Sarah

Sarah had built her disability support and community care business in wellington over seven years. nineteen people. Sarah was personally managing every key funder relationship, every support plan review, and every complaint from families. she had two senior support coordinators who had been with her for four and five years and were deeply experienced in the sector. they had never been given formal authority to make decisions above the routine. Sarah was working fifty-five hours a week. she had a young family. she described the feeling as being permanently half-somewhere-else.

participant satisfaction scores improved in the six months following the structural change because the coordinators were more accessible and more responsive than Sarah had been when she was managing everything personally. the two senior coordinators took on twenty-two new participants in the following year without Sarah managing the intake. Sarah worked thirty-five hours per week within eight months. the first time since starting the business that her working week was under forty hours. she was home for dinner four nights per week consistently.

the people closest to the participants were the coordinators, not Sarah. the structure just hadn't acknowledged that. once it did, the participants were better served and the founder got her life back simultaneously.