Reed Phillips - QuickValue

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I ts easy to assume that business owners and CEOs know everything about their companies and have all the details at their fingertips. Many work hard to create that impression, not so much out of ego as of a desire to assure everyone on board that an able pilot, who sees all, is at the controls. Yet as someone who started my first business in my twenties and has served as president and CEO of several public and private companies, all I can say isI wish!

Owners and CEOs know a lot. They have to. They live and breathe their companies, and sincerely care about their companies success and about the people who work there. But omniscience is for the gods. There are qualities far more valuable for any leader, such as understanding what you dont know, and what you need to know, and having the curiosity and determination to find out.

That is more challenging than it sounds. To run a company is to be bombarded daily with decisions large and small, important and mundane, critical and inconsequential. You have to be ruthless and committed to carving out time to consider big-picture questions about your mission, your strategy, and, most of all, the value that your company is creating.

When your company sets out to deliver best-of-class products or preeminent services, the single most effective measure of success is the value you create over time. Regardless of the industry youre in, creating value is the top job for any business leader. When a leadership team achieves value creation goals, all is right with the world. Its high fives all around. Few things are more rewarding than being part of an early-stage company that grows and matures. And when youre not creating value, even the best ideas wont amount to much. Yet because of the daily pressures and demands of running their companies, too many leaders leave value creation to chance.

What I like most about QuickValue is that Reed Phillips has created a simple way for owners and CEOs to stay focused on this vital idea. While just about every business manager is familiar with the concept of value drivers, this is the first time Ive seen them used as foundational components in calculations to determine your companys current worth. Just as important as the number that emerges from your calculations is the actionable intelligence you will gather along the way, to help make your business stronger each year.

So dont just read this book; use it. Come back to it again and again and put the insights you generate into action. You wont ever get to the point where you actually know everything about your business. But thats OK: A certain degree of mystery is what keeps businessand lifeinteresting. What you will have is a stronger and more resilient business, one better prepared for whatever the future holds. My only gripe with Reed is that he didnt write this book sooner. When I think about my own business journey, I would have loved to have QuickValue by my side every step of the way.

Mike Perlis, Vice Chairman, Forbes Media LLC

T his book began as a March 2020 magazine article in Knowledge@Wharton, the online business journal for the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. My friend and colleague Jeff Pundyk, coauthor of that article, had suggested that I develop some of my ideas into thought leadership pieces. When Jeff suggests an idea, I listen. He was publisher of The McKinsey Quarterly, and as far as Im concerned, hes got an MBA in thought leadership. Based on that article, we started to think about this book. Around that time, Jeff was recruited by Deloitte to be