What Got Us Here Won’t Get Us There
Executive Insight
Organizations don’t become enterprises by standardizing systems. They become enterprises when people begin thinking beyond their individual businesses.
Shared purpose creates shared identity, and shared identity makes shared process—and ultimately shared technology—possible.
“What got us here won’t get us there.”
That was the premise I offered a room of engineering leaders whose businesses had recently come together under a common corporate umbrella.
The Board had established an ambitious goal: grow annual revenue 450% by 2030. No one questioned the need for change; only whether the organization’s current ways of working could support that growth.
Every growing organization eventually reaches the point where yesterday’s strengths become tomorrow’s constraints. Leadership thinkers from Larry Greiner to Ichak Adizes have described this transition for decades.[1] What’s discussed less often is how leaders help organizations navigate it.
Most transformation efforts begin with systems, processes, or organizational charts.
In my experience, organizations often try to standardize systems before they’ve aligned around the future they are trying to build.
Growth changes more than scale
Growth doesn't just change revenue and headcount; it increases communication pathways, coordination costs, and organizational complexity. Local workarounds that served one business unit well can create friction when leaders need enterprise-wide visibility and consistent decision-making.
Rather than beginning the workshop with discussions about software or organizational charts, we started with a different question: “Where do you experience friction today, and how might that friction limit the organization you want to become?”
The answers were remarkably consistent.
Engineering teams struggled to locate technical documentation stored across multiple systems. Similar concepts were described using different terminology. Titles, responsibilities, and performance expectations varied across business units, making collaboration more difficult than it needed to be. Managers worried they couldn’t take vacation because there wasn’t enough bench strength to keep work moving in their absence.
None of these problems were new; they had simply become more consequential.
Shared purpose drives shared process
The conversation changed when we stopped discussing today’s problems and started imagining tomorrow’s organization.
Each table was intentionally given a different perspective on what engineering should look like in 2030. What surprised me was how different similar the conclusions became.
Despite approaching the exercise from different aspects of engineering operations, every group independently described a future characterized by integrated systems, transparent information, stronger career paths, better knowledge transfer, shared engineering resources, and real-time visibility into performance.
No one instructed the groups to converge on those ideas. They arrived there because they had aligned around the same destination.
Only then did conversations about specific technologies become productive.
A product data management system wasn’t the vision. It became an obvious consequence of agreeing on the future they wanted to build.
Shared language creates shared identity
Peter Senge’s work on learning organizations emphasizes the importance of shared vision and shared mental models.[2] I saw a practical example of that principle during this workshop.
As discussions progressed, participants gradually stopped referring to themselves as independent “operating companies” and began talking about “business units” within the larger enterprise.
That shift wasn’t cosmetic.
Language shapes identity.
Identity shapes behavior.
In conversations since the workshop, the engineering leadership team noted that continuing to clarify terminology, roles, responsibilities, and decision rights had already begun reducing conflict between corporate engineering and the business units.
Before organizations successfully standardize processes, they often discover they need a common language. Shared language doesn’t eliminate disagreement, but it gives people a common starting point for resolving it.
Shared identity makes shared processes possible
By the end of the workshop, the recommendations seemed almost self-evident: shared document management, common naming conventions, improved workforce planning, cross-training, knowledge transfer, career development, and resource sharing.
None of those initiatives created alignment. They emerged because alignment already existed.
Leaders often begin transformation by asking which systems should be standardized. A better question is: “What future are we asking people to build together?”
Organizations don’t become enterprises because they standardize systems; they standardize systems because they’ve begun thinking like one enterprise.
A shared purpose creates a shared identity, and a shared identity makes shared processes possible.
References
[1] Larry E. Greiner, “Evolution and Revolution as Organizations Grow,” Harvard Business Review, May–June 1998, https://hbr.org/1998/05/evolution-and-revolution-as-organizations-grow ; and
Neil C. Churchill and Virginia L. Lewis, “The Five Stages of Small-Business Growth,” Harvard Business Review, May 1983, https://hbr.org/1983/05/the-five-stages-of-small-business-growth
[2] Peter M. Senge, The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization, Currency, revised edition, 2006. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/163984/the-fifth-discipline-by-peter-m-senge/
