The situation

The founder of Bonaventure Partners, William O'Connell had his cards stacked against him. His client, a large wireless carrier, had significant operational issues.

They had product issues, operations issues, and leadership issues. You name the problem, they had it. It needed to be turned around.

And through his due diligence, and putting a great team together, which he assembled, he was able to make the wireless carrier, turn them around, and get endorsed by the leadership team as his biggest champion.

Here's how he led his company to turn around the wireless carrier and lead it to an acquisition by a Fortune 500 company.

The story

Listen in for an incredible story on how the CEO and founder of Bonaventure partners turned around a wireless carrier.

So, where I learned my passion in business is when I was hired to run a sales division of a company in Chicago and they were an IT company. And the company was publicly traded. But that was another sort of a hot mess in that, we were shipping empty boxes of software, clients were firing us repeatedly, and we were not doing well. So, there was a dynamic leader there who kind of put us on a three-year plan to right the ship.

And so, I subscribed to the plan. And I had some strong metrics that I had to follow. And it truly taught me my passion and what I love, which is, again, diagnosing the problems, triaging the problems, finding the right people, building the right team, and making sure that everybody has the tools necessary, the clear vision of what we have to do. 

Well, the problem that we had is we were letting down customers and we were not executing well. So, I remember my first meeting with a large carrier, wireless carrier. And I went to sit down and the guy said, "I'm not giving you a seat because you're not going to be here on the next meeting." And I said, "Well, all right, so let's talk about it." So, I stood the entire duration of the meeting.

So, what I did is I methodically took notes as to every one of his issues, which were long, because people had been ignoring them and hadn't been paying attention and it was affecting his performance. So, I took this as a personal challenge to go through his punch list of what the issues were. And it was a lot of things, obviously, internally.

Credits and just bad product and ... I mean, it was serious and we were going to be fired. And through my own diligence, and again, having a good team that I put together, we were able to make them happy, to turn them around, and then he became one of our greatest champions.

And then he showed me all the people from our company that had been there prior. "How are you different? What are you going to do with these other predecessors with false promises? I had to prove myself.

Well, you had to pull together the product groups. You had to put together the operations people. You had to get the finance people together. And then everybody had to take ownership of these issues. And at that point, you're acting like a project manager. 

Everybody had a timeline and a deadline. And this is when I expected this to be completed and it worked. 

After three years, we sold the company to a division of Hewlett Packard. And once that transition took place, I knew I could not be in a large corporation any longer. Because getting on a conference call with 20 people and it takes you 20 minutes to get through everybody's introduction and just pounding and so forth, pontificating.

I knew that I caught this turnaround and building and growing shareholder value, and it's something ingrained in me, and it's something that I greatly enjoy.

Bonaventure Takeaways

Tackle the most difficult challenges head on.

The Wireless SVP was by far, our biggest challenge. His career and reputation was on the line. So, we had to work with him every step of the way to show him progress, and that's how he became one of our biggest endorsers and champions.

Real listening turns into real results.

Sometimes even the small things like taking notes and repeating it back to leadership can build trust and ultimately, results. But, you have to have real empathetic listening.

Transformation takes place at the ground level, not the boardroom.

The only way to turnaround the wireless carrier was to have skin in the game, and get operations in place. That takes real hard work, at the product and operations level. It needed a turnaround, and it started with the people and the processes of those doing the work at the ground level.

WILLIAM J. O'CONNELL

PRINCIPAL PARTNER

William is an ultra-competitive senior leader with experience leading Fortune 500 divisions and entrepreneurial ventures as an operator, advisor, and investor. He’s a creative, tenacious practical leader with deep, diverse experience in solving difficult challenges. If there is a problem, Bill solves it. Plain and simple.

Bill is also a former amateur boxer and accomplished marathon runner. Will has a strong ability to help clients grow sales, evaluate management teams, and improve operational efficiency.