When $12M Looks Fine But Should Be $36M: How Standards Unlocked Hidden Scale

Situation

A fast-growing Australian mobile media business brought me in as Head of IT while sitting at roughly $12M in annual revenue. The company was expanding in a market driven by trends, rapid content cycles, and the operational burden of continuously launching, localising, and maintaining mobile media platforms. On paper, the IT function looked strong: a 16-person team with overlapping technical specialties, a broad footprint of servers, and a history of responding quickly to ad-hoc internal requests.

But underneath that apparent capacity was drift — duplicated work, inconsistent methods, rising complexity, and a lack of unified engineering standards. Other departments were used to bypassing process through corridor conversations and informal requests. Important work was mixed with speculative ideas that rarely went anywhere, and the team had no structured mechanism to filter for what truly mattered.

The business wanted to pursue bigger opportunities, including international deals and more sophisticated multi-tenant platforms. But the IT function was already underwater. Without structural change, the company couldn’t scale — not at the pace the market required.

The Real Constraint

The constraint wasn’t talent or capacity. It wasn’t headcount. It wasn’t even workload volume.

The real constraint was erosion of standards, and the hidden operational drag it created:

• Multiple engineers doing the same tasks in different ways, multiplying complexity instead of output.
• No shared processes for work evaluation, so low-value ideas entered the queue through informal conversations.
• Fragmented systems and server sprawl, driving maintenance costs and slowing deployment cycles.
• A reactive posture: doing work to please internal stakeholders rather than building the infrastructure the business actually needed to scale.

The IT team wasn’t failing. They were working hard. But effort wasn’t compounding, because the absence of standards meant the team’s energy was constantly diffused. The business assumed it needed more people; in reality, it needed clearer principles.

Intervention

The shift happened when the IT function adopted what can be called a premium business standard — a clear, enforced stance on what work mattered, how it would be done, and what the team existed to deliver.

Rather than optimising for responsiveness, the team optimised for scalability, quality, and strategic alignment. Three major operator-level changes created leverage:

1. Consolidated a 16-person function into a 6-person, high-standards team of multi-disciplined operators. These weren’t just stronger technicians — they were standards-driven generalists who could execute consistently, work across systems, and reduce variability. This removed duplicated effort and made the entire function predictable.
2. Replaced corridor conversations with a simple written proposal process for any idea or initiative. This eliminated distraction work, stopped reactive commitments, and restored focus.
3. Rebuilt infrastructure around clarity and stability: consolidated physical servers into virtualised infrastructure, rebuilt remaining hardware to a clean, reliable standard, reduced data sprawl, and redesigned product-launch workflows to cut turnaround time while increasing quality.

This wasn’t an efficiency play. It was a standards play. And it gave the business back its ability to pursue meaningful growth.

With the foundation stabilised, the team could take on high-stakes opportunities — including an international engagement in Canada that led to the design of what was, at the time, likely the world’s first multi-tenant, multi-language mobile media platform.

The company didn’t grow because IT worked harder. It grew because it became a function built on principle, capable of compounding output.

Outcome

Over the next 18 months, the business grew from $12M to $36M in revenue — a 3× increase shortly before a merger that formed the largest mobile media company in Australia.

Internally, the IT function shifted from a chaotic 16-person group to a compact, high-leverage 6-person team that delivered significantly more output, at a higher standard, and at a lower cost. Complexity dropped, stability increased, and the function became a reliable platform for commercial execution.

• Pipeline stability improved because the team could reliably support new opportunities.
• Pricing power increased indirectly through the company’s strengthened reputation and operational track record.
• Client quality increased through the ability to pursue larger, world-first deals rather than reacting to small requests.
• The whole organisation experienced fewer operational fires, freeing leadership attention for strategic moves.

From the outside, it looked like growth. Internally, it was simply the removal of the constraints created by eroded standards.

Mapping

This pattern shows up in nearly every B2B service business — especially those around $1M–$15M in revenue.

Leaders loosen standards to keep cash flowing, to keep clients happy, or to keep team members comfortable. At first it feels harmless. Eventually it becomes the ceiling. Output fragments. Complexity climbs. The team expands but leverage drops. Owners lose time, optionality, and strategic capacity.

And the business remains stuck at a level that looks fine — but is far below what it could achieve if the organisation operated on clear, firm, premium standards.

• If you’re constantly busy but not compounding, standards are slipping.
• If you’re adding people but not improving output, standards are slipping.
• If clients or internal stakeholders dictate your priorities, standards are slipping.
• If you can’t pursue bigger opportunities because the team is always underwater, standards are slipping.

Most service businesses don’t have a sales problem. They have a standards problem that looks like a capacity problem. Fixing standards reveals leverage that was there the entire time.

Next

This story demonstrates the core principle behind the Premium Standards primer: growth is capped not by effort but by the standards the organisation operates on. When standards drift, scale disappears. When standards are restored, scale returns quickly.

If you can see parts of your business in this case — inconsistent delivery, team expansion without leverage, or the sense that you’re leaving growth on the table — this is exactly the type of situation addressed in the Foundations work. It’s where we identify the constraint, rebuild the standard, and restore the organisation’s ability to scale.