How I work with companies
Most leaders don't call an advisor because strategy is going well. They call because something isn't landing: the plan exists but the business isn't moving, or the plan itself no longer survives scrutiny, or both. The work starts by finding out which problem you actually have, because the fixes are different, and most firms sell only one of them.
Test the strategy
Every engagement starts by interrogating the plan you have: against the numbers, against the market, against the assumptions nobody has said out loud. Sometimes the strategy holds and the work ends here, which is the cheapest good news a company can buy. Sometimes it doesn't, and knowing that early is the point.
Build what’s missing
Where the strategy fails, or where none really exists, we build: honest analysis, real trade-offs, choices that exclude things. This is where market entry gets sized, acquisitions get an integration logic, and pricing gets a floor. The output isn't a vision. It's a plan with names, numbers, and a sequence in it.
Make it run
A plan worth executing deserves machinery: owners with real authority, money and calendars moved to match the words, the systems selected and stood up, and a rhythm of review that catches drift while it's still cheap to fix. This is the phase most strategies never get, and the reason most of them die.
Test the Strategy
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Build what's Missing
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Make it Run
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Test the Strategy ✳︎ Build what's Missing ✳︎ Make it Run ✳︎
What this has looked like
A health plan had won the right to offer a new state program, but the license to actually sell came with a condition: build the service coordination function the program requires, from scratch, and pass a week-long state readiness review of its quality and sufficiency. I led the build end to end: designing the function, driving the recruiting effort with HR, writing the workflows and policies, creating the training and managing its delivery, and then preparing the organization for the state itself, equipping every presenter with their content and their answers, and rehearsing the full review cycle after cycle before the real one. The plan passed decisively and was approved ahead of the intended timeline. Execution at its most literal: the strategy was approved; the license depended on proving the company could run it.
A producer of specialty compounds had developed a genuinely novel coated-fabric technology, proven in Europe, unproven in the US, and no shared view of where it should compete. We mapped the full universe of applications, from automotive interiors to luxury goods, prioritized segments on demand, margin, and go-to-market friction, and built the business case and entry plan: target customers, partnership options, supply chain readiness, and the operating model to serve the first wave. The outcome was a strategy with names and numbers in it, an executive team aligned on where to play first, and a plan concrete enough to fund.
A storied brand inside a larger portfolio had demand signals everywhere and no machinery to act on them: leads arrived, aged, and died. In a short pilot, we built the qualification framework, tested it against a live sample of real accounts, and packaged the business case for a disciplined lead-to-revenue process. Execution-gap work in miniature: the strategy said grow; the fix was the plumbing that growth actually travels through.
A respected regional producer was growing revenue while margins quietly compressed, and no one could say with confidence which products made money. We rebuilt the overhead allocation methodology from the floor up, traced the margin erosion to its operational sources, and gave leadership a pricing floor for every segment, the line below which a deal destroys value. The arguments in the room changed from opinions about products to decisions about them, and the work seeded a standing cost discipline the company now runs itself.
A nonprofit's software delivery team was under growing demand, and the assumed answer was more people. The analysis said otherwise: measured against sustainable velocity, the team was running with a fifth to a quarter of its capacity untapped, hidden behind inconsistent process flows, fragmented data, and a backlog nobody could trust for planning. We showed leadership where the capacity was and what concealed it, and laid out the path to unlock it: consistent workflows, minimum data standards, and the agile discipline to make the backlog mean something. The cheapest capacity an organization can buy is the capacity it already has; it just has to become visible first.
A major energy player faced the question every large organization now faces: an AI mandate from the top, enthusiasm and anxiety below, and no bridge between them. We worked with leadership on where AI genuinely serves the strategy, and, drawing on my doctoral research, on the human side of adoption: what these tools change about the work itself, and how to bring people through that change rather than around it. And because advice that stops at the deck is half the job, we helped manage the implementation itself, where the adoption actually happens.
If the conversation you need is about a strategy that isn't landing, or one that needs building, get in touch. Formal engagements run through Trans4mative Advisors.