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, or monthly - that sets them apart from the rest?
After leading 2 of my own growth teams, coaching 75+ growth teams, and interviewing 80+ growth leaders on my podcast, I’ve seen what separates good teams from great ones. And it’s not ideas, playbooks, or frameworks.
It’s systems.
The world’s best growth teams don’t rely on one-off strategies. They build clear, repeatable systems that create alignment, focus, and execution speed.
In this post, I’ll break down those exact systems so you can install them in your own team.
Why Most Growth Teams Struggle
Even today, most companies don’t know how to work with a growth team. They might understand the idea of experimentation, but not how to support it cross-functionally.
That leads to:
Misaligned priorities
Confusing ownership
Resource gaps
Constant debates over “who owns what”
The root cause isn’t a lack of ideas. It’s a lack of systems to execute those ideas consistently.
When I led my first growth team, I fell into the same trap. I’d spend weekends crafting new ideas and opportunities, only to hit roadblocks Monday morning because product wasn’t aligned, design was swamped, or marketing didn’t understand the context.
That’s when I realized: execution is a systems problem, not an ideas problem.
System #1: Your Growth Strategy & Operations Manual
Every great team documents how they work. You need two key artifacts:
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
Think of the operations manual as your “how we work” guide. It helps new hires onboard faster, keeps other teams aligned, and prevents your process from living only in your head.
System #2: Operating Principles
Great teams make good decisions without the leader in the room. That happens when you define clear operating principles.
I recommend 6-8 principles that guide how your team makes tradeoffs. For example:
Data over opinions
MVP before polish
Speed over rigor (when possible)
Qualitative when quantitative isn’t available
Once written, embed these into your rituals:
Weekly planning: Ask, “What’s one opportunity to live our values this week?”
1:1s: Reflect on how each person applied the principles.
Retros: Revisit which principles helped—and which need adjusting.
Onboarding: Teach new hires how your team makes decisions.
When values are baked into rituals, they shape behavior. Your team moves faster, collaborates better, and delivers results with less oversight.
System #3: Cross-Functional Rules of Engagement
Most teams stall because nobody knows where growth starts and ends. Growth often overlaps with product, marketing, and data. Without clarity, people step on each other’s toes.
To fix this, use a RACI matrix:
R – Responsible (who does the work)
A – Accountable (who owns the results)
C – Consulted (who provides input)
I – Informed (who gets updates)
Map your RACI across both:
Growth model KPIs (e.g., acquisition, activation, retention)
Surface areas (e.g., landing pages, in-product onboarding, email sequences, pricing pages)
Share it with stakeholders. That one sheet eliminates 80% of future confusion and creates instant collaboration clarity.
System #4: Meeting Rhythms That Drive Momentum
The best growth teams have rhythm. Here’s a four-part cadence to consider:
Weekly Workflow Meetings
Monday planning session: set focus and ownership
Optional standups: unblock progress
Sprint planning (biweekly): align upcoming experiments
Learning & Insight Rituals
“Full Story Fridays”: review user behavior and friction points
Call reviews, user interviews, and product teardowns
Performance Reviews
Monthly KPI check-ins
Quarterly retros to reflect on process and velocity
Leadership Routines
Weekly or biweekly 1:1s
Career growth and feedback sessions
Coaching conversations focused on alignment and trust
Each of these meetings creates structure without slowing things down. Over time, they form the heartbeat of your growth system.
System #5: The Experimentation Process
Testing is the backbone of every high-performing growth team. But most teams still run ad hoc experiments without structure.
To scale experimentation, document three parts in your Growth OS:
Where to Test
Use both data and qualitative inputs to find leverage points across acquisition, activation, and retention. Ask:
Where are we underperforming benchmarks?
Where is friction or drop-off happening?
Where could a small improvement have a big impact?
What to Test (Prioritization)
Use a scoring model 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 results and share learnings - especially the failed ones. That’s how you build organizational memory and pattern recognition.
The Real Takeaway
If there’s one lesson from supporting 75+ growth teams, it’s this: playbooks don’t scale, systems do.
When you document how your team operates, makes decisions, and learns, you create leverage. You stop firefighting and start compounding.
That’s how you run a growth team that gets consistent results, earns executive trust, and scales as your company grows.
Ready to install these systems?
Check out my Growth Operating System Program — the plug-and-play framework I used to help cross-functional growth teams scale with clarity, confidence, and momentum.