I walked into that first session in October 2024 and knew something was off.
Six brilliant people sat around the table. Every single one of them knew their stuff – manufacturing, R&D, operations, you name it. But when I asked who was making the final calls on major decisions, they all kind of looked at each other.
“We vote on it,” someone finally said.
Real talk – that’s when I knew we had work to do.
The Problem With Democracy in Business
Here’s the truth: democracy is fantastic for nations. It’s terrible for businesses.
This manufacturing company had just lost their owner. He’d moved on and left the leadership team to figure things out. And these weren’t just any six people – they were smart, dedicated, and genuinely cared about the business. But without a clear decision-maker, they’d turned every major choice into a committee decision.
Sounds fair, right? Everyone gets a voice. Everyone votes. Majority rules.
Except they’d just posted a million-dollar loss in 2024.
You can have the smartest people in the room, but if no one has the authority to make the final call, you end up rowing in circles. One person wants to go left, another wants to go right, so you compromise and go nowhere. Meanwhile, your competitors are making decisions and moving forward.
The owner – who still had his money in the game – would occasionally poke his head in with direction. “This is where I want the organization to go,” he’d say. And rightfully so, it was his investment. But then the six of them would be left to figure out how to get there. Through voting. Which meant slow decisions, watered-down strategies, and a whole lot of frustration.
The Groundhog Day Nobody Talks About
You know what nobody tells you about being stuck? It’s exhausting.
These folks weren’t lazy. They were working their tails off. But it was like being on a treadmill – tons of effort, no forward movement. The same issues kept coming up meeting after meeting. The same arguments. The same lack of clarity on who owned what.
I’ve seen this pattern hundreds of times. Good people, working hard, genuinely trying to do the right thing. But without structure and clear accountability, they’re just burning energy.
The thing that struck me most was the fatigue in the room. Not physical tiredness – this was something deeper. It was the exhaustion of trying really hard and getting nowhere. Of having the same conversations on repeat. Of wanting to grow but not knowing how to break through the ceiling they’d hit.
If you’re reading this and thinking “that sounds familiar,” you’re not alone. It’s probably the most common pattern I see in businesses between 10 and 250 employees. What got you here genuinely won’t get you to the next level.
When the Real Issue Isn’t What You Think It Is
Fast forward to their annual meeting in December. We had 70 issues on the board. Seventy.
One of them was “Do we need to update the handbook?”
Seems straightforward enough, right? Handbooks need updating. Policies change. Laws change. Let’s tackle it and move on.
But we started digging into it – this is what we call IDS (Identify, Discuss, Solve) – and something wasn’t adding up. The more we talked, the less it seemed like a handbook problem.
Turns out, there was one person in the organization who just didn’t fit the culture. He wanted to do things his own way, come and go on his own schedule, operate outside the team norms. And instead of addressing that directly, the leadership team was trying to modify his behavior through policy updates.
They were adding rules to the handbook to manage one person’s behavior.
Listen, I get it. Having tough conversations about people is hard. Especially when you like the person. This wasn’t about them being a bad human – he just wasn’t the right fit for what this organization needed. But rather than face that difficult reality, they were creating bolt-on policies as workarounds.
Once we identified the actual issue – a culture fit problem, not a handbook problem – I asked them a simple question: “If this person issue is solved, do we still need to talk about the handbook?”
The room went quiet for a second. Then someone said, “No. That solves it.”
That’s the magic of getting to root causes. Half the issues on your list aren’t actually problems – they’re symptoms of deeper issues you haven’t addressed yet.
The Shift That Changed Everything
As we worked through the accountability chart – basically defining who’s responsible for what – two people started stepping into their roles in a completely different way. The visionary and the integrator stopped deferring and started leading.
There was this moment during one of our sessions where a decision needed to be made. The old pattern would’ve been to discuss it, debate it, maybe take a vote. Instead, the integrator listened to everyone’s input, acknowledged the different perspectives, and then said something I’ll never forget:
“This isn’t a democracy. We need you to push back and share your thoughts – that’s critical. But at the end of the day, someone has to make the decision so we can move forward. And then we all need to get behind that decision.”
The energy in the room completely shifted.
It wasn’t dictatorial. It wasn’t dismissive. It was clear. Everyone still had a voice. Everyone was still heard. But there was finally a decision-maker who could take all that input and move the organization forward.
Spoiler alert: clarity feels like relief.
The Turnaround Nobody Saw Coming
By the time we wrapped that first annual meeting in December 2024, something had shifted. The team that had been spinning their wheels just two months earlier was energized. They had clarity. They had structure. They knew who owned what.
Then came 2025.
At their annual meeting in December 2025, they shared the numbers. The same company that lost a million dollars in 2024 posted a million dollars in profit in 2025. That’s a two-million-dollar swing in one year.
Was it because they suddenly got smarter? Worked harder? Found some magic strategy?
No. They were already smart and hardworking. What changed was the clarity. They finally knew who was responsible for what. They had a clear decision-maker. They’d addressed the people issues they’d been dancing around. They’d defined where they were going and what needed to happen to get there.
Simple? Yes.
Easy? Not even close.
The owner called me recently to check in. He’s pleased with where they’re heading. More importantly, the leadership team isn’t exhausted anymore. They’re energized. They’re making progress. They’re finally moving forward instead of spinning in place.
The Hardest Simple Thing You’ll Ever Do
Let’s be real – mechanically, all of this is simple. Accountability chart? Simple. Defining roles? Simple. Getting clear on who makes final decisions? Simple.
But simple doesn’t mean easy.
The magic isn’t in the tools or the framework. The magic is in having the space to have really difficult conversations. To look at that person who’s holding your business back – who you genuinely like as a human – and acknowledge that they’re not the right fit. To stop managing by committee because it feels safer and step into actual leadership. To face the truth about what’s not working instead of creating workarounds.
I’ve had sessions where there were tears. Where people got genuinely upset with each other. Where the tension in the room was so thick you could cut it with a knife. And you know what? Those are the sessions that get the highest ratings afterward.
Because growth doesn’t happen in the comfortable moments. It happens when you’re willing to work through the uncomfortable ones.
If you’re a business owner in your 60s or early 70s, still with fire in your belly to grow but feeling stuck at a ceiling – I see you. You’re not alone in this. The exhaustion of Groundhog Day is real. The fear of making the wrong call with people you’ve known for years is real. The frustration of working this hard and not seeing the results you want is real.
But here’s what I’ve learned after doing this for years: the clarity you’re looking for is available. The breakthrough is possible. Sometimes you just need someone from outside to help you see what you can’t see from inside.
You don’t need to vote your way to success. You need structure, clarity, and the courage to have the conversations you’ve been avoiding.
The question isn’t whether it’s possible to break through your ceiling. It’s whether you’re ready to do the work to get there.
Greg Giniel is an EOS Implementer helping leadership teams gain clarity, build accountability, and break through growth ceilings. If you’re tired of the same issues repeating year after year, let’s talk about what’s possible for your business.