Beyond Best Practices:

Why Authentic Organisations Sustain Growth

Reflections on organisational growth drawn from three decades of field observation

Years ago, I encountered an article in the Harvard Business Review that fundamentally changed how I observe organisations. In “What It Means to Work Here” (March 2007), Lynda Gratton and Tamara J. Erickson challenged a deeply held assumption in management thinking: that companies should strive to implement “best practices” to attract and retain talent.

Instead, they introduced a concept that has proven remarkably durable: Signature Processes.

These are not generic practices copied from benchmarking studies. They are distinctive, often idiosyncratic ways of working that emerge from an organisation’s history, values, and identity. They signal to prospective employees exactly what life is like inside the organisation—and crucially, they attract people who fit while repelling those who do not.

The Core Insight

Gratton and Erickson’s central thesis was deceptively simple but profoundly strategic: organisations should not try to be “the best place to work” for everyone. Instead, they should be the most authentic place to work for the right people.

This shift from universality to specificity changes everything.

Rather than competing on standard benefits that any competitor can replicate, successful organisations compete on distinctiveness. They institutionalise practices that reflect who they genuinely are—practices that emerge from heritage, not from consultancy decks.

The authors illustrated this through compelling examples:

Whole Foods Market allowed teams to vote on whether new hires should be retained after a four-week trial period. This signalled that power resided with teams, not managers.

Trilogy Software ran an intensive three-month immersion program led by the CEO himself, signalling that raw intelligence and high-intensity commitment were non-negotiable.

Goldman Sachs subjected candidates to 30+ interviews, signalling that cultural alignment and consensus mattered more than hiring efficiency.

The Container Store invested 263 hours of training in the first year—versus an industry average of 8 hours—signalling a profound commitment to employee knowledge and development.

Each of these practices was inefficient by conventional metrics. Yet each served as a powerful filter, ensuring that only people aligned with the organisation’s core identity would thrive.

What I Have Observed Since

Over the decades since reading that article, I have tested this framework repeatedly across diverse organisational contexts—from established engineering enterprises to entrepreneurial ventures, from Indian conglomerates to global technology organisations. The patterns have been remarkably consistent.

Escorts Ltd. (Late 1980s): Discipline as Signature

During my tenure at Escorts Ltd. in the late 1980s, I observed an organisation that had already achieved significant scale. The central challenge was no longer growth itself, but sustaining complexity through operational discipline.

Decision rights were clear. Functional expertise was deeply respected. Managers grew through responsibility and judgement, not through rapid title progression. Leadership development occurred through exposure to real operational challenges, not merely through formal programs.

The signature process here was earned authority. Leaders were expected to demonstrate mastery before being granted autonomy. This created patience in development but also resilience in execution.

The lesson was clear: scale can be sustained only when leadership depth and operational discipline grow in tandem. When organisational complexity increases faster than managerial capability, growth begins to strain—even if markets remain favourable.

SEPL: Entrepreneurial Energy as Signature

My experience at SEPL exposed me to a contrasting growth context. This was an organisation characterised by entrepreneurial energy, informal structures, and rapid skill acquisition. Belief, momentum, and personal commitment often substituted for formal systems.

These conditions are powerful enablers of early growth. Decisions are fast, hierarchies are flat, and people stretch beyond defined roles. The signature process was adaptive intensity—the expectation that individuals would solve problems resourcefully rather than wait for structured guidance.

However, this also revealed an important transition challenge: what enables early growth must eventually be redesigned if the organisation is to move to its next phase without strain. Without deliberate evolution in people practices and decision structures, the very strengths that fuel early success can become constraints.

Tata Companies: Stewardship as Signature

Working within Tata companies highlighted a different and enduring growth philosophy. Here, growth was treated not merely as expansion, but as something to be absorbed responsibly over time.

The signature processes were visible and deliberate:
• Values-based hiring that prioritised alignment over credentials alone
• Internal development and redeployment rather than aggressive external recruitment
• Leadership continuity that emphasised stewardship over short-term performance
• Long-term investment in people, even when markets demanded speed

This approach did not eliminate growth challenges, nor did it prioritise speed above all else. Instead, it focused on preserving organisational coherence as scale increased. The result was greater resilience during periods of change and less organisational shock when conditions shifted.

The insight: sustainable scale requires patience with people, even when markets demand urgency.

Cisco: Trust as Signature (Observational)

My exposure to Cisco has been observational rather than direct—through interactions, case material, and discussions with professionals familiar with the organisation. Yet consistent patterns emerge.

As Cisco scaled globally, it appears to have invested deliberately in trust-based ways of working. Rather than relying solely on hierarchy and control, emphasis was placed on:
• Distributed decision-making across functions and geographies
• Collaboration supported by strong context-setting
• Shared accountability without excessive supervision

The signature process here was earned autonomy. Complexity was managed not through tighter control, but through clearer context. Trust replaced unnecessary oversight.

This illustrates a powerful growth principle: complexity can be managed when trust replaces bureaucracy.

The Paradox of Sustainable Growth

Across organisations as diverse as Escorts Ltd., SEPL, Tata companies, and Cisco, one paradox remains consistent:

Growth requires structure.
Sustainability requires meaning.

Organisations that focus only on efficiency and scale often grow faster—but fracture sooner. Those that invest in how people think, decide, and collaborate may grow more deliberately—but endure far longer.

Gratton and Erickson’s framework has proven prescient. In an era of remote work, “quiet quitting,” and heightened expectations around organisational purpose, the question is no longer whether signature processes matter. The question is whether leaders have the courage to identify what makes their organisation distinctive—and the discipline to protect it as they scale.

The Real Question for Leaders

The challenge facing leaders navigating growth is not:
*”How do we scale faster?”*

But rather:
*”What must remain true about how work happens here, even as we grow?”*

Answering that question honestly—and designing organisational processes around it—is often the difference between expansion and longevity.

Closing Reflection

Gratton and Erickson’s 2007 article gave language to something I had observed intuitively: that organisations succeed not by becoming all things to all people, but by becoming unmistakably themselves.

The organisations I have respected most deeply are not those with the most impressive strategies or the largest budgets. They are those where you can walk into any office, speak with any employee, and recognise immediately what the organisation stands for.

That coherence—between what is declared and what is practiced—is the foundation of sustainable growth.

It cannot be benchmarked. It cannot be copied. It can only be cultivated.

References

Gratton, L., & Erickson, T. J. (2007). What It Means to Work Here. *Harvard Business Review*, 85(3), 104–112.

Author’s Note

The organisations referenced are mentioned solely as illustrative examples based on personal professional experience and publicly observable practices. This article does not imply endorsement, affiliation, or representation of official organisational positions.