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Corporate Culture Matters When Hiring

May 9, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Corporate culture matters. It affects your bottom line. It can be the reason you lose top employees. It can motivate and empower employees. It can either attract or repel potential employees.

Recently Bill Barnett, former lead of the Strategy Practice at McKinsey & Company, wrote a piece for the Harvard Business Review Blog called When Choosing a Job, Culture Matters.

In the piece Barnett chronicles the story of Sean, a person who received a job offer at a Fortune 500 company to be its chief administrative officer. Sean would be the first person to occupy such a position within the company.

Sean turned down the offer after concluding that the role wouldn’t be a good fit in the performance-driven environment where everyone measured success by a person’s direct contribution to the bottom line.

M&A Weekly Digest – December 16th, 2011

December 16, 2011 By Leave a Comment

This week’s M&A Weekly Digest discusses how economic uncertainty affects business owners; a increase in the amount of cash that corporate strategics are sitting on; getting optimal deals; and the types of M&A services available and what to expect from each.

M&A Weekly Digest – October 21st, 2011

October 21, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The M&A Weekly Digest articles are intended to provide insight on current M&A news but also provide M&A tips for private business owners looking to sell a business. This week we take a look at how private equity firms are a pillar of the economy; why pension funds and now endowments are turning to private equity investments; and how to get the maximum return for your business in regards to deal structure.

Getting Things Done – Back To The Basics

October 19, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Due to the economy, businesses are being asked to do “more with less.” Not only do we as business owners have more to do these days but we also operate in more complex worlds. Still, sticking to the basics is the key to time management and getting things done. In this article, I’m going to share my version of “the basics.”

There are three variables that apply to getting something done: the task(s) at hand,  the time available,  and the resources required to do it. In the spirit of providing helpful guidance, I’ll put the winning formula up front. If you want to get things done, use a fixed timeframe, optimize your resources, and reduce the tasks at hand in order to succeed at getting things done.

Hiring Explosion on Horizon for Small Businesses?

September 27, 2011 By 1 Comment

As we are all too painfully aware, most of the economic news we have been hearing recently has been unrelentingly negative. This is especially true of the unemployment data that seems to get reported on unceasingly. Despite all this doom and gloom, data was released in the past few weeks that is fairly positive.

A recent study found that more than 40% of small businesses plan to hire in the next six months.

Mergers And Acquisitions Activity Up By 30%

July 14, 2011 By 1 Comment

If you want to sell your business, your timing couldn’t be any better. According to the ACG (Association for Corporate Growth), M&A activity is up by 30% through May of this year. The ACG’s 14,000 members include professionals from private equity firms, corporations and lenders that invest in middle-market companies, as well as law, accounting, investment banking, and other firms that provide advisory services. It is an international organization dedicated to fostering sound corporate growth primarily via mergers and acquisitions.

Because their membership is largely skewed towards dealmakers focusing on the U.S. middle market, their information is a really good barometer of M&A activity. According to the ACG, although M&A activity has not reached pre-recession levels yet, valuations have largely recovered. Given the significant amount of capital chasing deals right now, this is not surprising. In fact, according to Pricewaterhouse Coopers, we are at the beginning stages of a seller’s market.

Deloitte Survey Shows Middle Market Perspectives

July 11, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Recently a colleague of mine sent me a link to a study recently published by Deloitte. She thought I might find it of interest because it was based on a survey earlier this year of middle-market business owners. Given that this publication is dedicated to developing a dialogue with this group, I certainly was interested.

In February of 2011, Deloitte in conjunction with the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) conducted a survey of over 500 private and public middle-market companies in the U.S. The survey was quite comprehensive covering a wide range of topics, including questions about pre- and post-recession metrics, growth plans, and the general outlook regarding the future of the companies and the economy. The findings were quite compelling.

Many of you are aware of just how vital the U.S. middle market is to the engine of our economy. According to the EIU, the middle market generates $6.1 trillion in revenue (this survey included companies with revenues from $50 million to $1 billion), which is about 40% of the entire U.S. GDP. In addition, this group employs 24.6 million people. So the middle market is possibly the most important component of our economic health.

Charitable Giving Points To A Recovering Economy

July 8, 2011 By Leave a Comment

In past articles, I have examined a number of pieces of economic data as “key economic indicators” of continued recovery. These have ranged from employment data to seaport shipping activity and retail sales to name only a few. Today we add a new one: charitable giving.

As you can imagine, giving to charities is really, in most cases, a very discretionary item. Though we are admonished to keep giving faithfully even during difficult times, unfortunately for many of us, when tough times hit, we either dramatically reduce the amount we give or we stop giving all together. And charities really feel it when we do.

So I was pleasantly surprised to recently learn that after a two-year drop, charitable giving in the U.S. was up in 2010.

More Positive Economic News: U.S. Exports Hit Record High

May 27, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Too often entrepreneurs are so focused on running their businesses that they ignore the bigger, longer-term picture. As we have indicated before, one of the goals of our articles is to ensure that the middle-market community is aware of the turnaround in the economy.

Clearly almost every business in the U.S. was negatively impacted by the recession that we are still recovering from. It will take a long time to erase the memories of that downturn. So it is not surprising that many middle-market business owners, still reeling from the recession, do not “feel” like the recession has ended.

But the reality is more and more of the data points attest to the fact that the economy is recovering. This was reinforced earlier this month when Reuters released an article indicating that “U.S. exports hit a record high in March, buoyed by the weak dollar and strengthening global demand as U.S. trade returned to levels last seen before the global financial crisis.”

Baird’s Expectations for M&A Activity in 2011

May 24, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Recently Robert W. Baird & Co. released its annual projections for worldwide M&A activity in 2011. Since many middle-market business owners are under the mistaken impression that M&A activity is still down, I thought I would share a few comments from its overview so you can see that the consensus is growing that M&A activity should be strong in 2011 and beyond.

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