What Is The Missing Ingredient In “Traditional” Exit Planning.
September 30, 2011 by Harvey Wigder · Leave a Comment
In this newsletter the word “exit” refers to an owner leaving his or her business via sale, transfer or liquidation.
The first baby boomers have passed the traditional 65 year retirement age and every year, that number will increase. This will impact the economy because it is estimated that this age quadrant owns about 8 million businesses. This is an important time for making some key decisions in the life of a business owner, especially since it is estimated that 80% of his or her wealth is tied up in the business. Since a business is not a liquid investment, it must be sold for the owner to realize its value.
There are two problems with exits. The first is that the owner has spent his life operating the business and usually doesn’t have the skills to sell it. What generally seems to happen is that the owner has a crisis or 
gets fed up and seeks an immediate sale. Since owners often have unrealistic notions of the value of the business and have not done anything to prepare it for sale, selling the business can be very problematic. One statistic that shows the result of that lack of expertise is that 78% of businesses presented to M&A firms do not find a buyer and are subsequently liquidated. Many others find buyers, but don’t maximize the selling price. These transitions are not good for the owner, his or her family, employees, or customers; it also represents a loss of jobs and value added for the economy.
Advisors who understand that most owners do not have the skills to sell their businesses have begun to focus on the idea that bigger picture exit thinking needs to be coupled with their specific professional expertise. Many money managers, M&A firms, lawyers, accountants and business consultants are realizing that each situation has its own complexity and it will take a team of specialists (legal, tax, accounting, and others), plugged into the needs of the owner, to help guide that person to a successful exit. These advisors help the owner understand the process and form the team needed for success. And in this case, the term success is defined as the completion of a transaction wherein the owner is able to monetize his or her investment to the greatest financial benefit possible, while at the same time ensuring employees, customers, vendors, and the buyer are also benefited.
Thus, the initial approach to the realization that “exits” would become increasingly prevalent was financial. The questions most often posed to owners were “how much money do you need to fund the life you would like when you no longer have cash flow from the business?”, and “what is your business worth – assuming you can sell it?” If the business was worth more than his or her needs, the owner could sell it and was encouraged to create a plan around value maximization. If the business was worth less, the challenge was to create a plan that included steps to increase the businesses value (and its likelihood of sale). However, these insights often don’t necessarily lead to action. Why? What is the missing component?
The missing ingredient is emotional readiness. Although I have heard there are owners who want to retire, I don’t know them. The ones I know have their identities and lives so wrapped in running their companies that they do not have a clue about what they might do with their lives if they didn’t have the business to go to. Instead, they ask themselves, “if I sell my business on Friday, what do I do Monday morning?” When they contemplate the prospect of not actually not “going to work” at the business, they figuratively (and sometimes literally) grow cold and clammy because they feel that without the business, they would drop into a black hole that feels somewhat like a walking death. In a sense, the business is their life and without the business, life seems pretty empty.
Understanding the emotional component has led to the next generation of exit planning, more properly called transition planning. With this focus, the owner considers his or her (and often the spouse is included) emotional readiness early in the process. If an owner can get excited about the prospects of an interesting and meaningful life after leaving the business, they are motivated to proceed. Otherwise, they nearly always put off needed planning; avoid the subject altogether, or (unconsciously) sabotage planning and selling efforts because of this lack of emotional readiness to move into another phase of life. This emotional component of the situation has many variables – and they differ from person to person. The point here is that those variables should be carefully examined, planned for, and resolved as part of the transition process.
I have gone through my own transition planning which I will discuss in the next newsletter. During my planning I discovered the Successful Personal Planning Institute which has created a systematic, business oriented process to help owners deal with emotional issues. I have been certified by them to use their process and am now working with business owners to help plan and effect a successful emotional and financial transition from their business to a new and equally fulfilling life. We will continue on this topic in the next newsletter.
Heidrick & Struggles Opens Its Kimono
July 29, 2010 by Harvey Wigder · Leave a Comment
In a recent article in the Financial Times, the new CEO of Heidrick & Struggles, one of the nation’s leading executive search firms, tells about changes resulting from a recent internal study of the results of 20,000 searches.
“We’ve found that 40 per cent of executives hired at the senior level are pushed out, fail or quit within 18 months.”
Some industry observers who saw that quote used it to bash the firm. For example, Staffing Advisor says “Astonishing. He’s describing a 40% failure rate by one of the most trusted and reputable brands in the executive search business. (If that statistic is true, I’m glad they didn’t build my house or service the breaks on my car.)”
Staffing Advisor was being disingenuous because they know that Kelly is only admitting what other observers have known for years. It is hard to find and integrate executives into a new company. Failure rates are high and the reason is cultural fit, not skills.
Kelly is a young CEO who earned his recent promotion because of his successes building revenue in the Heidrick regions he managed. He is using this research as a basis for introducing new services and income streams to the company. To continue quoting the Financial Times article: “The firm now offers companies everything from initial training and early feedback for their new recruits to regular assessments of current executives and succession planning and staff development programs.” The article then quotes a killer analogy. “Mr. Kelly likens the services to the work of an organ transplant team, which not only locate and attaches the new heart or liver but also follows up with the patient to make sure the transplant is not rejected. Such “leadership and advisory services” now account for 10 per cent of Heidrick’s revenue. Mr. Kelly hopes to push that number to 40 per cent over the next five years….”
I am sure these new services will be attractive to the Fortune 1000 firms who are most apt to use the services of Heidrick & Struggles and the other big brand search firms. This is the CYA mentality immortalized in the phrase, “You can’t go wrong with IBM!”
If Heidrick and the other big search firms had the courage to take a deeper look, they might take a Deming approach and consider the failure rate as having something to do with their processes and business model and tackle the question: What can we do to improve our processes?
At Fulcrum, we have recognized the problems in the big-company search model for years. We improved our processes several years ago and we provide a 100% satisfaction guarantee. We are happy to see that a giant like Heidrick and Struggles is beginning to get it, and is offering (for an additional fee) many of the services we already provide as part of our stand search package.
If you go to Heidrick’s website, you will see the array of services they offer and learn about the many experts who provide them. On the other hand, if you go to the Fulcrum web site, you will see a simple promise: a guarantee that we will get it right. Let the clients decide which firm gets it right.
What does the BP oil spill have to do with executive recruiting?
June 21, 2010 by Harvey Wigder · 3 Comments
Every night on the evening news, we see oil soaked animals and witness interviews with unfortunate and hardworking people who can’t make their mortgage payments. Then we cut to the underwater camera which shows the continued rapid flow of oil and finally we switch to a map that shows us a bigger and bigger area of destruction. Recently, ABC Evening News superimposed a map of Nebraska over the Gulf. Maybe by now, they are showing Alaska. Last weekend, in acts of PR “genius” BP’s Chairman sympathized with the “little people” and its President attended a yacht race,
As this goes on we get angrier and feel more hopeless. We wonder how and why the parties could have done what they did, why we can’t fix it faster, and last, who exactly is responsible.
Assigning responsibility is tricky. Certainly BP underestimated risks and cut corners and deserves its current prominence for malfeasance. But, the responsibility is broader. The oil industry wasn’t prepared and this isn’t the first leaking rig. The government structure for regulation was in place, but the people who did the regulating didn’t act in the public interest. Despite the warning signs, our appetite for petroleum fuels remains unabated. The consequence seems to be riskier and riskier drilling. Should we hold successive administrations responsible for insufficiently dealing with this potential crisis?
Besides bail out, the solutions that are now being proposed address responsibility and punishment. The mechanisms are increased penalties and better regulation. Given the current malaise in Washington, the Congressional debate on how exactly what to enact will go on for years and will end with the public having little confidence in the final result.
Last week the news also brought the story of a Tylenol recall because bottles manufactured in Mexico gave off an offensive, and to some, sickening odor. Before BP took them off the top half of the page, Toyota also showed offensive irresponsibility. The problems caused by the Greek governments irresponsible stewardship of the country’s economy have also impacted us all. The sources of threat are everywhere! If you believe that global warming is in progress, that ups your level of concern about the fate of our earth.
Our ability to cope hasn’t kept up with our ability to manage global interdependency. National governments are now dealing with issues of international impact with agreement between nations almost impossible because of diverging interests.
Dealing with these issues will require systems thinking on an international scale with a corresponding recognition of the problems and a will to deal with them. The track record isn’t good so this is highly unlikely. I can only anticipate a long series of unanticipated disasters. These issues don’t have a single culprit or even a root cause. The problem is that we can’t manage a diverse system. Fortunately a company is a smaller entity than the world economy and some are managed very well.
Executive recruiting is more problematic than the search industry wants to publicize. Just to get you oriented, recent surveys have shown that 40% of newly hired CEOs don’t last 18 months. For more metrics that show how dismal executive retention rates are, click here.
When you are an owner who sees that a hiring mistake has been made, you are seeing an oil leak on a smaller scale as the business makes bad decisions, looses market credibility, experiences drops in profits and morale, and begins to lose its best people. The cause can be summarized by this phrase: people get hired based on their resumes and get fired because of their personalities and their failure to provide leadership in the right way in an organization with a specific culture.
A non-systems oriented search will list the skills and experience that the resume of the new executive should contain. On the other hand, a systems perspective would consider the culture of the organization, its strategic plan, the role a new executive can play in implementing it and the obstacles the new executive would have to overcome to be effective. The specification would go beyond the resume and consider personality, character and ability to fit into the culture while simultaneously being a change agent.
The systems view would then go broader still: It would consider that the organization and its current leadership need to collaborate for success and therefore will have as much or more responsibility for achieving the organizations goals as the new executive. That is follow up and integration is included as an important step for success. Both the organization and the new executive need feedback to ensure they stay on track to achieve the larger goals of the organization.
Conclusion
The time for limited, non-systems thinking has past. Those who are engaged in executive search can continue to make the mistake of seeing the responsibility for success as only being in the hands of the person hired (e.g. if that person doesn’t work out, we hired the wrong person) and begin to take a broader systems look at what the organization wants to achieve and the responsibility of the whole for achieving it.
The Advisor’s Dilemma
May 4, 2010 by Harvey Wigder · 3 Comments
I belong to two professional associations that consist of seasoned advisors who consult to family and private businesses. To get the juices flowing, we sometimes discuss cases that highlight issues and make us think about common concerns and ways we can collaborate to provide the most value to our clients.
Let’s look at the structure of a typical case. The case starts with the history that resulted in the company’s origins and place in its market. Generally the cases present a company that is a going concern and has, at its core, a foundation for a good future. However, there are problems. It almost always is declining profits. Underlying and contributing to this are problems with funding, sales, marketing, customer service, and operations. There will also be further underlying concerns about family dynamics, the quality of owner leadership, and the quality of the management team.
The advisors who discuss these problems offer different perspectives:
- Those who are accounting oriented, analyze the content and nature of financial data to get to the issues that seem to most affect the bottom line.
- The M&A specialists talk about what has to improve to make it more attractive for buyers and fetch a higher price.
- The business and turnaround consultants focus on the strategies they implement to turn the company around.
- The lawyers offer up the legal tools to draw up buy sell terms and related succession plans, but usually need to hold off until other issues are resolved.
- Estate planners outline strategies to preserve and grow wealth.
- The money manages optimize security and investment income.
- The organizational development people will see problems with leadership and will propose programs or coaching to improve planning and communications to better link human resources together to better achieve the mission of the company.
- Insurance people think of how to provide a financial safety net for the owners.
- I, as a recruiter, see opportunities to strengthen the company by introducing new talent.
We come out of these discussions with two conclusions:
The first is that the situation is much too complex for any single discipline, and in an ideal world, several would collaborate to help the owners solve complex and interrelated problems.
The second is a desire for, what I will call, the Holy Grail. By this I mean each discipline knows it has an important role to play with a focused successful company. What we all seek is company leadership that has an intelligent, well implanted business plan which leads to growth along with leadership who has an exit or transition plan to ensure the continuity of the business for the long haul.
Result: This can lead to the ultimate win-win. The owner has the experience of meeting business and life goals and advisors have the satisfaction of providing valued support along the way.
As advisors, our thinking about the company is not limited by its culture, and we know all companies go through cycles and leadership strengths in earlier stages can be weaknesses in later stages. We understand there is strength in coming to grips with change and being open to new ways of thinking necessary for the company’s present reality. We also know the owner who plans for the future dramatically increases the odds of achieving the highest quality result.
Put another way, our client may benefit from a changed way of thinking but doesn’t see the need or resists taking the risks inherent in implementing change.
The dilemma is tantalizingly simple:
How hard (or perhaps, in what way) should a trusted advisor push the owner to take a broader perspective and engage the support of other advisors and coaches who will help incorporate new ways of thinking and a more planning oriented approach to the transition that is inevitable?
The best advisors put their clients first and are consistent advocates for what is best for their clients and their clients businesses – but how can they do this if the client simply does not see the forest because of the trees? What do you think?
Profit Sharing: Entitlement or Motivator?
April 26, 2010 by Harvey Wigder · 1 Comment
Background
Many business owners believe in profit sharing because of their personal values and also because they believe that profit sharing motivates employee loyalty and performance. This second conviction remains firm even though research shows that for incentive to impact behavior, there must be a clear link between the behavior and the reward. Because most jobs are so far removed from a direct impact on profits, this condition is seldom met.
Employees are unhappy when they do not get profit sharing and are happy when the do. Therefore, profit sharing can have a positive impact on employees’ feelings about their company–but it does not motivate performance.
The original purpose of Geiger’s profit sharing plan was to reward associate loyalty and compensate for lower pay during a period when the company was struggling for survival. Third generation President, Ray Geiger, promised to his new employees, “If you help us earn a profit, we will share it with you.”
That period of struggle has long been over, and Geiger is now one of the largest and most stable companies in the industry.
The Geiger Challenge
A few years ago I was hired by Geiger to conduct a systematic review of all compensation programs with the goal of ensuring equitable and competitive compensation, including incentives at all levels.
The mechanics of Geiger’s profit-sharing plan were typically straightforward. After the end of the financial year, the company allocated a portion of profits to a profit-sharing pool, which was distributed to associates in the same ration as individual wages to total wages. Management felt the associates didn’t understand the plan and were distrustful of the way is was administered. They wanted to turn this around and get them to share some of management’s concern for profits.
Plan Design
The most dramatic change in the new palm was to base the program on company and business unit earnings targets that were clearly stated at the start of the year. This meant that instead of having to wait until year-end to learn about their shares, associates were given a score-card to keep track of company results and their own share of profits.
At the start of the year, each associate is presented the financial targets for the company overall and for his or her division and department. Each associate’s incentive is linked primarily to the department performance, but at the same time it was decided that everyone should have no less than 25 percent of the incentive linked to the results of the company as a whole. Geiger hoped everyone would fee part of the total Geiger “family boundaries.
Due to budget constraints, hourly associates were targeted to earn a meaningful but modes 2.5 percent of annual compensation if targets were achieved–and proportionately more if the targets were exceeded. Some selected manager had higher earnings targets consistent with increased impact on overall results.
The plan had a minimum threshold for overall company profitability below which no payments would be made to anyone. Employees were told how their payment would increase, decrease, or fail to be paid depending on actual results.
Questions and Concerns
In the process of designing this program, management had numerous concerns and questions about the plan design. Here are some.
• Keeping It Understandable. It is very easy to overcomplicate a plan so that employees don’t ..understand how it works. If they don’t understand the plan, motivating value is lost. Indeed, lack of ..understanding may even result in a negative effect if people feel something is being put over on them. ..This suspicion existed with the previous plan.
• Non-Financial Performance Measures. The company had quality metrics for its Departments. They ..could be part of the scorecard. Theoretically, it would be preferable to base bonuses on some ..combination of profits and other metrics. However, this would be too difficult administratively. It was ..decided to continue to provide feedback on the quality measures but base the profit sharing payoff only ..on profit targets and results. The question remained: Were profit targets (which were more removed ..than team quality targets) be enough to drive performance?
• Making it Meaningful. The bridge between individual jobs and Department results is more direct than ..that between corporate results and individual jobs, but not as direct as desirable. The way to make the ..connection was with good communications and through wide spread problem-solving meetings. Could ..management pull this off?
• Size of Rewards. Were the target bonuses too small? The $775 shown in the example translated into ..about 1.3 weeks’ pay. Some employees even had smaller dollar targets, depending on annual wage. ..Was this amount large enough to make employees care about whether the company and their unit ..achieved its goals?
..Difficult Economic Times. The industry and company were going through difficult times. Because the ..economy was weak, client advertising budgets were down as were company revenues and profits. Did ..it make sense to launch a plan like this in a year when it was possible that there would be no profit ..sharing bonuses?
• The Unknowns. There were probably unanticipated consequences. What would they be? Would they ..be damaging?
Geiger management decided to implement the plan despite these concerns and evaluate results, making modifications as appropriate.
Results
The company’s experience in the second year of the plan shows the value of connecting the profit sharing plan and individual rewards to unit performance. Company revenue ended significantly below plan, yet profit exceeded targeted profits. As a result most employees received profit sharing payments that exceeded their original targeted amounts.
Why did this occur?
• Managers reported monthly (verbally and with graphs posted) to all employees how their units were ..performing compared to target. The CEO issued quarterly reports the overall company performance. ..Employees knew of the sales struggle and understood the need to focus on cost reduction
• Employees clearly understood that cost cutting was necessary if they were to get bonuses and put ..pressure on management to do so. Was the size of the potential reward large enough to motivate ..employees? The result indicates that potential bonuses were enough and additionally, that employees ..understood how the system worked for them.
• One large unit did not achieve bonuses the first year. What impact did that have on morale? The unit ..was particularly diligent about costs the second year, and successfully achieved bonuses. The first ..year was very disappointing for that unit. This disappointment seemed to focus the unit. When the unit ..made target and bonuses were paid the second year, there was a big celebration.
• The company had training programs for managers and employees on leading teams and motivating ..quality performance. This helped the process on involving employees in cost cutting and other ..improvement strategies and minimized resistance to implementation of the plans..
What were the unintended consequences?
The pressure on managers to achieve targeted goals came from above and below. In particular, the head of the largest division understood that the performance of her unit was critical to the company’s overall profits and, therefore, to whether the company reached the minimum threshold for any bonuses to be paid at all. She reports lost sleep over the challenges. The plan can hurt morale in units that get low bonuses because of unit performance. It is up to the unit leader to mobilize people.
Some scorecards had to be fine-tuned to better reflect circumstances in the unit. The biggest adjustment to the plan was in the sales organization. In the first year, bonuses were paid on profit as in other units. The results were as indicated above: costs were cut and profit targets were made. However, there was concern that this worked against building new business. Therefore, for the sales organization there was a major change. Now, half of the target is for building revenue and half for profits. This made the job of the sales executives more complicated but prevented the plan from motivating only cost cutting.
In any planning process, some executives will provide stretch targets while others will be conservative to both protect themselves and make bonuses more attainable. It is very important for a plan like this to provide a level playing field. Management must be diligent to prevent “sandbagging” and make goals uniformly realistic.
Conclusions
Everyone Understood The Link Between Profits and Their Personal Reward. This plan was dramatically successful in getting employees involved in the profitability of the business. It gave them a meaningful stake in the business’s success. Everyone at the same organizational level in the same unit had the same scorecard. Therefore, the plan provided group rather than individual incentives.
Hourly and Management In Same System. The plan proved meaningful to management and hourly employees and tied them together with a concern for company profits.
Beyond Entitlement To Earned Reward. Employees are still disappointed when there is no bonus. In this regard such a plan is no different from when profit sharing is seen as entitlement or a benefit. However, when bonuses are received they are seen as something earned and are celebrated. Structuring a plan in this way allows profit sharing to impact business results.
Employees Understood Rules and Wanted to Play. The success of this plan also reinforces research that indicates it is not the size or amount that counts. What counts most is making the ground rules clear and giving employees a means of making an impact on whether they receive a reward.
Ongoing Involvement By Senior Management. Finally, and most important, Gene Geiger and his management team wanted this program to succeed. He and his management team believed in sharing success and in profit sharing. As a result they were willing to invest effort in the communications and the process of reacting to events and making changes when necessary to make the program succeed. Their reward was that the profit sharing plan helped them improve corporate performance.