Exploration: Charting Your Course

Gaining clarity for navigating the challenges of scaling, selling, or engaging in family succession starts with exploration. This phase is usually completed in 90-days or less and results in a documented understanding of the preferred future, current reality, gaps, degree of alignment between stakeholders and recommended course of action for the following 12 - 24 months.

The key to a successful transition (scale, sale, succession) begins with exploring your unique situation. Both academic research in psychology and business along with real world experience confirm that the key to a successful transition is to ensure you begin the journey with as much clarity, confidence, and control as possible. As the adage goes “If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time”.

Our approach includes:

• Pre-Retreat Assessments and Interviews
• 1.5 - 2 day Retreat
• Written Report With Actionable Recommendations
• 90-Minute Debrief

This process takes about 90-days. For some owners this clarified expression of future state and the process for getting there are enough to navigate without ongoing support. Others choose to engage us for support in gaining alignment. *Family businesses: we encourage participation by all adult family members.

Design: Gaining Alignment for Your Transition

Even with a clear goal in mind, the tenuous waters of transition contain obstacles that could lead to stranding and wreckage. Maintaining family alignment while gaining alignment with the leadership team, employees, external advisors, and other professional service providers can present additional challenges. Navigating uncertainty and complexity means people have to think, be, and do differently - this is the intersection of business and psychology.

For some owners and their families, a map is not enough. This phase is focused on preparing owners, the family, and the business for transition success. It is a highly customized phase designed to meet the unique needs of your situation. The average engagement length is 12 - 24 months and focuses on two key areas:

1. Conquering Obstacles: As the journey unfolds, new challenges and opportunities often emerge. Business owners, whether family-related or not, frequently start with incomplete ideas, conflicting thoughts, or unresolved disputes, especially during the early stages of change. For family businesses, these issues may stem from longstanding family narratives that influence both business decisions and personal dynamics. For non-family businesses, the challenges can arise from differing visions and priorities among stakeholders. The involvement of professional service providers—such as lawyers, wealth advisors, and bankers—adds further complexity, making it essential to ensure alignment with the owner's goals. The success of any transition hinges on maintaining this alignment among all stakeholders throughout the process.

2. Building capacity: With clarity, shared understanding, and alignment about the preferred future state, owners and operational managers can work together more efficiently to build the capacity needed for achieving transition success. Capacity building is the activity that supports closing the gaps by preparing the owners, opertional leaders, family members (in a family business), and the business itself to achieve the preferred future state.

Business psychologists work with owners and their management teams just as sports psychologists work with elite athletes to help them excel in new ways. Our proven approach helps owners, family members, and their management teams to build the necessary alignment and organizational capacity for achieving the desired future state.

This work is tailored to the unique needs of your business in the context of a successful transition and can include:

• Separation of management and governance structures.
• Assessing and developing organizational culture.
• Advancing leadership development efforts.
• Understanding and improving financial health in light of transition goals.
• Executive coaching to support an efficient transition of MOM (Management, Ownership, & Money).
• Development or alignment of the management operating system to support an effective transition.
• Strategic CFO level support to gain greater clarity and control over the financial health and decision-making in the business and family.

Implementation: Supporting Your Journey

We work in the deepest and sometimes most vulnerable places of our client’s lives. That means our engagements are never just a contract rather, they are highly personalized trust-based relationships. In many cases our relationships continue for years with something as simple as knowing they can always “phone a friend” when the going gets tough—or to celebrate their success. In other cases we work at the governance (family or business) level to provide external expertise and support through unique phases of the organizational or family life cycle.

This work can include:

• Coaching: To support governance and/or operational management with implementation of annual strategic planning and accountability.
• Coaching: Providing guidance and support through transactions that require owners align and resolve input from multiple external advisors. This is a particularly challenging dynamic for owners as they engage with experts who speak different expert languages, introduce competing priorities, and are motivated by money in motion (aka: a closed deal).
• Coaching: Facilitating monthly and/or quarterly financial health and management review meetings
• Coaching: Providing 1:1 executive coaching to support goal achievement and change management.
• Coaching/Consulting: Support for navigating family dynamics challenges.
• Consulting: Assessment delivery to support organizational culture development.
• Consulting: Facilitating annual family and/or management team retreats to help owners keep their business and family on course for continued success.
• Consulting: Helping navigate conflict when it becomes a barrier to success.
• Consulting: Acting as a thinking partner for organizational leaders as new challenges and opportunities arise.