January 31, 2023

Why ALL Executives – Not Just the CTO – Need to Understand Technology

Why ALL Executives – Not Just the CTO – Need to Understand Technology

Did you just buy new tech for your company? Congratulations! Now, it’s time to start thinking about an upgrade.

So says David Mitchelhill, a long-time interim Chief Technology Officer.

Mitchelhill, who served in various CIO roles at organizations like Klarna, Freeletics, and the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Justice, is a sharp-tongued critic of everything from Salesforce to Microsoft to company owners who don’t take the time to learn about and understand technology.

By the time a company’s technology solution is a year old “it’s already decrepit,” he says.

The speed of technology development is doubling every year. Companies that don’t have AI-driven decision-making are now too late for three reasons:

1. Difficulty acquiring complex knowledge  

2. Scarce talent expertise 

3. Time to interweave AI-driven knowledge into the company’s fabric  

If this describes your company, don’t feel like you’re alone, he says. “I mean, Microsoft missed the internet — Marc Andreessen and Netscape completely blindsided them!”

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January 18, 2023

How a Turnaround Now Can Help You Avoid Business Bankruptcy Later

How a Turnaround Now Can Help You Avoid Business Bankruptcy Later

First, the good news: Corporate bankruptcies in 2022 have been running below average. Now, the bad: That is about to change. Big time.

Government stimulus, post-pandemic demand, and historically low interest rates combined to give companies the edge during the first half of 2022. Organizations that survived the pandemic shutdowns thrived as the world recovered.

In fact, Cornerstone Research, which tracks business bankruptcy trends in Chapter 7 and Chapter 11 bankruptcy filings by companies with assets of $100 million or more, says in its midyear 2022 update report that there were only 20 bankruptcies filed by companies with $100 million plus in asset during the first six months of the year. It’s the lowest midyear total since the second half of 2014.

But the US Federal Reserve is waging war on inflation with historically fast increases in interest rates – more than 3 percentage points in just six months. That, coupled with the threat of a global economic recession, is spelling trouble for highly leveraged companies and underperforming firms.

We asked two turnaround specialists to walk us through the highly charged bankruptcy landscape as 2023 looms.

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December 21, 2022

12 Secrets to Family Business Success

12 Secrets to Family Business Success

There are some family businesses that have been around for 100 years and continued to thrive under the leadership of 5 or more generations. But they are rare – as rare as a child who loves basketball making his way to the NBA.

So notes John Messervey, an organizational behavior consultant who counsels high wealth families through very difficult conversations about their family dynamic, their family business, and their hopes for the next generation.

His years of experience working with family businesses and entrepreneurs led him to develop these 12 lessons for family business success:

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September 29, 2022

CEO Turnover: Why the Bosses Are Leaving & Who’s Replacing Them

CEO Turnover: Why the Bosses Are Leaving & Who’s Replacing Them

Millennials and Gen Z employees might get all the press for their “Great Resignation” but they aren’t the only ones who are leaving their jobs in droves. CEOs are too. The Great CEO Turnover, which peaked in 2021 and early 2022, has leveled off a bit. But it certainly doesn’t mean that your CEO is planning to stick around for the long haul.

Outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas compiles a monthly report on the CEO turnover rate. The July 2022 report shows that CEO changes at U.S. companies fell to 58 in July, down 45% from the 106 CEO exits recorded in June. It was the lowest monthly total since the early pandemic departures of April 2020.

However, departing CEOs are hardly a thing of the past.

When Deloitte and independent research firm Workplace Intelligence surveyed 2,100 employees and C-level executives in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia, they found that an eye-popping 70% of top management are seriously considering quitting for a job that better supports their well-being. And 81% of the top execs say that improving their well-being is more important than advancing their career.

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August 29, 2022
Robert Jordan

Venture Capital 101: How to Survive and Thrive When VC Funds Dry Up

Robert Jordan | CEO, InterimExecs
Venture Capital 101: How to Survive and Thrive When VC Funds Dry Up

Way back in 2009, the Great Recession hit America. And it didn’t pass me by.

In case you don’t remember how bad things were, let me refresh your memory: Bear Stearns failed. Lehman Brothers failed. Merrill Lynch sold for next to nothing. Countrywide Mortgage sold for pennies on the dollar. AIG had to be propped up by the federal government. General Motors went bust, was put on life support thanks to the federal government. People were worried. They wondered whether they would go to the ATM one day and no cash would come out because their bank had failed.

And me? I was at a startup called PV Powered. We were developing the next generation of commercial and utility grade solar inverters. We had about 100 angel investors and we were burning $750,000 a month when the Great Recession hit despite as much bootstrapping as possible. The next thing we knew, 98 percent of the investors had backed out, equity stake be damned, announcing they would no longer support the company. And who could blame them?

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August 25, 2022

Executive-as-a-Service Can Solve Your Leadership Problems Like SaaS Solved Your Outdated Software Problems

Executive-as-a-Service Can Solve Your Leadership Problems Like SaaS Solved Your Outdated Software Problems

For years, companies have used SaaS – Software-as-a-Service – to solve their technology problems. No more buying expensive software. No more hiring experienced managers to oversee its installation. No more worrying about updates. It’s all handled by the pros and the service lives in the cloud, ready for your people to access the minute the need arises.

Now, companies are discovering that EaaS – Executives-as-a-Service – can just as easily solve their c-level executive challenges.

What is Executive-as-a-Service?

Like SaaS, which is subscription-based on-demand access to digitals tools, EaaS is on-demand access to executive leadership, whether you need the skills of a chief financial officer, chief marketing officer, chief operating officer, chief technology officer, or any other type of “chief.”

EaaS allows you to pay only for the c-level expertise you need and only for as long as you need it. No pricey executive search fees. No hiring bonuses No long-term contracts. No human resources expenses. As a cost-effective alternative to onboarding any type of full-time chief executive, the EaaS model means that even small businesses can afford experienced, effective leadership.

Executive-as-a-Service leaders are interim or fractional executives with a wealth of experience managing companies through big challenges such as rapid growth or decline, mergers or acquisitions, new market demands, and dried up funding.

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August 24, 2022

Family Business Succession Planning Checklist: 6 Important Questions to Ask

Family Business Succession Planning Checklist: 6 Important Questions to Ask

The pandemic had one positive effect on family businesses: More of them developed formal business succession plans. That’s according to PwC’s 10th Global Family Business Survey. The report says that 30 percent of the family firms it polled now have a formal plan in place, up from just 15 percent in the 2018 survey.

Perhaps it shouldn’t be all that surprising that so many family-owned small businesses lack a formal plan. Creating a succession plan requires having difficult discussions around emotionally fraught family dynamics:

  • Should your son or daughter be groomed to take over the helm, or should it be a non-family member?
  • Should you just sell and split the proceeds?
  • What if the company you founded and devoted your life to building goes in a different direction once you retire?

Despite widely quoted statistics that say that only 30 percent of family businesses successfully transition to the second generation and only 13 percent survive through the third generation, a Harvard Business Review report says that is not true.

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August 4, 2022

Creating an Omnichannel Customer Experience and Why Retailers Must

Creating an Omnichannel Customer Experience and Why Retailers Must

Omnichannel is the new retail. It means that there are no walls between brick and mortar and online, between online and social media, between social media and email and, one day very soon, between humans and the metaverse. In other words, the omnichannel customer experience creates a seamless customer journey that allows consumers to move easily among all of the channels a retailer can use to reach a purchaser.

A Digital Commerce 360 analysis of US Commerce Department data shows that consumer spending online in the US rose to $870.78 billion in 2021, up 14.2 percent from the pandemic-inflated numbers recorded in 2020. Compare the 2021 figure to pre-pandemic 2019 stats and online spending rose a whopping 50.5 percent.

Those are numbers far too big to ignore. Customer retention demands a seamless experience that allows consumers to move from in-store to online to in-app purchases with ease.

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July 25, 2022

How to Overcome Barriers to Organizational Change Fast

How to Overcome Barriers to Organizational Change Fast

Humans are hard-wired to resist change that we don’t like or fear. Our brain interprets that sort of unwelcome change as a threat and readies us for “fight or flight.” 

Given that, it’s easy to see why companies find implementing change management initiatives so challenging. When evolution is desperately needed, employees dig in their heels and cling to inefficient systems and outdated technology. 

This weakens the company’s competitive edge, slows its go-to-market opportunities, and wreaks havoc internally. The end result is that these organizations remain stagnant, fueled by a lack of internal alignment and frustration among employees who are not empowered to make decisions.

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June 24, 2022

Your Complete Guide to Launching a Search Fund

Your Complete Guide to Launching a Search Fund

As the incredible success of private equity over the past couple decades has made clear to many aspiring company owners and investors, if you can find and acquire a decent company, it’s possible to earn great returns.

This has fueled a new class of individuals seeking to launch their own search funds. What exactly is a search fund and how do you become successful at it?

Let’s explore.

The Stanford Graduate School of Business Center for Entrepreneurial Studies explains search funds this way: “The model offers relatively inexperienced professionals with limited capital resources a quick path to managing a company in which they have a meaningful ownership position.”

Inexperienced professionals? Limited capital resources? It doesn’t exactly sound like a recipe for success.

But it can be.

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