It took me a couple of decades to come up with, and then refine, a model that really works. I was driven by the firm belief that ‘there just had to be a better way!’ After all, being in business begins with getting business. Get it right and you can win big. Get it wrong and nothing else much matters.
I have spent the past several decades working on the challenges of making business development really live up to its name. During that time I was constantly bothered by questions such as:
o Why does business development never seem to fully live up to its name?
o Why is it so difficult to get business development working effectively for a company?
o Why do most BD teams look like a series of revolving doors - with one person after another being hired amid great fanfare only to be let go within a year for ‘non-performance’?
o All these consultants are peddling the same tired old solutions to a problem that never seems to go away. Why can’t somebody come up with something that works?
It took me a couple of decades to come up with, and then refine, a model that really works. I was driven by the firm belief that ‘there just had to be a better way!’ After all, being in business begins with getting business. Get it right and you can win big. Get it wrong and nothing else much matters.
You might ask why this problem vexed me so. Well, I am a recidivist entrepreneur and effective business development was essential to the success of each of those companies. I have founded six companies and two non-profit organizations. During my six tours as CEO I found myself encountering the same challenges over and over. My frustration grew until there was no way out but to develop an alternative approach that really worked. Finding a way to make business development work became a crusade for me.
It’s funny how fate sometimes takes a hand and shows you the way. I got very lucky. My fourth company showed me the way. And, in the end, it had little to do with my frustrations or efforts to develop an alternative approach. The solution became clear because of the nature of the business I had founded and the industry that we were in. Six months after founding the company I had the beginnings of a solution. Those first insights formed the core of an innovative, potent and cost-effective approach to business development. The idea of an advisory board as a business development engine had been born.
The company that I had founded – along with the CFO of Columbia Pictures - had taken up the challenge to revolutionize the way feature films were financed in the US. Once our solution was perfected and business model was in place, we set about managing three flows. The first was the flow of product - film projects that we could finance. The second was the flow of investment dollars which would ensure that we could meet our obligations under the financing agreements. The third was the flow of bank funds to finance the balance of the production budgets.
Informally at first, but then more formally later, we formed two working groups that eventually merged into one advisory board. The first group was representatives from the film industry and their bankers. Their task was to organize the flow of investment ready opportunities. The second group was senior representatives of the Wall Street investment banking houses and big accounting firms. Their task was to organize the flow of investment dollars. Initially we spent time working to balance the flows but soon realized that, if we brought both groups together, we could more closely coordinate the process. Thus the advisory board as business development engine was born.
What was neat about this approach was that entire, multi-million dollar transactions were often proposed, negotiated and funded during single advisory board meetings. The process wasn’t entirely on automatic pilot but it sure was a lot easier to manage than shuttling back and forth between camps. My team provided the meeting coordination, processing and the post-closing management - we also acted as the coordinator of the overall process and made sure that each interest within the group was fairly served. In the end everybody had a big win and everybody had a respected role in the process.
As I refined the model I came to realize that there were at least three major characteristics of this advisory board that were important to its success. The first was that the board had a very well defined and important function to serve. When the members came to the meetings there was an anticipation of ‘doing business’ and ‘getting things done’. As a result meeting preparation was very through, materials were provided well in advance and meeting participation was very active.
A second characteristic was that all board members had specific economic interests that the advisory board would help to advance. All of the players came to do business and trusted the others (including members of my team) to come to the table in the same spirit - a culture of cooperation towards a common set of goals that served the individual goals of each participant.
Finally, all discussions were conducted in a spirit of camaraderie and common purpose. Complex settlements would be explored and reached at the table and not left to extended phone discussions that typically involved lawyers and accountants. In other words, the decision makers made the decisions (and compromises) together.
From my team’s perspective, the advisory board made life much easier. The flow of product, investment funds and bank loans was all organized within one venue. The regular meetings of the board provided a continuity of process that helped to organize a complex situation. Because the ‘market’ had become so well organized and the ‘players’ were all recognized ‘friends’, the process of arranging and closing financing became ‘rationalized’ - much of the uncertainty had been removed. My team got the credit for doing that and my company was seen as a necessary part of the process.
Much of the last two decades has been spent developing then refining a solution to what I see as the principal point of pain for most CEOs. During that time I was guided by three goals. First, the solution had to be head-and-shoulders better than competing strategies. Second, it had to be highly cost effective – minimizing the drain on critical resources while generating maximum benefits in the form of turbo-charged business development. And third, it had to work!
Experience has taught me that, although the process of designing, populating and managing an advisory board as a business development engine may seem simple and relatively straight forward, it is definitely not. It is one of the most subtle and complex one that I have been involved in. But experience has also taught me that it can be done and, when it is done right, it can be productive beyond a CEO’s wildest dreams.
In addition to building my own companies, I spend a bit of time helping CEOs build theirs and often, because of my experience with making Business development work, we end up focusing on driving the run-rate. You know, I’ve never met a CEO who was really happy with the way business development was working. They all end up saying about the same thing. “Traditional solutions fail to produce expected results while regularly generating unexpected costs. There needs to be a better way.”
Although all the CEOs that I met had a strong interest in driving the top line, I came to realize that a relatively small percentage of them had what it takes to actually do something about it – to effectively work with one of my advisory boards. This was mostly because my boards are populated with six to eight highly successful, very well connected and completely professional individuals – and that challenge can be quite intimidating to a lot of people who are much earlier on in their life experience. Almost as a matter of self-defense – to help filter out those who would not be up to the challenge and to identify those who were – I decided to write a book about the boards. My goal was to take the reader through the entire process from the first inclination to talk about setting up a board to the management of an established and highly productive one. The result was Amazing Pace.
Amazing Pace: Turbo-Charged Business Development describes how an advisory board populated with highly experienced, committed and well connected individuals is the fastest and most effective way to drive a company’s top line. The book describes the design, operation and management of such boards – boards that will radically increase the effectiveness of a company’s business development process.
I wanted to have Amazing Pace show how it is done and, more importantly, that it can be done for virtually any company with amazing results. Its core messages are that 1) getting business development right is the primary challenge for any senior team, 2) there is a solution to this persistent and painful challenge; 3) the solution is potent and cost effective and, 4) given a professional approach, this solution is not rocket science – it can be deployed for virtually any company.
Even though the book has just been published, I have started to see a positive impact already. CEOs who are considering having me deploy the model for their company now read the book and realize what is at stake and what will be required of them and their team. Many have realized that they have some serious spade work to do in order to prepare for a board. This experience alone has been worth the effort to write the book as I can now help them do that spade work and have to spend less time convincing them that is has to be done. Other CEOs read the book and get a better understanding of why they need to put one of these boards in place and how it will impact the future of their company.
Longview-style advisory boards are the single most effective way I have ever found to drive a company’s top line. Correctly done, the process can truly generate an amazing pace. There is no question in my mind that the presence of five to seven highly experienced, well connected and committed senior individuals has a far greater impact on the future of a company than any other resourcing.
The challenge is to make business development live up to its name – to master the single most ubiquitous point of pain that any management team faces and turn it into an advantage that will allow a company to beat out its competition and become master of its future.
