About Us
Meet the Founders of Critical-Decisions.Com
HISTORY: Tracing the Early Collaboration
of Bishop, Nott & McDaniel
By 1998
Rick Nott and Ray Bishop recognized that the Internet was one more
powerful
indication that the conduct of commercial activity was in the
process of being
forever changed. Certainly, they were impressed by the profundity
of changes
that the new communication technology was likely to elicit. But
they had
observed, up-close, for two-plus decades a continuing rollout
of
technology-based innovations, cultural upheavals, revolutions in
financial
markets, and other shifts in the macroeconomic
topography.
They
viewed with alarm the practice of losing touch with the customer,
cavalierly
fracturing the commitment to employees and the unseemly practice of
treating
shareholders like they’re the enemy. But they were also confirmed
by the new
genre of cooperative business relationships that were unfolding
everywhere.
They watched competitors acting like allies. They saw the fortress
walls around
companies becoming more permeable and less resistant to visitation
and even
residency by other companies. They witnessed thousands of people
with different
skill sets and interests working long hours because of a passion
for doing
something well. It was fun to observe a new hero in the American
line-up – the
bright, independent, tough-minded, obsessed
entrepreneur.
Because of the depth and variety of their business experience, Messrs. Bishop and Nott were never fooled by what you should expect from new tools and technologies. They were accustomed to "looking through" tools and technologies to the resulting enhancement of value creation functionality. They were on solid ground with the proposition that you don’t run out and buy new technology for technology’s sake.
They set
about to identify the generic survival criteria, the necessary and
sufficient
conditions which must obtain for a commercial enterprise to remain
competitive
in the 21st century.
In a parallel universe in Dallas, Texas, Richard McDaniel was creating the protocols for how commercial enterprises would be funded in the future. While Nott and Bishop examined the radical new tools and technologies and searched for their implications for reengineering business practices, McDaniel was studying the power relationships between the major economic stakeholder groups – corporate leaders (officers and directors), employees, shareholders (institution investors like pension funds), customers, vendors and regulators. McDaniel saw the turbulence in the shifting power relationships and contemplated alternative strategies to fashion order out of the emerging chaos by delivering to each stakeholder group the quality and quantity of outcomes each coveted.
The
question McDaniel posed for himself and his research team was: What
kind of
control mechanism can connect the boardroom, the institutional
investor, the
employee, upstream and downstream vendors and customers, and
regulators? And
what kind of control mechanism – which connects these diverse
stakeholder
groups – can leverage the authority required to reengineer the way
capital
flows from institutional investors to corporations in the form of
debt and equity funding?
The short answer to both of McDaniel’s questions was the Decision Accounting Operating System (DAOS) - a decision science-based value creation architecture that holds officers and directors accountable to superior fiduciary performance and optimizes the preferred outcomes for shareholders, employees, regulators, customers, vendors and the fiduciaries. These outcomes are rendered by vigorous prosecution of the generic mission of the corporation – which is the methodical achievement of competitive advantage in the firm’s marketplace(s).
When Nott, Bishop and McDaniel began to share their respective visions of the future, several layers of compatibility were discovered. For example, they saw the future firm’s technology makeover as congenial with fiduciary decision making and corporate governance makeover. They saw that they could lift the generic value creation architecture out of the Decision Accounting Operating System and use it as a template for reengineering firms with new technologies and partnering relationships and infrastructures and competitive strategies.
The union of the three was formalized with the collaborative development of the Unified Business Operating System (UBOS). UBOS is a 21st century, digital age operating system and catechism for the elicitation of a high performance corporate culture. Several of the impact elements of UBOS have been disaggregated and reconnected in creative ways to constitute distinctively different value creation/risk attenuation-protocol based portfolios. By rebundling these elements – Nott, Bishop & McDaniel have repackaged them as stand-alone product offerings and implemented them as unique operating systems within various types of business.
For
example, the UBOS elements have been reconfigured to instantiate
the operating
system for Fiduciary Guaranty Corporation of America (FIG; www.figsmartgov.com – contact human.capital@figsmartgov.com for guest login and
password) and Smart
Capital Private Securities Exchange (www.scpse.com –
contact human.capital@scpse.com
for guest login and password).
It is fair to suggest that the collective work of Nott, Bishop & McDaniel takes aim at how fiduciaries and senior managers make the most complex decisions in service of their stakeholders’ interests. Critical-Decisions.Com, Inc. confers this interest in complex decision making on the wider arena of American culture and, specifically – on to the most challenging issues facing the American people.
Below are synopses of the Founders
professional backgrounds.
RICHARD LOWELL MCDANIEL is Chief Executive Officer of Fiduciary Guaranty Corporation of America (FIG), Founder and Director of Strategic Intelligence Corporation of America, R3X.Net, Inc., Communications Venture Services, Inc. (CVSI), and the Smart Capital Private Securities Exchange. He has developed a focused consulting practice over the last twenty years specific to the issues of fiduciary performance and corporate governance. He works with Boards of Directors that are committed to elevating the quality of their corporate governance practices and intent on delivering superior shareholder value. Dr. McDaniel is the primary creator of the discipline of Decision Accounting™ and the Ad Hoc Decision Audit™ Technology upon which it is based.
Previous
to his work in corporate governance, Dr. McDaniel developed and
adapted various
behavioral technologies, including behavioral decision theory and
decision
analysis, for use in business practice. His
past positions include: Managing Partner of Value Creation
Metrics,
Inc., a consulting firm which specialized in the reengineering of
strategic
value creation processes instrumental to the achievement of
competitive
advantage;
President and Chief Operating Officer of Mortgage Banc of
Dallas;
Regional General Sales Manager for Pulte Home Corporation in
Dallas/Ft. Worth,
where he supervised the sales and mortgage lending functions and
subsequently
developed the first Fannie Mae approved no‑down payment mortgage in
the
industry, in the early 80s, by reanalyzing FHA and VA foreclosure
data
according to different risk assessment criteria. Earlier in his
career, Dr.
McDaniel was one of five inside advisors to, and representatives
of, H.L. Hunt
of Dallas (Hunt Oil Company) at a time when Mr. Hunt and J. Paul
Getty were
regarded as the two wealthiest men in the world. It was during his
association
with Mr. Hunt that he developed a profound interest in boardroom
decision
making.
A
native of Beaumont, Texas – Dr. McDaniel was graduated from Harvard
College in
1969 and was nominated by Harvard for a Rhodes Scholarship along
with fellow
Texan and classmate Tommy Lee Jones. He
subsequently earned a Ph.D. in experimental psychology from the
University of
Texas (Arlington), where he specialized in human judgment and
complex
decision-making under conditions of risk and uncertainty. His
doctoral dissertation examined the
previously unknown impact of information configuration on risk
preferences for
financial outcomes equivalent in expected value, but differing in
variance,
skewness, kurtosis and other central moments of the
distribution.
Dr. McDaniel is a present or past member of the Society of Bayesian Psychologists, the American Psychological Association, and the National Association of Corporate Directors. He is Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Decision Accounting Standards Board and is a member of the board of Press on Foundation.
He is a past member of the board of the ACLU of Texas,
Dallas
Chapter. Dr. McDaniel previously served
as President and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Dallas
Jazz
Orchestra. He is also a member of the
Schools Committee of the Harvard Club of Dallas, which organizes
and conducts
interviews with local high school students applying for admission
to Harvard.
In
the Fall of 1999, Dr. McDaniel assumed a leadership role in the
founding of
Texas Business Leaders for a Gore Presidency, a non-profit Texas
corporation
which presented to the Texas business community the policies and
practices
embraced by Vice President Gore that would have impacted American
business in
profound and congenial ways – had Mr. Gore been elected. Dr.
McDaniel and Vice
President Gore were classmates at Harvard from 1965 –
1969.
L. RAY BISHOP, J.D., is a Founder, Officer and Director of Strategic Intelligence Corporation of America, Communication Venture Services, Inc. (CVSI), R3X.Net, Inc. and a Founder of R3X Global Capital Group, LTD, Fiduciary Guaranty Corporation of America, and the Smart Capital Private Securities Exchange.
Mr. Bishop has 55 years of professional and managerial
experience
in civil and criminal law, business development, military sciences,
public
service and philanthropy.
From 1995 to 2013, Mr. Bishop has been President and Chief Operating Officer of Internet Ideas Unlimited, Inc. (IIUI), the think tank behind Communication Venture Services, Inc. Additionally, he was Managing Partner of the law firm of L. Ray Bishop and Associates and prior law firms since 1966 to 1995 and has held numerous executive and committee positions with the American Bar Association (ABA), Michigan State Bar Association, Michigan Trial Lawyers Association and Washtenaw County Bar Association. These positions included membership in the Michigan State Bar Representative Assembly as well as chairing the Washtenaw County Bar Association, the Law Practice Management Section of the American Bar Association, and the Second Congressional District Character and Fitness Committee. Mr. Bishop was an Assistant Prosecuting Attorney from 1964 through 1966 and an officer in the United States Navy from 1957 to 1960.
He has a Juris Doctor Degree from the University of Michigan, a Bachelor of Science Degree from the University of Utah and attended Duke University graduate school. Mr. Bishop has been an officer in and on the Boards of numerous companies including; Central Title Service, Inc. (Secretary and Board Member); Credit Services of Michigan (Board Member); RVT Corporation, Inc. (Board Member); Technology Center (Partner); Washington Street Associates (Partner), Wolverine Holding (Secretary and Board Member).
He has also been an active leader in philanthropic and public service organizations such as the Ann Arbor Cancer Society, Ann Arbor Police Officers Association, Masonic Lodge, and was a member of the State of Michigan Mental Health Advisory Board. He is the author of several law related books and other publications, has lectured extensively throughout the United States, and has been listed in numerous biographical collections.
RICHARD C. NOTT is a Founder, Officer and Director of Strategic Intelligence Corporation of America, Communication Venture Services, Inc. (CVSI), Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of R3X.Net, Inc. and a Founder of R3X Global Capital Group, LTD, Fiduciary Guaranty Corporation of America, and the Smart Capital Private Securities Exchange.
Mr. Nott has
distinguished himself as a forward thinker in understanding the
value creation
and risk attenuation implications of digital age technologies on
the internal
value chain configuration of operating companies. He has been
effective in
conferring these transformative insights on the formulation of
generic and
particular competitive strategies and their prosecution into
competitive
advantage for companies in a wide range of venues.
Mr. Nott’s body of work
derives from 35+ years of senior level professional and managerial
experience
that spans manufacturing, commercial development,
business-to-business sales,
information technology, real estate investment and consultancies at
the board
and corner office level.
From 1972 to 1976 Mr. Nott was Midwest Technical Director for the Sports Division of Kawasaki Motors, based in Grand Rapids, MI. From 1976 to 1991, Mr. Nott held the position of Managing Partner in N&N Holding Company, a Livonia, MI, based real estate development and investment firm. From 1993 to 2000, Mr. Nott was Chairman/ CEO of Internet Ideas Unlimited, Inc. (IIUI) of Ann Arbor, MI, the think tank behind Communication Venture Services, Inc., IIUI provided full service network and information services to commercial companies such as Motorola and similar regionally based industries.
Mr. Nott holds a BA
degree from Thomas Jefferson College and has done extensive
graduate work in
Business Administration.
