METHODOLOGY
VBM Sprint®: a value-based methodology for business owners
Before an important decision, a list of results, problems and strengths may not be enough. You also need to understand how the parts of your business work together and what those relationships could mean for its future.
VBM Sprint® is an original methodology for applying value-based management in a small, owner-led business. It helps the owner move from an incomplete picture of the company to a structured basis for an important strategic decision, with the evidence and reasoning made explicit. It combines the owner's value-based management perspective with the discipline of agile working and analysis of data, relationships, underlying mechanisms and possible consequences.
Your situation and your question set the direction
In an owner-led business, knowledge of the company, responsibility for its value, exposure to risk and the authority to make the final decision often come together in one person.
The work starts with your situation and a question about the future of your business. That question may concern growth, succession, a sale, a new market or another important choice. It determines what we need to learn and which relationships are worth examining.
From information to a reasoned understanding of the situation
The following outline describes the logic of the work. Its scope depends on the owner's question and the information available.
We organise what is known and make the unknowns explicit. We bring together data, documents, observations and the owner's experience. We distinguish supported findings from interpretations and assumptions. We also record missing information and contradictions.
We examine relationships. We explore how developments in different parts of the business may affect one another. A falling margin is an observation; explaining it may require a closer look at customers, the offer and how work is organised.
We develop explanations with a clear basis. We reconstruct the mechanisms that could explain the situation: how particular conditions and relationships may produce or sustain what we observe. Each explanation needs supporting evidence and must remain open to testing or challenge.
We prepare the basis for a decision. We consider possible consequences and what the findings mean for the available courses of action. The reasoning matters, as does making clear what remains uncertain.
Business value as a common point of reference
Value-based management provides a way to consider finance, customers, processes, people, the business model and risks in relation to the company as a whole.
Asking what shapes business value leads us to examine how these elements work together. An improvement in one measure does not, on its own, explain what it means for the company's future.
What “Sprint” means
A sprint means focusing on an important problem, setting limits on time and scope, and refining the understanding through successive rounds of work with data. Pace must go hand in hand with analytical rigour. The scope responds to the owner's question and to what the available information can support.
What the process provides — and where it ends
The output is a structured basis for your decision, with the reasoning made explicit: relevant findings, explanations, possible consequences and identified uncertainties. The final decision is yours.
The methodology does not guarantee the right decision or an increase in business value. Its currently supported scope ends at preparing the basis for the owner's decision. The detailed process of moving from identified mechanisms to consequences and possible courses of action remains an area of further development.
How VBM Sprint® developed
The methodology developed through successive interventions and episodes of work with business owners. Practice, reflection and research informed how the problem was understood and how the methodology was formalised.
The case accounts describe this development and changes in the basis on which owners understood their businesses. They do not demonstrate that the methodology is universally effective.
The initial assessment and the full methodology
The public assessment collects your answers about the business and organises them into a self-reported profile. You can use it as a starting point for a conversation.
Work with VBM Sprint® goes further. It examines a specific question, the available information about the business and possible explanations of the relationships involved. Answers given in a form need to be checked; the profile alone cannot replace that work.
Take the initial assessment (in Polish)
See the system. Shape value.