Companies which have not installed a Value Based Management process will describe the climate and management thinking within the company in the following terms:

• We could not clearly determine where value is created or destroyed in our company.

• Our employees did not appreciate that capital has a cost.

• Our managers did not focus enough on the balance sheet.

• Our resources were not always allocated toward the most productive uses.

• Many business units were generating profits that failed to cove the cost of capital.

• Our managers did not act like the owners of the company.

• Communication between the business units and the corporate centre was poor.

• Important decisions were not grounded in factual analysis.

• Our stock price performance was poor relative to our peer group’s.

• Strategic planning was too much of a paper exercise.

• Our company’s culture was too comfortable and complacent.

• Too much politics and emotion entered our decision making.

• Forecasts and assumptions behind our investment decisions were often wrong.

• Games were played during budget negotiations between corporate and business units.

• Our business units did not collaborate for the company’s greater good.

• We focused too much on the short term.

• Our employees were not entrepreneurial enough.

• It took us too long to make and act on decisions.

• We failed to realise the value of apparent synergies.

• We focused too much on the long term.

• We lacked good ideas in our company.

Based on a survey from the Harvard Business Journal and ranked from most significantly improved to least improved – article “Managing for Value” August 2001.