In mid-large companies in particular, internal stakeholders who are not “at the helm steering the ship” often become frustrated at the lack of forward movement of the company.

Sometimes this perception is actually a close reflection of the reality of the actual situation. I have found that there are a few key reasons for a company slowing-down or stagnating on its evolutionary course:

  • The owners are so entwined in the day-to-day running of the business, that they have little-no time to work “on” it (i.e. setting direction/ exploring new opportunities for business development/ make timely governance decisions, etc).
  • There is no written Strategic Plan in place to evolve the business in any particular direction, or  if there is such a plan in place then it either hasn’t won the buy-in (support) from internal        stakeholders (largely because they haven’t been included in its formation) and/ or it hasn’t      been shared – within the comfort of the owner to disclose particular contents – with relevant      stakeholders.
  • Key internal stakeholders feel disenfranchised from the business.

 

When I have worked alongside business owners who feel that they’ve “come unstuck” or are frustrated at feeling like they can’t influence any significant momentum in their business, the first question that I ask is “how many days each week are you working on your business and not in it ?”

The answers that spring from that initial pivotal question quickly tell me that there is insufficient capacity within the owner(s) to work in both the management realm and the governance realm within their business. In short, they are working as “Operational Cogs” in their business – and not as “Evolutionary Cogs”.

It is my view that if a business owner is serious/ genuine about wanting to firmly occupy the “governance seat” (become a major “Evolutionary Cog”) in their business, then they should be doing everything in their power to successively relinquish as many of the day-to-day operational functions that they are involved with as they can – and empower suitably qualified and experienced employees to take care of these instead.

Quality, well-reasoned governance decisions made on a timely basis play a huge part in determining the speed at which an organization evolves. The more that “Evolutionary Cogs” are jammed-up dealing with matters which really “Operational Cogs” should be dealing with, the less opportunity there is for such governance decisions to be made…and so the “ship” slows down, and sometimes stops altogether.