Scalewrights

The Gap Check · for leadership teams

Find the gap between your plan and your people.

Every company has a gap: the distance between the company your leaders intend and the company your people experience. It widens with every hire, layer and location, and it decides how far a company can scale. In five days, the Gap Check measures it and shows you which link to fix first.

Alignment GapDeployment GapPerformance Gap

Find your gap · from $1,500 → See a sample report

Live in two minutes. One link for your team, results on day five. No setup call, no software, no annual contract.

For PE sponsors and integrations

The deal closed. Now two companies have to become one.

Leadership ambiguity, duplicate roles, pay conflicts and missed synergies get more expensive every week. Scalewrights puts an experienced operator inside the business to make the organization one, in any sector, on a flat fee.

Book a 20-minute integration call → Run the readiness check

Twenty minutes. No deck, no pitch. If Scott is not the right person for it, he says so on the call.

What we do

Three ways we close the gap.

Start by measuring it. When the gap needs an operator in the building, Operating Partner is the seat and Integration Partner is the project. Each is a fixed price, delivered by the operator who has done it as the executive responsible.

The Gap Check

Find the gap between your plan and your people in five days: an anonymous team survey, your leaders' forecast, and a pathway that shows which link to close first.

From $1,500 · 5 days · self-serveFind your gap

Operating Partner

One day a week at your leadership table, to make the other six run better: the plan, the seats, the cadence, the scorecard. Interim roles when the seat needs a title.

$12,500 a month · two seatsWhat the seat does

Integration Partner

Becoming One™: two companies made one by day one hundred. One org chart, one leadership team, one pay structure, a name on every synergy.

$75,000 flat · 12 weeks · 3 gatesHow the engagement works
Who this is for · by shape, not sector
Multi-site or about to be100 to 1,000 people$20M to $250M revenueAn ownership change behind it — acquired, merged, rolled up, PE-backed, or a founder stepping back

Manufacturing, services, consumer goods, HVAC, distribution. Eleven HVAC businesses into one; six manufacturers across seven plants into one. The org chart does not care what the company makes.

Not at a deal and not ready for an operator in the building? The books carry the same doctrine, from $19.

Diagnostics

A clearer view of where the deal stands.

Fifteen questions, five minutes. Score the combined company on UNITE, the five lines a board checks at day one hundred, and see the three to fix first. Free, and yours before the board asks.

Run the Integration Readiness Check → Not a deal? Score a company on BUILT, the Operating Partner check →
7Plants made one company
2,500People across those sites
11HVAC businesses consolidated
20+Years as an operator

Done as the executive responsible, not as an adviser. The compensation case, site by site →  ·  The full background →

You should call us when

One of these is true in your building.

  • You closed an acquisition and the leadership roles are still unclear.
  • You are absorbing bolt-ons faster than the operating model is standardizing.
  • The synergy model exists, but nobody owns the execution.
  • The founder is stepping back and too much still runs through them.

Any one of them is the call. Book a 20-minute integration call →

The expensive way to find out

Every one of these is cheap to decide at close and expensive to discover in month seven.

Scott has watched boards pay for each of them, from both sides: as the executive who sold a company to private equity, and as the Chief People Officer who then made six manufacturers one. None of it is exotic. It is the same six things, left undecided, found by the people who leave. The full list of situations, and what each becomes →

Two controllers, two closes, one spreadsheet. Month-end takes three weeks and the board gets a number nobody can defend. Nobody decided whose close it was.
The operations leader on the acquired side takes the recruiter’s call. He did not know whether he had a job. By the time someone told him, he had a better one.
Same job, same title, three times the pay. Two purchasing managers at two plants, $230,000 and $90,000. Nobody compared them, because until the deal nobody had to.
Seven benefits plans, one company. Open enrollment is a different conversation at every site, and the cheapest plan becomes the rumor.
The synergy number moves right a quarter, with an explanation. Then again, with a longer one. No synergy had a name and a date on it.
Nothing below the CEO gets decided, because nobody decided who was in charge below the CEO. Two budgets stay two budgets. Two cadences stay two cadences.

The free Integration Readiness Check scores your deal on all of it in five minutes, before the board asks. Take it →

“Harmonization is no easy task. You are instantly the bad guy. It is a hard job — and I am willing to be the bad guy, so you don’t have to be.”

Dr. Scott Kimball · after seven plants and 2,500 people became one company · the case →

Next step

Book a 20-minute integration call.

Twenty minutes on the deal, the building and whether Scott is the right person for it. No deck, no pitch. If the answer is no, he says so on the call.

Book a 20-minute integration call → Not ready to talk? Take the five-minute readiness check →

The thesis

The soft side is the hard side.

A QoE checks the earnings. It cannot check the people who have to earn the next ones. Revenue and EBITDA run through who decides, who stays, and whether two leadership teams pull the same way. That part of a deal gets called soft. It is the hardest part to get right, and the part that makes the model true.

Measured in 108 organizations against their own performance numbers. Lived as the executive responsible when seven plants became one company.

Read the thesis →

How it works · three gates

Structure first. Stability second. Direction third.

Every engagement runs through the same three gates, because the failures run in the same order. Structure without stability is a new org chart that does not actually work. Stability without direction is a well-run company going nowhere. Direction without structure is a strategy deck with nobody clearly accountable.

01

Structure

Put the right people, roles and decision rights in place.

“Do we know who is in charge, who owns each decision, and how the company is organized?”

02

Stability

Build the cadence, systems and behaviors that make performance repeatable.

“Can it operate week after week without reverting to old habits, the founder, or the legacy businesses?”

03

Direction

Align the organization, capital and accountability around the outcomes that matter.

“Is everyone moving toward the same priorities and economics, and can we see it?”

WHERE YOU AREtwo companiesSTRUCTUREgate one · week fourSTABILITYgate two · week eightDIRECTIONgate three · week twelveONE COMPANYday one hundred
Three gates, one bearing. A gate is a place you reach and a page the board initials; for the seat, the same three gates with no calendar attached.

Integration Partner · Becoming One™

UNITE · the method inside each gate · build one company, make it operate as one, point it at one plan

Structure · weeks 1–4
Unify command · Name the decisions. One chart, the team chosen seat by seat, decision rights written.
Stability · weeks 5–8
Install the rhythm · Engage the people. One cadence, HR made one, the people the model depends on kept.
Direction · weeks 9–12
Tie money to names. One budget, an owner on every synergy, the hundred-day scorecard.

Hybrid: Scott on site at each gate, in the room every week. Invoiced by gate; a gate not met is not invoiced. Scoped after the $7,500 Integration Read, credited in full toward Becoming One™ if signed within 30 days. Against the $16M of synergy value that lands or does not in a typical $3M-synergy deal at 8×: under half of one percent. Gate by gate →

Operating Partner · the seat

BUILT · the method inside each gate · clarify the company, make it repeatable, make it accountable to the plan

Structure
Boundaries · Installed team. Owner boundaries written, the leadership seats filled, an accountability map, decision rights.
Stability
Locked rhythm. The leadership cadence, the scorecard, the decision forums, KPI ownership, the Thursday that runs without him.
Direction
Unified plan · Tracked money. One plan, the quarter’s priorities, capital allocation, budget against execution.

Starts with a diagnostic month: four days in the building, every leader interviewed, the numbers read, a one-page plan. Six months is $75,000; against two turns on $4M of EBITDA, under one percent. Interim COO, Chief People Officer, integration lead or GM scoped per role; never CFO. What the seat does →

How this is different

The big firms put the organization third. We put it first.

Strategy firms run integration as a program with twelve imperatives and a team of twelve, and build the organization in phase three. Change frameworks certify your people to manage the change. Advisory firms send interim staff. Each has its place. None of them is an operator in your building who has already been the bad guy.

The usual answer

  • A team, a program office, a deck of imperatives
  • The organization built in phase three, after systems and synergies
  • A framework your people are trained to apply
  • Priced for multinationals, or not priced at all
  • A success fee, a percentage, or equity for the advice
  • Recommendations. The hard conversation is left to you.

Scalewrights

  • One operator, in the building, who has done this as the executive responsible
  • The organization first — command, seats, decision rights, pay, cadence — because it is where the deal is decided
  • A method with gates, deliverables and a scorecard the board initials
  • $75,000 flat for the integration; $12,500 a month for the seat. On the page.
  • Flat fee only. Never a percentage of anything, never equity
  • The hard conversation had, in person, with authority, the week it is due
Experience
Operator since 2002
EVP, Chief People Officer, operating partner — manufacturing, services and consumer goods across North and Latin America
One outcome
Growth, sale, integration
EVP of Capstone Nutrition through its sale to private equity; then six manufacturers made one as CPO of the acquirer
Credentials
PhD, I/O Psychology
Gallup doctoral internship under Donald O. Clifton · CliftonStrengths R&D
The seat today
Operating partner, founder side
Inside a founder-led beverage company now — the same seat Scalewrights offers
How we charge
Flat fee. No success fee.
Never a percentage of your raise, your revenue or your sale price

The work

Seven sites, 2,500 people, and two purchasing managers doing the same job for $299,000 and $99,000 in total pay.

One run of the HR shared-services phase of Becoming One™, anonymized: the company, the sites and the people. It is here so you can see the shape of the work before you buy it.

Before

Seven plants under one name after the deal, each with its own pay structure and its own benefits plan. Nobody had compared them, because until the deal nobody had to.

Found

Eighteen roles mapped across seven sites — 126 role-and-site pairs on one architecture. The widest gap: a purchasing manager at a $150 million plant on $230,000 and a 30 percent bonus; a purchasing manager at a $135 million plant, same job, same scope, on $90,000 and a 10 percent bonus.

Built

One compensation structure for the eighteen roles, with the rule decided before the first conversation. One national benefits plan across all seven sites — not the richest of the seven, not the cheapest, a new one — and every site plan retired on the same date.

After

Some people whose pay came down left. That is the honest cost, and it belongs in the deal model beside the synergies. The ones who stayed were on one structure that could be explained to anyone in the company with a straight face.

Also from the building

Eleven HVAC businesses brought into one company — a roll-up, which is to say eleven integrations in a row, in a sector that has nothing to do with food or beverage. The org chart does not care what the company makes.

References

Three on request — two chief executives and a board chair who were in the room. Not names on a page; a phone call, arranged inside a day.

The ten steps HR takes after a merger, and the whole case →  ·  What the research says →

Dr. Scott Kimball

Why boards trust Scalewrights

The person in your building has done this before.

Every gate and every operating-partner day is Dr. Scott Kimball personally. Twenty years as an operator: EVP of a manufacturer through its growth and its sale to private equity, then Chief People Officer of the acquirer, making six manufacturers across seven plants into one company — the org chart, the leadership team, the compensation analysis, the benefits harmonization, from the inside. Today, operating partner inside a founder-led company. PhD in industrial-organizational psychology, the one credential competitors cannot claim for the people side; Gallup doctoral internship under Donald O. Clifton. You are buying his judgment, not a template.

Book a 20-minute integration call → Read the full background →

For the sponsor · free

Ten questions to ask the management team at day 30 after close.

Two per line of UNITE, with what a good answer sounds like and what a bad one does. Ask them in the first board meeting after close. If more than three come back bad, the integration has not started, whatever the closing date says. One page, built to be forwarded inside a fund.

One email with the PDF. No sequence, no spam. Or open it now →

Questions a buyer asks first

Straight answers.

We bought more than one company. Can you integrate several at once?

Yes. Becoming One™ runs in three shapes: two companies into one; a platform absorbing bolt-ons (add-ons, tuck-ins), where the operating model is built once and deployed to each add-on in the same sequence; and a multi-company consolidation, where several acquired businesses are brought under one operating entity with centralized shared services — finance and the close, HR and payroll, procurement, IT — and one leadership structure over the sites. Six manufacturers across seven plants into one company; eleven HVAC businesses into one. The three shapes →

Is this only for food, beverage and consumer goods?

No. The run on this page was manufacturing; the roll-up was HVAC. The work is the org chart, the leadership team, the pay structure and the week — the same in any sector with a leadership team and a P&L. The filter is shape: 100 to 1,000 people, $20M to $250M, an ownership change behind it.

Do you do the systems and the synergy model?

We sequence IT and name its owner; your IT partner runs it. We read the synergy model and hold the building to it; we do not build it. We do the part that decides whether the model comes true. The full list of what we take on and what we leave to others →

What are UNITE and BUILT?

The two methods, one per offer, each five lines you can score in five minutes. UNITE is the integration: Unify command, Name the decisions, Install the rhythm, Tie money to names, Engage the people — the five lines a board checks at day one hundred. BUILT is the seat: Boundaries, a Unified plan, an Installed team, a Locked rhythm, Tracked money — the five lines of a company that runs without its owner. Score your deal on UNITE → Score your company on BUILT →

What do I actually hold at the end?

For Becoming One™: a page the board initials at each of three gates — the chart and the team at week four, the charters and the cadence at week eight, the budget, the synergy register and the scorecard at week twelve. Gate by gate → For the seat: a page every month — the scorecard, the plan, the seats.

How does the Operating Partner seat start, and can I stop?

With a diagnostic month: four days in the building, every leader interviewed, the numbers read, a one-page plan. It stands on its own; if the seat is not worth the next five months, Scott says so. After the six-month minimum, thirty days’ notice from either side.

Will you take equity, a success fee, or a board seat instead?

No. Flat fee only — never a percentage of the synergies, the raise or the sale, never equity for expertise. Scott is not deploying capital or taking board seats. The seat is work.

Who else can I talk to?

Three references on request — two chief executives and a board chair who were in the room. Not names on a page; a call, arranged inside a day. And the Dr. Scott Kimball channel on YouTube, where Scott talks through how companies, and the people inside them, reach their potential.

The deal is signed. The company is not.

Decide who is in charge before the people waiting to find out stop waiting.

The cheapest week to do this is the week after close. The second cheapest is this one. A conversation is the place to start: twenty minutes on the deal, the building, and whether Scott is the right person for it.

Book a 20-minute integration call → Integration Partner Operating Partner
Find your gap · from $1,500