Business audit: find the one constraint that blocks everything else
A list of twenty problems doesn't help you. You need one: the one that, once fixed, unlocks the other nineteen.
By Thibaut Vanderhofstadt · CEO of Sortlist for 11 years, founder of FounderOS.
A useful business audit answers one question: what, once fixed, unlocks everything else? It starts from your real numbers and names the #1 constraint, the number that proves it, and the order in which to remove the next ones. Anything that doesn't help you decide on Monday morning is noise.
Why most audits change nothing
A classic audit hands you a list. Twenty pages, forty recommendations, all of them true. You read it, start six things at once, and three months later nothing has moved. It isn't a lack of effort. It's a problem of method.
A company moves at the speed of its slowest point. Improving anything that isn't that point gives you a thicker report, not a faster company. Eliyahu Goldratt wrote it in 1984 in The Goal: a system's throughput is set by its constraint. If the constraint is you, no hire anywhere else will unblock the company.
So the hard part isn't finding problems. It's picking one, and letting the others wait.
Signs it's time to look
Tick what's true in your company today, not what you'd like to be true.
Where to look, in what order
1. Your time. List the activities of a normal week. How many hours go to leading the company, and how many to delivery, selling or emergencies? If more than half your week stops when you stop, the bottleneck has your name on it.
2. Waiting time, not workload. The real constraint isn't the step that takes the most hours. It's the step where work waits the longest. A quote that waits four days for your sign-off costs more than a four-hour task.
3. Your customers, in a spreadsheet. Take your customers from the last 36 months. Who pays the most, who earns you the most, who costs the most to serve? Your ideal customer isn't defined in an off-site. It's read in a table.
4. Your margin, offer by offer. Revenue growth can hide a melting margin. Look at the contribution of each offer and each large customer, not just the total.
5. How decisions get made. Who can say yes without you, on what, up to what amount? If the answer is "nobody", you've found part of your constraint.
What the FounderOS audit gives you
The FounderOS audit does this work in about ten minutes, on your answers and your numbers:
- your #1 constraint, written about your situation, with the gap in euros between where you are and where you want to be;
- the route: your bottlenecks in the order we tackle them;
- a 90-day plan for the first one, with three actions you can start on Monday.
You redo it on day 90 to see what moved. It's the same measure the program uses to check that your #1 bottleneck is unblocked.
What the books that matter say
The Goal
Eliyahu M. Goldratt
A system produces at the pace of its constraint. Optimising anywhere else piles up stock in front of the bottleneck, not results.
The E-Myth Revisited
Michael E. Gerber
Most companies are started by excellent technicians who end up trapped in the job they wanted to do. An audit starts by looking at where the founder's time goes.
Frequently asked questions
How long does the FounderOS audit take?
About ten minutes for the first read. You answer about yourself first, then about your company and your numbers. You can stop and come back later.
How is it different from a financial audit?
An accountant checks that your books are right. The FounderOS audit starts from your numbers to find what limits your growth: your time, your offer, your margin, your team, how decisions get made. The two complement each other.
Is the audit really free?
Yes, no card. You get your #1 bottleneck and what proves it. A full report is available as an option; it's deducted from the program if you join.
What happens to my answers?
They stay in your account. They're used to write your diagnosis, not to sell to you. You can delete them.
What if my #1 constraint isn't something FounderOS works on?
You'll still know it. The diagnosis is yours, and we'll tell you plainly if the program isn't the right answer.
Go further How I discovered our pricing was killing us · The full article on Thibaut's blog
Read next
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