In the world of private equity and growth investing, due diligence is a critical process that underpins investment decisions and shapes post-deal strategies. However, the sheer volume of information generated during due diligence can be overwhelming, leading to what we might call "due diligence indigestion…

…. Some months ago, I argued that formal value creation methodologies – created to address the problems of a less favourable investing environment – could be self-defeating unless balanced by greater attention to how teams and organisations build value in practice (which Catalysis refers to as value enablement.

…. To have the highest probability of success in enabling value, the investor or Chair probably need to check whether all five contributions are likely to be provided by the people involved in post-deal planning and strategy setting. If there is a gap, it needs to be filled somehow.

Armed with more empowering assumptions; the insight, focus, and acceleration questions; and a desire to seek out low cost (in money but especially time) but high impact solutions, how might activities across the investment lifecycle become more value-adding?

The previous article concluded that current Value Creation approaches may, through their assumptions and methods, cause various dysfunctions which impede value creation. It proposed, by way of a counterbalance and partial cure, ‘value enablement’.

The way that formalised Value Creation has been deployed means that it is often hindering its own objective of systematically growing economic value. This article explains why.

One way to define what Catalysis does with investors and companies is that we (i) help directors create executable strategies and then, (ii), make sure that the managerial and organisational underpinnings of strategy execution are in place. On the first point, we don’t identify the ‘what’ of strategy…

You’re probably not great at hiring great talent despite being thoughtful, experienced and keen on improvement (these being characteristics of the people who seem to gravitate towards working with Catalysis). I’m pretty confident in stating that because (a) hiring people is almost certainly…