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Why a Consulting Project Did Not Fit A CEO leading a turnaround in a purchased debt business reached out looking for advice on engaging third-party collection agencies. The immediate objective was straightforward enough: reduce fixed cost. The company had already shuttered offices and reduced portions of its internal collection infrastructure. Expanding agency relationships seemed like…
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We developed some genuinely effective outreach tools in the 3P collections world. The model was straightforward: collect more, generate more revenue, improve cash flow. Operationally and economically, everything aligned nicely. Even the revenue recognition under ASC 606 was intuitive enough that the executive team and Board immediately understood it: revenue was earned as a percentage…
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One Board request sounded straightforward enough: explain monthly revenue variance. In the ARM world, we initially approached it using a standard three-factor decomposition: Simple in theory. Except variance attribution models are rarely as objective as they appear. The problem emerged almost immediately: sequence mattered. If volume variance is calculated using: …you get one answer. If…
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People like to pretend modern professional life evolved beyond primitive power structures. I do not think it did. We simply industrialized them. Wrapped them in PowerPoint, recruiting decks, utilization targets, “talent strategies,” and consulting brands. Today was another reminder. We are implementing a new system. The consultants arrive. The product engineer running the demo starts…
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“They eat their own.” That phrase has been stuck in my head for weeks. At first I thought I was writing about consulting firms, corporate hierarchies, aging workers, or the way professional systems quietly consume people once their economic utility begins to dim. But that is not really the deeper trigger. Recently I reread something…
Financial Foundations with Jim Curham 