Flying Formation
Define cross-team roles (DACI) plus operating rhythms before growth ships anything
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 90%
When a growth team spins up inside an existing product org, the failure mode is ambiguity: unclear decision rights and teams stepping on each other. Tan's answer is a written 'flying formation' doc that pairs a DACI (driver / accountable / contributor / informed) with explicit metric ownership and meeting cadences, so growth is infused into the company rather than layered on top of it.
Origin
Coined and used by Melissa Tan when standing up the growth team at Webflow. The DACI component is a pre-existing framework (popularized by Atlassian); Tan's contribution is combining it with metric ownership and operating rhythms into one cross-team contract.
Core principles
- 01Growth should be infused into the company, not a layer on top of product
- 02The accountable/decision-maker slot is the one that goes ambiguous — name it explicitly
- 03The decision maker should be whoever has the most context or is ultimately responsible
- 04Roles without rhythms are theory; write the meeting cadence into the same doc
- 05Split metric ownership at a hard boundary, not by feature area
How to run it
- 1
Write the DACI for each shared area
For each project or surface, name the Driver (runs it), the Accountable (final decision maker on open questions), Contributors (teams doing work), and Informed (need to know, don't decide).
Pro tip Spend the argument budget on 'Accountable'. That is the slot that quietly stays empty and produces stalled cross-team decisions.
- 2
Cut metric ownership at a clean line
Assign each team the metrics it owns end-to-end. At Webflow, growth marketing was accountable for sign-ups and CAC; product growth was accountable for every metric downstream of sign-up.
Watch out Splitting by page or feature area instead of by funnel stage recreates the toe-stepping you're trying to eliminate.
- 3
Add the operating rhythms
Write the cadences into the same doc: a weekly meeting where all teams look at the metrics together and do updates around the room, plus quarterly planning where each team names the projects it drives and the ones they'll co-own.
Pro tip Use the weekly round-the-room explicitly to spot collaboration opportunities, not just to report numbers.
- 4
Run growth as a feedback channel back into product
Because growth sits closest to the user, route what it learns back into the product roadmap, and coach core PMs to be more growth-oriented in return.
Watch out If growth only receives roadmap and never informs it, you've rebuilt the 'layer on top' problem.
In the wild
When first starting the growth team, Tan's team wrote a doc defining how product growth works with product and with growth marketing: product growth accountable for all metrics downstream of sign-ups, growth marketing accountable for sign-ups and CAC, a weekly shared metrics meeting with updates around the room, and quarterly planning naming driven vs. co-owned projects.
→ Clear decision rights and cadences from day one, avoiding the Dropbox pattern where growth always felt like a layer bolted on top of product.
Common mistakes
Leaving 'who decides' implicit
Tan says the accountable slot is the most confusing one. With many teams involved and no named decision maker, decisions stall and teams step over each other's toes.
Starting growth late so it becomes a bolt-on
At Dropbox growth started only after self-serve slowed, so it always felt like a layer on top of product. Go-to-market and monetization should be front and center in product development from the start.
Is it for you?
Best for
Growth leaders standing up a new growth function inside an existing product org, or any leader with recurring cross-team decision paralysis
Not ideal for
Sub-20-person companies where one room still holds every decision maker
From the transcript
“think of flying formation as like how do we work together across teams”
“we created a flying formation when we were first starting the growth team at Webflow”
“growth marketing is accountable for sign-ups”
“growth shouldn't feel like”
From the episode
Building high-performing teams
Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva)