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: building an operating system that enables your company to keep growing.

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.

I call this blog systems that scale because the structures, priorities, and cultural choices inside companies determine how they grow. Companies that get this right can scale with focus, ownership, and speed. Those that do not drift into complexity, chaos, and inertia.

I have seen these issues up close in companies of all 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."
"Management paints rosy pictures, but on the ground, it feels like a drag."

These are not minor problems. They are core blockers to scale. They are deeply frustrating to the people involved — both leaders and staff. But they are fixable. Or at least mostly: scaling always creates some overhead, there is no way around that.

This blog is where I share what I have learned about building better operating systems for companies — practical ways to grow without drifting into chaos or bureaucracy.

Of course, with my thinking, I am standing on the shoulders of giants. A few names I would like to mention are Roger Martin (on strategy), Claire Hughes Johnson (on company operating systems), Jim Collins (on enduring organizations), Kim Scott (on good management), and Jeff Gothelf & Josh Seiden (on goal setting). Their ideas have shaped a lot of what you will read about here.

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

• The framework – a holistic view on the systems a company needs for successful scaling
• Perspectives – thoughts, tools, and models that help turn concepts into action
• Stories from builders – conversations with people building and scaling companies

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 this blog will be useful to you.

About me

My name is 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 Swiss tech company and a global leader in positioning solutions (GPS, Galileo etc.). This blog is where I share what I have learned – and keep learning – about turning ambitions into results without letting growth slide into chaos or bureaucracy. If you would like to connect, you can find me on LinkedIn.