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But here's the uncomfortable part: Most firms draw their waterlines too low. Software choices go to committee. Meeting formats go to committee. The firm's email template goes to committee. Every one of those decisions gets treated as though it's a critical below-waterline risk. Most are not. That isn't being cautious; it's paying hull prices for deck decisions, and it's the reason your ship can't turn quickly.
Firms that pull ahead of the pack won't be the ones with looser standards. It will be the ones with higher waterlines. In other words, they're more disciplined about which side of the waterline where every decision belongs.
Large firms can't get small by shrinking
Being smarter about your waterline doesn't mean you have to break your firm into smaller pieces. I want to be clear about that. The constraint is never about how many people you have; it's about how many of your people must be in agreement before a decision gets made.
If you're a large firm, you can still be an agile swarm if you're organized as 40 small teams, each having real authority. But a five-person firm that requires all five people to sign off on every decision is just an aircraft carrier with a small crew.
Here are three strategies to help you become an agile swarm, and none of them is a reorganization:
1. Shrink the decision, not the firm. Take a decision that your firm makes over and over. Name the smallest group that can say yes to it and then take everyone else out of the path. Most firms can't answer that question for their top 10 decisions.
2. Fund small teams, not initiatives. Give three people a small budget, a short clock and the authority to spend the money without coming back for approval. An initiative reports up, but a team moves ahead.
3. Set the end date before the start date. Every team gets an expiration date on the day it forms. This is the one tactic that almost nobody follows and it's why firms keep accumulating structure until they can't turn anymore. Starting things is easy; closing them is what takes discipline.
If you're a small firm, don't get complacent
Being small is not the same thing as being fast. Speed isn't worth anything if curiosity isn't attached to it. A small firm full of people who never want to change lanes can't be a swarm. It's just a rowboat which essentially is a ship with fewer options.
Nobody is going to guess this right
Here's the thing that should make us all a little uncomfortable. Nobody knows what our profession will look like in five years. I don't, and neither does the keynote speaker at your last conference who claims they do. Neither does the firm down the street that just spent a fortune betting on one answer. Firms that come out ahead won't be the ones who guess right. They'll be the ones who realize quickly when they guess wrong and still have room to pivot.
That's what this whole debate comes down to. It's not how big you are. It's not how much you spend. It's not how early you started. All that matters is how quickly your firm can find out whether something works, and how cheaply it can be wrong when it doesn't work.
The next time somebody at your firm thinks they have a good idea, don't ask whether it's a good idea. Nobody knows that yet. Think about the last good idea somebody brought to you. How long was it before anyone tried it? The amount of time it takes is your firm's real speed. It has nothing to do with how many people you employ or how large your capital budget is.
You're never too large to be an agile swarm or too small to get stuck in battleship mode. One of the most important decisions you can make if you want to thrive, not just survive, into the future is to get real clarity about how your firm makes decisions — and gauge where its waterline is.
