Notes on how good businesses operate.
Practical thinking on where value leaks in established businesses, how independent diagnostics work and what separates firms that scale cleanly from those that stall.
How to identify, quantify and rank improvements in your business when resources are finite
The loudest problem in a business is rarely the most expensive one. Here is how to sequence improvement work by what the evidence says it is worth.
Read →Where value leaks in multi-site health services
Multi-site health and allied businesses leak value in predictable places. Most of it collects at the boundaries between sites, which is where to look first.
Read →Handing the task over does not hand over the work
Delegation fails when the task moves and the conditions it depended on stay put. What has to move first, then how to measure what it is costing you.
Read →A mature firm needs to move beyond informal rules
The line comes from a peer-reviewed study of 13,000 firms. It also finds that businesses still run by the person who founded them score poorly on management.
Read →Six signals your operating model has fallen behind
Six everyday signs that a business has outgrown the way it runs, what each one usually means underneath and why they are so often treated as separate problems.
Read →The price you set when you were smaller
Pricing rarely gets reviewed as a system. It drifts quietly, which is why the gap between what you charge and what you deliver is often the largest number.
Read →What an eight-week diagnostic actually looks at
An independent diagnostic scores six areas of a business over eight weeks. Here is what it examines, how the evidence is gathered and what you get.
Read →Where scaling businesses leak value and why it stays hidden
The gap between how big a business has grown and how it actually runs shows up as six quiet signals. Here is where value leaks and why nobody notices in time.
Read →What a fractional operating partner actually does
Between a consultant who advises and leaves and a full-time executive you may not need yet sits the operating partner. Here is what the role really involves.
Read →The quick fix that becomes next year's clean-up bill
A cheap build shipped fast can cost far more later in tech debt, security exposure and rework. How to tell a real saving from a deferred bill.
Read →Scaling is the achievement. Maturing is the follow-through
Fast growth is the hard part most founders are proud of. Maturing the business to match is the quieter work that decides whether the growth actually holds.
Read →How to tell if a business assessment is actually independent
The most useful assessment is one with no stake in the answer. Here are the tells that separate an independent diagnosis from a sales pitch in a nicer suit.
Read →Why hiring more people stops fixing the problem
When a growing business strains, the instinct is to hire. But past a point, more people adds coordination, not capacity. Here is why that happens.
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