Nancy is known at CFAR for her ability to act as the coach and thinking partner to the owner-leaders of closely held businesses. She understands the questions on their minds and helps them analyze and act on issues of risk, delegation, competition, continuity and exit. She also knows that while quantitative analysis is necessary, it is most useful when coupled with qualitative thinking.  Nancy helps leaders understand and deal with what they often see as the "messy" emotional and internal issues that can cloud their business vision. Once they can see clearly to set strategy and make hard choices, she then helps them work through the structures, processes, people and metrics that can stand in the way of productive action.

 When Nancy consults with her clients, she draws not only from her academic training, but also from her experience as a founder and leader of both the Family Firm Institute and CFAR. She knows what it takes to start an organization and to keep it running.

Nancy leads CFAR's Telling the Strategy Story focus area, where her ideas and methods for strategy development and implementation are applied and tested with clients of all types.

Skills/Knowledge/Abilities

• Executive Coaching - Consults one on one with leaders facing critical decisions
• Strategy with Top Teams - Works with leaders and their teams to set and implement direction
• Financial Analysis - Teases out the story implied by the balance sheet, income statement and other financials

Recent Projects

• For a real estate and construction company, coached the second generation and top team to develop strategy, leadership and governance processes that enabled them to grow rapidly—from $20 million to $100 million—without losing their culture of extraordinary quality.
• For a global public manufacturing company, worked with the president of its largest business group to develop a curriculum and materials for teaching advanced strategy skills to new unit executives. Then coached the president and unit executives to use these skills to create business plans, organize for implementation and effectively review unit performance.
• For a mid-size professional services firm, worked with founder and potential successors to devise a strategy story that contemplated the founder's exit, the business's growth and new leadership, and then put that strategy story into action.
• For a billion-dollar, family owned, retail company, led a consortium of advisors that designed a new ownership strategy and helped educate the new directors in everything from finance to leadership.

Professional Facts

MBA in Strategy, the Wharton School

Co-founder of CFAR and member of CFAR management committee

Directs CFAR's owner-led business practice

Founding member and board member of the Family Firm Institute, an independent educational association that serves family firms and supporting professionals

Selected Writing

"The Softer Side of Governance."
The Legal Intelligencer, Corporate Governance Special Supplement, November 20, 2006, pp. CG4, CG7.

"Interview with a Founder - Drozdow: Nancy Drozdow, Principal, CFAR."
Family Firm Institute website, June 2006.

"Tools for Strategy Development in Family Firms"
(with V. Carroll). Sloan Management Review, 39(1), Fall 1997.

"Consulting in a Constellation of Advice-Givers"
(with T. Gilmore). Journal of Management Consulting, 9(4), November 1997.

"What is Continuity?"
Family Business Review, 11(4), December 1998.