FM Conway - Going the Extra Mile

Chapter 5 Finding a New Home

Scale brings its own problems and its own kinds of pressure, and these pressures were felt throughout the organisation, at the bottom and also at the top.

2005, and we were able to buy their offices. We badly needed the extra space. But for us also, there was a human cost to all this growth and change. We had to adapt quickly if we were to ride on the crest of the wave rather than be swamped by it. Scale brings its own problems and its own kinds of pressure, and these pressures were felt throughout the organisation, at the bottom and also at the top. My own role was changing. It wasn’t that I had to make bigger decisions than before, there were just many more of them; and I had to be quicker at making them. And since there was no longer time for me to be involved in the day-to-day operations, I needed reliable information about what was going on – and I wasn’t getting it. The front end of the company was growing, adapting, and changing, but the back office operations were simply not keeping pace. I knew what I had to do, but I wasn’t happy about doing it. I spoke to Sean, my Finance Director, the ‘rock’ who had supported both me, and the company, for so many years. I told him I had to know where the problems were, and what they were, before they happened. I had to know the pressure points. I had to know when things were going to happen, and how much money we’d need to make them happen. And in order to be able to look forward, I needed better systems of information, and it would require change throughout the organisation to deliver those systems. That’s what I told Sean. But he couldn’t see it. He and I could not agree about what needed to be done. And so Sean left. And there was one more casualty. Neil Leaver, who had joined us with the Westminster contract, and who had been Commercial Director for several years, was unwell. The pressure of work had been

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