How I Think About Scaling

Scaling is rarely about doing more work or pushing people harder, even though that’s where most leaders instinctively go when growth starts to feel strained. It’s more often about identifying what’s quietly getting in the way of the work that actually matters and then having the discipline to remove it.

Most companies don’t stall because they lack ambition, talent, or good ideas, and they usually don’t stall because people stop caring. They stall because friction builds up slowly as the company grows, and by the time leaders feel it, it’s already spread everywhere. Decisions take longer than they should, meetings feel productive but don’t convert into action, and priorities sound clear in theory but blurry the second everyone leaves the room. Good people hesitate, not because they are incapable, but because the system doesn’t give them the confidence to take action.

Over time, that friction changes how growth feels. CEOs feel heavier carrying the organization forward, teams lose momentum even though effort stays high, and what once felt energizing starts to feel exhausting.

My work is centered on finding where growth is being constrained and removing obstacles that don’t need to exist. Scaling done well should simplify the business rather than complicate it. And that always starts with clarity.

Unclear thinking can break a company.

As organizations scale, every assumption gets amplified, and every vague priority creates confusion downstream, while every half made decision quietly generates rework that compounds over time. What once worked through informal alignment starts to fail, not because people changed, but because the system outgrew the way decisions were being made.

The first responsibility of leadership is to communicate clearly enough that others can execute without guessing, because when leaders do that work well, execution becomes faster and lighter across the entire company. When they don’t, leaders end up compensating for that lack of clarity with more meetings, more oversight, and more personal involvement.

That’s why I spend so much time helping CEOs define what truly matters right now, clarify what good actually looks like, and decide which decisions don’t need to be reopened every quarter. When those things are clear, teams move with confidence.

Strategy only matters if it survives contact with reality, and execution is where that truth shows up. When execution drags, it is not usually because teams are weak or disengaged. It’s almost always because expectations are unclear, ownership is fuzzy, or decisions were never fully closed. When work keeps flowing back to the top of the organization, that is usually a signal of a design problem rather than a people problem.

Scaling well means designing the company so decisions happen at the right level, teams know where they have real autonomy, and leaders are no longer required to be the bottleneck for progress. When the structure supports the work, capable people naturally move faster.

Most leaders don’t need to push their teams harder, but they do need to remove the friction that is slowing them down, because when expectations are clear and constraints are visible, strong teams move decisively. When everything feels ambiguous, even the best teams hesitate.

Scaling isn’t about control, and it’s not about intensity. It is about creating conditions where momentum becomes the default rather than something leaders have to manufacture.

AI fits into this work as a tool, not as the strategy itself. It only matters when it helps leaders think more clearly before decisions are made. AI can surface blind spots earlier, reduces unnecessary back and forth, and removes friction from planning and execution, which is where most companies lose time and energy.

I don’t think AI’s biggest value is creating effeciency or content. It can help leaders make better decisions with less drag. Sometimes that means a framework, sometimes it requires a difficult conversation, sometimes it calls for a new habit, and sometimes it looks like AI acting as a thinking partner.

I believe growth should create energy rather than exhaustion, and leadership should feel lighter as companies scale rather than heavier. Well run companies are calmer than they look from the outside. When something consistently feels hard, slow, or frustrating, it usually means there’s friction worth removing.

That’s how I think about scaling. Clarity creates the conditions for good implementation, and good implementation is what allows growth to compound without exhausting the people doing the work.