– with thanks to David Joel of Lanson Consultants for his inspiration.
I am happily married with four lovely daughters.
I think any involved parent is a CEO.
I am an equal partner CEO in the parent company. Two of our branches believed they would be more successful away from the control of the parent company and so we have come to a mutual agreement to separate. The longest established branch has formed a successful joint venture by merging with another to form a separate company, and the other branch has changed markets and moved to develop within a larger concern in London.
– This has resulted in reduced costs and improved productivity of the parent company and day-to-day running is noticeably less frenetic.
The remaining two branches are still being developed and have interesting prospects for the future. They have each developed in very different ways addressing widely differing markets; one in entertainment and the other in service industries. Once each has reached fully profitable status and is attractive enough for a (hopefully) more established concern to take notice, then these too will likely separate from the parent company as ‘going concerns’. Some support will have to be maintained during the transition phase at least, and possibly longer. I envisage maintaining a non-portfolio directorship for some time but doubt my influence will be considered valuable by then.
– The timescale for these changes is difficult to determine. We are hoping for 5-6 years but suspect it may be considerably longer.
Once the parent company has been ‘asset stripped’ in this way, we hope it will remain a viable concern, able to tick-over at least for a few years. Returning to full efficiency and optimum profitability may take some time but once achieved then a more bespoke, higher level, occasional consultancy may be the structure adopted.
As for passing the company on to future generations…..
I hope this analogy resonated with some of you.
Finally, a question to ask yourself; am I being a good CEO or am I simply ‘doing a job’?
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