The CEO of a 50-person startup sits frustrated after their third failed attempt to implement "best practice" leadership frameworks. Quarterly OKRs proved too rigid for rapidly changing priorities. Regular one-to-ones with all direct reports became mathematically impossible with constant hiring. Cross-functional team structures created more confusion than collaboration.
The management consultants assured them these approaches work at "leading companies," but somehow everything meant to streamline operations actually slows them down.
Most leadership advice assumes you're operating in a stable, mature organisation with predictable processes. But scale-up environments operate under completely different rules. What works brilliantly at 7 people fails spectacularly at 70, and frameworks that save you at 70 become bureaucratic nightmares at 700.
Through extensive leadership experience in startup and scale-up environments, I've discovered that effective leadership isn't about finding universal principles. It's about understanding distinct challenges at each growth stage and adapting accordingly. Let me introduce the 7/70/700 framework: a way of thinking about leadership that acknowledges how companies actually grow.
The Scale-Up Reality Most Leadership Books Ignore
Traditional leadership development assumes you're working with established teams, stable processes, and predictable growth patterns. Harvard Business School case studies feature companies with decades of history and mature operational frameworks. These examples provide valuable insights for established organisations, but they're useless when your company doubles in size every six months.
Research shows that almost three-quarters of high-growth digital businesses fail due to premature scaling, often because they apply enterprise-level management practices before they're ready. Most leadership advice treats growth as a linear process where you simply "do more" of what worked before.
The False Promise of Universal Leadership Principles
Corporate leadership frameworks assume conditions that don't exist in scale-up environments: time for thorough planning, stable team structures, and predictable revenue streams that support long-term strategic thinking.
According to research, when a team scales by just 33%, this represents a 400% increase in complexity. Imagine applying standard management practices when your complexity increases by 400% every few months. Planning cycles become obsolete before implementation.
The 7/70/700 Framework
Through experience building and scaling teams across critical inflection points, I've identified three distinct stages of organisational growth:
- 0-7 employees: Startup stage where execution speed and individual heroics drive everything
- 7-70 employees: Scaling stage where systems and processes become essential for survival
- 70-700 employees: Maturing stage where strategic thinking and organisational design determine success
Leadership skills that make you successful at one stage can become serious liabilities at the next.
Stage 1 (0-7): The Startup Reality
Leadership at this stage looks nothing like traditional management. You're leading through energy and example rather than authority and process. Everyone wears multiple hats because specialisation is a luxury you can't afford. Direct communication is your superpower. Decisions happen instantly because the person with context can make calls immediately.
Trying to implement formal management practices is like wearing a dinner jacket to a building site. Research by McKinsey & Company suggests small teams often outperform larger ones on innovation tasks. This isn't just about productivity; it's about natural advantages of small team dynamics that formal management can accidentally destroy.
The most important leadership capability is rapid decision-making under uncertainty. You need resource creativity and energy management for both yourself and your team. People join early-stage startups for excitement and purpose. Your job is maintaining that energy when things get difficult.
Stage 2 (7-70): The Scaling Nightmare
This is where most scale-ups hit their first major leadership crisis. Informal communication that worked perfectly at 7 people becomes chaotic at 20. You're too big for startup approaches but too small for enterprise solutions.
The most dangerous moment happens when you realise "just figure it out" no longer works. Communication breaks down because you can't have every conversation with everyone. As teams scale rapidly, "processes that worked for a smaller group might crumble under the pressure".
You need your first layer of management, but not by promoting your best individual contributors. You need people who can enable others to do excellent work. Documentation becomes essential for the first time, and cultural crystallisation requires active management.
Your leadership must evolve from doing to enabling. Decision-making shifts from gut instinct to documented reasoning. Individual heroics must give way to team systems.
Stage 3 (70-700): The Ignorance Iceberg
This presents the most counterintuitive challenge: you become more ignorant about your business as you become more senior. With 70+ people, you can't know everyone personally. Yet you're expected to make strategic decisions affecting all of them.
I call this the "ignorance iceberg" because the extent of what you don't know becomes invisible. Distance from ground truth increases exponentially with each management layer. Customer feedback gets processed, summarised, and interpreted by several people before reaching you.
You're now managing managers who manage people you'll never meet. Your primary role becomes organisational design: creating structures that enable good decisions without your direct involvement. Culture maintenance becomes deliberate practice rather than natural outcome.
Many leaders try to stay hands-on when systems thinking becomes essential. Research shows that information workers spend more than 7 hours weekly searching for information in poorly structured organisations.
Stage 4 (700+): The Enterprise Leadership Shift
At this scale, you're architecting an organisation rather than leading a team. Success depends on creating systems that operate effectively without constant oversight.
Innovation happens through structured frameworks rather than ad-hoc creativity. Risk management and compliance become significant factors. Some leaders develop enterprise management skills, whilst others recognise their strengths lie in earlier-stage environments. Both paths are valid.
The most successful transitions often involve bringing in enterprise-experienced leaders to complement scale-up leadership teams. This isn't about replacing founders; it's about building capabilities that match organisational complexity.
Navigating Your Current Stage
Most leadership problems in scale-up environments stem from applying the wrong stage approaches to current challenges. Ask yourself: What leadership approaches from previous stages are you clinging to that might be holding you back?
If you're at 0-7 employees: Focus on execution speed and rapid decision-making. Skip formal management training until you actually need it.
If you're at 7-70 employees: Develop systems thinking and delegation skills. Start building the communication structures you'll need as you continue growing.
If you're at 70-700 employees: Focus on strategic thinking and organisational design. Get comfortable making decisions based on incomplete information.
The 7/70/700 framework isn't a rigid prescription. It's a navigation tool for understanding what type of leadership your organisation actually needs right now. Your effectiveness depends on matching your approach to your current stage, not your past experience or personal preferences.