Every CEO leading a high-growth professional services firm has faced a similar problem: Your leadership team and board agree on the goal, but they can’t agree on how to get there. Unison helps CEOs turn that friction into alignment. Here is how we partnered with one firm to get it done.

Context‍

A professional services firm had achieved steady success over several decades and was ready to set ambitious long-term goals. The CEO and board set an ambitious goal to significantly scale the business over the next decade.

The destination was clear. The path was not.

Some leaders argued for different potential growth strategies, ranging from technology investments to geographic expansion or new market opportunities.

The CEO recognized that achieving the firm’s ambitious growth goals would require significant effort regardless of the path, and that he needed deep alignment from this group of stakeholders. Without alignment, indecision would cause a lot of friction, slow things down, and jeopardize their goal. He needed the team to agree on a small number of priorities that could be easily communicated, resourced, and executed.

The Challenge

Leadership teams often struggle to prioritize revenue initiatives. Many initiatives can look great on paper, and the number of uncertainties and contingencies involved can make it hard to know for sure which ones will have the greatest impact. Also, when executives feel like decisions are handed “down” to them rather than co-created, they disengage.

We worked with the CEO to align the leadership team around a focused set of priorities that could be effectively communicated, resourced, and executed.  

Unison’s role was to work with the leadership team to transform a nest of competing ideas into clear, credible bets the full team could champion.

The Approach 

Define what makes a “priority.” 

We first established clear criteria: A top priority had to materially advance growth, align with the firm’s long-term strategy, and be executed profitably and with low friction or risk. This gave the conversation guardrails.‍

Introduce an objective framework.

We built a scoring model with specifically-identified weighted factors. This replaced gut feelings with structured analysis and gave the team firm standing for debate.  

Engage the team members individually first.

Prior to the meeting, we enabled executives and board members to independently score potential initiatives using the framework. This step revealed that some of the possibilities had significantly more support than the others, and eliminated the weaker candidates before the live discussion.

Structure debate and commitment via a live workshop.

Unison designed and facilitated a session to complete the task.

Our workshop consisted of:

• Small-group debates: Leaders with opposing views were grouped to discuss for and against with a goal of agreeing. The sub-groups then came back to the full group discussion to share their updated perspectives. This ended up converging the group on a small number of priorities.
• Real-time ranking: A projected working list of priorities allowed everyone to see how initiatives rose and fell as the debate progressed.
• Final convergence: With some of the initiatives clearly falling out, the group used structured discussion to agree on their top priorities and their order.

The Outcome

We helped the firm converge on clear revenue priorities. Each leader walked out of the room a champion of the list, with clarity on what mattered most and confidence in how the decision was made.

Before Unison, the company had:

• Numerous competing growth ideas, all compelling but unprioritized
• Leadership Team and Board members pulling in different directions
• High potential for wasted effort, friction, and second-guessing
• No clear way to communicate priorities across the firm

After Unison, the company had:

• A more refined list of growth priorities, explicitly defined and ranked
• Full alignment across CEO, Leadership Team, and Board
• Clear commitments from the Leadership Team
• Priorities supported by objective data and a rigorous framework
• Unified message to cascade across the firm, reducing friction and speeding execution

Takeaway for CEOs:

Aligning your team on the path to revenue growth isn’t about choosing the perfect strategy. It’s about creating a process that forces focus, gives leaders ownership, and builds confidence in the decision.

That’s the value Unison provides: we give CEOs the structure, data, and facilitation that turns debate into commitment. When every executive walks out of the room aligned and energized, growth accelerates and friction disappears.

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