#125: A New Model For Shareholder Activism

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The Proxy Activism Project

A New Model For Shareholder Activism (Blog)

A New Model For Shareholder Activism (YouTube)

A New Model For Shareholder Activism (Eric Schleien / John King)

Netflix, Sears, and Tribal Leadership (Eric Schleien / John King)

How To Keep Large Companies Innovative (Eric Schleien / Scott Forgey)

Eric Schleien discussing Tribal Leadership

Eric Schleien discussing Activist Investing

CBRE Case Study - Tribal Leadership

Comparing Transformational & Transactional Leadership (Eric Schleien)

Cultural Issues In The Hospital Industry (Eric Schleien)

Took 9 Years To Develop

ProxyActivism is a project that has taken 9 years to create over the course of thousands and thousands of hours to develop, and finally launch. This blog post will go into the background into how ProxyActivism came to be, our process, how I see this project unfolding, and how you as a value investor can be involved (and no, for all you cynical fucks, I’m not trying to sell you something)

The Initial Insight

My idea for ProxyActivism started when I did an ontological leadership program with a former Vice President of Disney who decided to quit his job and devote the rest of his life to empowering people. I got more in a few days of intense Socratic style inquiry than in all the years of reading books combined. As someone who relied on books to “get ahead” this was a completely new paradigm for me. Within the next few months, my income tripled, I repaired relationships with the people around me, and produced many more results. I figured there must be some application to business as well. And it turned out my intuition was right. The company had a consulting arm. The consulting arm of the organization was recently named one of the top consulting companies in the world by Forbes. At a lecture I attended at NYU, the preliminary internal data at the company was that their average client experienced a 600% increase in profits within 12 months. I thought to myself, “I wonder if I could combine ontological coaching with shareholder activism?”

A Zero Competition Game

I figured this must have already been done and figured I would go work for a hedge fund already doing this and get some experience under my belt. However, after searching, I could not find a single hedge fund that was doing activism this way. Even the funds that talked about so-called “transformations” at companies - were really just doing more “change management consulting” and not actually anything transformational. Nothing wrong with that, just not as reliable or as effective. 

So I became very frustrated that I could not find a single hedge fund playing this game called transform companies. I knew I was missing something. Every single business study on this kind of work showed results that any shareholder activist would be salivating over, this was clear alpha, and a low competition game with very high barriers to entry. (If the barriers to entry were low, I would not be writing about this or even talking about this).

Why Is Nobody Already Doing This?

I knew I was missing something but couldn’t figure out what. This was the best idea I ever had in my life for a business and also seemingly the lowest hanging fruit. I just couldn’t get why nobody had taken this on before.

And then it became quite clear.

I called 37 different hedge funds or investment managers that were engaged in some kind of activism. I was excited and figured they would all be competing for me to implement this idea at their fund. I had this vision that I would develop this business as a fund, make a ton of money, and make a ton of people (including myself) extremely successful in this world. These “so-called” rational people however became quite cynical. Not skeptical and open. Cynical and closed off. I couldn’t believe it. Some of them told me this was not their wheelhouse and they were going to stick to what they already knew. Ok fine, I can get that. But an unwillingness to learn something n