Operational Bloat Is the Enemy of Growth

If your team is always reacting, you’re not scaling—you’re surviving.

The embassy had her visa application for 10 months, but they only gave her 3 days' notice for the interview. And she lived 4 hours from Islamabad.

The contractor scrambled for childcare, got a bus ticket, and found a hotel near the embassy. It had already been a long day—and where was that letter of recommendation from the company? 

There was no sense in applying for the travel visa if the Los Angeles-based company didn't confirm they needed her to travel. 

I got the message around lunch time. In California. Which meant it was already midnight in Pakistan…

Letter? What letter? This was the first I'd heard of it.

Why had nobody brought this up until now? Didn't anybody know?

It turns out, no. Nobody else was tracking it either. Not even her. They were all busy fighting the fire right in front of them. Trying to overcome the operational bloat that comes from a lack of intentional systems. Everyone thought the visa thing could wait, until it was an emergency. 

The letter needed to explain this contractor's relationship with the company, how long we’d known her, and her reason for travel. But I couldn’t even tell whether they were Mr. or Ms. Contractor based on the information I had, let alone find her original contract. 

The company had gone through many recent changes. No one knew where anything was, let alone what to pass on. In the process, critical resources and files went missing. The result: chaos. And an environment where every task was done as if it were the first time.

At 2am Islamabad time, I called her directly to gather what I needed. It was embarrassing. She was pissed. But at least she got a letter.

This wasn't an isolated incident. Everything was a fire drill at this organization.

The team spent most of their days compensating for the dysfunction rather than growing the company. With no systems in place to store and pass on critical information, systemic failure was the status quo. 

When there is no system for simple things like where and how to store information, you can’t do simple tasks. You’re forced to figure every detail out as you go, which only compounds the disorganization. 

The cracks turn into a full-on collapse when the chaos of the day-to-day makes basic operations impossible.

Scaling is hard enough. Let’s make sure your operations aren’t the thing holding you back.

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