Clear direction and values.
Knowing where the business is going, what it stands for and how it is represented, so decisions stop coming back to you by default.
I ran an IT recruitment business that grew to a team of 17. From the outside, it looked like growth. Inside, I was carrying too much, the business depended on me more than it should have, and adding people wasn’t making it run any better.
Eventually, I stepped back and looked properly at how the business really worked: how work flowed through it, who was responsible for what, where time was being lost and where the bottlenecks were. We clarified our direction and values, rethought roles and responsibilities, simplified how things got done and shaped the structure around what the business genuinely needed.
We more than halved the team, to seven people.
Turnover doubled.
That experience taught me more about business structure, efficiency, capacity, leadership and sustainable growth than anything else in my career. It was my business, and every business is different, so it isn’t a promise of the same result. But the questions are the same, and they’re the starting point for everything I do now.