Equity Issuance: A Danger Signal

Companies issue equity all the time. It is considered a normal part of business. In fact, when equity markets are doing well, CEOs will often push for a rights issue, arguing that the market is over priced and therefore it makes sense to issue new shares and sell them into the market.

That might seem to make sense at first blush. But if a CEO thinks that this makes commercial sense then they are being naive. The only other explanation is that they are less than honest. Let us explore why.

As a first step, why is selling something at a higher than value price incorrect? In general, if it is a non-producing asset, then there is nothing wrong with this. Selling someone a pair of shoes should not cause any issues. The problem lies in what if it is a producing asset?

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Delegation Will Set You Free

Centralised control has failed in every single economic endeavor known to man. As a national economic system centralised control, better known as communism, failed spectacularly in the USSR. More recently China’s attempt to incorporate capitalist elements to its centralised economic control framework lead to the country wasting USD 6.8 trillion in investment according to a recent report by the Financial Times.

Such failure tends to be true at the company level as well. Centralised management, or non-delegation, restricts the potential for a company. The CEO is a single person and if he retains complete control and refuses to delegate then he will limit the potential of the company to his personal ability to manage all of it. On the other hand, a more distributed control structure allows the company to scale its business by scaling its human resources.

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Planning and Reorganising Masquerading as Work

One of the recurring themes in my writing is that there is not enough planning before action is taken. Maybe what I should have said is that there is not enough effective planning. The distinction is important as far too often too much planning and reorganisation gets in the way of real work. My experience is that there are two main sources for this wasteful work: perfectionism and deception. Continue reading

Initiating Confrontation is Good Leadership

A good manager learns how to manage conflict when it arises, as it invariably does in any organisation. A good leader learns how to initiate confrontation. This seems counter-intuitive to many people but that is because there is an incorrect presumption that confrontation is bad. I blame tree-hugging hippies for falsely promising a corporate utopia free from confrontation. Continue reading