Built Different: Why Mid-Sized Companies Win at Change
Compass post- Your size is your secret weapon
I've watched billion-dollar companies burn millions on transformation consultants. The dark secret is most of them are doomed to fail, and mid-sized companies are positioned beautifully to take advantage.
Over my years running transformations for Fortune 500 giants, I've seen the same pattern repeat: an innovative management trend emerges (Agile, OKRs, Lean/Product, Digital Transformation, etc.), transformations are assigned massive budgets, five-year roadmaps are created, and waves of consultants arrive. Then the slow fizzle as momentum dies and organizations revert to familiar dysfunction. McKinsey found that 84% of digital transformations fail to sustain gains1. Not stall- fail.
Meanwhile, the 50-person company down the street that could implement these concepts in weeks may not even try.
There's something happening here that most people miss. We're in a cycle where enterprises move first but benefit last, while smaller companies outside the tech world who possess the key success criteria may not move at all because they think popular methodologies are for somebody else.
On the surface, this key success criteria might feel obvious: big organizations are complex and slow; smaller ones are nimble. But if we stop there, we miss the real opportunity. The dynamics that make transformation fail in the giants reveal something deeper about how to make it work elsewhere. Let’s unpack what those failures can teach us and how to use those lessons to your advantage.
The Paradox: Why Giants Fail Where You Can Win
At first glance, big companies seem built for successful adoption of cutting-edge thinking:
Bigger budgets mean earlier access to tools and training
The capital to afford the top-tier consultants
The resources to launch formal programs with dedicated teams
The reserves and scale to weather the slowdown and failure that comes with innovation
But I've been inside these machines. I’ve watched teams of talented and passionate people handcuffed by internal processes, visionaries held back by politics, and decisions that caused long-term issues.
They're not failing because they lack resources. They're failing because of them:
Complex reporting structures create 6-month decision cycles
Siloed departments that can't coordinate or collaborate
Constant leadership churn that disrupts continuity and introduces new strategies
Cultural resistance and inertia that grow exponentially with headcount
Quarterly earnings pressure that kills any long-term thinking
A Gartner report showed employee buy-in for transformation initiatives dropped from 74% to 38% in just six years2. The change fatigue is real. After multiple transformations, people just tune out.
The Mid-Sized Edge: Your Structural Advantages
Here's what Fortune 500 CEOs would kill for and what you probably take for granted:
You can make decisions in days, not quarters. When something isn't working, you can pivot without 47 stakeholder meetings.
You’re closer to your customers. You can test and iterate in real-time without layers of abstraction.
Your leadership is more stable. Your key leaders have longer tenure and a long-term view. Real change is possible when the person championing it will be there to see it through.
You face less internal resistance. You can experiment without worrying about unintended consequences in the next re-org.
The beautiful thing? These advantages are naturally baked into every small and mid-sized organization, and each one of them is the direct answer to the reasons that big companies fail when trying to move their organizations forward.
When big transformations fail, the methodology gets blamed. But these concepts aren’t flawed- they gained popularity and spawned best-selling books because they bring real value. They aren’t the problem; it’s that they aren’t getting deep enough adoption in the companies that stand the most to gain.
Built Different Means Built to Adapt
This is the foundation of our new series: growing organizations below the enterprise level are at a unique inflection point- big enough to need structure, but still small enough to move. And they have a world of advanced ways to run organizations at their fingertips. When I look at the lessons I’ve learned and the reality of the situation, there is one clear takeaway for me:
These companies don’t need to run a transformation program, they need to build an operating system that adapts.
The choice isn’t between the chaos of "winging it" and the bureaucracy of enterprise methodology. There's a third path: taking what works from these frameworks and adapting them to function at your scale.
What this means in practice:
You can learn faster than a 100,000-person org
You can align more tightly around purpose
You can adapt without 18-month change initiatives
You can build systems that flex and scale with growth
The answer isn’t to make a big commitment like “OKRs are the answer; let’s build our organization around them.” It’s to take advantage of these built in differentiators so that your company and culture are primed to pivot to OKRs, Agile, deeper use of AI, or whatever else is coming around the bend in the future.
What's Next in Built Different
In the next post, we'll dig into what this looks like. Specifically, how to build a foundation that adapts to whatever challenges are in front of you or changes you want to make. From there, we'll explore how to adapt popular practices like Agile, OKRs, and Lean Startup/Product thinking that will work best for you- like what we’ve already done for AI strategy.
The best path forward doesn't come from copying what’s done at enterprise scale or avoiding beneficial ways of doing work because they’re overdone
It comes from recognizing the advantages you already have and building systems that move with you.
What operational friction is your growth creating? If you’re trying to figure out the answers and want a partner to work with, book an introductory call with me.