Every company has someone
everyone calls.
Scroll to begin
Start with Mike
The person everyone calls before the decision.
“Mike’ll know.”
“Run it by Mike.”
“That customer only wants to talk to Mike.”
“If that machine starts acting up, get Mike.”
The customer calls angry.
Mike remembers the promise made twelve years ago.
Line 3 starts to rattle.
Mike hears it before the gauge moves.
The numbers look clean.
Mike circles the one that feels wrong.
Nobody planned the dependence. It grew one solved problem at a time.
You can name the person. Can you name everything that leaves with him?
See What Goes With HimSkagway Succession
We find what still lives with one person—before it walks out the door.
The work begins with one person and the ground only they know.
Our services
Start with the person behind the hardest decisions. Then see how far the problem reaches.
We begin with what one person knows and does. From there, we can prepare whoever comes next, look for the same problem elsewhere in the company, or keep the record useful as the years change.
I
The Map
Find what only one person still knows.
See The Map →II
The Passage
Prepare someone else to make the decision.
See The Passage →III
The Atlas
Find where the company still has only one answer.
See The Atlas →IV
The Long Watch
Keep the record alive as the company changes.
See The Long Watch →
A figure in the margin
If the handoff goes poorly, what begins to slip?
Probably nothing all at once. A customer waits. A hard decision sits overnight. A price exception goes through that Mike would have questioned. Suppose those small misses cost a $100 million company one point of margin.
Annual revenue
$100M
One margin point lost
$1M
less EBITDA each year
At an 8× multiple
$8M
possible difference in company value
Percentage points
lower average shareholder returns in the five years after a CEO transition than in the five years before it.
A global analysis of 200 publicly traded family-owned companies that changed CEOs between 2000 and 2020. The comparison describes the study population; it is not a forecast for any one company.
The question behind the number
How much of the business still leads back to Mike?
Ten questions about what people still ask him, what no one else has tried, and how soon the company may need an answer without him.
The Convictions Beneath the Work
Skilled work deserves to be carried with care.
Long experience deserves dignity. So do the people asked to teach it—and those asked to carry it forward.
We find what the years have taught them
and pass the flame forward.
Preserve hard-earned judgment before experience walks out.