On Iconoclasts and the Compass of Patient Capital
Most turnarounds follow a basic playbook. Load up with debt. Cut overhead. Narrow the offering. Squeeze suppliers. Raise prices. Acquire competitors. Exit.
Arar Han begins with a premise: What is working well? What do customers love? (What do they hate?) How can things be better?
Since founding Sabot Family Companies in 2016 with Shayne Fitz-Coy, Han has acquired and transformed seven businesses. No countdown clock, no planned exit. Improving what is already there is the name of the game. Patience is the key.
People First, Then Everything Else
Han starts with people. “You can’t have the boat gliding along in the same direction if you haven’t agreed on the direction and the pace.”
Everyone is invited to join. But more often than not, there are people who move on. “And that’s ok. If the past was working for people, then it’s perfectly understandable that they might not want an altered future.”
New people are invited to join. Han’s primary tool is the Chronological In-Depth Structured Interview (CIDS) - a lengthy conversation spanning up to four hours, tracing every role change in a career: Why then? What specifically did you do? What were the results? She listens for patterns in decision-making. The resume does not matter. It’s the narrative.
A team that agrees on where to go and how quickly to get there is the starter for great results, to borrow a baking analogy. The ‘right’ people tend to forge a performance culture. And a performance culture is the prerequisite for sustained results.
What’s an example of a ‘not right’ person for Sabot? A company was doing well, so recruiting kicked off for a President who could keep things going. One candidate came in for the CIDS and left a warm impression. They weren’t perfect, but they were humble and willing. It wasn’t until later, as the team mined the interview notes that another aspect emerged: the candidate’s discomfort in working with people of the opposite gender. “It would have been a bad setup had we brought this person in. The company was full of opposite gender managers…” The role went to someone else; the culture endured.
The Philosophy of Patient Capital
Permanent ownership enables what Han calls legacy stewardship: understand what a founder built, wash and iron what works well, cut away what is dead, carefully mend what could be saved.
It sounds gentle. It isn’t. Stewardship is healing, and there’s often surgery involved. Rehab too.
A poem by CK Williams, “Invisible Mending” captures what Sabot is trying to do: “how really very gently they’d take the fabric to its last, with what solicitude gather up worn edges to be bound, with what severe but kind detachment wield their amputating shears.”
Leaking roofs must be replaced, barren gardens, tilled and replanted. But we never begin our journey with any team without love and respect for the foundations they built.