England Went Down to 10 Men. What Happens When Your Business Loses a Key Player?

I was up in the early hours watching England play Mexico with my family. 

And what a game. 

Severe weather delayed kick-off by 60 minutes. England went 2-1 ahead before half-time after Jude Bellingham scored twice in 98 seconds. Then, in the 54th minute, Jarell Quansah was shown a straight red card following a VAR review. 

Harry Kane later scored from the penalty spot, and England held on for a 3-2 win after playing more than 40 minutes with ten men.  

Watching it, one business question kept coming back to me. 

What happens when you suddenly lose one of your key players? 

Football and business are obviously not the same. 

But it is a question worth asking. 

If one person is unavailable, what stops? 

Think about your own business tomorrow. 

Your operations manager is unexpectedly off. 

The person who knows a major client inside out is unavailable. 

A senior team member leaves. 

Or you, the owner, simply cannot be there to answer every question. 

What happens next? 

Do decisions stall? 

Do client queries wait? 

Does a process stop because only one person really knows how it works? 

Does somebody spend half a day searching through emails, folders and old messages trying to work out what should happen next? 

And how quickly does your phone start ringing? 

Often, the deeper problem is not the person who is missing. 

It is the structure around the role. 

At Naylor Accountancy Services, this is one of the areas we look at when helping business owners think beyond the numbers and build a business that works better without depending too heavily on them. 

The aim is not to make good people disposable. 

It is to stop important work being dependent on one person's memory, one inbox or one person's constant availability. 

You can usually spot dependency before it becomes a crisis.

There are often warning signs. 

Routine decisions keep coming back to you. 

Key information lives in somebody's head rather than in a process the team can follow. 

Clients only want to speak to one particular person. 

The same task gets completed differently depending on who does it. 

Time off is followed by days of catching up, answering questions and fixing things that stalled while someone was away. 

You may have become so used to this that it simply feels like running a business. 

But if every absence creates disruption, every new team member need knowledge transferred from scratch, and every important decision finds its way back to the owner, growth can become harder than it needs to be. 

You add more people. 

You win more work. 

But you remain in the middle of everything. 

Try the one-week test.

Pick one key role in your business. 

Including yours. 

Now ask four questions: 

1. What work would stop if this person were unavailable for a week?  

2. Who could make their routine decisions?  

3. Are the key processes written down and actually used?  

4. Does the team know where problems go and when they will be reviewed?  

Be honest with the answers. 

Because a documented process nobody follows is not much help. 

Neither is an organisational chart that says one person owns a responsibility when everybody still asks you. 

Good structure gives your business more options. 

Clearer roles, documented processes, regular review points and agreed decision routes do not guarantee that nothing will ever go wrong. 

They can, however, make it easier for your team to respond without every problem immediately escalating back to you. 

That is the thinking behind the Structure Model side of the NAS Signature System: looking at owner dependency, accountability, business rhythm and the processes that keep work moving consistently. 

For many owner-managed businesses, this is where an uncomfortable question appears. 

Have you built a business, or have you built a bigger job for yourself? 

England are now through to face Norway in the World Cup quarter-final in Miami at 10pm BST on Saturday 11 July.  

Your business, unfortunately, does not get a fixture list for its next unexpected problem. 

So perhaps the question to ask before it arrives is this: 

Could your business keep moving if one of your key players was suddenly unavailable? 

If the honest answer is no, Naylor Accountancy Services can help you look at where the dependency sits and what needs strengthening first. 

To speak with our team, contact: 

• Main office: 01892 807 001  
• Chichester office: 01243 776088  
• Bourne End office: 01628 530805  
• Email: [email protected]