Drawing No. 040 — Use Cases

Use cases

These are the situations I step into when companies hit their limits.

Where growth looks right — but isn't
Use Case

Revenue growing — but the business isn't scaling

Revenue is growing, but the system underneath is breaking. Retention is weak, delivery struggles, and customer success becomes reactive. Sales keeps pushing forward — masking structural problems. The issue is not growth. It's that the business is not built to sustain it.

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Use Case

It looked like product-market fit — it wasn't

Revenue was growing, and sales were strong — but retention hovered around ~50%. Customers churned after initial growth, and expansion into larger segments kept failing. The issue wasn't demand — it was mistaking sales-market fit for real product-market fit.

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Where the organization cannot carry the growth
Use Case

The founder is still the system

Too many decisions still flow through the founder. Teams wait instead of acting. Managers lack real ownership. The organization grows — but the operating model doesn't.

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Use Case

High trust — low accountability

The culture is collaborative and supportive — but performance is inconsistent. Feedback is soft, ownership is unclear, and underperformance persists. Empathy becomes a shield instead of a driver of improvement.

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Use Case

A strong engine — but no machine around it

The company has a strong core function — usually sales — driving growth. But product, operations, finance, and customer success lag behind. Execution breaks at handoffs, and performance becomes inconsistent.

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Where governance breaks under scale
Use Case

The board was in the business — then out of it

Founders moved to the board — but continued influencing operations. Decisions were bypassed, governance blurred, and authority eroded. The issue is not control. It's structuring governance to enable the business.

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Drawing No. 041 — Writing

Articles

The 21st-century leaders vs. the 20th-century managers

Much has changed in the past century: industry has turned digital, the world has globalized, and with them, also the manager role. This is a guide for the 21st-century leader.

Building a business plan vs. lean startup: pros and cons

In recent years, more and more technology ventures take their first commercial steps without a clear business plan. Why?

Direct sales vs. indirect sales (channel partners)

Many businesses contemplate whether to engage the market via direct sales or through partners. This article discusses the trade-offs.

Why hard work is not enough

Many managers push their employees to work hard and "put in the hours." This article makes the case against it.

Full articles coming soon — get in touch if you'd like to read one now.

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