If growth is a system, why do we still organise companies in functions?

Marketing creates demand.

Sales converts.

Product builds.

Customer Success makes sure customers get value and stay.

A simplification, obviously. But roughly how we’ve organised commercial work for a long time.

And for good reasons.

We need specialist expertise. People who get really good at Marketing, Sales, Product and Customer Success.

So this isn’t an argument against functions.

It’s more a question of what happens when we expect a functional organisation to create something that isn’t particularly functional.

Growth.

In my last post, I wrote about growth as a system.

Brand can make Sales more effective. What Sales learns can make Product better. A better product can create more customer value. Customers who get more value stay, expand and recommend us.

One thing makes the next thing stronger.

But for that to happen, quite a lot needs to cross the functional boundaries we’ve created.

We tend to manage the parts

Think about a fairly normal management meeting.

• Marketing reports on pipeline, leads or brand.

• Sales reports on revenue, win rate and forecast.

• Product reports on roadmap, releases and usage.

• Customer Success reports on retention, churn and perhaps NPS.

Nothing strange about that. I’ve sat through and presented plenty of those slides myself.

But where do we see whether the connections are getting stronger?

• Is Brand making Sales more effective?

• Is what Sales learns actually changing what Marketing or Product does?

• Is increased product usage leading to expansion?

• Are the reasons customers stay or leave affecting who we try to acquire in the first place?

Those questions don’t fit quite as neatly on a functional slide.

And I think that matters.

We’re very good at measuring whether the parts are performing.

We’re less good at seeing whether they are making each other better.

Everyone can be doing a good job

Marketing can hit its pipeline target while Sales thinks lead quality is getting worse.

Sales can hit its number by winning customers who turn out to be difficult to onboard or unlikely to expand.

Product can deliver its roadmap while Sales keeps hearing the same objection from customers.

Customer Success can hit its retention target while expansion opportunities sit somewhere between CS and Sales.

Nobody is necessarily doing anything wrong.

That’s what makes this interesting.

Each function can make perfectly sensible decisions based on what it has been asked to achieve.

But those decisions don’t automatically add up to the best outcome for the business.

Growth happens in the combination.

So maybe, alongside:

• How is Marketing performing?

• How is Sales performing?

• How is Product performing?

• How is Customer Success performing?

we should be asking:

Is the system getting better at creating growth?

Which brings me back to organisation

I don’t think the answer is to get rid of functions.

And I certainly don’t think putting everyone into cross-functional teams magically solves it.

I’ve been in enough cross-functional meetings to know that adding more functions to the invitation doesn’t necessarily make the meeting or the outcome better.

But I do think there is a distinction worth making.

Some things make sense to organise around expertise.

Developing people. Building deep specialist competence. Methods, tools and standards.

But should all growth work be organised that way?

Acquisition.

Adoption.

Expansion.

Retention.

A strategic account.

A new market.

None of these belongs naturally to one function.

Take a new market.

We can divide the work between Marketing, Sales, Product and Customer Success and give everyone their part.

Or we can start somewhere else:

Make this market work.

The same people may be involved.

But now the starting point is the outcome rather than the functions.

And that changes the conversation.

I started with Revenue Pods. I think the question is bigger than that.

Earlier this year, I suggested small cross-functional Revenue Pods working around a shared commercial outcome.

I still like the idea.

But the more I’ve thought about it, the less interested I’ve become in whether the answer is actually a “pod”.

The name certainly isn’t the interesting part.

What interests me is the principle underneath it.

What should we organise around expertise and what should we organise around the growth we are trying to create?

Because if growth is a system, perhaps we need to get better at managing both:

the parts and what happens between them.

I don’t think there is one organisational model that answers this.

But I do think it’s a question worth asking.