Finding opportunities among 'poorly managed' firms

Lack of focus on management

We have often stressed we spend too little time with company management as we struggle to differentiate between those teams that are truly talented, and those with silver tongues who have found themselves in the right place at the right time.

In general, if an audience can see tangible evidence of success, it is far more likely to be convinced of management brilliance, thus making objective analysis difficult.   Is it any easier to detect poor management and, if so, does this bring opportunity with it? Once again, the risk of identifying poor management from performance in meetings is that it often highlights failings in presentation skills, not management abilities. We prefer to judge management through their historic actions instead. This, typically, would be from analysis of their capital allocation decisions such as...