Earl R. Smith II's Blog, page 76
October 22, 2014
The Founder’s Challenge – Reaching Then Exceeding Limitations
Dr. Earl R. Smith II DrSmith@Dr-Smith.com Dr-Smith.com I work with mid-market government contractors. That means that I work with a lot of founders. For the most part, those founders have built their business to a point that it is very profitable. The are experience good cash flow – sometimes for the first time since they [...]
Fighting The Wrong Battles
Dr. Earl R. Smith II DrSmith@Dr-Smith.com Dr-Smith.com Coaching is a profession easy to get into and very hard to master. I am often taken aback by the lack of experience that some ‘coaches’ have. They seem to have fallen into the profession by default. One ‘coach’ told me that she became a coach because she [...]
October 21, 2014
Chasing the Tale – Part One
Dr. Earl R. Smith II DrSmith@Dr-Smith.com Dr-Smith.com I was recently working with the senior team of a mid-sized government contractor. They had built the company nicely to just over thirty-million dollars in annual revenue. The customer base was tight and well focused. They had good client intimacy and acceptable pipeline velocity. An initiative to move [...]
Meeting the Past
Dr. Earl R. Smith II DrSmith@Dr-Smith.com Dr-Smith.com A while back I was having drinks with a friend who had, with her team, built a very nice mid-market government contractor. They had started with a client that she had developed a solid working relationship with. Like some new companies, they had left a larger one after [...]
Chasing the Tale – Part Two
Dr. Earl R. Smith II DrSmith@Dr-Smith.com Dr-Smith.com One of the best compliments that any author can receive is a request for the ‘next chapter’. I had a number of such requests after posting the first part of this series. For that I am grateful. I suppose that I am often read as an author of [...]
Getting the Right Personal Vision
Dr. Earl R. Smith II DrSmith@Dr-Smith.com Dr-Smith.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Lots of advice is available. The common mantra is ‘get a personal vision’. But the truth is that you already have one. Sure, it may be out of focus and counterproductive. But you do have one. Many would call it your ‘self image’. It is how you [...]
Innovation – Post-Modernist Evolutions
Dr. Earl R. Smith II DrSmith@Dr-Smith.com Dr-Smith.com A new way of looking at the world and humankind may start in academic departments like philosophy and sociology – but sometimes those futuristic thinkers produce ideas that find their way into the mainstream. Innovation and the process of innovation is one of those mainstreams that has been [...]
Chasing the Tale – Part Three
Dr. Earl R. Smith II DrSmith@Dr-Smith.com Dr-Smith.com I was recently working with the senior team of a mid-sized government contractor. They had built the company nicely to just over thirty-million dollars in annual revenue. The customer base was tight and well focused. They had good client intimacy and acceptable pipeline velocity. An initiative to move [...]
Chasing the Tale – Part Four
Dr. Earl R. Smith II DrSmith@Dr-Smith.com Dr-Smith.com In the second of this series I described how the flowering of hubris had damaged a company’s prospects. The third focused on the effects of an increasingly diffuse value proposition. Both of these had combined to increase pressure on management and cause stakeholders to begin to worry about [...]
Truth and Complexity
Dr. Earl R. Smith II DrSmith@Dr-Smith.com Dr-Smith.com During a recent conference call with a bunch of my investor friends the conversation focused on the basis for deciding. We grappled with a variation of the old question ‘how do I know that this thing is true’. We had all known each other for a very long [...]
