Rory Causseaux, a founder of CHW, began serving as president of the company in 1997. When Causseaux decided the time had come for him to transition out of this role, he turned to Velocity Advisory Group. Initial discussions revealed that Rory Causseaux owned 55% of the company while the other two owners of the company, Robert Walpole and Kevin Hewett, owned the remaining 45% and both served as Vice Presidents.
Causseaux recognized the potential value new leadership would offer the company. Due to previous experiences with unintentional and unplanned transitions, he wanted to make this transition as smooth as possible, so he enlisted the help of Velocity Advisory Group.
The Approach
Velocity began by working with Causseaux and other leaders to prioritize the value drivers evaluating the business’s current operations and Causseaux’s goals for himself and the company. We determined that in the transition they would focus on improving leadership, maintaining a strong company culture, setting up the business for strategic growth, and establishing independence from the owner.
Following this assessment, Velocity facilitated a planning session that resulted in a multi-step, multi-year transition plan focused on growth and improvement in key priority areas. During the five-year transition, we acted as an accountability partner to ensure prioritization of the transition preparation needed to ready the organization. This included ongoing consulting and coaching for key members of the leadership team throughout the readiness phase as well as situational consulting and communication planning during the transition phase. Velocity continued post-transition to aid new leadership in addressing transition pain points and advising on situational issues as they arose.
The Solution
It was determined that CHW would benefit from deployment of Velocity’s Level 7 Ownership Transition System™, a phased approach designed to grow transferable value across seven key value drivers as well as sustainability within an organization, all while creating choice for the owner to be able to exit on their terms.
The Results
- 400% growth
- x3 employee count
- Acquired another firm and doubled revenue
- Grew outside of core market and that new market accounted for 30% of total revenue (and counting)
Read the full case study below or click here for a downloadable PDF.
CHW-Case-Study_Leadership-Transition-8