Thread by @asanwal

1/ In 2014, @cbinsights was <30 people and are now ~250

There is not a lot written abt challenges of scaling a company in the "teenage years"

Lot about early childhood (startup phase) and a ton about adulthood (the giant megacorp phase), but not a lot abt the teen years

@CBinsights 2/ So in this week's @cbinsights newsletters, I asked our very smart readers for some recommendations

And they were generous (as always) with their ideas

Many rec'd books which I haven't had opp to read but 2 articles they recommended were pretty solid

us1.campaign-archive.com/?u=0c60818e26e…

@CBinsights 3/ The first was "Evolution and revolution as organizations grow" by Larry E. Greiner

hbr.org/1998/05/evolut…

@CBinsights 4/ It's from 1972 but still highly relevant. Lots of good ideas in it

The premise being that "management problems and principles are rooted in time"

@CBinsights 5/ And as a result "critical task for management in each revolutionary period is to find a new set of organizational practices that will become the basis for managing the next period of evolutionary growth"

@CBinsights 6/ And it highlights this challenge which we've observed where we "experience the irony of seeing a major solution in one period become a major problem in a later period"

@CBinsights 7/ So this requires recognizes the limited range of solutions, i.e. nothing works forever

"Management must be prepared to dismantle current structures before the revolutionary stage becomes too turbulent"

@CBinsights 8/ These revolutions can be jarring. We've felt them @cbinsights / are prob always on the verge of feeling them as we grow

"To move ahead, cos must consciously introduce planned structures that only solve a current crisis but also fit the next phase of growth"

@CBinsights 9/ They talk about implications for managers and summarize in this table which summarizes the mgmt practices that characterize each growth phase

The article is from 1972 and while terminology has likely changed, the principles remain quite solid (with tweaks of course)

@CBinsights 10/ There were a couple of articles that were recommended which I've not reviewed but if they have solid ideas, I'll share them here in case useful for others who are navigating a company through the teenage years like we are @CBinsights

@CBinsights 11/ I'd written this about my 54 screwups as a startup CEO in 2014

The ways I've screwed up in new ways since then are numerous

Not seeing these aforementioned revolutions and thinking about the org is often the root cause

cbinsights.com/research/team-…

@CBinsights 12/ The cos in the article are manufacturing, retail, etc but the fundamental driver of their evolutions & revolutions comes down to people

Irrespective of when (1970s) or sector or co's pace of growth, it comes down to people

@CBinsights 13/ The article doesn't give a playbook for how to navigate the revolutions but did help me understand a bit how to recognize when we might be entering or in the midst of one

I hope it's helpful for you. LMK your thoughts or if you've read other great articles on the topic

@CBinsights 14/ BTW, if you're someone who'd love the challenge of optimizing these evolutionary phases and navigating through these revolutionary phases, we're hiring an SVP, People Strategy :)

Absolutely gargantuan role @CBinsights

boards.greenhouse.io/cbinsights/job…

@CBinsights 15/ Last point for some context

We've grown from <30 to 250 ppl without burning any money

We raised $10M in 2015, and we have more in the bank today

We've been atypically hyper-capital efficient as we've grown (which is abnormal in the current environment)