SCALE NOTES

When something feels off in a company, the first instinct is usually: Let’s reorg. Maybe marketing isn’t aligned with product. Maybe customer success is stuck between sales and ops. Maybe decision-making is slow, and no one knows who’s accountable for what. So leadership moves the boxes around, hoping a new structure will fix the friction. But friction isn’t the enemy. Friction is where relationships live. A reorg assumes the problem is where people sit. More often, the probl

I’ve been noticing how often organizations ask for transformation without changing the conditions people are operating in. When priorities are stacked and attention is already fragmented, even meaningful change can start to feel like one more thing to carry. And it's so rarely because people don’t care, but because there’s no room to absorb it. The system is already full. In moments like this, the question isn’t whether the idea itself is good. It’s whether the system around

I keep noticing how often teams are operating on a set of assumptions that were never fully named. Early on, this can feel like a strength as you move fast and vibe with your new colleagues. There’s shared context, a lot of trust, and an unspoken sense of what needs to happen next. Pausing to spell everything out can feel unnecessary, or even counterproductive, so people keep moving without a clear organization design. For a while, this works quite well. Over time, though, th

There is a particular kind of meeting I have been in more times than I can count. The question on the table isn't especially complicated, and the people in the room are good at their jobs. They understand the problem. In many cases, they are the people closest to it. Still, twenty minutes in, nobody has decided anything. The conversation goes around once and then again. Someone says, “I think we should probably bring this to leadership.” A name enters the room—someone more se

After a major merger, leadership faced the challenge of bringing together employees spread across regions, offices, and distinct cultures. On paper, the deal made sense. In practice, it threatened to pull people apart. Without a clear roadmap, the risks were high: attrition, disengagement, siloed decision-making, and operational breakdown. What was needed wasn’t just a structural integration, but a cultural one. Andes’ Role We designed an integration roadmap that aligned le

A global organization with more than 100,000 employees operating across 70+ countries was struggling with fragmented people systems. Job...