Helping companies grow

For 15 years, Dave Haviland has been consulting and working with companies who are starting up or transitioning to a new stage of development.

In that time, he has built a valuable combination of best-practices knowledge and in-the-action experience – and he adds to it every week, helping clients deal with the current market and economic realities.

He has worked with dozens of leadership styles and cultures.

Phimation works with the following:

• Engineering-based businesses
• Companies past initial start-up phase, transitioning from "Stage 1" to "Stage 2"
• Business owners who measure success by more than the bottom line
• Business owners who want their company to be more sustainable and successful
• Leadership teams who are open and collaborative, and want to lead the transformation of their business with the benefit of experienced guidance
• Leadership teams who value a disciplined, structured approach to solving problems that also acknowledges the flexibility needed to seize new opportunities and react to unexpected issues
• Leadership teams who want to enhance their existing culture by adding management practices

Serving a diversity of markets

Phimation's clients are well-known in their markets, but not household names. Their customers, though, are a who's who of industry leaders. A list of those companies, shown below, illustrates the breadth of markets that Phimation works in.

Coca-Cola	BAE Systems	Thermo Electron	Department of Defense
Abbott Labs	Pepsi	Raytheon	Sarah Lee
Ford	Weston Bakeries	Lockheed Martin	Department of Energy
Monsanto	Safeway	Boeing	Chrysler
SAIC	ConAgra	EPA	Lanxess
GM	FANUC Robotics	Fisher Scientific	Cargill

Clients who are builders and leaders

Phimation has worked with many of its clients for 3 years or more, and its longest-running client started working with Dave Haviland in 2002.

Phimation's client list includes:

• Three companies that won "Michigan 50" awards for growth by a "Stage 2" company
• A 25-year old company that works with many of the world's top packaged goods companies, and whose founders are planning their succession
• A 50-year old company that is transitioning to the 3rd generation of family ownership – and launching an industry-leading PLC control system
• A 100-year old transportation company that is building a new leadership team and a new culture so that it can pursue a new business model
• A 20-year old company that has a proprietary green-chemistry alternative to nitrate testing – and has seen commercial sales double in each of the last 2 years
• A 5-year old, venture-capital-funded company that has won high-tech sensor awards each of the last 2 years
• A brand new company that is developing wind generation systems and raised $1 million in private and public capital in its first 6 months
• The division of a $135 million enterprise that manages collaborative research and technology transfer, and is going through its own Stage-1-to-Stage-2 transition as its successes grow

Biographies

Dave Haviland, Principal Dave has served as an operations, corporate development, or marketing leader at four telecom/media start-ups, including service as President with Data TV Networks and Head of Business Development for Startec Global Communications. He has been a management consultant for eight years, most recently as a Principal with Shepherd Advisors, and earlier in his career with Booz Allen & Hamilton. As a consultant, Dave has worked with about 50 organizations. He serves on Boards of Directors or Advisors with several clients. Dave is a member of a number of associations, including the Small Business Association of Michigan, the Association for Corporate Growth, and Ann Arbor SPARK.

Lesa Lekity, Director of Marketing, Finance & Operations Lesa directs Phimation's own business operations. She arrived at Phimation after holding a number of leadership positions in the Finance Division of Ford Motor Company, which she left in the mid-2000s to start her own business. While at Ford, she handled responsibilities in finance, HR, and strategy; while owning her own business, she had the total entrepreneurial experience of handling all aspects of the business' operations.

A deep bench

Phimation has developed a network of business partners that provide augmented and complementary services on occasion and as needed by the individual client. Phimation partners include:

Thread Information Design: Thread is a full-service marketing agency that starts by building a fact-based strategy and objective-based plan, and then helps clients build their businesses. Thread works with all kinds of businesses.

Fritz Seyferth & Associates: Fritz learned the value of clear strategy as a Fortune 100 consultant and in leadership roles with the University of Michigan Athletic Department. He works a clear, insightful process with clients to uncover their core values, mission, and vision.

Perth Leadership Institute: After serving as a CEO and leadership coach, Ted Prince captured his learnings in a unique leadership assessment tool that reliably predicts a leader's intrinsic profitability (what Perth calls the "Financial Signature").

Shepherd Advisors: Loch McCabe has been in the clean tech space in Michigan for 2 decades, and started Shepherd just before the current clean-tech boom was starting. Shepherd is the leading Michigan-based management consulting firm focused on clean tech, and has developed a team that spreads its reach and capabilities far beyond Loch's base.

Garstang Enterprises: Collin Garstang has worked with sales teams at GE and a number of other large organizations, and for the last 10 years has been applying that wisdom to smaller companies. Collin brings passion and process to define, build, and manage sales and marketing results.