To my dear readers (population 3),Happy new year! I hope that 2017 is better than 2016 which really sucked all the way around. Here’s to a better new year.Recently, I’ve been reading Tim Ferriss’ Tools of Titans which I’ve found to be really interesting and thought-provoking, despite the majority of the interviews being by white men of privilege. But anyway…it doesn’t mean it’s not useful and interesting tidbits.In particular, I was taken by a little blurb I read from an interview with Evernote founder Phil Libin who shares insight that he received from Japanese CEO Hiroshi Mikitani. Mikitani shared that at intervals in which organizations triple in size, EVERYTHING BREAKS!“Mikitani calls it “The Rule of 3 and 10”: Every time a company triples in size, “everything breaks.”
Mikitani grew Rakuten from the ground up, and today it has roughly 12,000 employees. He noticed that from one to three employees, from three to 10, from 300 to 1,000, etc. (the rule rounds up to multiples of 10 for ease of understanding), that everything stops working as it should.
“And by everything he means everything,” Libin tells Ferriss. This includes how the company handles payroll, how managers schedule meetings, how teams communicate, how it budgets, and how its hierarchy is balanced.
The problem, Libin says, is that many CEOs of rapidly growing startups “blow right through these triplings without even realizing it.””
This BLEW MY MIND! I’ve found it to be really true. When we were a three person organization, we had systems that worked for our size. It wasn’t until we tipped to 10 people that things started to break down and go haywire. If we can fix our current systems, we’ll be good to go until 30.
Why? I have no idea. That would be an interesting article.
But for me, it’s incredibly comforting to know that others have been here before and it’s not just me. In my darkest hours, I do a little backflip from being a reasonable, competent human being to a complete wreck who questions and doubts my every instinct. “Is it ME?” I wonder when things go awry. “What am I doing wrong?” Radio KFUKed is on full blast.
First of all, it is actually incredibly arrogant of me to think that I alone could control so many factors and variables that could lead to chaos. Secondly, it’s just not helpful.
I think a lot about The Martian in which Matt Damon says, “At some point, everything’s gonna go south on you and you’re going to say, this is it. This is how I end. Now you can either accept that, or you can get to work. That’s all it is. You just begin. You do the math. You solve one problem and you solve the next one, and then the next. And If you solve enough problems, you get to come home.”
So, let’s get a grip and start solving problems one by one. And if you solve enough problems, you get to secure yourself past the dreaded power of 3 and 10.
Happy leading!
