Strategic planning that tests the growth plan before it is funded, not after it fails.

Most growth plans are written to be approved. The market sizing is generous, the ramp is linear, the capital arrives on schedule and the organization that has to deliver it is assumed rather than designed, and the first time anyone tests the plan against a bad year is during one. We open every strategic-planning engagement with a feasibility view: whether the plan holds in the downside case, at what funding sequence, and with what organization. We do not raise capital or arrange financing; we tell you how much the plan actually needs, in what order, and whether it survives if the market delivers less than the deck. The practice is led by principals who have carried the P&L through a growth plan, with a community bank chief executive on the bench for credit conditions and capital structure.

Does the plan still hold in the downside case?

Every strategic-planning engagement opens with that question and ends with one of three answers: feasible, feasible with conditions, or not feasible. Answering it means building the downside case as carefully as the base case: what happens to margin, cash and covenant headroom if volume lands materially under plan, if the ramp takes twice as long, if the adjacent market turns out to be a different business rather than a bigger one, or if the capital assumed for year two is priced differently or not available. The finding says where the plan breaks, how early you would know, and what has to be true for it to hold.

Call before the plan is funded, or when the board has only seen the base case.

The best time is before the plan is funded, when the finding can change the amount raised, the sequence it arrives in and the milestones attached to it. The usual time is when a new market, geography or adjacency is on the table and the question is whether it is an extension of the business you run or a different business altogether. The last useful time is when the plan is already funded, the base case is the only case the board has seen, and the organization is being asked to deliver something it was not designed for.

A written feasibility finding on the plan, a funding sequence to match it, and an organization designed to run it.

The finding states whether the plan holds, under what conditions, and where it fails first, with the downside case written out rather than implied. Around it: a market and financial feasibility assessment; an evaluation of the market entry or adjacency against the operating capabilities you actually have; capital-structure and funding-sequence guidance that matches money to milestones rather than to the pitch; and an organizational design built against the growth plan, not the current org chart.

When the answer is feasible, the same principal stays through execution, as an advisor with a defined end date, or as an operating partner accountable for the milestones the plan was funded on. We do not provide capital, arrange financing or underwrite transactions, so the finding is not shaped by what it would take to close a round.