Resources
What the diagnostics look like in practice
Illustrative engagements, drawn from the patterns that recur across middle market and family enterprise work. Every company here is fictional. The findings, scores and instrument behaviour are not.
Case studies
Each one follows a single organization through the diagnostic and out the other side — what the instruments found, what the leadership did about it, and what had changed when they were run again.
Governance maturation
Two pictures of the same company
Harwick Industrial Solutions · $56M industrial distribution
A board confident about AI investment and a CIO who knew the infrastructure wasn’t ready. Neither was wrong. All three instruments run together, and a board book redesigned around Inform / Discuss / Decide.
Read the case study →Founder transition
Protecting enterprise value
Ellison Technical Group · $42M engineering services
A founder with a genuinely valuable firm and no organization underneath it. The same findings read three ways — strategic acquirer, private equity, management buyout — and an advisory board designed backwards from what each would require.
Read the case study →Governance failure
When the board can’t see the drift
Meridian Precision Components · $42M at peak
Five years, five layers of quiet decline, and a board chosen for comfort rather than capability. Written as a counterfactual: what each instrument would have surfaced, in which year, and where the window for correction closed.
Read the case study →Second-generation transition
A family business in transition
Hargrove Industrial Supply · $25M distribution and light manufacturing
The presenting problem was communication. The actual problem was authority. Includes the six-month re-assessment, where governance improved and resilience fell — and why that is the diagnostic working, not failing.
Read the case study →For advisors
The same engagement, read for the advisor
Hargrove Industrial Supply · advisor edition
For consultants and coaches who do this work relationally: what changes when structured diagnostics are in the room. Compressed time to insight, neutral ground for the authority conversation, and precision sequencing across the four systems.
Read the case study →International expansion
When the network is the strategy
Mekong Precision Components · Vietnam → US, $22M manufacturer
Tariffs forced a US acquisition. The relationship-based model that built the company in Vietnam became the obstacle in Ohio. Told as two tracks from the same letter of intent — one with the diagnostic, one without.
Read the case study →International expansion
Without a map in a new market
Hartfeld Cyber Solutions · Munich → US, growth equity
A German founder with a supervisory board that worked, a Delaware C-Corp on standard advice, and no assessment of whether either would carry a US expansion. Also told as two tracks.
Read the case study →M&A integration
Built before close
Northfield Infrastructure · Larkspur Engineering · $480M acquirer, $70M founder-led target
One acquisition followed from the founder’s exit preparation to the board’s six-month review, told twice — with and without the readings. The same three mistakes happen in both. What changes is when they surface, and who can still act.
Read the case study →All companies, individuals and figures in these case studies are fictional and used for illustrative purposes. They describe how the instruments behave, not particular clients.
Sample outcome — illustrative, pending a real client story
Professionalizing the board before the handoff
Family enterprise · next-generation transition
The board had governed well for two decades — and it was almost entirely family. As the next generation prepared to take on operating roles, the family wanted a board built for what the company was becoming, not the one that had carried it this far. Board Value read composition first; BoardPulse followed six months later to check whether the new board was actually operating differently, not just looking different on paper.
Before
- 5 directors — 4 family, 1 longtime advisor
- No director with capital markets or M&A experience
- No formal committee structure; meetings ad hoc
- Skill-coverage score: 45%
After
- 7 directors — 2 family, 2 next-generation, 3 independent
- Added capital allocation, M&A and digital-operations expertise
- Audit and Compensation committees formed; quarterly cadence
- Skill-coverage score: 82%
Illustrative sample, built to show what a real result looks like on this page. Will be replaced with an anonymized outcome from an actual engagement once one is available to share.
Reading and tools
Longer-form thinking, and two ways to get a reading on your own organization.
Start here · Free
SCALE™ Readiness Signal
Ten minutes · No email required
Twenty questions across the five pillars that hold an organization up. You see where you stand before you decide whether to talk to anyone.
Take the Readiness Signal →Whitepaper
Governance maturity
Dr. LouAnn Conner
How governance capability develops as a company grows, why it rarely keeps pace, and what the stages look like from inside a board that is still governing at an earlier one.
Download the whitepaper →Writing
Insights
Governance, structure and scale
Shorter pieces on what shows up repeatedly in this work — boards that have outgrown their composition, founders holding more than they should, and the gap between what a company has achieved and what it can carry.
Read Insights →