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We had the honour of inviting Larry Cooley, President Emeritus and Senior Advisor at Management Systems International, to converse with innovators from our Spotlight on AI for Career Readiness - Daydream Believers, Kinia, and Descodeuses’s Vibe AI - to help them navigate some of their scaling challenges.
Here are some tidbits of wisdom he shared:
1) Scope the Problem
One of the first questions that Larry Cooley asks is: “How large is the problem?” He sees that every problem has a denominator which indicates its size, while the number of people you are impacting is the numerator. He encourages founders to consider whether there is a way to scale the size of the solution to match the size of the problem without unduly impacting its effectiveness.
The challenge of letting go of ownership is something that Daydream Believers is familiar with, which is why they value trust when building relationships and scaling their work. Helena Good, the Managing Director, reflected, “We need to think less about ourselves and more about whether we can trust the people. How do we ensure that the people delivering the work feel the work is theirs?”
Nevertheless, there will always be tradeoffs between quantity and quality when scaling a solution. Founders must be able to make distinctions between these tradeoffs to tackle a larger slice of the problem.
2) Get People to Fall in Love with the Problem
You have to get people to fall in love with the problem before they can embrace a solution. Your partners and internal team must be on the same page of how important it is to solve the issue. Instead of focusing on advocating for which solution is better, which puts you in competition with others who are trying to solve the same problem in a slightly different way, Larry Cooley recommends trying first to build the strongest coalition around the problem. He encourages people to form communities of practice, to encourage knowledge sharing among organisations working on the same problem.
“What changed in our thinking was who we needed to be part of [the conversation], are also stakeholders in communities."
This was one of the key learnings that Kinia took away from the workshop: “What changed in our thinking was who we needed to be part of [the conversation], are also stakeholders in communities. They may not be invested in tech skills, but they are people who want the best for their communities and their young people, and they need a seat at that table because they are ultimately the people who will drive success locally and regionally in Ireland,” explained Marianne Checkley, CEO of Kinia.
Often, your organisation may share best practices with other organisations using similar approaches or working on similar domains. However, you should also expand your network and collaborate with others who are working on tackling the same problem, even if the approach is different than your own.
3) Scale the Solution not the Organization
Another important consideration for founders is to ask yourself whether your aim is to scale your organisation or scale your solution. Scaling the solution means increasing that numerator and tackling a larger piece of the problem, but it may extend beyond your organization. For example, it could imply going beyond your organisation by establishing new partners or fitting your organisation into a new role within the wider problem. It is therefore critical that you reflect on your aims for scaling.
“Make sure that you have a team that is ready to support growth and change”
The team at DesCodeuses echoes this sentiment, “Make sure that you have a team that is ready to support growth and change” advises Marguerite Nury, Partnerships Officer, DesCodeuses. Your team must be flexible and adaptable to changes that occur when scaling.
4) Aim for Systems Change
Often, when organisations are trying to solve a problem they are actually trying to reduce their dependence on things that they can’t control. For example, if you see that the system is not doing what it should be, your response may not be to ask, how do you fix that systemic problem, but how can you get around it. This is a natural instinct; in order to fix that problem, it would require systems change, such as policy or regulatory changes that are typically seen as beyond the direct scope of what you’re doing. However, if you truly want to reach a significant scale, you have to eventually start considering your potential to impact change at the systems level.
These learnings are part of a series of capacity-building workshops that HundrED conducted to support innovators selected for the Spotlight on AI for Career Readiness, supported by the Salesforce Foundation. Learn more about the project and our work.
Photo Credit: Daydream Believers
