About This Book

This book is – first and foremost – a guide. A detailed step-by-step guide to making a quantum leap in our corporate performance and, therefore, in your shareholders’ value.

It covers such important issues as what exactly the ‘quantum leap’ means in very practical terms; how it can – and must – be measured; what needs to be done – also in very practical terms – to make this quantum leap and how exactly to do it. In that way, the book is, indeed, a blueprint (or a ‘road map’, if you will) for this quantum leap.

But this book is more than just a ‘technical’ guide. I want it to be a powerful source of inspiration for you. A powerful source of inspiration that will create a permanent and formidable inner drive and cause a no less permanent and irresistible desire to make this quantum leap.

Why inspiration? Because decades of successful – and unsuccessful – corporate restructuring and reengineering projects which were ostensibly supposed to facilitate a quantum leap in corporate performance and financial value – proved beyond the reasonable doubt that without such a drive the project is doomed to failure.

Therefore, I will devote some significant effort to prove – also beyond the reasonable doubt – that you both can and must make this quantum leap in your corporate performance. By ‘you’ I mean an entrepreneur, an active investor, a top manager or a corporate restructuring project manager. This is the primary target audience of this book, but by no means the complete one.

This book can be used – and quite successfully, I am sure – as a textbook in an academic, commercial or corporate environment. Or as a self –study guide. However, it would be most useful and valuable when you are faced with the need for a quantum leap in your corporate performance or just with conducting a comprehensive business audit (CBA) or a corporate restructuring/reengineering project.

I personally believe that (1) every entrepreneur, active investor and top manager in every business entity there is needs this quantum leap and can (and must!) make it; (2) the ultimate objective of every CBA is to find a way to make this quantum leap and (3) every corporate restructuring/reengineering project must result in such quantum leap.

You make a quantum leap in three steps (I will cover them in detail later). First, you must obtain a comprehensive and detailed picture of your current situation (‘AS IS’). Second, you must develop a no less comprehensive and detailed vision of your desired situation (‘TO BE’). And, finally, you must develop and implement financial and operational transition plans to get from ‘AS IS’ to ‘TO BE’.

In this guide, I will cover all three steps; however, I will devote the lion’s share of this book to the first step which involves a comprehensive business analysis. Why? Because (1) it is by far the most important step – there can be no quantum leap without a thorough understanding of where you are now; (2) developing a vision of ‘TO BE’ situation involves pretty much the same process as a detailed picture of your current situation and (3) so-called ‘passive investors’ need the tools for performing a CBA (‘due diligence’) without having to think about making any ‘quantum leap’.