Is Your Business Built on Individual Heroics?

Posted on September 4, 2016 by John F. Dini

Great employees are a wonderful gift, but individual heroics aren’t healthy for your business.

Someday, you will start thinking about leaving the business. Perhaps you already do. When you begin planning for your transition, what will your company systems sound like when you describe them to a critical buyer?

“Yes, we have a process for that. It hasn’t been updated, but Martha knows it like the back of her hand.”

“We really don’t have anyone cross-trained on that machine. Bucky likes to work alone, but it’s okay because he hasn’t taken a vacation in three years.”

“We always use Andy on that route. There are lots of traffic snarls, and he’s the only one who seems to be able to finish on schedule.”

You are getting the point. When an employee is especially productive or reliable, it’s easy to become dependent on his or her individual heroics. It’s one fewer function of the business that you have to watch.

heroic workersIt is ironic that the very behaviors that make your life easier appear to be threats in the eyes of a prospective buyer. You know that they could pose a problem, but they haven’t so far. Why fiddle with what’s working?

The answer is because individual heroics discount the value of your business. A buyer worries that key workers might not like his or her management style. As a new owner, he might be immediately approached for pay increases. Worst of all, if one of your heroes’ performance heads south, he may not be able to fix it, or even know what is happening.

For just a moment, look at your best employees as threats. Do you have a contingency plan for each? Can Martha’s process be documented so anyone can do it? Is Bucky just a loner, or is he trying to make himself irreplaceable? Can Andy’s mental map be duplicated by routing software?

And in case you didn’t realize it, “I can do any of those jobs myself. ” is the worst of all possible answers. Those kind of individual heroics will send the buyer towards the exit instead of you.

Dependable high performers are invaluable, but they are frequently protective of their status. Recognize them, but make it plain that that their work needs to be duplicable. (Although, “Of course, not at the level you perform.”)

If you don’t, start looking at them as liabilities rather than assets.

Do you know a business owner who would enjoy Awake at 2 o’clock? Please share!

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Maximize Resources – Use What You Have

Posted on August 28, 2016 by John F. Dini

Every owner wants to maximize resources. The whole concept of profitability is based on doing the most with the least, but we often are trapped in the prevailing thought pattern about how things “should” be done.

building cranesWhen taking a car service to the airport in Denver on Friday, I noticed a new hotel under construction out on the prairie. There were 6 building cranes huddled around it like mother storks over a communal nest. (Or perhaps that is why we call them cranes?)

The construction had progressed to the second or third floor. Certainly using heavy equipment capable of lifting material over one hundred feet into the air wasn’t an especially efficient method, but I understand the logic. Placing the cranes at the beginning of the job saves time. Having six of them makes sure that crews aren’t idle while waiting for material. The builders are trying to maximize resources.

But I have to contrast the scene with what I’ve observed in China, where building seems to be at a breakneck pace almost everywhere. The demand for apartment blocks around the cities is extreme, and their construction is ubiquitous.

In China they build five or six apartment blocks simultaneously. There is one crane in the middle, and the buildings are arranged in a  circle around it. One mother stork; six nests.

It looked odd until I realized their logic. Labor in China is cheap and plentiful. Heavy equipment is expensive and scarce. The best way to maximize resources is to staff six projects at one time so the crane is always busy. If crews are idle, it is no big deal. Their time isn’t a major factor in the cost of production.

How do you maximize resources in your business? Do your salespeople sell all of the time; or do they, like many, spend half their time documenting what they did during the other half? Are you paying an employee $500 a week to perform a manual process when $50 per month software would free up half her time?

And how careful are you about your most expensive resource – your time? Do you have managers who can run the business from different vantage points, speeding up decision making and keeping everyone productive?

Or are you the crane in the middle, with everyone waiting until you can get around to them?

Do you know a business owner who would enjoy Awake at 2 o’clock? Please share!

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Good Customers Can Be Bad

Posted on August 21, 2016 by John F. Dini

When can good customers be bad? What could be wrong with a customer who buys a lot, pays promptly, and never has a service problem?

They might be buying too much. No matter how strong or comfortable a sales relationship is, it could end. You may be confident that the customer is yours for life, but therein lies the problem. Someone who buys the business doesn’t have the same level of confidence that the customer will be around for a whole new ownership lifetime.

Many mid-market companies rode one horse to success. There were bringing in a few million dollars in revenue when the landed “the big one.” Perhaps they had to scramble to add capacity and ramp up talent, but the seized the opportunity and met the challenge.

As these companies grow, the owners always say the same thing. “I know that it’s bad to have my eggs in one basket. I’m going to find other customers to even things out.”

big and little businessmenBut the good customer keeps buying more. They are twenty times your size, and an increase of 2% for them translates into 40% more for you. Businesses in this situation aren’t necessarily complacent. They are just scrambling to keep up.

This good customer brings many other benefits along with its dollars. They ask for plans and budgets, so you develop capabilities to meet their requirements. They coordinate packaging a shipping, so you learn more about logistics. They ask for detailed reporting, so you upgrade your tracking systems.

Your company’s increased capabilities translates into more business with large customers. You can show your ISO certification or online reporting. You deliver specifications or scope of work statements as professional as those of much larger competitors.

But you never quite catch up. You are like the dog that caught the pickup truck. You don’t have any control, but you can’t let go, either.

There is an obvious risk of good customers having a change in management or strategy, but for the most part the relationship is favorable. The problem arises when it is time to exit your business.

This issue is specific to mid-market companies. In a Main Street sized business, an entrepreneurial buyer (one who is purchasing a job) will often look at the steady income from a large account favorably. If you’ve grown large enough to attract a professional buyer, however, the “Quality of Earnings” audit will bite you.

Quality of earnings analyses are done by larger accounting firms for mid-market buyers, particularly private equity groups. Those firms typically charge between $20,000 and $60,000 for the audit. Not surprisingly, the client wants a return on that investment. That comes by way of discounting profitability associated with the “risky” business.

If the letter of intent is offering five time earnings, the price reduction is of course on a 5:1 ratio to the profits. Not to belabor the math, but if a $40 million company had $4 million in profits, and 40% came from one account, a 35% discount for that account alone would be $2,800,000 off the purchase price.

That’s when good customers can be bad.

Do you know an owner who would enjoy Awake at 2 o’clock? Please share!

Posted in Building Value, Entrepreneurship, Exit Planning, Marketing and Sales | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

One Response to Good Customers Can Be Bad

  1. allen james says:
    August 26, 2016 at 8:10 am

    exactly i was thinking a day ago when i faced this problem

    Reply

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What is Your CEO Job Description?

Posted on August 14, 2016 by John F. Dini

On occasion, a business owner client will ask me if I have a CEO job description. I’m sure such exist in large corporations, but for an owner-managed company it’s a bit vague.

The simple (and usual) answer is that the CEO of a small business has two responsibilities. He or she does whatever he wants to do, as long as it includes everything that no one else wants to do.

Unfortunately it ends there in most closely held businesses. The owner/founder/leader develops the strategy, creates the processes, determines job responsibilities and handles the important customers. In the time that’s left over (!), he thinks about the vision, culture and tries to develop subordinates into decision makers.

The late Warren Bennis, a guru of early leadership studies, had two different priorities for CEOs. He believed that they are primarily responsible for communicating the vision of the business to employees, and then acting as the company’s representative to other organizations on the CEO level.

What would your business look like if that was all you did? Perhaps not today, but what if you could eventually arrange your CEO job description to only encompass those two things?

Your time inside the business would be focused on helping people understand why they do the things they do. Your employees would value each customer the same way you do. They would take personal responsibility for quality and reputation. Those with outside responsibilities would watch competitors for new products or signs of weakness. Managers would make choices that didn’t require your oversight.

Outside the business, you spend all of your time with other CEOs. You gather in learning forums like symposiums, peer groups or to hear thought leaders speak. You meet with others at your level in related industries to share intelligence and explore opportunities.

You never work your way up the food chain with a potential customer or client. Sales efforts start at the top, so when you get a purchase decision it is a done deal.

Dealing with vendors is on a level where you never have to hear “We can’t do that.” I don’t pretend that there won’t be underlings in your way anymore; it’s just that you don’t deal with them.

Clock and exec activitiesThe key factor in dealing at the CEO level is time. You must be able to schedule appointments that aren’t cancelled for the crisis of the moment. It’s part of your credibility. You must be able to leave the business for travel to events or meetings. On a local level, it includes being seen where CEO’s gather, not where you are networking with their employees.

The personal flexibility to act as the face of the company to other CEOs only comes after you’ve handled that “vision thing” internally. Creating a team that functions excellently without you allows you to do the things that only you can do.

In short, the CEO job description should be to do only those things no one else can do. If that still includes more responsibilities than Bennis defined, you now know what needs to change.

Do you know an owner who would enjoy Awake at 2 o’clock? Please share.

 

Posted in Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Management | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

2 Responses to What is Your CEO Job Description?

  1. Bob Kroon says:
    August 22, 2016 at 11:41 am

    Hi John,

    Good post. In practice, I see CEO’s concerns focused on these, in no particular order: 1) Something finance (cash flow, fund raising, collections, etc), 2) Watching the “secret sauce” (could be following the CTO, watching key activities in a service business, product development), 3) Building the team (hiring a key person, replacing people, adding to the team), 4) Reaching out to customers, 5) Some issue or event which is a drain on the business (legal matter, facilities, misbehaving employee), 6) An opportunity (acquiring a big new customer, a competitor, a technology).

    Small wonder VC investors value teams more than individual entrepreneurs. The mental bandwidth required to lead alone is tough.

    Reply
  2. Joe Zente says:
    August 22, 2016 at 12:13 pm

    Great Article, John…

    Reply

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The Immortal Business Goes on Forever

Posted on August 7, 2016 by John F. Dini

Do you run an immortal business? I hope so. If you answered “no,” or even hesitated to be sure of your response, then you don’t think of your business as immortal.

So when do you plan to shut it down?

Most owners react viscerally to that question. They’ve invested too much time and too much sweat to watch their companies become a memory. They care too much about employees and customers to entertain the idea of  abandoning them.

ForeverFor many, the business is a part of them. Shutting it down would be like having a piece of you die.

Ironically, we play mental gymnastics in our heads every day. We think we have an immortal business. We know we aren’t immortal (on this plane of existence, at least.) Yet, I talk to owners every day who want to pretend that either they will run the business forever, or that it will find some magic way to continue without them.

Anyone who works in exit planning knows the standard answers to the question “What is your exit plan?”

  • “I intend to look for a buyer in about 5 years.”
  • “I still enjoy my business. Talk to me after I get tired of it.”
  • “I’ll sell anything for the right price if someone offers it.”

Each of those answers is a version of “I haven’t thought much about it, and I really don’t want to.” I wouldn’t be much of a consultant (or at least I’d be an impoverished one), if I didn’t have some counter arguments ready.

  • “I intend to look for a buyer in about 5 years.” That’s fine, but five years is about the minimum time you should allow for any serious tax planning. If you are going to take a subchapter S election, create a new entity, or change your  depreciation methods, it will take some time to have the desired effect. Of course, the Internal Revenue Service already has a plan for how they would handle the proceeds, so you could just go with theirs.
  • “I still enjoy my business. Talk to me after I get tired of it.” That is clearly too late. Whether you are selling to employees or family, or marketing the company to third parties,  the business needs to be running well to survive a transition to new ownership. Once you start losing interest, it gets much tougher.
  • “I’ll sell anything for the right price if someone offers it.” Sure but what is the “right” price? Is it based on industry metrics? Is it some multiple that a guy from a vendor told you a competitor sold for? Is it a number you need for retirement that has little to do with market value? If you received an offer tomorrow, how would you know if it was the best offer you might ever see?

The most important thing to remember is this: Planning is only planning. Implementation is a different activity in the management cycle. Just because you have a plan doesn’t mean you will use it today or tomorrow, but it will still be there when you choose to put it into action.

If you own an immortal business, you have an obligation to the folks who depend on it. Part of that is to know how they will be able to continue depending on it when you aren’t there.

If you know a business owner who would benefit from “Awake at 2 o’clock,” please share!

still

Posted in Entrepreneurship, Exit Options, Exit Planning, Exit Strategies | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

2 Responses to The Immortal Business Goes on Forever

  1. David Basri says:
    August 8, 2016 at 7:45 am

    In my head the answer to the question was an immediate “No”, because no business is immortal. That, however, is a completely separate question from, “Do you want your business to continue after you are gone or out of it”? Taking action to perpetuate a business may or may not succeed, but all entrepreneurs are used to that risk.

    There is no question that in most cases long term planning greatly increases the chance that a business will continue after the owner is gone. Then again, do not be afraid to jump if dump opportunistic luck comes along and someone offers a big chunk of money.

    Reply
  2. Dane A. Shrallow says:
    August 10, 2016 at 1:52 pm

    I concur with your post. I’ve been involved in corporate practice, and the M&A field, for over 4 decades. One thing that is readily observable is that few businesses last forever. The vast majority have a finite life. Competition, evolving business models and disruptive technologies tend to take a toll. Want to own a retail store today? The primary focus of a business owner should be on how to preserve accumulated wealth for future generations. That could mean planning to keep the business in the family, at least for the next generation. But often the wiser choice is to realize your investment when the business’ future looks the brightest and capitalize on what you’ve built. In other words, sell when the business asset when its at its highest value, rather than at your scheduled retirement date. A lot can happen between now and then.

    Reply

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