Direction is Something you Find while you are Still Small
A RACI sheet at a municipality, a text message back at the office, and the moment it becomes clear the same problem shows up at every size.
CONEXXIA NL · GOVERNANCE & SCALE · MENNO VAN DE STRAAT - 04/08/2026
I'm sitting at a table with a municipality, a sheet full of RACI rows in front of me. Client-contractor relationships, escalation lines, the question of which decisions belong in a steering committee, and which should just get resolved on the shop floor. Big organization, big questions.
Back at the Conexxia office, I text a colleague: "Wait, who gave their final approval? I thought we still had to discuss it."
That's the moment it clicks.
Today, we're still just six people at Conexxia NL. Everyone still knows exactly who's responsible for what. Got a question? You just walk over and ask. Need a decision? You call each other. But we're growing, and growing is fun to talk about and a lot less fun when nobody quite remembers which agreement was the final one, or who actually gets to say "yes" to a new client.
"At a municipality, that's called a governance issue. At a small company, that's called Tuesday."
TWO WORLDS, ONE SCRIPT
Here's the thing, and it's a little humbling: the underlying problem is exactly the same whether you're talking about a municipal organization with thousands of employees or a company of six people. The moment an organization grows, the oversight that came naturally when everyone sat next to each other quietly disappears.
What used to be "a quick word at the coffee machine" suddenly becomes a process. What used to be an unspoken agreement now has to be spelled out. Not because people suddenly understand each other less, but because the organization has outgrown everyone's ability to just keep it all in their heads.
At the municipality, I now advise on exactly this: how do you set up direction so that steering and execution don't get tangled up with each other, so responsibilities are clear, and so growth doesn't spiral into chaos. And here's the funny part: it's the exact same conversation we're having at Conexxia, just at our own scale.
And almost every time, the same reflex kicks in: more rules, more meetings, more agreements. Organizations often try to mature by adding more. Except that's often exactly how you lose what made you good in the first place.
"The real work isn't building as much structure as possible. It's building just enough structure to help people move faster and better together, not slower."
WHAT I'M TAKING BACK TO CONEXXIA
Good direction isn't about wanting a tighter grip on everything. It's about making it clear who's accountable for what, so people can act on their own without waiting for a green light. That's exactly what a growing company needs: not more rules, but less noise.
The risk with any governance setup is that you keep adding layers and meetings until the agility you were trying to protect quietly disappears. It's a trap I watch closely, for our clients and for us. We're small and fast, and we want to stay that way, even at ten, fifteen, or twenty people.
At a municipality, governance structures often only take shape once the cracks are already starting to show. For Conexxia, that's the lesson I'd rather apply now: think about how we organize ourselves before it starts to bite.
THE IRONY OF GIVING ADVICE
There's something quietly funny about advising a municipality on direction while our own org chart still fits comfortably on a beer coaster. But maybe that's exactly where the value lies. Directing someone else's script all day means you spot your own plot holes faster.
Every day, I see where large organizations run into trouble: responsibilities that slowly blur, decisions that get needlessly complicated, structure that limps along behind growth. Those are lessons you'd much rather learn before you need them yourself. Maybe that's the best part of consulting: you help clients rewrite their story, while quietly drafting your own along the way.
"You don't wait until you're big to find your direction.
You find it while you're still small enough to get it right.''
