April 29, 2020

How Companies Can Stay Ahead of Rising Cyber Security Threats

How Companies Can Stay Ahead of Rising Cyber Security Threats

There are plenty of new challenges to keeping a company afloat while the world endures the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. Here are just a few: 

  • Applying for government assistance to keep paying payroll. 
  • Developing a work-from-home system for employees following stay-at-home orders. 
  • Working out accommodations and new digital venues with customers and suppliers that will help everyone come through a cataclysmic crisis still in business. 

Add to the list a new one: Cyber security threats to business.  

InterimExecs RED Team executive and CISO, Zeeshan Kazmi, says times like these are prime for opportunistic hackers. 

Just look at financial technology company, Finastra, to see a cyber security nightmare in action. After coronavirus hit, the company was in the middle of developing an emergency plan to operate when hackers found a backdoor into their servers. Malware quickly spread locking down server after server on their network, taking down many of their customers which include 90 of the world’s top 100 banks.   

“We haven’t taken cyber security threats as seriously as they should be taken,” says Kazmi, who has spent 15 years working in the cyber security space. “Companies have been reactive. They protected their business transactions and their reputation. It became a corporate risk management function.” 

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April 20, 2020
Fred Tannenbaum

46 Predictions on How the Pandemic of 2020 Will Change the Business World

Fred Tannenbaum | Partner, Gould & Ratner
46 Predictions on How the Pandemic of 2020 Will Change the Business World

World War II was devastating Europe. Bombs unleashed death and destruction across London. The Allies could barely secure a beach head in Normandy. Undaunted in those dark days, visionary leaders dreamed of a brighter future when the world would emerge from the deadly carnage, and imagined the structure of a post World War II world.

Businesses throughout the world now confront a different kind of mortal enemy, but equally deadly and disruptive in its own way. This microscopic virus is virtually invisible, knows no borders, and is agnostic to any demographic. It confines us all to our homes, burying loved ones dying senselessly for no cause and way too soon, and upending our work and home lives. Just as our forbearers prepared for a new world order once the terror of their present one surrendered, we now have some time to humbly roll up our sleeves and get ready for what awaits us on the other side once the pandemic is finally vanquished.

 Many of the thoughts in this article are hardly novel, and really simply continue if not accelerate existing trends. Some ideas may seem like logical outgrowths of the pandemic provided they remain emblazed in our consciousness. Others may be dismissed as unrealistic or overly dramatic and alarmist.

 No one, however, can doubt a few things. Our lives and approaches to work, our society and business will change, some for the better, others not. Like inventions, there are unintended consequences and manifestations, many of which we cannot now foresee. Finally, and most obvious as we emerge from this Act of God–  man may make plans, but God just laughs.

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April 14, 2020

How COVID-19 Is Accelerating Your Company’s Digital Transformation

How COVID-19 Is Accelerating Your Company’s Digital Transformation

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed our lives in ways that seemed unimaginable just a short time ago. Within a matter of weeks schools have been shuttered, sporting events and conferences have been canceled, air travel has ground to a halt, over 16 million workers have been laid off, and those able to work from home are now doing so almost exclusively.

Commentators are already proclaiming that coronavirus will permanently change the world. Many of the expected shifts, however, are hardly new. They were nascent prior to coronavirus and emerging stronger than ever due to the pandemic-led paradigm shift.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the migration to remote work and the technologies that enable it. In the United States almost a quarter of employed individuals already were working remotely, and while this trend has steadily increased over the past decade, with coronavirus forcing millions to work remotely, we may have reached a tipping point.

If remote work is indeed the new normal, how can businesses embrace it? Alonso Vargas and Andrew Andrews-Ramirez provide digital transformation, helping organizations with everything from ERP implementation to outsourcing, to migrating to cloud technology, utilizing platforms including NetSuite, SAP, Salesforce, Hubstaff, and Office 365. They have seen a shift in how organizations are operating and have keen insights into how companies can get ahead in the digital curve.

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March 25, 2020

RED Team Executives: On Call to Help Now

RED Team Executives: On Call to Help Now

Uncertainty is growing in the US with coronavirus cases mounting. California, Illinois, Michigan, and other states have taken serious actions with shelter-in-place orders, leaving many people wondering how this will impact them personally as well as their companies and the economy as a whole.

At the same time, we’re reflecting on how much there is to be grateful for, including the strong relationships we’ve built over 10+ years with inspiring leaders. These are women and men who focus their careers on running into the burning building – the company in trouble – learning fast, listening, assembling resources, providing fresh and objective insights, developing new plans and actions for survival and ultimately blueprints for a brighter future.

We recently convened a call with some RED Team execs who shared how they are adapting to new ways to work. Many executives shared experiences on the front lines figuring out how to help combat the virus and also help people work smarter and safer:

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March 25, 2020
Philip Schiavoni

Surviving Zero Revenue: Thoughts from a Turnaround CEO

Philip Schiavoni | InterimExecs RED Team
Surviving Zero Revenue: Thoughts from a Turnaround CEO

Surviving a period of zero or near zero revenue is extraordinarily difficult. The fundamental challenge is how to use time and capital purposefully. Most businesses have multiple constituents with diverse and conflicting interests. There is no one correct course of action. What is beneficial to one constituent is likely to be harmful to another.

Consider the following: The shareholders, owners and founders of a business have invested their own capital, have taken risk and have worked hard to create equity value. These owners could be individuals, institutional investors, private equity groups and hedge funds or could be a publicly owned company. They could be US citizens or foreign entities. Should the protection and retention of owner and shareholder value be the primary and controlling objective?

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March 20, 2020

Inspiring Ways Companies are Reacting to Coronavirus

Inspiring Ways Companies are Reacting to Coronavirus

The worldwide outbreak of novel coronavirus (COVID-19) is showing that crises tend to bring out the worst—and the best—in people.

Amid frenzied panic buying, supply hoarding, and finger-pointing, we’re also seeing individuals and businesses step up to help others. If the cloud hovering over the economic system has a silver lining, it’s that temporary changes to how companies define their mission statement could become permanent. Instead of focusing only on their bottom line, businesses might emerge from the crisis more focused on the greater good. In fact, many companies are already leading the way and providing inspiration during these uncertain times.

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January 30, 2020

Transforming Your Business Through Technology: Chat with Interim CIOs

Transforming Your Business Through Technology: Chat with Interim CIOs

Technology is the most disruptive force in the business world today. It transforms everything that it touches, creating new opportunities while at the same time threatening incumbents and late-adopters.

Futurist Peter Diamandis describes the technology paradox in the following way: “Entrepreneurs will create more wealth in the next decade, than we have in the entire past century. We’ll also experience the reinvention of every industry. Understanding how to navigate accelerating technological change is essential for every leader. The problem with such dazzling change is that most people fear the future, rather than being excited by it. And fear is a terrible mindset from which to create and leverage the opportunities ahead.”

InterimExecs recently held a webinar with Chief Information Officers (CIOs) David Mitchelhill and Kevin Malover about how you should be thinking about technology and your business strategy as we enter 2020. Among the topics discussed were ways to navigate disruption to stay competitive, the value of outside viewpoints in technology, when to pursue new technology versus maximizing current assets, and balancing the fear of change with the fear of falling behind.

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November 6, 2019

V.U.C.A. Helps Companies Deal with Dynamic, Shifting and Challenging Situations

V.U.C.A. Helps Companies Deal with Dynamic, Shifting and Challenging Situations

Our world, our universe is characterized by constant change. Stars are born and die, storms transform the landscape, nations rise and fall, people change over time. In the business world economies grow and collapse, business models evolve, industries transform and even the Top 100 list of leading companies completely changes in a matter of a few years.

But sometimes the speed and scope of change is extremely rapid, its consequences unforeseeable and unpredictable. This makes planning and decision making highly risky because it is so difficult to see what the future holds. “Everybody has a plan,” said championship boxer Mike Tyson, “until they get punched in the face.”

To help explain the often sudden, fluid, rapidly evolving and dynamic forces of change – that “punch in the face” — the U.S. Army War College created the term V.U.C.A. to describe and ultimately deal with highly dynamic, shifting and challenging situations.

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September 3, 2019

Why Most Change Initiatives Fail. And What to Do About It

Why Most Change Initiatives Fail. And What to Do About It

“Write down a change you would like to make in an organization that you are currently with…or  change in the marketplace. Any kind. It can be a big change, it could be a small change – strategic, tactical, something you want people to start doing, something you want people to stop doing,” says Jeff Leitner as he looks around a room filled with CEOs, CFOs, CIOs, and other C-Suite executives at this year’s InterimExecs’ RED Team meeting. He continues “You’re change is absolutely, almost certainly going to fail. It’s not your fault. It has nothing to do with your particular genius – has nothing to do with your insights. Changes fail. They almost always fail.”

Jeff Leitner knows a thing or two about change and innovation. He spent the last 20 years improving organizations from the US State Department to NASA, Starbucks, Panera, and the Dalai Lama Center for Peace. In a world where innovation and disruption is key, the question is why does change rarely stick in organizations, markets, and society? Jeff has dedicated years to studying why change fails and in his most recent speaking circuit, is sharing what leaders can do to be more effective in leading change initiatives.

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April 25, 2019

Remove the Monopolies and Step Toward Innovation

Remove the Monopolies and Step Toward Innovation

The great thing about playing the board game Monopoly as a kid was that you could buy up everything, collect rents all over the place (or get slaughtered if say your older sister was just a better player) but when the game ended, it was over.

We’re now living a real life monopoly game that’s crept up on even the strongest free markets.

In 2017, 75% of the beer market was cornered by three monopoly companies and one, Anheuser-Busch, held more than 40% alone. In the online search industry, one company monopolized the market and held 91% of market share and 98% of the cell phone market is concentrated among the four largest companies, with 70% being split between Verizon and AT&T alone. Even seemingly trivial things like peanut butter, coffins, and adult websites are all controlled by only a couple of firms.

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