Services.

General Strategy Engagement

Building off work you’ve likely done to date, GrowthByDesign provides:

• Consulting tools and frameworks to bring real rigour to your strategy process
• External perspectives on likely future industry developments, based off relevant Australian and overseas case studies
• The experience to challenge your team on future direction and how you’ll execute
• Accountability to get to real decisions and a plan for action.

Ways that we can work with you include general strategy engagements (likely elapsed time 3-4 weeks) or in workshop mode (that is, pre-work, facilitated one day workshop, with synthesis and follow-up).

Growth Options Workshop

You may feel comfortable with your strategic direction, but want more guidance on your optimal growth strategy to get there.

A facilitated workshop, taking your leadership team through relevant case studies and decision-drivers, can help you accelerate landing on your preferred approach (eg, acquisitions, mergers, integration) and the options in market today for executing on these – this approach can also include preparation for implementation phase.

Merger facilitation assistance

We’re seeing more groups think about a merger of equals – getting to scale more quickly by merging with one or more groups that they believe are aligned with their values and objectives. We see this as a perfectly valid approach, but it still needs to be done with the same rigour and formality as you’d bring to an acquisition.

We’ve designed a facilitated approach to merger discussions, to ensure there is a proper level of diligence and challenge.

It’s designed as a series of three workshops, with “go/stop” decision points after each, with a view to dealing with the major merger sticking points:

• The strategic rationale (how do we make 1+1=3?),
• Valuations, and
• Decision-making and organisational structure of the merged entity from day 1 of MergeCo.

We find that third party facilitation of these discussions accelerates the decision-making process without sacrificing the necessary diligence required to avoid bad fit or misalignment of expectations.

Importantly, we have the flexibility to work with you in the manner and with the focus that will have the most impact for you, given where your business is at and what you’re trying to achieve.

Advisory Boards

It is critical for small-medium businesses to get the benefit of external perspectives and avoid the potential “echo chamber” of their own management team and their biases.

One way to get valuable external views in a cost-effective way is via an Advisory Board. An Advisory Board is a structured, collaborative method for organisations to engage with external advice. Advisory Boards act as a sounding board for an organisation’s owners.* The benefits include access to expertise or experience that you may not have in-house; objectivity and accountability; and access to new networks.

GrowthByDesign can help you design and manage an Advisory Board that will fit your purposes, by developing the Board Charter, curating the participants, and creating and managing the agenda. We’re also available to join Advisory Boards that are already in existence.

*Source: The Advisory Board Centre

Other services

• CommunityByDesign – learn more here.