Advice for CEOs

A company’s ability to plan and execute capital transactions is an essential driver of its success. We asked our partners, who are CEOs, senior executives and board members, to reflect on their experience preparing companies for transactions to raise capital to finance internal growth and/or M&A or to sell the company. Question: In your experience do the leadership teams of emerging growth companies believe they are more transaction ready than in fact they are? How so?

Newport Board Group, Susan Kearney and Lynn Lednicky, presented to an audience of business founders and CEOs. The topic for that portion of the webinar was the event or other catalyst that leads an entrepreneur to take action, as their business grows and becomes more complex, to build or augment their management team.

In a webinar on April 27, two partners of Newport Board Group presented to an audience of business founders and CEOs. The topic was how owners of emerging growth companies that have gotten off the ground and are trying to grow to scale should think about expanding and upgrading their management team.

A main need of companies in No Man’s Land is to build an experienced management team that can take the business where it needs to go. An entrepreneur must create and delegate to a high functioning management team responsibility to build processes, systems and culture to drive growth toward scale. We asked Newport partners to draw on their experience as CEOs and senior executives: what are successful practices you have seen (and what are pitfalls to be avoided) in defining executive roles and then selecting, onboarding, incentivizing, overseeing and rewarding members of the top team?

Emerging growth companies sometimes look to bring in a fractional COO, CFO, CMO or other executive on a part-time basis. This is typically an experienced resource that the company couldn’t afford or couldn’t make use of as a full-time employee. The intent is that he or she will provide strategy and direction—and give way to a full-time person or step up to a full-time position after the company has grown. But—companies that do this have many other needs and priorities. In what kind of situation does it make sense for a growing company to use its scarce resources to bring in a fractional executive?

What Human Resources policies and practices will help emerging growth companies get the most productivity and value out of their people? All entrepreneurs would acknowledge the principle that the success of their enterprise depends on the performance of their employees. But many entrepreneurs still find reasons to put human capital issues in the back seat. They may think that the kind of employees they want are motivated simply by the challenge and excitement that comes with building an innovative business model or technology. Or that the chance to get in on the ground floor of what might one day be a big company that pays high salaries is sufficient to energize their work force. They might say that they don’t have the resources to support rigorous processes such as providing feedback on employee performance. They may worry that such performance reviews will create an expectation for raises that the company can’t afford. And some entrepreneurs may--rightly or wrongly--associate formal HR processes with big, bureaucratic organizations--the opposite of what they want their company to be.