Building Groups at Scale
I'm a rank amateur at programming — I'm only a half step above "Hello World," and I still think pivot tables are amazing. Despite my shortcomings, I fell down a Google wormhole years ago and found an academic paper about writing scalable software. I lost the paper ages ago, but I still have my notes.
Scalable software, as it turns out, is also applicable to organizations at large.
Why is this relevant?
How often have you heard someone say, "I created a document to track…" or "Who owns the login for…"? Or maybe you've listened to "We need more training on…", or "We're too siloed," or "Our onboarding needs work" — I could go on and on, but you get the point.
As you grow, you are forced to reinvent your systems. The rule of thumb is to watch for a tripling of size. When a company goes from 3 people to 9, the systems break. When it goes from 9 to 27, they break again.
For anyone who has experienced growing pains, here's the best formula I've seen for scalable systems (brought to you by a sadly anonymous software academic):
Archive
Quick Access
Clones
Async
Archive
If you're a computer geek, the archive is like your hard drive. This is where you store your organization's secrets. If you have a good archive, you don't ever need to reinvent the wheel. It's like a scrapbook of everything successful (or unsuccessful) you've done. For a small group, this could be as simple as a shared Google Drive.
Quick Access
This is the place you go to find things quickly. It's not the archive, although they can be linked together. It's a spot where you keep all your "quick links" — the tools you use every day.
Clones
Every system needs repeatable elements. Often it's people — for example, I love sales pods with 3 people (an opener, a closer, and an implementer). Hire 3 more people, build a new sales pod. Hire 3 more, do it again. Rinse, wash, repeat.
Clones should teach other clones. If they are empowered to do that, the best ideas will evolve over time.
Async
The last step is the planning step. We should always plan for something to go wrong. Even the best systems get off-kilter. By planning for things to happen "asynchronously," or outside of the expected timeline, we can get ahead. Plan for every system to fail and have a backup plan.