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Automation Consulting Services (case)
WAC classification: Problem-Diagnosis Scenario | Perspective: Acting CEO / Executive Committee | August 2018
Classification rationale. The founders are confronting recurring control failures across four offices. The immediate work is to define the enterprise-level management problem, diagnose the causes behind each office symptom, substantiate those causes, and install controls that protect growth rather than suppress entrepreneurship. The case does not designate a single CEO; this analysis adopts the role of chief executive on behalf of the three-founder Executive Committee. (Case, pp. 1–2, 7)
1. Define the Problem
1.1 Central management problem
As a CEO of Automation Consulting Services (ACS), I diagnose a growing mismatch between the firm’s decentralized entrepreneurial operating model and the governance required by a four-office, $64.4 million professional-services organization. Firmwide growth remains strong, but the founders can no longer rely on personal contact, informal shared assumptions, revenue-based incentives, and semiannual office visits to prevent material client, capacity, project, and spending risks. (Case, pp. 1–2, 7; Exhibits 2–4.)
The problem is not that decentralization has failed everywhere. It is that local partners…
