It’s honestly great when a business finally has the chance to scale its products. And while the concept itself sounds fun in a way, oftentimes, it turn sinto this situation where everything is growing except the time of day itself. Just think about it for a moment; more stakeholders, more experiments, more documentation, more supply questions, more “quick” calls that aren’t quick at all. It all snowballs, and for a lot of businesses, though, it’s pretty common that growth often shows up before a team is ready to hire, because hiring is expensive, slow, and honestly a bit of a gamble if demand isn’t stable yet.
Sure, it’s not too uncommon for businesses to use AI or even automation nowadays, but it can only do so much. So yeah, the goal becomes scaling the work without scaling the headcount, and doing it without turning the business into a giant unorganised pile of handoffs and crossed wires.
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It’s Not the Workload, it’s the Bottlenecks
Alright, so it’s absolutely for the best to just go ahead and start right here. So, a lean team can handle a surprising amount, right up until everything depends on one or two people for decisions, approvals, and context. Then the work doesn’t move faster just because theres more tasks, it moves slower because the bottleneck is human. So, as you can probably see here, “more capacity” doesn’t immediately equate to “more hiring, right?
Actually, sometimes it means making the workflow less fragile. Like, a lot less fragile. Plus, clear priorities, fewer last-minute changes, tighter documentation, and a realistic timeline that accounts for review cycles (and while all of this sounds super easy on paper, in real life, it’s surprisingly hard to put this into practice). But as you can see, though, it’s the stuff that stops growth from feeling like a daily scramble.
What Has to Stay in-House?
A lot of businesses like outsourcing since it can expand capability, but it can’t replace ownership. The internal team still needs to own the decisions that shape the programme, like defining what success looks like, setting guardrails, approving changes, and keeping the strategy consistent when new data shows up.
When it Helps to Keep Work Under One Roof
Alright, so outsourcing was just mentioned above, but even this needs some attention, too. The biggest time sink isn’t always the work itself (it can be, but it’s not always the case). Actually, it’s the transitions between stages. Usually, there’s handoffs create delays, context gets lost, and suddenly everyone is spending time translating what’s already been done. So one thing your business could look into would be getting integrated partners, as this can be a practical move for lean teams that need continuity across stages.
Actually, it helps to team up with companies that can contract research, development, and manufacturing organisation, which matters because it reduces the number of separate vendors involved when a programme moves from one phase to the next. And yes, the point isn’t outsourcing to “do less.” The point is outsourcing so the internal team can stay focused on the work only it can do, like direction, decision-making, and keeping the business steady.
How to Use Partners without Creating More Work for Everyone
Because that’s not the point here, it’s supposed to be the opposite! But outsourcing can backfire if the internal team treats partners like a magical solution, because then it becomes constant follow-ups, vague requests, and last-minute changes that create rework.
So ideally, it’s more about trying to remove any sort of misunderstandings that could be there, like defining the scope clearly, setting timelines, deciding how often updates happen, and making it obvious who approves what and how changes will be handled, too.
