CEO Works Luncheon | Smooth Scaling From Friction to Flow

CEO Works is a peer-to-peer private group wherein advice always comes from like-minded people solving real problems and with experience in similar situations. This group provides you the space to get solid advice from your community peers, make connections, and learn from the best. CEO Works events typically start and end with approximately 15-20 minutes of networking and include either a presentation or discussion in between.

Presentation Description

When most people talk about scaling an organization, they focus on strategy, fundraising, or achieving product-market fit. Smooth Scaling: 20 Rituals to Build a Friction-Free Organization by Rob Bier tackles a more elusive yet pervasive challenge: the increase in organizational friction as you scale. This friction is the key obstacle that can derail even the best-crafted scaling plans.

In this presentation, Bill Underwood, a partner with Rob, delves into why organizational friction emerges as companies grow and how it slows down progress. These growing pains are predictable and preventable, yet they often catch leaders and teams off guard. Typically, leaders find themselves playing ‘Whack-a-Mole,’ constantly reacting to new problems that arise within teams, processes, and structures. This approach is both exhausting and ineffective. However, it doesn’t have to be this way.

Learn how to fill this gap with a clear, actionable approach based on real-world experience. During the presentation, we will explore a few of the twenty foundational “Rituals” that integrate seamlessly into a company’s daily operations, transforming how your organization functions. By implementing these Rituals, you’ll create a more frictionless environment, allowing your company to scale rapidly and sustainably.

We will cover the following key concepts:

• Elevate - Strategies to Build a High-Performing Team: We will explore the key elements that drive team success, starting with examining the role of psychological safety in cultivating a culture of ownership and accountability.
• Aligning: This strategy involves getting people to work effectively across the organization so that their behaviors and decisions align more deeply with the company’s goals. When team members clearly understand the organization’s vision and how their work contributes to it, they become more motivated and focused, which propels the team forward.
• The Vertical Accordion Problem: This concept explores a common challenge leaders face at all levels: the need to elevate from daily tasks to focus on longer-term, more strategic initiatives. Leaders often find their ability to do so limited by their confidence in the layer beneath them to demonstrate the necessary skills, responsibility, and accountability. This problem replicates itself at every level of the organization.
• The Horizontal Accordion Problem: As an organization grows, its different parts naturally become more distant, leading to silos. Here, we focus on “compressing the accordion” by facilitating strong relationships and healthy collaborative processes across functions and departments.

Bill will share the insights, tools, and Rituals needed to create a scalable, high-performing organization built to achieve its full potential. This session serves as a guide designed to help companies associated with SC Works overcome the hidden friction points that can hinder sustainable growth.

About the Presenter

William (Bill) Underwood

Since 1985, Bill has designed and facilitated programs for organizational effectiveness, leadership, team learning, and personal mastery for executives and leaders worldwide. Bill co-founded Catalyst Consulting Team to provide consulting services for vision, strategy and culture, training services for people managers and leaders, and executive coaching services. Catalyst’s research-based team intervention approach is focused on human dynamics relating to strategic choice, change, and work relationships.

Drawing on cognitive and developmental psychology as well as management best practices, Bill coaches executives to utilize their differences to advance intelligent progress. He focuses on knowing/doing gaps and helping to apply personal learning to action. His coaching and personal facilitation aids key executives in developing resilience in the face of complexity by applying an integral model for personal and organizational development. Bill works with executives, directors and managers in tech companies from start-ups to large corporations, as well as nonprofits and NGOs.

Bill’s background is in cognitive psychology, organizational learning, action science, general semantics and mindfulness. He has a double major in Anthropology/Sociology and Religious Studies from Virginia Commonwealth University and is an approved coach through the Executive Arts Coaching Program and Action Design Institute. He is accredited in LecticaTests, assessments in workplace decision-making and self-development, and certified in Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, The Leadership Circle, Executive Arts Leadership Mirror, Firo-B, MHS Emotional Intelligence 360, and multiple 360-competency feedback instruments.

Bill also creates and facilitates experiential simulations for management and team development such as BigPicture™ and other development games and simulations.

Based in Santa Cruz, Bill works with companies around the world: Adobe Systems, Airbnb, Autodesk, Cisco Systems, eBay, GREE, Intuit, Lookout, Maxim Integrated, NetApp, Pivotal Labs, Silicon Image, Splunk, and Taleo. Nonprofits and NGOs include the American Leadership Forum, Silicon Valley Community Foundation, and Shout-It-Now in Cape Town, South Africa.

Host or Publisher Santa Cruz Works