Maturing an Organization Without an Instruction Manual
We have enough senior people at the table, enough experience at the table to kind of skip the IKEA phase and really invest in some stronger systems. So I feel like there's been a lot of strong tailwinds in that regard.
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Trees for the Future (TREES) has been operating for over 30 years, running a singular agroforestry program that supports smallholder farmers across East Africa. The model works—and the impact is real and varied, spanning climate, food security, income, and soil health. That clarity of mission has been an anchor through everything that’s come next.
In the last five years, investment from the voluntary carbon market changed the equation. While the organization didn’t explode in headcount—Leslye Womack, the organization’s VP of People & Culture, describes scaling at TREES as “deep quality, with dozens of new employees, or maybe 50 at a max” in a given year. But the growth has been steady, expectations have shifted, and the culture and systems needed to adapt to meet those new standards. Trees was no longer just reporting to donors. These were investors.
“Our bar is higher, our metrics of success are much more rigorous, and so we just kind of have to do what we’ve always done, but better, higher quality, and with more people. So that’s kind of the moment that we’re at. ”
That shift created what Leslye calls “TREES 2.0.” The organization is bringing in senior talent, deepening its focus from five countries to three, and building the infrastructure to match its ambitions. It’s the kind of transition that surfaces a universal tension in growing organizations: people who thrived in one chapter are being asked to operate differently in the next, and that adjustment takes real investment and adjustment on both sides.
When Leslye dug into what was driving manager challenges, for instance, the answer surprised her. She runs structured problem-solving workshops in each country, and when her team investigated manager effectiveness, the root cause wasn’t skill or motivation—it was coordination.
“If you look at conflict or tension, from manager to direct report, at the heart of that conflict is role clarity. And when you dig deeper into role clarity, it is, well, then what are we doing? So it’s the whole vessel of just the marching orders of what we need to do.”
Leslye arrived at TREES a year and a half ago with ambitious plans. But she made a deliberate choice to start with foundations rather than flashy programs. She built out the HRIS, put structure around recruitment, and professionalized the basics. Everyone wanted leadership training, and she told them: not yet.
” Everyone wants a training on leadership. I can’t give you a training unless you’re paid on time and unless your benefits are active…there’s just some foundational stuff. And so what’s really worked has been coming in and saying “Thank you everyone. I love all these ideas. This year’s foundations,” and then building really strong trust on that.”
That discipline earned trust. Once people knew the steps for hiring, for reviews—once the system worked—Leslye had the credibility to move to phase two: getting the right roles filled with the right people. Skills development is phase three. She’s been transparent about the trade-offs at every step, so people understand what’s coming and what has to wait.
That transparency extends to an idea she calls “strategic firefighting.” At a growing organization, you can’t fix everything at once—the skill is being intentional about what you prioritize and honest about why other things have to wait.
” I think that’s kind of the vibe or the tension is it’s like so much excitement and newness, but we can’t do everything at once.”
Leslye’s own leadership journey prepared her for this kind of pressure. She was leading large teams at 26 years old and heading HR for a 10,000-person organization at 30—without the deep leadership experience to back up the huge responsibility. The confidence came gradually, through repeated hard situations and surviving them.
” gradually, gradually, gradually, then suddenly. And I think I hit that suddenly probably in the last six months when I was given in this more executive role. This is the first time I’ve reported to a CEO. I’ve actually found a freedom in that there’s nobody else. It’s me. Like I, I trust myself, and at the same time, that’s more responsibility, but I find it more freeing.”
If she had a magic wand, Leslye would give her managers a secure foundation—clear competencies, goal setting, and work planning so deeply embedded that the answer to ambiguity is never “I didn’t know.” Not so flexibility disappears, but so people have a base to come back to when things move fast.
Her advice for HR leaders at growing organizations: invest in your HRIS before anything else, resist one-off decisions that won’t scale, and build a community of practice—because the work is lonely.
“I’m thinking especially mid-size, having a community of practice is so important, because HR is lonely. HR is hard. You have no one else to vent to. You have all these issues and ‘I’m not an expert in all of these things. I just didn’t even know that you could do that’ is go out and about and like talk to other people and get their support. ”