Most Value Creation Plans contain sensible initiatives with credible financial benefits. But that doesn’t mean the organisation can deliver them all.
The problem is rarely obvious when each initiative is assessed separately. It emerges when the business tries to deliver everything at once.
A VCP can make financial sense without being realistic about what the organisation can deliver.
Consider a PE-backed business pursuing an ambitious growth plan.
The commercial team must accelerate revenue while introducing a new CRM. Finance is improving reporting while supporting an acquisition. The executive team is recruiting leaders, redesigning the organisation and running the business.
On paper, these are separate workstreams. In practice, they compete for the same people, decisions and resources.
Each initiative looks achievable on its own. Together, they risk overloading the organisation.
Most management teams know they need to prioritise. Yet too often, everything in the VCP remains a priority.
If five initiatives depend on the same three executives, ranking them doesn’t create more executive time.
The business needs to make choices about what gets done, in what order and by whom. Some initiatives may need to wait. Others may need additional resources or different decision-making arrangements.
These choices can be difficult when every initiative contributes to the investment case. But avoiding them doesn’t remove the constraints. It leaves the organisation to deal with the consequences through delays, overload and missed commitments.
The organisational assumptions behind a VCP deserve as much scrutiny as the financial ones.
Before committing to delivery, investors and management teams need to understand who will do the work, where demands overlap, what the organisation can realistically absorb and whether leaders are genuinely committed to the priorities.
A deliverable VCP needs more than worthwhile initiatives. The organisation has to have the capacity to deliver it, and its leaders have to be committed to its priorities.
Execution Radar helps investors and leadership teams test the demands of the plan against the organisation’s capacity, identify constraints and make better decisions about delivery.
We help investors and leadership teams identify execution problems, understand their causes and make changes that improve delivery.
