About systems that scale

When it comes to scaling a company, most talk is about funding and product-market fit. While that is crucial, in my experience it is not enough. Many teams with great products and strong demand still struggle – not because of money, but because the way their company is run cannot keep up.

That is what this blog is about: practical ways to design and improve an operating system that enables your company to keep growing.

An operating system is the set of systems that determine how work gets done in a company – how people are organized, how priorities are set, how decisions are made. When it works well, you barely notice it. When it fails, things become unclear, slow down, and stall.

This blog is about designing a company's operating system so it can keep growing. That is why I call it systems that scale. Companies that get their operating system right can scale with focus, ownership, and speed. Those that do not drift into complexity, chaos, and inertia.

I have seen the same patterns come up in companies of many sizes. They start early, often with just a few dozen coworkers, get worse as companies grow into the hundreds of people, and persist even in global organizations with thousands of employees.

The same frustrations come up again and again:

"We have no idea where we’re heading."
"Everything is supposedly important, no one knows what really matters."
"Nobody seems to properly own anything around here."

These are not small problems. They are core blockers to scale. And they are deeply frustrating for both leaders and teams. But they are fixable. Not completely, because scaling always adds some complexity, but enough to keep your company fast, focused, and sane.

While I mostly write about "the company", the same principles apply at any level – for business units, functions, and individual teams alike. That is because a good operating system is fractal: You can start from where you are and grow from there.

Of course, with what I do, I am standing on the shoulders of giants. Among those who shaped my thinking are Roger Martin (on strategy), Claire Hughes Johnson (on scaling), Jim Collins (on enduring organizations), Kim Scott (on good management), and Jeff Gothelf & Josh Seiden (on goal setting). Their ideas have shaped much of what you will read here.

Over time, you will find three types of articles here:

• The framework: A holistic view on the systems a company needs to scale effectively
• Practices: Concepts, tools, and models that help turn ideas into action
• Perspectives: Conversations with people who are building and scaling organizations

I want this to become the blog I would have loved to stumble upon when I first tried to get a grip on organizing a company in the middle of scaling. If you are building an organization and want it to scale without descending into chaos, I hope you will find this blog useful.

About me

I am Thomas. I love figuring out what it takes to build high-performance organizations and helping companies overcome the challenges of growth.

Over the last decade, I have worked as a COO in a scale-up, at Bain & Company, and now at u-blox, a global leader in positioning technology.

This blog is where I share what I have learned – and keep learning – about turning ambitions into results while keeping both chaos and bureaucracy at bay.

If you would like to connect, you can find me on LinkedIn.