company failure

Tom Koor

Your company will fail. V4

Your company will fail. V4

 What is the purpose of this article?

This article enables a discussion about your company’s long-term survival and competitively differentiated returns to investors.

The audience for this article includes: boards of directors, CEOs, the C-Suite, individual investors, and institutional investors,

This article does not provide tax, legal or financial advice.   You must do your own research and fact-based analysis using current and relevant information.

You can download a PDF of this article from: Your company will fail. V4

What are the critical learnings in this article?

  • 40% of CEOs believe their company will not be viable in ten years if it continues on its current path. 80% of companies are not prepared to quickly address disruptions.
  • Few large companies have provided good shareholder returns and had sustained value creation.
  • Most companies do not recover from crisis.
  • Most major changes fail or create limited value.
  • Most large-scale tech programs fail.

Will companies survive and prosper if they continue in their current path?

40% of CEOs believe their company will not be viable in ten years if it continues on its current path. 80% of companies are not prepared to quickly address disruptions.

  • In 2024, four in ten CEOs believed their company will no longer be viable in ten years if it continues on its current path. The majority of CEOs believed they will not be in their current role in five years time. 1
  • 94% of those running companies with more than $5 billion in revenue said that internal obstacles, not external ones, keep their companies from growing profitably. 2
  • Eighty percent of companies are reactive; they are unprepared to quickly address disruptions that may occur, and their operations aren’t structured for long-term resilience. 3
  • Globally, only 20% of companies are well prepared for disruption, and 29% well prepared for crises. 4

 How many large companies have provided good shareholder returns and had sustained value creation?

Few large companies have provided good shareholder returns and had sustained value creation.

  • The median return for public company stocks has been -0.74%yr. The 90% percentile has been 22.10%/year. (29,078 publicly listed common stocks in the CRSP data base from December 1925 to December 2023.) 5
  • Study of the largest 5,000 US companies stock prices rom Jan 2011, to Dec 2020 showed that after 10 years, 42% ended in the black, 36% lost money, and 22% had disappeared. 6
  • In 2023, 0.4% of large companies had SVC (Sustained Value Creation) for 10 years. 10% had done it for 8 years. Half the companies had 6% or less annual shareholder return over 10 years. 7

 How many companies recover from a crisis?

Most companies do not recover from crisis. 2

  • 80% of the swings in market value for companies occur as a result of decisions and actions taken during three types of PREDICTBALE crises. 2
  • About 5% to 7% of companies are in free fall or about to tip into it at any one time; of those, only 10-15% will recover. 2
  • More than 70% of companies fail to outperform their industry peer group average in both the short (one year) and long term (five years), after a previous performance downturn period. 8

How many major changes succeed and create value?

Most major changes fail or create limited value.

  • Only 12% of major changes produce lasting results. 9
  • During the past two decades, only 26% of corporate transformations have successfully created value in both the short and long terms. 8

How many large scale technology programs succeed?

Most large-scale tech programs fail.

  • More than two-thirds of large-scale tech programs are not expected to be delivered on time, within budget, or within their defined scope.10

How many public market funds succeed?

Most actively managed public market funds underperform their benchmarks.

  • Over a 20-year period ending in 2025, over 95% of US funds underperformed their benchmarks.11

How many buyout PE (private equity) funds succeed?

  • Close to 50% of PE funds had the same (or worse) returns as public market indices. 12

 How many VC (venture capital) funds succeed?

  • The median VC funds had returns about 3% higher than the public market indices. 25% of VC funds had annual returns at least 4% lower than public market indices. 13

What are your next steps?

  • Define the words/concepts/data you’re using, in a glossary. I’ve seen major confusion when the same words mean different things to different people.
  • Benchmark your company relative to peers and over economy: financial performance, customer perception (e.g. Net Promotor Score, market share growth, etc.), total shareholder return.
  • Do three sets of anonymous surveys, addressing some or all of the above questions: The Board of Directors, the C-Suite, employees, and shareholders.
  • Discuss the results of benchmarking and anonymous surveys.
  • What results do you believe are facts and represent the truth? Do you believe you have a problem(s) you must address?

Footnotes

1 PWC, “PWC’s 28th annual global CEO Survey”, PWC, 2025 01 20

https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/ceo-survey/2025/28th-ceo-survey.pdf

2 Chris Zook, “Barriers and Pathways to Sustainable Growth”, Bain, 2016 07 19

https://www.bain.com/insights/founders-mentality-barriers-and-pathways-to-sustainable-growth/

3 Ben Aylor, Jeremy Kay, Neeru Pandey, and Rainer Schuster, “If disruption is the new normal, operational resilience is the new necessity”, Boston Consulting Group, 2022 11 01

https://web-assets.bcg.com/16/4a/c7519aef4b9599e0decc5ad14f61/bcg-if-disruption-is-the-new-normal-operational-resilience-is-the-dec-2022.pdf

4 McKinsey, “Resilient firms and economies – How companies, governments, and multilateral development banks can help unlock growth in emerging markets”, World Economic Forum, 2025 12 08

https://www.weforum.org/publications/resilient-firms-and-economies-how-companies-governments-and-mdbs-can-help-unlock-growth-in-emerging-markets/

5 Hendrik Bessembinder, “Which U.S. stocks generated the highest long-term returns?”, W.P. Carey School of Business, Arizona State University, 2024 11 01, Page 14

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4897069

6 John Rekenthaler, “How many stocks beat the indexes?”, Morningstar, 2021 04 26

https://www.morningstar.com/markets/how-many-stocks-beat-indexes

7 Guy Brusselmans, Zuzanna Szmuc, Jenny Lundqvist, “Sustained value creation – the test of the best”, Bain, 2025 01 21

 https://www.bain.com/insights/sustained-value-creation-the-test-of-the-best-infographic/

8 Martin Reeves, Christian Grub, Kristy Ellmer, Adam Job, Gabe Bouslov, and Paul Ctchlove, “Five truths (and one lie) about corporate transformation”, Boston Consulting Group, 2024 04 12

9 Michael Mankinsand Patrick Litre, “Transformations that work”, Harvard Business Review, 2024 06 01

https://hbr.org/2024/05/transformations-that-work

10 Michael Grebe, Vanessa Lyon, Michael Harnisch, Abhik Chatterjee, Steven Alexander Kok and Jon Brock, “Most large-scale tech programs fail – Here’s how to succeed”, Boston Consulting Group, 2024 11 13

https://www.bcg.com/publications/2024/most-large-scale-tech-programs-fail-how-to-succeed#:~:text=BCG’s%20latest%20research%20shows%20that,year%20for%20a%20single%20program.

11 Anu R. Ganti, Davide Di Gioia, Nick Didio, Liam Flaherty, “SPIVA U.S. Year-end 2025”, S&P Global, 2026 03 03, Page 12

https://www.spglobal.com/spdji/en/spiva/article/spiva-us/

12 Tom Koor, “How profitable is private equity?”, Koor and Associates. 2026 07 176

https://koorandassociates.org/selling-a-company-or-raising-capital/how-profitable-is-private-equity/

13 Tom Koor, “How profitable is venture capital?”, Koor and Associates, 2026 08 03

https://koorandassociates.org/selling-a-company-or-raising-capital/how-profitable-is-venture-capital/

What further reading should you do?

“Is your company planning to fail?”, Koor and Associates

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

Tom Koor

Is your company actually a startup? V2

Is your company actually a startup? V2

 What is the purpose of this article?

Help shareholders, the board of directors, and C-Suite have a fact-based discussion regarding the status of your company.

The audience for this article includes: All companies, ranging from pre-revenue through to long established global companies.

This article does not provide tax, legal or financial advice.

You must do your own research and fact-based analysis using current and relevant information.

You can download a PDF of this article from: Is your company actually a startup V2

AI did not write this article.  100% human written.

 What are the critical learnings in this article?

  • Most companies need to become a startup again but don’t realize it. As a result, the wrong type of talent is in place, taking the wrong actions.
  • Most companies don’t last long. Most companies have poor value creation. Most transformations and major business changes have poor results.
  • Companies need to get into startup mode to validate and invalidate their assumptions regarding: customer needs and problems, and the number of customers willing and able to pay for a solution.
  • Board directors and C-Suite cannot learn startup mode knowledge, skills and decision-making processes because their brains have hard-wired biological responses and cognitive biases.

Where is your company it its life cycle?

#1 a startup

A startup is a temporary organization designed to search out a repeatable, scalable, and profitable business model with lots of potential customers who are willing and able to pay to solve their problems and needs.   Startups are not building a solution.  They are building a tool to learn what solution to build.

#2 most startups fail or end up as small companies.

#3 A scaling, growing profitable business enabling customers to achieve a competitively differentiated value proposition. Market share is growing, the overall market size may be growing, customers are strongly recommending the company, employees want to join and stay, etc.

#4 A slowly growing mature company. Market share is flat; the overall market size is flat.

#5 A company in decline. Market size may be shrinking. Market share is shrinking. Poor financial returns.  Transformation efforts producing little results. Etc.

Now what happens?1

Most companies need to become a startup again but don’t realize it. The company does not have a repeatable, scalable, and profitable business model with lots of potential customers who are willing and able to pay to solve their problems and needs.

  • Most companies don’t last long. The half life of US public companies is less than 11 years.
  • Most companies have poor value creation. 80% of corporations generate negative or little economic profit. Over 50% of public company generate negative returns over their entire life.
  • Most transformations and major business changes have poor results. Only 12% of major business changes produce lasting results.

 Why do companies need to become startups again?

Companies need to get into startup mode to validate and invalidate their assumptions regarding: customer needs and problems, and the number of customers willing and able to pay for a solution. This process must involve face-to-face interviews with customers by the CEO and other members of the C-Suite.

  • Customer needs and problems change.
  • The number of customers with historical problems and needs changes. Look at what happened to Blackberry: Blackberry was the cell phone leader in 2007. The iPhone was announced in 2007.  In 2008, the iPhone unit sales already exceeded Blackberry unit sales.
  • Customers perceive they get more value from a competitor.

Why are mature companies unable to get into startup mode?

The board of directors and C-Suite don’t realize they need to get into startup mode.

  • They try to do a transformation or major change – which usually fails.
  • I looked at recommended transformation approaches from the worlds leading consulting firms and business schools.
  • Only two of them (both business schools) recommended starting with understanding customers and their problems and needs. All the other have some variety of start with a vision or aspiration of where to end up. Building a solution which achieves the vision but does not address the problems and needs of cash paying customers results in failure.
  • None of the organizations I looked at recommended assessing and changing the board directors or C-Suite executives which led the company to failure.

Why can’t your board directors and C-Suite transform themselves?

  • Board directors and C-Suite cannot learn startup mode knowledge, skills and decision-making processes because their brains have hard-wired biological responses and cognitive biases.
  • One example is that the stress caused by financial turmoil triggers a threat response in the brain. The brain then relies on behaviors, knowledge and processes which have been successful in the past. This response leads to business failure when today’s reality is different from the past.
  • Another example is that their brains will strongly resist information which contradicts what they have deeply learned in the past.

What are the greatest challenges your board directors and C-Suite face?

  • Having the self awareness to recognize that they themselves must transform.
  • Having both the passion and ability to unlearn the past and learn new knowledge, skills, behaviours and actions.
  • Having the courage to recognize that they might not be the right person the lead the company forward.

What are your next steps?

  • Define the words/concepts you’re using, in a glossary. I’ve seen major confusion when the same words mean different things to different people.
  • Determine what stage your company is in by fact-based analysis of business performance and marketplace metrics. Exclude the impact of tax and financial engineering.  Assess the results of M&A by comparing the two separate companies with the final merged company.  I have often seen announcements in the financial press regarded the success of an M&A transaction while the post transaction market share, revenue, and profits were less than the two separate pre-transaction companies.
  • Determine the talent requirements for a board of directors and C-Suite in startup mode. Start with the components outlined in the article “What are the core components of talent?”2
  • Assess the cognitive biases of board directors and C-Suite and the resulting constraints on being able to move into startup mode. Determine what needs to change.

 Footnotes

1 Your company will fail. Koor and Associates

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

2 What are the core components of talent? Koor and Associates

https://koorandassociates.org/creating-business-value/core-components-of-talent/

What further reading should you do?

Is your company planning to fail? Koor and Associates

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

What is learning? Koor and Associates

https://koorandassociates.org/creating-business-value/why-have-your-minimized-your-talent/

Tom Koor

Is your company planning to fail? V5

Is your company planning to fail? V5

 What is the purpose of this article?

Enable Corporate Leadership (the board of directors, CEO, C-Suite, and any controlling shareholders) to discuss the degree to which your company is planning to fail.

This article does not provide tax, legal or financial advice.

You must do your own research and fact-based analysis using current and relevant information.

You can download a PDF of this article from: Is your company planning to fail V5

What are the critical learnings in this article?

  • 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 decision made and decisions not made.

The board of directors lack the knowledge and skills to make decisions.

  • A McKinsey survey of board directors showed that most had little understanding of their companies. Only 16% said directors strongly understood the dynamics of their industries; 22% said directors were aware of how their firms created value; and 34% said directors fully comprehended their companies’ strategies.1
  • A survey of board directors asked how many directors agreed that their members collective skills and backgrounds are appropriate for their organization’s needs: 54% of directors of high performing companies agreed, 40% of directors of low performing companies agreed.2

The board of directors and CEO lack the capabilities to align HR and IT with the strategy and ensure that most employees are working to achieve the strategy.3

  • 67% of HR and IT organizations are not aligned with business unit and corporate strategies.
  • 60% of organizations do not link their financial budgets to strategic priorities.
  • Incentive compensation is not tied to achieving strategy (70% of middle managers, over 90% of front-line staff).
  • 95% of employees are not aware of, or do not understand the strategy.

Corporate decisions and actions are not fact-based.

Leadership has a “seriously inaccurate perception of reality”.4

Leadership:

  • doesn’t measure the value the company is creating nr the potential value it can capture.5
  • makes the incorrect assumption that the main historical competitors will be the main future competitors.6
  • cannot learn from other companies’ failures or successes.7
  • is focused on the company mission and doesn’t hear what their customers are saying.8
  • thinks they have all the answers.9
  • fires anyone who questions plans or strategies. 10
  • relies on yesterday’s answers to solve current problems.11

 Corporate leadership has poor decision-making behaviours. 12

  • Good analysis done by good managers with good judgement produces poor strategic decisions.
  • Only 28% of executives thought good strategic decisions were frequently made.
  • 53% of business improvement is due to the quality of the decision-making process, only 8% is due to the quality and detail of the analysis.
  • One cause of poor decision-making behaviors is that leadership neither recognizes their biases nor takes steps to overcome biases in decision-making.

Corporate leadership does not understand the difference between risk and uncertainty.13

  • Risk-based decisions are determined by probability determined from analysis of historical facts.
  • With uncertainty, there are no historical facts from which to derive a probability.

The confusion between risk and uncertainty results in leadership believing they are making fact- based analytical decisions when the decisions are actually based on guesses and hopes.

Corporate leadership is not competitively differentiated in its core components of talent.

The core components of talent include:14

  • Self awareness, both internal and external
  • Character, including values, morals, and ethics.
  • Relationship skills
  • Communications, especially two-way communications
  • Crystallized intelligence
  • Fluid intelligence
  • Cognitive skills
  • Ability to quickly learn and unlearn
  • Creativity

Corporate leadership has five biases resulting in poor decision-making.15

  • Insufficient thought before action.
  • Tendency towards inertia, if uncertain.
  • Misaligned incentives, misunderstanding of strategies and objectives, and emotional attachments to personal perspectives.
  • Preference for harmony over conflict, leading to group think.
  • Recognizing patterns that do not exist.

Companies that have financial success develop behaviours leading to their decline.16

  • Success leads to entitlement and arrogance, believing success will occur no matter what happens.
  • Corporate leadership neglects focus, understanding, and renewal of the root causes of success.
  • “What” replaces “Why” (“We’re successful because we do these specific things.” Replaces “We’re successful because we understand why we do these specific things and under what conditions they would not longer work”. Corporate leadership is no longer inquisitive and learning.
  • Corporate leadership believes success is entirely due to their superior capabilities, and that luck had no role.

 Executive leadership development programs are broken. 

A survey of more than 500 global executives showed that only 11% strongly agreed their leadership development programs achieved results. What were the program flaws?17

  • Not specific to the companies’ strategic plans and drivers of business performance (e.g. turnaround, multiple M&As, organic growth, etc.).
  • Not organization-wide and not at all levels within the organization.
  • Not using digital learning embedded in day-to-day workflows. Too much use of the old teacher and classroom model.
  • Leaders did not use social media (blogs, video messages, etc.). to communicate with staff.
  • Senior leaders did not act as sponsors, mentors, and coaches.

 Companies do not recover from crisis.18

  • 20% of companies grow from insurgency to incumbency, but then two-thirds of them stall out and less than 1 in 7 stall-outs recover.
  • At any given moment, 5%-7% of companies are in free fall or about to tip into it. Only10%-15% of companies pull out of free fall.
  • 94% of large company executives site internal dysfunctions as their key barrier to continued profitable growth.

During turbulent times, the number of sinking ship companies increases 89%.19

 Founders are often the cause of start-up failures20

  • 65% of the failures of high-potential start-ups are due to people problems: relationships, roles and decision-making, and splitting the income.
  • More than 50% of founders are replaced as CEO by the third round of financing. In 73% of these founder replacements, the CEO is fired rather than voluntarily stepping down.
  • The founder’s passion, confidence and attachment to the start-up is initially a great strength. Founders often refuse to revise their strategy, misjudge the need for additional skills, and make decisions that don’t reflect the current situation.

 Leadership is the underlying cause of start-up failure.

The top nine reasons for start-up failures were identified by CB Insights. 21 I’ve shown below my point-of-view as to why leaders and leadership were the root cause.

  • 42% no market need – leaders did not validate that there were large number of potential cash paying customers who perceived they had needs and problems they were willing and pay for.
  • 29% ran out of cash – leaders did not understand cash flow management
  • 23% not the right team – leaders did not understand the talent required, how to hire, retain, and develop the right talent as the company evolved.
  • 19% get outcompeted – leaders did not understand how customers and users perceived the competition’s value propositions.
  • 18% pricing/cost issues – leaders did not understand how customers perceived their company’s value proposition.
  • 17% poor product – leaders did not understand how to oversee solution design and rollout to ensure meeting customers perceived value proposition.
  • 17% need/lack business model – leaders did not understand that a business model is needed or were unable to define one.
  • 14% poor marketing – leaders did not have marketing skill, understand their role in marketing, know the necessary cash to marketing.
  • 14% ignore customers – leaders did not believe it was important to listen to customers and take action based on what customers were saying.

The appropriate VME (Values, morals, and ethics) are not understood or agreed upon.

  • Inappropriate VME can result in:
  • Your company losing your social license to operate.
  • Your ability to attract and retain appropriate talent.
  • Reputation damage which impacts sales
  • Legal action by governments and others.
  • etc.

What are your next steps?

  • Define your terms and concepts to enable a common understanding.
  • Prepare your own set of evaluation criteria. The above reasons for failure may form some of your evaluation criteria.
  • Have your company assessment by members of your company’s ecosystem.
  • Analyze the results. Probe deeply into anything not related to talent to ensure talent is not actually the root issue.

What further reading should you do?

“Your company will fail”, Koor and Associates

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

“Traditional corporate governance dooms your company to failure. V2”, Koor and Associates

https://koorandassociates.org/2023/03/17/traditional-corporate-governance-dooms-your-company-to-failure-v2/

“Traditional strategic planning dooms companies to failure”, Koor and Associates

https://koorandassociates.org/strategy-and-strategic-planning/traditional-strategic-planning-dooms-companies-to-failure/

“Traditional risk management dooms your company to failure”, Koor and Associates

https://koorandassociates.org/corporate-governance/traditional-risk-management-dooms-your-company-to-failure/

“Traditional business transformation dooms your company to failure”, Koor and Associates

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

“What are the three greatest risks to your company?”, Koor and Associates

https://koorandassociates.org/avoiding-business-failure/what-are-the-three-greatest-risks-to-your-company/

 

 Footnotes

1 “Corporate Boards need a facelift”, Eric Kutcher, (McKinsey Partner) McKinsey website, May 4, 2018.

2 “A time for boards to act” McKinsey Survey 2018 March

3 “Creating the Office of Strategy Management”, Harvard Business School; paper 05-701, by Robert Kaplan and David Norton

4 Sydney Finkelstein, Why smart executives fail, Penguin Publishing Group, 2004, Chapter 6

5 ibid., Chapter 6

6 ibid., Chapter 6

7 ibid., Chapter 7

8 ibid., Chapter 7

9 ibid., Chapter 9

10 ibid., Chapter 9

11ibid., Chapter 9

12 “The case for behavioral strategy”, McKinsey Quarterly, 2010 Number 2

13 Adapted from “20/20 foresight: Crafting strategy in uncertain times”, by Hugh Courtney

14 What are the core components of talent? Koor and Associates

What are the core components of talent? V4

15 “Think again: Why good leaders make bad decisions”, by Sidney Finkelstein, Jo Whitehead, and Andrew Campbell, Harvard Business Review Press, 2009

16 “How the mighty fall”, by Jim Collins

17 “What’s missing in leadership development?”, Claudio Feser, Nicolai Nielson, and Michael Rennie, McKinsey Quarterly, August 2017

https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/leadership/whats-missing-in-leadership-development

18 “The founders mentality”, by Chris Zook and James Allen, 2016

19 https://www.bain.com/insights/the-new-normal-is-a-myth-the-future-wont-be-normal-at-all/

20 “The Founder’s Dilemmas”, by Noah Wasserman.

21 “Top 20 reasons start-ups fail”, CB Insights, Oct 7, 2014

Tom Koor

What are the three greatest risks to your company?

What are the three greatest risks to your company?

 What is the purpose of this article?

This article enables a discussion regarding the three greatest risks to your company.  The audience for this article includes: boards of directors, CEO, C-Suite, individual investors, and institutional investors.

This article does not provide tax, legal or financial advice.

You must do your own research and fact-based analysis using current and relevant information.

You can download a PDF of this article from: What are the three greatest risks to your company

What are the critical learnings in this article?

The three greatest risks to your company are:

  • The talent on your board of directors
  • The talent on your C-suite
  • If you have controlling shareholders, the talent of the controlling shareholders.

Why are these three the greatest risks?

#1 They make the business decisions with the greatest impact on the company e.g.

  • Appointment and termination of the CEO
  • Assessment and approval of the talent selection, development, and exiting processes and policies – including your board of directors and C-Suite.
  • Assessment and approval of: the strategic plan, budget, and policies.

#2 They monitor the performance of the company, its talent, processes, and technology. They take corrective action.

#3 They have, or lack, a variety of external relationships which can enable your company’s success

#4 They have, or lack, the capability to assess the analysis and recommendations provided to them from internal and external sources.

#5 Their behaviours, actions, and decisions communicate the expected values, morals, and ethics to the entire company and members of your company’s ecosystem.

The talent as a whole must be competitively differentiated. 

  • If the talent as a whole significantly lags the competition, the company will under perform or fail.
  • This does not mean that every single person in the above talent pool must be better than all of the competition. Company success requires a team.

What are your next steps?

  • Define the words/concepts you’re using, in a glossary. I’ve seen major confusion when the same words mean different things to different people.
  • Define what you mean by risk vs uncertainty.
  • Define how your measure the impact of risk e.g. how does the measure of a high-risk item compare to the measure for a low-risk item.
  • Describe your future scenarios. There must be at least three failure scenarios. #1 You company goes out of business. #2 Your company creates negative economic profit.  #3 Your company produces below median benchmark results.
  • Define the evaluation criteria for talent. Start with the criteria outlined in the further reading section below: “What are the core components of talent? V4”
  • Do an anonymous self assessment of your talent. The directors assess the board as a whole and C-Suite as a whole. The directors also assess any controlling shareholders. The C-Suite assesses the board as a whole and C-Suite as a whole. The C-Suite also assesses any controlling shareholders. The assessment questions are: Will the talent at the board, C-Suite, and any controlling shareholders enable company success in every future scenario. If so, why? If not, why not.  For the scenario in which your company fails, what components of talent enable failure?
  • Discuss the results. Create an action plan to increase the chances of your company’s success and reduce the chances of failure.

What further reading should you do?

What are the core components of talent? V4 Koor and Associates

https://koorandassociates.org/creating-business-value/core-components-of-talent/

Your company will fail.

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

Jeff Bezos 2020 letter to shareholders – his final one.  He quantities value creation in financial terms for some members of Amazon’s ecosystem.

https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/2020-letter-to-shareholders

Tom Koor

Is your company actually a startup?

What is the purpose of this article?

Help shareholders, the board of directors, and C-Suite have a fact-based discussion regarding the status of your company.

You can download a PDF of this article from: Is your company actually a startup

 What are the critical learnings in this article?

  • The leaders of many long-established companies are unaware that their company has become a startup.
  • As a result, the wrong type of talent is in place, taking the wrong actions.

Where is your company it its life cycle?

#1 a startup

A startup is a temporary organization designed to search out a repeatable, scalable, and profitable business model with lots of potential customers who are willing and able to pay to solve their problems and needs.   Startups are not building a solution.  They are building a tool to learn what solution to build.

#2 most startups fail or end up as small companies.

#3 A scaling, growing profitable business enabling customers to achieve a competitively differentiated value proposition. Market share is growing, the overall market may be growing, customers are strongly recommending the company, employees want to join and stay, etc,

#4 Failure may occur at any time.  The company may end up being a startup again and not realize it.

#5 A large, slow growing or static company. Market size isn’t growing, market share isn’t growing, etc.

#6 Most large companies fail or disappear. Market size shrinks, market share shrinks customers no longer perceive that they achieve a competitively differentiated value proposition, hard to hire and keep the best employees.  The company has become a startup again.

#7 The company is constantly improving and changing to avoid becoming a start.  Transformation is continuous rather than a one-time event. Ongoing talent management transformation, starting with the board of directors, is the foundation for long -erm success.

The company can become a startup again at any time, but the leaders don’t realize that.

  • A company, at any stage, is competing in a hyper-competitive world, with constant massive changes in the ecosystem. A company can suddenly become a startup.
  • Companies must be constantly improving, changing, and transforming to avoid becoming a startup. There are trillions of dollars of capital available to fund the right talent.
  • Exceptional talent is much rarer than capital. The ability to determine future talent requirements, assess the future potential of talent, and successfully develop that talent is the core foundation of long-term growth.

 What are your next steps?

  • Do a fact-based analysis of where your company is in its lifecycle.
  • Identify the changes you need to your ongoing talent management processes.
  • Identify the changes you need to your talent, using your new talent management processes.
  • Your new talent will create and execute the appropriate plans.

 What further reading should you do?

Is your company planning to fail? Koor and Associates

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