How a private equity-backed artisanal food manufacturer stemmed losses, rebuilt the leadership team, and positioned the company for growth

Through a combination of add-on acquisitions, capital investment, and the integration of three portfolio companies, a leading private equity firm transformed a local artisanal food manufacturer into a national company with a range of products and a portfolio of brands. To further scale the company and increase performance and profitability, the private equity firm identified the need to address operational inefficiencies, optimize the organizational structure, and develop a high-performing and agile leadership team.

To drive future success, the CEO of the company, an industry veteran, recognized the need to optimize the organizational structure, reduce the organization’s reliance on him for day-to-day operations, and change how the senior leadership team worked together. Simultaneously, the incomplete integration of recent acquisitions was negatively impacting operations and the organization’s supply chain.

The private equity firm engaged Brimstone to help the CEO quickly onboard two senior team members, develop a high-performing and agile team, and position the company to deliver strong operational success and top-line growth.

Brimstone worked with the CEO, the leadership team, and the private equity firm to put in place the conditions for success. Brimstone began by taking the senior leadership team, including the new hires, through Brimstone’s Strategy and Leadership Team Alignment. Strategy and Leadership Team Alignment is Brimstone’s proven methodology to help organizations gain – and sustain – the coordination, collaboration, and clarity that deliver results. It is designed to align the senior team by clarifying strategy and setting the stage for strategy execution by engaging and aligning the organization and driving the senior team to high performance. Strategy and Leadership Team Alignment linchpin is the Strategic Business Framework (SBF)- an actionable framework that serves as the bridge between strategy and execution. The SBF captures the organization’s key stakeholders, objectives, over-arching strategies, long-term strategies, short-term initiatives, and metrics to track performance.

In addition to taking the senior leadership team through Strategy and Leadership Team Alignment and working with the team to develop an SBF, Brimstone supported the leadership team as they created and aligned on:

• “Rules of engagement” to model how the team would work together
• A comprehensive communications plan to ensure that the organization would stay aligned going forward
• A realistic set of operating mechanisms to help the senior leadership team manage the business

Additionally, Brimstone worked with the leadership team to share this new way of working with the broader organization through an Organizational Alignment Summit with all salaried employees.

“The process is becoming a new way of doing things, and people are embracing it. The team feel amongst the executives is great – supportive and collaborative and a complete change from the dynamic this time last year. I am very appreciative of the help the Brimstone team provided. It has allowed me to modify how I run the business. In my opinion, the business is much better now than it has ever been.”  – Artisanal Food Manufacturer CEO

Brimstone worked with the private equity firm, the CEO of the company, and the company’s leadership team to address operational inefficiencies, optimize the organizational structure, and develop a high-performing and agile leadership team.

• Two leadership team members were onboarded
• The leadership team is aligned and working in a new way to deliver positive results
• A second level of leaders was developed to support the company’s growth strategy
• Revenue accelerated and the company returned to profitability