“Practical advice on how to hold powerful conversations that drive performance while creating a healthy and inclusive culture.”
Harvard Business School Professor Of Leadership And Author Of Right Kind Of Wrong
“Rob Bier has enormous experience helping high-growth companies—including ours—overcome the challenges of scaling. This book sums up his powerful method perfectly.”
Kris Marszalek
Co-founder and CEO of Crypto.com
“Smooth Scaling is a must-read for any business leader hoping to successfully navigate the critical transition points of their scaling journey.”
Hari V. Krishnan
CEO And Managing Director Of PropertyGuru Group
“Subtract friction and an organization will move faster, become more innovative and drive productivity gains.”
Donna Morris
Executive Vice President, Chief People Officer, Walmart Inc
“The idea of leaders as friction fixers is dynamite. Their job is to remove obstacles to help teams drive decisions and impact, whether that’s through eliminating friction that’s impeding progress or introducing friction to foster debate and better outcomes”
Shantanu Narayan
Chair and Chief Executive Officer of Adobe
“Friction―good and bad―is among the most important but least understood elements of an organization. Get it right, and your team will wake up happy to go to work, get it wrong, and you'll make everyone miserable and undermine their ability to scale your vision.”
Reid Hoffman
Co-Founder of LinkedIn and Partner at Greylock Partners
“A leader's role in removing and managing friction is a powerful lens for building companies that go fast and slow at the right times.”
Clara Shih
CEO of Salesforce AI, founder and board chair of Hearsay Systems, and author of the New York Times bestseller The Facebook Era
“Thoroughly enjoyable... and full of practical, actionable insights...”
Charles Mindenhall
Co-founder of Blenheim Chalcott, the UK’s leading digital venture builder
“You could not get better advice on how to scale a business. Highly recommended.”
Brad Jones
CEO Pay
“If you read only one business book in 2024, let it be this one”
Zori Zafirova
Partner, Alvarez & Marsal
"Smooth Scaling was the most refreshing business book I have read in years. It really helps to understand and put labels on negative and positive processes that I have experienced in different organisations over time."
Marcin Kupczak
Entrepreneur in Residence, Antler
“Practical, actionable advice for growing companies. What’s unique about these Rituals is that they fit right into the normal workflow, so they actually have a chance of sticking and genuinely improving how people work together.”
Amazon Verified Customer
“I listened to it on a flight, and honestly it's great. Having read a ton of leadership books I think it's up there with the very best. It needs to be more widely read!”
Sarah Touzani
CEO of Waggle.ai
"As the founder of a small but fast scaling company, I couldn't wait to read this book. But I never expected how many times I would be re-reading passages again and again. This book gives leaders of scaling companies a new mental model for what works, what doesn't and why."
Mark Fortier
Founder & President of Fortier PR
The world’s understanding of how to build businesses has grown dramatically over the past 20 years. Yet one aspect remains a baffling challenge for most founders and CEOs: the question of how to build a high-performance organization that scales.
For the past 12 years Rob has sought to answer that question. As head of Trellis Partners he has tested and refined his ideas by partnering with the CEOs and leaders of some of the most successful growth companies, guiding them through the scaling process.
Prior to founding Trellis he was an entrepreneur, a venture capitalist, and a partner in the Organizational Performance practice of Monitor Group, so he has experienced the challenges that leaders of high-growth companies face from every angle. Smooth Scaling draws on this deep experience and synthesizes it into a unified approach to scaling that is both powerful and practical.
