THE PHASE OFFirst Tests.
Early Adolescence is the six months right after launch. Membership spikes. Excitement is high. Leaders are doing the work for the first time. This is where the program either stabilizes — or starts looping back to where it started.
Early Adolescence isn't the phase where the program grows. It's the phase where the foundation gets used.
Membership joins. Leaders apply training. ERGs run their first events using the SOPs from the handbook. The data infrastructure starts producing real signal. The vision gets pressure-tested by real members, in real time, with real expectations. Everything that was theoretical in Infancy is now operational.
If Infancy was complete, this phase is intense but manageable. The structure absorbs the pressure. Leaders have what they need. The PM holds the line. The program stabilizes. But if Infancy was skipped or rushed — this is the phase where the gaps become impossible to hide. Leaders start improvising. The PM starts firefighting. The handbook is incomplete or unused. The data is messy. And the program doesn't fail. It just stops developing. That's how Broken Adolescence begins.
Early Adolescence is short. About six months. But what happens in those six months determines whether the program develops for the next ten years — or spends them stuck.
In Early Adolescence, ERG leaders and program managers have completely different jobs.
The work splits cleanly. Leaders execute. The PM reinforces. Confusing one for the other is how the program gets dragged off course.
Focus on consistency, not creativity.
The job in Early Adolescence is to execute the fundamentals — repeatedly, faithfully, within scope. Follow the planning process. Use the templates. Stay close to what the handbook outlines. This is not the time to innovate or reinvent. It's the time to build confidence through repetition.
Leaders will start hearing more from members — requests, ideas, suggestions. Without clear grounding, it's easy to get pulled in too many directions. If Infancy was handled well, leaders already know their role, the limits of their scope, and the process to follow. That clarity is what makes the rest of this phase possible.
- Run the planning process every cycle — without skipping steps, even when it feels redundant.
- Use the templates and resources — they exist to remove friction, not constrain creativity.
- Stay inside scope — say no to the requests that pull the ERG into territory that isn't theirs to own.
- Build confidence through repetition — the second event is better than the first, the fifth is better than the second.
Reinforce — don't rebuild.
The PM's role shifts in this phase. The work is no longer building. It's holding the line. The temptation will be to redesign the structure every time something doesn't go perfectly. Resist it. The program needs the structure that was built. What it needs from the PM is consistent reinforcement of that structure — over and over — until it becomes the program's operating rhythm.
This is also the moment to build shared momentum. Recognition, visibility, internal comms. ERG leaders need to feel seen for following the process, not just for delivering big wins. That recognition is what creates the cultural infrastructure for the phases ahead.
- Reference the handbook constantly — make it the source of truth, not an artifact gathering dust.
- Recognize best practices, not just results — reinforce the behaviors that will scale, not just the outcomes that look good.
- Share metrics across all ERGs — normalize performance reflection as a regular practice, not a quarterly review event.
- Call in leaders early when they stray outside scope — small course corrections now prevent big problems later.
- Host a program-wide kickoff or recurring touchpoint — visible reinforcement of the framework across the full program.
The signal that Early Adolescence is working.
There's one meaningful milestone for this phase: hitting 75% of the program's input metrics. Not output metrics. Not engagement numbers. Input metrics — the actions ERG leaders were committed to taking inside their roles.
Why input metrics? Because they're the only signal that proves the structure is working. Output happens because input happens. If leaders are doing what their roles outlined — running the events, sending the comms, following the planning cadence — the rest follows. If they're not, no amount of output goals will fix the problem.
Hitting 75% input metrics in Early Adolescence means the foundation is being reinforced in real time. The structure is working. Leaders are engaging. The program is being practiced into existence.
of input metrics consistently hit across ERGs.
The signal that the foundation is being reinforced — not that the program has been perfected.
Five early signals that the program is drifting off course.
Drift in Early Adolescence is subtle. It looks like small problems — easy to ignore. Each one is fixable inside this phase. None of them are fixable later without going backwards.
ERG leaders are rewriting the playbook instead of running it.
If leaders are designing new processes mid-quarter, the handbook isn't being used as the source of truth — it's being treated as a suggestion. That's how every ERG ends up operating differently.
The PM is building, not reinforcing.
If the program manager is still creating new templates, new tracking systems, or new processes six months in — the program is being rebuilt during the phase where it should be getting tested. That's a signal Infancy wasn't actually finished.
Leaders are fielding scope creep with no one to back them up.
Member requests will pull leaders into territory the program never agreed to own. If the PM isn't actively reinforcing scope, leaders end up saying yes to things they shouldn't — and the program slowly expands into work it was never resourced to do.
Input metrics are not being tracked — or worse, not understood.
If leaders can't articulate what their input metrics are, or no one is tracking them, the only feedback signal is whether the events "felt good." That's not feedback. That's vibes.
The handbook is open in five different forms.
If every ERG has its own version of the handbook, or leaders are referencing slack messages and Google docs instead of the central source, the structure is already fracturing. Six months in is when this calcifies into permanent inconsistency.
Early Adolescence ends one of two ways.
Around the six-month mark, the program reaches a fork. The decision isn't made consciously — it's made by what got built, reinforced, and tolerated during the previous six months.
The program loops back to Broken Adolescence.
- Input metrics weren't tracked, weren't hit, or weren't taken seriously.
- Leaders are operating on improvisation, not the playbook.
- The handbook is incomplete, ignored, or fragmented across each ERG.
- The PM is still building instead of reinforcing.
- Scope has expanded into work the program can't sustain.
- Each ERG operates on different rules. The experience is inconsistent.
This isn't failure. It's a structural problem that needs structural repair. The fix is going back to Infancy and rebuilding what's missing.
Read about Broken Adolescence →The program stabilizes and moves into Mid Adolescence.
- 75% of input metrics are being hit consistently across all ERGs.
- Leaders are using the handbook, the templates, and the process.
- The PM has shifted from building to reinforcing.
- Scope is being protected — leaders aren't being pulled into work that isn't theirs.
- The foundation is being practiced into the program's operating rhythm.
- Confidence is building — in leaders, in the PM, in the program itself.
Stabilization isn't excitement. It's not flashy. It looks like a program that's quietly working. That's exactly what's supposed to happen.
If the program is past Early Adolescence and still looping, it's not in this phase anymore.
It's in Broken Adolescence. The work doesn't change — but the path through it does. Fresh Start is how programs go back to Infancy without starting over from scratch.