Pros
DBS or FBS started with Lean (the Toyota Way). The conglomerate believes the company (they called opcos) they acquired, when managed properly, using the FBS or DBS tools, they could have much better Operating Margin Expansion. Most of the tools, as they started from Lean Management, is focusing on how to be more efficient by driving operational excellence year on year. Their Formula to out-grow the marketplace is all based on acquired-squeeze by DBS/FBS-margin expanded-acquire next-...cycle. DBS/FBS has its values as the management tools in how to do problem solving, kaizen, standard work and daily management. For companies where efficiency is poor, adopting DBS/FBS definitely is a good idea.
Cons
Culture eats Strategy likes breakfast. Danaher or Fortive hires smart people for crafting smart strategy, but as what most other companies failed, those strategy failed because of culture! For all who had worked in Danaher and Fortive, they will know we live under the "Quarterly Profit Margin Curse". In order to sustain the legend in the Wall Street where Danaher or Fortive has excellent manageability in delivering exactly the profit margin they forecasted, a culture existed in all opcos that no matter who is the president of the opcos, he or she needs to live with this culture and the utmost 1st principle and priority, i.e. delivering Quarterly Profit Margin, even at the sacrifice of long-term investments, commitments, projects, that in the short term the company cannot or even it PM will be hindered due to that, but in the long term the return of such will be huge. Because of this hitting Quarterly Forecast Culture, no one in the Opcos can have a long-term development commitment, and everything is so fluid or dynamic, and there is one common initiative called Dynamic Resources Allocation (DRA), that is a simple management directive to ask the organization to squeeze say 20% of your existing resources to hit 100% or even >110% plan, and then utilize your 20% resources saved for strategic development. But once if you are not delivering the plan after cut in a quarter or two, you possibly need to retreat and recall your resources back to support your shot-term plan. That is why it is called Dynamic Resource Allocation and because of this, most of the long-term strategic development implementation dies out. Then if the president struggles for growth, the conglomerate will change leadership to inject new minds to find new ways for breakthroughs. For every change of leadership, there won't be any continuity of strategy. This becomes a vicious cycle until they find a good story-teller to wrap the fire under the paper or the opcos can no more deliver what is required and being spin off or sold out. To sum up, Danaher or Fortive holds unwavering belief in their own DBS/FBS, and treat opcos and employees just as a fund or a number, and they are the fund manager. They acquire, and sell based on whether that fund performs, and they use DBS/FBS to reduce bottom line and give the opcos a high top line YoY until they can't deliver. It's commonly held within the organization, it is good to be investor in Danaher and Fortive but it is damned to be their employee.
