So, you’ve been at this for years through thick and thin, great days and days in which you’ve had better times. Much of your job has become routine. But it feels good to see your “baby” grow and others buy into your vision.
That daily routine
It is human nature for you and every entrepreneur to fall into a routine of taking care of 
day to day issues, meetings, communicating with customers and shareholders. But you remember the thrilling days when everything was newer, each decision an event, each milestone something to be celebrated. If you think about it, you also remember that you spent much more of your time on strategic issues and thinking about the business and its growth, as opposed to thinking within the business about its process issues.
Your value to the company
Your value as a CEO or executive is inherent in creating the vision, providing the drive, and forcing focus upon successful implementation of the vision that you bring to the enterprise. It is where the fun is.
[Email readers, continue here…] So, how do you regain that enthusiasm for what is best for you and for the company? There are a number of things you can and should do, and soon.
Things you can do to regain your enthusiasm
Take a day – a full day – off to walk, sit, and think of where you want this company and your role in it to be in the future. Don’t let interruptions from emails, phone calls and people at the door interfere with this focused effort.
Call for a strategic planning session
Then call a strategic planning session, off site, for you, your board, your advisors, and direct reports. If needed, hire a facilitator. And provide for someone to take notes. Lay out your vision to those present as a starting point. Ask for comments, challenges, and additions. Then spend the rest of the day developing strategies and tactics to get you there. Finish the process by refining the resulting document, passing it through the same group for comments.
The all-company meeting: Get everyone excited about change
Then call an all-company meeting to focus everyone on the vision, goal, strategies and tactics. Stand back and watch for the reaction. Most everyone wants direction and to buy into a vision that makes their jobs have meaning.
Monitor progress and become strategic again
Starting the very next day, begin monitoring progress toward the goal or goals, raising your job to one of strategic implementation and guidance, not of day-to-day process.
Your value will increase in the minds of your board, and you will feel much more enthusiastic about your contributions to the success of your enterprise.
It’s your move.
when you got a bit rambunctious with your friends. I was reminded about this by Mark Wayman, a friend and reader, who applied this statement to his recruiting environment. He called out those people who focus upon executives who burned bridges with threats and lawsuits, instead of just picking up their toys and moving on after a bad business breakup.
Short of threats, bad-mouthing a former employer or employee is the worst possible behavior when considering the effect upon the corporate culture if the offender is the employer, and upon the person making the claim if by a former employee. The point is that no one wins in this kind of word war. And if it ever gets to a lawsuit, both parties lose a second time as the lawyers take control and costs escalate out of control.
now and as you recover? Raising money during this crisis will be almost impossible, even from friends and family shocked by the stock market declines.
AFTER THE CRISIS: Here’s one most small and medium business managers forget in the midst of the panic to survive. How about a marketing and sales blitz at just the right time to overwhelm your surviving competitors, look larger than life to your largest competition, and restart sales faster and perhaps at a greater clip than ever? Your competitors will most likely be conservative at just that moment and be timid in their approach to spending lots for marketing and sales.
product’s gross margin is ten dollars but the corporate overhead is a million a month, it will take the sale of 67,000 more units to break even than if it were to take only six months to market. If the total annual potential is 100,000 units, the slower cycle to market just cost the company two thirds of a year in the product’s profits. With today’s rapid obsolescence, that could be the entire life cycle of the product itself, lost because of being slow to market.
Have you considered how to make your operation more efficient as an important way to increase cash flow? Most of us are quick to worry over cutting costs. Some of us worry over how to greatly increase revenues. Few of us worry over how to squeeze more efficiency out of the development cycle or from the organization itself.
If failing to hire a critical employee is the cause of reduced efficiency, you must act quickly to either make an effective hire or alter the environment that creates the urgent need, all to remove that bottleneck.
Another CEO chimed in with an answer that made us all think. Most every technology advance has been predicted in works of fiction years before the fact, he stated. Why not look to fiction for clues? From devastating events like tsunamis to future user interfaces predicted in such films as Star Trek or Minority Report, there are liberating clues within the experiences of most of us. Think of Flash Gordon or Dick Tracy, characters from many decades ago with communication devices that have not only come to life but have been far surpassed the reality. Tom Cruise’s virtual handling of graphics by hand movements came true only a few years later, even popularized as a game with Microsoft’s Kinect system driven by body movement alone.
Simply stated, a decision or action that affects an individual must be made with consideration of the affected individual’s view of the fairness of that decision. This doctrine is a variant of “do unto others” but with a twist. The recipient of the decision in this case usually has little opportunity to respond in kind (“as you would have them do unto you”). It is this frustration coupled with the simple outcry of “That’s not fair!” – that can affect the culture of a company in ways never considered by the original decision-maker.
So, my advice is to take the time to establish the reasons for pending actions – if not in an emergency environment. Speak privately to employees who are in danger of being fired, documenting the discussion to the employee’s file. Open up to the general group with facts that might later affect them, even at the risk of losing one or more to a hunt for a new job. Most employees and associates, treated with respect and dignity, will respond with understanding and lose the emotion that might have accompanied receiving the later news of a negative event.
Any new enterprise is at risk if there are not enough resources to get the company to breakeven, which is a proxy for stability. If a company truly needs five million dollars to get to breakeven, investors that provide the first million are greatly at risk of the company failing to raise the remaining capital or of subsequent investors valuing the company at a lower price than the first investors, causing a “down round” in which the early investors are punished for taking the first risk.
a “rescission offering” to those shareholders who invested illegally, offering to repurchase their shares at full value invested. This is sometimes difficult since it often happens just at the time a company needs new money most and is in the process of seeking that money for growth. If a previous investor does not accept a rescission offer, there is some insulation provided to the company against a future lawsuit by that investor.
