INHERENT RISK FACTORS TYPICAL OF AN ENTREPRENEURIAL PROFILE4
1 Rule Breaker: Ignores rules, tests the limits, does what feels good, risks company resources, does not think through consequences.
2 Upstager: Excessively dramatic and histrionic, dominates meetings and airtime, constantly selling a personal vision and viewpoint, demonstrates inability to go with the tide.
3 Eccentric: Quite unusual in their thinking and behaving, perhaps whimsical, weird, out of social step or norms, peculiar in some ways.
4 Egotist: Self-centered, has sense of entitlement and superiority, takes credit for others’ accomplishments, hard-nosed competitor.
5 Cynic: Skeptical, mistrustful, pessimistic, always looking for problems, constantly questions decisions, resists innovation.
6 Hyper-moody: Unpredictable emotional swings, moodiness, volatility, potentially explosive outbursts, and vacillation of focus or interest.
7 False advocate: Passive-aggressive tendencies; appears outwardly supportive while covertly resisting.
8 Worrier: Unwillingness to make decisions due to fear of failure or criticism.
9 Perfectionist: Micromanages, clings to details, has high need to control, has compulsive tendencies, sets unreasonably high standards.
10 Pleaser: Depends on others for feedback and approval, is eager to please the boss, avoids making decisions alone, won’t challenge status quo, refuses to rock the boat.
11 Detached: Withdraws, fades away, fails to communicate, avoids confrontation, is aloof, tunes out others.
TEAM BALANCE AND ALIGNMENT
Clearly, fitting perfectly within the ideal entrepreneurial profile is a tough hurdle. Smashing entrepreneurial success, as noted in Chapter 1, is extremely rare too. What is essential for you as the emerging entrepreneur is having the self-awareness of your own propensities for success before making the leap and commitment. Do you understand your character traits, risk factors, and motivational drivers?
As mentioned before, it is important to have team members with the inherent attributes to make up the deficiencies in your traits. Your leadership team, or general management team, needs to be diverse in their personality characteristics on key leadership competencies. So, someone who has a true entrepreneurial profile needs a person with higher prudence on the leadership team to focus on process, implementation, regulatory issues, practical and administrative matters, and the like. Also, having a leadership team member with a bit more interpersonal sensitivity may be helpful to attract and keep top talent as well as tolerate the difficult or intense personality of the entrepreneur.
LEADERSHIP TEAM DIVERSITY5
Homogeneous leadership teams fail more often than those with divergent capabilities.
Talent balance should be aligned with business strategy and values.
Talent cloning (often in one’s own image or comfort zone) is detrimental to business performance results.
Talent gaps cause blind spots, competitive disadvantages, and performance weaknesses.
When leadership teams lack broad-based inherent competencies, staffs frequently suffer from similar gaps.
Nearly 70 percent of executives have egotist tendencies making them reluctant to agree to objective analysis that might reveal talent vulnerabilities
Be sure to gain a clear understanding of your inherent talents, risks, and motivators before investing your time, energy, and passion into what seems to be a tremendous business venture. Undoubtedly, you will analyze the business, technical, marketing, and financial aspects of opportunity carefully. However, keep in mind you are the most important factor to the business venture—so take time to assess your capability to succeed.
Last, by undergoing this rigorous entrepreneurial assessment of your inherent suitability and the leadership team analysis, you will have procured a scientifically validated evaluation and report that predicts success. Therefore, this up-front due diligence can add to the appeal of your deal for the serious investor. Moreover, this thorough review will give you the added confidence and performance and development insights to help you assure your venture is a huge success.
NOTES
1 K. R. (Brinkmeyer) Leverage and N. E. Parsons, “Definitions Summary,” CDR Leadership Character Assessment Report, Tulsa, OK: CDR Assessment Group (1998).
2 N. E. Parsons, “The Real Enron Risk: Energy Traders,” Risk Management Magazine Letters, August & November Issues (2002).
3 K. R. (Brinkmeyer) Leverage and N. E. Parsons, CDR Drivers & Rewards Assessment Report, Tulsa, OK: CDR Assessment Group (1999).
4 K. R. (Brinkmeyer) Leverage and N. E. Parsons, CDR Leadership Risk Assessment Report, Tulsa, OK: CDR Assessment Group (1998).
5 N. E. Parsons, Executive Team Performance Forecast, Tulsa, OK: CDR Assessment Group, Inc. (2009).
Chapter 4
THE WORLD OF MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS gently mirrors the capital markets and reflects the turbulence they suffer. At the turn of the century when the dot.com boom and bubble were rising and valuations in Internet companies screamed along with them, there was euphoria in the industry. The subsequent popping of the bubble followed by the tragedy of 9/11 brought the buying and selling and/or funding of companies to a screeching halt. The sale of small to medium-size businesses and the IPO mania all came tumbling down, and a quiet period ensued that had virtually every segment of the market realigning itself. There was a great loss in paper value, most all parties concerned got back to basics and declared blocking and tackling was the main path to solid and respectable growth. This quiet period lasted through 2003 to 2004, and then came the advent of the private-equity players.
Up until the rapid growth of private equity, companies were sold the old-fashioned way, to competitors or to well-backed investors who wanted to run a business. The rise of third-party-money sources to buy controlling interest in businesses was a dramatic shift away from venture capital firms that had become notorious in their dealing with sellers and/or companies. The private-equity industry quickly changed the landscape as the privately held companies suddenly had buyers that would give them a high strategic valuation and let them still control their company using third-party funds. This allowed entrepreneurial owners who were oftentimes frustrated no way of implementing the grand strategies they had on the drawing board. Traditional sellers’ new majority-owners (private-equity partners) could fund these original owners’ growth strategies now operating under the umbrella of a larger ownership entity.
Thousands of firms were rapidly sold during the heyday of private equity that ramped right up to the Great Recession in 2008. Sellers could cash out and roll over some of their equity into the new company and charge forth with a larger company’s bank account. The entrepreneur suddenly could hire, implement growth strategies, and acquire competitors or synergistic companies that they had been lusting after for years. The early-to-the-marketplace private-equity firms made tremendous acquisitions in prolific numbers. The sellers were happy, and these private-equity buyers had big