Bob Sutton has been a considerable influence on me on how I think about scaling. Recently he taught me about three intertwined scaling challenges.
These challenges are:
- Growth
- Spread
- Size
Growth is about scaling up. This is what we typically think of when we think of startups and the hockey stick growth we see in products like ChatGPT. There are interesting problems to solve when your scale objective is growth.
Spread is about scaling out. You may have a need to change the way things are done within your team or organization. You want to scale out or spread ideas and behaviors. Spreading behaviors or ideas throughout an organization or team is difficult and requires intentionality.
Size is about dealing with scale or leading at scale. It refers to the complexity of a leader needing to manage both growth and spread challenges and how the humans in the system behave in it.
This framing is extremely useful to me as I think about scale in my role. Each of these challenge are intertwined but I now ask myself a question that helps me get grounded and focused in the right areas first.
What kind of scaling are we primarily talking about?
How do you think about scaling? Does this capture the challenges you’ve seen with scaling? Are there more challenges that should be considered? Let me know what you think.
