Scaling Up Excellence Book Summary

Book Summary

15 min

Brief Summary

Spreading excellence throughout a company is not always simple. It takes persistence. But, if a leader has a clear vision, the right people, and diversity, their company scaling efforts become much easier.

About the Author

Robert I. Sutton is the professor of management science at Stanford School of Engineering and researcher in the field of evidence based management. He is a New York Times best-selling author.

He received a PH.D from the University of Michigan. He works a Fellow at the designing consulting firm IDEO and has a courtesy appointment as a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Topics

Management & Leadership

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Key Insights

There are so many good ideas in the world; So many booming businesses with excellent performance and products that are changing the world. But, how can we spread these behaviors and products to people in different areas? Or even, just these good practices into other parts of the workplace?

In “Scaling Up Excellence” Sutton and Rao help readers to understand the struggles in sharing replicated practices and behaviors with different people and in different places.

“Scaling is akin to running a long race where you don’t know the right path, often what seems like the right path turns out to be the wrong one, and you don’t know how long the race will last, where or how it will end, or where the finish line is located. Yet it is one of the fundamental challenges that every organization faces, whether it’s small or large, new or old, or somewhere in between.” - Robert I. Sutton & Huggy Rao

They discuss the steps it takes to successfully scaling a company. And, tells you exactly what will hinder the process.

With this information, backed by research, you will be able to tackle your own scaling challenges.

Scaling is Essential

Scaling is the practice of spreading and introducing superb performance to more people and places.

Scaling is often referred to as “the problem of more” because it is a challenge for leaders to spread these positive performances.

The act of scaling can come in many different forms. For example, it could mean opening a new coffee shop in a different city or it could be growing the number of company employees. Or, even improving productivity and lowering mistakes in the workplace.

“It means constantly seeking and implementing better ways of thinking and acting across old and new corners of the system.”- Robert I. Sutton & Huggy Rao

There are two parts to scaling:

Replicating best practices

Improving performance

These go hand-in-hand. So, the “problem of more” also is the “problem of better” for the leaders in charge.

Scaling requires companies to be innovative by always developing new strategies and organizational structures in the workplace.

There is no easy recipe to follow to successfully scale a workplace to excellence.

Be Persistent

When you are working on scaling your company, be prepared to be in it for the long-haul. Scaling takes time, effort, and most of all, persistence.

There will be a lot of unforeseen roadblocks and bumps along the way, but you must have the mental endurance to keep going or else your scaling efforts will fail.

Before you begin, you must have the right amount of resources and manpower to fight through the scaling process.

For example, Mark Zuckerburg, the founder of Facebook made sure that everyone on his team was fully on board with his vision of this new platform.

He made every single employee go through a six-week test that consisted of them working with a mentor and proving that they fully understood the vision of the company.

By spending the time to fully train and teach your employees about the vision, your company will be much stronger.

“When big organizations...