3Cs SCOPED
Get your arms around it.
Then get your team moving on it.
3Cs Scoped is Pat inside the work with you and your team, taking on your biggest challenges. You end up with a roadmap you can act on and a team aligned behind it.
You’ve been circling this one for a while.
Maybe it’s one thing. Maybe it’s a list of them, and you can’t tell which two matter this year. You’ve talked about it. You’ve put people on it. It’s still sitting there.
You’re stuck on what you haven’t clarified, not on what you don’t know. What you need is already in your head and your team’s heads. It’s just sitting in pieces, and you can’t act on those.
It usually looks like one of these.
-
An opportunity you can see and can’t figure out how to go after.
There are three ways to play it and no agreement on which one. So it stays on the list quarter after quarter, while somebody else in your market gets there first.
-
A problem you’ve fixed before that keeps coming back.
You’ve thrown time at it. You’ve thrown people at it. It goes quiet for a while, then shows up somewhere else. Every time it comes back it costs you more, and your team trusts the next fix a little less.
-
Everyone’s solving a different version of it.
There’s activity. People are working. And each of them is solving a different version of the same thing. What looks like progress is motion around the issue, and from where you sit you’re the only one who can see it.
-
A decision that touches too many people.
Everybody sees a different piece of it and nobody’s looking at the same picture. So you either make the call alone and carry it alone, or you keep waiting on an agreement that isn’t coming.
-
You’re leading the company and managing the process at the same time.
Somebody has to pull the thinking out of people, write it down, chase what they said they’d do, and keep it moving. Right now that’s you, on top of everything else. So it moves when you have time. And you don’t have the time and bandwidth.
WHAT 3Cs SCOPED IS
After enough years inside your business, your own habits stop looking like choices.
You’ve been standing in the middle of your business for years, and it’s hard to tell what’s carrying the company from what’s slowing it down. 3Cs Scoped is Pat getting inside it with you and your team, on the thing that won’t move.
Clarify
What the real problem or opportunity is, what it costs you to leave it alone, and whether it’s the one worth your team’s time right now.
Chart
Where you’re going, what’s in the way, what must happen, what can’t happen, and what you’ll need to pull it off.
Co‑Align
The people who have to carry it, in it and committed, before implementation starts.
Everything comes from what you already know.
Pat doesn’t arrive with an answer. Every conclusion gets built from what you and your people say, in your own words, and you sign off on it as the 3Cs process moves forward.
What you get is an experienced operator alongside you.
He’s built businesses and sold them. He’s taken over one that was bleeding cash and turned it around. He’s also guided business leaders building their own companies for years.
He’ll tell you what he really thinks, including the part you don’t want to hear.
Pat asks the questions you can’t ask yourself. He knows a symptom from a root cause, and fixing the wrong one just moves it somewhere else.
How the work moves
What happens once you say “Go.”
Every engagement gets shaped around your situation. The three stages don’t change.
Clarify
It starts with you. You talk it all out and get it back documented and organized, in priority order, in an actionable format. The instruction going in is one line. Tell me what you know. Don’t worry about what you don’t.
You’ll know it worked when you read it and think, that’s exactly what I meant, and I’ve never seen it laid out like that.
Then the people who need to be involved. Each one gets the questions ahead of time. The work happens before and after the meeting, not just during it. Every session is confidential and nothing gets shared without your say‑so, which is what keeps the answers honest.
By the end the real issue is separated from the noise around it, in your team’s own words.
Chart
Now the path. Four things get nailed down.
- Where you’re going. The outcomes that would make this worth doing, in priority order, with a way to measure each one.
- What’s in the way. The obstacles between here and there, ranked.
- What must happen and what can’t happen. Your non‑negotiables for how you reach your desired outcome, settled up front instead of debated in month three.
- What you’ll need. The resources, the skills, the people, and who owns it.
Then it gets cut down to what you keep doing, what you stop, and what you start.
That’s the roadmap.
Co‑Align
This is the part that usually gets skipped.
You can chart a course, build the plan, start implementing, and then find out the people who affect the result never agreed with it or were not involved early enough. Now you’re partway up the mountain, you turn around, and half your team is still standing at the bottom. You can’t keep climbing until you go back down and bring them up.
So they get brought in before that. One‑on‑one first, so each person can think it through. Then together, where the misaligned areas are already on paper in their own words and can get worked through instead of worked around.
Everybody starts up the mountain at the same time.
What doesn’t happen
The business doesn’t stop while the work goes on. And you don’t wait until the end to get value, since what surfaces throughout the process starts moving while the rest of the work is still going.
Ready to get your arms around it?
Let’s TalkA real‑world example
A CEO with six problems and budget for two.
A $35M company. Sixty people.
Grown 40% in three years by pushing harder, and the margins are still holding.
The CEO has a list.
- Cost definitions not lining up between sales, operations and accounting. Nobody can agree what a job made.
- Purchase orders that get opened and never reconciled.
- Vendors billing late, which holds up billing the customer, which holds up cash.
- A comp plan he’s about to redesign.
- A software gap he thinks he needs to hire a developer for.
- A board asking for a margin picture his accounting system can’t produce.
Every one of those is real. He and his team don’t have the bandwidth to address everything. He has budget for maybe two of them this year, and he doesn’t know which two.
Stage One · Clarify
We take two hours in his office. He talks it all out and gets it back documented and in order.
What comes back is his whole list in one place, in priority order, with what it adds up to. First time he has seen it that way. Then we schedule the next session to fill the gaps the first one turned up.
Then we go to the five leaders, one at a time.
Two of them had flagged the costing problem to different people months apart, and neither knew about the other. One believes the comp redesign will land badly and has never said so. And all five describe the same bottleneck in different words.
Nothing is decided yet. But for the first time all five are looking at the same picture.
Now the list sorts into symptoms and causes. Underneath it, two things. Nobody owns the numbers end to end, and nothing gets chased once somebody says they’ll handle it.
He had been treating six problems. He has two causes. That is what separating root causes from symptoms does to a list.
The six problems trace back to two causes.
Stage Two · Chart
The first outcome he’s after is a margin number everyone trusts, in time for the board. What’s in the way is three systems that don’t talk and nobody owning the numbers end to end. So two things get settled before anything gets built. One definition of cost agreed by sales, operations and accounting, and one person who owns the numbers, with the authority that goes with it.
Then it gets synthesized into three lists.
- ContinuePricing and the sales process are working. They stay exactly as they are while the rest gets fixed.
- StopThe comp redesign and the developer hire, until there is one definition of cost to build against.
- StartOne owner for the numbers. One agreed definition. Purchase order reconciliation, beginning this month.
And the moves get ranked by how many of his six problems each one takes off the list.
That’s the roadmap.
Stage Three · Co‑Align
Sales and operations have been calculating margin two different ways for three years. It’s on paper now, in their own words, and everyone can see it.
It gets settled in one session with all of them reading the same record. The CFO makes the call. Two of them still disagree and say so, and then they commit to it.
By the end the five are working off one list. Not his list. Theirs. Everyone is aligned for moving forward.
Then he decides
So he has a choice. His team takes the roadmap and implements it. Or he continues to keep Pat involved to help drive it. And they define that role then, with the roadmap already built.
What’s in your hands when it’s done.
- The real problem or opportunity, separated from everything around it, in your team’s own words.
- The roadmap. The moves ranked by impact, the open decisions named and owned, and the sequence to work them.
- A written summary from every session, reviewed by the person who said it, so nothing in the roadmap surprises anybody.
- Your team aligned on it before implementation starts, instead of after.
- A clean decision point. Take the roadmap and go, or keep Pat involved to help drive it.
Pat walks you through the roadmap and hands it off.
It’s built to get used.
Your team takes it from there.
This is for leaders who are done circling it.
- Who have something sitting there that’s survived more than one decision to deal with it.
- Who need the people who’ll carry it moving together before implementation starts.
- Who don’t have somebody inside who can pull the thinking out of the room, put it in order, and play it back straight.
- Who want to keep leading the company while somebody else leads the sessions, chases the follow‑ups and keeps it moving.
Ready to get your arms around it?
Let’s Talk
Who’s in the room with you.
Pat Alacqua started his own concrete business out of high school. At 24 he co‑founded a trade show and events company and built it into a globally recognized brand before selling to a private equity group.
The systems he put in are still running that business decades later. He then took over a sports academy that was bleeding cash, rebuilt the model, and built the leadership team that eventually bought it from him.
Everything since has been working alongside founders and CEOs going through the same transitions he already lived through. All of it is the foundation for the work he does now.
He’s the author of Obstacles to Opportunity, and his perspectives on scaling businesses have been published by Chief Executive, CEOWorld Magazine, and Duke Corporate Education’s Dialogue Review to name just a few.
What leaders say
“We knew a lot of this before Pat walked in. What we didn’t have was it in one place, with everybody looking at the same thing. Six of us had six versions of the problem and none of us knew it. By the end we were working off one list and it was ours.”
“Pat is an exceptional listener who always asks the right questions. What sets him apart is his knack for devising tailored strategies that address obstacles head‑on. He epitomizes servant leadership, always focused on helping others succeed.”
Questions leaders ask before they call.
What does the investment look like?
Pat doesn’t hand out quotes. He starts by asking what your budget is and builds the work to fit it, so you get exactly what you need when you need it.
How much of his time you want, how many people are in it, onsite or remote, how well your team puts thoughts in writing. Each of those shapes the approach and the fee structure that fits you.
The question worth sitting with before that call is what this is costing you right now, in moves you haven’t made and time you’ve spent going in circles.
The engagement
How long does it take?
It depends on what you’re tackling and how many people are in it. Pat scopes it with you before anything starts, so you know what you’re agreeing to. What you’re buying is a roadmap and a team ready to act on it.
Can we start small?
That’s how it starts anyway. The first working sessions are you and Pat. Sometimes one, often more. You see what comes back before your team is ever in it, and you decide from there.
How much of my time and my team’s time does this take?
Pat drives the process. Your part is the working sessions up front, the steering conversations along the way, and being in the room when a point of tension needs you. Your leaders respond in writing before their sessions, which keeps the meetings short. Onsite, remote, or a mix, whatever moves the work best.
What happens after the handoff?
The roadmap is built to get used. It lays out the moves, the order, and who owns the open decisions. If you want Pat in the implementation, that’s a separate conversation and you have it with the roadmap already built.
Your team
What if my team doesn’t agree?
Good. That’s material to work with. Different views surface early, in writing, in each person’s own words, so the disagreement is visible instead of buried. Some of it settles in conversation. Some settles when you make the call. Either way it gets settled before implementation, at the lowest risk and the lowest cost.
Is what my people tell you confidential?
Yes. Sessions are confidential and nothing gets shared without permission. Pat’s job is getting everyone aligned, and that only works if people answer honestly. When the same concern turns up in four separate sessions, that pattern is worth more than any one quote.
What if I’m not sure what the real issue is?
That’s exactly when this works best. Many leaders can name the symptoms and haven’t pinned the cause. Clarify separates the two, and once everything you know is laid out, what’s missing turns into a short list you can decide about.
How it compares
How is this different from the 3Cs Snapshot Course?
Same three stages, different seat. The 3Cs Snapshot Course teaches you Clarify, Chart and Co‑Align so you can lead them yourself, on your own challenge, at your own pace. 3Cs Scoped is Pat leading them with you and your team on the one thing that won’t move, and you end up with a roadmap and a team aligned behind it. If you came looking for the course, that’s the Snapshot.
How is this different from hiring a consultant?
A consultant studies your business and comes back with recommendations. Nobody pays to be studied.
Pat isn’t coming in with a predetermined answer. He’s working with what you and your people already know, pressure testing it, and getting the right people aligned around it. What he adds is the questions, the read on what’s a symptom and what’s a cause, and his own insights from having sat in your seat when the call was his to make.
How is this different from Thought Partner?
Thought Partner is an ongoing thinking partnership for whatever comes up over time. 3Cs Scoped is one specific challenge with a clear beginning and end.
How is this different from Growth Pathfinder?
3Cs Scoped goes after what’s in front of you now. Growth Pathfinder builds the operating foundation underneath the whole business. If it’s one thing that won’t move, this fits. If the organization needs a broader rebuild for next level growth, that’s the Growth Pathfinder conversation.
Meet Pat
I started a company at 24 and built it into an internationally recognized brand. When it sold, the systems already in place kept running the business. They still are, decades later. Built to last. Built to scale at every next level of growth.
I then turned around a company that was losing money with no plan to stop it. Built the management systems and built the leadership team to run the company on its own. Build the systems and build the people, and the business stops depending on one person to hold it together.
I’ve been working with CEOs and founders ever since, helping them navigate the same transitions I faced from my own companies. Different industries, different companies, same growth problems underneath. Enough to know what’s breaking and why. Usually before the leader in the middle of it can identify it.
That’s the short version.
Ready to get your arms around it?
The next step is a conversation. Pat will shape the work around your situation, what it would take, and what it costs.
That problem isn’t going away on its own.
The thing you keep circling back to? There’s a reason it won’t move. This free diagnostic takes 30 minutes and shows you exactly what’s driving the stall.
FIND WHAT’S STUCK
Join Our Free Trial
Get started today before this once in a lifetime opportunity expires.