CHALLENGE
A privately owned personal care company brought in a new CEO to prepare the business for its Initial Public Offering. Meanwhile, the company was losing market share, had no coherent strategy for growth and had broken operating processes.
In addition, we needed to support the CEO to be prepared to run a public company within 100-days.
ACTIONS
After evaluating the business and organizational context, we convinced the CEO and the board to delay the IPO. Next, we leveraged our core processes and worked with the leadership team to put in place a new strategic plan and strengthen their operational and organizational processes.
RESULTS
The team aligned around a new strategic imperative that enhanced its competitive positioning and was well-communicated internally and externally. Operational performance improved, increasing confidence in the ability to execute. Market share trends were turned around, creating positive momentum. Then, “a funny thing happened on the way to the IPO”. The company was bought out by another private equity firm for $2.3B, $700MM more than the original IPO target valuation, three months later than planned.
The CEO told us “I could have put the strategy and operational improvements in place myself. But I never could have done it as fast as you helped us do it.”
