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Specialty Practice: Building Management Frameworks at Early Stage & Growth Companies

Guide and partner with entrepreneurs to develop managerial mindset and create robust analytical and 
financial frameworks

 

Challenge: Roughly 45% of entrepreneurs bring prior business and perhaps some management tenure to their new companies, but many do not have the experience or leadership skills needed to run an organization over the longer term. Sometimes as funding flows in and valuations rise, operating discipline can be lost. Many new companies do not assess real-time feedback and wait too long to make adjustments.

 

Skills: Deploying my knowledge as a manager and leading financial analyst I can solidify and broaden managerial effectiveness within companies in order to translate vision into rigorous yet flexible growth processes and tangible business practices requisite to sustainable commercial entities.
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Solutions:

  • Strategy development, business planning, analysis of short-run and longer term market sizing/potential, competitive benchmarking

  • Target setting and balancing of stretch goals with “realistic” expectations

  • Financial modeling (e.g. revenue, expense, profit realization, returns, cash flow and balance sheet) and forecasts/projections in the context of uncertainty; scenario assessments and analysis of possible risk-adjusted expected-value outcomes

  • Consistent decision making frameworks for budgeting and capital allocation, resource planning, funding needs and acquisition assessment

  • Identification of appropriate metrics, development of feedback loops to measure effectiveness, implementation of systems to harvest and assess real-time data for tracking business progress and to build accountability across individuals, teams and managers

  • Preparation of effective narratives to communicate data/information to employees, VCs, investors and other relevant constituencies in order to facilitate information flow among/across teams and build transparency, credibility and agility

  • Processes for constructive analysis of setbacks and failure in order to maximize learning and enhance future decision making

Build and evolve human capital programs that facilitate the mission and integrate fully into the commercial, technical and strategic imperatives

 

Challenge: Given their growth trajectories and risk/rapid change profiles, technology and innovation-driven companies are rarely in steady state mode; therefore their people needs and needs of their people can shift rapidly. As much of HR in these companies focuses on the intense demands of rapid-fire hiring in competitive technical labor markets, and as entrepreneurs fear creating bureaucracy or rigidity, oftentimes other important human capital processes remain underdeveloped.

 

Skills: Utilizing my experience as a manager and as a senior HR leader in volatile and challenging environments, I can design dynamic programs to evolve with the organization, favoring frameworks, logic and context over traditional reliance on static processes, policies, or controls.

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Solutions:

  • Talent acquisition: scalable recruiting with assertive and innovative but still disciplined hiring practices (e.g. differentiated interviewing and hiring decision making protocols) to ensure the talent bar remains high and is raised continually

  • Compensation and incentive structures for private as well as pre-/post-IPO companies

  • Culture creation: whether it is from the startup or when changes are needed, translating founder vision into a tangible set of goals and principles to engage and galvanize employees and reinforce desired behaviors

  • Organization design and effective team building

  •  Manager training and leadership development

  • Performance assessment and talent management: formal and informal feedback systems

  • Group coaching to work with teams to build their cohesiveness and optimize effectiveness and manage inevitable conflicts, as well as coaching/mentoring of individuals at all levels

  • HRIT: develop and implement systems for HR data and train how to use it intelligently

  • Diversity: ensuring that diversity of gender, ethnicity, background, experience, perspective and aptitudes is instilled naturally into all aspects of the company

  • Restructuring and downsizing: how to make decisions and take action in the event of unexpected developments, disappointments, setbacks, pivots and how to exit underperforming individual employees who might not have skills that match up with organization needs

  • Conflict resolution and crisis management

  • Due-diligence and integration of acquisitions and “acqui-hires”


 

Design and develop investor relations & corporate governance agendas addressing the needs of all the important stakeholders

 

Challenge: There are nearly 600 venture-backed companies considered to be in the IPO potential pipeline. There are also an increasing number of hedge funds and asset managers participating in investment rounds of still-private companies.  With valuations climbing, and an increasing number of monetization events, there will be more demand for disclosure, communication, transparency and information. 

 

Skills: Given my decades of experience with markets, private and public companies, equities valuation and stock picking, investors, shareholders, managements and regulators, I can be effective helping companies develop programs & build credibility with internal and external constituencies.
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Solutions:

  • Helping companies develop and improve their communication with investors and how they interact in particular with hedge fund and asset manager analysts/portfolio managers as well as VCs and PE firms

  • Working with companies in the pipeline to make decisions about if and when to go pubic and to understand the process

  • Preparing companies and managements in the pre-IPO stages, including their work with investment bankers and also analysts during the due diligence phase

  • Establishing effective investor relations programs, including hiring/training of the IR professionals, development of due diligence and road show presentation materials and setting policies and best practices for interacting with sell-side analysts, investors, shareholders, media and other key constituencies around earnings, events and on a regular basis

  • Ensuring compliance with regulations governing communication with the markets and dissemination of information and financial reporting

  • Advising companies on board structure and the recruitment/selection of board members (and other advisors) as well as setting and refining corporate governance policies

  • Benchmarking, tracking and analysis of peer group and other relevant company financial results, metrics, valuations and news flow

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