You are Camille Aubert, Chief Financial Officer of Chimiq Distribution in Lyon for the past five months. Three of the four distribution hubs have missed their quarterly target, and their directors blame a plan "handed down, not agreed". You have four weeks to take the board a new way of making strategy; first, you must decide what the current one actually lacks.
The situation
It is Monday, 16 March 2026. Chimiq distributes coatings, adhesives and industrial additives to manufacturers in France and the Benelux from four hubs in Lyon. It has 1,300 employees, including a technical-sales force, turns over €480 million and earns a 7.5% EBIT margin, €36 million. It was family-run until 2021, when a private-equity fund came in as a minority partner. For thirty years strategy has been set by the founder and five other executives; the rest of the company receives the numbers to execute.
For three years Chimiq has grown 1–2% a year in a market growing at about 4%, when the fund's thesis assumed growth above the market. This quarter's pulse survey says only 24% of managers understand how their work connects to the strategy, and only 19% believe this year's targets can be hit. On top of that, the forecasts the hubs submitted last year ran 11% above what they delivered: numbers with no shared logic and no way to check them before they were locked in.
You cannot open things up however you like. The fund's board issued a confidentiality directive after a competitor poached two accounts, and net debt stands at 2.9 times EBITDA against a 3.25 limit. The refinancing signs in about 75 days. The fund hired you because, in eleven years at an industrial group, you helped move it from strategy by a few to strategy built with the people running its plants and customers. Your mandate has one clear point: fix growth before the next board cycle.