Most mid-market L&D reviews celebrate hours logged, programmes run and feedback scores. None of those tell you whether anyone can do anything they couldn't do last April. Capability is the output; hours are just the receipt.

Every April, the forms go out, the ratings come back clustered around the middle, and increments are decided the way they were always going to be. Everyone knows the appraisal is theatre. The cost is paid by the people who actually perform.

The job description says one thing. The role, five years and several reorganisations later, does something else entirely. Nobody rewrote it because nobody was ever explicitly responsible for noticing it had drifted.

Adding senior hires to a founder-dependent business rarely fixes the bottleneck. Without a change in decision rights, every new hire just queues at the same desk.

Most mid-market businesses can name their leadership team and their frontline staff. Almost none can name who's actually ready to lead next.