How to prioritise people and operations during high-growth scaling

Executive overview

High-growth companies consistently under-invest in the basics — clear goals, aligned priorities, and consistent management practices. Without a declared company-level plan, everything below it drifts.

Three principles cut through the noise: commit to a plan before cascading goals, treat context as decisive before adopting any practice, and reserve novelty for your product — not your operations.

The fastest path to alignment is pointing at the finish line, not pushing people with carrots or sticks.

Commit to a company-level plan first

• Founders often resist committing to top-level goals for fear of missing them — this blocks alignment at every level below.
• Rolling out OKRs before setting company goals is backwards; individual targets have no anchor.
• OKRs were designed at Intel in the 1970s for a stable, 10,000-person organisation — not a 50-person startup mid-pivot.
• At early stages, quarterly individual OKRs are often obsolete before they're finalised.
• Start with three to five company priorities. Everything else follows more easily.
• Clarity drives alignment faster than incentives or accountability systems.

Context beats content — there is no best practice

• "Best practice" borrowed from another company is untested in your context: geography, scale, complexity, margins, leadership, and culture all differ.
• The Holacracy / self-managed team model worked at Zappos because they had a large, homogenous call-centre workforce under one roof — it does not transfer to a 1,500-person, 95-job-title, 38-location organisation.
• Before adopting any significant management practice, audit the factors you control and those you simply operate within.
• Get brilliant at the basics: named goals, regular one-on-ones, fair pay. These outperform novel systems.

Reserve innovation for your product, not your operations

• Trying to reinvent internal operations alongside a new product multiplies execution risk unnecessarily.
• Proven HR and management practices exist for a reason — use them.
• Be selectively novel: Southwest Airlines runs a distinctive business model but still has seats in planes.
• Scale-appropriate processes change at roughly factors of five in headcount (~25, ~150, ~750). Each new management layer degrades signal and trust.

Navigating rapid growth and organisational change

• What worked at 25 people is wrong at 250. Holding onto old rhythms as you scale actively creates drag.
• As layers increase, the CEO is further from the work; trust and awareness weaken — address this structurally, not culturally.
• The meeting format, decision cadence, and communication norms that fit a 20-person team will break a 200-person team.

Remote and hybrid work — practical observations

• Companies are splitting into two camps: making the location decision for employees, or letting employees choose.
• Organisations with high margins can offer full flexibility and pay market rates anywhere; PE-backed companies with tight margins are using remote work for labour arbitrage instead.
• One sustainable model observed: leadership teams convene physically three days per month under one roof — enough for relationship-building, alignment, and key meetings without disrupting the rest of the month.
• The talent pool has permanently expanded; wages in lower-cost markets will rise as a result.