Scaling Up : How a Few Companies Make It...and Why the Rest Don't (Rockefeller Habits 2.0)

By the time it reaches $50 million in revenue, an organization should have enough experience and a strong-enough position in the market to predict profitability accurately.

Between startup and the first million or two in revenue, the key driver is revenue (sell like hell). The focus is on proving that a market exists for your services.

you want to delegate the functions listed on the FACe tool to leaders who pass two tests (including culture fit): 1. They don’t need to be managed. 2. They regularly wow the team with their insights and output.

you want to delegate the functions listed on the FACe tool to leaders who pass two tests (including culture fit): 1. They don’t need to be managed. 2. They regularly wow the team with their insights and output.

To get to 10 employees, founders must delegate activities in which they are weak. To get to 50 employees, they have to delegate functions in which they are strong! In many cases, the strength of the top leader becomes the weakness of the organization.

Daniel M. Cable goes one step further and suggests you hire people who are downright strange.

Divide big teams into smaller ones aligned around projects, product lines, customer segments, geographical locations, etc., based on the idea of getting everyone in the organization into small teams and as close to his or her respective customers as possible.

Avoid checking up on whether someone did something the previous day. Team members will start feeling like they are being micromanaged. In general, looking forward is great management; looking backward is micromanagement.

Companies can spend tens of thousands of dollars and many months laboring through employee surveys and management meetings to figure out their Values, only to end up with a generic list of platitudes — like “honesty, integrity, teamwork, and customer service” — that misses the uniqueness and power of the existing culture. Discerning the Core Values