My best guess is that organizations will go through growing pains any time the toplevel group grows to a size that 12 people can't handle. This applies to subgroups in an organization as well, i.e. if you're on a team that is expanding, then it's going to be suck being the 13th person in.
By that logic, we should see growing pains at roughly magnitudes of 10 (10 is close enough to 12 right?). Whatever, maybe not, but you get the idea.
This is a crude level of understand; I am well aware of it. But it's a place to start, and you can get quite a bit of mileage from it.
I should note that neither of the two teams I've worked in professionally grew beyond 12 people in a peaceable manner. In the first case, the company simply fell apart.
http://www.fldp.org/2008/11/07/group-size/
My best guess is that organizations will go through growing pains any time the toplevel group grows to a size that 12 people can't handle. This applies to subgroups in an organization as well, i.e. if you're on a team that is expanding, then it's going to be suck being the 13th person in.
By that logic, we should see growing pains at roughly magnitudes of 10 (10 is close enough to 12 right?). Whatever, maybe not, but you get the idea.
This is a crude level of understand; I am well aware of it. But it's a place to start, and you can get quite a bit of mileage from it.
I should note that neither of the two teams I've worked in professionally grew beyond 12 people in a peaceable manner. In the first case, the company simply fell apart.