Tag Archives: dispute resolution

09/11/24

Dispute Resolution – How To Avoid It And How To Deal With It

I was looking back at some old notes from when I first got into the CEO coaching business a dozen years ago and reflected on the nature of my relationships with CEOs. One of the things that bubbled to the surface is I have been involved in a lot of internal and external dispute resolutions.

There is a distinct difference between internal disputes such as removing a key C-suite team member and external disputes such a dealing with a board of directors or venture capitalist. Some are both internal and external — a board of directors fighting amongst itself about replacing a CEO.

[Almost every startup company CEO will be replaced within 5 years of venture capital funding.] Continue reading →

05/6/24

CEO Shoptalk: The Escape Hatch, The Startup Pre-Nup

When a founder is giving birth to their new baby, he or she is filled to overflowing with the giddy excitement of creating life. Sure, they may create Corporate Bylaws, Articles of Incorporation, a Shareholder Agreement, or even an Operating Agreement — really good companies have Employment Agreements which subsume job descriptions with each of the co-founders — but there is one necessary element they typically fail to contempate.

OK, I’ll bite, what is it, Big Red Car?

Ahhh, dear reader, it is the escape hatch by which I mean the issue of who is in control and how is it done if the founders should have a spat or decide they need to part company. I think of it as the startup pre-nup.

This should be attacked right up front when there is nothing but goodwill about because if you don’t and such an eventuality befalls you, there will be no goodwill nor reason upon which to resolve the dispute. I have seen some brutally ugly disputes. Continue reading →

02/2/21

The Role of the CEO In Dispute Resolution

Several years ago, I was advising a fairly inexperienced CEO — a terminal condition that everybody eventually outgrows, remember that — who found himself in the midst of a dispute in the 8/10 range — meaning it would not tank the company, but it would change the speed, trajectory, and azimuth of the company’s future progress. It was important.

There was plenty of regrettable behavior on both sides and there was an important legal issue, but it was a heated and contentious confrontation made moreso by the personalities involved. These personalities were not the CEOs’, but the management of both companies.

Push led to shove and they were on the brink of paying off some lawyer’s lake house and turning their fate over to twelve morons with a collective semester of community college amongst them.

They had both talked to their lawyers, but no lawyers had been unleashed. It was still solvable.

Continue reading →