Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Why do some businesses "fail to scale"? Executive coach and organizational consultant Rob Bier offers up twenty essential rituals business leaders need to integrate into their organizations to make growth 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 twenty 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 human interactions.
Strategy, performance, culture, team cohesion, and employee engagement all live or die on the quality of human interactions across the business, from employee one-to-ones with their managers, to team and cross-functional 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 the bureaucracy, bottlenecks, and bickering so common in high-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.
In Smooth Scaling, readers will learn:
- Why the "fail to scale" problem hasn't been solved before.
- What a high-performance organization is, and how to build one.
- How what worked when your company was small won't work forever.
- How to build a top team with the people you've got.
- How to assess and improve the quality of interactions taking place across their organization.
- How to build a culture that has trust at its foundation.
- Twenty practical rituals that lead to sustained high performance.
Visionary leaders understand that rapid scaling has the potential for massive rewards but also carries risk. Those who want to see their organizations blow up--in a good way--while maintaining high performance will find in this book a powerful set of tools that will help them grow a business that's truly built to last.
Synopsis
Why do some businesses "fail to scale"? Smooth Scaling offers a clear diagnosis, along with twenty practical Rituals to boost your organization's performance and achieve frictionless growth.
Where other books on 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: organizational friction. Expert Rob Bier reveals why organizational frictions take hold as you grow and how they slow your company down.
These growth pains are both predictable and preventable, yet they almost always take leaders by surprise. But it doesn't have to be this way.
Until now, there's been no resource to guide executives through this challenge. As a result, they end up playing "Whack-a-Mole," reacting to a never-ending stream of organizational, team, and people problems one at a time--only for new ones to crop up. Smooth Scaling addresses this gap, presenting a proven approach based on real-life experience and application.
Drawing on his extensive experience building high-performance organizations, Bier has created twenty foundational Rituals that integrate seamlessly into the daily habits of your company. These Rituals make your organization as frictionless as possible, allowing you to scale faster--and more sustainably--than ever before.
In Smooth Scaling, you will learn how to:
- Build trust proactively across your organization
- Turn your managers into a powerful driver of productivity and scalability
- Build high-performance teams with the people you've got
- Break down barriers between departments to prevent silos
- Maintain a cohesive high-trust culture as you grow
Smooth Scaling is your indispensable guide to building a scalable, high-performing organization. It gives you the insights, frameworks, and tools you need to create a company that's truly built to last.