Elevate Performing Arts runs four dance studios across Sydney. Like a lot of multi-site operators, the business had grown by opening the next location when the current ones filled, or when opportunity or location had shown up. This is a sensible instinct, common practice for any founder-led venture still operating successfully after years in business. But…. It also leaves very little time to ask whether the existing sites, systems and offers are actually working as hard as they could.
That’s how this brief began. Not "we're in trouble," but "we think there's more here than we're getting out of it." When skilful, talented, intelligent and passionate operators such as Gabby as questions like these, it’s usually because if something such as inertia driven by incredibly hard-work that hasn’t allowed the breathing room to answer these questions with the oxygen required. That distinction matters, because it's the more common reason an established business calls us. Not a crisis, just a suspicion that something is being left on the table.
What the Diagnostic found
Two weeks in, working from the studio's enrolment, scheduling and financial data, four ranked opportunities came out the other end. Each had a dollar value attached, so the studio could weigh the return against the effort before committing to any of them.
Note: Due to commercial confidentiality, I won’t publicly describe each one, but the engagement from Diagnostic to Sprint should demonstrate that the methodology works.
Four opportunities, ranked by importance based upon Gabby’s initial intuition, all aligning with the potential for growth, impact or continued success of her business.
From findings to a plan of attack
The Diagnostic's job is to rank what's worth pursuing and placing a number on its execution. What happens next is up to the client and entirely dependent upon the number of resources, usually time, in which the business owner is able to allocate to undertaking them. I provided the pathway to move into a Turnaround Sprint, and the four findings became a Sprint Plan of Attack. This is a working document that turned each opportunity into scoped and sequenced pieces to implement.
That's the deliberate difference in how we work: the Diagnostic is diagnosis, not a report to file away. The Sprint is where a ranked list of opportunities convert to actionable work to be done.
For context, I provided Gabby with the level of detail for each opportunity in a manner which could be undertaken by her or her team independently of my engagement. Although, as mentioned above, time is usually lacking for business owners, so she instead engaged The Margin Lab for their implementation.
“We’ve been running on instinct for 18-years, and it’s been working. But even after all this time, Matt was able to point out areas that legitimately surprised me. The Margin Lab’s Diagnostic pulled apart our in-house tracking, then highlighted the gaps where tangible opportunities existed. What I appreciated most was that the plan handed back wasn’t generic advice, it was specific and actionable to our business, written so I could run parts of it myself if I chose to. That’s not something I’ve experienced with a consultant before.”
