Do you have challenges like these?
I inherited these (and many more) in new leadership roles, and I worked with my teams to successfully overcome them and achieve optimal results.
As A Newly Promoted CEO
- No clear company purpose or growth strategy, except to be the lowest price provider of anything we might be able to do
- Some diversity in employees below the leadership level, but lacking in diversity, equity and inclusion overall
- Fast growing low to negative margin sales accompanied by growing quality and delivery challenges
- High margin business shrinking, because no operations in Europe or Asia (removed from bid lists)
- An acquired and unprofitable operation across the country requiring consolidation
- An extended economic downturn with no end in sight (sales plummeting)
- Public company challenges and costs in a company too small to benefit from being public
- And, having most of these at the same time and feeling like I'm in over my head
As An Interim CEO
- Investor and employee melt-down after the Founder CEO committed financial fraud during a “bet the farm” SaaS product launch
- Defrauded investors evaluating additional investment or winding down the business
As A Startup CEO
- Starting up a business from scratch in my home office
- Government-developed cybersecurity technology not yet licensed & needing upgraded to a commercially salable product
- Lack of startup financing and available tech talent
As A New CFO
- Decreasing sales and profitability (not profitable and getting worse)
- A large credit line in a downturn, with the bank talking about pulling their credit
- Low understanding of cost of goods sold
- No turnaround strategy
- Declining leadership integrity
- High profile board members who were not a fit for this size or type of business
As A New CIO
- A failed ERP system implementation
- Siloed e-commerce company constantly tossing problems and new feature requests over the wall to the development team with insufficient detail for prioritization, execution or success
- Low software development productivity; few design, development and testing processes, and low organizational support for an aging ecommerce platform
As A New President & COO
- An under-performing and under-valued global ecommerce company in an uncertain regulatory environment where business models were evolving
- Over-sized, ineffective leadership team
- Over-sized, unmotivated and siloed organization stunting growth
- Flat sales in a market with huge opportunity
- Declining profitability
- An aging ecommerce platform stunting growth
- Very diverse employee base and leadership, but needing work on inclusion and innovation