Many managers who haven’t had access to the top layers of an organization imagine that strategic planning is either the product of a superior intellect and insight or, at the other extreme, some random musings and voodoo-assisted “visioning”. It’s true that a very small number of leaders have far more finely attuned antennae than the rest of us and are able to pick up on vibrations if not in the cosmos then at least in their industry that are not apparent to others until much later. Their success may look like magic at the time, although it can and will be explained long after the fact by dozens of consultants and academics. The vast majority of organizations are able to craft effective strategies with a structured process that applies known practices to the environmental signals that its leaders are able to identify.

This book provides the guide map to the generally-accepted practices that make up a useful strategic planning capability, and brings in several tools that aren’t seen as often. It would serve as a useful handbook for any executive or member of a planning team, and for the consultants seeking to advise them.

It’s not for every organization; many of the concepts require a relatively free rein in terms of markets and products, whereas many businesses, particularly the smaller ones (under, say, $20M annual revenue) wouldn’t be credible trying to reinvent their industry. Others, particularly in the public sector, may see themselves as too constrained by law and habit to make such shifts, but there is room to adopt the ideas behind the practices and find ways to make changes and improvements even within their sandboxes.  In addition, it’s not really an “Operating System”; it stops at the point that most organizational strategies fail: the designation of strategic initiatives and allocation of specific responsibilities, resources and milestones to make sure that what shows up on paper in the strategic plan will eventually occur in real life.

Link to this book on Amazon

Subtitle: Everything you wish a lawyer would tell you about buying a small business.

The subtitle pretty much nails it. Whether you are a business buyer, seller or broker, you owe it to yourself to gain the perspective an experienced business lawyer can bring to the process. The book is chock-full of examples of what can go wrong if you decide to save a few dollars and wing it on your own. At the same time, Joel Ankney is very pragmatic, pointing out many issues that simply aren’t worth haggling over if your objective is to buy the business instead of torpedoing every deal you’re in. (It can also be a bit scary for a seller in realizing all the ways a buyer can create havoc if they feel like it and their own business lawyer isn’t up to it.)

It’s a sizable book, about 270 Kindle pages. The bulk of it is devoted to walking through a typical Purchase Agreement, first explaining the clauses and then pointing out the pitfalls and opportunities in each one.

One of the key points to understand is the difference between an equity sale (buying the business outright by taking over the ownership share) and an asset sale, which is not just a bankruptcy liquidation as many expect but rather a mans of transferring all the assets, including intangibles such as  “goodwill” and customer lists, to a company you own.  The point here is liability for past events and future discovered latent issues, and here I wish the book had gone into even more depth.

The author is so opposed to a buyer doing this that he gives it pretty short shrift, but there are several situations in which that’s not possible or preferable. Examples include when you’re buying a company with desirable government contracts (very common in Virginia) or with licenses that are not transferable, such as medical and elder-care facilities (also very popular right now). He does not say this, but (while conceding that I am not an lawyer and highly likely to be wrong since common sense and the law are not always aligned) it stands to reason that but I believe, that any sort of employee deals (e.g. key people, education retention, non-competes, etc.) would also be off the table if the prior company with which they signed their agreement disappeared in an asset sale; they would have no obligation to the new company and its owner.

Another key point is the non-viability of “agree to agree later”  clauses, at least in Virginia.

One area that deserves comment is the strong preference Ankney gives to using a Letter of Intent (LOI) instead of a Purchase Agreement. Of course the buyer would like that, as they are committed to nothing at all, while requiring the seller to do a lot of work and expose a lot of proprietary or competition-sensitive information. In Transworld’s experience, this approach may be more appropriate for larger purchases in the $3 million+ range, but is unreasonable to expect for a smaller deal.

Ankney has also had some bad experiences with business brokers. As with every profession, there are some snake-oil salesmen out there. That is a superficial basis for critiquing the entire role. I would agree that if a seller and a willing buyer have already found one another, then the broker’s basic task is complete.  Assuming they are competent as a “business intermediary”, the broker can still play a critical role in keeping everything at arms’ length to avoid the inevitable spats that occur over 6 months and often spiral out of control if there is no intervening party, and to keep the ball rolling so that inertia does not set in while the principals are both busy conducting their daily businesses.

Again, a book that all parties to a business deal should read.

Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Heres-Deal-Everything-Lawyer-Business-ebook/dp/B01N810N0T

This short (83 pages) novella walks you through the basic steps of getting your name out there and the rewards of doing so. The approach allows you to compare the downside of refusing to do it through the character of the industry veteran who has become cynical about the whole process but is assigned as a mentor to a new and enthusiastic recruit. The book puts a human face onto the spammy side of sales and reminds us that people can only sell to other people, so establishing and maintaining relationships is critical. Naturally to make the points some of the storyline has to be a bit contrived but not to the extent that you often find in “business novels”. An easy read tat has enough depth that you will be back to refresh yourself from time to time.

Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1456731513

A very easy reading book, packed with real-company examples to prove the points around the idea that you do much better by being very good at what you’re good at than by trying to copy what the most venerated institution is able to afford to do (but usually doesn’t). For a small entity there are plenty enough potential customers to thrive by being great at your core offering and by turning less-effective elements into points of differentiation.

This book is descriptive, not a recipe. The businesses are categorized by what they have become successful doing. Except were revealed in the anecdotes, you don’t know how or whether they decided on this specialization,  and if it was intentional, how they came up with the idea and validated it before launching out on it. I suspect that in many cases it was accidental and the sheer authenticity of the approach is what sold a certain segment of the market on it. If that is correct, you can’t just pick something out of the book and do it, hoping to succeed; the authors are really telling you that it is OK to be who you are and go all in on it, attracting a certain set of raving fans, rather than trying to go vanilla in hopes of not annoying anyone. Not-annoyed people don’t spend a lot of money to get a bit more not-annoyed.

You can get it at Amazon via this link.