Had an Aepiphanni, Lately? October 2010
Had an Aepiphanni, Lately?
October, 2010
Staff Sergeant Jackson walked into the room. Even though he was a small, thin man who looked like he would shatter into a million pieces if he tripped, no one dared to challenge the wiry Panamanian-American with steely eyes and a set jaw, who had recently taken command of our unit.
“What kind of mango-tree lawyers been advising you, Pride?” he barked in a thick Panamanian accent in response to news that a member of the unit was spreading vicious rumors. Pride is a term of endearment, related to the family of a lion. A mango tree lawyer, synonymous with a monkey, is someone advises people without qualifications to do so.
“You listen to ‘dem mango-tree law’rs, hangin’ ’round wit’ nottin’ but but dim nuts and ber’s (berries), you end up gittin’ nuttin but spit on!” his thick accent demanding our rapt attention and causing us to think carefully about listening to the monkeys that nearly get all of us a trip to see the commanding officer.
As business leaders, we must surround ourselves with qualified professionals and advisors in order to make the best decisions for our businesses and stakeholders.
Enjoy! Your feedback is always welcome!
The professionals are those who you bring into and around your business to keep it safe by providing expert advice and assisting you with decisions in and around the business. They will provide you with insight and experience that is at least different than your own, at the most, providing new information to push your organization to the front of your industry and market. These are your advisors. As a business leader, you are going to want advisors in the following areas:
- Attorney – for addressing legal matters. Keep in mind that there are different types of attorneys; you’ll probably want a business lawyer or firm who can explain to you the legality of a broad spectrum of business practices.
- Insurance advisor – to help you understand insurance, the different types of insurance, to educate you to make informed decisions about the different coverage choices available and to guide you to the best discounts and discount programs for your business.
- Accountant/Financial Advisor – The accountant will provide you with financial information and advice to assist you with decision making, including tax advice, budgeting, forecasting, purchases and modeling. Your financial advisor should provide additional information with respect to the types of investments and investment planning you may wish to make for the company.
- Management Consultant – will help your organization improve performance through ongoing analysis and recommendations.
- Industry Professionals or Peers – will provide you with information to help you spot trends in your industry.
Qualifying your team will come from several areas. First and foremost, you have to feel comfortable with them, and they with you. If there is no relationship to start with, you’ll have nothing going forward. Other areas include:
- Experience – years of experience, types of experience, amount of diversity in experience
- Core values – they must align with your own. They cannot advise your properly if they are not
- They meet your needs – being oversold or undersold is not beneficial
- Honesty – while perhaps hard to swallow, you need to have people around you who aren’t afraid to argue with you
- Integrity – people who will tell you the truth no matter what, and have your best interest in mind beyond the fees that you pay them
- Commitment – while hard to judge from the outset, you want someone with a track record of commitment to their clients – someone who might work for free if times got bad
- Great work ethic
- Referrals – people who can tell you the REAL scoop about the person you are considering.
Keep in mind, this doesn’t have to be an overnight process.
Consider this…if you aren’t moving…you”re stuck. If your obstacles are stopping you, you are stuck.
Many business leaders feel that when they purchase services, they must take whatever they are given. Many providers feel that they have a way of working that they’ve always used, that works for them and their other customers, so it will, by extension, work for you. While that is nice and wonderful, remember, in most cases when dealing with your advisors, you are the customer. You need to state your expectations from the onset of the engagement, understand their expectations and ensure that both are being met in order for the relationship to thrive.
It is not out of the question, however, to be somewhat flexible and compromise to ensure that the relationships is mutually advantageous. You do need to ensure that both of your needs are being met.
For all of your hard work, you will have around you a cabinet, so to speak, of advisors who have your best interest in mind. Your cabinet is golden to you. They should see things coming that are specific to their expertise. They should be steering you away from circumstances that could hurt your business and pushing you toward extraordinary opportunities.
At the same time, you should be thinking about how you will keep them engaged – what types of return you might offer them. Will it be cash? Equity? Bonuses? Expertise? Time?
Demonstrating that your interest in your advisors is as powerful is as powerful as their interest in yours is the best way to an extraordinary relationship.
Unfortunately, sometimes we need to let people and relationships go. This could be the result of life or business changes or changes in expectations. Perhaps the performance level of your advisor is no longer meeting the needs of the organization. Perhaps your business has grown beyond his level of expertise.
No matter what the challenge is, you need to ensure that you are prepared to manage changes in the relationship. Perhaps this will be a discussion you will have with your advisors each year – to get an understanding of their plans and expectations.
Finally, you need to be very clear on your expectations, evaluate those expectations versus the outcomes and know when you need to break it off.
“Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed”
-Proverbs 15:22
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