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Practice 01

Corporate strategy

Strategy resets, portfolio choices and three-year plans built with your executive team — then governed like a board paper.

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Where the strategy conversation starts
Where the strategy conversation starts

Where the strategy conversation starts

Mid-market strategy rarely fails for lack of ambition; it fails because too many initiatives compete for the same management bandwidth. Our work begins by forcing the list shorter. In the first two weeks we interview the executive team, read the numbers behind the plan, and write a one-page problem statement the board signs before any advice is offered.

The diagnosis is deliberately uncomfortable. Pricing power is tested against customer evidence, not instinct. Channel economics are rebuilt from transaction data. The two or three bets that deserve capital are separated from the dozen that merely deserve attention.

  • Reset of a group strategy after a stalled diversification programme
  • Portfolio prioritisation where capital is rationed across business units
  • Three-year plan with milestones a non-executive can audit

What the board receives

The deliverable is not a deck; it is a decision architecture. Options are presented with trade-offs explicit, a recommendation is made, and — where we disagree with management — the dissenting view is written down for the board to weigh. Each initiative carries an owner, a date and the number that will prove it worked or kill it early.

Implementation is scoped separately because it should be. Most clients retain a monthly strategy session for four to six quarters afterwards, which costs a fraction of the diagnosis and does most of the good.

Common questions

Corporate strategy — what boards ask

If your question is not here, ask it directly — the first conversation is free and candid.

Common questions

How long does a strategy reset take?
Diagnosis two weeks, evidence three to four, decision inside one more. Most mandates close in eight to ten weeks — long enough to be defensible, short enough that the market has not moved underneath us.
Do you write the plan or facilitate ours?
Ours is a written recommendation the board can adopt or reject — facilitation alone produces documents nobody owns. We build the plan with your executives in working sessions, so it is ours jointly and executable on Monday.
What if the board disagrees with the recommendation?
Then the dissenting view we wrote down becomes the most useful page in the pack. Boards frequently amend; what they value is that the trade-offs were made explicit rather than smuggled.
Can you help us communicate the strategy internally?
Yes — investor letters, town halls and cascade packs for the top fifty managers are a scoped add-on. Communication that reaches the front line is where most strategies actually fail.
Related practices

Often engaged together

International Market Entry

Test strategy against markets you do not yet sell in.

Growth & Transformation

Execute the strategy when growth stalls or doubles.

Board Advisory

Keep the strategy governed between meetings.

Next step

Bring us the decision, not the brief

The most useful first conversation starts with the decision the board cannot close. We will tell you within the hour whether we are the right firm for it.

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