Value Leadership: the 7 Principles that Drive Corporate Value in Any Economy.Value Leadership: The 7 Principles that Drive Corporate Value in Any Economy. By Peter S. Cohan. Jossey-Bass, 312 pages. $27.95 The core concept for this book, Peter Cohan Peter Cohan is an American businessman. Education Cohan earned a B.A. in art history in 1979 and a B.S. in electrical engineering in 1980 from Swarthmore College. writes, comes from research he did on top-performing companies, especially those that had done well in both boom and bust In economics, the term boom and bust refers to the movement of an economy through economic cycles. The Boom-Bust economic cycle According to most economists, an economic boom is typically characterized by an increased level of economic output (GDP), a corresponding markets. In actuality, he screened the 1,500 largest publicly traded companies publicly traded company A company whose shares of common stock are held by the public and are available for purchase by investors. The shares of publicly traded firms are bought and sold on the organized exchanges or in the over-the-counter market. on a series of 11 qualitative and quantitative factors, and emerged with a top eight he identifies as value leaders--and not "value" in the investing sense of picking beaten-down stocks in the hopes they will recover. In analyzing these eight companies-Goldman Sachs & Co., Johnson & Johnson, Wal-Mart, Southwest Airlines This article is about the American airline. For the former Japanese airline, see Japan Transocean Air. For the British airline, see Air Southwest. Southwest Airlines Co. , Microsoft Corp., credit card giant MBNA MBNA Monument Builders of North America MBNA Mercedes-Benz North America MBNA Maryland Bank, National Association MBNA Maryland Bank North America MBNA Mount Baker Nurses Association (Bellingham, Washington) , J.M Smucker and semiconductor maker Synopsys--Cohan developed a series of common threads that he developed into a "value leadership" model. Not all the companies excel on all counts, he assures us, but their overall performance clearly outranks peers. The seven core principles can be summarized quickly: value human relationships, foster teamwork, experiment frugally fru·gal adj. 1. Practicing or marked by economy, as in the expenditure of money or the use of material resources. See Synonyms at sparing. 2. Costing little; inexpensive: a frugal lunch. , fulfill your commitments, fight complacency, win through multiple means and give to your community. Using them, he then can construct a "value quotient" that numerically grades any given company. Cohan, president of his own management consulting Noun 1. management consulting - a service industry that provides advice to those in charge of running a business service industry - an industry that provides services rather than tangible objects and venture capital firm and the author of seven previous books, tackles each of these principles in individual chapters, highlighting the precepts by comparing his value Leaders' behavior with that of lesser performers. There's a wealth of detail and thoughtful analysis of what really makes the leaders excel. Management books fostering a principled approach to corporate performance aren't exactly rare. But Value Leadership is unusually well-constructed and perceptive, and its precepts seem eminently sensible for companies aiming for long-term excellence. |
|
||||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion