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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.

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short-term uncertainty

The Strategy and Mindset You Need for Short-Range Uncertainty

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This is Part 2 of our two-part series about planning for uncertainty. In this blog article, I talk about short-term uncertainty. Check out the first part on long-range uncertainty here. 

This is the second part of our two-part series on strategizing for uncertainty. Last time, we covered long-range uncertainty. This time, we’re going to talk about how to act in the face of near-term uncertainty, and especially about the way that mindset can translate into strategic action. 

The truth is that most of the issues that we find with long-range uncertainty start out as near-term uncertainty, or worse, as near-term crises. The pandemic was a near-term uncertainty (remember those two weeks of lockdown?) that has irreversibly changed and shaped the world we live in today. Massive turnover starts with one person, and dipping sales can start with one PR scandal.

The good news is that the strongest and most sustainable businesses can handle near-term crises—even ones that they couldn’t have planned for. This is because they have the right mindset that translates to the right strategy and the right communication. Let’s break this down to help you weather the next near-term uncertainty that awaits you. 

Get Real About Your Goals

Let’s rewind to March 1, 2020, and pretend I asked you about your goals. Maybe you would have told me that you wanted to be the #1 car sales company, for example. You were planning on hitting record sales and expanding your personnel. To top it off, you had an unbelievable PR campaign planned. If you were on your strategy game, you would be able to tell me what your goals were and the steps that supported each of those goals. 

Fast forward to April 15, 2020. What are your goals now? Or in May? Or June? If your goals were the same as they were in March, you’d have your head buried in the sand. Right?

I make this point for two reasons. First, the most resilient companies revisit what they’re trying to accomplish in the face of major events. A car sales company that survived the pandemic might have revised its goals: I need to keep my car lines operating, keep my people employed, and keep my teams engaged. In other words, priorities had to shift in order to better serve the longer-term goal (e.g., survive the lockdown and work towards being #1 at some future point down the line). 

Some companies made this mindset shift faster and more effectively than others. Making this shift doesn’t mean your ultimate purpose changes, but it does mean that what it takes to achieve that purpose might need to be reassessed. 

From Mindset to Strategy

Mindset has become a bit of a buzzword these days, but for good reason. Sometimes mental blocks, that we don’t even realize we have, get in the way of establishing sound strategies that can withstand the rough-and-tumble of the economy and world today. I want to share a few of my favorite reminders for the mindset that translates into real action. 

Operating in the Gray

This is a mantra of one of my favorite CEOs. I love it because it is true and it works. 

Life is lived in the gray area. When we face a new quarter, a new team, or a new challenge, there are always unknowns. We don’t know how things will turn out, but we have past data, and we need to try something. We can take a small step and assess little by little. 

Here’s one way to put this into action: If you know it’s time to increase brand awareness, you might take a big bet for a short time. We call this a fail-fast mentality. 

Say you decide to invest 80% of your marketing budget into LinkedIn and see what happens. The trick is to make it time-bound (e.g., invest for 6 months) and be practical about what you can expect within that boundary (e.g., grow your followers by 500). The only way to move out of the gray and into technicolor is to try something and see what happens.

Set Up Choice Sets

Anyone who has ever known a toddler knows that it is a fundamental truth of human nature that we do better with choice sets rather than infinite choices. You can decide to grow 10%, increase profitability by 5%, increase your customer base, build your talent, or overhaul your brand, but you probably can’t do all of these. They might all go together, but you have to prioritize your investment priorities. 

Perhaps your company hasn’t been profitable and you need to be more profitable before making other investments. You might need to look at costs and pricing before deciding to bring in other customers, or else you’d be bringing them in at a lower profit. 

Look at your goals, assess them, and figure out how the pieces fit together (or hire a pro to help you get an objective look at what your most strategic moves are). Then figure out which choices to make now and which to save for later after a few more of the pieces have fallen into place. By the way, this advice works both when you’re in crisis and when it’s business-as-usual.

Just Do It 

This is true when it comes to long- and near-term uncertainty. Not knowing what the future holds can lead us into what is sometimes called analysis paralysis—wanting to maximize our actions can result in us not acting at all. Or, being perfectionists and wanting to keep our options open means that we end up doing nothing and closing off all of our options. Neither of these is ideal. 

At some point, you need to call in the support systems you need to act. As Bréne Brown says, we need to get vulnerable and learn to rise. The way we develop confidence is by actually doing things. Not through observing, studying, or reading another blog—we develop confidence just by doing it. And then we’ve done it, and we have the momentum to move on to the next order of business. We may not have done it the most perfect way, or the way we thought it would be done. And yet, it’s done—we can assess, gather data, and use the results to better inform our next move.

Communication

The importance of communication in a moment of crisis or uncertainty cannot be understated. Solid communication with stakeholders—employees, leaders, investors, customers, and partners—is key to finding the support you need to stay afloat. At worst, flubbing communication in a crisis can leave your customers feeling confused or even deceived. 

How can you make sure you have solid communication in a crisis?

  • Communication has legs: What you say can and will travel. A solid strategy or an external communications team can help you ensure that your communications reflect your purpose, your commitments, your priorities, and your plans. They can also help you ensure that you strike the right tone when discussing your knowns and your unknowns. 
  • Be aware of your stakeholders: Know who you’re talking to in each communication. The message you give to your stakeholders might confuse your team members. Likewise, you might communicate a different level of complexity in one forum rather than another. Be consistent while also knowing who you’re talking to. And of course, make sure everyone who needs to hear from you does—don’t forget about your business partners and community supporters.
  • Moving forward: Even amidst uncertainty or crisis, let your customers know what there is to look forward to. Know your goals for the near term while keeping your eye on the prize. Stay bold and steady in your long-term purpose. 

Concluding: Progress vs. Perfection

This last piece is something I work on daily. Dealing with near-term uncertainty is a game of tricking yourself (if you’re a perfectionist) into making progress. It’s always going to be imperfect, whether you’re dealing with a crisis or not. And sure, as leaders we want to make the best choices. We want data, but we live in a world where there is infinite data. 

Sometimes we get caught in a trap of thinking, “if I only had one more piece of information, I’d feel so much better.” There are diminishing returns, though. You get that 80% solution, but you want more. And chasing that last 20% can keep you from making the decisions that will help you come out on top once the near-term crisis is over. 

Ultimately, dealing with near-term uncertainty comes down to two pieces of advice: 

  • Strategize and plan ahead, as always and as much as you can. 
  • Get comfortable with being uncomfortable. 

Also, know your own blind spots—the mindset traps you fall into as a leader that keep you from making progress. Figure out the mantras, the advisors, and the reminders you need to help you move your team forward through any crisis, any uncertainty, or any gray area.

Are you still trying to figure out how to make sure you’re rock-solid when the next challenge comes? Our team of experts can help you make sure you have a strategy that works for the near term and the long term—don’t hesitate to reach out to us for a consult. 

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long-term uncertainty

The Strategy and Mindset You Need for Long-Range Uncertainty

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This is Part 1 of our two-part series about planning for uncertainty. In this blog article, I talk about long-term uncertainty. Stay tuned for the next installment of the series where I discuss planning for short-term uncertainty.

Uncertainty is a part of doing business. We simply don’t operate in a world of perfect information in economics, in business, or in life for that matter. Sometimes the unknowns are known unknowns (e.g., the price volatility of raw materials in a product), and sometimes the unknowns are true unknowns. The true unknowns are the big ones like climate, geopolitical circumstances, and health crises. Even having a C-Suite leader out sick for a week can throw a wrench into the best-laid plans. 

McKinsey has a framework for thinking about uncertainty, and here there are four different levels: (1) a predictable future, (2) alternate futures, (3) a range of futures, and (4) true ambiguity.

With our clients, we like to focus on two different kinds of uncertainty: long-term uncertainty and short-term uncertainty. The strategies we suggest account for what kind of uncertainty we face within this framework. Often, the first part of the work is getting leaders to make time to think about these issues at all. 

There are different reasons businesses and leaders often avoid thinking about uncertainty—it’s unpleasant, there are no easy answers, and it takes time away from the day-to-day aspects of doing business. Yet, building a bold and sustainable business means asking the hard questions and laying out the contingency plans you hope you never have to use. 

In this blog series, we’ll go over some of our top tips—for strategy and mindset—for approaching long-term and short-term uncertainty. 

Let’s start with long-term uncertainty: how should we think about uncertainty? And how should we plan for it? Here, we’ll walk through a few examples of long-term uncertainty to give you a map for the right kinds of questions to ask and the general mindset to have when approaching different kinds of long-range uncertainty.

First Principles 

When you’re asking difficult questions in your business, it can be helpful to ground into the things that you know and that you have control over. These are your first principles. The idea of first principles comes from ancient philosophy—what are the bedrock beliefs and ideas that we build everything else upon?

If you don’t have a value proposition, it’s an important part of long-term planning. What are you here to do? What are your goals and purposes in the business? Having a clear idea of who you are, what you stand for, and what your business does best can help you ground your future planning. Having this written into the DNA of your company and how you communicate about your company gives you something to work with if it becomes time to pivot. 

Long-Term Uncertainty: Case Studies

Long-term uncertainty concerns those uncertainties that might stretch a long time into the future without knowing when or how they will resolve. These are the things that pose big existential questions to your firm, or at least bring up existential questions, while you’re busy figuring out what to do. Here, we’ll walk through how we like to think about some case studies in long-term uncertainty.

Recession

At the time of writing, it feels like economists have been forecasting an imminent recession for the last five years. It can be hard when we’re all waiting for the other shoe to drop. In general, responding to market conditions, doing market research, and doing regular brand assessments are great ways to make sure you’re staying competitive in any environment. 

But let’s say a recession is announced. What do you do? The first question is: What is the best path forward from a long-term growth perspective? Depending on how your company’s finances were panning out in the recent past, one might decide to sell, IPO, take on additional investments, or bootstrap. There’s uncertainty attached to all of these options, and they’re going to depend highly upon several factors. 

What doesn’t change across different kinds of companies and different levels of performance is the importance of being in it for the long game. You don’t just want to think about the next five months, but about what moves will serve if different conditions pan out over the next two, five, ten, or 20 years. 

Personnel 

Your people are your greatest asset—hopefully, you know this already. And you also probably know that life happens. Yet, when the CEO or CFO walks out the door, or your best graphic artist steps out for a family emergency, it can throw you for a loop. 

Planning for this is tricky. In general, I don’t encourage redundancy. That’s a surefire way to create a tighter budget that—most of the time—won’t make sense. Instead, I encourage awareness of what everyone is working on. It’s important to know what everyone is doing; yet, it’s also important to be humble about job creep. Even if you’re the boss, you might not realize just how far your Database Manager has strayed from their original job description. It’s good to be aware of this both for understanding how all of the pieces fit together and for understanding who is responsible for what. 

Grasping the strengths and weaknesses of your team can ensure that you can figure out where other folks can step in and take on an entire job, or some parts of it. In some cases, people will be applying skills they’re already using on your team. In other cases, you might get the opportunity to help your team with professional development by teaching them new skills or discovering untapped talent. 

Ultimately, having a pulse on your team, avoiding silos, and understanding how everything fits together allows you to best direct your team towards a common goal.

Climate Change

This is a big one and a difficult one. There are more floods, more heat waves, and more wildfires than there used to be. How do we plan for this in our companies? I’ll walk through a few different lines of questioning that can begin to guide your game plan.

Location-specific climate change: Does it make sense to build a HQ in New Orleans? Or should we move back to northern Louisiana? What climate needs does your facility have (e.g., are there a lot of computers?)? What are the risks to your infrastructure? Do hotter summers or colder winters pose a risk to materials you might be transporting? Is water scarcity something that you need to be thinking about?

Disaster Preparedness: If the worst happens, are you insured against flood damage, wildfires, or whatever is most likely to affect your area? What kind of resources do you need to make sure you can support your employees if a disaster happens at work, or even in the general area? What will you need to reach out to employees? Will operations continue, and if so, how?

Communication: How will you communicate with your employees and customers if something happens? How will you communicate with key stakeholders and investors? How important will it be to communicate quickly? Do you have emergency contacts with important partners or plans that can be quickly enacted across different locations if coordination is necessary?

Global strife: It’s crucial to think about how disasters and climate issues will affect populations globally. Map out where your supply chains are so you can quantify the potential risks to materials, investments, economics, and of course, the human toll. 

Climate change presents some of the biggest unknowns we have—there are predictions, but we never know in what state or town disaster might strike. Ultimately, we are all on one planet. Animals are adapting (see: all the beach closures due to sharks!), and we have to make sure we do the same. 

Gap Assessment

When it comes to long-term strategy, some unknowns are—thankfully—a little closer to the business-as-usual that we know and love than climate change. For example, you might set a goal to increase brand awareness in 2024. This is long-term uncertainty because it has the potential to change the course of your business, and because if you’re doing a brand pivot you have no idea how it might be received by customers. What might your strategy be in this case? 

By the end of 2023, take stock of where your brand is. What does the market look like, and how do you want your brand to be perceived within your market? What does this mean in terms of customer perception, digital awareness, website hits, inbound inquiries, social media followers, and so on? Figure out what your most important metrics are and begin with the baseline info that you do know. 

By the beginning of 2024, you want to figure out how to get data for the metrics you don’t know and figure out which metrics you most want to target in 2024. You can’t target too many at a time or else you won’t know what worked or why. If you want more inbound calls, you might do more LinkedIn advertising or more website content regularly. If you want more website hits, you might invest in an SEO overhaul. 

Finally, throughout 2024, you would want to keep sight of what you’re trying to accomplish. What outcomes do you want, and what do you have today? Once you set SMART goals, you can put plans together and reassess quarterly to see how things are evolving and continue reassessing to get you to where you want to be in the market.

The 20 Mile Analogy

So much long-term planning is about deciding that you’re in it for the long game. That decision means you adopt a certain mindset and a certain willingness to dive deeply and boldly into uncomfortable and difficult questions. 

Jim Collins has an incredible analogy for this process in his book Great By Choice. Imagine you and others are about to embark on a 3,000-mile foot race from San Diego, CA to the tip of Maine. One person decides to push as hard as they can and travel 40 miles the first day, then they are exhausted and need to rest. In fact, they need to rest the next day too. You, on the other hand, set out to do 20 miles a day, every day, no matter what. Whether the 20 miles takes you 12 hours or four hours, it doesn’t matter. 

You might be able to guess who wins the race. The runner that was sprinting and recovering didn’t win. When you plan and can keep steady progress and stay on track with your plans, you give yourself space to maneuver. Any marathon runner knows that one mile can feel different from day to day. But if you set yourself on a plan, you at least won’t be trying to achieve 40 miles in a day, but just 20.

As with business goals, long-term planning requires breaking large goals into smaller goals. That climate change conversation across your entire company probably won’t happen in a day—and that’s okay. More broadly speaking, making sure that you have a steady and sustainable business plan means that you won’t be as swayed by waves of uncertainty.

There are no perfect choices. In a crisis, we can’t afford to be perfectionists. Looking at reality and moving beyond the “what-ifs” allow us to take small actions and make the necessary plans that can buoy us through a hard period. Take your steps, measure your progress, and eventually, you might realize you’ve already gone 120 miles.

Concluding Thoughts

Long-range strategy planning is hard, but it can work. With the right mindset shifts and a willingness to ask hard questions, you can create a sustainable business plan that addresses business-as-usual alongside potential long-term challenges. The steadier you are on the day-to-day, the steadier you will be during a crisis. 

Finally, action begets action. Taking the first small step means that you can then look back, 20 paces later, and see how far your team has gone. This, in turn, inspires more action and ensures that we’re not waiting for life to happen to us. Creating bold, sustainable, and competitive companies today means going beyond the status quo. Ask the hard questions. Take the uncertain step. Look into the future with unflinching eyes.

Keep an eye out for the next part of this blog series on strategizing for short-term uncertainty. And if you want any assistance with this from a team of experts, don’t hesitate to reach out to us for a consult.

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CEO transitions

CEO Transitions in 2023: Challenges and Opportunities

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CEO transitions have always presented challenges for companies, but post-pandemic, we’re seeing more turnover than we have in at least five years. Endemic burnout combined with challenging global and macroeconomic circumstances are causing CEO turnover in companies and organizations at every level.

At Audacia Strategies, we help our clients build companies, infrastructure, and culture that can weather even the harshest of circumstances. With this in mind, we’re going to get into the why of this current tide of CEO turnover and share the smartest moves companies can make during an executive transition, particularly at this moment.

Why Now?

We’ve all seen the numbers about employee turnover, and CEO turnover is catching up too, with Fortune reporting that it has reached its highest rate in five years. According to Challenger, Gray, & Christmas, Inc., CEO turnover is up 18% from a year ago (the numbers are from March 2023). But why are we seeing this uptick in CEO turnover happening right now?

First, leaders are dealing with burned-out employees. Mental Health America reports that in a study of 1,500 individuals, three-quarters of workers say they have experienced burnout. We’re all dealing with the same global and economic challenges. We watched the Great Resignation happen over the last few years. Between managing employee experience, customer experience, and their own burnout levels—CEOs have been at the forefront of change.

Second, We’re in a volatile time between market movement, elections, and global conflict. When a stock crashes, a bank closes, or a product fails, leaders have to take responsibility. This might—either by their own choice or not—lead to an executive transition.

Finally, the IPO market is also to blame. We’ve seen fewer IPOs which means that there are private, venture, and equity-backed companies who were planning on an exit in 2022 or 2023 that just won’t happen. The question to the CEO becomes, do we stay the course or bring in a specialist leader to pivot the firm to be more competitive in the 2024 or 2025 IPO market? 

The answer to this question has serious implications for the fate of the CEO and might amount to deciding between keeping a current CEO with public company experience or refocusing investments in their business and hiring a new “specialist CEO” with a depth of expertise in software or distribution, for instance.

The Challenges

So what are the challenges for leaders and board members dealing with CEO transitions in this particular macroeconomic environment?

Everything Changes

CEO and executive transitions are always fraught. Even if it isn’t explicit, a new CEO comes with the potential for significant change. Corporate leaders often feel the desire to say, “Nothing is going to change. Everything is going to be the same. Everyone stay calm.” Why? They understandably want to reassure their employees that things will be okay. But there are truer and better ways to reassure your employees—everything changes, even if you don’t intend it to, and when it does you risk getting blamed for lying to people.

Dealing with Multiple Constituencies

There are always multiple constituencies too. In our work, we focus a lot on employee-executive relationships and helping employees understand how and why change is happening. But beyond employees, companies also need to address business partners, customers, and financial stakeholders. 

Each of these groups has ideas about your company’s executive transition, and it’s essential that they understand the perspective, goals, and background of the incoming executive. Why is she the right person? Why did she take the job? What is the opportunity she sees in the market?

The Opportunities

While executive transitions present ample challenges, they also present excellent opportunities for building trust, strengthening culture, and driving future success. 

The First 100 Days 

As much as possible, let the first 100 days be a time for listening. Listen to (and visit, if possible) your constituencies and ask questions to get a sense of the goals, pain points, and existing strategies for the company. Incoming executives should ask questions like: Where is the friction for this organization? Where are we amazing? What can we do better?

After the first 100 days, come back to your team and reflect on what you heard. Let your employees know where you can be reached and where your priorities will be. While this contradicts the traditional advice to “hit the ground running,” most pain points are multivariate problems. 

Without understanding all of the variables, the CEO risks creating problems rather than solving them. At worst, executives can get dragged into the nitty-gritty early on. Avoiding this requires focusing on the big picture, and especially on the “why” of the organization. What is the purpose, and why do we exist? Spending the first 100 days listening and establishing relationships and expectations is essential for a successful tenure.

Listening Sessions

Create opportunities to listen to your employees through the channels they’re already using. If you’re coming into a remote organization, host listening sessions on Zoom or Slack. If you’re in person, consider hosting a coffee hour or an “Ask Me Anything” session. It can also be helpful to allow anonymous questions to be sensitive to employees’ concerns. 

Particularly during times of transition, employees need to hear your answers to the hard questions: What will this mean for me? How will my manager be affected? Does this CEO really invite questions or not? When conducted with curiosity, empathy, and a bias for transparency, listening sessions can catalyze important discussions.  

Draw the Story Arc

Why are you here? This is the first and most fundamental question of employees, customers, and business partners. An incoming executive should be crisp about why she chose this company and what working at this company means to her. If there can be a formal handoff between the exiting and incoming CEO, even better. Particularly for employees, knowing that the former (hopefully beloved) CEO hand-picked the incoming CEO can make for an especially smooth and amicable transition.

But of course, this is not always available. When it isn’t, having a trusted third party such as a board chair endorse the background, values, and vision of the incoming CEO can make a world of difference.

Manager Dynamics

Managers are the first place most employees will turn for information and to “check the temperature” of a change. Keeping the pulse of your people leaders and employee influencers  is a huge opportunity. Engage and listen to their challenges and frustrations and equip them with the tools and information to support their team. There is nothing worse as a manager than to feel helpless when your team is asking for help. 

Don’t hesitate to give them a channel to funnel questions. Be honest about the fact that we are all learning and moving through this transition together. We may not have all the answers but we’re working on it and we’re working together.   

Customer Communication

Just as your employees will wonder what the transition will bring, so will your customers. Am I still going to be a priority? Will you keep investing in what I buy from you? As with your employees and managers, be clear in your communication about what the new CEO will bring to the company or organization from the customer point of view.

Keeping Everyone Invested

One of our clients had five CEOs in four years. At a certain point, employees and customers reach a level of change fatigue. Customers don’t care and just want to make sure they have the same account representative. Employees go into survival mode, annoyed at what they see as change for the sake of change. 

Particularly with this one client, by the end there was almost no faith that someone would stick around: “I’ll believe it when I see it.” The upshot of this attitude is that employees might be unwilling to invest in new initiatives. An incoming CEO can show they are aware of these dynamics by being patient—it will take longer to establish trust and credibility.

In a case like this, it will be especially important to listen and let people vent. Let them air their true pain points and try to do small things in the early days to make their lives better. One of our clients, facing employee burnout, was able to offer every third Friday of the month off. It wasn’t every other Friday off like employees wanted, but it showed employees that the new CEO was listening.

Concluding Thoughts

It’s not easy to be the new CEO, especially if it’s due to less-than-ideal circumstances. Being a CEO puts you in an interesting position—people often tell you what you want to hear, and never tell you that you have a bad idea. But when you start somewhere new, you often have two reactions:

  1. People who aren’t afraid to speak their minds. 
  2. People who are terrified that by speaking up they’ll be fired. 

Being ready for the tough questions—and asking them yourself when no one else will—can help you succeed. As will a healthy dose of curiosity and empathy. Feedback is a gift. By taking time to listen, communicate carefully, and respond, you can ensure that both you and your company are headed in the right direction.

If you want to talk more about an upcoming or ongoing executive transition, don’t hesitate to contact us. Our team of professionals is ready to give you a strategic edge.

Photo credit: katemangostar on Freepik

future of work

What Companies Are Doing That We Love

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We’re living through a unique time right now. What work means to us is changing, and the leaders paying attention to this are making changes accordingly. The future of work is here, and it’s already happening before our eyes. 

We work with a lot of companies in transition, and we wanted to share with you some of the best moves to make sure your investors, employees, and customers stick around for the long run. Here’s a few tactics and techniques that we love.

1. Giving Employees a Voice

I’ll cut to the chase—savvy companies are listening to employees. This means engaging their employees, listening to their input, and integrating it into action. As an example, many of us are still in a return-to-the-office transition. After working on a remote or hybrid model for a year or more, companies are still making tweaks. What are the best means of communication? How do we come together intentionally? Do we have a cafeteria, and if so, what do we serve?

We’ve seen companies engage employees well in employee resource groups. In these groups, employers provide a forum for employees that is open-ended. One of our clients has a weekly coffee talk—it started as a small, organic event that became so successful that it’s now branded and managed by the communications department. 

The concept is simple enough: By offering an open forum where leadership asked employees what was on their minds while also offering a space for folks around the office to share what they were working on, our client created an outlet for honest communication and collaboration. Since these weekly coffee talks began, people have been helping each other across business units and brainstorming ideas about how to work together better.

One of companies’ biggest worries about offering an open forum is that there might be griping. Let’s be real—whether this griping happens at the water cooler in hushed tones or at an open forum, it will happen. If you care about employee retention and the future of your business, you should want to know what’s on your employees’ minds. When you give your employees an outlet, you provide an opportunity to express and address it constructively. And when you allow your team to share concerns about the small things safely, they’re way more likely to raise the alarm about company-threatening issues. 

People care more about something if they have a stake in how it grows and develops. By opening new avenues for feedback, you help your employees to be part of something larger than themselves.

2. Inviting Feedback from Customers

In-person client meetings are back, and it’s changing the dynamic. Especially when you’re dealing with sales, new relationships, and problem-solving, being in person changes the game.

Leaders are soliciting and tuning into the voice of the customer to add richness to their customer relationship strategy. The non-attribution interviews during voice of the customer surveys are invaluable whether you want to check the health of your customer relationship, inquire about your positioning among your peers, or simply understand what makes your client tick. Engaging in a voice of the customer analysis requires considering the information and insight your customers hold. This information can advance your market strategy and add nuance and understanding to face-to-face conversations—even when those conversations bring up uncomfortable feedback. 

3. Having Hard Conversations

We love the companies doing this but wish we saw more of it. The benefits of having hard conversations can mean something as sweeping as revamping your value proposition or talking to investors about major business changes.

The consequences of not having hard conversations can be huge. One of our clients couldn’t give bonuses this year; employees found out in a piecemeal, roundabout, through-the-grapevine way, and it all blew up during an all-employee call. It was rough and highlighted how the hard conversations between leaders and among teams weren’t happening during the year. 

Having hard conversations also means letting employees know when important changes in the company (like layoffs) are coming. The LinkedIn posts coming from former Google employees express a sense of deep betrayal. Layoffs, executive transitions, and other major changes are sometimes inevitable, but forums and clear communication help leaders communicate these issues with humanity and care.

A leader-employee relationship has an undeniable power dynamic, so it’s on the leader to initiate these conversations. Unfortunately, leaders and managers don’t always feel like they have the skills for these conversations. It’s hard to look someone in the eye who has worked overtime and canceled vacations and tell them that you can’t give them a bonus. These conversations are heartbreaking on all sides, but when deciding between a lie that draws a smile and a truth that draws a tear, the truth is always the better option. As Brene Brown says, clear is kind. Unclear is unkind.

4. Celebrating

We would love to see more celebrations at work. One of our clients was recently acquired, and we love how they continue to find ways to maintain their spirit and culture via service anniversaries, birthdays, and client wins. It’s not all sunshine and roses through an acquisition;  celebrating helps employees see the positive things happening around the organization. Making time to celebrate sends the message that we celebrate together because we’re a team. 

Here at Audacia, we got together in person last year to celebrate a fantastic year. When we can’t meet in person, we celebrate at the “water cooler” (AKA on Slack). Because we try to practice what we preach, we hope to get even better at celebrating the small and big wins this year.

The Future of Work: Choosing Courage Over Comfort

The future of work is upon us. The demands on employees are higher than ever, and in turn, employees have higher expectations of their employers. This isn’t bad; in the best-case scenario, it makes us all better. Being willing to listen to the voices of customers and employees, having hard conversations, and celebrating is a willingness to be aware of the many seasons that happen at a company. We love companies that do these because it shows their leaders know how to weather all seasons of the company lifecycle.

I love the Brene Brown quote, “Integrity is choosing courage over comfort.” Having integrity is not just about balancing your finances and answering your emails—it’s showing up for the highs and lows of running a business with presence and strategy.

If you’re looking for more guidance on driving meaningful conversations, integrating feedback into your business strategy, and building a consistent voice of the customer/employee program, Audacia Strategies has your back. Reach out to us, and someone on our experienced team will be in touch.

Photo credit: https://www.freepik.com/free-photo/people-taking-part-business-event_24483071.htm

reading

Reading, Listening, Watching – Your Prescription for Recharging

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As the year comes to an end, I’ve been reflecting on all the hard work the Audacia team has put in over the last year. I love what I do, I love the work my team and I do together, and I also love getting the chance to step into other universes of information and story through books, podcasts, and TV. The ROI from learning, relaxing, and enjoying is always worth it. Here’s what I’m reading, watching, and listening to this winter.

Reading

Corporate Rehab

Corporate Rehab is about building a business that isn’t toxic. Jennie Blumenthal talks about how leaders can become addicted to the hustle culture, the steps we can take to recover, and how to lead at the next level without losing yourself in the process.

 The author, Jennie, was my coach for a period of time and I learned so much from her. I was anxiously waiting to read her book and it does not disappoint! I have been devouring this book. Jennie interviewed 300 female executives, and her book presents their stories, lessons learned, as well as the REHAB framework we can all learn from. 

I cut my teeth in large corporations and while I’m grateful for the opportunities, my mentors, and the friendships over the years, the hustle culture discussed is real. Jennie’s work has inspired me to look inside myself, understand my story, and articulate my values. As a leader, I’m thinking deeply about building culture and how I show up for the Audacia team and our clients. I’m being helped along in this process by my awesome coach, Clay Parcells. Thanks Clay!

Instagram

By reading here, I mean not reading! For the past several months, I have put myself on an Instagram diet where I allow myself only 1 min of Instagram Monday through Thursday. It’s been AMAZING for my productivity and my mental health and leaves more time for… well, life!

Listening

Do Hard Things 

This book by Steve Magnus popped up on my Instagram feed so I added it to my Libby account and I’ve been listening to the audiobook (personally, I find it easier to listen to business books than to read them). This book presents stellar research and storytelling about the science of performance, toughness, and resilience. It has helped me rethink how I work, tap into my instincts, and build greater resilience.

Private Equity Deals with Capital Allocators Podcast

I was really struck by the conversation and depth of this episode of Private Equity Deals with Capital Allocators. This one is perhaps a little niche-y – Bain Capital has been a wonderful Audacia partner and Zelis is one of our awesome clients. Still, it’s a great conversation about strategy and financing. It talks about how Zelis is addressing some of the most abrasive aspects of the healthcare system including pricing, explaining, and paying for healthcare claims.

It was incredible to hear the backstory on Zelis from the folks that were (and are) “in the room.”

I learned a ton from the episode and now I’m looking forward to listening to more. I have the first episode in my queue for the holiday break. I’m fascinated by the impact that employee ownership can have on a business and Pete Stavros, Co-Head of Americas Private Equity at KKR, is doing impressive work on this front.

Watching

The Bear

OMG this show. It’s incredibly intense and for those who have ever worked in the food service business at any level, it’s probably bringing back memories (or nightmares) of being “in the weeds.” It’s about a young chef from the world of fine dining who comes home to Chicago to run his family’s sandwich shop after the suicide of his older brother who left behind debts, a rundown kitchen, and a diverse and chaotic staff.

Behind the food and frenetic chopping scenes, this is a story about character building and relationships. It’s stressful but compelling and an awesome escape at the end of the day, which is really all I want from a television show.  

Elf

I can’t help it, it’s my favorite! I love the pure joy of the movie and the many quotable moments. “SANTA! I know him!” My preschoolers aren’t ready for the movie but there are many moments where their pure joy for the Christmas holiday reminds me of Buddy the Elf, and it never fails to make me smile. 

I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for this holiday break! I’d love to know in the comments what you’ll be reading, watching, and listening to during your downtime. From all of us at Audacia to all of you, we wish you a restful and healthy holiday break. See you in 2023!

Photo credit: Scopio from NounProject.com

growth

Growth, Reflection, and Change in 2022

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How quickly a year goes by! It feels like we were just in the thick of it with new transitions and M&A deals. Suddenly, it’s all in the rearview mirror. 

At the end of the year, many of us who take time to reflect have the tendency to skip to the resolutions for next year. As humans, we have a bias toward the negative. We zoom in on what didn’t work as well as we hoped, and with the best of intentions, we immediately focus on resolutions for next year. This bias means we don’t always take time to feel pride and satisfaction about what we accomplished.

So, I’m going to give it to you straight: 2022 has been a phenomenal year for Audacia. 

Our seventh year of business was transformative for us. Our business grew in more ways than one, we got clear about who we are, and we thought hard about what our priorities mean to us. While this sounds simple laid out in a list, an enormous amount of work went into all of this. Let me share some of our 2022 highlights with you.

Business Growth

We’ve had an incredible and growth-filled year for our business. We grew our team to 14 strong and growing (check out these interviews with Sarah Deming and Sarah Gershman). Together, we worked to create the same culture of trust and transparency we work to instill in our clients. Because I trust my team, I’m able to focus my energy on big-picture strategy. 

On the numbers side, we doubled our top-line after multiple years of phenomenal growth. In addition to growing our team and top-line, we’ve been lucky to benefit from a growing community of supporters, partners, and subcontractors. We entered into many new rewarding subcontractor relationships and have received the benefit of expertise in everything from value propositions to executive presence. 

We also had the opportunity to work with wonderful clients like Xator. In just a few months, we helped them craft a succinct, evocative, and authentic statement of what Xator does—no jargon needed. We got to watch the internal and external transformation that happens when employees can speak authentically and accurately about what they do. 

And make no mistake, we worked hard to get to this point. We interviewed employees, read reviews, analyzed their competitive market positioning, and critically examined the marketing materials of both Xator and their competitors. If you want to hear more about this process, stay tuned for a case study in January!

Audacia’s Value Proposition

In addition to working with clients like Xator on their value proposition, we invested time, resources, and energy into working on our own value proposition. Our firm has evolved and changed since our launch in 2015. While people have an idea of what a communications firm does, Audacia isn’t a communications firm, or a PR firm, or a marketing agency. Let’s face it, we don’t fit the standard mold. In the midst of our evolution and growth, we needed to revisit how we talk about what we do. We chose to see this challenge as an opportunity to walk the walk.

In other words, we went through the same process we used for Xator and other clients: the ultimate act of putting our money where our mouth is. The process was rich: we learned so much about ourselves, about our clients, and we gained insight into how we’ve changed. And what did we learn?

Audacia Strategies is an advisory firm helping business leaders build the businesses of the future and uncover opportunities they never thought possible. We do this through a relentless focus on communications. 

It might sound simple, but it took us months of work to get here. We’ll tell you more about how this process looked on the inside early next year.

Learning to Prioritize

I know my clients get overwhelmed by their day-to-day and that can keep them from achieving their strategy. Over the last year, it often felt like we were more often ruled by the urgent than the important, and we spent a lot of time thinking about this. Here’s what we learned.

First, our urgent is usually our clients’ important and urgent. What we do means we’re on call for a corporation when there’s a new CEO or when there’s a significant transaction. It isn’t necessarily a bad thing to prioritize the urgent, and it’s part of doing business when you work with companies in transition.

Second, although it often felt like our days were ruled by the urgent, an imperfect devotion to the important still allowed us to prioritize our value proposition. It’s hard for companies to prioritize such reflective and research-intensive work, hence the need for external comms teams. But despite the days that felt ruled by the urgent, we managed to step back and do this important and clarifying work.

As we look to 2023, we’re thinking about how to attend to the urgent without letting it pull us off track. What are the changes we need to make in terms of our operations, staffing, and management to ensure we can balance the urgent and the important? How can we set realistic expectations for both ourselves and our customers? As much as we want it all done tomorrow, it doesn’t work like that. At Audacia, we want to continue to focus on dreaming big about the outcomes we want and work backward from there. The smartest way to invest your time is to start from where you are rather than where you wish you were.

Closing the Year With Gratitude

In reflecting on all the growth Audacia experienced this year, I want to offer gratitude for our clients, our team members, our business partners, and all of those who have referred business to us and supported us along the way. It feels like just yesterday that we started, yet here we are entering our eighth year of business. We are incredibly grateful for all of our supporters, and we are so lucky to do what we do. 

On behalf of the Audacia Strategies team, we wish you a joyful holiday season and a healthy, happy new year. Let’s make 2023 Audacious!

Photo credit: Jacob Lund Photography from NounProject.com

executive transition

Smart Planning for Executive Transitions: When Time Is Not On Your Side (Part 2)

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This is the second part of our two-part series on executive transitions. If you missed the first one, you can read some tips for handling a planned executive transition here.

Transitions are high stakes for both companies and investors. It’s emotional, especially if an organization has seen a lot of executive turnover in a short time. In fact, 70% of CEOs and managers—i.e., people leaders—are considering quitting. Experts suggest that emotional burnout, the stress of the pandemic, and the shifting labor market and economy are all likely contributing to this trend. 

Executive turnover brings up a variety of reactions. While some employees get very anxious about having to manage or “break in” the new leader, others—like those who were “quiet quitting” before it was a thing–check out entirely. Neither extreme is healthy for individuals or companies.

In Part 2 of our Executive Transition Series, we’ll consider a situation that’s a bit different than the planned exit of a long-term CEO. 

Imagine it’s three years into the pandemic, and your current leader, who has been with the company for two years, has admirably faced the challenges the pandemic brought to all organizations. Although she has managed quite well, another opportunity comes up and she submits her two weeks’ notice.

Without a transition plan in place, the company could be thrown into chaos. Some employees may have come to the company only to work with her, and others might be suspicious of how leaders are going to handle the change, or whether the company has a future at all. Executive  transitions are emotional and complex, and the fact is that there isn’t always time to prepare.

In a case like this, context will drive a strategic communications plan. What’s the context around the exiting CEO? What is the plan for the interim leader? Are we looking internally or externally? Most importantly, how do we set up a new leader for success and demonstrate stability to our employees?

4 Tips for Unplanned Transitions

 1. Storytelling

 This tops our list again because storytelling is how humans best connect and communicate. That doesn’t mean telling fairytales—employees can tell when a communication is bullsh*t or hiding the truth. It is important, as much as is professionally appropriate, to be honest about why change is coming. 

Tell the truth and allow room for employees to both have and share their thoughts and feelings about what’s happening. You’d be surprised at how much it helps to have leadership acknowledge that a particular situation is really challenging. Otherwise, you risk making employees feel as if they’re being gaslighted. Transitions are inherently challenging, and employees need to know they’re not alone in feeling it.

2. Due diligence

You’ve made space for the feelings, and now it’s time to do your due diligence. This has two parts: finding your next leader, and continuing to achieve your goals.

Finding a new leader will be your utmost priority. Most likely, your Board of Directors will take the lead to determine an interim leader and initiate a search for the next leader. You’ll need to announce and introduce the interim leader while also giving employees, customers, and partners a sense for the plan to find your new executive.

Finally, you want to help your team keep their eyes on the prize, whether that’s increasing sales or another goal for this quarter. Transition can be a major distraction. While it’s okay to acknowledge feelings of uncertainty, it’s also important to support your team in moving forward. 

As the saying goes, companies are bigger than one person; success is shared vision and collective action. By providing the right support, you can empower your team to keep pursuing the strategy. This will not only help maintain a sense of stability and continuity, but it also ensures you avoid larger business problems if performance falls off.  

 3. Fact finding

This is related to storytelling, but it’s different because this is not just about providing employees with a narrative that they can understand. It’s also about addressing any unanswered questions that may surround the circumstances of the exiting CEO and the changes that are coming.

People should be able to ask questions and feel they’re being heard. They should be able to say, “you’re the third CEO in three years, why should we trust that you’ll stay?” The sooner you get it all out there, the sooner you can move on. 

If you don’t answer the questions your employees have, they will fill in the blanks. It is better to be transparent and to provide honest answers to the difficult questions. Sometimes the honest answer is, “we don’t know yet” or “we’re still looking into it.” That’s okay. Better to be honest and give a sense for what you expect to be a timeline to an answer. This will build trust and, if done well, help with employee retention. 

4. Introducing New Leadership

As with planned transitions, employees want to know who the new leader is. In an unplanned transition, and especially a fast one, there might be more skepticism and suspicion. Being as transparent as possible about the new leader’s background and vision are crucial. What’s her background? Does she prefer to hire from specific universities? What’s her vision for the next five or ten years? 

Offer employees a variety of opportunities to talk with and about the incoming leader, and keep in mind that everyone has different levels of comfort with asking questions. Consider holding “Donut Wednesdays,” fireside chats, and other informal channels where leadership and teams can connect. You might also offer webinars where more introverted employees can submit questions virtually. As much as you can, provide ample time and spaces for teams to have conversations with transitioning executives as well.

The Need for Strategy

 Executive transitions—whether planned or unplanned—require strategy and careful planning. Storytelling, transparency, and diligence can help ease the growing pains of your company. However, it’s important to note that there are important and subtle differences in strategy for planned and unplanned transitions. 

For instance, employees are far more likely to feel insecure about their job and the future of the company amidst an unplanned transition. And without careful communication, rumors are more likely to distract from workplace goals. Honesty, diligence, and insight into company culture and employee needs are key for maintaining normalcy and retaining your valued employees.

 In all cases, I recommend you use a variety of channels and venues to soothe your most anxious employee and to engage your most checked out employee. Hold fireside chats, host Q&A sessions, send email updates from the hiring team, and create spaces for leadership to connect with their teams.

 Transitions can be chaotic, but they can also be opportunities to engage employees, customers and partners. A smart executive transition can open up a gold mine of insight into how these stakeholder sets are feeling about the company more generally. With the right support, you can use the transition as an opportunity to zero in on your systems and communications. If you’re willing to be present with the process, the results can be better than you ever imagined.

Want an experienced set of eyes to help guide your executive transition plan, or don’t know where to begin? Audacia can help. Reach out to us for a consultation here.

Photo credit: Young Businesswoman Receiving Praise From Her Colleagues During A Meeting In A Modern Office by Jacob Lund Photography from NounProject.com

IPO Roadmap

The IPO Market Won’t be Frozen Forever. Prepare for Your IPO with Audacia’s Roadmap

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After two HOT years for Initial Public Offerings (IPOs), the IPO market was due for a cooling period – and cool it has. “There’s an inverse correlation between market volatility and IPO activity,” said John Tuttle, vice chairman of Intercontinental Exchange’s ICE NYSE Group. The combination of rising interest rates, geopolitics, and shifting investor expectations have had a chilling effect on new listings. 

And while the IPO market is quiet – for now – it’s unlikely to remain that way for too long. In fact, many companies are taking this time to assess their readiness to enter the public markets. A great move, if you ask us. The Initial Public Offering (IPO) process is one of the most complicated and demanding events a growing company can go through. You need an IPO roadmap to be ready to deal with investors, auditors, lawyers, investment bankers, and accountants, among others. And then there’s the paperwork…

If you’ve never taken a company public before, you’re probably wondering what lies ahead of you. Never fear, with our IPO Roadmap you’ll be thinking three steps ahead. 

Audacia Strategies’ IPO Roadmap

We’ve talked about this before:  in a 3-part series, I broke down the process into three parts: developing your IPO story, building an IR team, and living with your IPO. Taken together, these three stages make up Audacia Strategies’ IPO Roadmap. Here are the highlights from each part.

1. Developing your IPO story.

Your IPO will include multiple filings that describe your business, your risks, and your opportunities. While you’ll speak with several different financial audiences (e.g., institutional investors, credit rating agencies, sell-side analysts, etc.), it’s important to develop a coherent story. We call this your investment thesis. Learn it, live it, love it. It is the core of your discussions with financial stakeholders and especially investors. Consistency is key.

After you have agreed on the  investment thesis for your business, it’s time to develop a narrative arc that answers the question: “Why buy this stock?” Make sure that you tell your story – not your competitor’s story – and that it goes beyond the numbers. Remember, investors are human. They respond to a real story like anyone else.

If you’re going public, that means you’ve spent some time honing your value proposition. Now is the time to expand upon and refine this message. Explain what makes your company unique? What’s your “why?” Think about where you can connect with investors in an authentic way and lean into that story.

Ideally, your story establishes your credibility and proof points and sets reasonable expectations. Keep the following in mind: your first few earnings announcements following the IPO will be closely watched to see how the company’s performance matches expectations set during the pre-IPO roadshow and how the management team characterized the firm’s performance in its S-1 (i.e., your initial registration statement with the SEC).

2. Building an IR team.

Once you have your investment thesis and narrative, it’s time to get operational. Put together your dream IPO team and make sure your team includes people with investor relations (IR) experience. 

Having a solid investor relations plan will guide your IPO discussions and ease your transition to life as a public company. The most important job? Establishing and building corporate credibility with your stakeholders through transparent and consistent communication.

And yes, there are some tools of the trade you’ll need to run an effective IR program:

  • An IR website: A place for investors, analysts, and the public to see your investment story. This should be easily accessible from your company’s primary website. 
  • An IR platform: A tool to track consensus estimates, trading patterns, analyze your shareholder base, research and target new investors, review ownership trends, etc.
  • Stock surveillance (optional): While not a requirement – it can be pricey – this type of information can be incredibly helpful to understand the ebbs and flows within your shareholder base. It can also be a lifesaver when your CEO sticks their head in your office and says, “what the heck is going on with our stock today?!”

Your IR team will ensure that you don’t stumble out of the blocks and set you on the road to building long-term trust with shareholders.

3. Living with your IPO.

Yes, Virginia, there is life after an IPO. I know it may not seem like it now because you’re so focused on preparing for the IPO that it’s hard to think past next week. But trust me, your future self will be glad you thought about this third and final stage ahead of time.

Don’t get me wrong, going public is an achievement in itself. By all means, take your victory lap. But also realize that having an IPO opens you up to a whole new level of public scrutiny. This is good news, but it means you need to follow through on your public commitments, keep telling your story (even after a 15-hour day of investor discussions), and continue to educate and build your shareholder base.

The key to a successful life after the IPO can be broken down into four simple steps:

  1. Set reasonable expectations.
  2. Tell stakeholders about them.
  3. Execute on those expectations.
  4. Tell stakeholders about that.

When your company goes public, you step into the spotlight. Yes, the stakes are higher during life after the IPO. But it’s nothing you can’t handle. You’ve got this!

Nervous about prepping for your IPO? Audacia Strategies has your back! Contact us to schedule your consultation.

Photo credit: Close Up Of Multi-ethnic Group Working Together Around A Laptop by Flamingo Images from NounProject.com

planning for the future

What’s On the Agenda for 2022?

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If you’re like me, you’ve probably seen, heard, and read one too many articles about trends for 2022. I even published a 2022 trend article myself. And as much as I enjoy thinking about and planning for the future with Audacia’s incredible clients, I’m also a realist.

Has anyone effectively predicted anything during the past two years? Fortunately, we don’t need to predict the future to build a solid strategy. What if we, instead, accepted the uncertainty and focused on building flexibility and the capacity for resilience inside our organizations?

With this in mind, let’s discuss what’s in, what’s out, and preview the flexible plan we’re implementing at Audacia Strategies this year.

What’s In

As we continue to watch workplaces shift and organizations rethink how productivity happens, some corporate culture trends have real staying power.

1. Building corporate trust.

The pandemic continues to erode public trust in large institutions. Early last year, when we were mostly feeling optimistic about a swift return to normalcy, we talked about ways corporations could begin rebuilding trust. Back then, public trust of businesses stood at 61%, higher than any other institution, according to Edelman’s Trust Barometer.

Now, after enduring another year of working from home and dealing with the uncertainty of the delta and omicron variants, many of us have given up on the concept of “a return to normalcy” entirely. And the 2022 Edelman Trust Barometer reveals that business holds onto its position as the most trusted institution, with even greater expectations due to government’s failure to lead during the pandemic.

Here are some of the key findings:

  • By an average of a five-to-one margin, respondents in the 28 countries surveyed want business to play a larger role on climate change, economic inequality, workforce re-skilling and addressing racial injustice. 
  • All stakeholders want business to fill the void, with nearly 60% of consumers buying brands based on their values and beliefs, almost 6 in 10 employees choosing a workplace based on shared values and expecting their CEO to take a stand on societal issues, and 64% of investors looking to back businesses aligned with their values. 

“Business must now be the stabilizing force delivering tangible action and results on society’s most critical issues,” said Richard Edelman, CEO of Edelman. “Societal leadership is now a core function of business.”

2. Establishing credibility as a trusted information source.

The 2022 Trust Barometer also revealed that trust in news and information sources has eroded over the past decade. Trust in all news sources has dropped (with the exception of owned media, which rose one point to 43%). Social media experienced the sharpest decline at eight points to 37%, followed by traditional media dropping five points to 57%.

In addition, concern over fake news being used as a weapon has risen to an all-time high of 76%. And the most credible source of information is communications from ‘My Employer’ (65%). 

Clearly, trust is at a premium now, which means there’s also a huge opportunity for organizations to establish credibility as a source of reliable information. Doing so will likely require skillful repetition of the truth and transparency in your internal and external communications.

It’s more difficult than ever for consumers to sift through all the available content and find useful information. Making increasing trust a part of your firms’ strategic plan in 2022 could be a serious differentiator.

3. Staying nimble.

Also, with all the challenges to public trust and uncertainty in the air, perhaps the best strategy for thriving in 2022 is to stay nimble. Where can you keep your strategic options open?

If you’re working on an M&A deal this year, for example, positioning your organization for the sale is key:

  • As your business model and corporate strategy shift with the times, you may need to re-evaluate how M&A fits.
  • Keep in mind that there are more options for M&A available now, such as SPACs and other non-traditional financial configurations.
  • Make sure your due diligence covers more than just the financials. The unfolding of the criminal trial and conviction of Elizabeth Holmes, CEO of the debunked medical startup, Theranos, has driven home this point. Many Theranos investors have been criticized for not doing the proper due diligence.

What’s Out

With the above in mind, let’s turn to what’s striking a discordant note with consumers, investors, and trend-setters.

1. Overpaying for an acquisition.

We’ve seen some of the highest M&A deal volumes ever in the past year, and multiples are at record highs. Still, the M&A market remains competitive. While many deals are worth the multiple, there’s no good reason to overpay for an acquisition. 

In fact, we see firms making this mistake for a variety of reasons:

  • Deal fever: It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of a bidding war. Instead, be willing to walk away from a deal that doesn’t really work.
  • Cutting corners on due diligence: Due diligence is like going to the dentist. If you don’t do the preventative work, you may end up needing a root canal.
  • Not getting real about your competition: The deal will have ripple effects. Do your best to anticipate how it will affect your competitors and the market in general.
  • Getting entranced by “synergies” [or insert your favorite buzzword]: Don’t fall for talk that sounds good but isn’t backed up by substance. Always have a gut check strategy.

What we recommend: A comprehensive integration strategy that goes beyond IT systems and benefits (both vital!) and addresses culture, leadership style, behavior expectations, and just plain “what’s in it for me?” And by the way, this comprehensive integration strategy should include perspectives from employees, customers, and investors.

Consider one of my favorite quotes from Dan Doran: “Value is analyzed, price is negotiated.” Write it down on a sticky note and keep it top of mind for deal negotiations.

2. Mixed messages to employees and customers.

Remember how we’re inundated with information and unsure whether we can trust any of it? Well, one thing that contributes to this paucity of trust is mixed messages. So replace complex, inconsistent, and vague messages with simple, consistent, and transparent communications.

And also, it can’t hurt to approach all messaging with a healthy dose of realism and empathy. For many, January 2022 feels an awful lot like April 2020. Pandemic fatigue is at an epic level and right now it’s hard to be an employee, a leader, a customer, an investor, a parent, a kid, a teacher, a doctor, a nurse…a human.

3. Everything being a top priority.

With everything we have to deal with on a daily basis, we don’t need the added burden of everything feeling urgent. So it’s best to think extra carefully about your real top priorities as an organization. 

Employee burnout is real. Customer burnout is real. No one has the patience to discern what’s a true priority. If you treat every task or project as if it’s Defcon Level 5, you’re likely to invoke a fight, flight, or freeze response.

Instead, pick your top goals, staff out each project appropriately, and give realistic deadlines, all with team input. Then maintain productivity by communicating your priorities and why to all levels and all stakeholders.

What We’re Doing at Audacia Strategies

Of course, by now, you know we at Audacia are always thinking about how we can walk our talk and 2022 is no exception. 

Here’s what we’re doing to build flexibility and the capacity for resilience:

  • Lots of deep breaths.
  • One of our guiding principles: Start with empathy.
  • Recommitting to our values and actively building our culture around them.
  • Focusing on prioritizing our business investments: We’re doubling down on what has worked by augmenting our offerings and building our capacity to support executive transitions, exits (IPOs, M&A), and refreshed marketing positioning.
  • Focusing on building our kick*ss team: We are proud to work with professionals who are the best of the best in their field, highly respected, customer-focused, awesome people with a fabulous sense of humor, and are no bullsh*t team players. We’ve already announced that IR pro, Mike Pici, joined the leadership team, and you can check out our team page to find out more about our strategic partnerships.
  • More deep breaths…

If the question of building a solid strategy amidst chaos and uncertainty has your organization reaching for the Magic Eight Ball, contact us instead to schedule a consultation. 

We haven’t been able to predict the future (yet!), but we do help clients develop strategies for dealing with anticipated and unanticipated transformations, and we can do the same for your organization.

Photo credit: Business Colleagues Having A Meeting Discussing Graphs And Figures by Flamingo Images from NounProject.com