Topics
Organizational Design
17 pieces on organizational design, across diagnostic patterns, climate tech, investor guidance, and earth observation.
Accidental Complexity
Your organisation is more complex than it needs to be, and the person who made it that way is you. Technical founders model complex systems for a living.
Diagnostic PatternsThe Adaptation Trap
Your process map is a geological record of every failure the organisation has survived. The layers compound, nobody removes the old ones, and the people who navigate the workarounds are the ones who defend them.
Diagnostic PatternsDecision Architecture Failure
Nobody in your organisation knows who can say yes. The org chart says one thing. The actual decision flow says another. The result is high latency, low quality, and zero accountability — and the fix isn't 'empower people.'
Diagnostic PatternsScaling Breakpoints
Organisations hit predictable structural walls at 15, 30, 50, and 100 people. Each breakpoint invalidates the operating model that got you there. The symptoms look like people problems. They're physics.
Climate TechBuilt Environment & Retrofit
Building decarbonization is a sector caught between regulation-driven demand and the brutal reality of fragmented delivery.
Climate TechDeforestation & Supply Chain Compliance
The EU Deforestation Regulation created a compliance market overnight. The companies racing to serve it are building for a deadline, and deadline-driven organisations break in specific ways.
Climate TechMobility & Transport
Mobility companies are infrastructure-dependent in a way that most technology sectors aren't, and that dependency reshapes the organization in ways the founding team rarely anticipates.
For InvestorsCase: The Portfolio Company Nobody Could Fix
A Series A clean energy company with missed targets, two COO departures, and board-level frustration. The problem wasn't the people.
For InvestorsClimate Tech Operating Models
Climate tech is not SaaS. The operating model assumptions from software investing don't transfer to companies with hardware, regulatory dependencies, and project-based revenue.
For InvestorsYour COO Hire Failed Because You Diagnosed the Wrong Problem
The pattern: portfolio company struggling, hire a COO, COO burns out within 18 months. The role isn't the problem. The organisational design is.
For InvestorsThe Organizational Failure Modes That Kill Climate Tech Companies
Climate tech carries organizational complexity that SaaS frameworks can't see. The failure modes are structural, predictable, and invisible to standard due diligence.
For InvestorsThe Next-Gen Transition Is an Organizational Design Problem
87% of millennial UHNW individuals consider social impact when investing. 30% of their parents do. The content industry frames this as a values conversation. It's an organisational design problem.
For InvestorsOrganizational Due Diligence
Your due diligence reads the pitch deck, the cap table, and the CTO's LinkedIn. It doesn't read the decision graph — the layer that actually converts your capital into the outcomes your thesis described.
For InvestorsPeople Due Diligence for Deep Tech
Everyone writes financial DD and technical DD. 'People DD' is a sales page term with no framework behind it. The structural assessment evaluates whether the decision graph can convert the capital into the outcomes the thesis describes.
For InvestorsPortfolio Diagnosis
The board sees 'execution problems.' The structural diagnosis sees a decision architecture that routes every product decision through the CTO, creating a six-to-eight-week delay on every release. One is a description. The other is fixable.
For InvestorsPost-Investment Support
The check is written. The company is struggling. Board advice isn't working. You've told the founder to fix the org three times. Nothing sticks. That's where structural diagnosis starts.
For InvestorsStructural Due Diligence: A Framework
Financial DD asks: is this a good investment? Technical DD asks: does the technology work? Structural DD asks the question nobody else is asking: can this organisation convert the capital into the outcomes the thesis describes?