Where's the Beef? Falling Short on Growth

As we get back to cooking with gas and the stimulus frees up the investment purse strings, a question arises as to where and how to grow the topline. Interestingly, as we discussed on other occasions, return on capital deployed has generally fallen short of business goals. Fixing the blame on this topic is romantic, solving the problem takes more digging and discipline. Finance plays a key role as guardian of capital allocation and instituting spending policies, including Capex. Notwithstanding, while elaborate ROI models are built and utilized by most companies....where is the bottom line return? Thinking through the gap to value suggests more proactive look-backs and soft "audits" of the investments made over the past 5 years is a good start.  If we talk about continuous improvement to the operating platform is a given, then let's spend some time using the same principles on capital investment. Follow the big bucks...