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The Contract Executive
What is Keeping You Up at Nights?
Every executive, in every type of business, has problems that keep him or her up at nights, either doing the work or, worrying about solutions to problems. If you are having problems you should consider a contract executive. Contract executives can help you:
- strengthen and improve the effectiveness of your management team
- solve the problems that won’t go away no matter how you try to fix them
- replace a key executive until a permanent replacement can be found
- achieve ambitious targets that you have set for yourself and your business
- manage rapid growth
- solve people problems or problem people
Contract executives will have many years of senior management experience that can provide you with flexible management resources with the right skills and experience to meet the need without the obligations of hiring full time.
Many contract executives will contract as mentors to support the CEO.
The role of the mentor is that of a confidential advisor or coach. He has experience with impatient investors, nervous bankers, and aggressive competition from larger companies. He’s dealt with family, with managers that are old friends that can no longer keep up, and with the realities of succession and long range planning.
Here are a few thoughts that could indicate to a CEO that mentoring might be helpful. If you can say that “I…
- am concerned that the pressure of day-to-day business has meant that we haven’t been able to prepare for ‘tomorrow’.
- find that we are very busy, but are having trouble making money.
- could be making the same mistakes as others as I try to pass this business on to my son/daughter.
- find that the whole world seems to be web pages and automation and I’m concerned that we’re not responding well.
- need an unbiased ‘sounding board’ on the issues involved in the raising of outside capital for the business.
- find that the bank (investor, family) are concerned about how the business is being operated and where it is going.
- have a new competitor in our market; and I’m uncertain about how to respond.
- wonder how to approach growing our business. How do I develop the opportunities and evaluate the options?
Mentoring is preventative medicine, not curative. It can make you better when you aren’t sick. A mentor is a trusted colleague or director, who has no axe to grind. A contract executive could be the answer to many of your problems.
Richard Heinen
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