The Scale Excuse

This post originally appeared on the Gartner Blog Network. This version may have minor updates and edits.

I’m sick of the word scale and would be ecstatic to not hear it again for the remainder of the year (and maybe longer). Why? Because in most cases, it comes across as an excuse. Yes, the ability, and readiness, to scale is important, but here is what I hear when scale comes into many of my conversations of late.

When folks say, “That’s a great idea, but I don’t think it would scale across our organization,” they usually mean:

• “That would require us to have a good training program, and we are not willing to invest in that.”
• “That would require us to have people that think, but we don’t have people that can think.” (Aside: This is patently ridiculous, but I hear it. particularly in terms of sales reps and SDRs actually adapting their talk track to the customer situation)
• “That might work for top performers, but the rest of our workforce can’t do that.”
• “That might work now, but we could never do that for all our customers, so let’s not try it.”

In cases, some of this might be true, but it usually ends up meaning that they fail to even try something new. It is the key to maintaining the status quo.

In other cases, it gets worse, and we optimize for mediocre. We institute checks and balances that force the mediocre to follow the basic steps for acceptable performance, while penalizing the top performers with added work and expectations that just get in the way. We strive for volume, asking for more calls, more leads, more pipeline coverage with the full on expectation that we will have lower quality and lower conversion.  We create generic templates that speak to everyone, thereby speaking to no one and then wonder why customers don’t care.

All of this might cause scale to really bite you.

To me, a few things need to change to get out of this cycle.

1. Scale concerns should never be the reason not to try something.  Try it, if it works, then figure out how to scale it. Look for elegant solutions to make the idea simpler (but not simple!).
2. When the focus is scale, take a hard look at the approach. If what you are really doing is scaling mediocrity, rethink it.
3. When thinking about scale, instead of thinking about how it can scale to “everyone,” think about how it can scale to “more people.” Everyone is probably an aspirational goal that just serves to delude and depress.
4. In fighting the battle against “it won’t scale,” consider measuring mediocrity—what are the incremental costs of accepting being average.  Include in that the morale drain on top performers as processes and practices get instituted for the many that frustrate the few.

The scale excuse. Enough is enough.