The Navigator Method
Two decades in the CFO and Controller chair, across multiple PE-backed mid-market companies and industries. I learned what works and what breaks by sitting in the chair, not by consulting on it. Decision Architecture is what I extracted from that experience.
The Arc
The pattern repeated across company after company, industry after industry, over two decades. The chart of accounts stops reflecting the business. The forecast becomes a fiction exercise. Working capital eats cash faster than the P&L generates it. And underneath all of it, capital decisions get made in Slack DMs and hallway conversations, with no record of who decided or why.
Different company, different industry — same structural breakdown. That repetition is what made the pattern visible, and what made it fixable.
Case Studies
These are composite teaching scenarios — illustrative patterns drawn from two decades of operator experience, not accounts of specific client engagements.
Case 1 — Pediatric practice group, ~$25M (composite)
- Situation
- A founder-led pediatric practice group at roughly $25M in revenue across several clinic locations. The founding physician still personally approved nearly every spend over a few thousand dollars — equipment, hires, lease commitments. Growth had outrun the founder's calendar. Decisions queued behind one person, and the queue was getting longer than the runway.
- What I changed
- Built a written decision rights matrix: what the practice administrator could commit without sign-off, what required the founder, what required the board. Defined the decision logic for capital spend — new location versus equipment versus provider hire — so each request was weighed against the same criteria. Set a quarterly decision review so commitments were revisited against what actually happened.
- What it produced
- Routine spend stopped queuing on the founder's desk. The group could open locations on a predictable cadence instead of waiting for the founder to surface. The founder got out of the approval loop for anything below the threshold — and back to the decisions only the founder could make.
Case 2 — Multi-state professional services, ~$70M (composite)
- Situation
- Growing 40% a year. The P&L looks healthy. Cash is quietly running 30 days behind, and DSO has crept from the low 40s toward 70 while everyone celebrates revenue.
- What I changed
- A working capital dashboard owned by finance and reviewed weekly. Explicit DSO targets by customer segment. A payables strategy aligned to cash timing.
- What it produced
- DSO pulled back toward the high 40s. A multi-million-dollar working capital gap closed. Board meetings that open with the cash conversion cycle, not the revenue number.
Case 3 — Scaling services, ~$120M (composite)
- Situation
- A large war chest sitting idle, “waiting for the right deal.” Months of capital uncommitted. Multiple acquisitions debated, none executed, because there's no written logic to decide between them.
- What I changed
- Force a written capital deployment hierarchy with the board — organic growth, acquisitions, debt reduction, shareholder return, in priority order. Set trigger-based review dates. Document the assumptions behind each path.
- What it produced
- Capital deployed against a clear thesis. Weak acquisitions killed at diligence on disciplined criteria. The right deal closed on better terms because the logic was set before the pressure hit.
Where this applies
PE-backed and founder-led companies between $25M and $150M — across healthcare services, professional services, multi-state operations, and M&A integration.
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