Our Approach
Our approach is designed to help business owners, leaders and leadership teams to successfully navigate the four big transition challenges – sustained long term growth; changing leadership/management; making acquisitions or merging; or selling the business with an over-time earn-out.
The success of any organization is greatly affected by the "deep structure" that ultimately drives the bus – namely the performance character created by the:
• Clarity and quality of the organization's purpose
• Character, behaviors and competencies of the people
• Integrity of the organization's operating and delivery structure
• Alignment of effort to identify and capitalize on market opportunities.
When in place and in balance, these elements create profitable, robust business performance and also contribute to building value.
So in facing these challenges, the question is:
"What is the deep structure of the organization today and what does it need to be to not only navigate through the transition but to prosper beyond it?"
Focused on the challenge, we help create and implement a unique, actionable plan built around CounterPoint's proprietary POOLS TOOLS TALENT® framework. The 3 phases of our process are:
• Construct an Assessment of Reality
- Identifying where you are - what is helping and what is hindering
• Collectively Create the Plan
- Map out the path to the results needed on the other side of the transition
• Implement the Plan and Equip the Leaders
- Provide the leadership team with focused coaching, tools and discipline to help build the performance competencies the organization needs.
The Additional Challenge for Family Businesses
When a Family Business is facing any one of the four transition challenges, the "deep structure" has the additional layer of the family dynamics. We have significant experience in working with family businesses and the additional considerations that must be made to ensure that the welfare of the family and the business are attuned.
The family business conundrum can be summed up in this statement "is the purpose of the business to support the family or is the purpose of the family to support the business?"
To ensure the ultimate goals of the family and business are met, having a solid, cohesive understanding of the answer to this question is frequently the first step in approaching a transition challenge. To that end we have expertise in these and other processes that may be needed to create the foundation for moving forward:
• Creating Family Creeds
- Family Philosophy on the Future and Purpose of the Business
- Clarifying roles and responsibilities family members working in and not working in the business
- Structure of the business governance and other family entities (trusts)
- Guidelines for passing of stock to next generation
- Guidelines for the next generation entry into the business
- Guidelines for family communications about the business
- History and connections between the generations
• Facilitating family meetings
• Providing objective assessments and recommendations about the roles that individual family members can, should or should not play in the business.
The Additional Challenge for Seasonal Businesses
Seasonal businesses have clear and distinct cycles that are driven by the natural seasons and punctuated by an annual "start / stop". The flow of business (sales) and the primary activities vary dramatically during the year. These annual fluctuations create significant planning and management challenges to running the business. There is no luxury to continually build on momentum and learning experiences. Many seasonal businesses find their year broken into three distinct phases – planning, preparing and "running flat out". The transition time between these phases can make or break a year.
Developing people is more difficult as it may take years for those in supervisory and management roles to gain a "single year's experience" as the focus of their role will change every 3 to 5 months with the changing of the phases. Staffing also typically flows with the business cycle and so too their experience flows out when the season ends.
In working with our "seasonal" clients we realized that a proactive process of anticipation and preparation for the next cycle was a critical tool for shortening the "get up to speed" time and keeping the team and individual learning and experiences relevant. Over the past 10 years we have created a process called the Master Operating Cycle™ that is designed to assist leaders and management teams to more deliberately plan, execute and link the distinct phases. We have created and implemented the MOC™ in two different seasonal situations:
• The one year, seasonal service cycle.
• The two year, seasonal product manufacturing and distribution cycle.
The Master Operating Cycle™ is a core tool in pursuit of sustain performance and growth and once embedded into the operating culture of an organization it contributes to easing some of the difficulties of the transition challenges.
Our Approach
The Additional Challenge
for Family Businesses
The Additional Challenge for Seasonal Businesses
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