Blue Line Intelligence
Understand what Value Really Means.
Stop Destroying Value, then Manage better To Manifest It.
If you’re in the corporate world, you’ve heard the word “value” tossed about like it’s some magic incantation—say it enough, and maybe it’ll appear. If you earned a thousand dollars for each time you heard it or spoke it, you wouldn’t need to work anymore.
But do you or your colleagues really understand what value is?
At a fundamental level; in the real world; how it functions, what it’s made of; what can create it, or destroy it?
If you’re like almost every executive or manager I’ve taught in board rooms through Blue Line Intelligence or in classrooms at top-tier business schools, you probably don’t. Not really.
Understanding blue line value is hard; managing for it is even harder. But that’s why it’s so powerful.
If you, your leaders, your managers, your employees — all decision makers in your organization — really get it, you stop destroying value and your company doesn’t die. You will, someday, but your company doesn’t have to.
how can you better
understand value?
The Blue Line Imperative
What Managing for
Value Really Means
Do you wonder why your value initiatives aren't providing the payoff you'd hoped for? Could it be because you've been thinking about value all wrong? According to this groundbreaking guide, there's a very good chance that you have. Using examples from leading companies worldwide, The Blue Line Imperative explains why every decision a company makes either creates value or detracts from it, and why, if they hope to survive and thrive in today's increasingly competitive global marketplace, company leaders must make value-creation the centerpiece of every business decision.
Kevin Kaiser has been opening minds and changing companies with the Blue Line Theory of Management since he and S. David Young clarified it in 2009.
Blue Line Intelligence is for leaders and managers of companies who know the perils of value destruction and are ready to make the fundamental change to avoid it.
Review a few case studies below, and learn more about Kevin here.
Case Studies
Cost of Capital
Engaged by global energy company to support their revision of their cost of capital policy to reflect the imperatives of the energy transition imperatives and a challenging macroeconomic environment.
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We were engaged by a global energy company whose focus is shifting due to the energy transition. This client needed to revise their policies relating to the discount rate/hurdle rate for assessing the value of new investments. Of particular concern was the different business risk of investments in new energy projects, as well as the need to work in different currencies, rather than focusing primarily on dollar-based cash flows as is the case in traditional energy projects. We worked alongside another consulting firm to challenge and ‘sense-check’ the work of the internal team as well as the work of the other consulting firm. With deep theoretical knowledge in the principles of valuation, and decades of experience performing valuations in complicated situations, we were able to lead the thought-development effort and guide the work of the internal and external members of the team to ensure a theoretically sound, yet also practicable and pragmatic solution was obtained.
Value Based Management
Engaged by the CEO of a portfolio company of a Middle-Eastern sovereign wealth fund to establish a value-based management approach, and to ensure the board members were on-board and supportive of senior executive approach to maximizing value.
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We developed a series of in-person workshops to target different levels of management, including the C-suite executives and their direct reports, as well as board members, in order to establish a shared language and approach to value-based management. Once the C-suite executives were comfortable and aligned with the new management approach to value creation, we shared the conceptual foundations, practical applications and implementation steps with their direct reports with whom they would work to implement the principles in the organization. In order to ensure the support of the board, an additional workshop was held to share the conceptual approach with the board to allow them to challenge and, eventually, become comfortable and supportive of the focus on value creation and the implementation implications of this approach.
Cohesive Multi-entity Strategy
Engaged by large, family-owned, South-American corporate owner of multiple business lines to enhance the individual understanding and the cohesiveness of the various business leaders with the shared corporate objective of creating value.
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We developed a series of workshops to provide a common vocabulary and understanding of what it means to manage the individual business lines for value creation. With this established, we then worked on distinguishing and identifying the key value drives and key performance indicators which the different business lines need to understand, monitor, and manage in order for each to be creating maximum value. We worked with the group CFO to then enable the corporate parent of the various businesses to be able to provide support for the different businesses by tracking, providing feedback, and guiding their efforts to deliver value in their businesses and to the parent.
Navigating Macroeconomic Turbulence
Engaged by a global industrial company to transform the top management mindset to a focus on value creation and antifragility in order to deal with extraordinary macroeconomic and industry headwinds.
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Facing headwinds from global supply-chain disruptions, war in Ukraine, and the industrial and consumer shift from ICE vehicles to electric vehicles, the new CEO of this global firm wanted to increase the awareness and adoption of value creation as a guiding principle. Working with the senior HR executives, we developed a series of workshops to:
(1) ensure a common understanding of what it means to create value,
(2) allow for all executives to voice their concerns, challenges and issues with this approach in order to ensure all are comfortable and willing to ‘buy-in’ to the new emphasis and direction,
(3) enable reflection and Q&A on what this new emphasis will mean for their individual and organizational approaches to managing themselves, their teams and their businesses,
(4) connect their individual efforts to their Personal Development Plans in order to establish actions and key success guidelines to ensure implementation at the personal level.After these workshops, executives were tasked to put their new mindset and management skills into action by selecting specific business challenges to provide opportunities for application of, and experimentation with, their new approach to learn how to put it into practice to create value in their organizations.