We are proud to offer a number of services designed to support businesses as they grapple with real-world challenges. Our work in our own businesses and years of helping clients with theirs means we provide skilled diagnostics and efficient problem-solving.

Our experience with a variety of business types and structures allows us to support a diverse clientele. Corporations, LLCs, and ESOPs are all in our wheelhouse.

From process improvement and financial analysis to performance measurement and leadership development, we create tailored consulting programs to support our clients, drive alignment, and create value. We work to align the elements of your business using a combination of:

• Strategic Alignment Diagnostics

• Strategic Thinking and Planning

• "Lonely At The Top" Guidance and Coaching

• Board Membership

• Leadership and Organizational Development

• Succession Planning, Ownership Transition, Exit Strategies, and guidance on how to sell your business

• Acquisition Due Diligence

• Bank and Bonding Preparedness and Due Diligence

For our financial services clients, we also offer specialty services in risk and operational assessments, such as:

• Acquisition Due Diligence

• Turnaround Strategies

• Management for Troubled Businesses

• Bank and Bonding Preparedness and Due Diligence

• Strategic Alignment Diagnostics

When your company’s vision, goals, strategy, and people are aligned, overall strategic alignment is high. Getting everyone on the boat and rowing in the same direction gives your company the best chance to perform at a high level and win in your market.

We help you gauge your organization’s alignment in these areas at the team, business unit, and/or enterprise level using our proprietary Snapshot Alignment Assessment. This proven tool gives insight into where your company is performing well and where there is room for improvement.

We consider things like:

• Are your organization’s vision and values clearly established?

• How aligned is your strategy with your long-term purpose?

• Do you have the right business strategy?

• How aligned is your strategy with your company’s organizational capabilities?

• Do you have the right talent strategy to achieve your vision?

• Strategic Thinking and Planning

Once you decide where you want your organization to go, it’s important to map out how you plan to get there. The Blair Group will guide you throughout these processes, as well as the critical next step: galvanizing your organization around its vision, purpose, and values so your team will be inspired to achieve your strategic plan, and beyond.

When your whole team is committed to a common purpose or vision, your company can overcome almost any obstacle.

• Does the team truly share in the organization’s purpose and goals?

• How can you align your organization to your purpose and goals?

• How can you create near-term accountability for goals and strategies?

• What does it mean to tie performance management systems to organizational goals?

When your leadership is motivated, your whole team can be motivated.

Whether it’s a knowledge, ambition, or skill set, a leader’s ability to communicate and be transparent can be transformative for the team. These skills are valuable at every level of an organization, but especially so at the leadership level.

We work with you and your leadership team to develop and refine the skills needed to listen, lead, and inspire – all parts of a healthy company culture.

We consider things like:

• Is the leadership team fully aligned?

• Which leadership training models would best suit your team?

• Who are the natural leaders in your organization?

• How is information communicated throughout your organization?

• Succession Planning, Ownership Transition, Exit Strategies, and Sale

When it’s time to sell your business or transfer it to the next generation, without a well-thought-out succession plan, you may be leaving money on the table – or leave with no one teed up to take over.

Understanding the options and opportunities long before your decision to exit, in whole or in part, is often a complex dance driven by family dynamics and/or disparate shareholder aspirations. It can take years to establish a clear plan and complete an ownership transition even in the simplest, most amicable situations.

We understand the process and its complexities because we’ve owned and sold family businesses of our own. Our consultants have counseled many other businesses in the process of leadership/ownership transition as well, including buying and selling companies, creating internal ownership transfers, and advising companies on growth succession plans involving no ownership transitions.

Striving to meet our clients where they are in the process, we work with them to meet their financial goals and vision for the future of the business. Often, this starts with guiding clients on creating a business that is so operationally successful and aligned that it’s a desirable entity for investors and employees to purchase - whether or not the existing shareholders are ready to divest.

We leverage our skills to help you create a business that is valuable for its shareholders, leaders, employees, and potential future shareholders.

Whether transitioning ownership through an ESOP or other employee ownership method, there are many considerations to be made, including culture, governance, process, and the actual mechanics of creating the legal documents and entity changes.

We bring our extensive experience to our clients so that transitions go smoothly and we work to ensure the business thrives beyond the ownership exchange.

Another strategy for growth and succession is buying businesses. We help our clients with due diligence to ensure potential acquisitions are supported by a solid look at the organizational and market position, asset condition, and fundamental boots on the ground views.

Acquiring a business can take lots of effort and resources, but often the real work begins when the deal is complete. In addition to our due diligence services, we also offer assistance with transition strategies for after the acquisition is made.

Our focus is on using a process-oriented approach to integrating the acquired company culturally and operationally.

Whether you are positioning your business for capital needs, are working to establish bonding, or are in need of other financial services, we offer advice and strategies for preparing your company to do so.

For our clients who are banks, bonding companies, and other financial services providers, we undertake due diligence services.

For our clients in the financial services and insurance industries, we offer assessments and risk profiles for investment and turnaround opportunities.

When making investment and other financial decisions that hinge on the risk profile and operational health of a business, having a trusted partner makes all the difference. Our consultants conduct reliable assessments and due diligence to help our clients better understand their exposure and advise them on how to increase the value of their investments.

Businesses can run into trouble for a range of reasons – and oftentimes these issues can be resolved. We offer strategies and on the ground services to help troubled companies turn around.

Our success in rehabilitating businesses under financial duress or bankruptcy speaks for itself – we have a nuanced understanding of what makes a business run better, and we know how to make it happen.

We offer seminars on a regularly scheduled basis. However, we are also happy to organize sessions for clients on request. Contact us to learn more.