Value can be a fleeting thing as many shareholders discovered when the tech bubble burst and corporate governance slid downhill. Market capitalization of retirement portfolios dropped to the depths from which most will never recover. The world changed so fast that it became a blur in the vision of most observers and will likely never be the way people remembered how they lived and worked for most of their lives. At the center of this storm were the CPAs and financial executives responsible for creating the mess and the corporations and CEOs to whom they reported or were accountable. While it is easy to blame these people, a good share of this load has to be carried by the shareholders and the gullible public who looked for a quick buck. From this tangle evolved the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation in 2002 and a business world that has seen productivity improve. This has brought heightened attention to corporate performance management and the reliability of accounting data. I am going to add my profit-focused accounting ideas to this stew and offer some recipes that will provide direction for how to improve the effectiveness of creating, managing, and measuring value.