Most midsized company leaders want their businesses to become mighty growth machines. Unfortunately, sometimes that growth slows, stops, or goes the other way, and their leaders don't know why. Is it the market? Is it the product? Is it the leadership team? Is it something he or she has done wrong an ill-conceived deal; an unrealistic strategy? Because business consultants focus on big companies that can afford big consulting fees, and because the problems of the Fortune 500 are very different than those of midsized businesses, there have been very few books that provide relevant growth advice for midsized company leaders, or can point out where the growth-killing potholes hide. But not anymore. Robert Sher focuses exclusively on midsized companies. He has long been an advisor to CEOs and their teams at many midsized businesses.

For more than two decades, Robert Sher was the CEO of a mid-sized company. Since 2007 he's been a personal advisor to more than 80 mid-market company CEOs and their management teams, helping them identify the growth killers and help the company recover. Since 2011, he's been researching the vulnerabilities of the middle market, and has interviewed over 100 middle market executives (most of whom are not his clients). Sher began writing about these issues as a columnist at Forbes.com in early 2012, the publication's only contributor focused on the management challenges of mid-market companies. More recently, Sher was asked by CFO magazine to write a regular column in its online edition for mid-market chief financial officers.