The SHA is an agreement among the largest owners in a company where the parties agree on what rules are to govern important ownership decisions, decisions at meetings of the shareholders and of the board of directors. Customary clauses which regulate joint ownership are clauses which govern business purpose, rights of first refusal, consents, and pre-emptive rights. Among other things, the agreement will regulate:
Read More »The Shareholder Agreement – SHA
Resigning from the CEO role is a vital decision when you are the principal owner of the company. You must accept the handover to an outsider of not only the control of the business but also your life’s creation and the management of the family fortune. I have, for example, met family business owners, and entrepreneurs, who had their entire lifelong savings in only one share, i.e., in the stock of their company.
To step down from the top position of a business is complicated and will need time for those concerned to process, accept, and enforce. A prerequisite for the successful exchange of the CEO is the understanding, trust, and respect from all parties involved. All shareholders, the board of directors and the top tier management need to be aligned. It is even more challenging when the resigning CEO also is a principal owner and perhaps the founder of the company. It requires rigorous mental, emotional, and practical preparations that take time. It is a life-changing decision, and it’s hard to see all the future implications fully. One of the most important matters is finding out what to do next.
In my previous blog post “Recommend to a friend”, I brought up the background to the measurement of customer loyalty with the Net Promoter Score, NPS [2]. The method is easy to use and popular among commercial companies as well as in the public sector. But, all methods based on a relatively simple model has its weaknesses. In this post, I am sharing reflections and some criticism of the NPS approach.
How likely is it that you will recommend a company to a friend or a colleague? That is the question we are asked more and more often after a finished purchase or being in contact with the customer support at a company where we are a customer. But why is this question asked?
Well, the question is at the core of the measurement of customer loyalty using the Net Promoter Score (NPS) [4]. In this blog post I will present the background to the measurement of customer loyalty using the NPS. But all methods based on relatively simple models have obvious weaknesses. In the next post “NPS – some reflections” I will share my reflections and criticism about the NPS method.
I have, in previous posts, raised the importance of defining the industry and to understand what the company offers to its customers, i.e., which right to existence the company has. Once you know your industry, what to offer, and who your customers are, you then need to decide the price of the product.
A while ago I got the question from some young entrepreneurs asking how to price their products. There are, of course, many different more or less complex pricing and business models. However, I decided to share three very basic methods, and I believe these might also be of interest to some of you who read my blog. The basis for the three models are:
Bottom-up. Image Adobe Stock & Vestadil.
Early in my career, as an engineer at Gambro (a Swedish medtech company), I was taught a simple method for expressing the core of the benefits of an offering to a client. The method requires the use of only a verb and a noun to explain what the customer needs.
For example, if you manufacture pencils, the “verb + noun” description is “make mark,” or if you manufacture jewelry and tie clips, the expression is “hold tie.” It is obvious that the business, market, and competitors will be completely different if you provide a solution to “make a mark” or “hold a tie” versus offering a pencil or a tie clip.
Image: Shutterstock and Vestadil AB.
There are currently three questions that all corporate boards and managements have to ask themselves:
In my previous blog post I addressed the question: “In What business are we?“. The answer is vital input when positioning the company and its businesses. I highlighted the necessity, in the strategic business development, to make a thoroughgoing analysis of the business (industry) in which the company operates.
When making the business analysis, we need to drill down and deeply understand the “problems” that the company’s products aim to solve for the customer, i.e., the core benefits.
The chosen market position will, in turn, determine which products to be developed and what competition the company will meet. In this blog, I deal with the second question, namely the challenge to grasp who are the company’s competitors – particularly new, unexpected competitors. In an upcoming post, I will address the third question to give my view of the challenge of attracting talents to our businesses.
Image: Shutterstock and Vestadil AB
Currently, there are three key questions that all boards of directors and management teams must ask themselves:
In this blog post, I will address the first question regarding the importance of deeply understanding the industry in which the company operates.
In future blog posts, I will address the other two issues, i.e., the importance of the early detection of new competitors that may enter the market and the challenge of attracting talents to our company.