Build the bungalow, not the mansion
Asana's Head of IT shares hard-won lessons from scaling IT through 4x IPOs at some of the biggest names in tech.
Johan Dowdy, Global Head of IT and IT Security at Asana, shares the playbook for scaling IT from startup chaos to enterprise maturity without breaking your systems or your team. Drawing from his experience building IT functions at Asana, Lyft, Twitter, and Workday, Johan reveals the exact inflection points when scrappy DIY approaches must transform into repeatable, scalable processes.
Discover why the worst mistake IT leaders make is trying to build the mansion when they only need the bungalow, how to recognize when your tech stack is about to become a liability before it actually does, and why hiring all your headcount at once creates chaos instead of capability. Johan explains why automation is more secure than manual processes, shares his framework for prioritizing what to fix first when everything feels broken, and reveals the compliance requirement that caught him completely off guard during his first IPO.
Learn how to balance building for future scale without overcomplicating today's needs, why treating audits as showcases rather than obstacles changes team mindset, and the essential leadership lesson about delegation that transformed how Johan builds teams. Whether you're supporting 50 employees or getting ready to support 5,000, this conversation delivers the tactical milestones and strategic thinking you need to keep IT from becoming the bottleneck as your company accelerates.
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