Growth Stage Technology Business

Evaluation and Strengthening

David J. Litwiller

Abstract – Growth stage technology businesses present distinct challenges for evaluation and optimization
relative to other phases of development. This paper provides a governance and general management operating
perspective of the success criteria and metrics that are the most informative to gauge and the most important to
advance for B2B enterprises in this stage. The goal is to detail performance indicators to monitor and
operational disciplines to improve in order to achieve the highest growth rate, financial return and strategic
impact.

Index Terms - keywords: growth stage technology business evaluation and strengthening, operational monitoring
and reporting, technology entrepreneurship, venture-backed business governance

I. Introduction take on a more quantitative nature than a seed or start-up stage

Growth stage business assessment with a view to furthering
success in the form of investment, improvement or strategic
collaboration has specific challenges relative to earlier or later
stage businesses. Evaluation of larger technology companies,
those that have achieved competitive scale and self-
sustainability, is more capably done in a quantitative fashion:
financial measures, complemented by classic key performance
indicators such as market share, relative growth, customer
satisfaction, and opportunity pipeline. Earlier stage
enterprises (those in concept, seed and start-up phase) are best
assessed based on the strength of the core management and
technical team, merit of the envisioned technical and go-to-
market approach, and vibrancy of the application space. At
such nascent stages, internal operational and financial
measures are usually subject to a wide range of interpretations,
too premature to be meaningful on their own.
business, significant elements of assessment are still often
qualitative, though more involved than at earlier phases.
II. Sales
Efficiency Metrics. There is discipline about the productivity
metrics to apply to recently on-boarded sales staff as the basis
for retention decisions as well as to meet prior to additional
hiring. Typically, there is a firm criterion for new hires to
have generated incremental contribution margin bookings of
four times their fully loaded compensation and direct expenses
in their first year, as a condition of further hiring. Otherwise,
sales staff and management can often become defocused on
training the next generation of hires, when the current
generation has not achieved acceptable productivity or skill,
and may never do so.

Between start-up and sustainability is the subject of this paper:
growth stage B2B enterprises, generally viewed as those with
between $2 million and $10 million in annualized sales, or 20
to 100 employees, that aspire to much greater scale and
success. These are companies that are starting to hone in on
the winning product and service delivery package, internal
processes, as well as pricing and channels, without being all
the way there.
Companies develop unevenly, even on the way to ultimate
success. There is head-fake potential for some early signs
during this phase that can be construed as overly indicative of
likely future success or difficulty because of the small number
of customers and limited history.
The criteria presented below are comprehensive measures
which are likely to signal success or difficulty for growth
stage businesses. While parts of the growth stage evaluation
Wide Net of Contacts within Prospect Businesses. There is
ego-less cultivation of contacts at target customers,
particularly with respect to seniority. Sales staffers want to
identify early and engage with everyone that has knowledge,
insight and influence over the purchase decision, across
functions. Moreover, they identify and cultivate champions
and coaches within prospect organizations early in the sales
process who provide privileged information. Opportunities
are rarely if ever rated above a 50% chance of closing without
an energized coach or champion within the customer
organization aggressively helping the effort along.
Executive Support at Customers. There is senior technical
and sales support at target customers for revenue-enhancing
technologies from an early stage in the purchasing process.
There is even broader multi-functional support for internal
process efficiency enhancing technologies, including
operations and finance. Revenue enhancing technologies tend

© David J. Litwiller 2010 1

to attract advocates more easily, and can be sold more on
conceptual advances. In contrast, internal efficiency tools
have to stand up to wider functional review and more rigorous
savings or performance measurement.
Advanced Pipeline Stage Conversion to Wins. A minimum
of late-stage deals that were reported to be near signing
spontaneously disappear. There is rigor about the process of
discovery and education as opportunities develop. This
includes technical and business needs, as well as reading the
political grain within customer organizations. Typically, this
takes collaborative business case development with customers
on financial, technology and operational impact dimensions, to
develop and close deals. Better growth stage companies
achieve 80% and above close rates on late stage deals by
dollar value, in the quarter that they are targeted to close in.
High close rates on late pipeline stages means that the most
precious resource, time, is being spent on the right deals and
developing them the right way. High later-stage conversion
provides one of the clearest summary looks back at earlier
pipeline stages to indicate that they are being done well.
Forecasting. Regular forecasting occurs. Projections based
on reportable pipeline (opportunities assigned ≥50%
probability to close within the next twelve months) in past
periods substantially match up with actual revenues or
bookings, both in aggregate, and for major individual
opportunities. Moreover, there is sufficient forecast
granularity and adherence to allow operational planning in
provisioning, production and delivery at a product platform
level, usually with quarterly period revenue outcomes +/- 10%
of projections entering the period.
Reportable Pipeline. The total value (not probability-
weighted expected value) of the reportable pipeline is at least
five times the value of projected revenue over the coming
twelve months. This multiplier typically provides enough
volume for sufficient revenue to materialize in support of
forecasted levels despite some over-optimism which is
common. Upbeat probability assessment is typical with sales
associate self-reporting, the tendencies of customers to tell
sales staff what they think the salesperson wants to hear, as
well as commonplace push-outs in time of some deals as they
move toward closing.
Large Account Plans and Plan Execution. Large account
plans are a reflexive expectation of staff and management.
Few organizations develop high performing sales teams
without developing good large account plans, or plans for how
to turn footholds in large accounts into much larger revenue
streams. Large account plans are one of the most revealing
non-financial measures of sales performance for the way they
reflect method about being forward looking rather than
primarily reactive, and making the most of proximate
opportunities. Whereas pre-transaction prospect interest is
sometimes difficult to gauge for the way that it reflects upon
© David J. Litwiller 2010
the sales effort, particularly separating positive, self-affirming
meetings from real progress and escalating commitments from
each side, the quality of sales management as evidenced by
large account plans is much harder to deceive.
Lost Order Recording and Analysis. Deals from the
reportable pipeline that got away are recorded, along with a
low distortion view of the reasons why. This data is used as
the basis for periodic reviews and lessons-learned sessions to
help guide future improvement in tools, processes and
targeting.
Sales is an Honorable Profession. Other functions of the
business view sales as an honorable vocation. They seek to
help and demonstrate salesmanship themselves when facing
outward on behalf of the business. Reciprocally, the sales
group earns and renews this respect daily. When necessary to
go out on a limb to win business, the sales and delivery
organization agree beforehand to go out together.
III. Customers
Time to Value. Customers deploy the technology quickly
relative to competitive benchmarks, and are easily trained to
use the product well and derive its intended benefits.
Satisfied and Promotable. Customers are reference-able,
most are delighted or nearly so, and several name-recognized
capability leaders are willing to lend their names as users for
promotion. They either love the experience with the product
or service, or they get a new-to-the-world capability that is not
available elsewhere. Individuals within customer
organizations see their use of the product as socially or
professionally advancing, or transformational for the benefits
that it delivers.
Return-on-Investment (ROI). Customers achieve a known
and significant ROI. The ROI model and results are shared
sufficiently with the vendor to further product marketing
collaterals and impact knowledge. ROI feedback is used to
drive increasingly targeted consultation and business case
collaboration with prospects in future sales.
Profitability Profiling. It is known which customers are
profitably being served and which aren’t. For customers that
that aren’t, there is a clear understanding of how they will
move to profitability or be set aside over a defined and
reasonable time.
Product-Service Clarity. There is an understood allocation
of revenue and profit between product and associated service.
As it is much harder to scale and build lasting value in
services, this distinction is usually made with a view to
keeping the growth rate and growth potential of the business
as high as possible.
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 IV. Financial Impact for Vendor and Customer
The following measures profile typical thresholds of pricing
and performance required to have lasting impact and
sustainable differentiation based on common models of
technology delivery, product positioning and service offering:
IP Licensing. Recovery of allocated development, legal and
filing costs from up front and milestone payments are
achieved in year one after signing a new licensee. Subsequent
milestone and royalty payments provide a further overall
average return in excess of 30% per annum. The year one
component is important to distinguish tire kicking customers
from those that are motivated. Both the up front and
downstream elements need to be present as evidence of
customers seeing substantial strategic impact potential from
taking a license.
High Performance Product. The vendor is able to defend a
doubling of value relative to incumbent offerings, target a
50% increase in price, and accept no less than 30% more.
Low Cost Product. Sustainable cost savings are delivered of
at least 25% for a product that is otherwise functionally
equivalent to the status quo.
Business Productivity. Business productivity improvement
for the customer is realized that delivers a 40% ROI,
alternatively payback of four times the hard costs over the
likely useful life span of the purchased asset.
Industrial Productivity. An enduring 30%+ increase in
speed, accuracy, repeatability, reliability or flexibility is
achieved in the customer’s system, or, alternatively a 10%+
reduction in scrapped output.
Business Process Solutions. Where the vendor assumes an
entire business process on behalf of a customer with
significant differentiating IP, it is able to charge twice what
the hard costs of operating the process are expected to be.
Alternatively, the value of the offering supports a realized
price of double the cost of the bundle of required components
and integration effort. Lesser pricing risers over hard costs
typically signal that the solutions are viewed more as services,
than as IP rich offerings that deliver significant, durable gains
for the customer or appreciably faster time-to-value than
alternatives.
V. Pricing Structure and Processes
Consistency. Similar pricing and discount structures are
provided to similar customers and channel partners. There are
no special deals just for asking. Customers and channel
partners become trained over time to not expect special deals
as a reward for renegotiating or otherwise maneuvering apart
from driving up volume and profits. Consistent pricing
discipline saves everyone time to focus on higher value
© David J. Litwiller 2010
dimensions of the business, imparting trust and integrity into
other aspects of the relationship.
Discounts Based on Results. Discounting rewards volume as
it happens, not by forecast, and favors larger transactions over
smaller ones.
Exceptions. Exceptional pricing requests that have transpired
are periodically grouped and reviewed as the basis to evolve
the pricing strategy and structure so that such exceptions
become less necessary in the future.
Restricted Discount Authority. Discount authority is
defined and controlled, particularly for revenue streams of
long persistence or high expansion potential.
VI. Marketing – Inbound
Data-Rich Environmental Understanding. The competitive
landscape and benchmark companies’ strategies and financial
models are well understood, in as data-rich and fact-based a
manner as possible (rather than largely anecdotal).
Environmental monitoring is done with a view to outflanking
the competition and levering the collective investments and
intellectual energy of those that have approached the same
market before. Anecdotes are subject to selection bias, and in
isolation can be used to argue for almost anything. A broad,
ongoing data-driven external frame of reference is powerful as
a tool to identify how to invent or redefine marketplace
expectations where it matters most, sidestepping or deflecting
head-on competitive battles, and selectively settling for being
efficient enough and good enough where differentiation is not
so valuable
Customer Requirements – Five Whys. Those who gather
and distil customer requirements relentlessly ask “why” until
the answer stops changing. They understand how the offering
can add the most value to the system level challenge through a
component or solution; the totality of the use case customers
need to fulfill is at an advanced state. Inbound bandwidth is
further combined with implementation and delivery
pragmatism to arrive at practical goals for product and service
development.
VII. Product Management
Short- versus Long-Term. There is balanced weighting of
deal-of-the-day new inclusions, with longer-term feature
consideration processes. Both are necessary to create a
compelling, competitively powerful product platform and
vector of advancement that can be maintained, while still
doing what is necessary to meet near-term revenue and growth
targets.
Complementary Product and Capability Strategy. There is
an explicit strategy to either make complementary products
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much more powerful which are already in the hands of
customers and channel partners, or, to commoditize those
complements with sufficient power to re-apportion
competitive power in the market web.
VIII. Marketing - Outbound
Appropriate Communication Channels. Marketing
communication channels are used that speak to the real
influencers and decision makers. The right medium builds the
strength of relationships and mutual understanding appropriate
to the investment stakes of the technology or service.
Instrumented. Metrics are monitored for how expenditures
in each sub-segment of marketing communication convert to
leads and qualified leads to stoke the sales pipeline. Outbound
marketing is not done in an open loop or scattershot fashion.
IX. Analysts and Influencers
Aware, Enthusiastic and Promoting. Analysts are
dedicating significant coverage to the company and its
products. The endorsement of outside analysts is a significant
predictor of future success, especially for technologies where
the customer’s purchase decision is political and multi-
functional, and more so when the technology addresses
internal efficiencies more than major revenue expansion for
the purchasing business.
X. Channels
Pragmatic Sense of Channel Power. The enterprise has
adapted to whether it is a technology- or channel-led business.
The appropriate one is the focus of activity. The underlying
issue is when technology businesses struggle, it is often
because of a presumption that strong technical differentiation
will prevail to attract distribution channel partners in a
reasonable time scale, when in fact it is the channel that holds
the real marketplace power. In channel centric industries, it is
access to distribution players and their mind share that
separates the winners from losers. The technology is table
stakes, but an insufficient condition for rapid success. This
can seem counterintuitive to some, especially those which
attain early localized success that is not indicative of the
reasons for why a much larger swath of the entrenched
channel would be likely to adopt and promote the product line.
This lesson is a difficult one for technology promoters that
would rather envision a way that technical differentiation can
overcome all else. Long-term winners develop an early sense
of channel power, and adapt accordingly.
Self-Sufficiency. If it is a channel business, there is
significant evidence from channel partners of attaining self-
sufficiency to originate and develop new deals. There is also
ongoing training, in addition to active pruning and re-seeding
of channel partners.
© David J. Litwiller 2010
Hit Above Weight. Sales channel partners see significant
opportunity to cross-sell, up-sell or increase the margin rich
portion of their existing product or service offerings through
the promotion and sale of the new technology. This requires
much more than just training, marketing communications and
cash or near-cash incentives from the producer to its channel
partners to rent mind share.
Limit of Channel Involvement. If it is more of a direct sales
business, involvement for channel partners is largely restricted
to lead finding or recommending. A third party channel may
still be important to find or unlock sales, but its role needs to
be constrained.
XI. Product
It Just Works. The product delivers consistent, repeatable
performance in the hands of customers.
Deployable. It requires a known, limited amount of service to
deliver, commission and sustain in most cases. Configuration
is done efficiently by a peripheral technical team, rather than
the core development group having to do most of the heavy
lifting.
Scalable. There’s sufficient knowledge and effort during
development and test to have reasonable confidence that the
product can be stably reproduced over the next order of
magnitude increase in demand volume and usage variety.
Demonstrable Quickly. Persuasive benefits can be
demonstrated easily, usually in five minutes or less, even if a
comprehensive understanding requires greater time and
education.
XII. R&D
Two Pizza Rule. The core development team remains ten
people or less. This is familiar start-up and early stage
guidance, but there continues to be strong communication and
co-ordination benefits to keeping a core development team as
small (feed-able by two pizzas) in the growth stage. Beyond
that size, further advantages of specialization begin to
diminish and communication overhead goes up rapidly,
driving additional proliferation of headcount, slowing
technical responsiveness, and diffusing accountability. The
result of premature growth beyond this threshold is often that
services (difficult to scale) start substituting for product (easier
to scale), hampering downstream growth, profitability and
valuation. A smaller, leaner development team becomes self-
reinforcing as it demands a product that is reproducible,
deployable and scalable. Even approaching $10 million in
annualized sales, results are usually much better restricting the
central R&D team to this level, and architecting the product
and the delivery model to allow customer-specific
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configuration by a less skilled peripheral technical team if a
larger set of technical hands is a necessity.
Can-Do, but Learn Fast and Make Money Now. There is a
a can-do attitude at the same time as having a grounding in
keeping implemented solutions as simple as possible, and
incrementally advancing on larger objectives in individually
sale-able steps to keep learning and revenue cycles fast.
Minimum viable product is a mantra not just for the first
generation product, but beyond as well. The only exception is
“get big” imperative companies such as those in utility scale
energy or certain life sciences fields where the magnitude of
investment and timeline to revenue are necessarily much
longer than most.
R&D Inventory Awareness. There is a related awareness of
the amount of cumulative R&D that has taken place that has
not yet reached a revenue-generating state. R&D inventory
like this is a liability, since the longer it builds, the more risk it
could miss the mark of what paying customers want. A bias to
constrain it keeps up adaptability and minimizes outright R&D
scrap that can’t be profitably marketed or reformed to a more
useful state.
Schedule Adherence. Major products are released to the
market within 20% to 30% of the cost and development
schedule formulated at the beginning of the effort.
Consistently achieving such accuracy typically requires
scheduling activity to a granularity of two days per R&D
person, or less, and involving R&D staff in estimating their
work so they feel a sense of urgency, responsibility, and buy-
in to the schedule. With coarser estimation, or less
involvement, there is too much work that usually gets
overlooked during planning and initial commitments, only to
jump up during development to slow and frustrate the process.
With more detailed effort estimates underpinning cost and
schedule estimates, minor errors tend to cancel each other out,
helping overall accuracy, as well as providing a more
meaningful reference framework for looking at deviations
after the fact from which to learn to estimate better in the
future.
Rapid Development, but Not Reckless. Development
schedules are within 10% or so of the fastest competitors, with
the extra time spent on better front end planning, refining
requirements, more thorough high level design, and attention
to critical risk areas.
Fast Cycles. There are no big bang development projects
where R&D staff work for months before doing integration
and system testing of something resembling a shippable
product. Development and testing infrastructure is created so
that new work can be tested individually every two days, and
system integration testing takes place at least monthly. New
products get out to market at a frequency of every four to six
months. This way, feedback comes when ideas and
© David J. Litwiller 2010
assumptions are freshest, so that errors can be corrected most
quickly, and errors do not propagate and amplify
unnecessarily. Trouble areas can then be quickly pinpointed,
to dispatch help, peer review, or a fresh design approach.
Moreover, fast cycles foster intra-team communication, a
major development productivity lever, as well as lowering
development work batch sizes which improve utilization rates,
creating more predictable outcomes. Fast cycles, small batch
sizes of development work, and predictable outcomes set the
foundation for running multiple development projects in
parallel as part of future growth.
Visual Status Control. Status and progress of development
work is made visible, self-reported by individual staff. Daily
reporting data and charts roll-up directly into weekly, monthly
and quarterly review reports, with a minimum of manual
effort.
Anticipation. The team is always thinking several steps
ahead about the roll-out and deployment of the product, as
well as both the sources of foreseeable internal and external
variation. They design and adapt the product and the
development process to anticipate and be robust to subsequent
demands, including variability.
Reflection and Improvement. After-action reviews take
place following each major development project to identify
and charter improvements for the next project. Those
improvements are implemented and followed up in subsequent
development efforts.
XIII. Intellectual Property
Explicit Plan and Follow Through. There is a game plan for
protecting IP. It is not left to be an incidental outcome of
other activity. It reflects the competitive intensity of patent
activity, and identifies areas for retained trade secrecy and
copyright protection, all with a view to the future state of the
technology and competitive landscape.
Compartmentalization. Where production, distribution or
consumption of the product or services takes place in nations
with weak IP rights regimes or contract law, there is a explicit
compartmentalization of activities to keep the entirety of the
secret sauce recipe out of view from those locales. They may
see part of the puzzle, but not all of it, and not enough to cause
fundamental distress if what they see leaks.
High Orbit Brands and Trademarks. Brand-building
marketing efforts focus on the company name or core
technology platform instead of individual products. It is
expensive and requires substantial repetition to build brand
awareness and equity. It is typically best in the growth stage if
the company name or the branding of its core technology
platform are the focus of brand-building awareness
campaigns, rather than subordinate product lines or individual
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product names. It is just too expensive in most cases to
concentrate enough resources at lower levels to make much of
an impression.
XIV. Quality Assurance
Quality, but Consistent with Rapid Innovation. There is a
passion for delivering the level of quality that customers in
aggregate value, to drive sustainable growth. At the same
time, there is not overzealous pursuit that can slow innovation
without sufficient offsetting benefits in customer satisfaction
and sustainability.
Positive Tension, without Dysfunction. There is a
willingness for the quality effort to constructively engage and
challenge R&D and/or manufacturing, and the business
overall to improve quality, keeping everyone on their toes and
moving forward. The effort stops short though of tipping over
into systemic confrontation
XV. Financial Performance and Outlook
Expanding Margins. Margins are growing with experience,
volume and increasing pricing sophistication relative to
customer value and competitor responses.
Rising Capital Efficiency. Revenues and profits are growing
more rapidly than required investments. A lot of intellectual
energy of management and staff goes into devising how to
make money now, and making do with a little less investment,
rather than taking the easier way out of spending heavily to
support growth. There are some exceptions at the defined size
of business addressed in this paper, such as get-big-fast
companies, or massive investment scale endeavors such as
general on-line retailers, utility-scale clean energy, and many
biotech ventures. But, for the vast majority of growth stage
technology businesses, a clear trend of rising capital efficiency
is a high correlation predictor of future growth and success.
Cost of Capital and Investment Hurdle Rate. The senior
management team is all acutely aware of the cost of capital for
the business, and the required investment hurdle rate for
initiatives. They then tend to bring this viewpoint into
department-level review and deliberation processes, so that
ideas are screened early and well for being worthy
contributors to the business.
Control Costs. As go headcount, rent and extravagance of
the travel establishment, so goes the cost base of the business,
more often than not. Things can get out of control quickly
once headcount, rent and travel expenses start proliferating, as
they are major drivers themselves of costs, as well as sending
a strong signal about spending restraint standards to other
areas.
© David J. Litwiller 2010
Dashboard. The most important measures of financial health,
recent performance, and near-term outlook, usually no more
than seven in all, are the basis for daily, weekly and monthly
management course adjustments and business model tuning.
Cash flow is one of them, so that there is absolute clarity about
cash utilization and reserves. Cash is oxygen, and cash
positions can change quickly at times of rapid change. The
dashboard should also go on to address hypotheses for the
targeted business model and strategy that are not yet proven.
If there are such questions, there should be a similar size set of
measures to confirm or disprove those that are monitored on
the same cadence. With such a shared set of measures, the
management team then tends to have a more similar view of
present footing and the business model, and view opportunity
and difficulty in more similar terms.
Forecast Assumptions and Dependencies. People spend as
much time discussing the assumptions and dependencies
behind projected revenue and budget numbers, as they do
about the numbers themselves. Operational linkages then tend
to be much better contemplated, improving success rates.
Re-Budget Once Revenue Varies by More than 10% vs.
Plan. The budget for the leading twelve months gets rebuilt
once top-line deviations of more than 10% from the most
recent prevailing plan become likely. This includes the cash
plan, operating expense forecast, and capital investment
models. Otherwise, divergence of spending and investment
views can take place because of localized interpretations of the
changes, making efforts disjointed.
XVI. Accounting
Close the Books within a Week Past Month End. Business
process, accounting and administration are well in hand,
without taking an army of people to generate the monthly
numbers. A rapid monthly close generally correlates with the
company not undertaking gyrations to recognize revenue in
advance of when it really should, or similarly defer expenses,
providing a fair near-time sense of how the business is
performing from which to make course adjustments. Complex
interpretations are reduced to systematic operating procedures,
so that few entries each month need to undergo time
consuming analysis and debate. Simplicity, clarity, speed, and
integrity in financial reporting is difficult to achieve and
sustain without similar characteristics throughout much of the
rest of the business.
Minimal Period-to-Period Reversals. Intra-period
accounting is reasonably accurate on an activity basis, and
doesn’t need to undergo reinterpretation routinely based on
future events.
Monthly Process Consistency. The quarter-end and year-end
months are almost like any other month, without excessive
scrambling to address unallocated charges or income.
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Reluctance to Capitalize Development Charges.
Capitalizing development charges can impair management
decision making down the line. There can be hesitation to
acknowledge impairment or otherwise move forward as
technology and operating conditions change. Often, sizeable
capitalized development charges distort the balance sheet,
complicating interpretation of financial condition.
Capitalization is typically only appropriate when the
difference in time is long (usually well over a year) between
when an asset is developed and when it is released. This is
inconsistent with a rapid develop-release-learn imperative
described elsewhere in this paper.
XVII. Strategic Partners
Fear, Greed and Commitment. Strategic partners work with
the young company because they have both a pressing greed
reason with roots in growth and strategic influence, as well as
a fear factor of significant damage to their existing businesses
over time were they to not. Also, there is clear evidence of
significant investments of money and time of top talent within
strategic partner organizations to the advancement of their
joint effort with the earlier stage company. There is no hold-
up in sight where partners engage with the new technology
primarily to gain blocking influence to slow its progress rather
than advance it. Absent too are press release only partnerships
with little substance behind them.
XVIII. Advisors
Top Shelf Help. The company is advised by top tier tax,
accounting, and legal representatives. They are responsive,
efficient, and proactive. This streamlines downstream growth
and financing, among other benefits, saving management
having to rip-up and re-do tax, financial and legal items later
that were poorly done.
No Parasites. The company is not unduly burdened by
advisors. There are plenty of retired executives that would
love to catch on for lucrative retainer-based advisory work,
particularly in business development, citing their industry
networks as their stock in trade. Such people often have
complex personal agendas. Strong firms that go on to greater
things have the energy, networking skills and management
credibility to open the doors they require on their own, without
a lot of help from such people with asymmetrical objectives.
XIX. Board of Directors
Been There, Done That. Board directors collectively have
direct and successful experience with analogous technical,
operational, sales, finance and growth trajectory business
challenges.
Supportive, But Willing to Challenge. The board is
supportive of management, seeking to offer help, providing a
© David J. Litwiller 2010
sounding board, delivering constructive input, and spending
the time to learn the business and its environment. They come
prepared to board meetings, to make the most of the working
time together. At the same time, they are independent and
take initiative. They are not shy about challenging
management and standing their ground on pivotal issues.
Strategic Alternative Discussion, with Limits. The board is
presented with a few possible variations on major strategic
themes that need to be decided upon. Doing so brings out a
richer debate and range of input than simple yes-no responses,
while not overwhelming directors and diluting the discussion
with infinite possibilities. At the conclusion, timely decisions
are made and put into action.
Management Transparency. The CEO, CFO and any other
interacting management are up front with the board about
what is worrying them most. There are few surprises for the
board. Senior management knowledgeably articulates in a
forthright manner the different sides of major issues that are
confronting fiduciary management and the board.
Management makes concise recommendations, but leaves
room for board influence.
Second Level Management Interaction. The board has
regular access to the most senior layer of management below
the CEO from whom to gain unfiltered information, and
education about the internal and external circumstances of the
enterprise.
Clear Goals and Feedback. There are clear goals for the
business, and evaluation criteria for fiduciary management by
the board. These goals serve as the basis for ongoing
monitoring and performance feedback.
Executive Sessions. The board carries out regular executive
sessions to discuss how the board can do its job better, what
management needs to do better, and the delivery of that
feedback to management
Monitoring Discipline. The board is disciplined about
monitoring financial matters, as well as satisfaction of
customers and partners, sales pipeline progress, R&D
execution, culture, talent development and strategic
development.
XX. Management
Coordinated Approach. Senior management has a similar
view, though not cult-identical, of the most pressing issues
facing the business. Wide differences in outlook are worked
out among senior management privately, vigorously at times,
to come out to present a unified front to more junior staff,
partners and customers. Rank and file have a voice, but
leaders make decisions and abide by them.
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Lead by Example. Enough said.
More than Just One or Two Spark Plugs. Salesmanship,
technical depth and catalytic energy exude from more than just
one or two key figures, so there is sufficient engagement to
ignite others to behave similarly as the business scales up. As
well, key capabilities are institutionalized in the processes and
infrastructure of the business, rather than remaining the private
domain of just a few people.
Coherent Strategy. The strategy evolves and adapts, but
doesn’t change profoundly on a regular basis. Otherwise,
there is compass failure, the business thrashes, and momentum
is lost.
Monthly Operating Reviews. There is a regular monthly
rhythm of bringing the leadership team together to review
performance versus plan, adjust to address gaps, and seize
newly emergent opportunities. The focus is on delivering
current period tactical and financial plans.
Quarterly Business Reviews. These reviews are led by
senior management, but with the spotlight on functional
management in a peer-review forum to present results and
delivery of mutual commitments to support overall financial,
customer, technology and operating goals. Greater emphasis
on strategic level issues takes place in quarterly sessions than
in monthly operating reviews. Culture and staff on-boarding
discussions should be part of quarterly reviews.
Communication. Communication with staff keeps up at all
times, and especially in difficult circumstances.
XXI. Employees
They’re Smart, and Get Things Done. What more is there?
Strength Attracts Strength. Strong candidates, those with
outstanding reputations for excellence earned elsewhere, are
seeking the company out as a place of prospective
employment, particularly past colleagues of current staff. The
gold standard is to attract the best 5% or so of top performers’
former colleagues. These should be the strongest colleagues
that the most effective staff have worked with in the past and
have ties with, seeking to challenge and prove themselves, not
merely the top 20%.
Low Voluntary Turnover and High Effort. People are
excited about the work, and stay with the company. They
work extra hours not principally because there is social or
explicit pressure to do so, but because they are pumped up
about what they’re doing and the difference they’re making
internally and externally.
Methodical On-Boarding. New hires are provided with clear
performance targets, learning objectives, challenging but
© David J. Litwiller 2010
attainable early assignments, and regular feedback. Pivotal
moments in the company’s history that exemplify desired
behavior, and counterexamples, are presented. New staff then
have the highest chance of adapting to the culture and standard
of excellence that the business aims to achieve. The ultimate
growth limit of a technology business is often determined by
the pace at which new hires can be mentored and trained to
productively contribute, and themselves on-board the next
generation. On-boarding is a fundamental growth-stage skill
to sustainably thrive and expand.
Active Pruning and Re-Seeding. Mis-hires are pruned,
especially during the first year of employment. Weaker
players or misfits are regularly moved out and do not become
detrimental to a climate of achievement and high performance.
Reflexive Performance Feedback. Managers provide
encouragement, actionable criticism and advice as events are
unfolding, or very shortly thereafter, not waiting for a semi-
annual or similarly low frequency performance review event
when memories often have faded, and perceptions shift.
Constructive advice is delivered in real- or near-time.
T-Shaped Development for High Potentials. Employees
with the highest potential to grow into more senior or cross-
functional roles are given ad hoc broadening assignments.
These projects are designed to give them additional
perspective and experience in the business, cross-training
beyond just their functional specialty, as well as an extended
network of internal contacts. Doing so also provides
improved resource balancing options at times of high demand.
XXII. Culture
Drive and Belief. Employees and management have a strong
belief in the future of the business and for its products and
services to be transformational for customers. But, there is
also an underlying paranoia that success has to be earned, and
that complacency can be the seeds of the undoing of the
business at any time.
Substance. There is a depth to employees’ technical and
application enthusiasm for the product, grounded in driving
real, sustainable value for end customers. This is different
from superficial enthusiasm and a glossy pitch that can’t hold
up well to direct drill-down questioning and informed
skepticism. Staff and management can advocate for the
business’ technology and market position without summarily
resorting to the sliver of infinity argument to fend off doubt
(“It’s going to be huge”) or circular, self-fulfilling arguments
for future success to deflect critical analysis. There is
intellectual honesty, to see situations objectively and act
accordingly. Businesses with this capability of testing ideas
and actions make better day by day decisions, to accumulate a
superior capacity across functions and market presence over
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time. People who can’t handle the argument often don’t care
enough or understand enough.
Improvement Obsessed. Double feedback is evident. The
first is to fix problems as they arise, not conceal them. The
second adapts the underlying process or system to better
handle similar situations in the future and avoid recurrence.
There is a culture of continuous improvement. Absent are
whack-a-mole dynamics where one problem is summarily
exchanged for another, or reminiscences of the movie
Groundhog Day where the same issues keep recurring with
little progress.
Common Goals. Everyone is able to articulate the value
proposition that the company, its products and services
provide to customers, and the way the business is collectively
committing to fulfill its commitments internally and
externally. There is Esprit de Corps. Employees are guided in
day-to-day decisions by more than just what their immediate
managers and colleagues are saying and doing at the moment.
The ego and ambition of the company is greater than the ego
of the individuals.
Demanding but Rewarding. The workplace is demanding
but rewarding. It expects much of people, and holds them
accountable, but supports, provides guidance, and rewards
them. There is an absolute minimum of BS.
Energy with Control. Enthusiasm, initiative and energy are
abundant, but with control to maintain efficient execution.
Risks are carefully researched and weighed before taking big
decisions. Wherever possible, project commitments are
graduated, so that progress and opportunity are regularly re-
evaluated as the basis for future investment or repurposing.
Strong Negotiation Skills. People are encouraged and
mentored to be tough negotiators, particularly toward
capturing full value for the company’s contribution to the
competitive ecosystem.
Integrity. When there’s one version of the truth, there’s
nothing to keep track of, and corners don’t get easily cut.
© David J. Litwiller 2010
XXIII. Conclusion
There are always exceptions, and the above list is broad where
there is room for variation. But, with strong recurrence I have
found that businesses that go on to achieve considerable
success through the growth phase have a consistent, early
discipline on a strong majority of the above. And, in the
minority of cases where they do not, enterprises are able to
identify and regularly improve shortcomings to move toward
the preferred state.
Growth stage technology firms that prosper usually meet 90%
or more of the above criteria, where they are good, and
actively getting better. Almost always, companies that sustain
growth and go on to much greater profitability and scale are
solid on at least 80% of the described attributes, and striving
to improve.
About the Author
David J. Litwiller is a senior executive in high technology,
based in Waterloo, Ontario. His background is in wireless
devices, precision electro-mechanics, semiconductors, electro-
optics, MEMS, biotech instrumentation, and enterprise software.
He serves as an advisor for various private corporations in
matters of strategy, technology, operations, and business
development. Mr. Litwiller is a frequent speaker at technology
entrepreneurship forums and executive conferences on business
strategy and turnarounds, having worked extensively with
growth stage businesses.
He is the COO of Prinova Inc., and most recently was in
progressively more senior R&D, marketing and M&A executive
roles with DALSA Corp. Mr. Litwiller is the author of “Rapid
Advance - Mergers & Acquisitions, Partnerships, Restructurings,
Turnarounds and Divestitures in High Technology”,
http://www.amazon.com/Rapid-Advance-Acquisitions-
Partnerships-
Restructurings/dp/1439200874/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books
&qid=1287516364&sr=1-1.
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