Playbook / Lessons / The system runs: operating cadence
StartupsMake roles and decision rights explicit after your first dozen hires
Tottman and Dominguez argue that startups scaling past their early hires run into unclear roles and priorities. They say that if roles, decision rights and priorities are not explicit, teams pull in different directions, strategy ends up living in Slack and roadmaps keep shifting. They link this to operating-model gaps, with murky ownership and a weak management cadence.
“After the first dozen hires, tribal knowledge breaks.”— Chris Tottman and Ruben Dominguez, Why Startups Fail: The Cost of Premature Scaling, Aug 2025
Do this
Write a one-page list of who owns each priority and who has the final say on each kind of decision, and share it with the team.