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Member Intro – Brendan ReitsmaMarch 23rd, 2012
Member Introduction – Dr. Joel ConnMarch 23rd, 2012Owner of Pismo Beach Veterinary Clinic, Veterinarian
Joel was born and raised in Blacksburg, Virginia but migrated to California with the rest of his family following high school. He attended college at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, where he received his Bachelor’s degree in Biological Sciences in 2002. Joel went on to receive his doctorate at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine in 2006, following an externship in Avian and Exotic Animal Medicine at the Animal Medical Center in New York. Joel’s primary interests include surgery and avian and exotic pet medicine. Ever since childhood, Joel has had a passion for working with and helping animals and has wanted to be a veterinarian since the age of five. Joel is a member of the Rotary Club of Pismo Beach/Five Cities and has been a board member since 2010. He was also a 2009-2012 board member of the Mid Coast Veterinary Medical Association and 2012 President of the Central Coast Professional’s Network. Joel currently does a bimonthly segment on the KCOY CBS 12 Morning News called “Ask the Vet.” You can join him every other Monday at 6:45am! In his spare time, Joel loves playing Ultimate Frisbee and disc golf. Joel lives in Pismo Beach with his wife, Dr. Sarah Conn. Pismo Beach Veterinary Clinic Founded in 1996, Pismo Beach Veterinary Clinic has long been a center for premium veterinary care on the beautiful Central Coast. As one of the only American Animal Hospital Association (AAHA) certified clinics in San Luis Obispo county, we pride ourselves on our commitment to excellence in veterinary medicine. Over the years, we have expanded our services and facilities to meet the ever changing demands of veterinary medicine. Now under new ownership, we have again increased our services to offer abdominal ultrasound, avian and exotic medicine, digital dental x-ray and in-house laboratory, and expanded our staffing to provide more appointment availability.
www.pismobeachvet.com Agenda: Internal ProcessesSeptember 17th, 2011This month one group decided to explore internal processes and again we discovered we had more in common than most would think. It is amazing how many times we see the same challenges in different business. The details are different but the concepts are shareable learning experiences and that creates value in the groups. What was instantly discovered is that the need for tight policy and procedural control was in direct conflict with the need for creative business solutions in a world of rapid changes. Every organization in the meeting had a different mix of the same challenges. As the level of the person increases the need for tight procedures declines and becomes a restriction on the business but without the procedural processing the business struggles to deliver a consistent quality level. Giving executives tight procedures is as wrong as giving entry-level employees procedural latitudes. This has always been a balancing act for CEOs but today it is tougher because the systems are changing at a rapid pace and often the change is outside the control of the CEO. In automated systems businesses that used to have one update every two years we are now seeing several updates per year and in the case of cloud solutions the pace is moving even faster. With some solution providers several updates per month is not uncommon. Cloud computing was especially challenging for many businesses because the system changes are outside of their direct control. The challenge is that every system change has the potential of creating both an immediate employee training problem and a maintenance issue for existing data. Cloud computing is moving our systems from a fixed desktop to every interface device everywhere. With this comes a procedural and employee training nightmare. Service providers in the cloud are releasing new functions and features at a pace that challenges all the businesses that use or have contact with that system. • Have we reached a point where technology change is outpacing the organization’s ability to adapt and leverage? Ultimately the value of system changes is only realized when the organization can leverage that to create competitive advantage. The process of develop, release, test, fix, repeat or what some call rapid prototype development does get development done in a hurry but maybe it’s too fast. We often see changes to systems that have unintended consequences. Balancing PrioritiesMay 25th, 2011CEO Roundtables have many interesting conversations but the best ones explore the balance between conflicting priorities. People often seek the right answer but CEOs realize that most decisions are a balancing act between conflicting priorities. There are very few right-or-wrong answers that surface for a CEO because if it were that easy someone would have made the decision. The CEO gets the ones without clear answers where the solution is often a negotiation between different agendas in the business. A classic conflict that CEOs wrestle with all the time is the short versus long term. On the short side you have to be concerned with making the next sale, payroll, or a hundred other transactional items. On the long term strategy are investments in innovation that might take years to flow through to the P&L or balance sheet. Personally I can remember a decision that I made very deliberately that was a great short term decision resulting in immediate profits that was the major contributing factor that lead to the ultimate failure of the business. It made sense at the time the decision was made but it was a long term disaster. There are many ways to improve the profits of a business but most fall into either increase revenue or reduce costs. These are in constant conflict because at the most fundamental level you have to spend money to make money. Some people are overly focused on cost savings and can literally save you out of business. On the other hand a singular focus on revenue increase without consideration of the cost can also shut your doors with unprofitable sales. The secret is somewhere between these two extremes and CEO’s are very aware of the balancing act between these concepts. Another of the classic conflicts is the personal and professional demands on the time of the CEO. On one side of this is the demands from the business from a workflow that never ends and can easily consume any person. On the other side CEOs have the demands on their time from family, spouses, children, and aging parents, just to name a few. Again a time demand that can easily consume the entire schedule of the CEO. It is my observation that CEOs are artists at balancing conflicts across the entire organization, the market place, and their personal lives. They do not do this perfectly but they are often the only one that can make the final call because there is nobody else to kick it up to. Managing Business LiabilityFebruary 18th, 2011This month one group decided to explore the issues involved in managing business liability. To help guide us in this topic we invited Kevin Elder from the San Luis Obispo Law Firm of Sinsheimer Juhnke Lebens & McIvor, LLP. The meeting included 7 members and the discussion was lively and interactive. The issue of managing business liability is a varied topic and it was clear that each of the members had different hot buttons related to this. Certainly insurance – especially errors and omissions – was a common tool used to manage the liability, but there are also lots of considerations over the terms and conditions in business contracts. Another area of great interest was employee relations and its associated liability. While the conversation did not go deeply into the employee relationship it was clear that all businesses struggle with the balance of the different priorities in this area. One example of how this issue varies from business to business was in the area of indemnification terms and conditions. For several businesses this was a big deal while others it was a non-issue. This is one of the great things about the Roundtables is that you get to see different perspectives to the same problem and it makes you think deeply about the variables. One comment in the meeting that I thought was important was “Anybody can sue anyone at anytime” and in that statement is the problem. While it is important to start with a good contractual relationship it is the quality of the relationship and the management of expectations that stop or create disputes. What was very clear from the conversation is that everyone has challenges in this area and there is no simple answer to managing liabilities. What everyone realized is that over managing liabilities can restrict a business from taking advantage of market opportunities needed to grow the business. Within the meeting it was interesting to hear the experiences of the other CEOs that had made similar decisions with very different results. This causes me to compare and contrast my observations and experiences with theirs and in that is the value of these groups. Business PlanningJanuary 20th, 2011It is January so business plans and last year’s results were front and center with several groups this month. The thing about this topic that never ceases to amaze me is the different ways that highly talented people go about this process. There is an almost magical process in building out the assumptions of the plan and a very precise logic in linking and assembling the assumptions into the business flows. What is clear from the meetings is that there is no one way to do planning. Many members noted that the more inputs they got the more confused the assumptions became and the better the plan. More than one person noted the complexities of the interrelationships between variables and the fact that improving one thing often degraded some other variable. What was clearly understood in the room is that getting from an observed effect to the cause was extremely difficult especially in areas like sales and marketing. What drives the complexity of business planning are some of the classic conflicts such as the clash between:
All of these are balance issues where pushing one side often results in an offsetting negative impact on the other. Improve the quality of your market targeting and the size of the market shrinks; seek to expand market opportunity and you increase risk; increase revenue and expenses move with it. There are lots of stories of businesses that saved their way (Expense Control) into bankruptcy and those that grew too fast (Opportunity) and exploded (Risk). For those that seek a right or wrong way of doing business planning the real world environment of balance issues can be confusing. The other item with wide support was that business planning helps you think through the challenges your business will face but it does not make things happen according to plan. As a matter of fact I think the consensus was that it is nice to have a plan to deviate from. Everyone in the room knew that a plan is a living document and that before it is done it is already changing. The agreement was that change was the only constant in the CEO universe. It is always interesting to see how different CEOs take on the challenge of a business plan. Everyone has their own approach to the planning assumptions and how to move from those assumptions to the next logical steps in the flow. Some start with revenue while others focus on expenses and both ways work. I know some very successful businesses that come at this from very different directions. Some of the conversation caused me to go back and reconsidered some other possible outcomes in my plans. I think I learned what I often learn in these meetings. Not that I did something right or wrong but that other people can see different outcomes and bring different perspectives that you have to consider as a CEO. Viewing your business through the eyes of others can be an enlightening experience. Members – January 2011January 20th, 2011The following are members of the CEO Roundtable Program as of January 2011. Advantage Answering Are CEO Roundtables Secret?January 20th, 2011In some ways yes and some ways no. The existence of the tables, rules, and members are pretty well known but what is said in the meeting is not. In order for a roundtable to be useful to the CEO it has to be kept confidential and that is one of the very few strict rules in the program. As the Program Administrator I can tell you that most of the comments made in the meetings are ones that I doubt any of the members would have issues saying out loud in a crowded room. However there are exceptions to this and that it is a critical part of the process. Confidential information is not disclosed in every meeting nor should it be. However when it happens the CEO has to feel confident that it will stay in the room. To be very clear with this the rule is everything is confidential unless the person disclosing the items specifically requests assistance in getting the information out. There is and should be some mystery to these groups. We do not publish who is in what group, when they joined, or when they attend. When a new member is being considered for a group we disclose all the members of the group they are being proposed to and that person to everyone in the group. The challenge is that we want a room full of non-competitive peers and that non-competitive attribute is decided by each member. After a group is formed membership is entirely controlled by the group and getting admitted to a group requires 100% yes votes from the existing members before an invitation to join is extended. New groups are different since there is no existing membership to vote on each member. What happens here is that the program administration provides all prospective members with a roster of all the other prospective members. Each member is given the opportunity to raise any concern they might have with any other prospective member. The program administration helps the groups resolve any conflict so the group can form. After that we hold a first meeting so everyone gets an opportunity to meet everyone else. If after that there are no objections from anyone the group is formed. Once a month I write a newsletter that recaps of the topics discussed in each meeting but no details. There is no who said what and there never will be. There are no minutes or meeting notes past the general topic and attendance. This is not the way to run a meeting but it is the way to run a CEO Roundtable. People know what they know because they were in the room. Once a month I write an article on one of the topics discussed in one of the tables and within that article could be things or perspectives that were expressed. What you will never find in one of those articles is a statement or opinion from one of the members unless they specifically wanted to be identified with the comment. The purpose of the blog is to give people an understanding of the types of topics that are discussed not to disclose any secrets. The relationships that are built over time in the roundtables make the discussion very frank and honest. If you ever get a chance to see ten business leaders tear into an issue you will understand what this means. The value to the members is in the unvarnished opinions of people that they respect as peers and this is something that is nearly impossible for the typical CEO to get within their business. The challenge for a CEO is that they are surrounded by people they pay. They pay the wages of the employees that report to them and they pay the experts that they surround themselves with. This makes it very difficult to get an honest opinion not influenced by the agenda of that person. The CEO Roundtable is a rare opportunity to get input from peers in exchange for your opinion. So are they secret – well yes and no. Business Succession PlanningDecember 22nd, 2010Business Succession Planning was the featured topic for one of the tables this month and the first thing that you realize with this topic is just how different the goals and plans of different businesses are. This is a topic where one-size-fits-all is not an option and within the room we had several different goals for succession at several different phases. Even in a group with only 12 CEOs, we had family transfers, potential cash outs, and corporate perspectives in the room. Some were near term and others were decades away from planned execution yet everyone in the room had given this some serious thought. The topic is easy to defer to tomorrow and doing so puts the business at risk. Clearly the CEO needs to step up and keep a reasonable priority on this or it will just idle in place because the conversations you need to have are difficult. Another challenge is the perspective of the parties involved where the intent is to pass the business to the next generation. The older generation may want or even need to cash out of the business to fund their retirement but the next generation might look at it as an inheritance with an expectation of being given the business. This was described as the ugly elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about and I think that is a fair visual. Clearly these types of issues can cause the parties to start very far apart in their expectations. The challenge is how to balance these and negotiate to something that works for all parties. The cashing out is also not straight forward as some might look at holding ownership and structuring the business as a cash-cow while others are looking at it as a cash deal without the follow on risk. Both of these have very different risks and rewards that have to be considered and, of course, let us not forget the tax planning and legal requirements in this process. Smaller businesses have some unique issues in this area and that is especially true if the owner is a primary player in the business. If this is true, as it is in many, then the owner has to make themselves expendable. If they fail to do this they limit the pool of potential buyers to someone with the same skill sets as the current owner. This smaller pool of potential buyers drives down the value of the business in many cases to almost zero. This problem is similar to the family business where the next generation is just not interested in the business. One area, echoed by all the members, was the need to put together a trusted group of highly skilled advisors and to get the project on schedule and keep it updated. As a minimum this team needs to include your CPA, Lawyer, all owners present and future, and a facilitator for the difficult discussions. Others that might need to be involved are people involved in transference of critical business relationships such as key customers, investors, and many others. An interesting part of this was the stress by several on the importance of keeping the agenda’s of the specialists out of the solution. The depth of experiences in the room really helps bring focus and priority to how unplanned items can get introduced in this area. The loss of key owners and managers can instantly put transition plans in high gear and if it has never been thought through it can put the entire business at risk. This discussion showed that there are a thousand ways to create and execute a generational transition plan, all them hard. As is typical, this conversation could have gone on for several more hours but we have a commitment to our members to start and end on time so that is what we did. |
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