When I came to America, I was so fascinated about one thing about this country above all else. It was the country’s ability to instinctively think of operating at scale in everything it did.
Every expressway throughout the country had the same Green signage with the same font, no matter where we went. Every McDonald’s had the same menu and the food tasted the same. Every Walgreens looked the same no matter where you went. It was pre-globalization and where I came from, there was no standardization. It was all very bespoke.
So I always wanted to learn this one skill. How to develop a scale mindset. Very specifically, I wanted to learn how to scale businesses.
But I started my career in a business that did not scale AT ALL. It was a consulting business. You could only scale revenue linearly to the scale of people hired.
So I tried to learn and observed companies like Microsoft, Apple, Cisco, Oracle as these companies that were these magical companies that scaled because of their core business model. This was pre-Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc btw, for those of you who are wondering!
I would always be amazed when I went to Europe and saw a Billboard in an airport in Germany of an American tech company. I was so marveled with it, that when someone worked in an office and made one decision, the entire world would benefit from it. It blew my mind.
Then I met my first boss in software, Rick Devenuti who taught me so much about scale. He was ex-Microsoft and really intrinsically understood scale. He taught me things like if you don’t have systems that give you data, you can’t run a business. That you must communicate with your teams very regularly. Like constantly!
But he taught me something that shocked me. He told me that scale isn’t hard. It’s the absence of scale that’s hard. Because if you have 1,000 people and you want to start a new project, you can always carve out 5 people. But if you only have 3 people, you can’t carve out 5 people.
But what I found was that every time I made a mistake in hires, they always experienced scaling challenges. The question is, why if scale is easy and absence of scale is what’s hard were people failing largely because of scaling challenges? And I finally figured out why a few months ago.
What you need in tech companies operating at scale are three things which are easy to find individually, but not all together.
They are the ability to be systems thinkers, who optimize for speed AND are scrappy.
It’s easy to find people who optimize for speed and are scrappy, but they typically aren’t systems thinkers.
And then there are people who are systems thinkers but don’t optimize for speed and aren’t scrappy. But unless you have all three, it’s hard to succeed in an at scale environment where the industry is dynamic and disruptive innovation is the norm.
So if you need someone who operates at scale, look for people who are systems thinkers, BUT are able to also be scrappy and optimize for speed.
Modernizing Enterprise BI Software Applications
1moI was a Cincom Systems employee in the late 1990s and worked with a great group of people. I met with your dad in his amazing office! My boss was Jerry Miller, my best manager ever. Congratulations on the company success and thanks for employing so many Cincinnati people (not to mention those friends in Maidenhead and around the world).