Removing Leadership Barriers to Growth

Client: Healthcare advisory firm.

Service: Organization Assessment.

The Challenge

Like many founder CEO led companies, our healthcare client struggled with both tension between the co-founders and a culture of nepotism and loyalty.  Although growing rapidly, the organization design and culture were ill equipped to support the strategic direction of the company.  Despite recent PE investment, the Board had serious concerns about the firm’s ability to grow any further given the leadership and organization capabilities in place.  The co-founder leadership framework, structure and decision making were slowing the company down and creating a toxic organization.

Our Solution

• Conducted a comprehensive organization assessment with a specific focus on assessing strategic alignment, leadership strengths, organizational structure, decision making, and organization agility.
• Conducted 1:1 interviews with senior management team members and the private equity investors.
• Led focus groups with key employee groups, including high potential employees to determine the level of strategic and organization alignment across the firm.
• Conducted our proprietary on-line organization assessment diagnostic with all employees to better understand specific improvement opportunities.

The Results

As a result of our work, the firm company hired an external professional CEO from a top advisory firm to drive a broader growth agenda.  By transitioning the founder leadership into board advisory capacity, they were able to strengthen employee engagement and culture. A more simplified leadership structure resulted in the kind of faster decision making needed to launch new products and services for key clients. The newly established CEO has transitioned extremely well, the Board has renewed confidence in the healthcare investment, and the firm is growing a rapid pace while improving employee engagement.