Started From the Bottom: Building Systems that Scale
Moving from growth to scale is one of my favorite parts of organizational work. It's messy. It's ambiguous. And it will humble any clean little framework that looked perfect in the planning meeting. But it's also where some of the best work happens. Growth creates movement. Scale creates the opportunity to build something that can last. I learned this while launching the leadership development system at Expedia. My team and I built everything from scratch: the system, the programs, the expectations, the tools. And Drake's song "Started From the Bottom" is the perfect lens for that climb, because he isn't just celebrating success. He's tracing exactly what it took to build something that held up once the visibility increased. When growth does not turn into scale, it is usually because a key set of structures is missing. Here are the three that matter most, what it looked like when I built them at Expedia, and how you can build them too. 1. Translation...
