Facebook has just acquired Instagram – a billion dollar proposition. But what will happen to that acquisition? Will it truly be “integrated” into the Facebook business? If you’re a mid-market company, with limited resources both human and financial, what do you risk when making an acquisition?
Founders have different aspirations. Some founder CEOs are eager and able to develop their CEO skills enough to run a mid-market company, while others are not. Those who want to keep the job must build those skills rapidly, ahead of the needs of the business, if they hope to keep the backing of their investors.
One of the main reasons acquisitions fail is that they are doomed from the start. Some deals just shouldn’t be done. This Forbes article suggests five critical questions
Nearly every successful middle-market company eventually faces a swarm of competition. When their core business contracts, single-product companies can find themselves fighting for their lives. But the companies which plan highly-related diversifications before such downturns grow in good times and bad.
Growing your business through acquisitions is tempting: the rewards can be great. But as many as half of all marriages between companies fail to meet expectations. Here are the key questions to ask before you do the deal.
Change is a constant in business, but new modalities have upped the ante. Today’s CEO requires new skills and approaches to deal with these four new challenges.
After five years as a top-level consultant, here are my top five questions for a CEO. But the path to answering “yes” to all five questions can be a long and winding one.
David Gensler, Executive Director of Gensler first faced the challenges of operating worldwide back in the 1980’s: he’s had a few decades’ head start on most of us. Read how the company’s experiences in China became a global strategy.
What would you reveal about the future direction of your company or a specific employee? If big changes are in the wind – M&A, reduction in force, or outright sale – here are some specific suggestions on how the CEO and their top team should deal with disclosure.
CEOs aren’t in sales, but they have a critical role to play. Dennis Raefield of Mace Security International (OTCQB: MACE) shows us that the proactive CEO is key in landing and retaining key customers.
Robert Sher is founding principal of CEO to CEO, a consulting firm of former chief executives that improves the leadership infrastructure of midsized companies seeking to accelerate their performance. He was chief executive of Bentley Publishing Group from 1984 to 2006 and steered the firm to become a leading player in its industry (decorative art publishing).