You are Nadia Okonjo-Price, five weeks into the job as chief operating officer of Brackenfold Foods, a family-owned food manufacturer in Wakefield, in the north of England. Forty-one approval requests sit in the founder's tray; the oldest has waited nine working days. On 26 February the board expects your first proposal: what to do about the founder's authority.
The situation
Brackenfold has 200 employees and turned over about £26 million in 2025, three quarters in the UK and the rest in the European Union. It makes three lines, snacks, chilled ready meals and drinks, in Wakefield and at a smaller plant near Venlo in the Netherlands. Until 2019 it made only snacks; the other two lines arrived in quick succession, each with a product manager who reports to the founder and shares production, marketing and finance with the others.
Graham Pell founded the company in 1998, is still its largest shareholder and still signs every price change, every new label, every hire and every purchase order above £5,000. Twelve people report to him: the heads of production, quality, sales, marketing, finance, people, procurement and logistics, the Venlo site manager and the three product managers. In November a supermarket chain offered a private-label drinks contract worth £1.2 million. Recipe, packaging, price, production slot and label each needed his signature; the approvals took 23 working days against the customer's 15. A competitor got the contract.
The board's dashboard shows a decision-speed index of 50 out of 100, a communication index of 50 and management cost at 12% of revenue, about £3.1 million a year. Three pieces of advice on your desk disagree. A consultant Pell hired has drawn a chart with three management layers between the founder and the shop floor, first appointments due in March. The finance director, Tom Adeyemi-Clarke, has written in the margin that every layer is a salary line the margin cannot carry. And Pieter Aalders, who runs Venlo, wants to sell different flavours and pack sizes without asking Wakefield for permission.
Pell's own view is shorter: he has signed everything for twenty-eight years and the company is still here. You asked him for an hour before the board. He offered thirty minutes on Thursday, "after I've signed these".