Mentorship & Coaching

Companies, throughout their lifecycle, fall into four types of business situations: Start-up, Success-Sustaining, Realignment, and Turnaround. Although their ultimate goal is the same – to be profitable growing businesses at a rate of return that exceeds their cost of capital – they demand different management strategies and leadership styles because each presents a distinct set of challenges.

• With Start-Ups, we help entrepreneurs assemble the capabilities (funding, people, and technology) to get a new business, product, or project off the ground. We help them create the organization.

• In a Turnaround, we guide leaders through the process of taking over a business that is recognized to be in trouble (or in extreme cases insolvent), stabilizing it, and getting it back on track. Click here to learn more.

Both the Start-Up and Turnaround situations involve much resource-intensive construction work. There is not much existing infrastructure and capacity for the manager to build on. Both require that the manager make tough calls early. “Hunters”, people who can move fast and take risks, are a better fit.

• In a Success company, we help leaders preserve the vitality of a successful business while searching for the next high-return project. Nobody believes that changes are needed so the manager has to invent the challenge.

• In a Realignment, we help managers revitalize a business, product, process or project that is drifting into trouble by redesigning its vision and strategy. They have to reinvent the business, but first build awareness of the need for change. It is essential for the manager to understand the history here: what made the organization successful in the past and why it drifted into trouble. The organization is still likely to have strong people, products, and technologies.

In both the Success and Realignment situations managers will find significant strengths (people, product, and technology), but also some serious internal resistance. They typically have some time before they need to make some major calls, which is good news because they have to learn a lot about the culture and politics and begin building supportive coalitions. “Farmers”, people who display more subtle influencing skills, are a better fit.

We often see hunters stumbling into realignments and success situations as well as farmers stumbling into start-ups and turnarounds. This can be a disaster. The experienced turnaround manager facing a realignment is at risk of arriving with “the answer” too early and moving too fast, thus causing resistance. On the other hand, the experienced realignment manager in a turnaround situation is at risk of moving too slowly, expending energy on cultivating consensus when it is unnecessary to do so, needlessly wasting precious time. This is not to say that people who are good at hunting cannot farm or vice-versa. Good managers can succeed in all of the four situations, though no one is equally good at all of them.