People & headcount
Hold headcount flat, redeploy people or reconsider vacancies. Decide what the business needs to become capable of doing.
Explore examples →The next layer of the existing pathway
You’ve made time. What will you change?
Create capacity in the functions. Agree its destination as a leadership team.
Four buckets.
Your priorities.
The 10·10·10·10 split illustrates four choices. Adjust it to the strategy and the situation your business is in.
Insourcing
Explore what you can own—and which part of your offer customers could increasingly do themselves.
Explore examples →Emerging risks
Investigate how AI changes behaviour, assumptions and the places where work happens.
Explore examples →Cross-functional growth
Combine the expertise and decisions needed to test an opportunity that no function can realise alone.
Explore examples →You might hold headcount flat and invest all released capacity in risk and growth. You might build internal capability, absorb demand or reconsider selected vacancies. The leadership team agrees the choices together.
Try a different allocation →The first day makes the next step possible
Create the time to change the work.
PERSONAL + TEAM · a first step
Five days’ work in four.
In our experience, the first day is often more accessible: improve how people frame questions, prepare, compare, draft and check their work.
WorkWorkWorkWork1 day
20% of the original week. Protect some of that time for the work needed to go further.
Reinvest in redesign · the harder step
Five days’ work in three.
The next day usually requires changing workflows, handoffs, roles and decisions together. The first released day helps make that work possible.
WorkWorkWork1 day1 day
Two days in total: 40% of the original week. Establish the result in your own work before committing it elsewhere.
11 perspectives · four capacity choices
Start in your function.
Follow the wider question.
Each example connects a situation, an assumption worth revisiting and one useful thing to do. Follow the connection into another function when the outcome needs it.
All 44 examples
Marketing · People & headcount
What if the capability you cut is the one that makes the output usable?
Producing more versions is easier to count than retaining the ability to know whether they work.
Explore the example →Revenue · People & headcount
If administration shrinks, does a salesperson’s job stay the same?
More selling capacity does not have to mean more of the old sales activity.
Explore the example →Product · People & headcount
Could a fuller roadmap leave you with less customer understanding?
The work that is easiest to accelerate can crowd out the work that tells you what is worth building.
Explore the example →Customer · People & headcount
Your remaining service team may need a different job, not a higher target.
Automation can change the purpose of the human service team.
Explore the example →Finance · People & headcount
When does a saved hour become something the business can spend?
Time released is an opportunity. Cash released requires a separate operating decision.
Explore the example →Technology · People & headcount
Are you counting code produced—or capability retained?
Capacity to produce and capacity to understand can move in different directions.
Explore the example →People · People & headcount
A vacancy may be the wrong unit of workforce planning.
AI changes bundles of work. A vacancy gives you a decision about one person.
Explore the example →Operations · People & headcount
The easy work may leave before the difficult work does.
A smaller workload can be a more demanding workload.
Explore the example →Legal · People & headcount
Who develops judgement when the first draft disappears?
Removing effort from today’s work can remove experience from tomorrow’s expert.
Explore the example →Risk · People & headcount
Could fewer escalations mean less ability to recognise a problem?
A falling review workload is open to more than one explanation.
Explore the example →Enterprise · People & headcount
What if holding headcount flat is your growth strategy?
A stable headcount can conceal a substantial change in what the organisation is capable of doing.
Explore the example →Marketing · Insourcing
Is your agency budget paying for production—or for a perspective you lack?
The right unit of the sourcing decision may be a capability, not the whole agency.
Explore the example →Revenue · Insourcing
A customer can retain you while replacing the work.
Renewal can remain healthy while the customer’s reason to buy particular work is shrinking.
Explore the example →Product · Insourcing
What happens when your customer can make their own version?
Your customer’s adequate alternative can redefine what they value in your product.
Explore the example →Customer · Insourcing
What if understanding the customer became a capability you owned?
Owning the report is less valuable than owning the ability to learn and act.
Explore the example →Finance · Insourcing
The invoice can disappear while the work stays.
Insourcing changes who owns the service, not just who produces the output.
Explore the example →Technology · Insourcing
Building is getting easier. Which services should you choose to own?
A lower cost of creation can leave you with more services to maintain.
Explore the example →People · Insourcing
Could the best learning supplier help you become your own learning organisation?
Attendance is an event. Internal capability is something the organisation can use again.
Explore the example →Operations · Insourcing
Are you bringing the work inside—or bringing back the queue?
The fastest task does not determine the speed of the whole service.
Explore the example →Legal · Insourcing
The first draft may be cheaper than the understanding behind it.
People can decide to insource a service before they understand what it was doing for them.
Explore the example →Risk · Insourcing
Does “in-house” mean the dependency has gone?
Ownership and independence are different properties of a service.
Explore the example →Enterprise · Insourcing
What if a good supplier helps you need less of them?
A supplier’s value can include the capability that remains after they leave.
Explore the example →Marketing · Emerging risks
A customer may reject you before your funnel knows they exist.
A customer’s consideration process can happen before your measurement of the journey begins.
Explore the example →Revenue · Emerging risks
A faster bid can hide a worse commercial decision.
The risky part of a bid may be the part that looks most finished.
Explore the example →Product · Emerging risks
Your most valuable difference could be missing from the buyer’s comparison.
A difference that customers value still needs to survive the way options are represented and compared.
Explore the example →Customer · Emerging risks
What happens to your P&L when customers stop giving up?
An earnings stream can look like loyalty when part of it depends on the effort required to leave or challenge.
Explore the example →Finance · Emerging risks
What if customers capture the saving in your AI business case?
Your cost model may hold revenue constant just as the buyer starts to change it.
Explore the example →Technology · Emerging risks
Your AI found the document. It missed that it was never a decision.
Permission to read a document does not tell an assistant whether the document should be believed.
Explore the example →People · Emerging risks
The judgement doing the checking may be the capability you cut.
The expertise that makes AI useful can be invisible in the productivity calculation.
Explore the example →Operations · Emerging risks
What if saving time makes your best people look worse?
People may be protecting themselves from your measures, rather than resisting your technology.
Explore the example →Legal · Emerging risks
A shorter queue could mean your function is being bypassed.
Your response time has become part of the way risk is created in the business.
Explore the example →Risk · Emerging risks
How many independent checks are really the same assumption?
Repeating an answer can increase confidence without adding independent evidence.
Explore the example →Enterprise · Emerging risks
What if AI is making your existing strategy easier to defend?
AI can make an established view more articulate before it makes the decision better.
Explore the example →Marketing · Cross-functional growth
What if the next growth lever is a promise the business can prove?
A problem in the funnel can originate in the product, service or proof behind it.
Explore the example →Revenue · Cross-functional growth
Could a smaller sale open a larger reason to buy?
Growth can require changing what you sell before asking people to sell more.
Explore the example →Product · Cross-functional growth
What if the customer’s problem sits outside your product boundary?
The boundary of your product is not necessarily the boundary of the customer’s problem.
Explore the example →Customer · Cross-functional growth
What if a complaint is an early description of your next offer?
Resolution can end the incident while leaving the opportunity unexplored.
Explore the example →Finance · Cross-functional growth
Could your forecast requirement be selecting the safest-looking ideas?
The precision of a forecast can exceed the knowledge behind it.
Explore the example →Technology · Cross-functional growth
Could a technical possibility change the question the business is asking?
Technical expertise can help reframe the problem before it becomes a specification.
Explore the example →People · Cross-functional growth
Have you created a growth team—or given busy people another job?
A team can exist on paper without having any usable capacity.
Explore the example →Operations · Cross-functional growth
What if reliability is the feature that unlocks growth?
The growth constraint may be the experience of getting the value, rather than the value promised.
Explore the example →Legal · Cross-functional growth
Could Legal help invent the route to yes?
The timing of expertise changes the choices it can create.
Explore the example →Risk · Cross-functional growth
Can a small test reveal the risk before a large commitment creates it?
Risk expertise can improve the quality of learning, not just the approval decision.
Explore the example →Enterprise · Cross-functional growth
What customer outcome is nobody able to own alone?
Strategy can be clear at the top and fragmented where the customer experiences it.
Explore the example →Use AI to widen the question
What might your experience be assuming?
Bring one live decision. Explore a competing explanation, identify what would change your mind and speak to someone who sees the situation differently.
Explore leadership and unlearning →Bring it into the work
A useful starting point for a conversation.
The examples can help you choose a live issue for PERSONAL, a question for FUNCTION or a shared decision for STRATEGIC.
Explore the existing sessions →