Continuous Breakage

When I started working at Ai there were about 6 people. Now there is about 40. In speaking with a colleague yesterday, I stumbled upon the essential mechanism of a scaling company: breakage. A scaling company is one in which good, working processes break. Continuously.

The mechanism itself is simple: business processes put in place when there are 6 people stop working when there are 12. Processes that work at 12 people then strain under 24. Processes at 24 fail at 35. Failing processes are a normal part of a growing company. It's healthy. Painful, but healthy.

The role of good management is to be ready for process failures and respond actively: either by adjusting or replacing business processes to fit the needs of the company at its new size. Unfortunately, this can't be done prematurely - it can be just as destructive to roll out a process that is optimized "too large" than it is to cling to one that is optimized "too small". The balancing act is to wait until the appropriate time to adjust a business process, recognizing that occasionally it will feel like overkill when it is initially implemented.

The other factor that can be easy to overlook is that there are people involved. Processes shape people's jobs and thus their experience at work. If a person's job description changes as a consequence of a process adjustment, it can be interpreted as a change in their prestige or status. Great care needs to be taken in order to not unduly ruffle feathers in the pursuit of a working organization. The people have the same value they've always brought - its the organization that has changed.