I was sitting in the boardroom of a $10 million manufacturing business last month.
The owner had called me in because growth had stalled. Revenue had been hovering around the same number for nearly two years. Profit was okay but not growing. The team seemed busy but directionless.
I asked to see their business strategy.
He pulled out two documents: a three-year-old marketing plan focused on lead generation, and last year’s budget spreadsheet.
“This is our strategy,” he said.
I looked at both documents. Then I asked: “Where’s the actual strategy? The decisions about where you’re going and how you’re going to get there?”
Long pause.
“Isn’t that what these are?”
That conversation happens in some form with almost every established business I work with.
Smart, successful owners running $5M to $15M businesses who don’t actually have a strategy. They have tactics and they have budgets and they have activity.
But they don’t have strategy.
And that gap is costing them millions.
What Strategy Actually Is (And Isn’t)
Let me start with what strategy is not:
- Strategy is not a marketing plan
- Strategy is not a budget or financial forecast
- Strategy is not a list of goals (“grow revenue 20%”)
- Strategy is not a to-do list
- Strategy is not last year’s plan with the numbers changed
Strategy is a set of coherent, integrated choices about:
- Where you will compete (markets, customers, geographies)
- How you will win (what makes you different and better)
- What capabilities you need (people, systems, assets)
- How you will allocate resources (time, money, focus)
- What you will NOT do (equally important)
Real strategy involves making difficult choices and trade-offs.
If your “strategy” could work for any business in your industry, it’s not strategy, it’s a generic to-do list.
The Pattern I See: Reactive Decision-Making
Here’s what operating without real strategy looks like in practice:
A potential customer calls with a project request. It’s outside your normal scope, requires capabilities you don’t really have, and the margin will be thin. But it’s revenue.
Without strategy: You say yes because “we need the work” and figure out how to deliver it later.
With strategy: You have clear criteria for what work you take and don’t take. This opportunity doesn’t fit. You politely decline and redirect your energy to opportunities that align with your strategy.
A competitor launches a new service. Your sales team starts getting questions about it.
Without strategy: You scramble to match the competitor’s offering—even though you’re not sure it’s profitable or aligned with your strengths.
With strategy: You evaluate whether this fits your strategic direction. If it doesn’t, you have a clear message for customers about why you’ve chosen a different path.
Your best salesperson wants to pursue a new market segment.
Without strategy: You let them try it because they’re a good performer and you don’t want to demotivate them.
With strategy: You evaluate the opportunity against your defined strategy. If it’s outside your target markets, you redirect their energy to higher-value opportunities that are aligned.
The difference? Reactive decisions vs strategic choices.
Most mid-sized businesses operate almost entirely reactively. They respond to whatever comes at them, customer requests, competitor moves, staff suggestions and market changes.
It feels productive. Everyone’s busy. Things are happening.
But busy isn’t strategic. And activity without direction is just expensive chaos.
Why Mid-Sized Businesses Operate on Gut Feel
The pattern I see is this:
Early stage ($1-3M): The business runs on the founder’s instincts and relationships. This works because it’s small enough for one person to hold the entire business model in their head.
Growth phase ($3-8M): The business gets more complex but the owner is still making most decisions by gut feel, supplemented by some basic financial reporting and maybe a marketing plan.
Plateau phase ($8-15M): Gut feel stops working. The business is too complex. There are too many variables. The owner can’t be across everything. Decisions made by instinct start producing inconsistent results.
This is where most established businesses get stuck.
They’ve outgrown gut-feel decision-making but haven’t replaced it with strategic decision-making.
Why doesn’t it happen naturally?
- No time: “I’m too busy running the business to work on strategy”
- No framework: “I don’t know what good strategy looks like”
- Uncomfortable with choices: “Saying no to opportunities feels risky”
- Team resistance: “My team won’t understand why we’re changing direction”
- Past success: “Gut feel got us here, so it must be working”
So they keep operating reactively, wondering why growth has stalled and profit isn’t improving.
The Five Strategy Areas Every Business Needs
Remember the framework I introduced in Week 1? Every business needs coherent strategy across five interconnected areas:
1. Marketing Strategy
Not: “We need more leads” or “Let’s try Google Ads”
Real strategy answers:
- Who is our ideal customer? (Specifically, with clear criteria)
- What markets are we targeting and which are we deliberately exiting?
- How do we position ourselves differently from competitors?
- What’s our customer acquisition and retention approach?
- What’s our pricing strategy and why?
2. Operations Strategy
Not: “We need to be more efficient” or “Let’s implement Lean”
Real strategy answers:
- What’s our core operational model? (Make-to-order, make-to-stock, project-based?)
- What capabilities must we own vs. outsource?
- Where will we focus quality and efficiency improvements?
- What capacity do we need and how will we manage it?
- What systems and processes are strategic vs. tactical?
3. Financial Strategy
Not: “Hit $12M revenue” or “Improve profit by 10%”
Real strategy answers:
- What’s our target business model? (Revenue mix, margin targets, OpEx ratio)
- How do we allocate capital? (What gets investment, what doesn’t)
- What financial metrics drive our decisions?
- What’s our working capital strategy?
- How are we building business value, not just profit?
4. Human Resources Strategy
Not: “Hire when we’re desperate, fire when there’s a problem”
Real strategy answers:
- What capabilities do we need in our team?
- How do we attract and retain the right people?
- What’s our leadership development approach?
- How do we structure roles and authority?
- What culture are we deliberately building?
5. Innovation Strategy
Not: “We should probably update our products sometime”
Real strategy answers:
- How do we systematically evaluate and evolve our offerings?
- What’s our approach to process improvement?
- How do we stay relevant as markets change?
- What do we need to stop doing?
- What’s our R&D investment and focus?
How Strategy Changes Decision-Making
Let me show you how strategy transforms daily decisions.
Scenario: A large customer requests significant pricing concessions
Without strategy: Owner thinks: “They’re 18% of our revenue. We can’t afford to lose them. I guess we have to give them the discount.”
Decision: Accept the pricing pressure. Margin erodes. Set a precedent.
With strategy: Owner refers to strategic framework:
- Target gross margin: 35% minimum
- Maximum customer concentration: 12% of revenue
- Position: Premium quality, not low price
Analysis: This customer is already too large (concentration risk) and asking us to violate our margin and positioning strategy.
Decision: “We appreciate your business, but we can’t meet that price and maintain the quality standards you value. If price is your primary driver, we may not be the right fit. Here’s what we can do within our pricing structure…”
Outcome: Sometimes they accept your terms. Sometimes they leave. Either way, you’ve made a strategic decision aligned with where you’re going, not a reactive decision based on fear.
The Uncomfortable Truth About Strategy
Real strategy requires saying no.
No to revenue opportunities that don’t fit. No to customer requests outside your scope. No to staff suggestions that aren’t aligned. No to competitor moves you’re not going to match.
That’s deeply uncomfortable for business owners who built their business by saying yes to everything.
But here’s what I’ve learned watching dozens of businesses make this transition:
Saying no strategically creates room to say yes to better opportunities.
Why This Matters Now
If you’re stuck at a revenue plateau, if profit isn’t growing despite activity, if you’re constantly firefighting, if decisions feel random and inconsistent—you probably don’t have a strategy problem.
You have a lack-of-strategy problem.
Gut feel worked when you were smaller. It stops working as complexity increases.
The businesses that break through aren’t just working harder on tactics. They’re making better strategic choices and aligning everything around those choices.
After 25 years as a chartered accountant and business coach working with established businesses, I can tell you:
The difference between a $10M business that’s struggling and a $10M business that’s thriving usually isn’t capability, market conditions, or resources.
It’s strategy.
One has clear strategic direction and makes decisions accordingly.
The other is operating reactively, saying yes to everything, and wondering why they’re exhausted but not growing.
Which one are you?
Your Next Step
Block out a day, or even better two, in the next month and get off-site. Bring your leadership team if you have one, or do it solo if you don’t.
Work through the five strategy areas:
- Marketing: Who are we serving and how do we win?
- Operations: How do we deliver and what must we own?
- Financial: What’s our business model and how do we allocate capital?
- HR: What capabilities do we need and how do we build them?
- Innovation: How do we stay relevant and what do we stop doing?
Make actual choices. Write them down. Build your decision filter.
Then, and this is the hard part, start saying no to things that don’t fit.
If you’d like help facilitating this process or want to discuss what strategic planning looks like for your specific business, email me at richard@coumans.com.au.
I’ve guided dozens of established businesses through this. It’s not complicated, but it does require discipline and someone to ask the hard questions.
The businesses that do this work don’t just grow revenue. They build valuable, strategic, focused businesses that aren’t dependent on constantly saying yes to everything.
And they get their lives back in the process.
