24/08/2026
A client recently told me he had a $100 million problem.
I flew to Africa for business. The plan was simple: meet a company, pitch executive recruitment, and hopefully crack the deal!
The owner had built the business from the ground up to millions in revenue, with 1,000 employees.
But there was one major problem.
Every decision, big or small, still landed on his desk.
He knew that couldn't continue if he wanted to keep growing. His idea was to hire a General Manager to help him scale.
But my advice for him was to think bigger.
I told him to hire a CEO instead, so that ownership sits with one person, not two.
He liked the idea, but I could see the hesitation. Getting that one hire wrong felt like too big a risk for him.
So we went back and reworked it.
What came back was a full two year transition plan built around two General Managers instead. Org structure, role mandates, KRAs/KPIs for every function, and a path where owner would shadow his new leadership team for six months, hand over more control over the next year, then step back into the role of Chairman.
We didn’t charge him for that plan because it was our way of showing him exactly how we think and what we bring to the table before asking for anything in return.
He reviewed it, approved it, and signed off on our recruitment proposal within a day.
He's already running a second division just as large, and his goal now is to grow the whole group to $500 million in the next five years. For that, he needed structure before he needed candidates.
If your business has outgrown the structure it's running on, the gap usually isn't talent.
It's design.
Source: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/nizar-lallani-a323a71_leadership-recruitment-businessgrowth-activity-7493251846501912576-q-kW?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAEIRD1EBdduvWr-AKBJUmULogn-lGy_xXgM
