How to Run a Growth Team (Like the World’s Best Operators)
If you’re leading a growth team, or about to, you’ve probably asked yourself:
How do the best growth teams actually operate?
What do they do day-to-day, week-to-week, that helps them execute faster, align cross-functionally, and hit goals more consistently than everyone else?
After leading growth teams at Wistia and Postscript, coaching over 75 growth leaders, and interviewing 80 more on my podcast, I’ve learned something important:
It’s not about better ideas, or more playbooks.
It’s about systems.
The best growth teams don’t rely on heroics or one-off tactics. They build systems that scale - clear processes, shared principles, and written artifacts that turn chaos into clarity.
In this post, I’ll break down 5 systems you can install to help your growth team move faster, make better decisions, and execute with confidence.
(And if you want the entire plug-and-play version of these systems - complete with templates, examples, and rituals - you’ll find all of them inside my Growth Operating System.)
Why Most Growth Teams Struggle
Even today, most companies still don’t know how to work with a growth team.
They understand the concept of a cross-functional team running experiments - but not how to support it across departments.
That leads to:
Confusing ownership
Misaligned priorities
Resource gaps
Constant debates over “who owns what”
When I first started scaling the growth team at Wistia, I ran into all of those.
I’d spend weekends generating ideas, only to hit roadblocks on Monday because product wasn’t aligned, design was overloaded, or marketing didn’t understand the context.
At the time, I thought the problem was that my ideas weren’t good enough.
In retrospect, that wasn’t it at all.
The ideas were fine - I just couldn’t execute on them.
And that was on me.
I hadn’t built the systems or relationships needed to turn ideas into momentum. That’s when I realized: execution isn’t an ideas problem. It’s a systems problem.
System 1: Create Artifacts that Scale
I hadn’t documented the “why” behind what we were doing.
I hadn’t written down how the team worked, who owned what, or how decisions got made.
Everything lived in my head.
Which meant progress stopped whenever I did.
Documentation is how you create clarity, alignment, and speed.
Here’s where to start:
Growth Strategy Document – Defines what you’re working on and why.
Include:Strategic priorities
OKRs and success metrics
Resource needs
Risks and assumptions
Growth Operations Manual – Explains how your team operates.
Include:How experiments are run
How you collaborate cross-functionally
Decision-making principles
Key KPIs and reporting cadence
These artifacts create leverage.
They help new hires onboard faster, align cross-functional partners, and keep your team focused even when you’re not in the room.
System #2: Codify how Decisions Get Made
Great teams make good decisions without the leader in the room.
That only happens when everyone knows the rules of engagement - the values that guide tradeoffs.
I recommend defining 6–8 operating principles. Think of them as your decision-making OS.
Here’s a few examples:
Using data to make decisions
Bias for simple solutions that scale
Experimentation before deep investment
Putting the users’ opinions over your own
Providing value to the user as quickly as possible
Focused on learning & sharing to enable other areas of the organization
Then, bake those principles into your routines:
In weekly planning, ask: “What’s one way we’ll live our principles this week?”
In 1:1s, reflect on how each person applied them.
In retros, revisit which principles helped - and which need adjusting.
When principles are embedded in your rituals, they stop being words on a slide.
They become the system that guides how your team thinks.
System #3: Clarify Ownership Across Functions
Growth lives in the messy middle - between product, marketing, and data. Without clear ownership, that overlap turns into chaos.
To fix it, use a simple RACI matrix to define who’s doing what:
R – Responsible (who executes)
A – Accountable (who owns the result)
C – Consulted (who gives input)
I – Informed (who gets updates)
Map this across:
Growth model KPIs (acquisition, activation, retention, monetization)
Surface areas (landing pages, in-product onboarding, email sequences, pricing pages etc)
Then, share it widely.
That one exercise eliminates 80% of confusion and politics.
System #4: Build Rhythms that Drive Momentum
The best growth teams have rhythm.
Their rituals create predictability, reflection, and focus.
Here’s a cadence you can borrow:
Weekly Workflow
Monday planning: set focus and ownership
Optional standups: unblock progress
Biweekly sprint planning: align upcoming tests
Learning & Insight Rituals
“Full Story Fridays”: review user behavior and friction
Call reviews, teardown sessions, and user interviews
Performance Reviews
Monthly KPI check-ins
Quarterly retros focused on process and velocity
Leadership Routines
Weekly or biweekly 1:1s
Coaching and feedback conversations
Each of these meetings creates structure without slowing things down.
System #5: Turning Experiments in Organization Memory
Testing is the backbone of every high-performing growth team. But most teams still run ad hoc experiments without structure.
To turn testing into compounding learning and insights, document three things:
Where to Test
Use both data and qualitative signals to find leverage points. Ask:
Where are we underperforming?
Where is friction or drop-off?
Where could a small win drive a big lift?
What to Test
Use a prioritization framework like ICE (Impact, Confidence, Ease) or RICE (Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort).
This forces you to prioritize by upside, not excitement or seniority.
How to Learn
Create a short test doc for every experiment: hypothesis, metrics, kill criteria, and expected learning.
Afterward, log every result and share learnings - especially the failed ones.
That’s how you turn testing into institutional knowledge. Over time, your organization stops guessing and starts pattern-matching.
The Real Takeaway
If there’s one lesson from supporting 75+ growth teams, it’s this: playbooks don’t scale, systems do.
You can have all the right ideas, but without clear systems—your growth strategy, decision principles, and rituals - they’ll die in the execution gap.
When you codify how your team operates, decides, and learns, you stop firefighting and start compounding.
That’s how great growth teams earn executive trust, deliver consistent results, and scale as the company grows.
If you want to skip the guesswork, explore the Growth Operating System.
It’s the complete toolkit of templates, frameworks, and meeting rhythms I’ve used to help dozens of cross-functional teams scale with clarity, confidence, and momentum.
Build a growth team that runs on systems, not stress