Breaking the growth ceiling: an external board that decides every month

1. At a glance

Organization

Established manufacturing SMB

Industry

Light manufacturing

Engagement mode

Diagnostic (Plan 90), then fractional leadership (External Board)

Format

3-week diagnostic, then a monthly committee

2. The situation

A manufacturing SMB whose growth had plateaued for several fiscal years. Important decisions were made on gut feel: the president arbitrated alone, without a shared dashboard, and the bank requested forecasts the company could not produce.

3. The decision to make

Should the company hire a full-time executive to structure its leadership, or install a lighter external governance — and on what data should that choice rest?

4. What we observed

• No shared indicators across sales, operations and finance: each department tracked its own numbers.
• Structural decisions were made ad hoc, without consolidated data or follow-up.
• Every bank request pulled leadership into firefighting mode, with no forecasts ready.
• The roadmap lived in the president's head, not in a document the team could execute.

5. What we built

• A revenue-model diagnostic, grounded in leadership and frontline interviews and in recent fiscal-year data.
• A prioritized 90-day roadmap: every workstream with an owner and a deadline.
• An operational KPI board, installed in the company's own tools.
• A monthly external committee: indicator review, recorded trade-offs, minutes with owners.
• Bank presentations prepared from that same dashboard.

6. What changed

7. What the team keeps

• The monthly committee cadence and its minutes, in the company's own tools.
• The KPI board, documented and maintained internally.
• The continuously revised roadmap, executable with or without support.