“Who Do We Want to Be When We Grow Up?”
“I guess we need to figure out who we want to be when we grow up.”
It usually gets a laugh. Sometimes a sigh. But underneath it means something real.
I’ve heard this line from founders of $50M+ companies. From exec teams post-acquisition. From startups and legacy orgs trying to evolve.
It always shows up at the same moment:
When growth has outpaced clarity.
Growth Isn’t the Same as Maturity
Revenue is up. Headcount is up. Product’s expanding. Marketing’s shipping. And yet, something’s… off.
Teams are misaligned.
The story is unclear.
Decisions feel reactive.
The brand feels like a leftover version of who you used to be.
You’re no longer a scrappy startup. But you’re not a fully formed org either. You’ve outgrown your instincts, but haven’t yet built infrastructure for the next stage.
The Coming-of-Age Moment
Every company hits this. It’s not a failure. It’s a developmental milestone. The challenge is, most teams try to solve it with surface-level fixes:
A new deck
A rebrand
A reorg
A vision offsite with Post-its and team building exercises
But without real alignment on identity, priorities, and behaviors, those fixes fade fast.
Coming of age as a company means making the hard shift from improvising to intentionally leading. From chasing momentum to building direction.
Strategic Alignment Through Brand Design
You need to build clarity into your system, so that how you lead, how you decide, and how you show up to the world all point in the same direction.
That’s what growing up looks like.
If you’ve caught yourself, or your team, saying:
“Who do we want to be when we grow up?”
That’s not a joke.
It’s a turning point.
What happens next is about choosing who you are, how you lead, and what kind of business you’re really building.
And doing that with intention, not improvisation.
Christopher Cureton is the creator of The United State of Brand Design Framework™ and a strategic partner to CEOs and Executive Leaders navigating go-to-market complexity. He helps executive teams align product, marketing, and sales around a shared vision—building strategic momentum, unified messaging, and brand-led growth.