CovQ Tech Insights 2022: Different Perspectives Identify the Need for Cohesiveness, Alignment and Systems to deliver Value Creation

8W8 Global Business Builders developed in collaboration with more than 70 entrepreneurs, founders, executives, board members, investors, and academics the Compound Value Creator Quotient, aka CovQ or put simply: ‘the IQ of a company,’ and is now releasing the CovQ Tech Insights 2022 findings. Tech companies include the following categories: SaaS, platforms, marketplaces, direct-to-consumer, e-commerce, mobility, and digital media.

CovQ is is the world’s first assessment that enables companies, their founders, CEOs and executives, board members, and investors to discover a firm’s intelligence and quality with respect to creating value, compounding it, identifying the most important and mission-critical value drivers that must be prioritized and developed further. In comparison, more than 60 million people took the Myers-Briggs personality test (MBTI Myers-Briggs Type Indicator). The CovQ assessment is a module of the CovQ platform encompassing the assessment, a framework, method, knowledge, and software for value creation and strategy operations.

Across all participating tech companies encompassing Americas, EU, UK, Australia, and New Zealand the CovQ Tech score average is

CovQ  67

The maximum a company can score is 100. Most companies scored between 50 and 80. As stated, the current average of all tech companies taking the assessment is 67.

As is often the case, when the 80/20 rule is applied, the majority of companies are doing ok, plus/minus, or in other words, are kind of average, however, companies that really want to thrive, outperform the competition, and deliver the full potential of their business should come in at a CovQ score between 85 and 100.

20 % of all tech companies scored 80 or higher.

The breakdown is as follows:

CovQ Tech 67

CovQ Tech US 69

CovQ Tech US Growth 73

CovQ Tech US Scale-ups 69

CovQ Tech US Start-ups  63

CovQ Tech EUUKANZ 68

We discovered that many companies:

– Need to improve alignment and leverage data-driven strategic decision making

– Need to implement cohesive strategy infrastructure tools and methods to ensure consistent communication and ongoing completion of the most mission-critical strategic initiatives

– Are embracing diverse teams to produce better results

– Find integrated marketing across all channels including social media challenging

– Tech companies have higher CovQ scores than their non-tech counterparts (CovQ Insights 2021 CovQ 63 vs. CovQ Tech Insights 2022 CovQ 67)

– Growth companies led by highly experienced CEOs and serial entrepreneurs score the highest

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The CovQ score is broken down into five segments:

DEEP IMPACT CREATES VALUE BUILDING

The CovQ Tech Insights 2022 results are broken down as follows:

DEEP – expressing qualities around substance, sustainability, long-term, broader steering

IMPACT – expressing qualities around the right set of tactical and operational activities making a positive and strategic impact

CREATES – rallying the required teams, using tools and systems to implement and control strategy execution and reporting

VALUE – communicating and sharing information proactively, constantly, consistently to all relevant stakeholders

BUILDING – leveraging specialists, experts, peers and self-development

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This is an example of a board, advisor, consultant and C-Level team’s CovQ results:

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Forward-thinking and accomplished business builders Scott Knoll, Founder & CEO PC Dreamscape and former President & CEO of Integral Ad Science (NASDAQ IAS), and Arno Schäfer, CEO VONQ, are sharing their perspectives on applying CovQ:

Key take-aways across the entire set of tech companies participating in the CovQ assessment:

• There is only limited awareness of the concept of compounding value by consistent and successful strategy execution on an ongoing basis
• 80 % of the participating companies came in with a CovQ score lower than 80
• Tech companies that scored > 80 are also extremely successful
• Tech companies let by experienced CEOs and serial founders score the highest, which means experience needs to instrumentalized in all companies
• Companies have a lot of upside identifying and leveraging their blindspots
• Most tech companies have insufficient strategy tools for progress tracking and reporting, central information storing and sharing
• Integrated social/marketing/sales strategy is found to be challenging
• Innovation processes either do not exist or are difficult to manage and are ultimately not effective
• Scenario planning needs a wake-up call first
• Most companies’ management feel they are solid with information sharing
• Each company is totally unique
• Within a firm various individuals judge the value driver qualities differently, sometimes very differently, hence team-based CovQ assessments deliver the most effective outcomes, a structured basis for data-driven strategic decision-making and the development for mission-critical priorities and strategic initiatives. An outside view can enhance the holistic perspective even more.

In any case, there are different ways of looking at the results and each company has to develop its own opinion, takeaways, priorities, and impactful action items to be created and managed, but there are some general questions to be asked:

• Should a company double down on its strengths aka very high CovQ scores?
• Should a company fix all weaknesses aka very low CovQ scores?
• Should it be a combination of both?
• Which and how many strategic initiatives are getting a company to the next level? Which ones are actually mission-critical?
• How do the board, CEO, and management set priorities?
• How is following through on strategies ensured?
• How to pull this all together and measure it?
• Is there a single source of truth?
• Can this all be done with the current setup?

All things considered, the CovQ Tech Insights 2022 report reveals that CEOs,  management, boards, and investors alike have found taking the Compound Value Creator Quotient assessment a valuable and structured experience and use it as a window to identify value creation potentials as well as a framework to structure their mission-critical priorities and strategic initiatives moving forward. Leveraging these essential sets of information allow leadership teams to develop a business further; at the same time increasing focus and reducing risk. In the VUCA times of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity companies need the intelligence and tools to deliver growth, momentum, transformation, and outcomes, excite their stakeholders by successfully compounding value, and hence making the respective eco-systems a more effective and better place.