Your survival depends on what you’ve learned.  In the past three months, what have you learned about your customers that no-one else knows? What have your learned about how to enable your customers to achieve more value from your solution than from your competitor’s solutions?

The purpose of this email is to share my learnings and unlearnings, with the expectation that some will be of value to you. This email was 100% written by me – not by AI.  When you send me an email, my response is 100% written by me.

My biggest learnings in the past three months:

• AI has been very powerful in finding fact-based research regarding the issues and challenges I’m dealing with.
• Facts alone don’t tell me what to do. I have to think about the implications and the next steps.
• The facts may also be out-of-date and not relevant in todays turbulent, fast changing, and hyper competitive world.

Sharing my learnings

Below are links to my website containing new and revised points-of-view since my last update. The critical learnings are included. Each article designed to enable discussion among founders, owners, shareholders, investors, CEOs, and boards of directors. The learnings and unlearnings are applicable to any size company, ranging from early-stage startups to large global enterprises.

Links to my points-of-view articles:

Traditional Business Transformation dooms your company to failure. V2

• Most transformation efforts fail and destroy company value.
• The failure is due to leadership flaws with the company leadership: the board of directors, CEO, and C-Suite.
• The leadership has limited understanding of employees and how to gain employee commitment to transformation.

https://koorandassociates.org/business-transformation/5920-2/

Do you need to transform your company? V4

• Many business leaders think that they need to change the direction of their company, in order to be financially viable.
• Transforming while ahead of the competition is more successful than transforming when you are forced to.
• Cost cutting is not the solution to under performance.
• If your company is underperforming, compared to the competition, determine what changes are required to the board of directors and C-Suite,
• Often the board of directors and C-Suite do not know that their company is in crisis or heading toward crisis.

https://koorandassociates.org/business-transformation/do-you-need-to-transform-you-company/

What is business transformation? V3

• There is no commonly agreed upon standard definition of business transformation.
• Your company must create your own definition and criteria for what is business transformation, which everyone understands.

https://koorandassociates.org/business-transformation/what-is-business-transformation/

Is your company planning to fail? V5

• Most companies are successfully executing their plans to fail. Most companies fail or produce poor investor returns. (Read “Your company will fail”, which is the first article under “What further reading should you do?”)
• Plans are comprised of two parts: what is in them and what’s not in them. Plans reflect decisions made and decisions not made.

https://koorandassociates.org/avoiding-business-failure/is-your-company-planning-to-fail/

Your company will fail. V3

• Most companies will: fail, disappear, or provide poor returns to their investors.

https://koorandassociates.org/avoiding-business-failure/your-company-will-fail-v1/

How profitable are search funds? V2

• The IRR for traditional search funds in Canada and the US has been 35.2%.
• Traditional search fund investors provide far more than capital. They also provide coaching, mentoring, board directorships.
• You need to fund between 30 to 45 searchers, to have a high chance of approaching the IRR for the asset class as a whole.

https://koorandassociates.org/selling-a-company-or-raising-capital/how-profitable-are-search-funds/

Personal Update:

• Mentoring a startup at the University of Toronto Department of Engineering. The approach was based on weekly advisory board meetings.
• Continuing as Board Director at a private company.
• Continuing as a Patient Family Advisor at Sunnybrook Hospital.
• Continuing my long-term fundraising for the Geoff Carr Fellowship at Lupus Ontario. Over the past 18 years family, friends, neighbours, and colleagues have contributed almost $270,000. You can use the donation link later in this update
• Continuing with the Angel Capital Association in the US.
• Focusing on my two professional purposes: #1 Enabling current and emerging business leaders to succeed, #2 Enabling business leaders to have a positive impact on society.