Control is a rotten fish

Our company was a small, agile fighting machine. Our team of just a few people was known for solving problems so fast that we won major brands as clients. We were the embodiment of problem-solving. We just needed to grow, right?

That is what I believed, too.

We hired C-level executives from big, "successful" companies. They brought processes and hierarchies with them, and we adopted them eagerly. We wanted to build a "real" company. We did not understand that we were creating the exact bureaucracy Gary Hamel calls the greatest enemy of innovation.

Just when we thought we were growing, we started to self-destruct. I watched from the sidelines as innovation faded, creativity was stifled, and our problem-solving ability vanished. Bureaucracy, that silent killer, had taken over. And I was its architect.

The rise and fall of the factory

The age of bureaucracy began. A wall of project managers and other middlemen grew between our coders and our customers. The vital, direct connection was cut. The link between the customer and the people who solved the problems, our coders and designers, was gone. Our coders became what Marty Cagan describes as "feature teams." Their role was reduced to implementing someone else's filtered vision through small tickets.

We walked straight into a trap. We focused only on doing things, not on whether those things created any value.

The people who once shined burned out, one by one. Their energy was spent navigating processes, not solving customer problems. They came to work to execute, not to innovate. The price was high. We lost brilliant people. We also lost our market position because we could no longer solve real problems.

A hard lesson and a new direction

I learned a hard lesson. I thought I was building order, but I was just building walls between people. Control is a rotten fish. It starts to stink quickly and drives everyone away.

The real insight came when I understood that trust, autonomy, and collaboration are the only path to sustainable growth. Bureaucracy is a silent killer that eats a company's soul.

Fortunately, you can root it out. It requires courage, clarity, and a human-centric approach. We must start with why we exist, as Simon Sinek teaches. Only then can we build an organization based on trust.

And I want to help you on that journey.