A Vaccine for the Alignment Epidemic

Over the past few months I’ve had the privilege to interact with many CEOs of innovative emerging growth companies.  I call these individuals Economy Heroes:

I asked these creative warriors to tell me their company story – how they got started, their uniqueness, vision for the future and mission in the present.  Even though I agree with Tom Brokaw that my father, a soldier and entrepreneur,  was part of our country’s Greatest Generation, my eyes start to swell when I hear stories about this generation’s “starters” who step out and take such risk to change our lives.  I puff with national pride when I hear accounts of of boot strapping, maxing credit cards (24 in one case),  personal sacrifice to keep employees, and passionate pursuit of  ideas.  Entrepreneurs are indeed our country’s competitive advantage in the world economy.

For many of the companies I requested that the CEO, and at least two of his/her leadership team, take a short assessment to determine their alignment on critical issues.  I wasn’t surprised that almost all teams were significantly out of sync in categories such as priorities, value proposition, economic model, management team and capital structure.

I’ve learned from hundreds of second stage companies over the past 18 months that team misalignment is not a trend, it’s a universal epidemic that continues to produce significant consequences to our economy.

Despite the herculean effort of our Economy Heroes, history indicates that over 90% of their ventures will fail; and misalignment will be one of the greatest  factors in their demise.  The process to get a team in sync is simple, but it can also be difficult.  We can surface the right information and provide radical objectivity for the team to examine the brutal facts; the tough part is the tough decisions that follow.

The less than 10% of second stage ventures that succeed generate over 85% of new jobs in this country.  What would happen in our economy if the success needle moved to 20%?

It’s time for Entrepreneurs to roll up their sleeves and receive the vaccine that will sync their team and dramatically increase their company’s chance of survival.

www.incnav.com