What was easy when we were small is now hard

If you’ve seen me talk or read many of my various musings online, you know that I champion what I consider three of the most important things in business operations and effectiveness, the 3Cs:

  1. Communication
  2. Collaboration
  3. Coordination

I’ve spoken at length about how if we keep a pulse check on these three things, it will greatly help everything else run smoothly, but what I haven’t specifically touched on is how the way we do this needs to evolve as we scale.

I’ll go through each one:

  • From the lens of both a start-up/small operation as well as a scaled/large operation.
  • Specifically the things to watch for as your operation scales.
  • Rituals, frameworks, and tools that can help.

Communication

When you’re small

Communication in a startup or small operation tends to be organic and informal. Teams often work closely together, with lots of face-to-face interaction and spontaneous discussion. You might all work in a single small room or two, where banter comes easily and friendships form fast. That closeness can build a strong sense of camaraderie and transparency, with everyone on the same page about goals and tasks. It’s possible to be more reactive at this size without it feeling overwhelming.

When you’re small, communication can often feel easy. You may not even think about it; it just happens. You can notice people problems faster than a larger org can and hash them out faster, too. Complications can arise if you’re mostly remote, but for the most part, it’s still easy to reach out and resolve something.

When you’re big

As your business grows, communication becomes more structured and layered. Departments and teams form, which brings more specialization and can silo communication. You need clear channels such as email, meetings, and company-wide updates to keep information flowing across the organization.

I talk to a lot of folks at larger organizations that say communication is difficult. There’s too little or too much, rarely in the right places or with the right people. If the organization scaled quickly there’s also a lot of strange feelings about this, too. Folks who used to feel close suddenly feel disconnected and like that culture has changed. If teams are still incredibly reactive at this size they easily get overwhelmed and burnt out. It’s harder to notice patterns forming in people problems quickly or to address them en masse.

As you scale

Scaling makes proactive and intentional communication more important. With more moving parts and stakeholders involved, you need clear communication protocols and platforms. Setting up tools like project management software, internal wikis, and collaboration platforms sooner rather than later can streamline communication and give everyone access to the information they need. On the other hand, if these repositories themselves scale too quickly it can also lead to confusion.

Things that help

  • Regular all-hands or Scrum-style meetings to align everyone on overarching goals and strategies.
  • Implementing communication tools like Slack or Microsoft Teams to facilitate real-time messaging and collaboration.
  • Setting clear guidelines with people about when to make a new communication channel (whether literally a “channel” in Slack or metaphorically), what to name it, who to share it with, how it should be monitored and moderated, and so on.
  • Setting up clear channels for feedback and discussion, such as regular team retrospectives or suggestion boxes.
  • Investing in communication training for managers and leaders to ensure effective communication cascades down through the organization.
  • Investing in facilitation training for managers and other roles that will be leading meetings and workshops. (I have taken facilitation training multiple times and usually receive compliments afterward about the sudden “boost” it gives my meetings and workshops.)
  • Record virtual meetings for people who cannot attend.
  • Summarize the main insights and actions from meetings and workshops for those who cannot attend.
  • Ensure your recordings and meeting notes are shared in the proper places.
  • Adopt a “right content, to the right coworker, at the right time” mentality.
  • Use frameworks like RACI on your larger initiatives and ensure all involved folks know who is responsible, accountable, and who should be consulted and informed.
  • Lean on folks in your organization like Product Marketing Managers to help inform internal messaging and communication as much as they do externally.
  • Share your content style guides for your products and marketing with your teams to help prevent internal nicknames, slang, and technical terms from making their way to customers.
  • Create a content strategy that helps cover how to assess existing content, when to create content, how to maintain content, and when to remove content.
  • Solicit anonymous feedback, research has shown that people will be more honest when they’re certain anonymity will be maintained. And honest feedback is more helpful feedback.

The biggest things that have helped me in organizations as we’ve scaled, or that I’ve used to coach others through scale, are the need to be proactive, intentional, and focused on value. What does that actually mean?

Being proactive with communication

In a scaling organization, being proactive with communication is like laying down tracks before the train arrives. It means anticipating the needs of your team and stakeholders before they arise and preemptively addressing them. This can mean setting up regular check-ins, circulating updates on projects or initiatives, and actively seeking feedback to identify potential issues before they escalate.

Proactive communication also involves staying ahead of changes within the organization. As you scale, roles may evolve, new teams may form, and priorities may shift. Telling people about these changes in advance keeps things transparent and keeps everyone headed where the organization is going. Changes to roles, teams, and how and where information is stored or shared are even more important to make sure everyone is on the same page about because they can cause cascading communication issues if not.

Being proactive also means looking for chances to celebrate successes and milestones. Recognizing what individuals and teams achieve builds a positive culture and boosts morale, which you need to keep momentum up during periods of growth.

Communicating intentionally

Intentional communication is deliberate and purposeful. You communicate clearly and precisely so your message is understood and supports your objectives.

As organizations scale, communication channels can become cluttered with noise, making it easy for important messages to get lost in the shuffle. Intentional communication cuts through the noise and delivers messages that land with your audience. It also involves knowing when there’s becoming too much noise and cutting back.

This may involve tailoring your communication style to suit the preferences and needs of different stakeholders, whether it’s providing detailed reports for analytical minds or delivering concise summaries for busy executives.

Intentional communication also means actively listening to feedback and adapting your approach accordingly. Along with broadcasting messages, you need to create opportunities for dialogue and collaboration.

Staying focused on value

As organizations scale, communication can become fragmented, with various teams and departments operating in silos. Focusing on value means making sure every message is worth something to the person receiving it. We have to avoid blasting folks from every direction with every little update. The things we share should hold value!

This requires a deep understanding of your audience’s needs and priorities. Instead of inundating them with information overload, focus on delivering insights, updates, or resources that are relevant and actionable. A helpful tip is to consider “if the folks I am about to share this with were actually our customers would this message hold value?”

Value-focused communication also involves prioritizing clarity and brevity. People are busy and don’t have time to sift through lengthy emails or presentations. Get to the point quickly and put the main takeaways upfront. This goes triple if it’s customer-facing. Get. To. The. Point.

Focusing on value also encourages accountability and ownership. When team members understand the impact of their communication, they’re more likely to put time and effort into messages that land and get results.

I try to encourage teams to communicate with me far less about what they did and far more about why they did it and the impact they think it will have.

Communicating with value also means communicating the value you want to receive. We must become much clearer with teams and individuals at scale about our expectations. What are the outcomes we want them to chase? What’s our strategy, and how do we see them playing a big part in it? What actions do we need from them right now, next, and later?

Collaboration

When you’re small

In a small operation, collaboration happens naturally as team members often wear multiple hats and work closely together towards common objectives. Informal brainstorming sessions and ad-hoc collaborations are common, allowing for agility and quick decision-making. Collaboration also may not happen because there are only a few of you, and you’re scrappy, with everyone trying to get something done quickly.

When you’re big

As the organization grows, collaboration becomes more structured and deliberate. Cross-functional teams and project groups may be formed to tackle specific initiatives, requiring coordination across departments. Tools like shared document repositories and project management software have become essential for managing collaboration at scale.

If your scrappy mentality evolves in unhealthy ways, integral folks may be left out of key initiatives, decreasing their quality or causing them to take longer than they should have, whether in the initial first pass or all of the re-work that needs to happen after the fact to then get it right.

As you scale

Scaling requires shifting towards more formalized collaboration processes to ensure alignment and efficiency. Alignment on what? The outcome you’re chasing, first and foremost, only then the path and efficiency of getting there. Establishing clear roles and responsibilities within teams, defining workflows, and implementing collaboration frameworks such as Agile or Scrum can help manage complexity and drive productivity. Notice my italics there, though, they can help, but you need to make sure folks understand their principles, how to implement them meaningfully, and more importantly, when not to. So many folks implement these tools and frameworks incorrectly, miss the point they originally were made to serve, or don’t know when to let go.

One of the most common things I notice about organizations that scale quickly is that the folks who wore a lot of hats previously may suddenly feel FOMO (fear of missing out). They get involved when there are now specialists to take care of things, and this can easily cause a “too many cooks in the kitchen” type of feeling to form. When this happens, we have to ensure people are aligned on their roles and accountabilities and make sure leaders hire and train others and empower them rather than continuing to get involved themselves.

I like to remind folks of two of my favourite acronyms:

You don’t want to swing a MISS or you’ll wind up seeing SPOTS.

  • MISS: Made In a Silo or Self-righteously.
  • SPOTS: Strategic Plan (left) On the Shelf.

The point that these are getting at is that some initiatives and projects are meant to be worked on together. They’re either better, quality-wise, or the act of making them together is half the point. Every time I hear about an organization hiring an external agency to make journey maps or service blueprints for them I can’t help but laugh, because the act of making those things as a team is half the point. They help you build empathy together. This applies to almost any strategic plan or initiative, it’s almost never a good idea to form alone.

Things that help

  • Encouraging a culture of openness and inclusivity where ideas are welcomed from all levels of the organization.
  • Identifying the key points that others should be involved. For example, highly effective product teams often include more functions in problem identification and ideation exercises because they recognize that each role will be more attuned to identifying different risks to mitigate or solutions that could help.
  • Investing in team-building activities and workshops to build trust and collaboration among team members.
  • Using collaboration tools that enable remote work and asynchronous communication to accommodate a distributed workforce. E.g. Miro, Figma
  • Implementing regular cross-functional meetings or forums to facilitate collaboration and knowledge sharing across departments.
  • Make sure that the right people are in cross-functional meetings or forums. Often times these will be more effective if they are organized based on people who can contribute to problems or outcomes you want to chase, or based on people from different slices of your funnel.
  • As a leader, train or hire others and empower them instead of trying to always get involved yourself.
  • Call attention to HiPPO behaviour, when the Highest Paid Person’s Opinion is leading instead of the specialist they’ve hired or readily available objective facts.
  • Collaboratively create team working agreements that ask hard, vulnerable questions of each other so you better know how to work together.

I think it’s important to teach people that effective collaboration requires humility, contribution over competition, empathy, and gratitude.

  • You have to have the humility to recognize when you’re the wrong person at the moment and to know when to call others in. You also need to know when to listen instead of speak.
  • You have to reframe away from competition and thinking there’s a “best idea” and instead get everyone to contribute meaningfully before doing any of cost/benefit analysis or prioritization of ideas.
  • You have to have empathy for the other folks in the room, their perspectives and contributions, and help them form empathy for those you’re serving and the reason you’re all in the room in the first place.
  • You have to call others in, encourage, champion, and show gratitude for peoples’ contributions to help maintain inclusivity and momentum to keep the ideas and participation flowing.
  • Use things like POPs to better inform people about what to expect in your meeting or workshop so they can contribute more meaningfully.
  • Ask people to rate your meetings and workshops at the end, like in an L10-style meeting, so you can take in feedback and improve.

Coordination

When you’re small

In a small operation, coordination often happens organically as team members are closely interconnected and aware of each other’s activities. Communication is fluid, and decisions can be made quickly based on shared understanding and alignment.

When you’re big

Coordination becomes more complex in a larger organization due to increased specialization and the need to manage interdependencies between teams and departments. What gets handed off to whom and why can be very confusing. Project managers or coordinators may be appointed to oversee large-scale initiatives and ensure that timelines and resources are managed effectively, though many of us ops professionals argue that if our attention were on efficiency and maturity, the teams may have been able to handle that themselves.

As you scale

Scaling requires a more systematic approach to coordination to prevent bottlenecks and keep work tied to overall business objectives. Establishing clear processes, workflows, and escalation paths can help streamline coordination and resolve conflicts efficiently. Creating good feedback loops between teams you need to provide to and consume from is incredibly important in service organizations so that you can quickly adapt to customer and partner changes.

Things that help

  • Implementing project management methodologies such as Gantt charts or Kanban boards to visualize and track progress.
  • Investing in automation and technology solutions to streamline repetitive tasks and improve coordination across teams.
  • Conduct regular performance reviews and retrospectives to identify areas for improvement and optimize processes.
  • Building a culture of accountability and ownership where individuals take responsibility for their tasks and contribute to the overall coordination effort rather than competing.
  • Create an overarching definition of done (DoD) for your department and one for each smaller team within it.

Comparing and contrasting

As you begin to compare and contrast common differences between smaller organizations, larger ones, or those that are in the middle of scaling, you may start to pick out what’s true or not for your organization. Not everything I’ve outlined here is going to match up for you, as there will always be unique contexts. Either way, there will be major differences between when you’re small and when you’re big, and not every organization makes it through the growing pains in between. A lot of the why for that, I think, comes down to a lack of humility, lack of perspective and empathy, and an inability to make hard decisions quickly.

As we scale, we need to constantly be tuning our microscope to different levels, staying in touch with what the odd organism that is our organization is has evolved into. We need to do this at both an organizational level and a personal level. The people, processes, tools and other operational and cultural aspects of our business may cause some folks to thrive at one stage and stagnate or flounder at another. This doesn’t mean we have to say goodbye to people who are having trouble with change, instead, to me it usually means we need to dig in and help inspire growth and maturity, and facilitate those awkward adjustments in communication, collaboration, and coordination.