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Stan Abraham
Founder & CEO |
Examples of Previous Engagements
For a residential construction company whose managers had just endured two years of poor leadership and no growth, designed a highly participative strategic-management program. The program included a workshop to develop mutual trust and open communications among the management team, a strategic-planning retreat, constructing a financial model to compute a baseline shareholder value for the business (so that strategies could be chosen on the basis of their contribution to shareholder value), a thorough operational overhaul and development of operational objectives, and developing an incentive-compensation system. The program developed a collaborative team spirit among the managers and employees (changed the culture), and enabled the company to come close to doubling sales during that first year
For a company in the water-treatment business, helped it to broaden its customer base from just one customer (a billion-dollar company), restructure the management team, develop an inventory-control system, prepare a two-year cash-flow proforma, and forge strategic alliances with technology and marketing partners
For a toxic-waste-remediation company with proprietary technology, whose revenues had slowed to a trickle because of protracted regulatory requirements, helped prepare a business plan to raise $9 million. The plan included industry and market analyses, financial projections, risk analysis, and a marketing plan. Separately, helped the company assess the commercial feasibility for a related technology
For a small graphics-supplies business unit that couldn't determine whether to grow through acquisition, helped it sort through its motives for such a strategy--including vertical integration, expanding its customer base, broadening its product line, etc.--and sell its ideas to divisional management through a PowerPoint presentation
For an ambitious information-services new venture contemplating going public, helped prepare a strategic plan and appropriate SEC registration materials. The assignment included a comprehensive assessment of numerous healthcare and retail market segments and market-entry strategies, and complete marketing, operational, and financial plans
For a holding company, worked as a member of the due-diligence team in investigating 13 companies that the client was considering acquiring. My role was to assess the managers and executives of each company, how the company was organized, and its future strategic outlook. (An offer was tendered for only one of the 13 companies.)
For an academic department at a university that had reached a point of diminishing returns as it tried to do everything with extremely limited resources, facilitated a strategic-planning process whose initial purpose was to identify alternatives it could focus on (it had never before done strategic planning). Scenarios were created around each alternative, and it took faculty members three months of heated discussion and argument to get away from wanting to do all of them and focus their energies and resources on just one. After that, implementation was relatively easy. This academic department won the prestigious 2003 Excellence in Strategic Planning Award of the Association for Strategic Planning on October 14, 2003.
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New Book On
Strategic Analysis |
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QUOTE OF THE DAY |
"Strategy is a handful of decisions that drive or shape most of a company's subsequent actions, are not easily changed once made, and have the greatest impact on whether a company meets its strategic objectives...This handful of decisions consists of selecting the company's strategic posture, identifying the source or sources of competitive advantage, developing the business concept, and constructing tailored value-delivery systems."
Kevin P. Coyne and Somu Subramaniam, "Bringing Discipline to Strategy," The McKinsey Quarterly, No. 2000 3 Strategy (originally)
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