Writing on
the work.

Perspective

Organization

The integration that reaches the org chart

Most acquisitions are won or lost in the first ninety days after close — not in the financial model, but in the organizational decisions that determine whether the people who explain the acquired company's performance choose to stay.

Article

M&A

The integration playbook most mid-market acquirers are still missing

Six observations on what distinguishes acquirers who compound value from those who quietly destroy it, drawn from a decade of mid-market integration work.

Perspective

Strategy

Succession in the family business

Why the succession question is rarely about succession — and what mid-market family businesses can learn from those who confronted it five years before they had to.

Perspective

Firm Practice

Why mid-market firms get the wrong consulting

A note from the Managing Partner on the structural reasons mid-market companies are systematically served by consultants whose business models are designed for someone else.

Article

Technology

AI without theatre: what disciplined adoption looks like outside of tech

Most mid-market AI programs fail less from technical missteps than from organizational ones. A note on what the disciplined version looks like.

Article

M&A

The case for operational due diligence

Why the diligence work that protects acquirers from inheriting two years of operational problems is, with surprising frequency, the diligence that gets compressed into the last week of the process.

Short Take

Strategy

The quiet cost of postponing the succession conversation

On what privately held businesses lose, quietly, in the years they delay confronting the question of what comes next.

Short Take

Operations

Supply chain resilience after the easy fixes

Most mid-market companies have completed the easy supply-chain work. The harder work — and the work that distinguishes resilient operators from theatrical ones — is now overdue.

Article

M&A

Cross-border M&A: what the family-owned acquirer needs to know

The patterns that distinguish successful cross-border acquisitions by family-owned mid-market firms — and the avoidable mistakes that make most of the unsuccessful ones predictable.

Article

Technology

The mid-market technology gap

Why the gap between what technology vendors promise mid-market companies and what those companies are equipped to absorb is widening — and what the responsible response looks like.

Short Take

Organization

Leadership transitions: a note on cadence

Most leadership transitions fail not in their content but in their cadence. A brief observation.

Short Take

M&A

When the right answer is to walk

On the underrated discipline of walking from the wrong transaction.