When you have confidentiality agreements in place and a mid-level manager baulks at answering your reasonable questions about what accomplishing your shared goals is worth to them (“value”) you have two options: revert to your economic buyer (assuming you have a relationship) and ask for their advice on how best to proceed or ask the mid-level manager “why”?

In a great many organisations, particularly those with managers less experienced in partnering externally, they have a natural defensive culture (a set of beliefs that informs their attitudes and behaviours) that can quickly stifle a potential collaboration. The “fear of getting blamed (FOGB)” for releasing information that they are genuinely not authorised to share or they believe might be used against them by others (self-esteem). It is not personal and it is not you. Recognise it and respond intelligently.

Are you keeping your contacts (family and friends, business, investments and passion interests) sufficiently up to date on your value today to others? My strong anecdotal evidence suggests less than 10% of the “contacts” in most entrepreneurs and investors databases could recite in two or three sentences their contemporary value. Perhaps 2% to 3% in language that might trigger someone with a need for that value to ask them for an introduction. That is a dynamic problem in that the 27 year old might have 750 to 1500 contacts of obvious interest after a 5-year career and prior education but the 52 year old might have 3,000 to 5,000 names, most collecting dust in their databases. If you are not triaging your folders and lists at a minimum every 6 months (ideal, unknown, no value) and prompting updates, can you be said to be really maximising your potential?

There are a great many highly successful entrepreneurs who might be described as “cash rich, time poor”. By that I mean they routinely lose sight of what drives their business wealth and what is intellectually interesting but does not meaningfully impact it. When prompted to examine the “return on time invested” in key profitable growth initiatives not the return on capital, it pretty soon comes clear that there is an awful lot of time in any given week or month (meetings, calls, events etc) devoted to moderate or low business wealth creation activities. Just as looking at a monthly bank statement tells an uncomfortable but intellectually honest assessment of cash collection, so the same rigour when done weekly or monthly challenges the entrepreneur to be honest with themselves about the productive use of their time. None of us are getting younger, maximise the effectiveness of the time we have on the most important items.

I don’t know but I came here to find out. Why don’t you tell me what you would ideally like to accomplish (results and value) and when (time) with my expertise, and then both of us can decide whether we are right for each other?

Simplicity lies in setting the correct frame for a discussion. It sounds simple but how many conversations about partnering together and collaboration start with that level of clarity and create that unambiguous picture?

The unfolding superyacht tragedy involving tech millionaire, Mike Lynch, and his family and friends has garnered extensive newsprint, and apportionment of blame in the UK and Italy this week.

Having sat on multiple balconies late night this past month looking out over picturesque Aegean seas with the dimmed lights of superyachts moored offshore, it now would seem to indicate that the Bayesian crew have overestimated their abilities to manage risk and underestimated what can go wrong.

It doesn’t stop us having empathy or sympathy for all involved and their families, just as we rightly should for the countless thousands of migrants claimed in the treacherous waters around Europe this year.

What it does remind us is that an owner with substantial wealth and the resources at his or her disposal, is not a “watertight” risk management strategy for “human error”. That is equally true in businesses we own, work with, invest in or from whom we buy essential products or services.

Readily accessible contingencies (Plans B and C) and redundancies (surplus cash, resources, back up systems) are a “must”, not a luxury item.

Does “Sales” lead “Marketing” at JP Morgan or “Marketing” lead “Sales” at ? Does it really matter? In businesses large and small across the planet that conversation is being had daily, and the answer is, stick with what works best in your organisation and your ideal customers.

What fundamentally doesn’t work is when marketing activities assume every buyer is your ideal buyer and the ability to connect marketing investment with attraction of ideal buyers, conversion, implementation and expansion, is opaque. If it is not discernibly moving conversations forward with your ideal buyers to your ideal destination, it is not working. Don’t blame others, look at the robustness of your system, the people undertaking the work and the relationships you need to build, cultivate and retain.

I am tiring of early stage and high growth entrepreneurs, who desperately need greater help in attracting their ideal partners (capital, distribution, and so on) for their business growth but refuse to invest upfront in their own success.

They have money, whether it is supporting existing payroll and benefits or their own personal lifestyle expenses (private schools, mortgage, holidays), they just don’t trust their own judgement in parting with it to resolve the increasing ambiguity and complexity within their businesses.

The visible lack of confidence in their own future and poverty mindset, is precisely what is turning off their ideal partners. If they won’t accept and change their own behaviour, why should others underwrite the risks that they are taking in their entrepreneurial businesses?

Are you talking about the issues your clients, investors and business partners need to be thinking about or those issues that are dating quicker than a cold slice of turkey? Here is a primer:

1. With every “market squeeze” (energy, supply chains etc) a “market glut” follows, as day follows night. Are you prepared?
2. With interest rates ranging between 4-5.5% this year, expect in sectors with heavy private equity investment much greater talk about the consequences of rising Debt-to-EBITDA and Fixed Charge Coverage ratios
3. When major suppliers of PE credit financing such as Ares are demonstrably much more cautious expect growth capital financing of new deals to be much longer and trickier to navigate. The knock-on consequences for Sellers and those in M&A professional services.
4. 3 or 5 year business plans are as redundant today as they were in April 2020. Businesses need a laser-like focus on the next 12 months and maximum reassurance that Plans B and C are in place for key strategic facets of their businesses (capital, people, customers, distribution, technology, markets and so on).
5. Taxation is going to have renewed focus, as the countdown to key elections come into view in the US, UK and other major trading nations. What is a “fair share” and who precisely should share the burden?
6. Governments are going to offer greater financial and non-financial incentives to start new businesses and expand into new markets in order to spur growth but volatility and ambiguity will remain high. A delicate balancing act.
7. Huge efforts (re-skilling, new training etc) will be made to encourage those over 50 years of age, who have taken early retirement or are considering it, to return to or remain in the workforce. What does that look like for your business or clients’ immediate future?
8. In previously highly fragmented markets in financial services, insurance, business services and so forth that lent themselves to simple “buy and build” PE-backed consolidation, the game will move onto superior organic growth-driven business growth. Expect the consolidation of the consolidators to become a recurring theme, where businesses have no other option or ability to pull the organic-growth lever.

Get stuck in (“GSI”) is a piece of advice I often tell my clients hesitant to proceed at a pace that will reap them maximum reward.

“Pilots” and other dipping your toe in the water techniques, are really suggestions around the boardroom table favoured by those, who are fearful about the consequences. If you don’t confront that “fear” at the outset, often linked to emotional and pyschological issues of the people undertaking the work, you will increase, not decrease risk and the probability of failure.

There is an increasing number of enterprise technology businesses (colloquially, known as “Deathtech”) intent on turning the fragmented and cumbersome end-of-life experience into a far more pleasant one. Yet look harder and a great many are simply playing at the margins (symbolic changes). Time, money and energy. If you cannot see as a next of kin, beneficiary, employer or trustee meaningful improvements in those areas, don’t get trapped in the hype.