SectorsProfessional services
Professional services
The partner is the bottleneck. Deal flow, qualification and reporting run on experience that was never shared.
What it usually gets called:Key-man risk, deal knowledge, partner dependency
Concrete
Incoming leads qualified against the criteria the partner applies but never wrote down
In a firm with a handful of partners, judging a new case sits in the head of whoever has been there longest. That works, right up until that person is away for a week.
The cost is not in the mistakes but in the waiting: every file sits still until the right person looks at it.
What a system takes over here is the first assessment, not the judgement itself. The partner approves, the system does the groundwork.
Professional services: what is the bottleneck costing you?
Twenty minutes to work out whether there is a sprint in this, and which size.