If you’ve ever built or scaled a business that relies on human talent, you’ll know that growth doesn’t follow a straight line. It happens in steps. You push through a ceiling, find a new rhythm for a while, then inevitably you hit another wall. And every time, you have to reinvent.

The reinvention isn’t just about adding more revenue or more clients. It’s about reshaping the very way your business works so it can sustain the next phase. In our experience – across building, running, and exiting multiple people-first companies, and advising many more – that reinvention follows a repeatable pattern.

We call it The Pyramid of Reinvention.

At the base is Technology. Above it sits Process. Above that is People. And at the very top, the most difficult, yet most powerful layer, is Culture.

It’s not just a nice visual. It’s a diagnostic tool we use with leadership teams. We step back, look at where the real constraint is, and then apply a simple rhythm: Diagnose → Design → Deploy.

Let’s walk through each layer of the pyramid in turn, with a conversational lens on what actually happens inside growing companies.

Here’s what it looks like:

Culture: the invisible operating system

Culture is one of those words that gets thrown around a lot. But in reality, culture is simply “how decisions get made when nobody’s watching.” It’s the behaviours you reward, the compromises you’re willing to make, and the way your team talks about the business when you’re not in the room.

The problem is that culture is also the hardest thing to change. Which is why many founders avoid tackling it until it’s too late. But in truth, if you don’t get culture right, everything else in the pyramid eventually crumbles.

So how do we approach it?

  • Diagnose: We look for the shadow of leadership. What behaviours are being role-modelled in tough moments — when a client is angry, or when revenue is missed? We check what new joiners say after 30 days — do they talk about collaboration, or about firefighting? We review decision-making. Was the last big call made on principle, or personality?

  • Design: Once we know the truth, we can set a new direction. That might mean creating clear operating principles (“always share bad news fast”; “never sacrifice quality for speed”), and linking them to real behaviours. It might mean setting new leadership standards, or designing rituals that keep culture visible — Friday wins, monthly town halls, quarterly retros.

  • Deploy: Here’s the hard part. You can’t just put the values on a poster. Culture needs embedding into hiring, performance reviews, recognition, and leadership coaching. That’s why we always start with the managers — they’re the multipliers. If they model the new behaviours, the rest of the business follows.

Culture work feels intangible, but when you deploy it well, it becomes the multiplier for every other change you make.

People: your leadership bench and beyond

Once culture is in motion, the next layer is people. This is about the calibre of your leaders, the clarity of roles, and the incentives that drive behaviour.

Here’s the reality: as you scale, you can’t be in every room. That’s often where businesses stall — the founder becomes the bottleneck. What got you to £2m won’t get you to £5m. You need to build a leadership bench that can carry the culture, make the tough calls, and run parts of the business better than you ever could.

  • Diagnose: We start with an “org heat-map.” Which teams are strong? Where are we over-reliant on one person? Where do we have accidental managers — great ICs who’ve been promoted without the tools to lead? We run talent reviews and 9-box assessments to see who’s high performance, who’s high potential, and who’s at risk. We also check incentives. Are they aligned with value creation, or just activity?

  • Design: With the gaps clear, we can build the org of the future — not just today. That means designing what the business looks like at the next revenue plateau, then working backwards. We create clear role scorecards so every leader knows their mission and outcomes. We build career paths so people can see a future here. And crucially, we fix incentives — tying bonuses or equity to real outcomes like profitability, client retention, or cash, not vanity metrics.

  • Deploy: Then it’s about putting this to work. We run leadership bootcamps for new managers. We roll out 30/60/90 day onboarding plans. We build succession pipelines and quarterly talent reviews. Over time, this creates a flywheel: strong people hire strong people, and the founder finally gets space to think about strategy, not firefighting.

We’ve seen businesses double purely because they finally freed the founder from being the bottleneck. That’s the power of getting the “people” layer right.

Process: the operating system

If people are the drivers, process is the road network. Without it, you get chaos: rework, missed margins, client churn, and frustrated staff.

But process isn’t about bureaucracy. It’s about creating a repeatable way of delivering value that frees your best people to focus on the exceptions, not the basics.

  • Diagnose: We map the value stream from lead to cash. Where are the bottlenecks? Where does work pile up? Where do margins get lost? We look at rituals — are stand-ups and client reviews adding clarity, or are they just calendar wallpaper? We audit client experience: are renewals strong, are NPS scores healthy, are projects delivered on time and margin?

  • Design: From there, we create the “golden path” playbooks. How do we sell, kick off, deliver, QA, and renew in a way that works 80% of the time? We define the critical handover points, the checklists, the stage gates. We set a rhythm of reviews and retros. Most importantly, we design processes that are light enough to use but strong enough to scale.

  • Deploy: The key is piloting. We test new processes in one pod or client group, fix the bugs, then scale out. We build short enablement guides and Loom walkthroughs so people can actually use the process. And we bake the process into the tech — if the PSA or CRM doesn’t mirror it, adoption fails.

The magic moment is when a founder sees delivery running smoothly without them in the weeds. That’s when you know process is working.

Technology: the enabler, not the solution

Finally, at the base of the pyramid, we have technology. This is where most teams start – chasing a shiny new tool. But tech is scaffolding, not structure. It only works if the higher layers are clear.

That said, when you have the right processes and people, technology can be a powerful accelerator.

  • Diagnose: We start with a stack inventory. What tools are being used, and which are just sitting there? Where are spreadsheets doing the real work? Is there a single source of truth, or multiple conflicting dashboards?

  • Design: From there, we build a minimum viable architecture. One system of record for sales, one for delivery, one for finance. We set data standards, automate the obvious handoffs, and design dashboards that track the metrics that matter. No more, no less.

  • Deploy: Rollouts are phased. Start with the most painful flow, migrate clean data, and appoint super-users who can champion adoption. Measure usage and impact. If people are still exporting everything into Excel, you haven’t nailed it yet.

When deployed well, tech removes friction, surfaces truth, and gives leaders confidence to make decisions at pace. But it never fixes culture or people problems. That’s why it’s the bottom of the pyramid.

Pulling it all together

Here’s the truth: most growth blockages are higher up the pyramid than leaders think. It’s tempting to swap tools or redesign a process. But nine times out of ten, the real issue is people or culture.

That’s why every reinvention I run follows the same rhythm:

  1. Diagnose what’s really broken.
  2. Design a future state that fixes it.
  3. Deploy it with discipline and measurement.

And then, inevitably, when the business hits the next ceiling, we run it all again.

Scaling a people-first business isn’t about finding the one magic playbook. It’s about recognising that reinvention is the playbook. The Pyramid simply gives you a way to see where to start.