Do you know if the company you just bought has the right strategy — and the team to execute it?

The numbers got a hard look before close. Two things usually didn't: whether the company holds a defensible position in its market, and whether the leadership team can execute the plan. We test both in the first 100 days, and again at each reset across the hold.

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The problem

Financial models get stress-tested. Management teams rarely do.

By the time a leadership gap shows up, you're twelve months into the hold and behind on the plan.

Standard 100-day plans cover systems and process. They rarely answer the two questions that actually determine whether a deal's thesis holds: can the people execute it, and does the company hold a real, defensible position in its market.

At exit, the same two questions set the multiple. A buyer pays more for a company that wins on something other than price and runs without depending on one person.

Our point of view

Start outside the company, not inside it.

Most planning starts inside the company: its strengths, its team, its goals. That produces a plan the leadership team likes. It doesn't tell you whether the market will pay for it.

We start with the market and the competitors, then work inward. The company's position gets tested against what its customers can buy elsewhere before anyone builds a plan around it. An exit buyer will run that same test in diligence. Better to run it first, while there's still time in the hold to act on the answer.

Four questions, always in this order.

Skipping the order is the trap — it produces a wish list, not a strategy. The full method is published: Visionary Advantage: Find the Position Your Industry Says Doesn't Exist (Craig Paxson, 2026). What follows is the short version.

1
What does the market support?
A proprietary read of demand and positioning room, paired with a scored competitor view across the customer's full buying journey.
2
How do we make money?
The business commits to one of eight distinct ways to make money — chosen deliberately, before the value proposition is written.
3
What is our value proposition?
Built inside the profit model, never before it — including a formal check on whether the position is specific enough to require turning some customers away.
4
What must we be capable of?
Every commitment translates into an operational requirement, checked against reality and logged as a prioritized, actionable gap register.

Where we fit in the hold

Pick the read that matches where you are in the hold.

When the position is the question

Competitive Advantage Blueprint

A half-day, facilitated session that produces a documented competitive position — the specific, deliberate reason a customer chooses this company over anyone else.

What you learn: Whether this company has a real reason to be chosen over its competitors, or is winning on price and relationships that won't survive a sale.

Market & competitor read
Profit model selection
Positioning statement
Capabilities matrix & gap register

Half-day, in-person or remote.

When the team is the question

FirmFoundation Assessment with Predictive Index

A live, facilitated session — the leadership team scores the company's operating foundation together and argues its way to agreement. Covers up to five key employees.

What you learn: Whether the leadership team you inherited can carry the plan, and where the operating foundation will give way first.

Seven-category operating assessment, scored live
Predictive Index reports on key employees
Team Type read
Management strategy guide per person

Live session with leadership team.

First 100 days, then every year

Competitive Advantage Summit

A two-day, fully facilitated strategic plan. Both of the above, plus the complete plan to get there — vision through execution gaps, in one document.

What you learn: Both answers, plus a year's plan the board can hold management to.

Everything in the Blueprint and FirmFoundation
Six External Pressures read
Industry benchmark data
A year of live tooling access

Two days, in-person, co-facilitated.

Repeated annually, with quarterly reviews between, so the plan stays current through exit.

For the firm

One method across the whole portfolio.

Every portfolio company gets the same method, the same scoring, and the same deliverables. That gives the deal team something it rarely has: operating reads it can compare across companies, instead of a stack of reports from different consultants using different frameworks.

Comparable scores. FirmFoundation scores and gap registers use the same categories at every company, so you can see which leadership teams are strongest and where the same gaps repeat across the portfolio.
Board-ready output. Every read ends in a documented position and a prioritized gap register the board can track management against.
Evidence at exit. Several years of documented positioning and operating reads show a buyer the discipline behind the numbers.

Most firms start with one company. The same process then runs across the rest.

Who delivers this

Two disciplines, one engagement.

Craig Paxson has sat where your portfolio CEOs sit. The PE owners of an $8M company asked him to step in as CEO when its leader could no longer run it. In his first year, a hurricane wiped out 80% of the company's largest account. Two years later, a business that had lost $500,000 the year before he arrived was making $300,000, and he went on to lead it through a successful sale. He knows what a sponsor needs from a CEO in the first year because he was that CEO.

Craig leads the competitive positioning method, published in Visionary Advantage (2026). Debbie Radish-Respess of Invisible Horizons, a certified Predictive Index partner, leads the Predictive Index and organizational behavior work.

Both are in the room for every engagement that includes PI. The strategy read and the people read happen at the same table, not handed off between two vendors.

Why it's rigorous

Not proprietary in the sense of undocumented.

The frameworks behind every deliverable are established, named, and — in the case of the core method — published.

Baldrige Excellence Framework

The same framework the U.S. government uses to evaluate high-performing organizations, adapted for a single live session with the leadership team.

Predictive Index

An established, widely-used workplace behavioral assessment — a predictor of how someone will behave in a role, not a personality test.

Bizminer industry data

Third-party financial and operational benchmarks used to pressure-test the plan against real comparables, not internal assumptions.

Fit

Built for founder-led companies in the lower middle market.

Company profile

10–100 employees
Founder- or owner-led before the deal
A leadership team beyond the CEO
Controls its own brand and positioning
Industry-agnostic
United States

Not a fit

Add-ons folded into a platform's brand
Companies over 100 employees
No leadership team beyond the owner
Outside the United States

See a full sample read.

On a 15-minute call, we'll walk through a complete sample deliverable, built on a fictional portfolio company, so you can see exactly what your deal team and the portfolio CEO would receive. Then we'll talk about fit, from one company to a repeatable process across your portfolio.

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