The Plan Everyone Agreed To and Nobody Did
You spent a day on strategy. Everyone left energised. Three months later almost none of it has happened, and nobody has mentioned it since.
10 articles on business consulting — what breaks as businesses grow, why it happens, and what to do about it.
You spent a day on strategy. Everyone left energised. Three months later almost none of it has happened, and nobody has mentioned it since.
It worked for twenty years because everyone knew everything. Now there are forty people, and the way it always worked has stopped working.
You told yourself the market slowed down. Then you looked at the enquiry numbers and realised the market did exactly what it always does.
Before changing anything, find out what is actually true. Thirty questions across six areas, answerable in a week with data you already hold.
Consulting engagements fail on scope and accountability far more often than on expertise. Here is what to establish before you commit.
Big decisions are usually made once, on one set of assumptions. Scenario planning tests them cheaply before capital is committed.
Resilience is not caution. It is structural flexibility — the ability to absorb a shock without the business stopping.
You have been told you need a consultant. Nobody has told you what actually happens, what it costs you in time, or how to tell a good one from an expensive one.
The business has grown past the point where consensus at dinner is a decision-making system. Nobody wants to say so, so decisions simply stop happening.
The new city looked obvious: bigger population, visible demand, a competitor doing well there. Eighteen months on it still consumes cash and attention.
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