Scaling Excellence Successfully

In this podcast, Professor Sutton overviews his findings in studying methods for successfully scaling excellence. To sum up these conclusions, Robert Sutton describes a few main lessons. Among these, Professor Sutton further details importance of focusing on the mindset one is trying to scale, the significance of self-driven culture in scaling, the consequence of making teams too large in the process of scaling, and the need to dispel all the identifiably unwanted parts of an organization prior to scaling. Through his enthusiasm and real-world examples, Professor Sutton explains the importance of taking a logical and thought out approach to scaling, with the caveat that undergoing such a process could be immensely good or incredibly destructive.

Robert Sutton is Professor of Management Science and Engineering and a Professor of Organizational Behavior (by courtesy) at Stanford. Sutton has been teaching classes on the psychology of business and management at Stanford since 1983. He is co-founder of the Center for Work, Technology and Organization, which he co-directed from 1996 to 2006. He is also co-founder of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program and the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (also known as the d.school).