Tiburon Managing Partner Chip Roame speaks with Former Focus Financial Partners CEO Rudy Adolf during a Tiburon Fireside Chat at Tiburon CEO Summit XLVI

Tiburon believes that the training that Tiburon's principals have received at leading management consulting firms makes it one of the few firms truly able to deliver strategic-level multi-disciplinary advice to CEOs and other senior executives. Tiburon's core strength is in assisting CEOs and other senior executives in developing business strategies for new, growing, or lagging businesses. Tiburon's managing partner has been doing so since his consulting days at McKinsey & Company and later applied these skills as a business strategist at The Charles Schwab Corporation. While having experience in marketing, sales, operations, technology, organizational, and human resources issues, Tiburon believes that corporate strategy must lead. The twin keys though, in Tiburon's opinion, are to build the right processes for developing strategy and for gaining executive acceptance.

Consulting is an often used, and often misapplied, term. Tiburon participates in one segment of the consulting industry called management (or strategy) consulting. Most trained management consultants would agree on a series of points:

• Business is won through a combination of having the right strategy and applying it better than one's competitors. Management or strategy consultants focus on the first part - developing the best strategy. Because of Tiburon's narrow industry focus, Tiburon is able to go further into implementation but the firm's strength is in the development of strategies.
• Developing good strategy takes a combination of industry knowledge, consulting skills, the willingness to do hours of focused research, and industry experience to make actionable decisions. Some firms have industry experience; others have consulting skills; and still others are willing to do the research. The unique combination of these skills is what allows a select group of firms to develop leading-edge business strategies.
• The consulting process is incredibly important to getting to the right answer and this is often overlooked by consultants not trained at one of the leading management consulting firms. Studying one's competitors or interviewing one's clients are not tasks that can be done without forethought. Rather, detailed project plans and interview guides need to be developed to focus analytical staff on the crucial points - what products of a competitor are earning the margins, what client needs are going unfulfilled, and into what areas can a company profitably expand with its existing or only incrementally new capabilities. Many industry experts may claim to know the answers to these questions, but for years Tiburon has found that detailed research leads to better strategies.

Tiburon projects almost always include a series of client steering committee meetings and a series of research modules necessary to turn written industry knowledge into specific business strategies. As a firm, Tiburon has completed over 3,400 projects since 1998.

Tiburon's Strategy Consulting projects are complex, research based processes, and are long-term in nature with fees beginning at $500,000.

If you would like more details please contact Sarah Sage at SSage@TiburonAdvisors.com.