|
|
| © 2006-2010. Sigrid Caroline Schroder. All rights reserved. CLARITY
AT THE
HIGHEST LEVELS® 
Crisis Guidance FOR CXO'S, DIRECTORS & ENTREPRENEURS Re/Alignment Transactional Strategy Litigation Oversight Internal Dispute Resolution Red Flags & Solutions Business Model Re/COmstruction Turnaround NEGOTIATE THE PATH FOR YOUR BUSINESS... BEFORE CHANGE MAKES A PATH THROUGH YOUR BUSINESS, PERMANENTLY. The problem with business is that risk and opportunity connect seamlessly with law and personality. Whether you are assessing risk, defining an opportunity, or resolving a dispute, you can't work just by the numbers. Every analysis and every decision is dependent upon factors of performance, personality, politics and perception from every angle. The real value of strategy to business is not in knowing the minutiae of the numbers but in the critical analysis which gathers data, focuses on the anomalies, and balances facts, factors, costs, and benefits to derive strategy or define solution. Preventative analysis looks at your business questions not only from both sides of the table but from the angle of all the stakeholders in the room. It analogizes between situations and sets of facts in order to predict--and generate--an outcome. The more complex the world becomes, the more business requires critical judgment, not to close just any deal or dot the "i's" and cross the "t's," but to comprehend real opportunity and real risk, to balance cost and benefits, and to generate sound business judgments. The real value of critical analysis is in a classic prudence which does not idly dismiss countervailing facts and forethought in the interest of real or potential present gain and unbridled action. ADD NEW VALUE: In a siloed and hyperspecialized world, business people and professionals, from executives and entrepreneurs, attorneys and CPA's to researchers and medical specialists often do not know what  others do even within the same or adjacent industry sectors or specialties. Hyperfocused, they can have gaps in awareness and even knowledge. I can bridge those gaps. SECURE EXISTING VALUE: Often in the rush to move forward, the details of securing intellectual capital are overlooked or pushed to the backburner. The perceived value sits awaiting the magic of specialists once the business is built, the deal is cooked or the post-transactional integration is begun. Unfortunately, without early analysis and capture, the value can leak away or even prove to have been a mirage. Together we capture value up front. Image© Mike Dabell.iStockPhoto
 PLAN AHEAD
Whether your business is large or small, multi-national or local, it is vital to have objective, independent, outside guidance. You need fresh eyes. I partner with you to catch new competitive advantages, isolate patterns, flag anomalies, and diverge from habit and fad. Shed the current business mythologies whether bullish or bearish, nation-centric or globe-centric, technocentric or retro. If your profits are flush, do not feel exempt from the next waves of economic repercussions or unexpected circumstances. If your profits are stressed and you are retrenching, don't cut through the muscle to the bone so that you have no power for the future. And don't segue to the next fad for an add-on to your model. If this current economic crisis proves anything to the individual business, it proves that blind belief can drive you over the cliff. From dotcom to CDO, in this decade alone, business co-dependence has been disastrous twice. Ask me for my comprehensive independent analysis. Don't believe your own mythology. And don't panic. After Image©Radiant Byte.iStockPhotos.
 RESOLVE CRISIS
Crises come with the territory. Presumably if you were not good in crises, you would neither have grown this business nor have risen to your top role, but you need not face a crisis alone. Even a good team can get lost retracing ground as it holds back panic. On the other hand, some business cultures encourage even their leaders to ignore crises until the crisis is a full-blown disaster awaiting detonation. Those cultures do not permit a rising manager to raise "negative" details lest the "inconvenience" be labeled fear" or, worse, "sabotage." There, if you're not with the team, you're agin' it. There, crises are not recognized as crises until the lawyers (or LEO's) are clawing at the doors, and red ink is running down the floor to the bottom line. Whether you are mired in that sort of deadhead culture or are coping responsibly with crises at the red flag stage, it is critical to have outside independent guidance. You need back up while your staff, (former) consultants, lenders, and directors are covering their hand and their hindsight. You need outside independent guidance to control the panic, to assess what is reality and what is not, and to flag,weight and weigh the factors so that you candefine alternative solutions and balance the costs and benefits of choices--and act. After Image©LiseGagne.iStockPhotos. COMMUNICATE THE PLAN
Rationalize the Model and the Plan: Follow the trend back to core competencies, but make sure you define them well. Integration should come not only after merger but in stages as the business grows--and grows apart. Elements of a business and an organization inevitably mature independently of each other. Some competencies lag. Some outrun the Model and the Plan. Some outrun the Founder and the Team. I help you understand what works and what doesn't. We identify the competencies you have overlooked and those required for a market you have overlooked. Eliminate the areas where you cannot attain the competencies in time to maintain profits or maintain the competencies to sustain profits. Integrate the Top Team: How often do all of you diverge? How often do you cleave either to the silo of your own knowledge and perspective or to the comfort of your own personal habitat? How often do you shut out the technical knowledge which intimidates you? IT and Legal have their own technical perspective on the Model and the Plan. You need to hear it. You should not silo them out of earshot consideration beacuse of the CEO-COO-CFO-fear of hearing "no" or even "maybe" as "no." If the CIO's refrain is"aging network, more budget," perhaps you should listen before the network grinds slowly down or the security holes gape and let someone rob, or tap, your bottom line. If the CLO's refrain is "What is going on?", perhaps you should make sure more than mere clues get through to Legal. How many trendy companies had Legal 'templatize' their leases and their contracts and then came back to Legal to negotiate the deal at 11:59--or not at all? How many of those companies have faced disaster now? If you are frustrated that every country (or every state) has different rules, don't stop your ears.
Invention: Does your business team silo invention within the limits of Engineering, R & D, or the functional equivalent so no one else knows what is going on? What are you missing? Capture developing value. Develop value across departments.
Innovation: If you have ever listened to John Lienhard on NPR, you may realize that to stoke innovation in your business, you have to tap into creativity. Unfortunately creative people are considered to be notoriously at odds with direction, budgets, and the bottom line. Are they? Creative minds also flag the serious risks which Sales and Finance would rather overlook and Engineering may brush away as "remote" with no analysis. Where in your company you do have creative minds, your mathematical minds may be squelching not just creative freedom but their critical thought--and axing them before they can talk (make trouble). From Prevention to Solution: Pre-empt your legal matters by identifying them when the legal issues are just a germ and still a business problem. As Jacob Bronowski intoned in his ever popular Ascent of Man, "Ask an impertinent question and you will get to the pertinent answer." I do. Succession and Change Require Adaptation: Succession and change are one leaf out of the same book: the chapter could be written in this one page. Change comes. Inevitably. You need context to understand how to adapt. You need to know how others adapt or not, and what you can do. Image © Guillermo Perales.iStockPhoto GET PRECISE PERFORMANCE
At a time when you and your lenders are watching for any change in performance, you have to be precise. You cannot afford to let any opportunity to slip by or to take that extra unnecessary risk. You need a comprehensive understanding of your business, but you have internal bias; you need a an independent view. You need someone meticulous who can give you a fresh view of your business.
After Image © FiFranck.Fotolia  FIND YOUR BENCH STRENGTH: HARNESS YOUR IP
One of the key strength of a business, of any size or age, is the ability to recognize the nature of its intellectual capital (IC), particularly the intellectual property (IP). IC is a fuzzy drifting zone; some of its value may be captured elsewhere on the balance sheet, but for raw competitive advantage, for the power of ideas converted to inventions, words, designs and symbols, IP harnesses the power for years and across global regions. IP has value not just to the Microsofts and Oracles, Coca Colas and Frito-Lays, but to all businesses, whether emerging from the entrepreneur's latest venture or enduring from the beginnings of the Industrial Age. Secured as IP, IC which otherwise would not be of a substance conducive to transfer can be considered as collateral. And yet the court records and financial pages are filled with lost value and litigation expenses. New businesses fail to adequately secure their IP rights and complicate their early fundraising, or doom any hope of IPO. They botch the patent. They botch the licensing. They fight out trademark infringement state to state and waste their war chest. These disasters are not limited to the new business which does not file its patent in time or shrugs off filing a trademark registration. and thus not worthy of the expense of protection--until it's too late. At times when the capital markets have rewarded only the latest killer app or IT black box, these leaders have brooded that their own technology is too low to merit protection. They fail to understand the novelty or influence of their own work. They forget what critical incremental improvements and publish all the details to the world. They fail to think the issue and its consequences through. They make very expensive choices, the expense of which they may never fully understand except by watching the success of their competitor. Let's look at what you do and who else does what and harness your IC. Image © Fifranck.Fotolia WHEN PUSH COMES TO SHOVE: STRATEGIZE YOUR IP
When jockeying for position gives way to battle, you need to strategize your IP. Developing your IP rights gives you property; it allows you to exclude others from your turf or welcome them in. Strategizing your IP gives you more value. IP can be valuable collateral in a time of shrinking credit. In a period of global bankruptcies, the value of assets and IP rights can shift and change, but structuring and monitoring such IP rights can also allow you to hold onto future value you might otherwise have lost. If you do not structure and monitor well and there is a default, particularly a bankruptcy, then your rights may well not be transferable at all, or may be transferred free and clear to a third party. This can make the IP rights of no value as collateral or anything else to you. It's complex and it's a mine field. Whether you have an established company or a new venture, let's talk. Image © Damien Bert.Fotolia  SECURE IP: WHO DEVELOPED WHAT WHEN WHERE, HOW AND AND WITH WHOM?
It's the 11th hour. Do you know where your IP is? Have you monetized your Intellectual Capital (IC) in time? Have you secured your Intellectual Property (IP)? IC and IP sound expensive, and they are abstract and complex; but pinch pennies and you could miss a fortune. Not dealing properly with these issues early on can deprive you of significant profits and can even deal a mortal blow to the business. It's not just a matter of whether you might be infringing on some other business's rights. We have seen developing companies ignore the fact that their key product was actually invented jointly with other, outside inventors, departed founders and even short-changed employees. They have impeded early fundraising, invited litigation, and even doomed any hope of IPO. Esteemed companies have lost huge value when they have lost control over their inventions. Ignore reality, collaborate too freely or let Open Source filter in without measure, and your IP can vanish into cyberspace. Have you had employees sign the rightagreements? Do you have problems lurking in your contracts? Might your website development catch you up? How thorough is your IP work? Are you planning to develop something new, something different, something useful but haven't planned to mark out carefully who, what, when, where, how and with whom else it is to be done--or has been started? Whether you simply assume that your intellectual property rights are secure or assume that your IP may be secured later, lets talk. Image After © Piksel.iStockPhoto
Unlike other consultants, large and small, I don't slide you off on staff or a network. Who you meet is who you get. Sigrid Caroline Schroder (877) 462-4035 What Can I Do For You? Clarity at the Highest Levels® Critical Guidance Corner Office Confidence® See Around Corners Reconnaissance Relativity & Revival® Develop Your Model Clear Counsel® Special Notes for Counsel I SPOT WHAT THE OTHER EXPERTS MISS.... Competition  ©Damien Bert.Fotolia | |
|