The purpose this email is to share my learnings and unlearnings, with the expectation that some will be of value to you.
Personal Update:
- My mentoring program with 1st year Rotman Business School MBA students, for the 2022-2023 school year has completed. I will fundamentally re-examine the value I can provide to determine if I should continue and what approach maximizes value to the students. Many students in consulting hope to work for McKinsey, Bain, or BCG with a starting salary of over $200,000/yr.
- Will be mentoring a startup at the University of Toronto Department of Engineering – Hatchery, starting the week of May 1
- An advisor at the Holt Xchange, a global fintech fund and accelerator.
- Continue as a member of: Angel One Investor Network, AIO (Angel Investors Ontario), and the Advisory Board at the Shaughnessy Group
- Continue as Board Director at Computer Aid Canada.
- A Patient Family Advisor at the Odette Cancer Centre – Sunnybrook Hospital.
- Continue my long-term fundraising for the Geoff Carr Fellowship at Lupus Ontario. Over the past 17 years family, friends, neighbours, and colleagues have contributed over $260,000.
- Continue to share with you, and on my website, some of what I’ve learned with the intent that some of you will find value. The learnings are applicable to any size company, ranging from early-stage startups to large global enterprises.
My biggest learnings in the past four months:
In any group of people, half are below the median and half are above the median. This simple concept is often unrecognized. E.g.
- Assessment of executives, CEO’s, boards of directors. Half are below the median. Far more than 50% believe they are above the median. It’s unclear if the variability in compensation reflects the variability in performance.
- People may be above median in one area and below median in another area. No-one is perfect.
- A person’s relative ability to create value can change radically over time. Their value creation ability may depend upon: others members of the ecosystem, processes, technology, etc.
Some people can learn, change, and advance above the median or remain above it. Many people at one point in time and one specific set of circumstance were above the median, then crash below it when the circumstances change.
The above factors are a major challenge for companies that seek to have a competitively differentiated set of talent over the long-term.
Sharing my learnings
My website (https://koorandassociates.org/) contains my points-of-view regarding key issues and questions regarding value creation and growth in for-profit businesses. Each point-of-view is a brief article designed to enable discussion among founders, owners, shareholders, investors, CEOs, boards of directors, and advisory boards. I do not address not-for-profits, government, or other non-profit oriented organizations.
Below are links to my website containing: new and revised points-of-view since my last update in December
Links to my points-of-view articles:
Due diligence questions for a startup V3
Traditional corporate governance dooms your company to failure. V2
Do you need to transform your company? V3
LP (Limited Partner) assessment of a fund. V2
Do you understand your company’s external ecosystem?
Traditional succession planning is obsolete.
Koor and Associates 