From spark to scale - Part 2
Overcoming the scaling challenge
In Part One of this series I reflected on my experience getting new ventures started without being frustrated by the treacle of organisational processes which don’t lend themselves to innovation.
I looked at the intrapreneur mindset and the methodology of insurgency, drawing out the following key lessons:
In an age of AI, where you can get virtual expertise at a click, never doubt the real value in working with passionate, informed individuals.
Just start somewhere (ideally, with aircover from a friendly senior sponsor).
A modest amount of structure - just enough to capture and diffuse insights, identify and pursue shared interests - can unlock huge value.
In short, part 1 explored the mindset and methods needed to get a new venture off the ground. But as any innovator knows, a successful launch is not the finish line; it’s the start of the real race.
Getting started is about agility and working around obstacles. Scaling is about facing those obstacles head-on.
Common pitfalls on the road to scale
Earlier in my career I spent three years scrutinising policy delivery in the Prime Minister’s Implementation Unit. During this time I saw first hand how a set of recurring themes caused even the most well-resourced policy programmes to stumble. Three issues occurred most frequently in these implementation reviews - specifically:
Weak clarity on purpose and objectives
Limited understanding of the delivery system and its motives
Lack of focus on the user experience
These same issues later arose in some of my own efforts to scale novel initiatives, and are instructive for anyone seeking to deliver a project or policy programme at scale.
Pitfall 1. Weak clarity on purpose and objectives
The early days of the Better Care Fund is a compelling example of the first of these common scaling pitfalls. For Treasury officials, this £5.3 billion health and social care integration programme was primarily a way to quietly transfer cash to the resource-depleted social care sector. Department of Health and hospital managers however wanted to see the funding deliver cashable savings to the NHS. With such a profound misalignment from the outset, implementation was fraught with confusion and conflict at both national and local level, resulting in delays to additional scrutiny from the centre.
At a smaller scale, the All Party Parliamentary Group for Connected Places, which I seeded in early 2019, suffered from the same challenge. Early engagement from industry and parliamentarians was excellent (again thanks to the valuable contribution of Associates, specifically Ben Hawes and Julian Dee) with a well attended launch event and summer reception at the Houses of Parliament. However, differing understanding among internal colleagues about the core purpose for creating an APPG (and what was allowed within the various regulations governing such groups) led to weak take-up of the commercial partnerships needed to fund the initiative. The general election that December saw all existing APPGs dissolved, and we took the opportunity to refocus our efforts elsewhere.
Pitfall 2: Limited understanding of the delivery system and its motives
Housing delivery is a good example of the second common pitfall, where colleagues found that the government’s ambitious homebuilding targets were being frustrated by a stalemate over risk and commercial incentives within the delivery system. Large development sites which already had planning permission in place were being held up by the slow rollout of enabling infrastructure - roads, connections to power and water etc. Cash-strapped councils lacked the finance to deliver the infrastructure, while the developers argued that shouldering these costs themselves would render the schemes unviable commercially. The result was a delivery stalemate: no matter how much the government promised more housebuilding, councils could not fund the enabling works, developers would not build without it, and housing delivery remained stalled.
The 5G Action Learning Network which I discussed in Part 1 was expressly designed to try and tackle this kind of delivery system stalemate, by empowering councils and creating a new market dynamic. Entrenched market forces proved greater than our ambition however, and the pioneering investment behaviours we hoped to foster were just too great a leap for many local authorities at that time, and the initiative wound down after the pilot cohort. (That said, since no experience is wasted, the peer-learning cohort concept was later integrated into the Innovation Places Leadership Academy, which ran successfully across two cohorts from 2022 to 2025.)
Pitfall 3: Lack of focus on the user experience
The tendency to design initiatives without fully considering the experience of the intended beneficiaries is perhaps the most common scaling pitfall, and the one which has been most directly addressed in the decade since I left government with the rise of Service Designers in policy making.
Two high priority implementation challenges illustrate this pitfall perfectly. Firstly, efforts to boost recruitment of Army reservists were undermined by the fact new joiners didn't receive their fatigues for weeks after signing up. They could join training sessions straight away, but doing so in their own clothes rather than uniform made them feel disconnected from the rest of the squad, weakening their sense of belonging and ultimately leading a large share to fall away. Similarly, the offer of free loft insulation under the Green New Deal saw low take-up partially because potential beneficiaries felt reluctant to let inspectors see their untidy lofts.
I saw a similar dynamic play out in my attempt to transition the successful Associates initiative (see Part 1) into a business-as-usual function. After three years running the programme, I worked with colleagues to codify and integrate the initiative into another team. Sadly, design choices which had been intended to improve the quality of relationship management between the organisation and these high-value partners ended up weakening the user experience for Associates, and increasing the distance between them and Catapult’s senior leadership. Before long, the spark had gone out and the initiative was wound up.
Stepping back from these experiences, a crucial insight emerges. These three pitfalls—misaligned purpose, delivery stalemates, and user disconnect—are not separate problems to be solved with better project management. They are, in fact, recurring symptoms of a single, powerful, and often invisible force at play in our organisations and partnerships.
The Hidden Barrier: A Collective "Immunity to Change"
What I’ve come to understand is that these scaling challenges are often symptoms of a more powerful, hidden dynamic: a collective ‘Immunity to Change’. This concept, first articulated by Harvard researchers Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey, brilliantly explains how a system can be perfectly—even unknowingly—designed to prevent the very change it claims to want.
We’ve all experienced it: a coalition of people - maybe from within a single organisation, or representing a range of partners - come together and commit to a shared strategy or programme. There is shared ambition and a palpable sense of momentum. And yet, weeks later, little has changed.
This isn’t a failure of will. It’s a systemic immunity, born from a powerful competing commitment. The group’s stated commitment is to take action. However for many time-poor leaders in cash-poor organisations like local authorities or universities, there is an unspoken competing commitment to protect one’s own limited resources. In practice, this means that the attention needed to advance strategic initiatives is hijacked by urgent, everyday tasks, and key resources which could drive progress remain tied up on other projects.
Until you can surface and address this hidden dynamic, the system will remain stuck, no matter how inspiring the vision.
Let Recurve help you turn inertia into impact
Recurve is here to help you lead beyond boundaries
I founded Recurve to help leaders navigate the changing world and maximise the opportunities for renewal in our institutions, communities and regions.
Equipping leaders to overcome the pitfalls and competing priorities outlined in this article is a key part of that mission. Whatever your ambitions, wherever you are in your journey, if you are experiencing unexpected opposition or inertia, we can help you and your partners get 'unstuck'.
Alongside expertise in the pioneering practices which maximise the impact of public sector investments, we focus on the deep, human dynamics of collaboration that are so often the real drivers of progress. Whether you are trying to align a complex regional partnership or drive an ambitious innovation agenda within your own organisation, we can help you put the right strategies in place and build the skills needed to lead genuine, systemic change.
Drawing on two decades of experience in this field, I have designed a practical, diagnostic workshop specifically for leaders and their teams looking to transform inertia into impact. This is a facilitated process designed to help your team or partnership uncover the hidden roadblocks limiting your success and develop concrete strategies to overcome them. It is the first step to empowering you to lead beyond boundaries—to forge the robust, trust-based partnerships that are essential for creating thriving, resilient organisations and places.
So if the challenges I’ve described here feel familiar, and you are committed to turning your ambitions into a reality, then I invite you to get in touch.
Use the contact form below or email me at hello@recurve.solutions to find out about our upcoming public workshops or to discuss a private diagnostic for your team, organisation or place partnership.