Man, this blog is a treasure trove! I just got into a rabbit hole and I feel like I updated a bunch from this article plus:
- Slot hiring vs bar hiring
- My favourite moves during initial discussions with candidates
- Operations teams have to make a surprising number of hires to keep pace with a growing org
Some of this is validating some choices we've made but also I feel like I have a much better ontology to think about these problems. It is not surprising that a bunch of your wisdom transfers to Kairos but I didn't expect it would all be neatly explained in a substack!
Great post and useful examples! I think you are right that being highly intentional about staying nimble while scaling is quite possible. Some of the big consulting firms are also good examples of nimbleness at scale. Somewhat counterintuitively, I think that, over time, doing this well can sometimes require slowing down or adding rigor to a few particularly important processes (like hiring). My sense is that retaining flexibility and delegating ownership remain very much the exception rather than the norm as most organizations scale, because control, consistency, and risk-minimization are often valued more highly by leaders.
There's a framing in early work on organisational management on the emergence of budgets / control / etc. happens which I've been a bit obsessed with recently.
The idea:
1. Firms would like their decision makers to act as rational agents in the interest of the firm.
2. However, the decision makers have limited bandwidth, have different interests to the firm (~principle agent problems), etc.
3. Therefore, firms constrain the choices of their decision makers, using tools like these.
The trouble is that those constraints prevent people acting as idealised decision makers for the firm: and that's especially a problem when change is needed.
The exciting angle here is that the Principle Agent problems which mission driven organisations have with their staff are much less bad than those which of The Median Corporation has with its staff.
So _maybe_ we'll be able to be more nimble than them.
Man, this blog is a treasure trove! I just got into a rabbit hole and I feel like I updated a bunch from this article plus:
- Slot hiring vs bar hiring
- My favourite moves during initial discussions with candidates
- Operations teams have to make a surprising number of hires to keep pace with a growing org
Some of this is validating some choices we've made but also I feel like I have a much better ontology to think about these problems. It is not surprising that a bunch of your wisdom transfers to Kairos but I didn't expect it would all be neatly explained in a substack!
Great post and useful examples! I think you are right that being highly intentional about staying nimble while scaling is quite possible. Some of the big consulting firms are also good examples of nimbleness at scale. Somewhat counterintuitively, I think that, over time, doing this well can sometimes require slowing down or adding rigor to a few particularly important processes (like hiring). My sense is that retaining flexibility and delegating ownership remain very much the exception rather than the norm as most organizations scale, because control, consistency, and risk-minimization are often valued more highly by leaders.
Interesting, that does sound right to me.
There's a framing in early work on organisational management on the emergence of budgets / control / etc. happens which I've been a bit obsessed with recently.
The idea:
1. Firms would like their decision makers to act as rational agents in the interest of the firm.
2. However, the decision makers have limited bandwidth, have different interests to the firm (~principle agent problems), etc.
3. Therefore, firms constrain the choices of their decision makers, using tools like these.
The trouble is that those constraints prevent people acting as idealised decision makers for the firm: and that's especially a problem when change is needed.
The exciting angle here is that the Principle Agent problems which mission driven organisations have with their staff are much less bad than those which of The Median Corporation has with its staff.
So _maybe_ we'll be able to be more nimble than them.