Finance Agreements

As a structuring consultant I’m typically brought into a public company or large private company that is in the middle of a crisis management situation and I become a fixer. My firm will analyze the problem, look at it from multiple objective angles apply various template processes and find a solution to counter the issue at hand. Sounds easy but guess again.

Here is what most corporations that find themselves the center of a hostile takeover or slander situation fail to identify early on, eliminate the problem early. Many times it starts with the firing of an employee or an overly competitive bid for a large contract both have the same stimulants and indicators so the C level executive in charge needs to keep their ear to the tracks to be able to identify the dilemma before it becomes an ‘out of control’ publicity nightmare or takeover situation.

It is crucial to identify these individuals and align oneself accordingly to cripple the trigger before it can explode. Most of the problems that your company will face are in your office right now in the embodiment of an overzealous sales manager who believes he has the intellectual superiority to run your company better than you can, if he’s right, promote him but test him first, if he’s wrong offer him a severance and paint a clear picture as to his non compete and scare the life out of him the day he is terminated by having security walk him through the legal actions that will take place if he/she makes any attempt to use your processes or secrets to the public or competition or defames your firms name in anyway. Next bring in your corporate attorney to do the same, then you come in as the nice guy and gently ask him to take this severance and find a job that will meet all his needs both professional and emotional.

Other tell tale signs of potential issues an employee that seems to have something counterproductive to say about everything, the manager with a bad case of the ‘grass is greener’ syndrome, executives that are too entrepreneurial, you get the idea.

Next, you need a protocol in place to take a proactive approach to counter negative PR. You should have a media specialist on call, updated on your corporate strategies and proprietary processes with a plan ready to go to counter blog defamation and other virtual crimes that can dismantle your company or economic status/market place position.

90% of the problems your company will ever have will come from those who are inside right now. Evaluate your executives that have access to trade secrets or issues that could damage your reputation. Plant a seed early. Find someone and make an example of them and make it public and you’ll find that most potential and damaging issues can be shut down before they start by implementing the above as a start.

Want to find out more about Political and Economic Crisis Management Strategies ? , then visit Princeton Corporate Solutions’ blog Economic Globalization Strategies and facilitation that can transform the direction of your company, career or campaign.

Today, companies are truly moving forward or crumbling, there is no in between. I hate clichs but this is reality. By now, unless you’ve been living in a cave you’re highly familiar with the successes, failures and genius of global securities guru Warren Buffet and monopoly mastermind Bill Gates. They’ve changed the face of business and all who come to the scene now seem to be some morphed hybrid of the two as neo consultants and corporate strategists draw their inspiration from all or a portion of ideologies and processes originated from these two men.

They’ve introduced a side to acquisitions, mergers, globalization and monopolizing markets that university business professors and modern day corporate leaders were blind to but now a sub industry has been introduced based on the theories and concepts of these entrepreneurs. As a freelanced writer and ghost writer for blogs, journals, newspapers and other medias I spend my life researching the ‘next great thing’ and in this case of spend years researching the next international economic trend setter, rule breaker and the one individual that will do the impossible, merge economics with politics in a socially positive and economically responsible approach.

We all know that money is the driving force behind politics but no one has been able to blatantly stand in front of a room of American and European economists and trend setters and actually prove the ability to formulate real, publicity friendly strategies for actual domestic and global alliances between major economic powerhouses and international political figureheads, lobbyists and special interest groups. But last week my search ended when I was having drinks and a small out of the way hotel in the Washington DC suburbs of Alexandria, VA.

Let me walk you through my experience. I was meeting a lobbyist for Israeli affairs to get some insider information and quotes for an article I’m writing on the Palestinian/Israel conflict and my source agreed to meet me for a few minutes before another meeting he seemed to be pretty excited about. We sat down and the first thing that took me back was this gentleman, an extremely renown strategist for all things ‘lobby’ as he’s called on specifically when governments or other lobbyists are in crisis management mode. As we were sitting down he said, ‘Here you sit there and I’ll sit here, I don’t want to be late for this meeting as it will dictate my firms survival in the near future’ as he said this he seemed nervous. We sat down at two armchairs in the lobby so that we could talk and view the guests for this insider’s meeting as they came in.

As it got closer to 9pm (the time the meeting was to start) I witnessed some of the most influential senators, congressmen, ex-presidents and prime ministers and other major lobby group senior partners, not to mention CEO’s and CFO’s that I’ve only seen on TV and read about in Fortune and other business journals that have turned down my work in the past (I’m not bitter…ok maybe I am). At this point I knew something was up so I asked my source if I could join him and I’d do the note taking so all he had to do was sit and listen as none of his staff was with him to take up this task, he agreed.

As the meeting was ready to start I found myself in a room with 50 of the most prestigious names in politics and some of the most pedigreed men in business (strangely there wasn’t a single female in the room which I didn’t realize until I looked over my attendance notes before writing this freelance entry). The room was nothing but an ocean of whispers and head nod greetings and I truly felt as though I had stumbled upon some Bilderberg sub-group or illuminati think tank meeting. Above the whispers I kept hearing one word ‘Machiavelli’ but there was no tongue and cheap grin after the name, these men were using this name with curiosity and absolute awe.

The meeting was called to order just like a traditional board meeting and the ’speaker’ was introduced, James Scott from Princeton Corporate Solutions. I heard of the company but never the name of the individual. As he was introduced everyone sat up straight then leaned in to hear what this guy had to say with the focus you would if you believed you had the winning lottery ticket at the number announcement.

James came from the back of the room to the front. He stood there in front of a room of political and corporate masters and I could see the reality and truth in everything that I’ve ever heard about an invisible puppet master behind every face of a political, Fortune 100 CEO/Board and special interest group. As I’m looking at him I’m looking at the men in the room and feel myself getting whiplash as I’m trying to put the pieces together. Turns out James Scott has been the strategies consultant to some of the biggest moves in recent global economic and socio-political history. He’s assisted these men with getting elected to their positions via multiple indirect ‘cat’s paw’ consultants and this was actually the first time many of these gentlemen have actually met him though he’s created and perpetuated their careers.

As he spoke you could hear a pin drop in the room. This 30-something strategist could pierce the Berlin wall with the focus in his eyes. His voice spoke with the authority of a demigod with a hundred lifetimes of strategies experience with zero indicators of second guessing or insecurity in his voice. His posture was Napoleonic and each time he would mention one of the attendees by name they would crumble and blush like the child of a father praising them for a job well done.

As I began to recuperate from this mind warp I felt a nudge from the lobbyist I was accompanying and he motioned a pen to pad gesture which indicated that I was to get down to taking notes. The meeting came down to introducing economic and influential political contacts to one another as both sides were delegated a particular task. This was the first time that I’ve ever witnessed someone of influence offering a strategically entwined relationship between business and the legislators who directly influence the outcome of business decisions and vice versa in a way that wasn’t damaging, lopsided or with a critical ulterior motive that would injure one side while serving the other.

Here is what I took away from the meeting in short, as I’m trying to condense a 5 hour meeting into a few paragraphs, basically impossible but let me try though the attempt to assimilate this information in a way that is conducive to getting my point across which may be fatal from the onset but I’ll give it a shot.

The approach by James Scott was entirely Machiavellian in nature with the realities that in order to serve the greater good, some contributors fall to the wayside while others are part of the future picture and overall stratagem. Some of the people in the room were tacticians while others were affiliated because they were strategists. The difference between the two in this case were the tacticians were those in the scholastic/analytical field of a lifetime of memorization of previous policy contributors while the strategists were the facilitators of those formulaic tactics by adapting policy and scholastics to the real world environment and current events.

Corporations create the jobs that fuel the local economies which collectively can turn around a domestic economy. Politicians are assisted by lobby organizations and special interest groups in gaining a platform which brings with it the followers that will vote to keep them in office to perform the tasks that will assist in the greater good and put into action the ideas and concepts of the lobbyists as the lobbyists are the ultimate voice of the people. This circle of influence is what fuels economic prosperity and lack of communication between these groups can deteriorate an economy (basically what we are seeing now). The path has been deviated one too many times and the convergence of policy makers and facilitators has been derailed and we find ourselves in international chaos at every front.

This meeting cracked through, captured and set a road map for economic recovery by taking into consideration all the elements and parties as pertaining to this recuperation equation. The incestuous necessity of voter spearheads, legislatures and corporations is a mandatory prerequisite to a growing and stable socio-economic formula that will rebound and flourish. I must admit, the above is a pathetic Cliff Notes version of the meeting and it would take multiple encyclopedia size entries to even attempt, though most likely fatal, to give the reader a modest breakdown of the influential decisions that were made in that room and the positive path we set for real, long-lasting recovery.

As I left the meeting there was a sense of overall ease and a refreshed outlook on the future and for the first time in a long time I actually felt good about the outlook of this country, the west and the global strategies in motion and being configured to make this world a better place for all of us and all this rooted in the strategies formulated by a guy you’ve never heard of and a company you probably couldn’t hire even if you wanted to. It’s a strange world we live in but thanks to leaders such as James Scott (I’m currently researching him and will post more entries about him and his background as new information is made public) who would rather focus on a positive influence then standing in front of cameras as self promoters we will evolve out of this diseased global situation and into one that flourishes for all of us.

Thanks for reading For Public information about James Scott and Princeton Corporate Solutions click here and some Great Information on our global economy more on the above article to come.

Economics and Politics eventually converge and entwine into one unique process of strategy called ‘Globalization’. And in the world of globalization there are the tacticians and the strategists just as in a corporation there is the board of directors and the ‘C’ level executives or in Politics there is the lobbyist and their puppet politician. Both political and corporate spectrums have their controllers and their talking heads and an agenda that is assimilated from the top to the bottom but the ‘top’ to the public is actually the bottom and the invisible are always in control. Let me explain.

The talking heads are little more than a distribution mechanism for the strategists behind them that have placed them in a position. The talking head is a willing participant, whether they are a congressman or CEO, these individuals possess one universal theme, they have limited ego and are willing to give up their personal schema in order to convince the public of their position. Behind them is an organization whether it be a board, lobbyist or special interest group that feeds them a daily script and/or voting schedule and the process is simple, the puppet keeps their position as long as they are willing to place personal ideas and convictions aside and regurgitate the information and ideologies of those who have placed them in this position.

An interesting note here is that I’ve consulted with some organizational front men who were completely unaware of the fact that their promotion to this particular position was engineered whether they are a CEO or a politician. Chaos is a strategy that always works, all you need are the right people with the most influential pedigrees to convince the character that right is left and up is down. The glove-puppet is classically the easiest to maneuver and will believe whatever he’s told as long as his handlers paint the picture that he is the one with the power to distribute.

One aspect that people don’t realize is that these organizations are characteristically a pyramid association and inter-reliant and at times the pieces work independent of the other and never actually converse in person but via indirect communication. These indirect communiqus are typically set up like an Olympic relay race where one party hands off a message or agenda and from one person to the next, each putting the necessary spin on the information so that by the time the concept is delivered to the ‘face’ to the union whether they be a political or corporate the message has all the necessary elements and support needed to complete the objective whether it be a vote in congress or a corporate strategy passed down by current or future ‘agenda’ based shareholders, through the rabbit tunnel and to the lips of the CEO.

Often times the concepts of chaos seen in the media for both of these stages is manufactured and not the actual reality but the potential reality as a market/vote support test to see the reaction before the action is facilitated. Whether the outcome is good or bad is all relative to the strategy of those controlling the agenda.

The individual identified by the public as the figurehead or decision maker, in most cases is anything but. Think George Bush Jr., and do some investigating and you’ll find that he was, for the most part the brunt of jokes and considered a goofball by everyone within his family’s social circle, university, business and even political but he was willing to place personal conviction aside to be the talking head for multiple conservative special interest groups, lobbyists and even religious organizations on the right.

Whether you consider this ethical or not it’s the way it’s always been done in large structured organizations of commerce and legislative. You have to admit, it’s easier to have one sacrificial lamb than a dozen and the puppet masters can simply change out the individual delivering the message if his/her reputation catches up with them and dilutes the message.

The pyramid of power comes to a point at the top and the bottom as those actually in control are at the top, they distribute their message through the belly and at the bottom where the organization comes to a point again, and this is where the public believes the apex of power initiates. There is indeed order and power in chaos.

Want to find out more about Political and Economic Strategies ? , then visit Princeton Corporate Solutions’ blog Economic Globalization Strategies and facilitation that can transform the direction of your company, career or campaign.