Scaling Without Losing What Makes You Great

Five years ago, I turned down the chance to help co-found a consulting firm. Not because I didn’t believe in the people - I did. But I wasn’t ready. I wanted to sharpen my blade, learn to operate at scale, and lead in rooms where decisions moved millions in minutes.

So I went to Google Cloud, where I spent the next five years building revenue strategy, navigating ambiguity, and learning the difference between speed and hurry. Some days, we moved fast and built better. Other days, we moved fast and broke things we had to rebuild at twice the cost. Both were lessons.

A few months ago I left Google Cloud to join Principal Consulting Group (PCG), the firm Aaron Einhorn and Ryan Volk built without me. And what I walked into wasn’t what I expected: no ping-pong table, no glossy mission statement. Just a high-accountability environment where smart people do meaningful work, and where culture is baked into how things get done rather than just on a fancy slide deck.

In my first weeks, I sat down with Aaron and Ryan to hear the unvarnished story of the early days. No hype. Just the real constraints, choices, and tradeoffs. It struck me that what they’ve done is less about landing clients or scaling fast, and more about making a handful of decisions early and sticking to them even when growth made it harder.

If you lead a team, a function, or a firm, the lessons here might hold up a mirror to your own approach. For the full conversation, watch on YouTube here. I’ve framed my takeaways in five of my 12 Rules of Finance Leadership here.

1. People Before Processes

My Rule #9: Always Choose People Over Processes — The right process should enable people, not replace them.

PCG didn’t start because Aaron and Ryan saw a gap in the market. It started because they saw too many great consultants burned out by the wrong problems - bad leadership, bureaucracy, politics, and incentives that rewarded the wrong things.

From their earliest late-night talks, they were imagining a place where:

Great people could do great work and enjoy doing it.

That meant hiring slow, making tough calls quickly, and building an environment where processes served the people, not the other way around.

Aaron said one of the earliest measures of success was simply landing their own project and not working for someone else, even if they never grew beyond the two of them. Growth came not from a glossy mission statement or a big marketing push, but because trust scaled before headcount did.

Leadership takeaway: Design your firm around people first, then build processes to support them. Reverse it, and you’ll lose your best talent.

2. Trust People with Outcomes, Not Just Tasks

My Rule #1: Build Leaders, Not Puppets — Don’t train people to escalate, train them to think. Delegation without decision-making authority creates dependency (not leadership).

When PCG started, Aaron and Ryan touched every single engagement personally. That hands-on control protected quality, but it also created bottlenecks. They eventually realized their real job wasn’t to personally oversee every deliverable, but to develop people who could uphold the same standards without their direct involvement.

That shift meant empowering mid-level consultants to make real client calls. Ryan admitted it wasn’t easy to let go, but it was necessary. As he put it, “Leadership wasn’t about doing everything yourself. It’s about enabling others to lead.”

Today, there’s no thick playbook dictating every decision. New hires learn the principles, shadow experienced team members, and are trusted to act in the client’s best interest, even if their approach is different from Aaron’s or Ryan’s. That trust builds capability far faster than task-level delegation ever could.

Leadership takeaway: Give your team the context, authority, and trust to own outcomes, and they’ll grow into leaders faster than you think.

3. Build Intentional Systems and Use Restraint

My Rule #2: If You Do Something More Than Twice, Build a Process, or Stop Doing It — Repeat tasks signal either inefficiency or a system waiting to be built.

The first six months were pure scrappiness: selling work, delivering work, setting up payroll, and even figuring out office space. They made plenty of mistakes, but one thing they learned early was to build repeatable systems as soon as a task became predictable.

Ryan pointed out that as they scaled, they invested heavily in processes only when they supported quality and consistency. For example, quarterly feedback loops weren’t just a “nice-to-have” HR policy, they became an intentional mechanism for keeping quality high across a growing team without reverting to micromanagement.

And restraint mattered as much as rigor. When a new hire spotted a workflow inefficiency in their first week, they weren’t told “that’s not how we do things.” They were told to fix it and the new process stuck. That kind of ownership is only possible when leaders avoid smothering the team under unnecessary layers of policy.

Leadership takeaway: Add structure only to remove friction. If a rule doesn’t improve quality or speed, it’s bureaucracy, cut it.

4. Value Outcomes Over Hours

Rule #12: Lead Like an Athlete, Not Like a Machine — Sustainable high performance means knowing when to sprint, when to recover, and how to make progress through downtime.

COVID forced PCG to rethink everything, including their assumption that everyone needed to be in the Bay Area, sitting in client offices. When clients stopped requiring “butts in seats,” Aaron and Ryan leaned into remote-first hiring, bringing in the best people no matter where they lived.

Their philosophy was simple: clients care about results, not hours. That trust in outcomes over visibility allowed consultants to structure their days in ways that worked for them , whether that meant breaking for a mid-day workout or working early mornings to handle family responsibilities.

The flexibility works because it’s paired with accountability. Consulting hours are tracked, deliverables are visible, and high standards are clear. As Aaron put it, “If it’s designed correctly, you don’t have to choose between quality and scale.”

Leadership takeaway: Measure the value delivered, not just the hours worked. Flexibility paired with accountability drives sustainable performance.

5. Act When You See a Gap

My Rule #6: If You See Something Broken, Fix It — The best teams don’t wait for permission. Ownership is earned by action, not by title.

From the beginning, PCG was built by people willing to figure things out on the fly. Aaron and Ryan both wore every hat in the early days, pitching clients, delivering work, setting up infrastructure, without waiting for a “perfect” plan.

That bias for action still defines the firm. Aaron recalled how, in their Big Four days, even urgent fixes could get trapped in bureaucratic approval cycles. At PCG, if something needs doing, people are expected to step in, whether it’s in their job description or not.

Ryan put it simply: “Being able to course correct in real time makes a big difference.” It’s why they hire for curiosity and accountability, not just technical skill. Skills can be trained, ownership can’t.

Leadership takeaway: Step in and fix what’s broken, don’t wait for permission. Action earns ownership faster than a title ever will.

Final Reflection: Culture Is a Lagging Indicator of What You Actually Value

You can't mandate culture. You reveal it every day, in what gets prioritized, promoted, ignored, or quietly tolerated. PCG is still learning, but one theme shows up consistently: build trust first, systems second. The inverse rarely works.

If you’re scaling a team or navigating growth yourself, the real questions aren’t about size or headcount. They're about:

• What gets protected when pressure hits?

• Who gets trusted when clarity fades?

• What gets reinforced when no one’s looking?

The best leaders ask, and answer, those questions before they’re forced to.

This week’s challenge: Pick one of the rules above and put it into practice with your team. Then share what happened with someone who can hold you to it.

And remember: Protect what matters, trust the right people, and reinforce your values when no one’s watching: that’s your real culture.

More soon and wishing you all the best,

Devon