Blog: Growth
Growth starts with knowing what is holding you back
Published by Forever Foundry
More orders are only good news if your organisation can deliver them.
A recent Made in Group article captures why growth depends on connecting commercial ambition with operational reality.
Published on 16 October, it explores Pinaki Banerjee’s approach at PP Control & Automation, which is targeting £100m turnover by 2028.
His four priorities are clear:
- Choose the markets worth pursuing, and those to leave alone.
- Remove delivery constraints and time capacity investment carefully.
- Develop managers who can make decisions beyond the boardroom.
- Apply AI to a defined business problem, with human oversight.
One example brings the approach to life. Engineers previously spent days extracting information from lengthy technical documents. The article reports that a tailored AI programme reduced this to hours, recovering 36% of headcount capacity.
That is a reported company result, not a benchmark or a cash saving. The £100m figure remains an ambition. Read Made in Group’s article.
The FOFO™ view: understand the constraint before funding the solution
This is strongly aligned with the thinking behind Forever Foundry.
A growth plan needs evidence from across the organisation. Sales may see market demand. Operations may see capacity limits. Engineering may see a backlog. Finance may see the risk of committing too early.
Leadership needs those perspectives together before deciding where investment will make the greatest difference.
That is why the FOFO Process™ begins by listening.
AI Compass™ uses conversational AI to uncover the challenges, friction points and opportunities people experience across functions, roles and levels.
Slid3rs™ then helps your people rank those focus points by business value and delivery complexity. FlowRoom™ brings leadership together to agree priorities, ownership and the roadmap.
The technology supports the process. Your people make the decisions.
Turn ambition into an investment decision
Before funding the next initiative, establish what is limiting performance, what improvement would be worth and how you will measure it.
That might mean shorter engineering lead times, fewer late orders or less management time spent resolving recurring exceptions. Record the baseline and include delivery and running costs.
FOFO is technology-agnostic because the right answer might be AI, additional capability, a process change or better use of something you already own.
The article reinforces a principle at the heart of our approach: understand the business, agree what matters and then choose how to improve it.
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