Maintaining an obsession with the front line—where the company meets the customer—is fundamental to achieving sustainable growth. But as companies get bigger, they have a harder and harder time staying close to their customers and maintaining the sharp, ground-level instincts of a younger company. Proliferating bureaucracies, expanding org charts, increasingly powerful central staffs, competing departmental agendas—all interfere with the focus on the customer and the deep connection with the details of the business that allowed these companies to grow successfully in the first place. So how can leaders of growing companies maintain this essential focus?