LOST turned out to be a helluva long job interview

For LOST fans, here is a interesting perspective on job interviews. It's by Robyn Greenspan, Editor-in-Chief, ExecuNet and you can reach him to comment at Robyn.Greenspan@execunet.com:
So, in the end, LOST turned out to be a helluva long job interview. For those who didn't spend the last six years alternately fascinated and frustrated by the series, I'll translate it into corporate language:
Like many good leaders, Jacob, knowing his tenure was coming to a close, had a succession plan. Well in advance of retirement, he started filling his talent pipeline and selected his top potential replacements. Due to the "unavailability" of some of his recruits at the last stages of the interview, very few candidates made it to the final slate.
The position came with tremendous responsibility and Jacob elected the candidates undergo an arduous series of situational interviews to assess their skills and qualifications. Plane crashes, death, destruction, explosions, polar bears, time travel, electromagnetism, good Locke/bad Locke, and a smoke monster — all to determine who was most qualified for the role of island caretaker.
An interview is an opportunity for candidates to evaluate if the role is a good fit for them too, and of those remaining — Jack, Hurley and Sawyer — two seem less certain they want the position. So Jack selects himself as Jacob's replacement, and when he inquires about the length of his employment contract, Jacob tells Jack he must do the job as long as he can.
Instead of a handshake, Jack drinks from Jacob's cup, and immediately begins onboarding into his new role by accompanying the evil John Locke on a business trip into a cave. But Jack is among the 12 percent that ExecuNet-surveyed recruiters report don't complete their first year in a new job and during a hostile takeover, he learns this role was only for a turnaround specialist on an interim assignment.
Before his exit interview, Jack expediently manages the institutional knowledge transfer to Hurley, who, with his servant leadership qualities, turns out is better suited for the longer term role.


Written by Robyn Greenspan
Editor-in-Chief
ExecuNet
Robyn.Greenspan@execunet.com
twitter.com/RobynGreenspan
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Where is the economy - fiscal issues, union salaries, union pensions

Here is a recommended reading list from Mish's Global Economic Blog. Read more. Mish is a self taught economic commentator and his blog has made more sense to me than most over the past three year ride. 
Any business owner needs to understand the true state of the American economy, not the one that politicians are trying to sell to the media and public. It will affect all of us over the next ten years.
The US economy is going to be weak for a decade thanks in part to refusal of politicians to address fiscal issues, union salaries, and union pensions now. Mish's book choice explains why in practical and readable terms.

• Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics by Henry Hazlit
• Economics for Real People by Gene Callahan
• What Has Government Done to Our Money? and The Case for a 100 Percent Gold Dollar by Murray N. Rothbard

Private Equity in Sell Mode

Well, business owners cannot moan that they were not warned that their opportunity to sell their business at a good price is rapidly declining. If you own a business in Canada, and particularly if your revenues are below $20M, you are going to have a far harder time selling your company. There is still time to get in Private Equity Partners who will buy 30% and let you stay on to grow the business with them and sell your remainder share five years down the road.

"For the first time in 16 years, private equity funds are selling more companies than they are buying," reports Andrew Willis, Globe and Mail. Here's what else Willis had to say: 

News on Monday that Cerberus Capital is selling a health care company in its portfolio, Talecris Biotherapeutics, to Spain’s Grifols marked something of a turning point for the private equity sector. According to data from Thomson Reuters, the $4-billion (U.S.) sale meant that for the first time since 1994, global mergers & acquisitions involving a private equity seller outweigh takeovers involving private equity buyers.Funds have sold $67.1-billion of companies, year-to-date, and done $64.2-billion worth of takeovers. Overall, the volume of deals involving private equity funds is soaring, largely due to a recovering in credit markets over the past year - loans fuel leveraged buyouts. Year-to-date 2010, Thomson Reuters found activity involving financial sponsors as sellers was up 132 per cent, while sell-side activity is up 174 per cent. M&A activity involving a private equity fund accounted for 13 per cent of the total value of worldwide M&A so far this year, up from 6 per cent of deals during the same period in 2009, according to Thomson Reuters. 

What does this mean for business owners? It is similar to the housing market, investors are selling off properties and this pulls down the price of housing in the neighborhood. Same for businesses. The last eight glory years of getting great multiples are over.

However, I was in Boston this past week and American Private Equity firms are very keen to buy into Canadian firms and willing to invest in equity partnerships of 35% upwards. They would be exciting partners for Canadian owners and are very similar in culture - polite. 

If you are a Canadian business owner with a company with revenues over $20,000 revenues, now is your chance.

Jacoline Loewen, expert in private equity, author of Money Magnet: Attract Investors to Your Business.

The Role of Institutional Development in the Prevalence and Value of Family Firms

It was a surprise to me the number of family firms in Canada, but this not unusual.

Family firms dominate economic activity in most countries, and are significantly different from other companies in their behavior, structural characteristics, and performance. But what explains the significant variation in the prevalence and value of family firms around the world? 

The two leading explanations are 

1. legal investor protection and 
2. institutional development.

Cross-country studies are unable to rule out the alternative explanation that cultural norms are what account for these differences. In contrast, China provides an excellent laboratory for addressing this question because it offers great variation in institutional efficiency across regions, yet the country as a whole shares cultural and social norms together with a common legal and regulatory framework. In this paper, HBS professor Belén Villalonga and coauthors study ownership data from a sample of nearly 1,500 publicly listed firms on the Chinese stock market. They conclude that institutional development plays a critical role in the prevalence and value of family firms, and that the differences observed across regions are not attributable to cultural factors. Key concepts include:

• Family firms do not inhibit growth and development, as is sometimes argued. This seems clear due to the relatively higher prevalence of family firms even in regions with high institutional efficiency.
• The effects of family, ownership, control, and management in China are remarkable similar to those found by professor Villalonga in her earlier research based on U.S. data. Namely, family ownership is positively related to value, family control in excess of ownership is negatively related to value, and family management, when exercised by the firm's founders as is primarily the case in China, is positively related to value. However, in China these effects are largely driven by the low institutional efficiency regions. In the high efficiency regions, none of these effects are significant.
• These findings are particularly relevant for China as it continues its transition from a central planning system to a market economy.
• On average, family firms are significantly smaller, younger, and less capital-intensive than non-family firms. Yet they exhibit significantly lower systematic risk, and they are not significantly different from non-family firms in their growth and leverage.

Read in Full at Harvard Business Review;

Published:June 23, 2010
Paper Released:May 2010
Authors:Raphael Amit, Yuan Ding, Belén Villalonga, and Hua Zhang

Every Family's Business: 12 Common Sense Questions to Protect Your Wealth

Surprise - Government stimulus can reduce private sector spending

If you are wondering if your tax dollars can re-build the economy, I recommend reading more about this fascinating study by HBS which confirms that government spending skews opportunities for private businesses.  I like it when we can separate out the social rhetoric and see the economic factors clearly, particularly with well-meaning government interventions. Central planning has been shown to be far less effective in the many political forms it has tried over the past century.  If you are running your own business and having to meet payroll, you will already be aware of these findings even thought the researcher, Joshua Coval, was surprised.

Executive Summary:

New research from Harvard Business School suggests that federal spending in states appears to cause local businesses to cut back rather than grow. Read the full article here - A conversation with Joshua Coval.
Key concepts include:

• The average state experiences a 40 to 50 percent increase in earmark spending if its senator becomes chair of one of the top-three congressional committees. In the House, the average is around 20 percent.
• For broader measures of spending, such as discretionary state-level federal transfers, the increase from being represented by a powerful senator is around 10 percent.
• In the year that follows a congressman's ascendancy, the average firm in his state cuts back capital expenditures by roughly 15 percent.
• There is some evidence that firms scale back their employment and experience a decline in sales growth.

Robin Hood Should Have Been in Private Equity

I saw Robin Hood this long weekend. It is a truly, extraordinarily bad film: long, boring and yet, at times, preposterously silly. The low point came towards the end, when a bloodied, chainmailed Robin lept out of the English Channel, and gave a dramatic, slow motion roar. The whole audience burst out laughing. But it’s a real shame the film is so terrible, because it actually has quite a positive message about hard working people keeping the results of their work. This is the not the Robin Hood conjured up by those Dalton McGuinty tax advocates, who think confiscating bank and business profits will solve all the world’s problems. This Robin makes speeches about liberty, battles King John’s tax collectors, and even tries to force the King to sign an early version of Magna Carta. If the film hadn’t been so utterly charmless, I’d have been cheering him on. Robin could have been a private equity partner to Maid Marion, helping her seed her farm while thinking bigger about the long term view.

This version of the Robin Hood story made me think of Jean Baptiste Colbert’s famous quote: “The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing”. King John, plainly, failed to master that art. Yet modern governments have become very good at it, taking up to half of what people earn without triggering a revolt, or even any serious resistance. The reason is that people today often pay their taxes without realizing it. Most is simply withheld by their employers (hopefully they get a slip seeing what was taken), while much of the rest is passed on to the taxman by retailers with GST and HST. I suspect a lot more people would be advocating low taxes if they had to actually reach into their pockets and pay them directly with cash. In this spirit, perhaps it is time for tax withholding to go. Private equity is increasingly coming under pressure in the USA to have their income from investments into companies taxed as a business owner, not as a capital investment. That is a whole other blog.

"Should Lady Gaga have most of her wealth taken from her and redistributed to artists who did not sell five top chart hitters last year?" Eeer...that seems awfully unfair and why prop up those who have not created their own market? Conrad Black used this example to talk about taxes in his column in The National Post. Worth reading. Go to NP.

Uncertainty created by government involvement.

I watched the movie 1984 which was filmed in 1984 by, interestingly enough, Richard Bransom. Virgin's movie company, Virgin Films, does a good job interpreting the dense book 1984, and had the soundtrack by stars on the Virgin Records list. Very interesting as the movie tries to capture the human psychological results when the big government gets so involved in the market and day-to-day life of its citizens. You can see a few of Richard Bransom's personal bug bears, but it is well worth watching to remind ourselves of how 1948 looked to those who had suffered through the rise of a government like Hitler's, and why other countries and people accepted Nazis for so long.
We are experiencing a rise in how much the government gets involved in the economy again, and I listen to many earnest 27 years olds who fervently believe their government work is critical. A recent study by the rational and dispassionate Harvard Business School shows that this belief, just like 1984's O'Brian's belief, is dangerously misguided. In fact, this Harvard study shows that government spending shuts down private sector activity.
I have certainly seen that government funding of NGOs and not-for-profits sucks up talented engineers and marketing people while the public sector struggles to find such skills.
Find the full article here.
Here is the researcher's comments on their insights which they did not even mean to study:

Q: Although you didn't intend to answer this question with the research, what does your team suspect are some of the causes that could explain why companies retrench when federal dollars come into their neighborhoods?

A: Some of the dollars directly supplant private-sector activity—they literally undertake projects the private sector was planning to do on its own. The Tennessee Valley Authority of 1933 is perhaps the most famous example of this.

Other dollars appear to indirectly crowd out private firms by hiring away employees and the like. For instance, our effects are strongest when unemployment is low and capacity utilization is high. But we suspect that a third and potentially quite strong effect is the uncertainty that is created by government involvement.

Q: These findings present something of a dilemma for public policymakers who believe that federal spending can stimulate private economic development. How would you suggest they approach the problem that federal dollars may actually cause private-sector retrenchment?

A: Our findings suggest that they should revisit their belief that federal spending can stimulate private economic development. It is important to note that our research ignores all costs associated with paying for the spending such as higher taxes or increased borrowing. From the perspective of the target state, the funds are essentially free, but clearly at the national level someone has to pay for stimulus spending. And in the absence of a positive private-sector response, it seems even more difficult to justify federal spending than otherwise.

Christopher J. Malloy is an assistant professor in the Finance unit at Harvard Business School.

• More Working Knowledge from Christopher J. Malloy
• 
  

  About the author of the HBR article

  Sean Silverthorne is the editor-in-chief of HBS Working Knowledge.

The risk to family business when bringing in a professional manager

Family-owned companies present special challenges to those who run them. The reason? They can be quirky, developing unique cultures and procedures as they grow and mature. 

That's fine, as long as they continue to be managed by people who are steeped in the traditions, or at least able to adapt to them. But what happens when a firm grows to a point that it must hire outside professional help to remain competitive? That can be a difficult task for all involved. Just ask Melanie Kau.

It was a spring morning early in May 2008 and Melanie Kau had just concluded a meeting with her buying team at Mobilia Interiors Inc., a family-owned retail chain specializing in imported designer furniture. Kau, the president of the Montreal-based company, usually enjoyed these meetings. Sourcing the products that filled Mobilia's stores had been one of her favourite tasks ever since she joined the firm in the mid-1980s. Today, however, she was feeling some regrets. Not the that the meeting had gone poorly. Kau had called her buying team together to begin discussing their plans for Mobilia's spring 2009 product line-up, and the talk had been quite rewarding. What bothered Kau came at the end. As she was gathering her papers, she glanced at her schedule. The next two weeks were packed solid -- and not with the important sourcing strategy sessions that she so enjoyed.

Kau sighed. As her company had grown, so had the complexity of the issues she was required to manage. Once, she could spend up to 50% of her time on buying activities, a key differentiator for Mobilia. In recent years, that figure had dwindled to 10%, crowded out by other commitments to operations, finance and human resources. Kau was determined to unclog her schedule so that she could concentrate on the parts of the business that mattered most to her. The question was, how? The most obvious answer would be to hire a dedicated operations executive, preferably one with experience at a large company. There would be a double benefit

to such a move. Not only would Kau be able to delegate some of her duties -- freeing up time to focus on purchasing and sourcing -- she would also be giving herself the opportunity to hire someone who could bring problem-solving skills and best practices to Mobilia. The trick would be finding and training the right candidate, someone who would have the requisite combination of experience and a willingness to work in a family-owned enterprise steeped in its own culture. That was a tall order and getting it right would mean the difference between success and failure.

Kau's father, Hans, founded Mobilia in 1959, launching it from a single boutique above a grocery store. He soon developed a reputation for innovative business practices, something that became ingrained in the company culture. In the 1980s, for instance, Mobilia became the first Canadian retailer to import affordable furniture covered in Italian leather, a luxury that had traditionally been available only to well-heeled shoppers. A decade later, it became a Canadian pioneer of the big-box format for furniture stores.

Mobilia's growth continued under Melanie Kau's leadership. In her first 10 years as president, starting in 1996, she quadrupled the company's sales and opened nine new stores, adding close to 180,000 square feet of showroom space in Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto. The accolades followed, with Kau earning a spot on Caldwell Partners' prestigious "Top 40 Under 40" annual list.

As Mobilia grew, Kau found herself frequently mulling over the idea of hiring an operations executive. But each time, she decided against it after an analysis of the situation. She had always found ways to manage her increasing workload, whether it be making meetings shorter, increasing the time between follow-up meetings or dividing work up amongst her team. By early 2008, however, the demands placed on Kau had simply become too much. Her workload had essentially doubled in the past eight years, and there was little left she could do to lighten the load. It was becoming increasingly apparent that she would have to bring in executive help, probably sooner rather than later.

The were several issues with this decision, however. For starters, a hire would be expensive, as a successful candidate would expect a six-figure salary -- money that would come straight off Mobilia's bottom line. Training a new executive would also take time. It would be weeks, even months, before Kau knew whether her investment was paying off. More significantly, Kau was reluctant to bring in a person who hadn't risen through Mobilia's ranks. Even though the firm was almost 50 years old, it was still a family business, and most of the senior employees had been promoted into their current positions. All were familiar with the company's history and unique culture. Any new executive that Kau might hire would need to be sensitive to that environment. Complicating matters, Kau would not be looking for someone who would merely act as a "caretaker" executive overseeing existing procedures. Kau wanted someone who could take an active role in remodelling Mobilia's systems and processes to make the company more efficient.

All told, Kau knew that bringing in a new person -- especially someone with new ideas about best practices -- would be difficult. Mobilia employees and managers would be asked to change the way they had been doing things. Making successful transitions would require much patience from everyone involved. Productivity would likely fall during the initial stages of the transition as employees shook off old habits and adapted to new procedures. There was also a risk that best practices introduced by a new executive wouldn't work at Mobilia, due to subtle differences between the company itself and the firms where the new best practices had been developed. Kau would have to trust the operations executive to make judgment calls about what was right for her firm.

Lastly, Kau was concerned that an outside executive coming into Mobilia, a fast-growing firm, would likely exhibit strong, entrepreneurial traits -- just the kind of person who might one day strike out their own and become a competitor. Kau wanted someone who would be loyal to Mobilia. Would she be able to find someone who was just "entrepreneurial enough?"

For all the challenges, the thought of hiring a veteran executive still appealed to Kau: She simply had too much work on here plate. Even if there were risks, Kau knew that the status quo was not acceptable. Something had to change. What she needed most was confidence in knowing that she would make the right decision.

THE EXPERT VIEW

By Jacoline Loewen,

Partner Loewen & Partners and author Money Magnet

Kau should be concerned about hiring an outside executive. Yet, if I were on her board, I'd be concerned that her time is skewed away from the sourcing of product -- Mobilia's competitive advantage -- which she does very well. Her effectiveness is weakened because of an operations bottleneck, which may cost Mobilia its hard-earned market position.

First, Kau ought to make it a practice to ask for advice from mentors, other business owners or even a regular advisory group. CEOs need networks of peers that they can access to discuss business challenges and explore solutions.

Second, Kau is concerned about paying a high salary to attract a top professional. She need not worry. The recession has put talent on the market. By offering a moderate salary to a mature professional, someone experienced in family business, along with the opportunity to buy a stake in the company, Kau can preserve cash flow. If the executive is good, Mobilia's profit margin will improve, thus increasing the value of the executive's equity.

Finally, one of the characteristics I consider when assessing the strength of a company is the ownership structure. If all the shares rest with one "rugged individual," it shows a family business is still in its infantile stage, even if the revenue is strong. That desire to hold on to equity is a common trait in entrepreneurs. Even Sam Walton initially resisted sharing equity in Wal-Mart. But Walton quickly saw the results when he shared profits, and then equity with his executives and team. I think Kau would enjoy a similar experience.

Read more: http://www.financialpost.com/scripts/story.html?id=2176257#ixzz0of8GKwee
Stewart Thornhill, National Post 

What qualities do private equity investors look for?

In addition to an outstanding management team and the firm’s performance at the transaction time, investors need to have confidence that the firm’s value is likely to increase after closing. The way a CEO communicates to the investor counts. Eric Burke, founder of Torquest Private Equity, pointed out that “investors never buy the hockey stick scenario”. If your company’s earnings have been steady in the last while but you are telling an investor that you expect earnings to go up rapidly like the shape of a hockey stick after a major capital investment, you need to provide solid information and reasonable assumptions to back up your projections.


Ultimately, an attractive deal to an investor is a business that has multiple competitive advantages that together act as a spring board to increase profits within a reasonable time frame, say 3 to 5 years. Truly outstanding competitive advantages are often unobvious to casual observers. Therefore, you as the CEO or your agent need to communicate to investors in a convincing way what the competitive advantages are and why they will be sustainable.
Jacoline Loewen, author Money Magnet

Ivey CEO Roundtable for Family Business Owners

The Ivey Business School has the Center for Family Business and David Simpson often joins with Loewen Partners to bring together family business owners for regular discussions. This time, family business owners will be discussing how private equity can work well with family business owners and survive for many generations.
The speakers are private equity experts who are Canadian but working in the US.

What Business Owners Should Know
American Investors – What They Want and How They are Different

Find out what American investors are looking for from Canadian companies and how they work with entrepreneurs north of the border. Gain insight from Canadian investment professionals working in the U.S. for American firms. Learn about their lessons and experiences.

Join us for a peer-to-peer conversation with leaders from the world of private capital as investors and entrepreneurs share their knowledge of private equity investing and cross border mergers and acquisitions activity.

Speakers

What Does American Money Seek in Canadian Companies & How Does It Work?

Monitor Clipper Partners, Boston – Bill Young, Founding and Managing Partner

As a professional engineer, Bill Young brings a practical enthusiasm to companies in Monitor Clipper Partners’ portfolio. Bill has worked with Monitor since 1989. He was a founding partner of Westbourne Management Group in Toronto, Canada, providing management services to companies requiring turnarounds. Bill began his career as a design engineer with Imperial Oil, Canada. Bill holds an M.B.A. with Distinction from the Harvard Business School and a B.A. with Honours from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. Venue: The National Club, Toronto tickets $150 http//www.loewenpartners.com