9 Ownership Transition Issues Specific to Contractors

All businesses face challenges with an ownership transition.

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There are nine interrelated issues that heavily impact contractors. 

Succession: 9 Ownership Transition Issues Specific to Contractors.

We will dive deeper into each of these over the next week:

  1. Strength and alignment of the management team (post-deal)
  1. Culture of the company - Is it prepared for an ownership succession and compatible with the new owner? Seems “soft” but is very “hard” and can destroy value quickly.  
  1. Key relationship continuity with employees, customers, and others.
  1. Financial partner alignment with banking, surety, and possibly insurance.  
  1. Cash generation capabilities.
  1. Asset vs. stock sale - who owns past liabilities, how are they quantified, and what is the tax implication?
  1. Sustainable growth strategy and plan to ensure value is created for all stakeholders.  
  1. Future direction of the construction industry and ensuring you are neither selling nor buying the equivalent of a horseshoe manufacturer and installer in 1900.  
  1. Extremely low barriers to entry for new contractors can easily create competitors out of unaligned stakeholder groups, which often destroys value.  

9 Ownership Transition Issues Specific to Contractors
Continue building value in your business, yourself and your key team members with a good succession strategy....

9 Ownership Transition Issues Specific to Contractors
Continue building value in your business, yourself and your key team members with a good succession strategy....

Complexity of Thought and Planning Time Span
There are multiple dimensions of talent including personality traits, IQ, EQ, desire, knowledge and experience. One of the critical dimensions is what Elliott Jaques called “Time Span of Discretion” which is essentially a combination of:
Aligning Projects and People
The business of building is largely about aligning projects and people. Contractors exist to build projects. People design and build the projects. The management team, structure, and systems bring it all together.
Improving Team Morale
If morale on your team is low then it’s probably your fault. Those words sound harsh but let’s unpack them a little bit and see if we can improve team morale.