Client Insight
The Business Was Working. But Year Five Still Felt Like Year One.
Jason Wall had built a company clients trusted.
The work was good. The team was experienced. New business kept coming.
But almost five years in, something still did not feel right.
The Business Was Not Broken
Jason had learned how to run the company he had. The harder question was what had to change next.
Devise was not a turnaround. Clients trusted the company, the team knew how to deliver, and Jason knew the business inside and out.
That was part of what made the problem difficult to see.
Most new business still came through relationships and referrals. Jason remained deeply involved in work that eventually needed to move further into the company, while sales needed clearer ownership.
The different ways clients could work with Devise also needed to make more sense from the outside, and some of the company’s strongest people were reaching the point where the structure around them needed to evolve too.
Nothing had suddenly stopped working. The company had simply become very good at repeating a version of itself Jason already knew how to run.
The business still worked.
It just took more effort to get somewhere new.
“Before working with Rupert Rodney, I felt like the business had plateaued. Going into year five, everything was operating in a similar way to year one. I had figured out how to generate revenue at a certain level, but there was something missing in terms of consistency, growth and overall structure.”
Jason Wall
Founder & CEO, Devise
In Jason’s Words
“Year five felt pretty much the same as year one.”
Before there was a diagnosis, Jason could already feel the pattern.
The First Job Was to See the Business Clearly
The problem was not effort. Important parts of the company were no longer moving together cleanly.
The Sprint did not begin by asking Jason to work harder, hire more people or adopt somebody else’s growth system. It began by looking closely at what Devise had already built.
The company had real trust, strong client relationships, deep hiring judgment and a way of working Jason genuinely believed in.
But the structure around those strengths had not evolved at the same speed. The company was creating more value than its public positioning made clear. New growth still relied too much on relationships Jason already had. Too much knowledge and decision-making still passed through him personally.
Some of the company’s strongest people also needed a clearer path for what came next.
The answer was not to invent a different company.
It was to make the company Jason had already built easier to understand, easier to operate and less dependent on him carrying so much of it personally.
“Through the Clarity Sprint, the biggest shift was recognizing the need to intentionally design structure within the business. The process helped surface gaps I wasn’t seeing and gave me a clearer framework for how to move forward in a more consistent and scalable way.”
Jason Wall
Founder & CEO, Devise
What the Sprint Produced
Seeing the pattern was only useful if Jason could make decisions from it.
The work turned what was happening inside Devise into something concrete enough to challenge, refine and use.
Artifact 01
The Structural Evolution Narrative
This put language around what was already true about Devise, where the company had outgrown parts of its existing structure, and what did not need to be thrown away simply because the business was entering a new stage.
Artifact 02
Devise Operating Architecture
This moved the conversation from diagnosis into structure. Instead of treating every part of Devise as one undifferentiated service, it began giving different client needs and different parts of the team clearer places inside the company.
Artifact 03
The Devise Scale Model
This tested what a materially larger Devise could look like without assuming that growth simply meant adding more people. It was a directional model, not a prediction.
One Thing Became Obvious Quickly
Devise was explaining what it did. It was not making what the client got clear enough.
Jason saw the difference while reviewing one existing piece of sales material.
“I realized we were spending too much time describing what we do, rather than clearly communicating what the client actually gets. That was a major shift.”
Jason Wall
Founder & CEO, Devise
That shift is now changing how Devise presents the business, moving from a traditional recruiting model toward positioning Devise as a talent infrastructure partner.
This Was Not a Template
Jason pushed back. The work got better.
Jason did not agree with every recommendation.
That mattered.
One early direction solved a real commercial problem, but it also moved Devise toward a kind of company Jason had deliberately spent years trying not to build.
His resistance became more information about the business.
So we kept working.
What already worked could remain.
What needed to change could change.
The work had to become true to the company.
“For me, the long-term value is in having a clearer structure and direction to build from, without feeling like I need to completely overhaul what already works.”
Jason Wall
Founder & CEO, Devise
In Jason’s Words
“We could adapt and still create value from the process.”
Thirty Days Later
The company was already being organized differently.
The biggest change was not that Jason had received a set of documents.
It was that he had started making different decisions from a clearer picture of the company.
01
More leadership moved into the team.
Experienced people inside Devise took on clearer leadership responsibility. The goal was not to remove Jason from the company, but to stop making his direct involvement the default answer to every question.
02
Sales had clear ownership.
New business could no longer be something the company focused on only when delivery gave it room. Someone now had explicit responsibility for moving it forward. That gave Devise a better chance of developing demand intentionally instead of relying primarily on relationships already inside Jason’s network.
03
Different client needs had clearer places inside the company.
The Sprint helped separate different ways a client might need Devise without making the company feel fragmented. That gave the team clearer commercial choices while preserving the parts of the existing business Jason most believed in.
04
Good people had a clearer path forward.
This was one of the outcomes Jason had not entered the Sprint expecting. Devise was good at developing people, but some strong team members could eventually reach the edge of the structure available to them. Jason could now see a different path for experienced people inside the company.
“Beyond specific changes, the process helped me better understand what I’m doing, why I’m doing it and where the business is heading.”
Jason Wall
Founder & CEO, Devise
What Jason Had Not Seen Before
“I had nowhere else for them to go. And now I do.”
Then the Decisions Met the Business
The Sprint ended. The evidence kept moving.
The Sprint ended.
Within weeks, the team was adapting to the new structure. More leadership was moving into the team, and the clearer commercial structure was beginning to show up in real client conversations.
The company was also putting support underneath those decisions rather than leaving them on paper.
The work was no longer something Jason had received.
The company was starting to operate from it.
The Larger Pattern
Sometimes a good company gets very good at repeating itself.
That can be harder to see than a company that is obviously struggling. Customers still buy. People still work hard. Revenue still comes in. The CEO still solves whatever appears in front of them.
So another year passes. Then another.
Eventually, the same problems start looking normal. Too much still depends on the CEO. Sales gets attention when delivery gives it room. Good people reach the edge of the structure available to them.
The company keeps moving.
But it keeps returning to familiar ground.
That was the pattern Jason had begun to feel inside Devise.
The Clarity Sprint gave him enough distance to see several connected problems at the same time.
Then we worked through them until the decisions fit the business he actually wanted to build.
Some came from our analysis. Some came from Jason. Some only appeared because he disagreed with us first.
The result was a CEO who could see what came next more clearly, and a company that had already started moving differently because of it.
Jason’s Answer
Would he recommend Rupert Rodney to another founder or CEO?
Jason Wall
Founder & CEO, Devise
If This Feels Familiar
The business may not need more effort. It may need a clearer read on what is getting in the way.
The Clarity Sprint is a 30-day engagement for established companies led by founders or CEOs where the business still works, but growth has started taking more effort than it should.