The problem with Scaling Up

Our platform is largely built on Scaling Up, and I say that without hesitation. The rocks, the KPIs, the priorities, the idea that a company needs an operating system to grow beyond the chaos: it is right, and it works. But there is one problem in Scaling Up that almost no one says out loud. And it is exactly the part that makes most companies drop out again after a year: the meeting rhythm.

Where Scaling Up is brilliant

Let me start with what is right, because that is most of it. Scaling Up gives you focus and a shared language. Rocks per quarter, KPIs you track weekly, a handful of priorities everyone knows. The core of the idea, steering a company by the few things that truly matter instead of everything at once, is gold. There is nothing wrong with it. In fact, that is precisely why we laid it down as the foundation under Boldcaster.

Where it goes wrong: the meeting rhythm

The price Scaling Up asks sits in the calendar. The daily huddle. The weekly meeting. The monthly. The quarterly. The one-on-ones. The performance reviews. Each of those meetings has a function in the model: it is the place where alignment happens, where the numbers come together, where the team gets on the same page.

And as long as you are small, that goes fine. But as you grow, the number of mandatory meetings climbs to twenty, thirty hours a week for your leading people. Everyone is in meetings, no one gets to work. This is why companies start to find Scaling Up "too heavy" and quietly let it go. Not because the model is wrong, but because the rhythm becomes unaffordable.

The assumption underneath

The meeting rhythm rests on one assumption: alignment happens in the meeting. The meeting is the mechanism. If you want the team on the same page, you have to gather. So more alignment means more meetings. In the era Scaling Up was conceived, that was true, because there was no other place where the whole picture came together.

That assumption is no longer true. And that changes everything.

What happens when alignment lives in the system

When strategy, rocks, KPIs, priorities per person, and status are visible live to everyone, alignment moves from the meeting into the system. And then two things happen at once that at first glance cannot go together.

Every meeting becomes optional. The daily, the weekly, the monthly, the one-on-one, even the performance review. Not abolished, optional. Because the information you would share there is already there. You only gather when there is something truly worth a conversation.

And at the same time there is more alignment than ever. Even more than with the full meeting rhythm. Because a meeting is a snapshot for the people who happen to be in the room. Visibility is continuous, and for everyone. You do not align once a week, you are permanently aligned, even with the teams you never have a meeting with.

That is the core. You keep everything Scaling Up gives you, the focus, the rhythm of rocks and KPIs, the shared language, and you take out the cost. In fact, you get more alignment in return, not less.

What happens to each meeting

Walk down the Scaling Up calendar and look at what remains of each meeting.

The daily huddle becomes optional. You see in real time where everyone stands and whether something jumps to orange or red. You do not have to gather every morning to hear that; you step in where the traffic light asks for it.

The weekly and the monthly become optional. The numbers and the progress are already there. The meeting that remains is not about "where do we stand", but about "what do we do with it". Shorter, and for those who need it.

The one-on-one becomes optional. No longer the weekly "how is it going", but a conversation the moment something is at play. Often more valuable, precisely because it is no longer mandatory in the calendar but happens when it matters.

And the performance review, perhaps the clearest example, becomes optional. In the classic model you reconstruct once a year how someone did, from memory and a few notes. In a system where someone's goals and results were visible all year, that reconstruction is unnecessary. The conversation that remains is not about the numbers, you already know those, but about the person behind them and about growth. And it can happen when it is needed, not because the calendar says so.

What this looks like in practice

I speak with a lot of entrepreneurs who already sense this. A director of a company where every employee generates more than six hundred thousand in revenue put it this way: "We do not have the luxury for many internal meetings. We stick to short, individual conversations about specific cases." That is not a shortage of meetings, it is a choice. Everything that is information belongs in the system. What remains for a conversation is the real problem, short and one on one.

In another company, a few hundred people strong, the bottleneck sat with the strategy. It lived in PowerPoint and a handful of scattered dashboards. Leadership was busy with the plans for the coming years, but translating those priorities into what a hundred people should do on Monday did not work. So it got discussed, and discussed, and discussed again. Not because they enjoy meetings, but because the strategy was nowhere the organization could see it. Put that same strategy into the system, linked to the rocks and KPIs of each team, and the meeting to explain it is no longer necessary. If you want a closer look at what replaces your status meetings, fewer meetings, better steering goes deeper into exactly that.

From my own practice

We built Boldcaster on Scaling Up, but made the meetings optional. At most companies, more coordination means more meetings. Not here, and that is exactly what makes hard growth possible. A task is done? You get a notification, you do not have to ask. A meeting is in your calendar? You click presentation mode and the system guides you through it. If everyone is green, you do not really need that meeting. And yet, or precisely because of that, everyone is better aligned than with any meeting rhythm.

The math

Do the math for yourself. A company running the full Scaling Up rhythm quickly reaches twenty to thirty hours of meetings a week for the people in leading roles. The same company, with those same rocks and KPIs but visible in a system, lands at three to five hours: quarterly course corrections, the occasional reflection, coaching, and the rare conversation about a real problem.

That is fifteen to twenty-five hours per person per week flowing back into real work. You give up nothing of Scaling Up. You only take out the mandatory meetings, and you get more alignment in return.

Frequently asked questions

So is Scaling Up bad? No, on the contrary. It is one of the best frameworks for steering a growing company, and our platform is largely built on it. The only problem is the meeting rhythm: the number of mandatory meetings that becomes unaffordable as you grow. Solve that, and you keep all the strengths of Scaling Up without the burden.

So are the dailies, weeklies, and one-on-ones abolished? No, optional. The difference is subtle but important. The meeting is still allowed, but it is no longer needed to know where everyone stands, because that is visible. You keep the meetings that add value and let the rest go, per team and per moment.

Doesn't optional meetings mean people align less? The opposite. A meeting aligns with the people in the room, once. Visibility aligns continuously, with everyone. In practice the alignment is therefore higher than with a full meeting rhythm, not lower.

Do performance reviews really become unnecessary? Optional. Because someone's goals and results are visible all year, you do not have to reconstruct once a year how it went. The conversation that remains is about growth and about the person, not about retelling numbers you already know.

How do I start? Do not start by cutting meetings, but by making visible what you now discuss in them: strategy, rocks, priorities per person, and KPIs. Once that lives in one place everyone can see, most meetings become optional on their own. Our audit shows where you stand now and what you should set up first.