Any ideas on how I can manage- I am the president and one of six shareholders of a company that grew from 12 to 44 employees. The shareholders include the secretary, two counselors, intake coordinator, business manager and myself. I think that the other shareholders feel the most comfortable with relatively minor decisions like what color the walls should be. I need strategies on how to manage these five individuals with the exception of the business manager having little understanding of how to run a company of 44 employees, income of over 1.2 million and a net profit for 150,000.

What is it that you really need to manage in the business, Is it just the other shareholders and what they do or is there more then that. What is your specific Role. This may be able to help us better help you.

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Joel Brown - Orion Networks
Techie-Central - Forums | SEOPTIMISA
Books | PHP

I am the president of the corporation but also a fellow shareholder. When it comes to decision making, I have the same vote as the other five. How do I separate out managing the business with managing the five individuals who bring very different experience to the table.

Don't you have by-laws that spell out the authority of each of the officers, as opposed to shareholders? If not make some that delineate each officers function and what they are authorized to do. It sounds like your running your business by committee and that's and that's well... you know it needs to be changed.

Kent Capener

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http://www.capenerconsulting.com
Solutions For Small Business

I agree with Kent. Shareholders generally don't get a vote on day-to-day business decisions.

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Peter T Davis
Frixer, Inc.
Helping people make profitible businesses on the web.

No business can long be run successfully by committee. It is too time consuming and laborious. Working on consensus decisions all the time rarely delivers optimal performance.

Appoint a CEO (can be one of the 5 share holders). Enshrine CEO authority in clear terms of reference agreed by your share holders.

Are your share holders all members of the board? If so, allocate roles and produce terms of reference for each.

You may well find that the other share holders are also uncomfortable with the current situation. Talk to them. Lay it on the line. Get their opinions. Then act.

Was in a similar situation that you are in and someone else was right you need a CEO and he needs the authority to run the business. Also the other shareholders have to accept him as the CEO and feel ok with giving him the power to run the business.

The shareholders/board should not be in the day to day activities of running the business. As one of my classes said the board should be the leaders "IE here is how much money we want to make next year" the people running it should be the managers IE "Here is how we make X amount of money next year"

Alan

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Alan Moore
www.1stcalltechnology.com