Scaling across markets: Build definitions before growth

As Peter Senge writes in The Fifth Discipline, systems produce the outcomes their structures generate. Yet reality can disappoint. Effort does not always translate into performance, especially when the structure does not support it.

While many advocate a bias for action, in my experience, complex scale requires design before execution. It needs to be worked through and articulated clearly before action.

Growth without scale: More effort, less leverage

Marty Cagan wrote about a distinction between feature teams and product teams: feature teams deliver outputs, while product teams are responsible for outcomes.

Outputs can increase with growth. In practice, when there is no shared structure, growth can still happen. But work accumulates. There is more to launch, maintain, and coordinate.

As adoption and complexity increase, the system becomes harder to understand. Teams might begin responding to requests rather than building towards outcomes.

Overall, less attention is then paid to solving the underlying problem.

So, Melissa Perri describes the build trap like this: teams stay busy shipping work while losing sight of whether they are solving the right problem.

Effort to deliver output rises, but leverage and outcomes do not.

Scale with clarity, not growth with complexity

Growth without scale is like sizing up an image to fit a larger frame, only to realise its resolution does not hold up. The pixels were never there.

Scale is the ability of a system to continue delivering value as demand and complexity increase. Without a defined system, expansion could increase complexity faster than value, and the problems become harder to ignore.

The work is not only execution, but definition.

This is where a business manager’s value lies. Defining systems for scale requires managerial judgement: knowing where small changes create leverage, and designing from first principles using domain experience and patterns across contexts.

Sources

Christensen, C., Hall, T., Dillon, K., & Duncan, D. (2016). Competing Against Luck.
Perri, M. (2018). Escaping the Build Trap.
Cagan, M. (2021). “Product vs Feature Teams.” Silicon Valley Product Group.
Senge, P. (1990). The Fifth Discipline.

Personal story: From effort to systems

In my first full-time role, I was required to submit a daily report. I missed the first day due to orientation. The response was direct: “That’s also a business activity, right?” I sent it immediately.

From then on, I submitted one daily and one weekly report for a specific line of business.

Initially, I thought it was just busy work. Had I taken a wider view, I could have learnt from it, for example, by observing what drives the organisation’s outcomes!

Nearly ten years on, I see work differently: less about effort alone, and more about understanding the systems that enable repeatable, reliable performance.