Scott Gelbard's Blogger

Every experienced business negotiator has a story -- sometimes several -- where a deal that should have closed did not, because neither side knew how to step back from the brink without it feeling like defeat. The negotiation reached an impasse. Both parties had taken positions publicly enough that retreating felt like loss. And so the deal fell apart, not because the underlying terms were irreconcilable, but because no one had the skill to engineer a graceful exit from a corner. I call this the soft landing problem. And across 25 years of advising on cross-border transactions, joint ventures, restructurings, and complex partnerships across three continents, I have come to believe it is one of the most underappreciated skills in business -- and one of the most costly gaps. **Why Negotiations Get Stuck** Most business negotiations do not fail because of math. The gap between positions is rarely as wide as it appears by the time both sides are entrenched. What fails is not the economics ...

There is a distinction I make early in every engagement with a business owner who is thinking about raising capital, selling a stake, or entering a major transaction. It is a small distinction in language but enormous in consequence: are you deal ready, or are you deal hungry? Deal hungry looks like urgency. It looks like a founder who needs the transaction to close, who has mentally spent the proceeds, who has told too many people about the deal, and who cannot afford to walk away. Deal hungry is the negotiating posture that costs business owners millions — not because the deal was bad, but because the counterparty could smell the desperation. Deal ready is something else entirely. It is the business owner who has done the internal work before any external conversation begins. Who has clean financials, a coherent growth narrative, a management team that can run the company without them in the room, and a real understanding of what they want from the transaction — and what they are w...

Some of the most complex business relationships I've navigated over a 25-year career haven't been cross-border deals or multi-party transactions. They've been multigenerational business partnerships — arrangements where a founder and their adult child are running a company together, or where two families who built something jointly decades ago are now navigating that legacy through a second or third generation of leadership. These partnerships are uniquely challenging, not because the people involved are difficult, but because the underlying dynamics — trust, role definition, identity, and authority — are all entangled in ways that have nothing to do with business and everything to do with family. The Partnership That Started Before Anyone Signed Anything The foundational challenge in any multigenerational business partnership is that the relationship existed before the business did. A father and son don't become business partners the day they sign the shareholders...

There's a pitch I've heard hundreds of times from young consultants and advisory firms trying to win business: "We can handle anything." The logic seems sound — versatility signals competence, breadth suggests capability, and the ability to serve multiple needs appears to reduce risk for the client. In practice, it's often the opposite. In my experience advising businesses across three continents over 25 years, generalism at its extremes is not a superpower. It's a liability. And the leaders and firms that have figured this out are consistently outperforming the ones that haven't. What the Market Actually Rewards There is a persistent myth in business — particularly in the consulting and professional services world — that the broadest possible offering is the most valuable one. The idea is that clients want a one-stop shop, a trusted partner who can solve any problem at any moment. But here's what I've observed consistently across engagements ...

There is a meeting that happens in almost every significant business engagement I've been part of over the past 25 years. It doesn't show up on the official agenda. It usually takes place in a hallway, over a coffee, or in a quiet corner before the formal session begins. And the people in that conversation are almost always the ones who actually decide what happens next. This is the reality of stakeholder management — and most business leaders are still operating as if the org chart tells the whole story. The Map Is Not the Territory Every organization has two structures: the formal one printed on the org chart, and the real one built from influence, history, trust, and informal authority. Experienced leaders know the difference. New ones often learn it the hard way. When I advise businesses on strategic transitions — whether that's a market expansion, a capital raise, a leadership succession, or a major restructuring — one of the first things I do is map the stakehold...

The most expensive hiring mistake I have ever seen a business make cost them not in severance or lost productivity, but in time. Eighteen months of building in the wrong direction. Eighteen months of a leadership team calibrated around the wrong person. Eighteen months of board meetings spent managing a problem that never should have been created. By the time it was resolved, the business had missed a market window it never fully recovered. That story is not unusual. I have a version of it from almost every business I have worked with seriously over the years. And virtually every time, the root cause is the same: the business moved too fast. The pressure to fill key roles quickly is understandable. Vacancies create friction. The team is stretched. Opportunities are waiting. The temptation to hire the best available candidate — rather than the right candidate — is enormous, especially when the available candidate is genuinely impressive. But the businesses that consistently win on tal...