What you’re feeling right now
You’ve become a macro-level leader focused on strategy, people, and structure, and the operational work you used to escape into isn’t yours anymore. Trust in your leadership team is high, and so are the expectations on them. You’re a known player now: competitors are watching and trying to take share. Activity is high, pressure is growing, and burnout is a live risk across the whole company, not just in your office. Processes are in place, but some are straining under the load.
Name the underlying issue to solve it
All business issues fit into 27 categories. Stop the trial-and-error, name the root cause of your Top 5 Challenges so you can solve them now.
What it costs
A one-year planning horizon at this size means competing against companies that think in three. The temptation is to hire your way out of the strain, but headcount without systems, alignment, and strategy just raises the payroll on the same problems. And a company this large that hasn’t made its vision and core values explicit is asking a hundred and some people to guess.
What changes here
Transition zone: the Flood Zone.
You entered Stage 6 through a Flood Zone: another surge in the volume of activity, this time across a company of a hundred-plus people. The deeper change is the planning horizon. Strategy means moving from a one-year perspective to two, three, four years out, because you’re bigger now, competing against companies that may not have known you existed, and now you’re on their radar.
What the stage asks of you
At this size, culture is either designed or accidental. Vision, values, and how a hundred-plus people stay connected to both: that’s your build.
Nearly an even split between running the company and pointing it. Your specialist days are over.
The direction of a company this size has to be unmistakable, and it has to come from you.
Strategy demands confidence. The longer view only pays off for companies bold enough to act on it.