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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 December 2013
However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.
W. S. ChurchillWilful blindness: “If there is knowledge that you could have had and should have had but chose not to have, you are still responsible.”
Margaret HeffernanPREAMBLE: WHO’S THE OWNER?
Who owns your business?
What Value are you creating for the Owners that prevents them from investing their money elsewhere? In fact, what does Value mean to them?
Answers to the first question tend to fall into one of four categories:
Shareholders of publicly listed companies
Individuals or families or groups, for privately owned enterprises
Governments, for a wide range of official departments, statutory authorities and other agencies
Communities, for a range of community-based cooperatives.
The diversity of types of ownership implies a diversity of concepts of Value for the Business. Here, we’ll concentrate on publicly listed companies, as they present the greatest complexity.
The complexity arises partly because, by and large, the shareholders are not entitled to receive all the information they need to assess the Value being created for them. That’s not a surprise: companies need to keep a lot of information confidential to develop and maintain competitive advantage. So, as proxy for the shareholders, public companies have Boards, members of which are entitled to have access to all the information. That’s why we develop the Value tree for the Board, rather than for the shareholders.
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