FOR FOUNDERS AND LEADERSHIPTEAMS NAVIGATING GROWTHFOR FOUNDERS AND LEADERSHIP TEAMS NAVIGATING GROWTH
PEOPLE DO THEIRBEST WORK WHENTHE environmentALLOWS THEM TO.PEOPLE DO THEIRBEST WORKWHEN THEenvironmentALLOWS THEM TO.
THE PATTERN
Organizations becomeOrganizations become
what their environmentsmake possible.what their environmentsmake possible.
How information moves, decisions get made and ownership is distributed shapes what people are able to do.
GROWTH
Growth doesn’tcreate organizationalproblems.Growth doesn’t createorganizational problems.
It exposes them.It exposes them.
What worked through proximity and informal coordination becomes harder to sustain as complexity grows.
REFRAMING
What if we’re askingthe wrongquestions?What if we’re askingthe wrong questions?
INSTEAD OF ASKING
START BY ASKING
- INSTEAD OF ASKINGWhy aren’t people taking ownership?
- START BY ASKINGWhat changed that made ownership harder?
- Why is execution slowing down?
- What changed before execution slowed down?
- How do we improve performance?
- What kind of environment allows people to do their best work?
THE WORK
Understand whatchanged.Understand what changed.
Reshape what nolonger works.Reshape what no longer works.
TealWave works with leadership teams to understand what changed around the work as organizations grow.
The work starts by looking at how the organization actually operates, not how it is supposed to.
Where information gets lost.Where decisions get stuck.Where ownership becomes unclear.And where the organization hasquietly outgrown the way it works.Where information gets lost.Where decisions get stuck.Where ownership becomes unclear.And where the organization has quietlyoutgrown the way it works.
What happens next depends on what we find. We work with leadership to make those changes and see how they hold up in practice.
BEHIND TEALWAVE
TealWave wasfounded byIvana Fišić.TealWave was founded byIvana Fišić.
Ivana’s background is in delivery and operations. She has worked with founders, leadership teams and distributed technology teams across Europe, North America, South America and Asia.
Working inside growing organizations gave her a close view of what happens as complexity increases and ways of working that once felt natural begin to strain.
TealWave grew from paying attention to those changes.
FIELD NOTES
Patterns observedacross growingorganizations.Patterns observed acrossgrowing organizations.
- OBSERVATION #011
- When Being Needed Becomes the Measure of Leadership
A CEO may want leaders who build independent teams, while continuing to recognize them for the decisions they personally handle. Both can seem reasonable. The tension becomes more visible as the organization grows.
ONCE YOU SEE IT…
