Any fast-growing company eventually develops the Big Company Disease - a change in internal dynamics dramatically slowing down growth. Scaling up successfully is the ultimate challenge of any bootstrapped business. Learning to Scale at Theodo Group is a deep dive into a lastingly fast-growing lean scale-up company. Founded in 2009, the Theodo Group counts 600 people in 10 companies, generates a turnover of 90M€ and still keeps up with impressive growth even after 13 years in business - a showcase of the Lean strategy , inspired by the Toyota Production System. Exploring the issues any company faces on a daily basis - finding a product-market fit, managing sales, recruitment, maintaining a technical edge - the book follows the path of a lean sensei , Catherine Chabiron, as she observes how teams deal with creating a sense of purpose, picking the right challenges and fostering a learning culture. Learning to Scale at Theodo Group is a companion field book to Régis Medina’s 2020 bestseller Learning to Scale , acclaimed by thousands in the French tech world.
About the authors Catherine Chabiron is a lean sensei with considerable experience in industry and services. She is a prolific author about Lean and a frequent columnist for Planet Lean . Régis Medina is a pioneer of Agile methodologies and the bestselling author of Learning To Scale. He works with prominent entrepreneurs of the French tech community to build fast-growing, highly adaptive scale-ups with lean. Antoine Haguenauer is a lean practitioner, management consultant and writer. He works with tech companies across industries and government services.
I read this book after going through Learning to Scale. A lot of the content is reiterated between the two books.
The Gemba walks offer insights, but some are more insightful than others. For instance, I was hoping to learn how to implement a pull system or the practice of Andon within the context of product teams.
Overall, the content of the book maintains good quality.