Situations Leaders Bring us
Leaders come to us when they want another set of eyes on the situation, to evaluate decisions or find the path of least resistance to growth.
Which of several options is the right path?
What they really want to talk about is a challenge that has their attention.
They are looking for insights and reassurance their strategy will work.
Unpacking their challenge reveals profitability isn’t where it should be. Growth is creating complexity. The business depends too heavily on one person. Accountability feels inconsistent. People issues are consuming valuable time. A bigger goal seems to be moving farther away.
These situations are often symptoms of deeper constraints.
Understanding what is creating these challenges is the first step toward identifying the leverage point that will have the greatest impact on growth.
Growth doesn’t come from having the right strategy. Growth occurs when these challenge are faced.
Low Return on Effort
When all your focus has been on driving revenue, it’s easy for everyone to see success, feel momentum and make big plans for the future.
But the real test is whether you are keeping more or less of every dollar earned. Sometimes, the way the numbers are categorized and reported, it’s difficult to tell other than noting what made it to the bank balance.
A professional services firm had this problem. Massive hiring, a team that was burning through billable hours, rocketing revenue, exciting times all around. Except for the CEO. The accountant told him to get a higher credit line. They wouldn’t make payroll in two months.
The CEO went to the shareholders to get permission to add another million to the LOC. When asked why this was happening despite all their success, each shareholder pointed to a different symptom. Higher salaries for the management team. Hiring experts before they had work for them. Accounting always asking for more clerks. And the million dollars they spent on fractional consultants the previous year that could never answer the question ‘why do we have profit on paper, but so little effort in the bank?’
The CEO wondered if his job was in jeopardy.
When they engaged us for a leverage point discussion, we were able to pinpoint the issues. And there is never one issue. They are intertwined.
What’s causing the presenting symptoms identified as ‘the problem’ is already embedded into systems. Baked into decisions. And the appetite for change when revenue is driving momentum is low.
When the billable team is feeling proud and the CEO is deeply worried, it is time to trace the symptoms to the real issue. For this firm, it was rooted into the behavior of the culture.
The popular billable staff, the A team people, never had time to send their project details to accounting. Accounting needed more clerks to chase down the A team to get the invoicing details. It was ‘just the way things are done here’. Accounting was surely at fault by not getting the invoices out sooner.
Until we called the assumption into question. Did the company want to serve as a bank to their clients?
A massive risk hiding behind their ‘too popular for paperwork’ culture.
You might not have this specific problem. Your iceberg issue might be found under other symptoms.
You could wait until minds and hearts see what you instinctively know is a major problem.
Or stop. Ask us questions. And let us re-calibrate the numbers so we are dealing with the facts.
Growth is Creating Complexity
In one company, project management reigned internally and externally. The producing team had no say in which project manager’s priorities took precedence over their own.
One key employee tried to manage the problem herself. She worked late. She said yes to people with seniority. No to others. She did everything she could to keep up with her responsibilities and constant expectations.
When project managers heard no, and didn’t have their reports and data, their projects and reputations suffered.
Frustration grew. Expectations were missed. Finger pointing followed.
What no one knew was how this situation affected her. She decided her only option was to quit.
And she did.
The only person in the business who knew how to do what she did walked out the door.
We were brought in after the fact, when clients had already expressed their dissatisfaction to the managing partners.
As expected, the presenting symptoms were only the tip of the iceberg.
When we traced the problem back to its source, we discovered she had been carrying the workload of two full-time people. No one had noticed.
The company had mastered onboarding. New employees received tremendous attention to help them succeed.
What they had not mastered was workload visibility.
They were not monitoring the effect of growth on organizational relationships, shared understanding, processes, or responsibility load.
Their risk was in a lack of oversight: how resources, responsibilities, and workflow were interacting as the business grew. Someone has to be responsible for that balance. Or it falls through the cracks.
Complexity appears in unexpected ways in rapidly growing businesses.
Let’s find out how and where it may be affecting yours.
Owner Dependence
Quick test.
How many managers come to you each day with decisions that are technically their responsibility?
How many people do you trust to make decisions that affect:
• The entire business
• Their department
• Customer expectations and experience
• Financial performance
If the number is smaller than you expected, it may be worth exploring why.
It is a double-edged sword being the one in control.
Should you trust others with greater authority?
Could you?
Every owner, founder, and leadership team wrestles with the same question:
Who can make decisions, for how much, and with what margin for error?
No one gets it right every time.
No one has accumulated the same experience, weighing risk vs reward, as the person who built the business.
That is why letting go of control is difficult.
But holding on too tightly comes with a cost.
Growth slows.
Decisions bottleneck.
Capable people become frustrated.
Some leave.
The question becomes: which risk carries the greater cost?
There was a manufacturer. The owner thought he was building company capacity so he could have more freedom when he hired a General Manager. They agreed on the job description. Great personality fit.
They spent countless hours in discussions about the business, about how the GM could run the operation. The owner provided counsel, tips, strategies, check-ins, tales of hard won experience, many examples of what not to do.
The GM listened and then went out onto the floor and observed. None of the staff made their own decisions. All the decisions rolled up to the owner, even when the GM was right there ready to talk.
This is an example of owner dependency masquerading as delegation.
There is no one right way to let go of control. To find your leverage point, we help you find the right balance to lead in a way others can follow and follow in a way others can lead. It is a transition, not a switch.
Authority Gaps
At a busy and growing company, the Manager of Operations played a pivotal role in delivering on customer expectations.
The pipeline was full.
Revenue was growing.
The management team was proud of its accomplishments.
Traction felt good.
The Manager of Operations wasn’t feeling the glow. He was feeling frustration.
He wasn’t sure if or when to raise the issue. Something wasn’t working, yet all eyes were on him to fix it.
The leadership team expected him to be accountable for ensuring the right resources were available at the right time.
But let’s look at what that actually required.
He needed authority to:
• Decide when to hire
• Decide who to hire
• Assign people to projects
• Manage competing resource demands
• Prepare resources for deployment
• Address readiness issues before they affected delivery
• Negotiate priorities with other leaders
If any of those decisions sit elsewhere, how can he truly be held accountable for the result?
Without the authority to act, accountability becomes a losing game.
It feels futile for the manager.
It creates frustration for the team.
It impacts customer satisfaction.
And eventually it affects profitability.
The culture notices the unspoken dissatisfaction long before anyone talks about it openly.
And looks for who is at fault, rather than what is contributing to the problem.
To stop that cascade of effects requires working backward from the desired result.
What would the business be able to do then that it cannot do now if this role was truly accountable?
That is where we begin looking for the leverage point.
I Want More Options for My Future
The business was successful.
Five shareholders enjoyed the rewards of ownership. The company was growing. Dividends were healthy. Everyone enjoyed working in the business.
Then retirement arrived for two of the shareholders.
A simple question changed the conversation:
“How are you going to let us exit the business?”
The partners pulled out the shareholder agreement. There it was. The remaining shareholders could buy out those who wanted to leave.
Simple in theory.
Not so simple in practice.
Where would the cash come from?
Some shareholders carried personal debt. Others had no interest in investing more of their savings into the business. The managing partner did not want any shareholder to own a larger stake than he did.
One advisor suggested using future dividends to fund the buyout. The exiting shareholders liked that idea. The remaining shareholders did not.
The shareholder meetings became increasingly tense.
Important decisions were pushed to the end of the agenda. Discussions that once focused on the future of the business became dominated by competing personal interests.
Then another advisor offered a different idea.
What if the company bought back the shares and retired them?
The room fell silent.
For a moment, everyone felt relieved.
Until they looked at the balance sheet.
The company could not afford the buyout without taking on additional debt.
What had seemed like a straightforward succession issue revealed a much larger challenge.
The real problem was not the shareholder agreement.
The real problem was that the shareholders had not fully explored the future implications of the options available to them.
Who would fund the exit?
How would knowledge be replaced?
How would future growth be financed?
What would happen to dividends?
How much risk was the business being asked to absorb?
These are not simply financial questions. They are leadership, governance, and business value questions.
The best time to have these conversations is when options still exist, relationships are strong, and the pressure to make a decision is low.
There is rarely a perfect solution.
There are only trade-offs.
Our role is to help shareholders understand those trade-offs, identify the risks, and evaluate the options available to them before urgency narrows the choices.