Great question and one that deserves a more precise answer. This may be longer than most responses but the topic warrants it. The Context Most Lower Middle Market businesses are not run by professional managers. They are run by their founders. The staff has not seen owners come and go. They have known one person their entire career. The founder is not just the boss. The founder is the identity of the business. The culture, the values, the relationships, the way decisions get made, everything flows from that one person. Your arrival is not just a management change. It is an identity change for the entire organization. And identity changes are the most delicate transitions a business can experience. Before You Close The most important work happens before you take the keys. Use diagnostic tools, like frameworks, to enrich your understanding of the business and the adjustments you will likely make to unleash growth for the business and the team members. For example, Larry Greiner's model of organizational growth identifies that every company moves through predictable phases. Each phase ends in a crisis that requires a fundamentally different kind of leadership to resolve and unlock the next phase of growth. Most founder-led businesses in the Lower Middle Market have stagnated at one of Greiner's phases. Not because the market stopped growing. Not because the product stopped working. Because the founder's leadership style, which was perfect for building the business in the early phases, became the binding constraint that prevented the next phase of growth. The founder who built a $5M business through personal relationships and tribal knowledge cannot scale to $20M using the same approach. The company sits. Profitable. Stable. But stagnated at the ceiling of what one person's style can support. At least, for now. Competition will not allow this profitable stagnation forever. Your job before close is to diagnose which phase the business is in and why it has stagnated. That diagnosis tells you exactly what categories of problems must be solved and what obstacles must be eliminated to unlock the next phase of growth, and prevent decline. That diagnostic capability is also your most powerful tool in the seller conversation. When you can sit across from a founder and say I understand exactly why your business has reached this ceiling and here is specifically how I am going to take it to the next level you are delivering a stewardship narrative that wins deals and wins the trust of the staff before you even walk in the door. The First 30 Days The following may surprise you. The people in the business already know what needs to change. They have known for years. They watched the founder make the same mistakes repeatedly and said nothing because nobody asked and nothing would have changed anyway. The answers to every challenge reside within the minds of the team. But the new leader cannot simply open the floor to every suggestion and implement whatever surfaces. That is not leadership. That is abdication. The Greiner framework defines the agenda. It tells you which problems must be solved and which obstacles must be eliminated to move the business to the next phase of growth. Then you bring the team into that specific conversation. Not what should we change. But here is the problem. What do you recommend we do about it? That is the difference between noise and signal. The framework creates the signal. The team fills it with solutions that only insiders could know. Through this process identify the informal leaders. Every organization has people whose title does not reflect their actual influence. The shop foreman everyone respects. The office manager who knows every client personally. Find them. Involve them in designing the solutions not just communicating them. When the people the staff trusts are part of building the new structure they become advocates rather than resistors. This matters for a reason that goes beyond good management. Resistance to change is the silent assassin of new leaders. It does not announce itself. It does not confront you directly. It simply slows everything down, undermines every initiative, and waits for you to give up or make enough mistakes that the board loses confidence in you. The antidote to resistance is ownership. People do not resist what they helped create. When the team designs the solution to a problem you diagnosed they have skin in the game. They want it to succeed because its success is their success. Find the quick win that benefits the staff not just the P&L. The broken coffee machine. The parking situation. The scheduling problem everyone complains about. Fix something small and visible that shows you are paying attention to their daily experience not just the numbers. Do it because you care. Authentically. Listen before you lead. But listen with a framework not with an empty notebook. Days 30 to 100 Now that you understand the business from the inside begin designing the structural and process changes required to move the company from its current phase to the next phase of growth. Separate the urgent from the important. Margin optimization and technology upgrades are important. They are rarely urgent. Culture shock is both urgent and important because it is the hardest thing to recover from once it happens. Communicate relentlessly. Uncertainty is the enemy of culture. People can handle almost any change if they understand why it is happening and feel respected in the process. They cannot handle not knowing what is coming next. The Underlying Principle The goal of the first 100 days is not to transform the business. It is to earn the right to transform the business. That right is granted by the staff when they decide you are worth following. And it is granted by the founder when they feel that their legacy is in good hands. The new leader brings the diagnostic framework. The team brings the solutions. Together they build something better than either could have built alone. Everything else flows from that. Thanks ^redacted‌

I’ve been an Operator stepping into this scenario at multiple companies, even turnarounds, and I always start with a 30/60/90 approach of stepping into, learning the company/culture, earn a place, and start changes around opportunities that are low hanging and easy from a buy in point of view first.