Strategic Planning and Implementation

• Organizational Assessment & Capacity Building
• Strategic Planning and Management
• Strategic Business Plans
• Balanced Scorecard

Sam’s initial work with family businesses was in facilitating strategic planning processes, and he continues that work today as an integral part of each leadership and ownership succession process. In many cases, the “next” generation of family business leaders takes responsibility for the planning process while using the experience and advice of the retiring generation to guide them. Sam offers many of the most up-to-date planning techniques and always includes multi-year financial projections to ensure that plans are realistic.

Case Study

• Developing Strategies with the Next Generation Leadership Team
  • A client was ready to turn over the ownership and leadership of the family business to his two sons and daughter, all of whom had been working in the business for at least 10 years. However, he was not convinced that his adult children could work together effectively without risking their family relationships, and he wondered who would provide the entrepreneurial leadership after he retired. With the father’s consent, we began our work by educating the G2 siblings about the differences between ownership and management responsibilities. We helped them form a multi-generational governing board with two independent directors to set policies, oversee the strategic direction of the business, and make ownership decisions.

    Next, we led the 2nd generation sibling team and their key non-family executives through an entrepreneurial strategic planning process. This process, undertaken over a six-month period, produced a dynamic vision of the future, a road map for pursuing strategies to achieve that vision, measurable outcomes to be achieved, and financial projections for executing the plan over the next three years. Next, we helped the new leadership team determine the best organizational structure to keep the company’s entrepreneurial spirit while focusing on execution of key initiatives. We completed the assignment by supporting the new sibling-led leadership team in using the company’s Shared Values as a means for empowering leaders and holding them accountable for executing the priority initiatives in their new Strategic Plan.