A Story From a Growing Business — When the Business Outgrows the Way It Is Managed

Consider a small but successful distribution business.

When the company had 5 employees and 20 orders a day, the owner knew almost everything that was happening: A customer placed an order, the salesperson knew about it, the warehouse knew what needed to be picked, the buyer knew what stock needed replenishing. And the owner could simply walk across the office and ask: “Where are we with that order?”

Someone always knew the answer.

And then the business grew.

Twenty orders became 50. Fifty became one hundred. The company hired more people, added more products and started dealing with more suppliers and customers. Nothing was really broken; in fact the business was doing well.

But one Monday morning, the owner received a call from an important customer.

“Where is our order?”

The owner assumed it had already been dispatched. The salesperson thought the warehouse was dealing with it. The warehouse manager thought they were waiting for stock. The buyer thought the stock had already been ordered. And when they finally checked the purchase order, they discovered that the supplier had never confirmed the delivery date.

Four people had touched the process. Everyone thought someone else was dealing with it, but the order had been sitting there for days.

The problem wasn’t that anyone had failed.

The problem was that nobody could see the whole process.

Then the owner spent the next hour finding out what had happened. Then another hour making sure it wouldn’t happen again: a spreadsheet was created, someone was asked to check outstanding orders every morning, another person was told to follow up with suppliers, a report was requested, a meeting was scheduled.

And for a while, things improved.

Until the business grew again.

Then the same problem appeared somewhere else. A different order. A different supplier. A stock discrepancy. A delayed delivery. A missed approval. A customer waiting for an answer.

The business wasn’t suffering from a lack of effort. It was suffering from the fact that human beings were being asked to monitor an operation that had become too complex to hold in their heads.

The Crossroad:

This is a growing business and they can keep on adding people, spreadsheets, meetings and checking. Or they can make the operation itself more intelligent.

The Aha Moment — What If the System Watched the Business?

Imagine if, in that situation, the system already knew:

• the customer order had been received;
• the order was waiting for stock;
• the stock had not arrived;
• the purchase order was overdue;
• the supplier had not confirmed delivery;
• the customer order was therefore at risk;
• and the buyer was responsible for resolving it.

And instead of the owner discovering the problem because a customer complained…

The system had surfaced it days earlier.

The owner wouldn’t need to ask: “What’s happening with this order?”

The system would already have answered: “This order is at risk because the associated purchase order is overdue. The buyer has been notified.”

That’s a fundamentally different way of managing a business.

Don’t manage everything — manage what isn’t working.

To be continued…