The $2M Sticky Notes

There's this company I know. Actually, let me rephrase that. There are about fifty companies I know that look exactly like this one. They started five years ago with three people in a garage, running on coffee, enthusiasm, and the kind of naive optimism that makes you think you can change the world with a laptop and a dream. Fast forward to today, and they're doing two million in revenue. They've got twenty-five employees. Real clients. Real problems. Real money.

And you know what else they've got? A bulletin board covered in sticky notes that supposedly represents their entire project management system. Email chains with forty-seven people CC'd (we'll talk about this in another article), where nobody knows who's supposed to do what. A Google Drive that's organized using the "I'll know it when I see it" filing system. And a founder who keeps saying "we need to systematize" while simultaneously making every decision based on whoever catches him in the hallway.

Welcome to the beautiful disaster of a company that grew faster than its systems could handle. It's like watching a teenager wearing clothes from when they were twelve. Sure, technically, they're still dressed, but everyone can see that this situation can't continue much longer.

Here's what nobody tells you about growth: the things that got you to a million won't get you to ten million. The scrappy, figure-it-out-as-you-go approach that works brilliantly with five people becomes an absolute nightmare with twenty-five. The "everyone knows everything" culture that felt so collaborative suddenly feels like chaos when you realize not everyone knows everything, and the people who do know things are stuck in meetings explaining the same thing to five different people.

And here's the kicker: the founder usually knows this. They're not stupid. They see the sticky notes piling up. They notice the same questions being asked repeatedly. They watch good people leave because they can't figure out what they're supposed to be doing. But they don't fix it. Why? Because fixing it means admitting that the beautiful, organic, spontaneous way they built the company doesn't work anymore. And that feels like betrayal.

From an OBM lens, this is fascinating. What you're watching is a reinforcement system that's fighting against itself. In the early days, spontaneity was rewarded. The person who could pivot quickly, solve problems on the fly, and make decisions without waiting for approval - they got all the positive reinforcement. They got praise, they got results, and they got the satisfaction of seeing their ideas turn into reality immediately. That system worked because everyone could see everything, everyone knew everyone, and you could course-correct in real-time just by turning around in your chair.

But now? Now that same behaviour creates chaos. The person who makes decisions without communicating creates problems for the three other teams. The spontaneous pivot that used to be heroic is now just confusing. The lack of documentation that felt like freedom now feels like incompetence. But here's the problem: the old reinforcement system is still running. People are still getting rewarded for the behaviours that worked when you were small. And they're confused and frustrated when those same behaviours now cause problems.

Shift happens, whether you plan for it or not. The question is whether you design the shift or let it design you.

Let me tell you about Sarah. She ran a marketing agency that grew from four people to thirty in eighteen months. Huge success story, right? Except nobody could find anything. Client files were scattered across three different platforms because different team members preferred different tools. The onboarding process was "watch Mary do it and take notes." When Mary quit, they lost six weeks of productivity while everyone figured out what Mary actually did.

Sarah knew she needed systems. She bought project management software. She hired a COO. She even paid a consultant an obscene amount of money to create process documents. And you know what happened? Nothing. Well, not nothing. The software sat unused. The COO quit after six months. The process documents collected digital dust in a folder nobody opened.

Why? Because Sarah made the classic mistake. She tried to install systems without changing the reinforcement structure. She bought the software but kept rewarding speed over documentation. She hired the COO but kept making decisions without involving them. She created the processes but continued celebrating the people who "got stuff done" by working around the processes. Just like that, all her attempts at systematization hit a wall of behavioural reality.

Here's what actually works, and it's going to sound too simple to be true, but stay with me. You need to change what gets rewarded. Not what you say you value. What you actually reward with attention, praise, resources, and advancement. Right now, if I walked into your company, I could predict with about ninety percent accuracy what your actual priorities are just by watching who gets promoted, who gets the interesting projects, and who gets face time with leadership.

If you want systematization, you need to start rewarding systematic behaviour. The person who documents their process should get recognized, not just the person who delivered fastest. The team that uses the project management system consistently should get the high-profile projects, not the team that keeps everything in their head. The employee who takes time to train someone properly should be valued as much as the employee who just gets it done themselves.

And here's the hard part: you need to stop rewarding the old behaviours. That star employee who delivers everything but never writes anything down? They need feedback, not applause. That manager who makes brilliant decisions but doesn't communicate them? They need coaching, not promotion. That team that gets stuff done by working around your systems? They need redirection, not hero status.

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Sarah figured this out eventually. Not because she read a book or hired another consultant, but because she had an exit interview that hit her like a truck. One of her best employees was leaving, and when she asked why, they said: "I love the work, I love the team, but I can't work in chaos anymore. I spend half my time trying to figure out what I should be doing and the other half redoing work because nobody communicated properly. I'm exhausted."

That's when Sarah got it. The chaos wasn't a quirky feature of a creative company. It was burning out her best people. So she did something radical. She announced that for the next quarter, process adoption would be a key metric in performance reviews. Not the only metric, but a key one. She started weekly shoutouts for teams that used the systems well. She made the COO a partner in every major decision. She personally used the project management software and made it visible that she was doing so.

Did everyone love it? Hell no. Her most senior employees complained that she was "killing the culture." Some people quit. There was a month where productivity actually dropped because people were learning new systems. But six months later? The company was running smoother than it ever had. New employees could onboard in days, not months. Client work stopped falling through cracks. And the people who stayed? They were the ones who wanted to build something sustainable, not just ride the chaos wave until they burned out.

The sticky note approach worked when you were small. It was beautiful in its simplicity. Everyone knew what everyone else was doing because you all sat in the same room. But you're not small anymore. And that's not a failure, that's success. The question is whether you're going to honour that success by building systems that can sustain it, or watch it burn baby burn until you're back to being small again.

Systems aren't the enemy of creativity or spontaneity or whatever romanticized notion you have about your company culture. Systems are what allow creativity to scale. They're what let you stop having the same conversations over and over. They're what give good people the structure they need to do their best work without constantly second-guessing whether they're doing the right thing.

But you can't just buy systems. You can't just document processes. You can't just hire someone to "fix operations." You have to change the fundamental reinforcement structure of your company. You have to make systematic behaviour valuable, visible, and rewarded. You have to stop accidentally punishing the people who do things right by celebrating the people who get results by working around the system.

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So look around your office. Or your Slack channels. Or wherever your team lives these days. Count the sticky notes, literal or metaphorical. Look at the chaos that felt charming when you were scrappy but now just feels exhausting. Ask yourself: what am I actually rewarding? What behaviours are getting reinforced by how I allocate my time, my attention, my praise, my promotions?

Because here's the thing about running a two-million-dollar business on sticky notes: it works until it doesn't. And when it stops working, it doesn't fail gradually. It fails catastrophically. Good people leave. Clients get frustrated. Growth stalls. And you end up spending all your time firefighting instead of building.

The beautiful part? You built something that grew. That's hard. Systematizing it is easier. It just requires you to be honest about what you're rewarding and deliberate about changing it. That's not theory. That's behavioural science. And unlike your current system, it actually scales.

Your company outgrew your brain. That's not a failure.

It's an invitation to build systems that are smarter than any single person could be.