Vermont...A State of Mind

My column in last month's issue of The Edge, about spring in Vermont prompted a lot of emails that shared with me readers' similar feelings about Vermont. Interestingly, one of these notes came from a highly respected venture capitalist who wrote that the column reminded him of some of his fondest memories cutting wood on one of his first jobs for a couple of dollars per cord.

Because of The Edge, a lot of people assume that I live here, but in reality I own a brownstone in the South End, work in an office on Boylston Street and spend most of my time at our customers' offices on 128 and 495. But each week, my wife and I return to Vermont where my family has lived for five generations. Coupled with customer offsites held at Stratton Mountain, we probably spend 40% of our time in Vermont, which really has, for me, become a state of mind.

In a couple of weeks, I will be sitting in the front row of the annual Wardsboro 4th of July parade...a throwback in time...taking in the sun (I hope) and watching 500 other people enjoy the simple pleasures of celebration and community complete with chicken barbecues and pie eating contests. Given the fact that there is only one street in Wardsboro, a town of 200 people, everyone also gets to see the parade twice. Once when it goes down the street and, of course, a second time, when it turns around and returns. That's Vermont.

Between snowboarding, gardening, biking, riding our ATV's, and working with customers, there's still lots of time to explore Vermont, which is as much a state of mind as it is a physical place to go. Vermont is a step back in time and certainly in pace, which for me, a serial entrepreneur working crazy hours in a post 9/11 world, it's the most conducive place to think about balance.

Given the intensity and the pace of business today, it's my belief that all of us need Vermont-type of place to go to on a regular basis. Maybe it's not the weekend vacation house, but it needs to be somewhere that you can retreat to on a regular basis x times a year, that will allow you to take perspective, recalibrate, rebalance and reenergize for the business marathon that lies ahead. This issue of The Edge, like last month's, continues to focus on a few of the management fundamentals that all of us need to think about as we manage our companies toward growth in these uncertain times .

Hope that you enjoy his edition of The Edge!

As always, give me a call or email me anytime with your comments. Maybe I'll see you on the 4th in Wardsboro.

Good Planning & Great Selling !

Jack

The Association For Corporate Growth, where Jack is President, is New England's premier business association dedicated to M&A, corporate alliances and growth. Our monthly Dealmaker's Breakfasts at The Meridian continue to draw record, sold out, attendance each month focusing on connecting M&A professionals within the community.

The Association For Corporate Growth is solidly into its 2003 season. We're executing on what is turning out to be a very successful year of 30 annual programs focused on learning and connecting people within the private equity, venture capital and M&A communities. With over 700 members, we've become THE business organization to be part of. You should think about joining the community and participating in the fun.

You can either email Jack or Leslie Whittet, ACG's Executive Director, at exdir@acgboston.org if you want to learn more, or just click on the website link below.

ACG Upcoming Events

Dealmakers Breakfast at Le Meridian
July 17th: Ted Dintersmith Says Goodbye To NE

Join us for this unique event when Ted Dintersmith, one of the legends of venture capital based on his years as a founding partner of Charles River Ventures, gives his last speech to the New England community. A must attend for entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and private equity managers!

Sold Out Events Every Month

The Annual Spring M&A Conference on May 8th: 970 people at the Sheraton Boston to connected with 60 private equity groups presenting in "The Capital Connection" and a world class list of speakers including...Bob Pozen Secretary of Finance for the Commonwealth; Bob Mahoney, Vice Chair, Citizens Bank; a CEO Panel with Mark Fuller, CEO, The Monitor Group; Rory Cowen CEO, Lightbridge; Linda Mason, Chair, Bright Horizons; Dick Reese, Chair, Iron Mountain plus a riveting panel discussion moderated by Howard Bryant of The Boston Herald on "The Business Of Sports" with Jonathan Kraft, Vice Chair, The Patriots; Larry Lucchino, CEO, The Red Sox and Stephen Pagliuca, Co-owner, Boston Celtics.

Sold Out March 31st Tech Economic Outlook

Cathy Minehan, President Boston Federal Reserve Bank. Roger Blethen, Chair LTX; Donna Cupelo, President Verizon; Tim McMahon, CEO Adams, Harkness & Hill; Gene Zimon Senior VP NStar plus MaryAnne Kane from NECN .

Sold Out (every) Dealmaker Breakfasts

MIT Enterprise Forum: June 11th-Lessons Learned

As past Chairman of the Forum, Jack believes that there is no better business association for entrepreneurship, than the MIT Enterprise Forum. After 25 years, MITEF excels in high quality events, brand name speakers and cheap prices. Click on the link below and check out the events schedule.

On June 11th , Jack collected an outstanding panel of experts and serial entrepreneurs with Jack acting as the moderator for what was a memorable program with a sold out audience.

Panelists:

Terry McGuire, Co-founder and managing general partner, Polaris Ventures
Chuck Digate, CEO, Applied Messaging Corporation
Jonathan Carson, Chairman & CEO, cMarket.

"Everything Old is New Again" is a phrase from Gilbert & Sullivan that Terry Maguire, the cofounder of Polaris Ventures, reminded the MIT audience of last week. It's a great tagline to remember as we come to the end of Q2 and think through what it takes to successfully manage companies in today's environment.

Every June, I run an annual "Lessons Learned" program at the MIT Enterprise Forum where I invite two serial entrepreneurs plus a highly respected venture capitalist to talk about their experiences as entrepreneurs. It's always a great program in terms of content and life experience plus, since all of the speakers have been through numerous start ups, they share their ideas naturally and with the type of confidence that can only come from knowledge born from hands on, getting-your-fingers-dirty hard work.

This year, in addition to Terry, Chuck Digate from MathSoft and now Applied Messaging and Jon Carson from Family Education Network and now cMarket all talked about their experiences and their individual factors for success. As the moderator, I have the luxury of having known each of these people for some time, but even considering that, what was very interesting for me this year was to realize as I was listening to each person present in real time, how quickly their comments all flowed into a very few categories of the same critical fundamentals of success.

In listening to real success stories like those told by Terry, Chuck and Jon and in reflecting on our experiences among our own companies, I believe that this concept of "Everything Old is New Again" is absolutely critical to attaining any level of success in today's market. Today, business basics count, and just like the old Smith Barney ad, both money and success need to be earned by following the fundamentals. Even with a rebounding stock market, there will continue to be an uncertainty about this economic environment for the next year or so. As a result, there is now a requirement on the part of all managers to have an unrelenting laser focus on the basic fundamentals of managing their businesses.

Management, Management, Management

In real estate, it's all about location, and in fast growth companies, it's all about the quality of the management team as a whole, and each of the individual manager's ability to pull together in both strategy and execution. This was a common thread from the MIT session last week, and this is a story that gets told and retold by every investor to every CEO. Unfortunately, in our experience, not enough CEO's or investors listen to their own words and do anything about making this happen...until it's too late and performance has already slipped.

"A" level CEO's always hire managers who are better than they are in their own respective skills, while "B" level CEO's typically hire "C" level managers. This is a quote that I took from a Bob Metcalfe speech at MIT a number of years ago, and it has always worked well for me. If you believe this, then this is a great time, mid term in the year, to profile your managers both individually and as a working team and assess who is "A", who is "B" and who is sits in the cluttered category of "other".

Half way through the year, sit down with each of your managers, discuss your assessment and fine tune and recalibrate their objectives. With the manager or two who has been dumped into the category of "other", it's time to work through an improvement program of either "up or out".

Don't be afraid to make a change since left to itself, the situation is only going to get worse. What you cannot do, in a business climate like today's, is continually hold back the growth of your company because you have one or two weak links on the team.

Plus in this environment, you'll quickly discover there's an extraordinary talent pool of "A" level people who are not only available, but chomping at the bit to belong to a company with real opportunity.

It's Hard Work

"It's hard work" is a phrase that was quoted frequently the other night at MIT. Building growth companies is extremely difficult and demanding work coupled with personal commitments of long hours and high risk. Terry Maguire's quote was that managing companies today is like running a marathon and not a sprint, and the analogy is a good one since it relates not just to the race itself, but also to the long periods of training, planning, learning new techniques, and continually assessing and recalibrating one's physical and mental well being.

When you listen to the really successful managers today, my own experience is that it's common to hear of 60 and 70 hour work weeks. These times are not for the faint of heart or the weak of spirit. It takes extraordinary time spent both planning and executing in order to put teeth, just as an example, into the simple phrase "customer focus" if you expect to affect any level of growth. All of this adds up to hard work and lots of time. Time spent individually, time spent as a group of managers tactically figuring out and executing solutions and time spent periodically throughout the year as a management team tuning up your business plan and realigning it with your longer term direction.

Don't Settle

If you believe that we have hit bottom in this business cycle. If you believe that you have learned...once again...not only how to survive, but how to begin to grow, then you should now believe that some level of growth is probably around the corner. In general, the managers of our customers feel better about where they are at the end of Q2 than they did at the end of Q1. The velocity and the tenor of business in general appears to be picking up, and those companies with proven well honed business and sales models should be able to take advantage of what just might be the next buying cycle in Q4.

So, in this environment, when you have already learned and relearned all of the tactics of survival in bringing your company back to growth, this is definitely not the time to sit back and take a breather or settle for mediocre performance. This is not a sprint, but a marathon, and success belongs to those managers who will continue to push themselves from now through the end of December.

In managing either your company or your department, pushing yourself means not settling for less than "A" level quality among your managers.
If you're the CEO, this same thought process should apply to your assessment of you and your fellow board members in terms of your current board process.
What it means is not settling for "less-thans" in new product features, just because they're difficult to create.
What it means is not settling for "less than" in your own management style as a leader, which means that you need to objectively assess yourself and figure out what to do about your shortcomings as a manager.
What it means is not settling for accepting less than a complete and collaborative management team the works seamlessly together.

At the end of this marathon, you're going to chalk up your time. What you want to make sure of is that right now you're working extraordinarily hard to make sure that you will achieve the best time that you can.

So, what now?

You're here at the end of Q2. The numbers are what the numbers are. It's time to take your management team offsite for a day or two and make absolutely sure that you are in total alignment for the next two and next four quarters.

Look back at your performance against the metrics for the first half of the year, and make sure that everyone is totally on board for the remaining half of the year especially with regard to your company's sales and customer support tactics.

Doing a one day offsite at this time of year is also a great tactic for your salesforce. Turn the tired complaint of "everyone's on vacation" (surprise, surprise) into a weapon by retraining your salesforce in to how to better execute their key account plans and actually take advantage of the summer cycle.

Given the normal vacation issues, success in Q3 belongs to the companies who execute better than the competition on their sales plans. By pulling together your senior managers for an offsite during the first couple of weeks of July, you afford yourself the opportunity to tune up your business plan and realign and hone the tactics that you are going to need to beat your plan for the rest of the year. To some degree, you're going to need to do this anyhow in a couple of months to think through your 2004 budgets planning, so you might as well be proactive and use this time of the year to focus on the fundamentals of your business and make absolutely sure that you're totally prepared for the marathon of the next six months of this year.

When you have a chance, give me a call or email me with your own ideas at jack@derbymanagement.com.

In the meantime...Good planning and even better selling !

The Stratton Experience

During the year, we facilitate a large number of management offsites for our customers using the time away from the office for both strategic updates and tactical fine tuning.

Focusing on the strategic growth of the company in general or on the tactical requirements of quarterly planning, these meetings offer the members of the planning team a unique experience to voice their concerns, provide their recommendations and, most importantly, be part of a common solution. It's hard work, but the results for our management teams have been outstanding.

Part of the experience is the opportunity to get away from the office environment. Locally in Boston, we use a number of unique sites like MIT's Endicott House in Dedham, The Essex Conference Center in Essex and Verizon's Conference Center in Marlborough trying to stay away from dull windowless hotel conference rooms.

For those management teams, who want a truly impactful management planning experience, we couple our intensive planning sessions with world class meeting facilities plus team- building time spent hiking or playing golf or tennis at Stratton Mountain in Southern Vermont.

Stratton's meeting rooms provide openness and effectiveness with all of the required electronics to ensure an efficient and effective planning session.

We combine the experience of facilitating hundreds of successful strategic planning sessions with the truly unique and invigorating environment of Stratton Mountain, a world class four season resort. Whether it's the Vermont environment, the ability for management to totally focus on the strategic process or the uniqueness of our strategic and team building processes, the results of "The Stratton Experience" for our customers have been spectacular.

In combination with Stratton's executive management, we will handle all of the logistics for you and work to your budget. Give us a call, and we can easily take you through the process. In the meantime, for more information on Stratton, go to their website at www.stratton.com.

Derby Management is a well known management coaching firm focused in providing strategic and tactical business and sales planning for its customers. Formed in 1990, Derby Management works directly with CEO's and the senior team in a variety of assignments specializing in...

• Business Planning
• Entrepreneurship Management
• One-on-One Management Coaching
• Fundraising Venture & Debt
• Interim Management: CEO, Sales, CFO
• Marketing Plans
• Market Research
• Recruiting & Team Building
• Sales Analysis
• Sales Planning
• Strategic Planning
• Turnaround Management