Tackling the Bureaucracy That Stalls Scale-up Growth using Stewardship and Agility w/ Michelle Ho...

Why "Rules Written in Blood" Kill Agency—and How Stewardship Restores FlowWhen companies scale, the default move is to add "boxes and rules" to maintain control. But this functional isolation often creates massive friction, turning G&A into a bottleneck instead of an accelerator. In this episode, Tyson Bertmaring and Michelle Holliday join Yuval to explore how shifting from rigid management to "Stewardship" allows your organization to evolve as a high-capacity living ecosystem rather than a bureaucratic machine.


Inside this Episode

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(00:00) The G&A Specialization Trap — Why splitting into silos for efficiency actually slows you down.

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(04:44) Rules vs. Trust — How to stop punishing the many for the past mistakes of the few.

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(10:18) Goals, Principles, and Rules — Building a framework that gives employees context instead of just a checklist.

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(15:05) Stewardship as Organizational Gardening — Why you must tend the "relational soil" where growth happens.

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(24:06) Blurring the Org Chart — Leveraging overlapping responsibilities to catch value that typically slips through the cracks.

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(39:49) Identifying "Zombie" Policies — How to audit the relics of past bureaucracy currently draining your team.

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(52:32) The Bird’s-Eye View of G&A — Transitioning to agile, interdependent service teams that scale with the business.


Notable Quotes & Aha Moments

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"If we trust people to work on million-dollar experiments, we should probably trust them to make $10,000 decisions."

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"Stewardship is recognizing the complexity of an organization and knowing what should be controlled versus what should be tended."

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"We accept silos as 'just how work is,' but those boxes are exactly what prevents flow."

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"The only way out of the 'rat race' is to collaborate—it leads to belonging rather than isolation."


Deepen the Relationship


Connect with Tyson, who’s working on evolving partnership ecosystems in Biotech (  / tyson-bertmaring-4751b321  )


Dive deeper into the world of Stewardship in Michelle’s book The Age of Thrivability (https://ageofthrivability.com/)


Your Next Step: Take the bird’s eye view


Invite a few people from around your G&A organization to take the bird’s eye view with you. What do you see? What’s flowing? What’s clogged? What could be the benefit of taking the bird’s eye view more often? 






Scaling w/ Agility with Yuval Yeret


Yuval Yeret helps scale-up leaders build resilient, high-capacity, thriving ecosystems that drive real business results. Get more of Yuval’s insights on scaling organizations with agility (https://yuvalyeret.com/insights/) .