Absolutely. There can be no 2 arguments about this.
I do not think anyone who has grown with VP disputes the importance of Capital Allocation - brought home to us by Mr D in 2011. He said it doesn’t matter how many times ytour stock goes up, what matters is how much you have put into the stock. He drove it home into us by this simple poser, “suppose your stock goes up 5x but you have put only 1L into it, how much did you make” I said 4L. Then he said “suppose your stock goes up only 2x but you have put into it 5L” and I said 5L!! And then gave us (as enunciated in the thread) the very simple, powerful, easily executable Capital Allocation framework that we swear by today.
That was a great insight for us in 2011, and that changed the course of thinking/investing at VP, and started the habit of capturing distilled practical investing wisdom (from practitioners of the craft) every year - a la Success Patterns, Business Value Drivers, Art of Valuation, EPA, and the like - stuff that you usually do not find talked about much in investment books)
I am making bold to announce the latest initiative of capturing which most senior practitioners are urging us to do next - an Investing Process Maturity model - which is in progress (going back and forth amongst a few of us). We hope to present the first public version in 6 months, inshaallah!!
The idea being (NOT to present a finished product, none of us are) but a W-I-P Investing Process framework, where we can keep plugging incremental learnings every year - that also serves as a benchmark of our individual progress curve. We felt there is so much to learn - invariably, there is too much of (for want of a better word) disjointed or fragmented learning. With an investing process maturity framework in place - we may be better placed to weigh any incremental learnings, and place them where they belong - on the investing maturity curve !!
Tall aims. Surely - and its an uphill task - not for the faint-hearted - but as always, this is what energises us at VP and with the help of this wonderful community and our super Mentors, we make bold to strive and raise the bar again!