How many of these symptoms do you recognise?
Money/Finance
- You need to invest to step-change but the money isn’t in the business.
- Outgoings are increasing as you grow.
- Converting bigger sales is taking longer.
- Bigger clients take longer to pay.
- Management Information takes too long to produce and doesn’t give you answers.
People
- Everybody is too busy.
- Roles and responsibilities have expanded with the business and lack clarity.
- Long-serving members of the team are concerned with where you are headed.
- There are internal tensions between different team members.
- Morale is mixed across the team, not everyone is pulling in the same direction.
Time
- There is never enough time to clear your to-do list.
- You constantly prioritise “urgent” over “important”.
- Communication has suffered; there’s no time to keep everyone in the loop.
- You are working too many hours and taking work home too often. Home life is taking a back seat.
- Spouse/children are complaining they never get to spend time with you.
Sales
- There are more sales enquiries than your team can handle effectively.
- Quality/timeliness of response to prospective customers isn’t always great.
- Your marketing strategy is not delivering the higher quality customers you need.
- Sales are increasing, but margins are decreasing.
- Pre and after sales follow-ups are not being done, there’s no time.
Infrastructure
- Your premises are creaking at the seams.
- You have a sub-optimal production and operations layout.
- Your IT isn’t sufficiently robust for your business needs.
- You don’t have any cybersecurity in place.
- You rely on willing team members to help with technology.