Scaling is not strategy

You might think that doubling head count, landing major R&D contracts and smashing technical milestones would make a business feel more in control.

But for one science-based tech firm we worked with, success was starting to feel strangely chaotic. It's actually a pretty common challenge. Actually, I meet few tech businesses who're at the 25-50 people stage who aren't starting to experience the same challenges.

They weren't failing the the classic sense. Quite the opposite. Their core technology was flying.They'd gone from a tight founding team to 50+ employees in just a few years. Customers were knocking. Investors were circling. The plan? Expand the offer: products and services. Explore new markets. Transition from bespoke R&D to scalable, repeatable revenue.

Smart. Sensible. But on the inside, things were fraying.

People were unsure where they'd fit as the business evolved. Ideas were flying around but noting seemed to land. Strategy and clarity felt like something that happened in funding decks, often at a project level, but not day to day decisions and not about the overall business. And the leadership team were stuck in the classic engineering catch-22: do we impose structure and risk squishing out all the autonomy and freedom to explore that keeps our highly capable employees stimulated and engaged, or do we wing-it and hope that alignment and cohesive rhythm magically emerge?

This is the moment for the Defankle Stack

When companies start scaling they often reach for familiar tools (StageGate processes, new roles, more tools, "innovation pipelines"). The trouble is that most of these are polished admin. The impose order without building clarity.

We did something different.

We started by listening. Not just to the loudest voices, but to the absences. The feedback loops that had quietly shut down. The talented individuals who felt confused, not empowered. The ideas that had been requested but never acknowledged. The signals that, beneath the surface, the story was starting to unravel.

Here is what we found:

The strategy was real, but hidden

The leadership team had clear intent. They just hadn't said it outloud. Or out loud consistently, clearly enough. People weren't resisting the vision, they just didn't know what it was. And without that anchor, they couldn't tell where their work aligned, they'd make assumptions, invest intellectual effort, and then be disappointed. So they gradually started to disengaged.

The story wasn't travelling

There was no shared language for change. Communication was happening but not in a way that helped people connect the dots, see the bigger picture, or make confident decisions.

The culture was holding its breath

People wanted to contribute but werent sure if they still belonged. The old ways of working were no longer sustainable, but the new ways hadn't been defined. So people hesitated.

Defankling the knot

We applied the Defankle Stack. Our model for building innovation infrastructure that actually works.

1. Strategy

   We made strategic ambition visible, tangible, and repeatable. We didn't craft a vision statement (that came afterwards) but we helped leaders with tools and frameworks to make and explain trade-offs and choices.

   
   

2. Systems

   We codesigned a simple, flexible governance structure. Not red tape; just enough clarity and structure to support clarity and flow. People now know where to take ideas, how they'll be evaluated and what good looks like.

   
   

3. Story

   We worked on leadership language. Shifted from vague vision talk to clear narrative about what was changing and why. Leaders started repeating the same messages. And soon, so did their teams.

   
   

4. Culture

   We named the transition. Acknowledged the shift from early stage visibility across to decisions and opportunistic evolution to deliberate growth. We invited people to be part of that growth. Psychological safety doesn't come from being 'nice', it comes from clarity, consistency and trust in the process.

What happened next?

Alignment returned. Not because it was forced, but because we enabled it. The team weren't just 'on board', they were steering the ship.

The company is now rolling out a new service offer, with growing innovation infrastructure to match their ambition. Strategy is no longer a slide, it's a working tool.

Pausing and acknowledging that something wasn't quite right, rather than pushing, has unlocked real foundational change that builds advantage immediately, and in the longer term. Originally, Defankle was called in to develop an innovation process but our stack quickly revealed that this wasn't the real challenge.

Defankling doesn't have to take years and it dosen't have to be torturously painful. If you're in a similar position, wondering if you're really configured to deliver innovation grow, please shout. We're happy to help and it's probably not anywhere near as painful and effort intensive a process as you might imagine: we pride ourselves on doing the heavy lifting and delivering results quickly.