Moe and Bob discuss a challenge that determines every organization’s success: scaling up farther, faster, and more effectively as a program or an organization creates a larger footprint.
Scaling Up Excellence
Starting a business is hard; scaling a business is harder. The former has little barrier to entry; while the latter requires deliberate due diligence and strategic thinking. In the beginning, most get their start in the preverbal garage with a simple idea, only to reach a ‘ceiling of complexity’ when their assumptions prove worthy. For a fast growth startup, rapid scaling maybe exhilarating; still it brings with it a new set of challenges that not only require fresh thinking, and ‘adult supervision’, more importantly, it rarely succeeds without leadership expertise.
Although those challenges fall into several broad areas – often, its people and process that top the list. The likely priorities will be to formalize an organizational structure and management system; to appoint a trusted board, and to fine tune HR; all while preserving the entrepreneurial culture. Few will pull it off; and the lucky ones who do are likely to have put more emphasis on their organizational mindset, not just their footprint. In their brilliantly researched book, Scaling Up Excellence– Stanford professors Robert Sutton and Huggy Rao unpack their convincing research on why beliefs and behaviors matter…