How to get revenues un-stuck and scale the company.

Too many companies are stuck on a plateau.  They have hopes to grow into a much larger company – maybe double the size or more—but year after year they’re not.  It’s frustrating! 

Fast moving early and mid stage companies can't do big company planning - it’s too slow. But as soon as there is a small leadership team at a startup, being clear on what the priorities are and what work should be done first is essential. Simple operating plans, progress tracking and staying prioritization does not have to be cumbersome. If the CEO is to be free for innovation, he or she must know that the rest of the team is getting the right things done each day. Yet many founder-CEOs don't naturally organize and plan, and it falls to their senior leaders. This workshop focuses on a flexible, agile planning system that will increase coordination and results, while allowing plan resets (even pivots) quickly and easily. These skills are scalable as the company growths, with increasing formality and structure as needed.

What you will learn:

• How to build a concise operating plan.
• Start simply, so you can stick with it.
• Build a simple dashboard and key projects list.
• Learn the secret of creating a plan your team will accept.
• Learn how to monitor the plan and keep your team focused on the most important priorities.

An estimated half of all acquisitions fail, a number that should give pause to every midsize company (those with revenue from $10 million to $1 billion). Mid-market companies can simply not withstand the impact of a disastrous acquisition nearly as well as a Fortune 500 company, with its deep pockets and extensive corporate development teams.

Yet acquisitions can turbocharge the growth of middle-market companies, and many of them have. So what must these firms do to greatly increase the odds of success?

CEO to CEO, a consulting firm that has worked with more than 80 mid-market CEOs since 2007, has conducted an extensive study over the last year of more than 70 midsize companies that are seasoned at M&A. Robert Sher, managing director of CEO to CEO, interviewed CEOs, CFOs, and corporate development officers from a wide range of mid-market firms.  He combines those learnings with his own strategic acquisition experience from 25 years of running a mid-market firm in this pioneering study.

This event is for mid-market strategic acquirers (buyers).  It will not be focused on the needs of sellers nor on the issues faced by financial buyers (investors or financiers).  We will focus on discovering and understanding leading practices for strategic acquirers.

What You Will Learn:

• How to assess the risk of any given acquisition.
• Leading practices of experienced acquirers in merger integration – reaping the benefits used to justify the deal.
• The secrets of successful roll ups—where one acquisition after another in the same industry is integrated—and how that can help all middle market acquirers be more successful.
• The trials and tribulations of intensely complex transformational acquisitions and their learnings from mergers of equals, and how that knowledge helps all sizes of middle market acquisitions succeed.
• The lessons of CEOs who led companies through their first acquisition, and how they set up their companies for success as repeat acquirers.

When is accelerating spending on growth initiatives prudent or just a drain on the bank account?  Mid-market firms can spend too much too fast, or spend too little too late. It’s like the driver who braves oncoming traffic to pass in the passing lane—misjudging speed, distance and timing can be deadly..

Low morale is a plague that reduces productivity. Some efforts to make the team “happy” often fall short, and don’t produce the focused engagement that drives productivity.

From deep research about how high performance environments are measured, five specific moves are identified that can change the culture and the way people work, and increase performance at all levels.

What you will learn:

• Understand a high performance environment.
• Learn about the five moves that can change the work environment
• Learn how to implement some of the moves.

The line between performance reviews and business performance is blurred at the highest levels in a corporation. Yet some executives are retained, even rewarded when they didn’t produce the results that business needed.

Creating a concise, well drafted and thought out business plan can and should function as both a performance review document and a business plan for that function.

What you will learn:

• Know the fundamentals of a concise business/department plan.
• Know how to coach the executive team through the process.
• Know how to help keep the process on track throughout the year.

Every CEO dreams of a top management team that shares his vision and solves his challenges in unison. Yet many C-suite leaders seem to care more about their own function than the company as a whole. The HR leader can play a crucial role in helping the CEO create a highly effective top team. But to do so, chief HR officers must take a very different approach than the one that many are used to.

In his session, he will explain how HR executives can:

• Help CEOs better understand the dynamics of the executive team and the rest of the organization.
• Get CEOs to reveal more about the pressures they face and become the CEO’s confidant about leadership issues.
• Help the CEO create and maintain a high-performance leadership team.
• Become a “business partner” with other C-level executives who helps them boost their individual effectiveness to drive corporate performance.

As companies grow from small to middle market, the requirement for more formalized communication grows. Gossip via an ever-growing number of online channels will shape opinions, and the CEO must be able to communicate persuasively to counter mistaken beliefs. A regular cadence of communication must exist between the leadership team and to the company at large. Within the firm, tasks and objectives must be tracked and discussed at regular intervals, and feedback must be ongoing.

Externally, customers, vendors, analysts and public investors all assume that what they see and hear from a CEO is the best he or she has to offer.

What you will learn:

• Discover common reasons why your team may seem out of step with you.
• Learn ideal process for communicating throughout the strategic planning process.
• Use communication with subordinates to increase the sense of accountability.
• Understand how to use individual and team exposure of results to improve performance.
• Set up an ideal cadence of communications in your leadership team, from 1:1s to team meetings to all-hands meetings.
• Learn to acknowledge the audience’s state of mind to synchronize with them, then shift their emotional state into a positive mindset.

Acquisitions are a great way to grow, allowing companies to shave years off of what would be required through organic growth. They can also bring in hard-to-find talent, remove competitors, drive costs down and a host of other strategic objectives.

They can also destroy your company. About half of all acquisitions fail and at best, the failure is painful and diverts management attention from the real drivers of the business.

The key is to make shrewd acquisitions—the right acquisitions that truly help your business, and that your team is ready to tackle. This seminar will share the nuggets from some significant middle market research completed by Robert Sher recently.

What you will learn:

• Steps to tie acquisitions to corporate strategy.
• How to spot high-risk acquisitions before it’s too late.
• How to prepare your team and company to be a savvy acquirer.
• Critical steps to master in the acquisitions process, both before closing and afterwards.

Many CEOs feel frustrated by their board, and find the relationship counterproductive. Yet a good board can be a powerful ally for the business. Any good board is looking for a CEO who is a strong leader with a clear vision for the business. Good boards also keep that CEO from running amok and destroying value, or taking the business in a direction that is counter to the best interests of the shareholders.

A natural conflict often arises, and the key to managing that conflict is that the CEO must manage the board as well as the CEOs relationship with each board member.

What you will learn:

• How to engage the board when there is a big problem, or a big decision to be made.
• The ideal approach to establishing and maintaining strong relationships with board members.
• How to populate your board (over time) with the right people.
• How , why and when to create a board for a closely-held company.
• Keys to generating the respect of the board.
• Issues in setting expectations for the board.
• The role of your CFO & other execs in managing the board.