MICHAEL GRIGGS
"Let's Shake Things Up"
Organizational Transformation in Practice
Mike Griggs
9/25/20263 min read
THE EXECUTIVE POUR 🥃
Transformation Isn’t an Org Chart. It’s How the Organization Works.
I’ve spent 17+ years leading SaaS, Professional Services, Customer Success, Delivery, Product, and technology organizations.
I’ve built teams. Restructured organizations. Changed operating models. Introduced automation. Scaled partner ecosystems. Fixed broken processes.
And I've learned something along the way:
The biggest organizational transformations rarely start with an org chart.
They start with changing how work gets done.
🍸 HAPPY HOUR
Every organization eventually hits the same wall.
Growth creates complexity. Complexity creates friction. Friction shows up everywhere: Customers wait longer.
Employees spend more time navigating the organization than serving the customer. Sales promises things Delivery can't easily execute. Product and Services operate from different priorities. Teams create workarounds instead of fixing the underlying problem.
And eventually someone says:
"We need to reorganize." Sometimes you do. But I've found that the org chart is often the symptom, not the disease.
The real question is:
Where is the work breaking down?
Who owns the decision? Where does the customer get handed off? Why does something take 30 days when it should take three? Why are smart people spending hours doing work technology could eliminate? Why does every escalation require an executive?
That's where transformation starts.
🥃 HARD TRUTH
You can't scale chaos.
I've seen organizations respond to growth by adding people, layers, meetings, processes and technology.
And somehow become less efficient.
More people don't necessarily create more capacity.
Sometimes they just create more handoffs.
At one point in my career, I helped scale a Services organization from 11 people to more than 150, supported by roughly another 150 partners.
That required more than hiring.
We had to fundamentally rethink how the organization operated.
How we scoped work.
How we priced it.
How Sales handed opportunities to Services.
How Services worked with Product and Engineering.
How partners engaged.
How delivery was governed.
How customers experienced the entire journey.
The result wasn't simply a bigger organization.
It was a more scalable one.
And that's an important distinction.
💡 MY TAKE
The best transformations I've led have had four things in common.
1. Fix the friction before adding resources.
Before asking, "How many people do we need?"
Ask:
"Why does this take so much effort in the first place?"
I've helped reduce implementations from 260+ days to fewer than 100 and country launches from 200+ days to approximately 30 days.
That wasn't accomplished by throwing more people at the problem.
It came from redesigning the work.
2. Make accountability obvious.
Customers don't care which box on the org chart owns a problem.
They care that someone owns it.
Sales, Product, Engineering, Services, Customer Success and partners can have different responsibilities.
But the customer should experience one company.
Creating that alignment has been a recurring part of my leadership work.
3. Use technology to eliminate work.
I'm a big believer in AI. But not because every organization needs an "AI strategy."
The question should be: What work shouldn't require a human anymore?
I've helped apply AI and automation to areas like services scoping, solution development, integration and QA. Work that could take months was reduced toward 48 hours. Integration activities moved from weeks toward days. The technology wasn't the transformation.
Redesigning the work was the transformation.
4. Measure whether the change actually worked.
Transformation without measurement is just storytelling. Across different organizations and transformations, I've seen results including:
48%+ YoY services bookings growth
79% improvement in engagement profitability
$15M+ incremental TCV
$45M+ delivery services under management
15% improvement in NPS
88% renewal rates
$4–5M in savings across 70+ projects
The numbers matter because they tell you whether the new way of working actually created value.
🥃 THE OTHER HARD TRUTH
Transformation isn't really about process.
And it isn't really about technology.
It's about changing behavior.
Moving from:
"That's not my team's responsibility." to: "What does the customer need?"
From: "We've always done it this way." to: "Is there a better way?"
From: "We need more people." to: "We need a better system."
And from: "That's impossible." to: "What would have to change to make it possible?"
That's the culture I try to build. One where people challenge the existing model - where data beats assumptions; where accountability is clear; here operational excellence isn't about creating bureaucracy.
It's about making it easier for great people to do great work.
🍷 LAST CALL
Organizations don't transform once.
They transform every time the business changes.
The model that worked at $50M might not work at $150M.
The delivery model that worked with 20 customers might break at 100.
The process that made sense before AI might be unnecessary tomorrow.
So I've stopped thinking about transformation as a project.
I think of it as a leadership discipline:
Diagnose the friction.
Redesign the work.
Align the organization.
Use technology intelligently.
Measure the outcome.
Then do it again.
Because the best transformation isn't the one where everyone says:
"We changed everything." It's the one where, six months later, someone says: "This is just how we work now."
🥃 That's the Executive Pour.
#Leadership #Transformation #ProfessionalServices #CustomerExperience #AI #SaaS #OperationalExcellence