murder board

The Murder Board: Getting Comfortable With Discomfort

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In the ever-evolving landscape of business, ideas are the lifeblood of innovation. If you have a brilliant idea, that’s great. Good ideas need support and nurturing, but it’s only the beginning: real sustainable access requires facing discomfort head-on. You need to be able to accept feedback, know your competition, and subject your ideas to scrutiny. 

Getting comfortable with discomfort is the key to success, and it’s not only crucial for leadership but also for everyone in your organization who works with ideas, products, and people. The Murder Board is a structured approach to criticizing ideas and products that can ensure that everyone is well-prepared. In this blog, we’ll dive into the Murder Board method, talk about getting comfortable with being uncomfortable, and explain how Murder Boards can empower you and your team to accept the feedback you need to grow your business.

Who Uses Murder Boards

Origins and Adaptations

The term murder board originated in the U.S. military, specifically from the Pentagon, but is also used in academic, journalistic, government appointment, and business contexts. The Murder Board serves a crucial role in identifying vulnerabilities, weaknesses, and other issues that internal stakeholders might overlook. If you’ve ever spent hours on a piece of writing or an email only to notice a typo as soon as you’ve sent it (who hasn’t?), you have an idea of what inattentional blindness can do. When all of our energy is focused in one direction, we might miss the small details that can become huge roadblocks. 

The method is used in business—one of the most well-known examples of a Murder Board is the kind of questioning used on Shark Tank. But it’s also used by politicians to prepare for high-stakes political hearings, like those involving Secretary of Veterans Affairs nominee Ronny Jackson. They’re also used to prepare for PR crises, like when Mark Zuckerberg gave his congressional testimony.

By terminating (e.g., murdering) the weakest points, a series of tough questions, discussions, and decisions can help make the idea as strong as possible. By uncovering problems, risks, and overlooked aspects, a Murder Board can save organizations from making catastrophic errors. It’s not about making the person presenting feel bad—it’s about making sure the strongest possible version of an idea is the one that gets sent to the battlefield, to the world stage, or to the market.

Why Discomfort Will Grow Your Business

At Audacia, we believe in the value of getting comfortable with discomfort. Whether you’re realizing that you need to revise your value proposition, reevaluate your strategy in the face of uncertainty, or prepare for an Investor Day, the things that will grow your business will almost inevitably feel uncomfortable at one point or another.

A Murder Board is one of the most potent medicines for getting comfortable with discomfort. It’s about willingly subjecting ideas and strategies to criticism and critique. By doing it in a way that supports and encourages your employees, you can not only grow your business but also help your employees give (and receive) better feedback.

When you can look reality in the eye and take the first uncomfortable step towards improving, you’re on your way to being able to see the challenges that must be addressed long before your competitors.

When to Use a Murder Board: Enhancing Preparedness for Critical Scenarios in Business

In the world of corporate strategy, the Murder Board can be applied to various forms of written and oral communications. Here, we explore three prominent scenarios where the Murder Board can ensure that your team is poised for success.

1. Preparing for Uncertainty or Crisis: A Proactive Approach to Risk Management

The business landscape is fraught with uncertainty, and unexpected crises can emerge at any moment: climate change, PR scandals, global crises, and more. For those fortunate enough not to have encountered a full-blown crisis, market fluctuations or preparing for an M&A deal are also good reasons to remain vigilant. The Murder Board is not only for huge events, though it’s great for those. At its core, it’s a risk management tool.

The initial step in preparing for a crisis is assembling a dedicated “damage control” Murder Board. This team should ideally comprise individuals with a deep understanding of both media dynamics and the specific vulnerabilities within your organization. Their role is twofold: to identify potential issues and vulnerabilities, and to formulate the toughest questions imaginable along with the best possible answers grounded in facts. Once these initial assessments are complete, the focus shifts to refining these answers and preparing your spokespeople for high-pressure scenarios.

2. Scrutiny from Investors: Elevating Your Game for Analyst Meetings

For companies engaging with investors, especially in one-on-one meetings with executives, being at the top of your game is non-negotiable. In these instances, the Murder Board is instrumental in ensuring your team is well-prepared in terms of executive presence, messaging, and a comprehensive grasp of key company metrics.

This is the time to call upon your most astute internal financial analysts. Encourage them to channel their inner “Shark Tank” persona. This specialized team, your investor relations Murder Board, should focus on formulating intricate and challenging questions that explore various angles on the company’s financial performance.

Bring in hypothetical situations where competitors are poised to outperform you, where investors—on paper—have every reason to choose to invest in them over you. How do you answer the tough questions that emerge? The Murder Board will ensure you’re more than able to highlight key competitive differentiators.

3. Scrutiny from Customers: Empowering Your Sales Team

Customers can be among the most discerning and demanding audiences. You know how it looks when an airline or company has comments flooded with angry customers because of poor performance or a PR scandal—it’s every Chief of Comms’ worst nightmare. Beyond the major faux pas, there are many other ways customers can be critical.

By preparing your sales team with a “customer relations” Murder Board, they can role-play within a context where they’re encouraged to get curious about how they act under pressure. Practicing before it happens with actual upset customers can make it all the more manageable in the long run. Especially when newer team members take on the role of the customer, your team can develop a deeper understanding of client needs.

Maximizing Preparedness and Growing Capacity for Discomfort

We understand that the concept of murder board sessions may, at first glance, appear excessive or even cruel. However, it’s vital, particularly for less seasoned leaders, to acknowledge that genuine readiness for critical situations and Q&A sessions necessitates more than surface-level preparations. Here’s how you can practice the Murder Board today.

Challenge Company Beliefs

We have seen again and again how individuals and teams fail to maintain objectivity when pitching ideas or experimenting with new messaging. To break free from the confines of the organizational echo chamber, engaging a murder board with external perspectives proves invaluable.

These sessions facilitate a rigorous examination of beliefs concerning various aspects of your business, and might include questions like this:

  • What major issues or challenges are we overlooking?
  • What’s our message, in its simplest form? What audiences will resonate with this, and what audiences won’t resonate with it? If they won’t, why?
  • What do we know about our customers? What don’t we know? If we gained more information about x, y, or z, how drastically would we have to change our strategy?
  • Is our communication and messaging consistent? Do we contradict ourselves? What are the chances that we can’t follow through on the promises we made?

Escape Groupthink

A fundamental aspect of the Murder Board is to introduce fresh perspectives, often originating from the standpoint of the client or stakeholder. Compelling your team to contemplate worst-case scenarios from the investor’s point of view stimulates critical thinking and fosters the development of robust defenses around economic issues. Additionally, encouraging your team to view situations from the client or stakeholders’ point of view can highlight a different set of deficiencies or unaddressed angles that require attention.

For this to work, it’s crucial to put yourself in a different perspective than you usually occupy. It can be a good idea to hire someone external to the organization to do this if you don’t have someone who is willing to put on their “Shark Tank” persona.

Supporting Employees Every Step of the Way

The Murder Board can be intense, and for good reason. If successful, your ideas and presentations will be air-tight and win over investors, customers, and business partners. However, ensuring that it truly helps your employees get comfortable with discomfort requires more. Being critical comes easy for some of us—but training our leaders and employees to be critical of each other’s ideas while supporting and being kind to each other is crucial. Otherwise, this process risks stoking anxiety and workplace tension.

Always keep in mind the values of a people-first workplace. Give adequate scaffolding before and after murder board sessions to support your employees, celebrate improving ideas as a collective win, and encourage each other—outside of the Murder Board—to be honest and kind about each other’s ideas (I promise it’s possible!).

The Murder Board is for Creation, Not Destruction

A Murder Board is a powerful tool to stress-test your company’s communication skills, enabling your team to thrive in high-pressure scenarios. The discomfort it introduces should not be seen as a hurdle but as a stepping stone to better understanding your messaging and connecting with key stakeholders. Ultimately, you’re eliminating weaknesses in order to create something even greater—the Murder Board destroys weak ideas for the sake of creating something better. 

To maintain an objective perspective, consider enlisting external experts, like Audacia Strategies, who have a proven track record in preparing teams for high-stakes meetings, investor relations, and transformative business endeavors. Embrace the Murder Board, and watch your business reach new heights through resilience, adaptability, and strategic refinement.

Photo credit: Image by yanalya on Freepik

IPO

The IPO and SPAC Market is Hot. Is Your Firm Ready for the Public Eye?

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2021 has been a record-breaking year for Initial Public Offerings (IPOs). Analysts predict that by December 31, we will have seen roughly 1,000 companies hit the market. As of now, there have been 372 IPOs and 535 SPACs, for a total of 907 companies representing $266 billion in proceeds. 

Among the most notable companies on the upcoming IPO agenda are giants like mobile payment company Stripe, San Francisco-based Instacart, which has more than half the U.S. online grocery delivery market, and Impossible Foods, the maker of plant-based burgers. Others include Databricks, an artificial intelligence company and a Brazilian digital bank, Nubank, backed by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway.

With the market this hot, we know that you may be considering joining their ranks and raising capital either through a traditional IPO or a SPAC. And while you can find plenty of IPO checklists and guides, making the process seem deceptively simple, the decision to take your firm public requires careful consideration. So, we thought it might be appropriate to look at some of the questions founders tend to overlook.

Make Sure You Know Your ‘Why’

There are a lot of good reasons to go public, but being the CEO of a public company adds several layers of complexity to your job. So it’s important to make sure you know your ‘why’ and why your ‘why’ makes you unique in your market (AKA your differentiator). This will help you stay grounded throughout the tough moments.

Many firms may think, “I need to raise capital, so I think I’ll take my company public.” Maybe you need access to capital to support planned acquisitions or maybe you want better access to debt and equity markets to carry out your growth plans. That access comes with costs both in flexibility and on the bottomline. Whatever your reason, spend some serious time evaluating it from every angle. A murder board can be a great resource here as well.

Another reason knowing your ‘why’ is important is that you need to be prepared to own the IPO process. Don’t assume that the investment bankers, lawyers, accountants, and consultants you hire will manage the process. Make sure you (and your team) manage the timeline and understand the process. Ask a lot of questions. Avoidable delays may cause you to miss your window in your industry. When you stay in charge of the timeline, you stay in control of the process.

What are SPAC IPOs?

In the past few years, we’ve seen a surge in what’s called a Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) and these relatively new types of deal are fanning the flames of the IPO market. Also known as a blank check company, SPACs are another way to raise capital.

Not your typical IPO stock, SPACs start out as shell companies that raise money by issuing stock. Then they use the proceeds, combined with bank financing to buy and take privately held companies public. SPACs typically set two-year time limits on completing the acquisition and if the deal doesn’t go through, then investors get their money back.

Although SPACs aren’t new, they have seen a rise in popularity after COVID-19 shut down the IPO market in Q1 of 2020. Prior to 2020, we were seeing about 15 SPACs per quarter. During Q3 of 2020, that number jumped to 82, and it jumped again to 129 the following quarter. In the first quarter of this year, we saw a record of 298 SPACs.

But whether SPACs are a temporary trend or have real staying power is yet to be determined.

3 IPO Tips from an IR Pro

There’s one other point that founders should be aware of when considering whether it’s time to take their company public: it’s all about the investors. Sure, you need to focus on the SEC regulatory requirements and keeping the analysts on your side. But when it comes down to brass tacks, public companies live and die by their investors’ decisions.

To that end, here are four tips from Managing Director of Investor Relations and Financial Transformation, Mike Pici:

1. Get your house in order.

There’s no reason to be in a hurry to go public. In fact, we’re seeing trends go in the opposite direction. Whereas a startup receiving a healthy stream of venture capital might have once gone public in four years, today the process might take eight years or more. Companies are waiting longer and growing larger before they go public. 

This is a positive trend because it is hard to course correct when you’re being publicly held to the results. So make certain your house, both financial and non-financial, is in order before going public.

2. Be prepared to show a track record of growth.

If you’re thinking like an investor, then you know that investors aren’t just looking for positive cash flow or past success. They’re also looking for evidence of future growth. The amount of revenue is not as important as showing healthy growth quarter over quarter. To this end, we recommend that you show a minimum of 1-2 quarters of growth before filing for your IPO.

3. Consider whether the firm can withstand the amount of stress going public will create.

You’ve likely faced obstacles in the growth of your business. And you should be proud of how you were able to face and overcome those obstacles. But if you believe overcoming adversity qualifies you to take your company public, you would do well to talk to other founders who have gone through the process.

You need to know what you’re walking into before you sit down at the table. The stress of going public is a particular type of challenge and while most founders will only do it once in the lifetime of their businesses, remember that you’ll be working with experts who have done hundreds of deals. Make sure you and your management team are up to the task.

Your IPO Roadmap:

Once you have decided to take your firm public, you’ll need a plan. At Audacia Strategies, we work with our clients through every stage of the IPO process. Here is a preview, which we call our IPO Roadmap:

Part 1: Developing your IPO story 

Although you’ll have multiple filings that describe your business, your risks, and your opportunities, you’ll also want to develop an overarching narrative to share with diverse audiences. Now is the time to refine your value proposition, establish credibility and proof points, set your guidance strategy, and set up internal processes to establish consistent communications.

Part 2: Building an Investor Relations (IR) program

A successful initial public offering requires syncing up several moving parts. If doing a product launch feels like playing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,” an IPO feels like playing “Beethoven’s 9th.” Of course, to play a symphony, you need an orchestra. For your successful IPO, that means building an IR program. You can schedule a consultation with our Managing Director of IR, Mike Pici, here.

Part 3: Navigating life after IPO

Once you’ve successfully taken your firm public, it’s time to follow through on the commitments you’ve made and deliver against those proof points. Remember the IPO is really just the beginning of your journey.

If you’re ready to start your IPO journey, contact us today to discuss your needs. Our team is ready to develop a transformational strategy that works for you.

Photo credit: Team of two women analyzing charts and diagrams by Jacob Lund Photography from NounProject.com

communications guardrails

Communications Guardrails: Your Key to Forward-Thinking, Innovative, and Grounded Messages

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We recently posted this blog article about strategies for making your underlying messages consistent with how you want your brand to be perceived by the world. With the speed of information dissemination in our digital age, you can’t afford to be reactive. But being proactive is a real challenge too. Anticipating all the ways our messages might be received is a tall order.

However, there is another way to ensure you are shaping conversations, rather than allowing conversations about your firm to be shaped by those outside of your organization. All you have to do is come up with some strong communications guardrails and stick to them. Let’s dig in!

Communications guardrails? What does that mean? 

Communications guardrails are a list of do’s and don’ts that are unique to your organization. They let the world know what your organization does and does not stand for. You can think of guardrails as rules, but that makes them sound really restrictive. 

We prefer to think of your guardrails as well… guardrails. They are boundaries that keep everyone corralled just enough to ensure that the conversations you’re having both inside and outside of your organization are forward-thinking, innovative, and grounded.

Your guardrails will also act as guides as your communications evolve. They include your values, branding messages, and talking points, but we encourage our clients to go even further. To start, ask your team these five questions:

  • What are we actively doing to show our commitment to our purpose, vision, and values?
  • What are our firm’s priorities when it comes to communications?
  • What industry-wide beliefs and best practices do we accept?
  • What industry-wide beliefs and best practices do we reject?
  • Do we have a solid crisis management plan? (because if communications are going to go off the rails, it will happen during a crisis)

With the answers to these questions in mind, you can begin creating your own guardrails. 

Also, you’ll want to consider what has worked for you and your competitors in the past. But don’t forget to look outside of your industry for ideas too. If you want to be out front leading, you’ve got to think beyond those tired, worn patterns.

Finally, avoid the 7 Deadly Sins of Business Communications:

1. Pride: Lack of consideration for or understanding of your audience.

2. Envy: Trying to ‘copy and paste’ another organization’s messaging because it worked for them.

3. Gluttony: Know when enough is enough and skip the buzzwords.

4. Sloth: There are no real marketing “shortcuts” or “hacks.” You’ve got to put in the work.

5. Lust: Beware of falling in love with the latest trends or tools. Keep your communications genuine.

6. Anger: When communications are perceived as angry, defensive, or overly negative, your audience will tune out the message.

7. Greed: It’s okay to make the ask, but make sure you consider carefully who’s winning in the deals you make.

Time to Give Those Communications Guardrails a Stress Test

Once you have come up with your set of guardrails, the next step is to test them. This is yet another reason the guardrail metaphor is apt. Road crews don’t build guardrails and then put them out on the street without doing a proper stress test. 

In the same way, you don’t want to assume that your communications guardrails are solid and test them out in the “wild.” You want to test them internally first. 

One method we use with our clients here is the Murder Board. The term murder board (AKA “red team”) originated with the military, but it’s shorthand for creating a team of rivals or a committee of killjoys whose sole job is to poke holes in your team’s best ideas. It’s great not only for testing communications guardrails, but for any new idea you might come up with.

In short, the murder board is tasked with locating the problems, risks, and bugs insiders might miss. So bring your guardrails in front of a murder board.

Murder Boards are beneficial in a variety of situations related to communication guardrails:

  • When prepping crisis communications, the murder board can hep you prepare for any number of scenarios and develop do’s and don’ts for your CEO and spokespeople.
  • When prepping to talk to investors or analysts, the murder board can role play scenarios with your CEO to ensure she has answers to any number of “tricky” questions.
  • When prepping your sales team or customer service on the frontlines, the murder board can get them ready to reply to customers who can be some of the toughest critics, especially during a crisis.

For high-stakes communication situations, there’s nothing better than a murder board. Finding your communications guardrails is a high-stakes situation. Without guardrails, you’ll find everyday communications feeling chaotic and overwhelming and crises quickly spinning out of control.

When you take the time to create your communications guardrails with your team, though, you have the opportunity to shape the conversations you’re having and to lead your industry into a brighter future. 

What are your communications guardrails?

At Audacia Strategies, we’re used to fielding questions from executive clients about how they can be more aware of the underlying messages they’re sending. Our go-to answer is let’s work on your guardrails. Ready to see us in action? Contact us to schedule an introductory call!

murder board

Murder Board—It’s Not As Bad As It Sounds. How to Use Criticism to Prepare Your Team

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When you have what seems like a game-changing idea, what do you do? You probably start by doing some low-stakes, crowdsourced testing. You tell trusted friends and family before taking the idea to friendly colleagues. Eventually, you get around to proposing the idea to those who can help you implement it.

When you go through this early testing phase, you’re looking mostly for validation. This can bolster your confidence, which is great if you’ve hit on a truly great idea. But how often have you watched an idea fizzle and die a slow death all the while wishing you had killed it sooner? This is one reason to seek not only validation, but criticism in the early stages.

In the investor relations and corporate communications world, we have a name for doing this in a formal setting: Murder Board. What is it and how does it work?

Murder Board in Context

The term murder board originated in the U.S. military, specifically from the Pentagon, but is also used in academic, journalistic, government appointment, and business contexts.

Here are a few recent examples:

Political Hearings: As soon as Secretary of Veterans Affairs nominee, Ronny Jackson, was scheduled to go before Congress for his confirmation hearing, officials began intense preparations, including murder board sessions. Reportedly, these sessions went on pretty aggressively during the past few weeks, but have probably slowed a bit now that the Senate has postponed the hearing.

PR Crises: When Mark Zuckerburg went on his recent apology tour after agreeing to testify in front of Congress, he was put through the wringer by a team of lawyers and outside consultants. In addition to a “crash course” in charm, Zuckerberg received a real grilling during murder board sessions. Essentially, his team created as identical an environment as possible and went through a series of real run-throughs of what’s likely to occur. These lengthy sessions were strictly private and videotaped for review and critique.

Also, known as a “red team,” the murder board team’s main job is to poke holes. In the military, the red team tries to penetrate your defenses. In the high tech world, the red team tries to hack into your system. In short, the murder board finds the problems, risks, and bugs that the insiders miss. In high stakes situations, murder board sessions can save you from making a terrible mistake.

Why Is It important?

Murder board sessions might seem like overkill. It’s easy, especially for less experienced spokespeople, to believe that they are prepared for Q&A. But until they have practiced responding to questions under pressure, your preparation is not complete. So, make sure you impress upon your team the importance of setting up a murder board.

1. Prepares you for real-world experience and Q&A.

It’s helpful to consider worse-case scenarios before facing one in real life, so you can strategize as a team. Otherwise, you risk your spokesperson going off script and saying something that makes matters worse. I want my executives and clients to face the toughest questions for the first time in the room with me, not in front of an investor, a client, or a camera. The preparation will remind your spokesperson to focus on the facts and not speculation.

2. Stress tests company-held beliefs.

When pitching an idea or trying out new messaging, It’s always hard to be objective. This is as true of individuals as it is of teams. When you really want to step outside of the echo-chamber of your firm, a murder board with external voices can help.

Use a murder board to test beliefs about:

  • Company preparedness—especially good for crisis communications
  • Messaging—Is your message really resonating?
  • Customer relations—What do we actually know about our customer?
  • The organization—Does our message really hang together? Where are the confusing parts?

3. Stress tests your sales team and sales message.

Role play scenarios with your sales team ahead of a high-stakes pitch. Ask questions such as: How could the meeting go off the rails? What are the toughest questions the client could ask? What are the worst responses to our message we could imagine? Murder board sessions will ensure your team arrives prepared and ready to keep the meeting productive.

4. Gets you away from group think.

The most important part of the murder board process is bringing in a fresh perspective, often that of the client or stakeholder. Forcing a team to consider worst case scenarios requires them to think critically and figure out how to defend their position. Alternatively, forcing them to consider the client or stakeholder view, helps identify any gaps or missing angles that need strengthening.

Murder board sessions are simply the most powerful way to ensure that your media relations, investor relations, or sales team are ready for high stakes interactions. If any of these teams are “winging” high stakes meetings, their lack of preparation could put the whole firm at risk. So, let’s talk about when and how to use a murder board.

When to Use a Murder Board

A murder board can be used for any written or oral communications. It’s all about ideas and messaging. Here are three areas where a murder board can be most beneficial for improving communications.

1. Preparing for crisis situations.

If your firm has never had to deal with a full-on crisis, consider yourself fortunate. But also realize that your big crisis could be lurking just around the corner. It’s always a good idea to have a plan for dealing with a crisis and murder board sessions can play an important role in such a plan.

Assemble your damage control murder board and have them begin identifying issues and vulnerabilities within the company. It’s best if you can assemble a team who understands both the media and your firm’s weak spot. Next, have the team work on questions and ideal answers. These should be the toughest questions they can come up with and the best possible answers based on the facts. Finally, refine the answers and work to prep spokespeople.

2. Preparing for investors.

Murder boards are also great prep for analyst meetings, especially one-on-one meetings where executives need to be on top of their game. Here you’ll want to focus on both the message as well as recalling key company metrics.

For this one you’ll want to call in your toughest internal financial analysts and encourage them to live out their wildest inner Shark Tank dreams. Assemble your investor relations murder board and have them begin coming up with “tricky” questions regarding different angles on the numbers.

For example, suppose your firm calls for 10% year-to-year growth with sounds amazing, unless your biggest competitor comes out with an expected 15% growth rate. Now you’re behind in the investor’s eyes. What does it mean for your business and key competitive differentiators?

3. Preparing for customers.

Customers can be one of the toughest audiences. Murder board sessions are great training for sales teams. Use these sessions to prep them for their sales calls, a big pitch, or proposal presentation.

Assemble your customer relations murder board by having sales people role play with each other. Have newer salespeople play the “customer” role first to test the more experienced team members. Besides the benefits of being prepared for hard questions, this kind of exercise forces salespeople to put themselves in their customer’s shoes.

Final Thoughts

A murder board is an effective way to test your firm’s communications skills in a close to real-world situation. For high stakes interactions, there is no better preparation. Remind your team, though, that this is NOT a hazing experiment designed to throw off another team member. The point is to prepare your team, better understand your messaging, and better relate to key stakeholders.

One way to ensure that you get an objective perspective is to bring in an expert from outside your firm. Audacia Strategies can be that expert voice. We’ve prepared teams for investor meetings, crisis communications, and high stakes business transformations. We’ll help you put on your game face!

Photo credit: racorn / 123RF Stock Photo