The businesses weren’t growing, but each needed a different fix. With holds running longer, picking the wrong one is the costliest mistake.
I have worked in both large, established organisations and smaller, growing businesses. Many had the same problem. They were not growing at the desired rate.
One clear example was an established professional services firm. Most areas ran smoothly, but digital marketing was different. It had been added later and never properly built, and it did not meet the business’s current needs. The function had to be redesigned, restructured and refocused.
In smaller tech businesses, I heard the same complaint. Not enough growth. Yet these marketing teams were more mature than the companies around them. The real issue was focus. Too much effort went into work and levers that did not support the growth plan, so redirecting it was the fix.
Then there was a well-established organisation with a strong, well-run marketing team. Its structure and focus were sound. In this case, it was the marketing plan itself that needed to change.
Three situations with the same symptom required three different fixes, and the size or age of each business told me nothing about which one.
Why the wrong fix is so expensive
When a business stops growing, people often reach for a familiar playbook. More budget, a new agency or a new head of marketing. Each of these assumes you know how mature the team is, usually judged by the size or age of the business.
This is where things go wrong. Maturity is rarely even across a business. A company that has been around for decades can still have a function, often digital, that never developed properly. A young company might have a team more advanced than the rest around them. If you restructure a mature team, you disrupt people who only needed clearer direction. If you give an immature function a new plan, you are asking it to do something it cannot yet handle.
Neither mistake shows up straight away. A restructure takes months to settle and hiring someone new takes even longer. By the time you realise the fix has not worked, you may have lost most of a year and a large part of your budget.
Why this is harder in 2026
Guessing has become more expensive. Holds are longer, and AI has pushed down software valuations, so buyers now want to see growth the business can sustain on its own.
AI has also changed what a mature commercial team looks like. Seat-based pricing is under pressure as customers use agents instead of people, and marketing and sales teams are being rebuilt around new tools. A team that was ahead two years ago can be behind today, even if nothing inside it has changed. The plan it follows may have been written for a different market. That is why maturity has to be measured against the business’s current needs.
What this means for Operating Partners
Two portfolio companies can both report a slowdown and need different fixes. Working out which is which before you spend money, or blame the leader, is one of the cheapest ways to protect the hold. A year spent on the wrong fix is a year the value-creation plan does not recover.
What this means for portfolio companies
If you lead a portfolio company, the board usually turns to you when the business is not growing. Obvious fixes, such as a new hire or a reorganisation, are tempting because they appear decisive. If they target the wrong problem, they use up the time and budget the right fix needs. Knowing exactly which problem you have also makes it easier to ask the board for the right investment and to explain why you need it.
How to tell which fix you need
Telling these problems apart means looking at the commercial engine in two ways. First, look at how product, marketing and sales work together and where time is lost at the handoffs. That lost time is the Synchronisation Tax, and it is the focus of What Commercial Due Diligence Misses.
Second, look within each function. Is the team mature enough for what the plan expects of it? The ClockSpeed Maturity System assesses each function against the stage the business has reached and the plan’s requirements for it.
You need both views because, in the board pack, the fix for these problems often looks the same.
Where I come in
My Maturity System assessment looks at the connections between product, marketing and sales and at what is happening inside each area. It shows which fix should come first, before you commit any budget. Then I work alongside the team to make the changes.
The question worth asking before you commit the budget:
If one of your portfolio companies stopped growing tomorrow, how quickly could you identify the fix it needs?
ClockSpeed helps investors and Operating Partners find the right commercial fix before time and money are spent, then stays to embed it.