The Path to Value™

What does it look like to create a path to value? What does that really mean?

I have been having great conversations for over 20 years that have informed my physical leadership events and my podcasts. I have pursued people who have ideas that might change their market and perhaps change their world. I have taken the position of learner within these conversations. I don’t interview, I consume.

It has been an incredible journey. The physical leadership events would average 150-350 attendees and, before the pandemic, were taking place across the United States. Then we pivoted to the podcast and have been recognized as being in one of the top 1% of podcasts today.

But I have never had someone ask about my role as founder of The Sage Group and author of our value transformation methodology called “The Path to Value”.

In this great conversation, I turn over the learning to Dr. Daniel Hallak, who connects human capital with strategy and execution to create organizational value. Daniel is one of my recent interviewees and based on his expertise, is highly interested in how The Sage Group extracts insights from our research to create a highly differentiated and strategic business plan that creates value for the owner and the stakeholders.

I must admit, I was a little bit nervous. My clients know I like to stay behind the scenes helping them create the strategy as well as execute it with and through their people.

Since we take a whole company approach, I shed light on the efforts to improve a company’s silos of excellence through subject matter experts without such a strategy. For those of you who focus primarily on those silos, this is not to dismiss you. It is simply that your subject matter expertise is best leveraged with an overall strategy in place.

For those who specialize in selling companies. This is not to dismiss you. You have your place and your value. But for my clients, by the time they get to such an event, the value has already been expressed, and the identification of the future buyer has been understood. We stay focused on the value that is realized and how it can be sustained through our people, processes, and tools within the new acquirer’s organization. People are too important to allow them to become mere expressions on a spreadsheet.

I urge you to hear me: This is my path. There are many paths to the mountaintop. This is the one I have chosen, and now am expressing through this great conversation.

Your path to value and your expression of success is one of the most important journeys you will ever be on. I am honored I have been able to walk your path to value with so many of you.