Читать книгу Equity Value Enhancement - Sheeler Carl L. - Страница 17

How does so much get missed in the valuation process and why are so many opportunities to create value overlooked? There is plenty of responsibility to spread around. The appraisal profession could do a better job articulating its offerings and uses. The standards of practice could be strengthened. Business owners and executives could seek an investment in quality advisory services.

In Cracking the Value Code, Richard Boulton states: “Boards of directors need information about all assets that drive value so that they can properly discharge their duties of stewardship and governance.”2

The advisors who most commonly serve business owners could strive to better understand the valuation work product and its utility. Peter Drucker, a well-regarded academic and management consultant, states: “If you want to do something new, you have to stop doing something old.” Academia could emphasize the importance of private capital markets and methodologies applied in valuing private companies.

However, another plain truth is most trusted advisors – attorneys, CPAs, bankers, insurers, and so on – suffer from technical myopia. They focus on their products and services and assume another professional will take up where they leave off. “It's not my job” and the risk of losing client revenues because of an unwillingness to learn the merits of other advisors plagues most professions.

We're almost all guilty of this and we suffer as a result. Worse yet, the client suffers the most due to the ad-hoc manner information often received from various advisors' lenses. The way to change this is also fairly straightforward: Owners and advisors need to elevate themselves to create better alignment on behalf of company clients' ecosystems with a focus on creating value. That is what a successful strategy is supposed to achieve: enhanced shareholder value.

The bar needs to be raised. Otherwise, as Michelangelo warned, “The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.”

It may be best to put people in the same room at the same time, something that will eliminate conflicting advice and facilitate having robust discussions about value creation strategies and their implementation. As will be shared elsewhere in this book, this often means including family, vendors, and clients as part of the holistic approach that becomes embedded in the company's cultural DNA.