Eleven people, and all eleven have run something
We hire operators, not graduates. The median age here is forty-one and everybody has carried a budget of their own.
Theory started because two of us kept being hired to clean up after firms who had sold a strategy and left before it had to work. We decided the document should be the deliverable, the fee should be fixed, and the engagement should end.
That means we turn work down. If a problem needs two years of hands inside your business, that is a hire, not a consultancy, and we will say so in the first meeting.
We publish our findings where clients let us, because the work is not a secret method. It is reading your numbers properly and telling you the truth about them.
- 2009
- 11
- 6 weeks
- 1 in 4
Who does the work
Andrea Barrett
Ran operations for a regional distributor for nine years before this. Leads costing and pricing work.
Devon Wright
Plant manager, then group operations director in manufacturing. Leads capacity and throughput engagements.
Nadine Ellis
Twelve years in HR leadership across two family-owned groups. Leads succession work and the interviews on every engagement.
What clients say afterwards
Read all the reviewsFound two product lines we had been selling below cost for four years.
Twenty-eight pages and our managers were acting on it the following week.
Told us in the first meeting that half of what we asked for was a hiring problem. They were right.
The working session was uncomfortable, which I now think was the point.
Ninety minutes, and about one in four ends with us saying no