#49 JooBee's newsletter (SE)

Author

JooBee Yeow
August 21, 2025

TL;DR

Summer special edition: Mugs ‘L’ Us parable (pt 3/3)

🦠 When your business scales, how do you align without micromanaging?

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Pt 3: When your business scales, how do you align without micromanaging?

Previously on Mugs ‘L’ Us…

Chen and Olga had just weathered their third crisis and implemented new systems, structure and alignment across global teams. Production improved, morale was up and the company entered Phase 4 of the Greiner Curve with confidence.

But what started as alignment has now slipped into bureaucracy…

💥 END OF PHASE 4: Hitting the ‘Red Tape Crisis’

Central teams tried to anticipate every possible issue in the plants. The result? A growing stack of policies and procedures — and the balance started to tip.

Manufacturing Managers grew frustrated. How could HQ know what was best for their teams? Many began tweaking or ignoring procedures altogether.

QA and HR pushed back — more site visits, more policy meetings, more disciplinary action. Tension rose. Managers stopped making day-to-day decisions, defaulting instead to “that’s what the approval guidelines say” — even when it came at the cost of improvement, efficiency and innovation.

Production kept going, but growth had slowed. And no amount of perks like “Yoga Tuesdays” or “Friday Beers” could improve morale. Mugs ‘L’ Us was no longer a scrappy start-up. It had become a bureaucratic machine stuck in indecision and approval processes.

The founding team knew something had to change. They wanted a culture where people could solve problems close to them and try new thing, without losing alignment on what matters. Olga, as COO, was tasked with leading the shift.

But change wasn’t simple. The business had grown used to relying on policies and waiting for HQ to green-light decisions.

❝

They needed an organisational reset and that wouldn’t happen overnight.

After exploring various ways of working, the founders landed on a model aligned with their goals: be nimble, learn fast and act often. They chose to adopt Agile practices.

From top to bottom, everyone helped shape the shift; from co-creating strategy and structure, to defining the skills needed, redesigning processes to cut bureaucracy, tracking progress with data, and — most critically — committing to the principles that would keep them aligned.

💡 How to overcome Red Tape Crisis

Red tape creeps in when policies shift from enabling action to controlling it. Many start-ups push for “ownership” or “accountability,” but without clarity, this creates a gap between intent and impact.

What we often need isn’t just ownership — it’s agency: the ability to act and drive outcomes.

To build both agency and clarity, Chen and Olga should focus on 4 things:

1️⃣ Align wins across product, customer, and employee. What’s good for one should benefit the others.
2️⃣ Create empathy by putting these three at the heart of every decision.
3️⃣ Clarify roles, why each one exists, and how it adds value to those core areas.
4️⃣ Make communication a by-product of the work, not a separate reporting layer. More processes = more red tape.

Every improvement must tie back to these shared drivers, or risk adding complexity without value.

Steve Bianchi, former CPeO at Beamery, Improbable

📈 PHASE 5: Growing through ‘Collaboration’

Mugs ‘L’ Us began to see growth pick up again. Practices like daily stand-ups and retros helped teams quickly spot and solve issues. The transition took time, but it paid off — distributed decision-making reignited ownership, accountability and innovation across the business.

The customer base kept growing, with strong brand loyalty — Mugs L-ifers, as they were now called. 90% of clients wanted to expand commercial contracts if Mugs ‘L’ Us offered more left-handed office supplies. Investors saw the opportunity and were ready to fund the next stage of growth.

💥 END OF PHASE 5: Hitting the ‘Growth Crisis’

Chen and Olga now faced a different challenge: internal growth wasn’t enough. If they wanted to diversify their product offering, they’d need to look externally.

Buy or build?

As it happened, a UK-based company, Crafty Lee’s, was open to acquisition. Specialists in left-handed office supplies (scissors, staplers, notebooks), they owned their niche but lacked global reach.

Financially, it made sense. But culturally? Not so much.

Crafty Lee’s was 40 years old, deeply hierarchical and hadn't updated systems or practices in over a decade. Mugs ‘L’ Us, now agile and distributed, couldn’t be more different.

On paper, the deal looked good. But success would depend on more than numbers.

💡 How to overcome Red Tape Crisis
Mugs ‘L’ Us and Crafty Lee’s may look like a good fit — but under the surface, they could be worlds apart. With strong leadership, clear planning and ongoing dialogue, most blockages can be overcome.

Beyond the financials, Chen and Olga need to assess 3 things:
▪️ Strategy alignment – are their strategies parallel, divergent, or converging?
▪️ Culture – will their values complement or clash?
▪️ Business baselines – are there operational blockers (e.g. systems, data, processes) that could stall performance?

If they go ahead, 2 challenges stand out:

1. The Leadership Challenge
Even simple integrations fail when leadership lacks cohesion or clarity. They’ll need a unified leadership agenda with shared strategy, priorities, and outcomes.

2. The Culture Challenge
Culture is the outcome of leadership. Integration brings risk of conflict, misalignment and disengagement. To succeed, they must define a clear culture strategy that blends shared values with each company’s strengths — and build a new, aligned culture together.

Warrick Chan, Sr. HR Manager at Booking.com

📈 PHASE 6: Growing through ‘Alliances’

At this juncture, we say goodbye to Chen and Olga as they head into Phase 6 of the Greiner’s Curve. They’re no longer deciding how to build the company, but who to build it with.

Their success now depends on whether they can align strategy, culture and systems with new partners and grow through collaboration, not just execution.

Growing pains are inevitable, but predictable

Each crisis on the Greiner Curve marks a turning point. And how long you stay in crisis depends on how ready you are to lead through it.

This fictional story was written to help founders and HR leaders anticipate what’s coming as they scale. Not to avoid the mess — but to navigate it with clarity, confidence and commercial intent.

📍Footnote: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead or actual events is purely coincidental.

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