Strategy Insights | Michigan | Shepherd Advisors

Strategy Alignment: The Overlooked Force Multiplier of Value Creation

My daughter was a coxswain for her high school crew team. Her job was to steer the boat toward the finish line, keep the team focused, navigate obstacles, and—perhaps most importantly—keep eight rowers in sync. When the crew was aligned, you could feel the difference. Each stroke reinforced the next, creating momentum and building speed. The boat moved through the water with an almost effortless rhythm. But when alignment broke down, so did the speed. A missed stroke or compe

Aug 263 min read

Is Your Strategy Being Well Executed? A Checklist to Stay on Course

Before every takeoff, pilots go through a checklist: route confirmed, systems verified, issues identified, problems avoided. Checklists reduce the risk of missed steps, keep focus on what matters most, and improve performance. They’re useful under routine conditions but quickly become critical when conditions grow turbulent. Strategy execution is much the same. Strategy provides the flight plan. Execution determines how the company reaches its destination—or whether it arrive

Aug 113 min read

Do You Have the Right Growth Strategy?

Take the next 5 minutes to find out. Companies with the wrong growth strategy feel it. Companies with the right growth strategy know it. When strategy is off, CEOs tell us, “We’re working harder than ever, but it doesn’t feel like we’re making the progress we should.” Some tell us, “We have too many priorities.” Others lament that “Decision-making takes forever” and “Every opportunity turns into a debate.” But when the strategy is right, we hear a whole different set of con

Jun 293 min read

Future Proofing Your Growth Strategy: A Guide for CEOs

According to PwC’s Global Insolvency report on 2025 Reflections and 2026 Projections, “The number of Chapter 11 bankruptcies hit a decade-long high in 2025 and activity is primed to continue into 2026.” That lagging indicator isn’t exactly rosy. The reality is we don’t know what next year—or even next quarter—will look like. We’re in a period of sustained volatility. Markets are shifting, signals are mixed, and the future isn’t following a single, predictable path. The good n

Apr 244 min read

Thanks for Showing What Strategy Well Executed Really Means

Growth success starts with developing the right strategy but hinges on what comes next: execution. This step can be challenging and is often where things start to unravel. In fact, growth strategy success is much more likely to falter from execution breakdown than from poor strategic thinking. There’s a real hazard in not quite making the leap from strategic planning to practice. The safeguard is intentional integration of strategy planning and execution. When you intentio

Mar 255 min read

Is Your Growth Strategy Set Up for Success? (Take Our Quiz to Find Out)

When a sales team isn’t hitting their numbers, one of the first questions we need to ask is: Are they set up for success? The same question applies to leadership teams when they’re struggling to execute a growth strategy: Are they set up for success? When growth strategies are unclear, unfocused, lack commitment across the team, or simply aren’t very doable, leadership teams are almost certain to lose traction. By contrast, strategies that work consistently are grounded in

Nov 18, 20253 min read

5 Hidden Costs of Unclear Strategic Vision + 2 Steps To Gain Clarity

“Fuzzy” strategic vision increases the odds for disappointing revenue and earnings growth. Even worse, it allows corrosive costs to creep in that sap productivity and morale before CEOs, leadership teams, and owners even notice. What does success look like? Without a definitive answer, its common for leadership teams—and everyone else—to get mired down and incur hidden costs that make it harder to run the business profitably. In this post, we’ll dig into five corr

Oct 28, 20255 min read

Does Your Company’s Growth Engine Need a Tune-Up?

A summer drive with the sunroof open and the music turned up high—what a feeling! Unless your engine starts losing power…then that feeling is gone right out the window. When our customers are happy, the sales team is crushing it, and everything is humming along, business growth can feel just like that summer drive, like we’re on top of the world. But when things stutter and lurch, and growth starts to slow, it might just have something to do with your firm’s Growth Engine. He

Oct 8, 20254 min read