Description
Why do some businesses “fail to scale”? Executive coach and organizational consultant, Rob Bier offers up sixteen essential rituals business leaders need to integrate into their organizations to make growing frictionless, easy, and above all, sustainable. In Smooth Scaling, Rob Bier reveals the often-overlooked reasons behind the “fail to scale” phenomenon–the low-quality, high-friction interactions that become increasingly common as companies expand. Bier’s solution? Based on his extensive experience as an executive coach who specializes in building high-performing organizations, Bier has created sixteen foundational rituals that business leaders can integrate into the daily habits of their organizations to make interactions as frictionless as possible, allowing them to scale more easily, and more sustainably, than ever before. Where other books on high-speed scaling focus on strategy, fundraising, or product-market fit, Smooth Scaling addresses the most pervasive and least-understood fail point that threatens to kneecap even the best-laid scaling plan: poor interactions. Strategy, performance, culture, team cohesion, and employee engagement all live or die on the strength of human interactions in all areas of the business, from one-on-one updates and performance reviews to team meetings, to vision-setting town halls. When those interactions are healthy, functional, and aligned with the values and strategy of the mothership, they grease the skids for success. But if poor quality interactions aren’t dealt with, they result in bureaucracy, bottlenecks, and bickering so common in rapid-growth companies. This can throw sand in the gears of every business function and may even threaten to bring the enterprise to a sluggish standstill at its most critical inflection point. Visionary leaders understand that rapid scaling is a risky game with the potential for extreme impact and massive rewards. In Smooth Scaling, readers will learn: How what worked when your company was small won’t work forever. Why a focus on interpersonal interactions is now more important than ever. How to build a top team with the people you’ve got. Why the “fail to scale” problem hasn’t been solved before. How to do more than strategy-setting and improving productivity. To navigate the increasing complexity of a new configuration. To improve the quality of human-to-human interactions to build future success. Rituals for better communication that lead to sustained high performance. Those who want to see their organizations grow while maintaining high performance will find in this book a useful, adaptable set of tools that they can embed throughout the company for a business that’s truly built to last.
