Evolving Growth Challenges Require Adaptive Teams
As companies scale, growth challenges evolve. Marketing strategies that work early on often lose effectiveness as the business matures. This requires growth teams to adapt their focus and capabilities over time.
We take an agile approach to align our squads to partners' changing needs. As David Manela, co-founder of Exactius, explained:
“The way we approach every single partnership is to deploy the right team at the right time, and deploying the right team at the right time means it is a team that is able to answer the demand of the business today and can start to deploy the playbook that you need for the next six to twelve months.”
Zan Bennett
David Manela is the founder of Exactius and creator of the Growth Operating System — a framework for deploying capital-efficient, compounding growth inside scaling companies.
FAQ
Frequently asked
How should growth teams adapt as a business scales?
The author argues that growth tactics that work early in a company's life often lose effectiveness as the business matures, so a growth team's focus and skills should change with the company's stage. According to the post's summary, that can mean widening a team's remit beyond campaign management to include data and engineering roles. The right mix depends on a company's goals and data maturity.
What planning horizon should a growth team work toward?
In the post, David Manela says a growth team should meet the business's demand today and also start the playbook needed for the next six to twelve months. This is his view, not a fixed benchmark. A practical reading is to staff for the current priority while building the data, tools and skills the next phase will require, then review the plan as the business changes.
How long do marketing leaders typically stay in their role?
Spencer Stuart's CMO tenure research, published in January 2026, puts the average tenure of chief marketing officers at S&P 500 companies at 4.1 years. For growth teams, that means leadership often changes within a few planning cycles. Documented goals, shared dashboards and clear ownership of tools and data can help a team keep its direction when a new marketing leader arrives.
How much of their marketing technology do teams actually use?
Gartner's 2025 Marketing Technology Survey reports that only 49% of martech tools are actively used. When a growth team adds people or changes its focus, auditing which tools are in use, which overlap and which no one owns can free up budget and reduce complexity before the team buys anything new.
What does poor data quality cost a business?
Gartner estimates that poor data quality costs organizations at least $12.9 million a year on average, based on its 2020 research. For growth teams this matters because targeting, attribution and testing all depend on reliable data. Adding analysts or engineers can help, though the right fix depends on where the errors start, such as tracking setup, CRM hygiene or reporting definitions.
How are companies budgeting for marketing and AI in 2026?
Gartner's 2026 CMO Spend Survey, published May 11, 2026, found marketing budgets at 7.8% of company revenue in 2026, up from 7.7% in 2025. CMOs reported putting an average of 15.3% of marketing budgets into AI, yet only 30% described their AI readiness as mature. The survey covered 401 CMOs in North America, the UK and Europe, fielded January to March 2026.
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