Frequently Asked Questions
In the interest of saving everyone time, we’ve compiled a list of the more common questions about our services.
Q1: Who is this type of consulting most effective for?
A: The short answer: businesses which have grown complicated enough that operational friction has started causing them to bleed revenue.
If you went looking for services like this, there’s a very high probability that describes your company.
Q2: Who is this service not a good fit for?
A: We generally find that companies with less than 10 employees or above $5 million in revenue are too small and too large, respectively. Below a certain level, there just isn’t much for us to work with. Above a certain level, we find that entrenched behaviors and siloed department managers defending their little kingdoms end up stalling our recommendations.
Q3: Around what stage of growth do operations problems begin surfacing?
A: This varies, dramatically, based on factors such as industry, company culture, pro/reactive management, etc.
In general, we find that serious drag begins to emerge as soon as there’s more than one level of decision making/management in a company.
Q4: How can I know that operations, rather than sales or marketing, is causing our bottlenecks?
A: Simply analyze where your friction is happening. If you’re struggling to fill orders or getting bad customer reviews then those rarely will be sales or marketing problems.
In other words, are you struggling to get orders/jobs or are you struggling to complete them on time and with high consistent quality? If the latter then you should schedule a call with us.
Q5: Why does my business feel like it’s getting harder to run even though my revenues keep increasing?
A: Almost certainly because you built a solid early stage business plan which needs to be reworked to accelerate your success instead of cannibalizing it. The plain and simple fact is that founder passion is priceless…….but it only sustains a business for so long. After that equilibrium point is reached, effective delegation, organization, and systemization become indispensable.
Q6: Why does ‘working harder’ not produce consistent results?
A: For the same reason Roman legions steamrolled far larger opposing forces repeatedly: organization and clearly defined responsibilities.
Few companies lack hard working teams, but most lack calculated focus and calibrated workflow systems. It doesn’t matter if everyone in the boat is rowing harder if they’re all going in different directions.
Q7: Why does it feel like problems move instead of disappear?
A: Think of a business as a Rubik’s Cube that’s fighting back. You bend and twist to get the colors correct on one side just to find you have a new problem on the other side. Almost invariably tweaking something in one area of your business affects things in another. This is why ‘continuous improvement’ has become all the rage in the world’s best operating companies. Improvement is an ongoing decision rather than a one time adjustment.
This is exactly why we decided to establish our FlexHours option and why we include two quarterly follow ups with every engagement.
Q8: Why do solutions that worked last year suddenly not work now?
A: This is usually for a combination of reasons. Staff changes, complacency, bad habit development, changing variables, choke points somewhere up or downstream, and so on. It depends on the solution, the problem it solved initially, and what has transpired in the meantime.
Q9: What does a Gilnockie Operations Advisors assessment actually look like?
A: Different for every business of course. What’s always done, however, is not all that different from how a plumber diagnoses a system.
A very simplified overview of a DeepDive using manufacturing lingo would be:
We analyze and carefully map how you currently create your product or service from ‘raw materials’ to ‘customer ready’
We identify where bottlenecks, friction, redundancy, waste, etc are present and craft actionable remedies that don’t involve you buying expensive tech or equipment.
We create updated process maps and training materials so that our fixes can be easily maintained by in house management.
We follow up quarterly for two quarters to track improvement, monitor for new problems, and help you stay on the right track.
Q10: How do you decide where to start when multiple things seem to be “broken?”
A: With this rather common situation, we prioritize the most dangerous wounds first. If something is actively damaging your reputation with customers we treat that as the priority. After we stop the immediate bleeding, we trace the issue backwards until we identify the root causes.
If the situation isn’t quite so dire, we solve for maximum revenue impact. This means we identify what’s costing you the most in lost revenue or waste and begin there.
Think of it like triage in an emergency room: the severed artery gets dealt with before the broken leg even though both are serious.
Q11: How involved does leadership need to be in the process?
A: In the earlier stages, we find that it’s best if they aren’t involved at all. Nobody works the same way with their boss standing nearby as they do when he’s not. They also won’t answer our questions about pain points fully or honestly if their manager is in the room.
For us to properly understand the challenges, we need to see how things actually move and shake when the boss isn’t watching.
Once we have actionable recommendations, it becomes vital for relevant managers to be receptive to our findings. We aren’t there to tell you what you’re doing ‘wrong.’ We’re there to help your hard work create stronger results.
Q12: How can you improve consistency and quality without creating more bureaucracy and paperwork?
A: Reduction of bureaucracy and paperwork is actually considered a key deliverable in our work. When decision logic, quality control, replenishment, and other aspects of operations are placed into a well-designed system you will realize just how many tedious tasks no longer darken your door.
If you’re ready to spend your days planning the future of your business instead of ordering coffee filters and fixing recurring mistakes, let’s talk.
Q13: Why hire you instead of doing this myself or hiring an operations manager?
A: Two reasons: objectivity and overhead.
Objectivity: Nobody is ever going to care about your business as much as you do. While that’s a unique benefit for an owner, it’s also a serious risk factor for rose colored glasses. Your business is your pride and joy, but you’re too close to it to see the things we will be able to detect because of that. We can help you see your business with a fresh perspective that honors your hard work but also that is free of your well earned sentimentality.
In house operations managers, inevitably, develop the same sort of outlook. They strive and strain trying to improve things but often end up trying to balance employee complaints, ownership demands, and their own career ambitions. Ops managers also tend to be too close to the operation for too long to avoid the emergence of blind spots and entrenched interests.
Overhead: In the NYC Metro Area, the base salary for an experienced Operations Manager will be around $95,000 on the low end. On top of that you’ll have the various other expenses involved in having a warm body on staff such as FICA tax, benefits, profit sharing, insurance, software licenses……..there’s a reason we’re a lean operation ourselves. This means that, conservatively, an Ops Manager will need to improve your margins by $150,000 per year for you to break even.
A DeepDive plus a block of FlexHours can deliver the same margin improvement as a $150k operations hire for less than 10% of the cost upfront with no ongoing commitment.
Q14: What’s the most common reason your services don’t lead to improvements?
A: Pride.
Many owners and managers have spent so many years being the one with the answers that they either reject or halfheartedly implement our recommendations. Some feel that any feedback apart from affirmation is a form of condescension.
This doesn’t happen often since our clients are usually owners who are sharp enough to recognize problems and smart enough to listen to expert advice on how to fix them.
If you’re the type who can’t handle constructive criticism or take advice, we won’t be able to help you and you’d be better off saving our fee for the rainy days approaching.
Q15: How long would it take for us to see meaningful improvement after your consultation?
A: As with many answers on this page, it depends in the same way your health improves (or not) based on whether you do what your doctor says.
If you and your team buy into the changes and systems we create for you then you will see a difference within the first sales cycle and often within the first month. We generally find that a morale increase is the first development since employees are accomplishing more with less frustration in the same number of hours.
Q16: What kind of improvement is realistic to expect after you consult with us?
A: We won’t, for a second, guarantee any dollar figure of improvement because we can’t guarantee what new challenges will arise in your industry nor how enthusiastically you will implement our plan.
What we can guarantee is that we will show you where the cobwebs are, how to knock them out, and how to keep them from reappearing somewhere else.
We can guarantee your operation will improve noticeably in how efficiently work flows through it.
We also guarantee that you will spend more time working on your business rather than in it, if you follow our plan.
Q17: How can we know we’re ready to engage your services?
A: If you recognized your business challenges in the above answers, you probably are.
If you didn’t then you wouldn’t have read this far.
Q18: What usually prompts your clients to reach out to you?
A: They recognize they have problems in their business that they can’t fix alone or can’t seem to identify. Most of our clients are at the end of their ropes by the time they call us. They have read books, attended seminars, asked other owners for advice, and thrown the kitchen sink at the issue without result.
Once they recognize that they’re facing systemic problems that can’t be solved by elbow grease and optimism, they stop spinning their wheels and have us get them back on track.
Q19: What should we have prepared for the first call?
A: At minimum, we will need to know the nature of your business (industry, employee count, location, etc) and what you’ve identified as challenges/friction points so far. The more accurate information you can provide us the faster we can begin looking under the hood to find the problem and the quicker we can get you humming like a new Ferrari instead of sputtering like your uncle’s old truck.
Q20: What’s required to move forward after the first call and how long until you start?
A: If we think we can help you and we both decide to move forward, we only require a 20% initial deposit. So $2,000 against a $10,000 total engagement for example.
This nonrefundable deposit is to compensate for our time and initial expenses/work in the event a client decides not to continue at some point in the engagement (which has never happened as of this writing).
As for how quickly we can get to work on your engagement, that depends on our current engagements and whether FlexHour holders request our help as the latter always get priority attention.
We pride ourselves on our efficiency, but we never rush through an engagement. Generally we can begin QuckAudits or DeepDives within 7-10 days of receiving your deposit.