Articles

Writing for the people who run things.

Short pieces on People, Structure, and Systems. And on getting scale-ready.

Scale-ready

What “scale-ready” really means

Scale-ready isn’t a feeling or a valuation. It’s one question. Will what you’ve built hold when the work doubles? If not, where does it break?

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The three parts

People, Structure, Systems: the three parts we look at

Most problems hide where two parts meet. Look at all three together and the real problem shows up.

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Structure

Spans and layers: how many direct reports is too many?

Your team feels slow and you can’t say why? Check your spans and layers: how many people each manager has, and how many levels of managers. The shape is usually the problem, not the effort.

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What you get

The Top 5 People Moves, explained

Not a list of everything wrong. The five changes that matter most, in order. Why only five, and why they never name names.

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The 90-day plan

The first 90 days after a Staff Analysis

Your report comes in days. The change takes the next three months. How doing five moves in the right order makes your company feel different.

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People & staffing levels

Understaffed, or just disorganized?

More people don’t always fix an overloaded team. How to tell if you’re short on people or the work is in the wrong places. And what to do about each.

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The founder bottleneck

The founder bottleneck

If every decision still goes through one person, working harder won’t fix it. The setup is the problem. How to spot it and fix it.

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Structure & leadership

When to hire a COO (and when not to)

Most founders hire a COO too late, or for the wrong reason. A simple test to tell if you need one, before you spend on the wrong hire.

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Systems & process

The right tools, and the work written down

Wrong tools and work that lives in a few people’s heads make growth risky. How to find the gaps in your systems and process.

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Org structure audit

Org structure audit: what you get

An org structure audit checks who reports to whom and who decides what. It shows what breaks if one person leaves. Then it gives you the five moves that matter. Done in days.

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More on the way. Written for founders and their teams, not consultants.

Three minutes from now, you'll know what to fix first.

Eight questions. A red, yellow, or green on People, Structure, and Systems. And the one thing to fix first.

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