January 2006 Newsletter

Greg Petkovich
This year the first of the baby boomers turn 60. Nearing retirement, many of them hold senior positions in firms across the country, and several of their companies are turning to interim managers to ease the transition to the next generation of top executives.

Our Principals are retained when a company wants to turn around a business, needs to reorganize or redefine a department, or needs someone to run a plant for a short time before it closes. We’re also seeing private equity firms using interim executives to run a new acquisition until a permanent management team is hired.

We launch the 2006 edition of our newsletter with a look at a crucial component of every successful business: managing time successfully. As Atticus Principal David Plouffe writes in Time - The New Currency For The New Economy, "Since everyone starts with the same amount of time, achieving a competitive edge depends in part on what you choose to do with time (strategy) and how (execution) you choose to spend it."

We hope that 2006 brings you and your family happiness and health, and finds your business prospering.

Sincerely,

Greg Petkovich
President
Atticus Interim Management

Time - The New Currency for the New Economy
By David H. Plouffe

In 1972, gifted musician Jim Croce sang fatefully about what he would do if he could “save time in a bottle.” A year later he was dead, killed in a plane crash at age 30. But his great hit remains a favourite, perhaps even more so now that time has become such a valuable currency in today’s very competitive corporate climate.

“Cur-ren-cy: noun 1. A continual passing from hand to hand, as a medium of exchange 2. The money in circulation in any country 3. Common acceptance; general use; prevalence 4. The time during which anything is current.”

Spices, jewels, precious metals, and beads are just some of the currencies favoured during specific stages of economic and social development. They reflected what was inherently valuable, transportable, and generally available, yet relatively scarce, at the time. Coins and, eventually, paper money emerged as more universally acceptable, as did the letter of credit, especially with the genesis of world trade.

Most recently intellectual capital – something that is passed from mind to mind, not hand to hand – has been recognized as a currency. Accompanying this shift from the physical to the virtual is the acceleration of circulation, with access to knowledge being more rapidly and readily available than ever before. However it is the application of intellectual capital and its timely deployment that creates true value. Since everyone starts with the same amount of time, achieving a competitive edge depends in part on what you choose to do with time (strategy) and how (execution) you choose to spend it.

Business Success = Operational Excellence

Magic doesn’t keep a successful business running smoothly. Having good operational processes in place does, together with fast retrieval of key information such as financial reports, sales and marketing analysis, employee productivity and strategic management data. A successful business also requires good internal communications, a finger on the pulse of the marketplace and, most importantly, the ability to adapt to change. As Draper Kaufman Jr. said, "Those who do not create the future they want must endure the future they get."

Has your business achieved operational excellence? Take our 10-minute Business Optimization Check to see if it has. Click here.

"Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but rather we have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit." Aristotle

"Excellence can be attained if you care more than others think is wise, risk more than others think is safe, dream more than others think is practical, and expect more than others think is possible." author unknown

Atticus Study Of Law Firms Reflected In Bar Assn. Magazine

An article in the December issue of National, the magazine of the Canadian Bar Association (CBA), details the Atticus survey of how well lawyers and their firms are meeting client needs and expectations. Reflecting the findings of the study, the CBA gave firms low marks – mostly C’s with a few B’s and D’s – for not meeting standards of service clients have set for them. Atticus conducted the study earlier this year among corporate law firms across Toronto as well as business people who hire and retain lawyers. See the pdf version here.