These organizations transformed their work from hard mode to easy mode.
CASE STUDY
Scaling: 10x revenue growth with only 2x headcount increase
CASE STUDY
Pivoting: 39% revenue growth + a new scalable business concept
Case Study
Scaling: 10x revenue growth with only 2x headcount increase
Summary
A self-funded social enterprise wanted to grow the company, so it aggressively pursued business development. Then, the company repeatedly turned away clients because the service delivery team was already over capacity. The CEO’s answer was to hire. However, research revealed something more urgent–the company didn’t track the resources required to deliver its services, and it was actually losing money on every project. Adding headcount would have made the organization more fragile, not less.
Through a process of ideation and experimentation, we solved the root cause of the issue. As a result, the company was able to scale 10x and become profitable without shifting away from its human-centered culture.
What was true
The service was roughly 80% custom on every project—expensive to produce, impossible to staff reliably, and inconsistent for clients. There were no systems for onboarding, project management, or quality control. Senior people were buried in routine work with no time to improve anything. The firm was generating a maximum of $83 per hour of staff time and had no mechanism to change that. We uncovered the real problem and got the team invested in solving it.
What worked and what fit
We redesigned how the company operated, transforming it into one cohesive system while:
Standardizing the service without eliminating the flexibility clients valued. The ratio flipped from 80% custom to 80% standardized delivery.
Building operational infrastructure so the team had what they needed to deliver consistent work without the head of operations holding everything together.
Launched an apprenticeship program that solved the immediate capacity problem, built a talent pipeline for future full-time roles, and produced intellectual property that was then used to develop an additional high-margin service.
Outcomes
Financial performance: Revenue grew 10x while headcount only doubled, and the company became profitable.
Stakeholder experience: Client and participant satisfaction consistently hit 9/10 — across every project, regardless of who staffed it.
Operational alignment: The team had clarity. Each full-time consultant could lead 3x more projects. Trained facilitators grew 8x. Geographic reach expanded without increasing overhead.
Leadership focus: The Head of Operations stopped being the connective tissue and the system held on its own and was able to shift focus toward building the future of the company.
Case Study
Pivoting: 39% revenue growth + a new scalable business concept
Summary
After over a decade in business, this double-bottom-line company’s leadership had ambitious plans for the future–dominate the industry and become a major brand. But the harder they pushed, the clearer it became that sheer effort was not going to yield the result they wanted. The Founder was involved in everything, and the team was burning out. Clients were paying premium prices and were dissatisfied. Research uncovered that the company’s existing infrastructure wouldn’t support growth and was barely supporting the company’s existing operations.
Through a process of ideation and experimentation, we stabilized the existing business, grew revenue 39%, and uncovered a hidden opportunity that would enable this high-touch business to scale without adopting the corporate practices that leadership found repulsive.
What was true
The firm had no documented identity—no vision, mission, values, or strategy—leaving the team without direction or a basis for decisions. Clients saw parts of the service as slow and unnecessary, even as they were paying 2-3x above market rates. The delivery team spent more than 20% of their time on activities that added no value for the client, operated without clear standards, and didn't feel safe raising concerns. Average employee tenure was less than one year. While the vast majority of projects delivered the outcomes clients paid for, clients were still dissatisfied with the experience.
What worked and what fit
Research revealed two distinct problems that required two distinct tracks. We worked on both simultaneously.
To stabilize the business:
Established the firm's first identity framework—vision, mission, and values—giving the company an anchor for strategy and the team a foundation for alignment and decision-making
Standardized the core service with client-persona-driven adaptations and defined quality standards
Built a sales system with new materials and a revised pricing strategy
Redesigned part of service delivery to incorporate AI, reducing workload, improving consistency, and evening out how demand hit the team
To find the path forward:
We tested three prototype directions with real clients. Two seemed not viable for the kind of growth the company was pursuing, which the prototyping process revealed quickly, protecting the firm from costly misdirection. The third surfaced capabilities the firm didn't know it had. It pointed to an entirely new business concept grounded in what the firm was already exceptional at and had the potential to reach significant scale.
Outcomes
Financial performance: Revenue grew 39% year over year. Per-project costs dropped 87% while maintaining quality and accelerating client timelines.
Stakeholder experience: Clients moved faster and reported less friction. The service became something the team could deliver consistently, not heroically.
Operational alignment: The core business was stabilized. A new business concept, built on existing capabilities, showed early market promise. Zero regrettable attrition during the transformation—a meaningful shift for a company that had struggled to retain people for years.
Leadership focus: Leadership was able to put their energy into developing the new business concept with less time spent managing the day-to-day.
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For executives of human-centered organizations
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