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The Pitfalls of Scaling

Last week, my deck refinishing kicked off when the contractor showed up with the stain chips to choose from. The thing is, looking at a 1 inch square doesn’t give a real perspective of what the color actually looks like at scale. Usually contractors paint a sample to confirm the color, but it was skipped this time. And what a mistake that was! Rather than the red tone I was looking for to match my fence, the stain was peach/orange. Luckily, we caught it early and the stain was swapped out for the color I was looking for.

Scaling is one of the toughest things in business. What works at a small scale, does not always work at a large scale. It could be your vision is completely distorted when scale is reached. Or maybe the technology works in a small environment, but not a big environment. And while most people have experience with scaling gone awry, thinking through what needs to be done to scale frequently gets skipped. It is the classic pitfall in scaling. How do you avoid the pitfalls of scaling?

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Posted in Leadership, Risk Management, Strategy.