Over the past weeks, I’ve written a number of posts about leadership, risk management, due diligence, integration, and goodwill. Individually, these topics are often discussed in isolation. In practice, they are tightly connected. Leadership behavior determines how risk is identified or ignored.Risk discipline determines how diligence is performed.Diligence determines whether assumptions about people, continuity, and … Continue reading Value Doesn’t Disappear Overnight
Leadership
It All Made Sense…On Paper
In SBA business acquisitions, I see the same issue surface again and again: deals that make sense on paper but unravel after closing. In many cases, the valuation wasn’t “wrong.” The assumptions embedded within it — particularly around people, continuity, and leadership — simply weren’t tested or protected. SBA valuations require more than financial normalization. … Continue reading It All Made Sense…On Paper
Value Erosion Is Rarely the Math
After working on thousands of SBA-related business valuations, certain patterns become hard to ignore. When post-close issues arise, the problem is rarely the math. It’s usually leadership behavior, untested assumptions, or overlooked human capital risk that eventually surfaces as value erosion. My recent posts have sought to connect those dots — leadership, risk, diligence, integration, … Continue reading Value Erosion Is Rarely the Math
When Value Doesn’t Transfer
Goodwill is often treated as something that transfers at closing. In practice, it only survives if the conditions that created it remain intact. Leadership behavior, human capital decisions, and due diligence failures connect directly to goodwill erosion and value destruction.
The Valuation Isn’t the Problem
I’ve shared a series of posts on leadership, risk, diligence, integration, and goodwill. They aren’t separate ideas. They’re stages of the same story. Leadership behavior sets the tone.That tone determines whether risk is addressed or rationalized.Risk discipline shapes diligence.Diligence shapes assumptions about people and continuity.Integration reveals whether those assumptions were earned or merely convenient. And … Continue reading The Valuation Isn’t the Problem
Reputation Follows Relationships, Not the Other Way Around
Here’s the lesson experience teaches clearly: You don’t protect your reputation by managing people.You protect it by leading them. Reputation is a lagging indicator.It reflects how relationships were handled long before scrutiny arrived. Leaders who focus on repair over positioning build trust that lasts.Those who don’t may control the narrative — but lose the truth. … Continue reading Reputation Follows Relationships, Not the Other Way Around
Repair Requires Vulnerability
True relationship repair requires leaders to risk discomfort. It requires acknowledging mistakes without qualifiers.It requires asking questions without defensiveness.It requires allowing silence without filling it. Leaders who can’t tolerate vulnerability often choose optics instead — and lose people in the process.
People Know When They’re Being Managed
Professionals know when a conversation is about them — and when it’s about managing them. They can feel the difference between:• genuine concern• reputational positioning Once someone senses they’re part of a risk-management exercise rather than a repair effort, the relationship is effectively over. Trust doesn’t survive instrumental concern.
When Leaders Talk More Than They Listen
There’s a subtle but important difference between communication and dominance. Leaders who fill silence with reassurance, explanation, or self-promotion leave no room for the other person’s experience. When conversations become one-sided, the outcome is already decided. Listening isn’t passive.It’s the work.
The Difference Between Engagement and Optics
Engagement is slow.Optics are fast. Engagement involves listening, discomfort, and accountability.Optics involve statements, calls, and narrative control. Leaders under pressure often choose speed over substance — and then wonder why trust erodes. Experience teaches you that credibility isn’t repaired quickly.But it is repaired honestly.
Highland Global Business Valuations 