We’ve all heard the old adage, “A dollar saved is a dollar earned”. But many of us forget its distant cousin: “A dollar needlessly borrowed is two dollars actually spent.” Remembering this one comes in very handy when it comes to contemplating financing.

If you’re like most businesses interested in financing, it seems to make the most sense to focus your energies on raising money, figuring out how & where to spend it once it is actually in hand. Not unreasonable, but not the best strategy either. And here’s why. continue reading »

Scenario: You are the owner of a company. You thought at one time that you would wish to hold on to your business forever. You now find yourself appreciating that “forever” is a very, very long time.

And with the competitive pressures of globalization and industry consolidation squeezing many businesses out of the market, you and your board find yourselves more frequently discussing the pros & cons of selling your business. continue reading »

The concept of systems thinking, which was definitively described by Peter Senge in his seminal work “The Fifth Discipline”, has been used by many to investigate and resolve deep organizational problems and to achieve higher levels of operational excellence. And in fact, systems thinking is an extremely effective tool to effectively resolve many of the barriers and problems that commonly plague service delivery improvement initiatives.
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