—— ABOUT
“Revealing the hidden the structures, leverage points and real interests enabling a viable course of action.”
Our approach and role varies from situation to situation. What is always needed is someone who understands the stakeholders, the often broad expertise that goes into it, ánd the situation.
Read what the situations take and the rare combination we contribute to get you to where you want to be.
—— CAPABILITIES
Why are we needed in the situation we work in?
Non-standard Events
Knowing what to do when stakes and uncertainty are high, unfamiliar, or when things get messy.
Special situations and projects are complex. they require a fundamentally different approach, because of the absence of a reliable map, playbook or standard solution that fits well. Getting a clear view on the situation isn’t easy.
We bring clarity and make the complex understood to help you make reliable decisions with imperfect or incomplete information, that can be walked back or course-correct early when necessary.
Breadth and Depth
Special situations have a broad scope with many moving pieces. They are rarely solved within one discipline.
This requires both breadth and depth: understanding the many disciplines involved, but at sufficient depth. It takes being able to put together a complete picture that is easy to understand, showing what works and what doesn’t.
We connect the dots and pull strands together by translating expertise from different disciplines and integrate into an inventive solution that solves the problem so it stays solved.
Human Interactions
Every business problem is a human interactions problem, and more so in complex situations.
People have different interests, have different views, requires viewing through multiple perspectives simultaneously, or resolve conflict. Pressure from uncertainty and stakes urge leaders to take action, but is costly if wrong and hard to walk back.
We orchestrate a process that produces reliable decisions, gets everybody on board, while taking the matter forward in a cooperative and productive way.
Reality is unmoved by appearances or preferred narratives. It rewards the ability to read the signs and understand the terrain.
Reality speaks its own language. The skill is knowing how to translate it and see the hidden pathways.
Behind the Firm
Lennart Huisjes
Special Advisor, Principal
—— CAPABILITIES
Case examples showing what special situations look like in practice.
—— PAST ENGAGEMENTS
—— THE PARTICULARS
Q&A on Rosemont and our work
What is a special situation or project?
A special situation or project in its simple terms is a business challenge with a potential impact on the future value of a business. They are high-stakes, complex and involve a great deal of uncertainty. Often it’s unknown what should be done about it.
What makes them hard?
With the potential to impact the future of a business they are high-stakes, which causes pressure and uncertainty. They don’t happen regularly. Non-standard means unfamiliar, adding to the uncertainty making. They are complex, which means they involve multiple knowledge domains, as well as multiple if not many stakeholders. That means more interests that need to be satisfied. It demands in depth understanding to be able to translate between domains, while coordinating the human interaction, and produce path forward to ultimately resolve the situation elegantly.
Why do you need us?
These challenges are open-ended and complex. The solution space is big. They don’t have just one solution and that is a good thing, but it’s harder to come up with one. The solution emerges as the situation gets navigated and is not known in advance. There are many ways to satisfy the interests of stakeholders, operational, technical and other constraints. You need to be able to see the entire playingfield and operate a layer above.
Companies themselves …
By comparison most businesses have a known solution for a known problem, for example a digital inventory system. Is is a close-ended problem solved by a standard solutions or approaches. The same goes for specialist firms, like law, finance or engineering. They handle their domain very well which makes them important, but they don’t special situations or projects well, or don’t solve the problem in the long run.straddling multiple domains of expertise requires extra coordination and technical translation.
What do people often get wrong in these situations?
The discomfort of uncertainty makes people feel compelled to take action. This is often based on premature conclusions, which leads to mistakes. To avoid this one needs to stay with it in spite until things are better understood.
Also, it’s important to recognize that business problems are fundamentally human interactions problems. Acknowledging that let’s you see people’s interests and their responses more clearly.
What does "done" look like?
When you want to get somewhere you want to make sure you do it in a way that actually gets you there. That means getting an orientation in unfamiliar terrain, and finding a path around obstacles, and every stakeholder on board. Ultimately you want to be sure that you end up where you will end up is where you actually want to be. Pressure and uncertainty have been taken out or greatly reduced wit the situation being under control. And when getting out of a situation you want to leave with zero liability remaining.
What does recognizing the situation early and bringing us in early do?
You can’t recover lost time and optionality narrows as it passes. So earlier is always better. The further the situation unfolds, the more has taken place and the more action has likely been taken, meaning more steps need to be walked back if a particular path doesn’t work out. The earlier the situation is recognized the earlier all requirements can be discovered which allows to get them addressed timely. If you don’t, timelines mess up. In the case of large investments looking into the permit requirements after the economic planning is done can be catastophic.
What roles do you perform?
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—— OPERATIONAL DOMAIN
More information on the example situations we handle.
Regulatory pressures, enforcement or deteriorated government relations.
Violations flagged inspection by authorities, or inability to to meet tightening regulations and standards can cause disruption, delays, penalties or worse: shutdowns.
Not always malicious, as the firm balances costs, competitiveness, and compliance. Its effects are non-linear and persistent. Optionality narrows with time. A purely legal response risks hardening positions. An operational adjustment may actually not be what the authorities need to see. Poor handling may lead to stricter oversight, undermining your regulatory standing towards investors, regulators or public exposure. This can be avoided.
Making decisions prematurely must be avoided, despite pressure. Recognizing the full playfield and addressing issues at the right level the best outcomes are produced, and leaves the organization in a much stronger position, with new space to maneuver.
Major investment in Production Assets or Technology
Significant capital committed: new production capacity, upgrades to fab or factory and technology acquisition, under pressure. A complex process with set timelines and all the pieces must fit.
Many foreseen, some emerging only as the work is underway. No playbook exists for this and no single silo alone can resolve the constraints and regulatory hurdles must be overcome, while maintaining stakeholder expectations.
The investment proceeds without losing time, capital, or value to inconsistencies between legal, operational, and stakeholder considerations. A workable path navigated and the organization moves forward minimizing delay or cost overruns.
Complex Asset Transfer and Site Closure
Divesting physical assets or closing down a facility. This involves a large number of stakeholders, all of whom need to be on board with the approach on your way out, while negotiating the terms of the sale and transferring risk.
A highly complex process surfacing every latent risk, with parties often having very contradictory interests that may change overnight, with completely misaligned timing. It is a non-standard event. No preexisting framework fits. The approach gets discovered by engaging the situation, in order to chart a course forward.
It is entirely situational and dependent on its inherent risks and conditions. Careful stakeholder orchestration and negotiation is required to reconcile differences, coordinate deep expertise and arrive at an elegant solution that hands of the asset with no remaining liability under any circumstance.
Organizational Disruption and Crisis Recovery
An organization experiencing disruption or breakdown that affects its ability to function properly. It may struggle to make equipment work. It may have become over-reliant on a single resource or vendor, or things that used to work simply aren’t working anymore.
Problems rarely come alone. What begins as a market shift or the loss of key personnel can quickly cascade, amplified by missing information or siloed decision-making. An incident may expose a deeper weakness. Often this is an early indicator of structural weakness: an organization ossifying, people working increasingly in siloes, oversight lacking, resulting in the inability to adequately respond to new demands. When the situation persists, knock-on effects accumulate. Acting swiftly avoids worse.
Such problems are diffuse by nature. They touch multiple functions and cannot be solved locally. A holistic approach is required, one that takes into account all the moving pieces, recognizes the emerging pattern, and informs a possible way forward. It is an open-ended problem, with no specific solution; only a recovery of process, system, or structure. Sometimes through temporary stand-in, sometimes through reorientation, so function gets restored.
External Threats and Hostilities
Teams tasked with making equipment work, get a pilot plant up and running, or attempting a breakthrough innovation, but finds itself going in circles, locked in under pressure, and struggling to make progress.
Non-standard by definition, highly complex, with constraints and expertise straddling all domains and with the not yet in existence.
The team has the technical depth and the resources. What is often needed is an someone enabling the team to properly integrate perspectives independent of discipline to get across.
Teams Unable to Make Progress
Teams tasked with making equipment work, get a pilot plant up and running, or attempting a breakthrough innovation, but finds itself going in circles, locked in under pressure, and struggling to make progress.
Non-standard by definition, highly complex, with constraints and expertise straddling all domains and with the solution not yet in existence.
The team has the technical depth and the resources. What is often needed is an someone enabling the team to properly integrate perspectives independent of discipline to get across.