What is Capital as part of the Business?
What is the business and capital as part of the business?
The business is defined as “the utilization of capital in performance to produce value in results”. Every business in the world invests in capital needed, in order to utilize capital in performance, in order to produce output results. The capital must have a worth that justifies the investment costs for acquisition or development and implementation as performance solutions.
Capital is the investments in the business to have the capability to produce results
The only reason to invest in capital is to provide the capability to produce results. Capital is all the tangible and intangible assets available to be utilized by the business. Capital includes the business organization, processes and systems, humans and their capabilities, facility equipment and supplies, management plans and tactics, and information capital. Capital has a worth in the capability to create result value-added attributable to the capital over the capital life.
20th century management fails to organize and manage capital as part of the business
Today, people think of capital as items in an asset register or on the payroll, rather than as items to be managed and utilized as part of the business. Businesses invest in enormous sums of money capital and then fail to identify the specific capital items developed, the costs of developing the capital, the worth of the capital as developed, the utilization of the capital to create value, the cost of capital utilization or consumption as capital worth deteriorates, and the value created to return the original investment. Some tangible assets are recorded as fixed assets and the acquisition costs recorded as asset worth and depreciated over the life of the asset. But even this capital is not managed as part of the business. Much other capital is developed, but never recorded as capital. Much capital is simply labeled as “intangible assets”, so that it can be ignored. Capital as a lump sum, as names for a collection of items, or as intangible assets has little worth.
Capital is organized as performance solutions that can be utilized to produce specific results
The definition of capital is “the set of assets and capabilities in specific performance solutions of positive (asset) or negative (liability) worth invested in and supported for utilization to produce specific business results”. Capital investments are made to have specific items of capital available to be able to produce business results. Therefore, capital must be sub-defined into specific items called performance solutions that can be utilized to produce specific results.
The capital worth of a performance solution must be known and managed over the life of the solution
The capital worth of each solution is the capability to produce attributable result value-added over a payback period or the remaining useful life at the cost of capital. This capital worth must be more than the costs to acquire, develop, and implement the solution to justify the investment. The amount invested in a performance solution provides an initial capital worth. The capital worth is periodically assessed over the life of the solution against the actual and expected capability to create result value. The capital worth deteriorates as the solution looses the capability to produce results. Capital worth can be increased by improvement or replenishment of the solution to increase the capability to produce result value-added. The deterioration in capital worth over the life of the solution produces performance costs that are charged to the result produced, until the solution is worthless. A worthless solution should be at the point that replacement is needed. The exception is human personnel capital, which has a worth to cover future personnel costs rather than past acquisition or development costs.
Performance solutions have common attributes that must be managed as a set
Capital is not a collection of isolated items. Capital is a set of performance solutions that have common attributes that must be managed as a set of capital. All performance solutions have descriptors including investment costs incurred to acquire or develop the capital, capital worth, unamortized investment cost balance, operating costs in the utilization human personnel capital or solutions provided as a service, capacity in the number or volume of results that can be produced, level of utilization, level of effectiveness in producing a result, expectations for the level of utilization and effectiveness, uncertainty in the availability and performance in the business, problems that limit or cause defects or other symptoms in result produced, a manager responsible for providing qualified solutions, outsource partners to provide the solution, service providers responsible for support, support contracts, and other capital descriptors. The invested capital utilized by the business cannot be managed unless organized and recorded as a set.
Capital is organized to be professionally supported by those with the capability needed
Tangible and intangible capital require specific capabilities and experience to manage. Generally there are four distinct categories of capital that require specific management and support capabilities
- Business capital is the organization, process, and data utilized directly to produce a result or set of results and cannot be used for results in general. Business capital requires business knowledge and analysis capabilities
- Human capital is the internal and external personnel employed in the business, specific capabilities that can be applied to produce difficult high-value results, and knowledge to assist human capital utilize specific solutions and produce specific results. Human capital requires human handling and development capabilities
- Facility capital is the traditional tangible assets of the enterprise in the reusable infrastructure and equipment, consumable money and supplies, and tangible information in records of the business. Facility capital requires administration capability and expertise with the specific capital
- Management capital is the aids that help manage the business in the business strategy and plans, business and competitive tactics to keep operations on track, and analyzed data and records and external intelligence to provide management information. Management capital requires management analysis and research capabilities
The four categories of capital are managed by capital result units that are responsible for developing and maintaining capital and providing qualified solutions to produce results. Capital that may be administered today as finances, information technology, corporate plans, legal items, etc are incorporated under the appropriate category for professional management of the specific performance solution.
Capital is organized to be integrated and utilized together to produce specific results
Capital must be organized differently in order to be integrated and utilized seamlessly to produce results. Each category of capital is organized into three class of capital to be integrated and utilized to produce results:
- Readiness capital must be in place to provide the capital for an organization unit responsible for a set of results. Readiness capital includes the business organization, human personnel, facility equipment, and management strategy
- Production capital is utilized directly when producing a specific result. Production capital includes business process, human capability, facility supply, and management tactics
- Information capital provides the information to be accessed together to utilize solutions and produce results and the means to document and record results. Information capital includes business data, human knowledge, facility records, and management intelligence
Capital is organized by capital class in order to be integrated and utilized by the result manager to produce results effectively.
Capital is managed to know the cost and effectiveness of the business
All capital must be managed to ensure that effective solutions are in place, to acquire or develop new capital needed for planned future results, to provide new solutions to produce new results, and to handle performance problems. Capital for each performance solution is measured to know the volume of results produced, capacity or time utilization, the development costs, assumed or assessed worth, unamortized development cost balance, total operating costs, performance effectiveness, incidents of performance uncertainty, performance problems encountered, performance against expectations, etc. Capital decreases in worth as it is consumed or deteriorates and increases in worth as replenished or improved. Capital is summarized by capital category and class and other descriptors. The performance of capital is reported for capital management improvement and capital optimization. Capital must be managed in order to manage the business, manage capital and enterprise worth, manage performance costs to produce results, manage result value-added, manage total capital costs, and manage the return on capital investments.
This is the fourth article under the forum “Why Manage your Business”
The Business Change Forum is now running series of articles under the forum “Why Manage your Business?” to explain Result-performance Management (R-pM) fundamentals for actual business organization and management for the 21st century. This is the fourth article in the forum. A new article will be posted every Friday.
