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 Structure: Make Sure People Know What You Mean

"Boys tell stories 'bout the man…"

Drake is pushing back on people writing their own version of his story, because they never had the full one. Organizations do this constantly. Ask five leaders what "accountability" or "high potential" actually means, and you'll get five confident, sincere, slightly different answers. 

Translation structure is the shared definition that closes that gap. It's what turns a value or expectation into something people can actually apply the same way, whether they're hiring, coaching, or leading their team through every day situations.

When I took on the challenge of building Expedia's leadership development structure, it was not enough to say we wanted stronger leaders or more consistent expectations. Those words meant something different to nearly every person across teams spread over multiple markets. We translated each core term into a one-page definition: what it looked like in practice, what got mistaken for it, and where it needed to show up. That document became the thing that helped every employee across every market operate from the same definition instead of their own interpretation.

The lesson: If your leaders cannot describe what a value looks like in practice, employees are guessing. And guessing is not a scale strategy.

How you can build this:

• Pick one word your organization uses often, like accountability, ownership, or urgency.
• Define what it looks like in practice
• Test it. Ask a few leaders to define the word separately. If the answers don't match, you've found the gap worth closing.

2. Decision-Making Structure: Build a System With Checks and Balances

"I done kept it real from the jump…"

Drake is pointing to consistency here. The story didn't change once success showed up. Same roots. Same reality. Organizations need that consistency too, but not in the form of one more framework. They need a system that defines who has the authority to decide, when something should be escalated, and what can be resolved without ever reaching a leader's desk.

Decision-making structure is the system that defines how decisions actually get made across an organization. 

As the leadership function grew, decisions were happening in more places than any one person could track, and the risk wasn't just inconsistency. It was decisions either escalating unnecessarily or getting made by people who didn't have the full context to make them. I built a decision system that answered three questions for every leader: What can you decide on your own? What requires input before you decide? What has to be escalated, and to whom? Leaders across the org used that same model, but it wasn't a script to follow blindly. It gave them a structure to reason from, so the same model produced sound judgment whether the decision was small or significant.

The lesson: Without clear authority and escalation paths, organizations default to one of two failure modes: everything gets escalated, which slows the org down, or nothing gets escalated, which creates risk no one can see until it's a problem.

How you can build this:

• Map out three tiers of decisions in your organization: what leaders can decide independently, what needs input first, and what must be escalated.
• Name who holds authority at each tier, and be specific rather than defaulting to "leadership" as the answer.
• Test the model against a recent decision that went wrong. Was it escalated too late, too often, or to the wrong person?

🎤 Mic drop: A decision system doesn't remove judgment. It tells people where their judgment ends and someone else's begins.

3. Reinforcement Structure: Keep the System Alive After the Launch

"Story stay the same through the money and the fame…"

Drake is saying the story stayed consistent even after the circumstances changed. Organizations need that too. It's one thing to define expectations, build the program, or launch the framework. It's another thing to keep using it once the organization gets busier and more complicated. 

Reinforcement structure is what keeps a system in use long enough to drive adoption. It's the set of routines, conversations, and accountability points built into the work leaders are already doing, so the system doesn't depend on anyone remembering to use it.

The leadership expectations we translated and the rubric we built for decisions would have quietly died the same way most rollouts do. So we built the language and the rubric directly into the routines that already existed. Manager one-on-ones. Interview guides. Quarterly talent reviews. Nobody had to remember to use the system, because the system was included inside the conversations they were already having.

The lesson: A good program creates momentum. Reinforcement is what turns that momentum into practice, and it's what turns an event into a system.

How you can build this:

• Pick one system, program, or process your organization has already launched.
• Decide where it should show up again: team meetings, one-on-ones, hiring debriefs, or talent reviews.
• Name who owns reinforcing it. If everybody owns it in theory, nobody owns it in practice.

🎤 Mic drop: If people only hear the expectations once, they remember the announcement. If leaders keep practicing them, people understand how the organization actually works.

Final Thought

"Started From the Bottom" celebrates the climb. But in organizations, getting bigger is not the same as getting stronger.

Scale asks a different question: can the organization support what it has grown into?

Not a 14-step approval process. Not a framework that lives only in a launch deck. Structure that gives people clarity, helps leaders make better decisions, and keeps the work human while making it repeatable enough to last.

TL;DR

Growth adds more. Scale helps more hold. If your organization is moving from growth to scale, pay attention to three structures:

• Translation: Make sure people know what you mean.
• Decision-making: Make sure leaders are using a shared decision-making process.
• Reinforcement: Make sure the system stays alive after the launch.

Starting from the bottom is a powerful story. But staying ready for the next level requires more than the climb. It requires the courage to build what people can stand on.

If this made you think differently about growth, scale, or the systems underneath leadership, share it with someone building something that needs to last.

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Until next time...