The Builder's Guide to the Tech Galaxy

4Scale-Up Mindset Principles to bridge organizational silos

With Johannes Lenhard

Key pitfalls for scale-up builders

• Ignoring the risk of organizational silo-building for too long

  With rising complexity in each scale-up function, it is natural that the teams start looking inward. Ignoring this for too long can lead to a non-aligned direction and lack of execution.

• Lack of customer experience focus

  Customer experience will be interpreted differently by each team. Not having measurable experience goals (e.g., with company-wide NPS targets that align the teams) is one key pitfall to avoid (see Practice 20).

• Thinking in “or” rather than “and”

  Often goals seem to conflict (e.g., growth vs. profit, speed vs. quality) and many teams discuss these as “either… or.” A successful scale-up will always try to reconcile seemingly contradictory goals (see Practice 21).

• Lack of learning cycles

  “Idea meritocracy” and psychological safety are often introduced as elements of a scale-up's culture too late (see Practice 22)

• Insufficiently enabling teams to work autonomously

  With rising size, the interconnectedness of teams will increase. Actively delegating decision power (e.g., with cross-functional product and tech teams, growth hacking teams or independent service teams) will often boost productivity and employee morale (see Practice 23).

In a startup, the generalists are the queens ...