Advice for CEOs

The Management “M” in NO MAN'S LAND 4 M’s framework addresses the importance for an emerging growth company of building a high capability, professional management team that can institutionalize the talents and efforts of the entrepreneur. Translating this objective into practical terms means asking: what is the role of the Human Resource (HR) function in a mid-market business?

It is not uncommon for a CEO/business owner to say, when asked about the exit strategy for his company, that he doesn’t really have one. At least, not one that is coherent and the result of thoughtful, thorough diligence. Some CEO’s say their exclusive goal is simply “to build a great company” and any thoughts beyond that are merely distractions to their work-in-process. Thoughts of “optimizing value for an exit” in a developing company don’t compute with many emerging growth company CEO’s. The prevailing paradigm is “I’ll worry about an exit when the time comes”. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs certainly would be in that group, at least early in their companies’ development.

Nothing is more important to a business, especially an emerging growth company, than customer focus. Sales growth depends on knowing and understanding your customers. As companies grow to the point that they enter NO MAN'S LAND, the stage where they are too big to be small and too small to be big, they tend to lose intimate contact with customers that they once had. The value proposition that motivated customers to buy the company’s goods and services place gets murky.

You’re the guy in charge. You need to show everyone that you have all the answers. That’s what they expect, right?

Emerging growth companies are the innovative, upstart ventures that challenge market incumbents by creating new technologies and business models. In no sector is this more needed than in healthcare, where growing companies hold the keys to improve the quality and cost of patient care.