The illusion of more
For years, growth had a relatively simple formula: more — at all costs.
More people, more roles, more teams, more motion, more! Companies scaled by addition with new hires and departments with relative ease.
But somewhere between this hypergrowth and the reality we’re seeing now, the math stopped working. “More” started costing far too much and delivering far too little (or too slowly) in return.
Now, as leaders stare at their 2026 plans, they’re realizing something a bit uncomfortable…
Headcount, once a symbol of progress, has become a problem.
WSJ recently claimed Corporate America is ending its “firing freeze,” taking a swift and severe magnifying glass to headcount. After years of hoarding top talent, major companies are now cutting deeply (from Amazon’s 14,000 roles to UPS’ 48,000 and Meta’s 600), with countless others of all sizes and stages quietly following suit in just the past few weeks alone.
TLDR: Headcount, once a proxy for growth and progress -> now a liability.
Why? 4 major tectonic shifts are converging right now
- Market scrutiny & budget discipline: Investors and ELTs are increasingly intolerant of overly-padded org charts and duplication. They demand sharper proof of return or sole ownership of results for every role.
- Talent constraints & shifting skills: Fewer open roles, more selective hiring, and rising importance of new skill sets (especially around AI and automation).
- AI & automation disruption: AI itself is reshaping how functions operate and intersect. Marketing, sales, customer success, revenue ops are all being impacted. (We talk all about AI being a reason for headcount scrutiny and what it really means for founders and execs in our post here.)
- The need for speed: Before, “more” headcount might have sounded like a positive thing. Now, more headcount = more layers = more silos = more hand-offs = more overlapping functions... ultimately slowing everything to a crawl that businesses can’t afford.
Target’s incoming CEO, Michael Fiddelke, put it bluntly in a recent employee memo when announcing 1,800 corporate layoffs: “Too many layers and overlapping work have slowed decisions, making it harder to bring ideas to life.”
That phrasing matters. The issue is cost, yes, but it’s also decision velocity. The structure itself has become the bottleneck.
We’ve been trained to see headcount as math. In truth, it’s design.
We’ve been taught to treat headcount like arithmetic. Add when times are good, subtract when they’re not.
But in today’s world, headcount resembles an org design problem more than anything. And design is all about intent: how people, skills, tech, and teams interlock to create velocity. Consider what that could look like in practice:
- Marketing no longer stops at lead generation, but partners with customer success to drive expansion.
- Customer success isn’t limited to renewals, but becomes a revenue engine through tighter collaboration with sales. (We interviewed GTM leader and Hunt Club Expert Lawrence Waldman all about this very evolution in our piece here.)
- Sales isn’t the lone frontline, but orchestrated/supported by revenue operations and then amplified by AI.
These shifts highlight that the problem isn’t necessarily how many people you have, but how those people are strategically designed to work together.
And yet, many companies facing the headcount challenge might be asking, “So… how many do we cut?”
But what if that question itself is flawed? What if we didn’t have to go to such extremes, so fast? While some cuts may be justified, are we really ready to live in a labor market where tens of thousands of cuts in one afternoon is the norm?
What if instead, we asked, “How can the team we have now move faster, smarter, and together?”
More companies are asking this question, giving rise to a new movement: the fall of the silo, and the rise of consolidation.
The fall of the silo & rise of consolidated teams
For decades—and still, in many organizations—companies were built around functional silos: marketing sits here, sales over there, customer success somewhere in between. Each with its own metrics, tech stack, and agenda.
That org design made sense when markets were predictable and scale was linear. But today? Those walls slow growth. Let’s take the classic misalignment between sales and marketing as an example: duplicated outreach, misaligned incentives, handoffs that lose momentum.
That internal friction and inefficiency may cost more than headcount itself.
So what’s the alternative? Bringing it all under one roof.
Consolidating teams like marketing, sales, customer success/support, and revenue operations into one coherent structure. One goal. One motion. One team.
Example of consolidated teams in action: Amanda Malko, Chief Revenue Officer at Thinkific
When Amanda Malko went from 3x Chief Marketing Officer to Chief Revenue Officer at Thinkific, she redefined how growth happens. In her new role, Malko oversees several (previously, disparate) functions under one unified structure:
- Marketing
- Sales
- Business development
- Customer success
- Customer support
- Revenue operations
This consolidation eliminated silos and created a single, shared vision for revenue generation.
“There’s a macro trend where marketing and sales have radically changed in the last five years,” Malko explains. “Roles, scope, and goals are starting to converge. Especially for growth-stage or product-led companies, I think you’ll see even more of this convergence.”
Fewer silos = a single narrative for revenue growth. In an era of constrained headcount, this is how you get more out of what you already have.
More strategic upsides of consolidation
- Unified Leadership: A single leadership structure ensures cohesive strategy and aligned execution.
- Aligned Objectives: Merged teams rally around shared revenue goals instead of competing KPIs.
- Faster Decisions: Fewer handoffs, more speed. Consolidation cuts friction and lets teams respond to market changes in real time.
- Resource Optimization: Shared tools, shared data, and smarter use of talent mean less waste and more impact.
Malko is quick to point out that consolidation isn’t one-size-fits-all. “There’s no absolute right or wrong,” she notes. “It’s a puzzle—who you have, what you’re trying to accomplish.”
Executive Guidance: 3 Questions to Ask Now
If you’re a founder, investor, CEO, or GTM leader reading this, here are three practical questions to help assess:
- What overlapping teams exist?
Map all your growth-oriented functions and audit your structure—marketing, sales, CS, support, revenue ops, etc. Ask where silos are costing you speed. Where are there duplicated workflows, conflicting incentives, or fractured data flows? - What is the single highest-impact metric?
Consolidation requires picking a North Star. Are your teams aligned around revenue retention/expansion, or still chasing disparate KPIs? - How does tech & AI support the merged engine?
Do you have shared systems and data platforms? Are you enabling the cross-function workflows that new models demand? If you merge structure but keep silos in tech, you’ll get a prettier version of the same problem.
How headcount stops being a headache
Every CEO and board knows the risk of over-hiring. Fewer recognize the risk of structural inertia.
Waiting for “the next hiring cycle” assumes the world will look the same when it arrives. It won’t.
Stop thinking of headcount as something you either add or subtract. Start thinking of it as something you design.
If you’re ready to rethink your org design or identify the talent that can accelerate your next phase of growth, get in touch with us.
