Practice 04
Strategic and operational
The business has to change shape before its next stage. We write the plan on top of the model, set the structure and deliver the change from the inside, and we stay while it beds in. The advice comes from people who have built and run businesses.
This is the practice for
- the owner whose business still depends on them
- the board without a second opinion
- the business that has to change shape before the next stage
In this practice
Business scaling
What has to change structurally for the next stage, and in what order.
Operational structuring
Reducing owner dependency, so the business is worth what it earns rather than what its owner does.
Board advisory
Reporting, governance and a second opinion for owners who do not have one.
Strategic partnerships
Joint ventures and commercial partnerships negotiated with multinational counterparts.
What the business depends on its owner for
Worth what it earns, not what its owner does.
- Customer relationshipsThe accounts that only the owner can call are the accounts a buyer discounts.
- Pricing and quotingA price list and a discount policy turn a judgement call into a process anyone can run.
- Approvals and cashDelegated authority, with limits, is what lets the owner take a fortnight off.
- Know-howWritten down, it is an asset. Held in one person's head, it is a risk.
- The second opinionA board that reads the numbers, and someone to argue with who is not an employee.
Before you start
What we would tell a board before its next stage.
A business is worth what it earns, not what its owner does.
Where the sales, the pricing and the approvals all run through one person, a buyer or an investor is buying that person's diary. Reducing the dependency is the most valuable operational work in the two years before a process, and the work owners most often leave until it is too late to do.
Write the plan on top of the model.
A plan written beside the numbers drifts from them within a quarter. Ours is built on the model, revised whenever the numbers move, and read against the actuals every month, so the board is arguing about the business rather than about the spreadsheet.
A board pack should change a decision.
Reporting nobody acts on is cost. We set up the numbers a board actually reads, the decisions that need a board rather than an owner, and a second opinion for owners who do not have one.
Delivery is the work.
We have run change from inside businesses, so the plan comes with the people, the sequence and the weeks it takes, not a deck. Structure first, then the operating change, then the raise, the sale or the partnership it was all for.
Work in this practice
Who runs it
A partner who has lived it runs your mandate.
Every plan is run by a partner who has done it. We have scaled a group as its general counsel, spun out and sold a subsidiary as its chief executive, and sat on the boards that had to live with the plan.
Meet the teamTell us what the business still depends on you for.
We will tell you what has to change first, and in what order. The earlier the call, the more we can add. The first conversation costs nothing.