Private Companies Make Great Acquirers
At least in theory, it is my belief that many mid-market private companies (say companies with headcount numbers in the 80 to 500 bracket) would make great acquirers. I’ll lay my thesis out in a minute. First, let’s be carful about perceived wisdom....
20 Questions To Ask Your CFO
I don’t really care what you call your head of finance. I do care as the CEO, what you should expect from the key financial executive. Scaling a business requires insight into what is happening out there. Think of the finance department as the metrics...
Scaling Businesses Using Projects – 6 Step Tool
The biggest barrier to scaling a business is often the culture. Bad culture allows silo-thinking to dominate. Smart, successful cultures let dynamic, multi-departmental projects be defined and executed in a spirit of collaboration. Egos minimized. Results are key....
Understanding How Family Business Owners Think – Part 2
In this post I’d like to examine a delicate subject, always present in every business, but particularly tricky in family businesses – When is it time for a founder to step aside? It’s not always an age related retirement issue. Recently we’ve...
The Solution to Consistent Sales Performance
Businesses either have too many sales or not enough. Take WeVeel, a Morrisville, PA based business, it sells the Scentos brand of scented markers, paint and other toys for children. It was ranked #500 on the Inc. 500 last year, with a three year growth of 913% at...
Automating M&A – Allows Time for Humanity
For decades M&A was managed the old way – pen, paper, landlines, spreadsheets, word docs, fax machines, face to face meetings – and it worked (at least the deal got done) all be it, in a terribly inefficient way. Enter the brave new connected economy,...
Employee Reviews & the need for self monitoring
GE is trying to reinvent the employee review. Accenture and Adobe have scrapped annual reviews. But here’s the thing. This challenge of monitoring performance, of developing talent still remains, whether we have annual reviews or not. The challenge of improving...
Understanding How Family Business Owners Think – Part 1
It’s a huge subject but well worth reviewing, given many of the 27 million private businesses would be regarded as family businesses. Over the coming weeks we will take a look at many subjects dear to the hearts of family business owners, including specific challenges...
CEOs – Are You Increasing Shareholder Value?
As the CEO and, let’s say, owner of a private company, I would argue that you are in the asset management business – all be it with one asset. The question therefore that requires to be answered is, are you increasing shareholder value? CEOs of public...Operational Excellence For Exits
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