Dr. Earl R. Smith II

Sometimes management teams lose focus on the fact that the principal goal of business involves producing increasing revenues. Sometimes they get caught in the trap of incessantly talking about increasing revenue.

Dr. Earl R. Smith II
Managing Partner, The Federal Circle
DrSmith@Dr-Smith.com
Dr-Smith.com

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One of the inevitable results of growth is change. This maxim is as true for organizations as it is for individuals. When ‘what has been’ morphs into ‘what is new’, opportunities proliferate but dislocations occur that affect every part of a company. I recently helped one navigate these perilous waters. The experience brought several important lessons into focus. Read the rest of this entry »

Dr. Earl R. Smith II
Managing Partner, The Federal Circle
DrSmith@Dr-Smith.com
Dr-Smith.com

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Recently, I was recently invited by three different investors to ‘take a look’ at companies that they had invested in. The pattern that I found was so strikingly similar that I set to thinking about what I was finding. I began to think about the roots of the pattern. The more I thought about it, the more I found myself staring at one of the principal reasons that only one in ten start-up companies make it to their fifth anniversary. Read the rest of this entry »

“What happened? We were doing so well – started out with such energy and focus. What has brought us to the very brink of disaster?”

It seemed like such a good deal. We were getting funded and getting all this free advice to boot. Now the money is gone and the advice seems to have been less than useful.

I’m not sure if it was because of Mr. Spock or Dr. Spock but there is a generation of managers and business leaders out there who seem to have great difficulty being human.

Aligning executive compensation with desired results is a major challenge for any board of directors. Getting it right can mean reducing friction within the executive team, eliminating forays along tangential paths, reduction of self-serving gaming of the system and much better operating results. Getting it wrong can bring all those problems and many more.

Innovation – such an easy word to say. So why is it so hard to get it going within an established corporate culture?

Sometimes the best strategy is to wait until conditions improve – or are improved by improved results. This is particularly true when founders are thinking about their exit strategy.

A hard fact is that the sins you committed along the way will effect your ability – limit the possibilities – of a major score when it comes to selling your company. Nowhere is this more true than who you have decided to make deals with along the way.