Advanced Topics
Scaling Strategic Growth Hacking across multiple teams, nested OKRs, and building company-wide experimentation culture.
Once you've mastered the core framework and run a few successful cycles, these advanced topics help you scale growth hacking across your organization.
Multi-team growth hacking
As your company grows, a single Growth Lead can become a bottleneck. The solution is to distribute growth hacking across multiple teams while maintaining alignment.
The hub-and-spoke model
In this model, a central growth team sets strategy and coordinates, while embedded growth practitioners work within product, marketing, and sales teams.
Central growth team
- Sets company-wide OKRs
- Coordinates cross-team experiments
- Maintains documentation standards
- Shares learnings across teams
- Trains new team members
Embedded practitioners
- Own team-specific OKRs
- Run day-to-day experiments
- Report to both team lead and growth
- Attend weekly growth sync
- Contribute to shared learnings
Communication cadence
- Daily: Async updates in shared channel (Slack/Teams)
- Weekly: 30-min sync with all growth practitioners
- Bi-weekly: Experiment review with stakeholders
- Monthly: Company-wide growth update
- Quarterly: OKR review and planning
Nested OKRs
Nested OKRs create a hierarchy where company objectives cascade down to team and individual objectives, ensuring alignment while preserving autonomy.
The cascade structure
Company OKR (Annual)
Objective: Reach €10M ARR
Key Results: 500 new customers, 90% retention, €20K average contract value
Growth Team OKR (Quarterly)
Objective: Acquire 150 new customers in Q1
Key Results: 5,000 MQLs, 15% MQL-to-customer rate, €500 CAC
Marketing OKR (Monthly)
Objective: Generate 2,000 MQLs in January
Key Results: Launch 3 campaigns, 4% conversion rate, 50% from organic
Best practices
- Limit depth: 3 levels maximum (company → team → individual)
- Ensure autonomy: Teams choose HOW to achieve their objectives
- Regular reviews: Check alignment monthly, adjust if needed
- Shared visibility: All OKRs visible to everyone in the company
- Accept failure: 70% achievement is healthy; 100% means you aimed too low
Increasing experiment velocity
The number of experiments you can run per week is a strong predictor of growth success. Here's how to increase velocity without sacrificing quality.
1. Reduce experiment scope
Break large experiments into smaller, faster tests. Instead of "redesign the pricing page," test "change the CTA button color" first. Small wins compound.
2. Create experiment templates
Standardize documentation so experiments can be set up quickly. Include hypothesis format, success metrics, and expected timeline.
3. Build a testing infrastructure
Invest in tools that make it easy to deploy experiments: A/B testing platforms, feature flags, and automated analytics dashboards.
4. Parallel experiments
Run multiple experiments simultaneously in different parts of the funnel. Just ensure they don't interfere with each other.
5. Set time limits
Every experiment should have a maximum duration. If you can't get statistically significant results in 2 weeks, refine the hypothesis or accept inconclusive results and move on.
Building experimentation culture
The ultimate goal isn't to have a growth team—it's to have a company where everyone thinks in experiments. Here's how to get there.
Celebrate learning, not just wins
Share "failed" experiments as proudly as successful ones. The learning is the value, not the outcome.
Make data accessible
Everyone should be able to check metrics without asking. Self-service analytics empowers autonomous decision-making.
Remove fear of failure
Experiments that don't work are expected. Make it safe to propose bold hypotheses and be wrong.
Lead by example
Leadership should run experiments too. When the CEO shares their failed test, it signals that everyone can.
Warning signs of culture problems
- Teams only share successful experiments
- Experiments require extensive approval processes
- People are afraid to propose ideas that might fail
- Data is hoarded by analytics team
- Growth is seen as "someone else's job"
Governance and documentation
As you scale, good governance prevents chaos without killing speed. The key is lightweight processes that add value.
Essential documentation
- Experiment log: All experiments with hypotheses, results, and learnings
- OKR tracker: Current objectives and progress (use the Growth Dashboard)
- AAARRR map: Current understanding of the customer journey
- Playbooks: Documented processes for common experiment types
- Glossary: Shared definitions for key metrics (see our SGH Glossary)
Review processes
Low-impact experiments
No approval needed. Document and run. Examples: copy changes, A/B tests on non-critical pages.
Medium-impact experiments
Notify stakeholders before launch. Examples: pricing page changes, new acquisition channels.
High-impact experiments
Require brief review meeting. Examples: major pricing changes, new product features, brand changes.
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