Our Approach

The Fifth Turn

Most businesses move through four familiar phases: building capability, scaling operations, stabilizing performance, and defending position.

The Fifth Turn is different.

It is the point in a company’s evolution where leadership deliberately steps out of execution mode and redesigns the business to compound enterprise value. At this stage, effort is no longer the constraint. Judgment is.

In the Fifth Turn, systems replace heroics. Decision rights become explicit. Capital, talent, and technology are aligned around durable value creation rather than short-term output. Companies stop optimizing activity and start engineering outcomes.

This is not a turnaround, a cost-cutting exercise, or transformation theater. It is a deliberate shift in how the business is designed to create value.

At its core, Fifth Turn follows a simple pattern — Assess, Clarify, Advance. The methodology below describes how that structure is applied in practice.

The Fifth Turn Methodology

Reaching the Fifth Turn requires more than insight. It requires a disciplined operating approach that translates judgment into durable systems.

Fifth Turn engagements follow a repeatable structure, adapted to the realities of each organization.

1. Diagnose Reality

We establish a shared, fact-based view of how the business actually operates today.

This phase strips away narrative and surfaces structural constraints, friction, and leakage. Symptoms are separated from root causes. Effort is evaluated against economic value.

Outcome:
A clear, systems-level diagnosis leadership can align around.

2. Design the Value Engine

We define the minimum viable future state that compounds value.

Decision rights, information flow, incentives, and the operating and financial model are redesigned together. Systems are selected to reinforce how the business should behave, not how it claims to operate.

Outcome:
A future-state operating model that can actually run.

3. Embed the System

Design becomes reality.

Workflows, controls, and automation are implemented. Dependency on individuals and tribal knowledge is reduced. Judgment is applied only where it matters.

This is where Fifth Turn differs materially from advisory models. The work is embedded until the system holds.

Outcome:
A business that performs consistently without heroics.

4. Transfer & Compound

Durability is tested in live operations.

As theory meets reality, adjustments are made. Ownership is transferred back to leadership, with systems and decision frameworks intact.

Outcome:
Improvements that persist and compound after we step away.