Is "Company Doctor" the worst job title in the world?

Some companies are so sick that they do not need a doctor; they really need a vet to put them down. Those vets are called insolvency practitioners. Avoiding them is a full-time job of almost any company director. Lots of people call themselves a Company Doctor when what they really are is a general management consultant. And company directors in SME business say that they do not want general management accountants around for two straightforward reasons:

1.      they are perceived as extremely expensive in terms of the value returned

2.      it is open admission that management needs help, and SME directors don’t like to admit that they have any weaknesses at all

So why would anybody with a company that is not sick want a Company Doctor, and if they are sick, what can a Company Doctor do to help that a “vet” can’t?

Perhaps we should take a step back and look at what happens in an SME company as it grows.

1.      The founders have an idea, either alone or together

2.      they test this idea in the marketplace with people close to them or customers they know already

3.      they gather resources (money, products, data) and try to service more customers

4.      after a while the company starts to hire more people to do the jobs that the founders cannot do themselves

5.      the founders take the senior management positions in the company, often forming the board of directors

6.      and then, either:

a.      the company grows rapidly without any significant crises of cash flow, liability, supply, personnel, or litigation – maybe 1% of companies, probably 0.1%, of companies experienced this; OR

b.      the company will hit one or more serious and significant crises which nothing in the prior experience of the management team equips them to deal with. This is more likely, by a factor of 100- or a 1000-times.

It will be my contention that both the lucky success and the more common struggle both require, at different times of the different reasons, very experienced external advice. But what advice, from whom, and why? And is that person a “Company Doctor” or something else?

In large, listed, enterprises there are entire departments who can specify the exact problem, and run a procurement process to find the perfect hire or expert to solve it. This leads to media and advertising being dominated by very narrow specialists able to solve very narrow problems very quickly and effectively. The company has a diagnosis of its own problems, for instance the corporate equivalent of a blocked cardiac artery. They are well placed to hire the corporate equivalent of a heart surgeon and anaesthetist to solve it, usually from another top five international consulting very happy to charge ￡1000 per hour for the use of their professional indemnity insurance. And experience.

In SME life, the problem is usually a little vaguer as far as the board is concerned. Things feel “not quite right”, things aren’t growing quite as fast as they “should”, customers aren’t quite as “happy” as they should be, product performance isn’t what “was expected”, the cash flow has some “red parts in it”. If this was a person, they would pick up the telephone and make an appointment with their local general practitioner. We tend to call these people doctors because they are, but they’re a very special sort of doctor: they are trained to spot from the vaguest and most confusing descriptions of symptoms the difference between the common cold in lung cancer, a bruise and a broken hip, a hangover and a brain injury. They are generalists who have enormous experience to hundreds, if not thousands of cases that have enabled them to take their professional learning, refine it through direct experience, and apply it in the real world where things are very much not perfect. They also advise on giving up smoking, losing weight, taking exercise, having children, and staying sane.

They are there to promote wellness, as much as they are to remove the causes of illness. Returning the patient to full health – personal or corporate – is the reward in all these cases. The problems go away, and people try to return to normal.

But there is another aspect in SME life as well, the company may be healthy and working “just fine”, but that is absolutely not the same as reaching its full potential. If you are an ambitious athlete, you would hire yourself a trainer to help you reach that potential. As a writer, you might take a mentor. On the company level, why would you not hire yourself somebody you had the ability to help you avoid future problems (possibly because they face them themselves), who knew what could safely be left undone, who had the confidence and connections to make your financial transactions or customer introductions easier, who had experience of hiring at a senior level, who had connections in government, who have experience of dealing with press and media, and who has deep and meaningful insight into what your financial numbers are not only showing now but should be showing?

Proper corporate health isn’t just having no obvious problems, it is meeting the full potential of the company. And very, very, few companies manage that without help.

1.      Companies are vastly more likely to succeed if they seek help at an early stage: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/288769

2.      Directors who find themselves long-term advisers are vastly more likely to achieve their life ambition, are happier, and earn more: https://www.successfactors.com/resources/knowledge-hub/why-mentors-matter.html

3.      SME business that works with experienced external advice in the long term is substantially more likely to achieve its own success measures: https://hbr.org/1983/05/the-five-stages-of-small-business-growth

4.      “The most effective appointments have come from seemingly quite generalist non-executives who have an insight in to the business’ industry in question or where they are on their growth curve.“ https://www.growthbusiness.co.uk/can-non-executive-directors-help-boost-business-growth-2551211/

To return to the original question, Company Doctor is probably the worst job title in the world. It fails to help customers understand what to expect. I fear, that we are stuck with it because "Company Mentor and General Practitioner And Non-Exec Director and HR Expert and Accountancy Expert and Legal Expert and Shoulder To Cry On and Compliance Advisor and Company Secretarial Adviser and Assistant Sales Negotiator and Supply Chain Analyst and Product Development Guru and Goals Coach" is far too long for any business card.

SME directors that sign up with a great adviser can outperform their expectations and their competitors. So, ignore the dreadful job title and reach out to somebody who can help today. It doesn’t really matter what it says on the business card, but it has to be somebody that the founder trusts, likes to be with, respects, and is happy to act on the advice of. They are more likely to be a generalist than a specialist. They will always have a blend of professional experience, board level experience in multiple companies, have met both success and failure and handled both with panache. Less perhaps, a company doctor than simply a “Founders’ Friend”?