If your company has stalled, you’re not broken. You’re on schedule.
A professional services firm I work with has sat at $25 million for two years. Last quarter the sales team missed again. Leadership fired all of them and hired a new CRO. A million dollars down the toilet.
Their advisory board is seasoned professional services CEOs, private equity investors, and operating partners. They don’t mince words.
I wasn’t surprised. I see this all the time.
For more than fifty years, Harvard Business Review has published research on how companies grow. The finding holds. Growth comes in stages, and each stage ends in a predictable break, because the habits that built the last stage can’t carry the next one.
In EOS we call it Hitting the Ceiling. Every growing company hits one. It’s as normal as a kid outgrowing his shoes. Nobody blames the kid. You buy the next size before the blisters.
This firm is at the stage researchers call Take-off, the jump from founder-run to professionally run. Here the limiting factor is the leaders’ ability to let go. Founder-led selling stops scaling, and loose process starts leaking. New reps won’t fix that by themselves.
Here’s the move for Monday. Ask your leadership team one question: what are we still holding onto that the next stage needs someone else to own? Write down every answer. That list is your ceiling, and now you can work it.
Where did your company hit its first ceiling?
Stay Curious,
JBS