In this practical episode, Debbie Plager shares strategies to align your leadership team and structure for scalable growth. If you face organizational chaos or misaligned teams, you won't want to miss it.

You will discover:

- Why pausing to assess strategy prevents growing pains.

- How to align leaders using data-driven insights.

- What the 70/100 rule means for org design.

This episode is ideal for for Founders, Owners, and CEOs in stage 4 of The Founder's Evolution. Not sure which stage you're in? Find out for free in less than 10 minutes at https://www.scalearchitects.com/founders/quiz

Debbie Plager is a dynamic executive coach with over 20 years of experience empowering leaders to unlock their potential and drive meaningful organizational change. She specializes in helping executives elevate their careers, refine strategic thinking, and enhance team effectiveness through tailored coaching. Debbie’s approach blends the art and science of leadership, utilizing assessments and stakeholder feedback to set clear, actionable goals that align with her client’s aspirations. Debbie’s commitment to sustainable growth ensures she equips her clients with tools and a mindset for long-term success.

Want to learn more about Debbie Plager's work at The Plager Group? Check out her website at https://theplagergroup.com/

Mentioned in this episode:

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Founder's Quiz

Hello, hello and welcome.

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Welcome once again to the Start, Scale and Succeed podcast, the only podcast that grows

with you through all seven stages of your journey as a founder.

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And today I am here with Debbie Plager to talk through what I think is one of the biggest

challenges for stage four disillusioned leaders.

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And that is how do you align your leaders

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and your strategy because it does not happen by default.

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And if any of you listening are in stage four, you know exactly what it feels like to have

everyone seemingly pulling in every direction, which means no less than half of them are

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directly pulling against you.

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It'll drive you crazy.

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ah It's all that and a bag of chips.

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But if that's you, you're gonna have a ton of hope and help after this episode.

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All in thanks.

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to Debbie, who is a dynamic executive coach with over 20 years of experience, empowering

leaders to unlock their potential and drive meaningful organizational change.

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She specializes in helping executives to elevate their careers, refine strategic thinking

and enhance team effectiveness through tailored coaching.

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Debbie's approach blends the art and science of leadership, utilizing assessments and

stakeholder feedback to set clear, actionable goals that align with her clients'

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aspirations.

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Debbie's commitment to sustainable growth ensures she equips her clients with tools and a

mindset for long-term success.

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She's here with us today.

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Debbie, what would you say to a founder listening today who is managing a rapidly growing

business, but they have so many fires to fight that something as esoteric as

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organizational design is the very last thing on their mind?

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Scott, first of all, I'm so glad that you have this platform together for founders that

are going through their growth.

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So I think it's key.

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And for your Stage 4 founders, I'm here to share that you're not alone and is, I think,

really common when you get to a certain trajectory.

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So you've gotten to scale.

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You now have leaders over different functions.

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Hopefully, they're not wearing five hats.

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Maybe they're wearing two hats.

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or less, maybe wear one, but usually they're just still wearing a couple.

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And it's really common.

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So I think one thing I just want to do is just sort of normalize, like you said, this

organized chaos.

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And I love how you described the sense of everybody's rowing, but the problem is they're

rowing in different directions.

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And so how and where might org design, how does strategy and leadership, how does it come

together?

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So you asked me a really big question.

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So I'm going to try to unpack it in some very practical, tactical terms.

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So first of all, I think it is about with intention, bringing your leadership together.

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And as you shared in my intro, I'm very much data driven.

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So actually hearing from the leadership team, you can look at your business results.

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can get interviewed.

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often get interview data just from everybody.

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And I don't say who it's from, but I said, here's your data as a team.

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Yeah.

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And I asked them questions about what's working, what's getting in the way, how are you in

making decisions, how are you clear and prioritizing?

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If you were to say what the top three or the top two priorities are, what are they?

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And more often than not, I put the data in front of the team and the team looks and goes,

oh, we're not as aligned because we make assumptions.

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The CEO thinks that everybody's in line.

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They think they have the right people around the table.

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And you usually do.

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but it requires intentional communication around decision-making, around priorities and

checking in on those things.

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So that's one of the things I'll share, is backdrop.

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In terms of org design, often what happens is the company grows in organic ways and it

works to a certain point until it doesn't, right?

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Then you get that friction of you have support functions,

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that didn't exist, that now exists because now you're big enough and you need them, that

you have the main function.

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So when I work with tech companies, right, engineering is the main function, but how does

quality get in there?

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How does testing get in there?

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When I'm working with financial services organizations or I'm working um with really sales

organizations and sales is front and center, but customer service or client service might

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be trying to figure out how do we actually come in?

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And so it's natural that things are going to go and then you're, it's going to happen is

your strategy is not going to match your structure.

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And that's at the time when you really need to pause and you need to get data and you need

to look at, that's whether you're working with someone like me or you're sitting down as a

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whole and saying, where are we not set up to scale?

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We're not only with today's problems, but the next 12

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24, 36 months.

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When you're in a startup, you're moving so fast, you don't often pause.

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And so one of the things I would highly recommend is when you start to feel those friction

points, don't wait and assume it's gonna go away.

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It's gonna get worse, it's gonna get louder.

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And the more time you let it go without having the right conversations with your

leadership team,

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I think the more frustration you're going to feel and the more you're going to see those,

you know, those boats going in different directions.

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So oftentimes I will, when I'm working with organizations that are sort of, you know,

equivalent to this, the stage four that you're calling, um, it's saying, okay, let's take

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a look at your strategy.

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Let's take a look at your leaders and what's their understanding of the strategy.

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And then let's also take a look at.

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the leadership team behaviors.

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So how good are they at having constructive conflict?

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How good are they at raising their hands and saying, I need help?

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How good are they at sharing information that they might have from customers or from

partners with their colleagues internally?

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And so I think there's this sweet spot of your strategy is probably the right strategy,

but you've outgrown your structure.

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And so it's a good time to pause.

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And if you're working with anyone, make sure that they're looking at the whole system.

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They're not just saying, okay, we're structured.

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Do we just put another team here?

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Do another function there?

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How does workflow?

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What capabilities do we need?

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How are we rewarding behavior?

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Because oftentimes we reward the old behavior and we expect the new behavior to happen.

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Well.

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especially uh culturally, right?

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In the little things that we do.

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Yeah, for sure.

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There's this interesting challenge that I've run into with folks, particularly the kind of

visionary founder types.

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that is like part of what you described of, uh know, fires and challenges and everything.

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Like that's, they've never not known that, right?

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So.

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One of the things that we learn, it's a vital skill early on, in my opinion at least, is

to kind of, uh what's a nice way of putting this, to reframe every problem as an

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opportunity.

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And so one of the challenges with that though is it doesn't necessarily allow us to dig

into some of these structural problems because we can't necessarily admit that there's a

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problem there.

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How do you help folks ah to get past that feeling of like having to defend the way things

are and help them to recognize, maybe it's not that we screwed up, but it's not gonna

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serve us well moving forward.

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Yeah, because you're exactly right.

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Because what worked when you were a 20 person, 30 person, 50 person organization no longer

works when you are on your way to being a 200 person organization.

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So it's not that it's wrong.

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So I think you're right.

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Using your language, it served us well.

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And how do we honor the past and say, but where are we going?

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And can we make sure our strategy is sound?

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And if the leadership team's aligned on the strategy, you're like, hey, absolutely, we

have the right mission.

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we're clear on what we're here to serve, then you say, all right, how do we need to

structure in service of where we're going?

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So can we align on where we're going?

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And that's usually what happens, right?

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So it's easier to get leadership teams, different egos, different perspectives to say,

look, when you're sitting at this virtual or in-person table, you are not representing

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your function.

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You are here in service of the organization.

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Can we align on where the organization is going?

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If we have that, okay, then,

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and former historian here, so I like you saying this a lot.

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There are many roads to Rome.

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There's no perfect or design.

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What are the major pain points that we're experiencing now?

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Let's play this movie forward.

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What do we anticipate the major pain points continuing to be?

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And we have to make choices.

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So which are the ones we actually want to address?

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And which are the ones that we're just going to let, we're just going to have to suck it

up and deal with it, right?

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So if the leadership team that's coming in and saying, I'm not representing sales,

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I'm representing this organization and I happen to then have to think about how do I

execute this through sales?

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Same thing with engineering or finance or HR or ops, whatever you are.

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But if you can do that, then you can look at the organization and say, what levers can we

pull and where do we want to start?

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So that's one thing.

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think like, so if you're future oriented and you could say, can we align on this?

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And again, honor the past.

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but let's figure out the major pain points.

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I think that helps.

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Getting that mindset of I'm here as a member of the leadership team, that is my function.

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That's, think we're having someone like me that can, you you can see it.

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You can see when they're holding onto that versus, hey, is that a me issue or a we issue?

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Okay.

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And then, what was the other piece I was going to share?

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Oh, okay.

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So org design.

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Here is one of my favorite principles with org design.

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I call it the 7100 rule.

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When you have made enough decisions to get it 70%, you figured out 70 % of it.

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Stand it up as long as you are 100 % aligned.

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So what does that mean?

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Okay, we're all in the room.

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gonna, we think this is the right way to go because the amount of time Scott that it takes

for an organization designed to go from 70 % to 100%, you've already missed, you've missed

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the opportunity.

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you've missed the market, etc.

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So go with 70%.

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It is good enough and every organizational design that I've ever stood up, that my

colleagues have ever stood up, always has pain points.

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Because you don't know, because I'm paper versus in reality with people, with customers,

with suppliers, right?

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So as long as you're aligned and you're committed to, let's test, let's learn, let's get

data, let's smooth it out, we'll get that from 71 % to 100.

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And then by the way, it's a living thing.

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So I'm a big believer in the 7100 rule.

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I love that because it strikes a really cool balance because you'll get some people on the

team who are just more inclined to like, let's figure this out.

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Let's get it all perfect.

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Let's make the org chart of org charts.

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And then you have other people who like, they don't want to take time to spell org chart,

you know?

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And so it's a really cool balance because it really does take the best of both.

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takes, yes, we have to make some progress for this.

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We have to get a big chunk of it right.

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But yes, really the biggest thing is,

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what alignment does that create on the team?

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Because you're right, like the org chart's gonna change.

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And it's almost one of those things that will never be what it actually is, because it's

constantly evolving and moving forward.

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And so I love that principle because it really does capture, we do have to make progress

on this.

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It does have to get better.

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Some changes have to be made.

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Some real tough conversations need to be had.

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But as long as we're aligned, we don't have to check every box first.

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That's super cool.

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yes.

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It lets the pressure off and then it also says, okay, in service of our strategy and where

we're going, what are the data points that we need to collect that we know we're making

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the right decision?

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And the team is really good usually at deciding and identifying what those data points

are.

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So then they're using data-driven input to make these decisions.

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And I think that that also helps.

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part of when I work with, that's why I love this work because you're working with a team

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together and aligning these decisions and you're also building this mindset and refining

this mindset together of we.

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And so when they get in these rooms and they're talking about strategy and they're talking

about org design, let your function go for a bit, put the leadership team on.

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Okay, now what are we seeing?

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What do we need to tweak?

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ah success is like, hey, we're getting all this data in from customers, real pain points.

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or maybe there's real pain points over here from sales or there's real pain points from

marketing.

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But they know that they're bringing it in and they're sharing it in service of the company

and the leadership is more likely to look at it and hear it that way versus defensive.

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yeah.

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You made a comment earlier uh in the conversation that many times you have the right

leaders in the room, but it usually doesn't feel like that.

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And sometimes you don't have the right leaders in the room.

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So how do you help folks really flesh that out uh of is this just a miscommunication thing

or is it a misalignment thing where we really don't have the right leader in the right

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seat?

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Yeah, think, okay, so that's a good question.

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And I tend to be more optimistic, I will share, because I am a believer, Scott, that

people don't wake up in the morning trying to be a jerk and trying to make life difficult

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for their colleagues.

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So going in with that principle, I think it's like we're doing the best we can, and we

often have misinformation or not complete information.

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So when I do this work with leadership teams, first of all, I really, it's much more

successful if we have team involvement and not just the CEO.

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or the CEO and whoever's like the head of people in this like small organization or a COO,

right?

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So if you have more people in, and then I often ask them, can you create during this

process expectations of how you are going to work together and accountability for how

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you're gonna work together?

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And I often will, that's where like sort of the leadership alignment coaching and what I

do comes in.

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So they're doing this work together and I will often check in on not just how

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you know, did they make the milestones?

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Did they make the decisions?

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Where are they?

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But how are they doing?

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And what happens more often than not is that the CEO will start to see very clearly who's

playing and who's not.

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And they will know whether it is a will issue or a skill issue or something else is going

on.

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So sometimes, as I said, if you're scaling an organization, someone who was great leading

a team cannot be that senior leader.

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And that's OK.

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They still have value to add to the organization, but you may say, given where we need to

go as we're growing to be this 200 person organization, it's not the right place.

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You're just not there yet.

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And so I think, so I have seen that happen, but I think if you can get alignment with the

team on here's our expectations of how we're working together, how we're making decisions,

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how we're disseminating information, what is powerful is when the team holds each other

accountable and not just the CEO.

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Yes.

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So more often than not, when I see that happening, then more often than not, uh people

will either self-select out or it's again easier for the CEO to say, it's just not the

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right fit.

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And again, not that they need to exit the organization, but they're just maybe not the

right fit for the leadership team for where the company is and its size and where it needs

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to go.

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Yes, so true.

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So true.

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ah I could talk about this for a really long time.

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ah But for our busy founders, I want to ask you one more question before we make sure we

point folks in your direction.

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So, Debbie, the question is this.

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What would you say is the biggest secret that you wish wasn't a secret at all?

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What's that one thing you wish everybody watching or listening today knew?

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This takes intention.

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It takes attention and it takes intention.

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And please consider this the slowing down to speed up.

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Don't consider this something, know, or design leadership alignment, working with

strategy, your leadership team is not this thing over on the side.

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This is in fact your job.

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And so I wish that CEOs would say, my job is making sure I have a functioning team.

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And am I doing enough to really focus on this team?

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And how am I making sure that they can build that mindset?

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It's, if you create the container for the right conversations, like that's my thing with

intention and then paying attention to how people are responding.

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It's, it's, think it's seen as this ephemeral thing.

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And I wish people would say, look, this is, this is part of the work.

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It's very practical and you can break it down and not have it be the scary thing.

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It's so true, so true.

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Debbie, there's some folks listening.

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It's exactly where they're at.

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They need help.

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They wanna design a more scalable organization.

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They wanna know how you can help them do it.

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Where can they reach out to you and find out more about the work that you do?

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Well, I would say, first of all, uh I'm very active on LinkedIn.

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So if you want to get a sense of who I am and where they are, you can absolutely find me,

Debbie Plager.

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uh The other place is obviously my, I have a website, theplagergroup.com.

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uh You can send an email to debbie at the Plager Group or support at the Plager Group.

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Both will find its way to me and happy em to help leaders, especially founders.

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uh

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pivotal time, I think, for a lot of small businesses.

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And if I can provide support, and by the way, if I'm not the right fit, I know other

people.

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sometimes it's, where are you?

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What's your industry, et cetera.

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But those are the best ways to find me.

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Thanks so much for being on the show today.

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It really was a privilege and honor having you here today.

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uh Really loved this conversation.

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I say this every once in a while, but there are conversations where you just have to go

back and listen again because you only caught about half of what Debbie said.

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ah So do it.

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Check it out.

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It's worth a re-listen.

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You'll pick up on a whole bunch that you might have missed the first time through and

you'll be better off for it.

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ah And for you, those of you who are watching and listening today, you do know your time

and attention mean the world to us.

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I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I know I did and I cannot wait to see

you next time.

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Take care.