“Corpcraft” is a term I came up with early on in my career as
a recruiter and entrepreneur. It is a sort of shorthand I used with my team and
it naturally, over the years, found its way into occasional use in The Art of
Corporate Warfare newsletter.
Used correctly the term is efficient and telling. When an
executive displays good corpcraft they are making a wide variety of decisions
that result in a sustainable increase in equity holder value. In my perspective
that's what it all comes down to. Enhancing social and environmental conditions
are important as well, but most equity holders view those as somewhat secondary
to more easily quantifiable self-interest.
When we do executive searches, along with good “fit” into
the new organization, truly proven corpcraft is a large part of what we are
looking for in candidates. When we are looking for acquisition targets for
clients, the presence of good corpcraft is, likewise, a vital variable. In both
cases the entities of interest consistently make “good” decisions, often
leveraging less obvious techniques and philosophies, and are always focused on
moving the enterprise ahead in a sustainable manner.
Corpcraft, at its poorest, is reflected in equity holder
disasters like those of Enron, WorldCom, etc. and are typically brought on by
people and/or boards that have a fatally impaired sense of the future. An
important aspect of individuals and companies with poor corpcraft is that they
are generally fairly easy targets for mitigation or elimination because they
help bring it on themselves. An individual or organization lacking corpcraft is
like a deer in the headlights of someone that has it. Also, I’ve frequently
observed over the years that those that possess good corpcraft find identifying
where it’s lacking to often be a humorously trivial matter.
Think about it...
