The Executive Guide to Boosting Cash Flow and Shareholder Value: The Profit Pool Approach

by V. Rory Jones

As a business leader, you're constantly looking for ways to maximize shareholder value--as quickly as possible. The Executive Guide to Boosting Cash Flow and Shareholder Value outlines a practical, effective, and innovative framework for achieving this goal, using established management tools to find and exploit high-value Profit Pools. With this book as your guide, you'll quickly discover how to unlock large untapped sources of cash flow, and achieve...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0470138963
• ISBN13: 9780470138960
• Release Date: March 2008
• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 2.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.4" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Everything you wanted to know about shareholder value... and then some!

As a former management consultant, I have never ceased to be amazed by the relative lack of attention given to cash flow amongst many successful businesses and business leaders. Despite the fact that the linkage between shareholder cash flow and market capitalization is more or less iron-clad, and the typical executive fixated on shareholder value (or more correctly, share price), in my own experience most business leaders still tend to retreat to the safety of GAAP-based metrics when setting market strategy. While this book doesn't attempt to answer this paradox, it does present a detailed "how-to" guide to applying the principles of cash flow and shareholder value. This obviously isn't the first book on shareholder value, but Profit Pools distinguishes itself from its predecessors by adopting a much more pragmatic approach, providing a series of familiar examples (sorry, no buggy whips here) that should allow even first-timers to apply the concepts of shareholder value to their own businesses, no matter how big or small. Furthermore, Jones fills in what I would consider to be the "missing link" in shareholder value theory -- whereas much of the existing literature focuses on the value created within a business, this book also addresses the equally important issue of how value is created in the marketplace. A few caveats are in order -- some of the terminology here takes a bit of getting used to (market inflection events?) and because Jones has taken such a comprehensive approach to the subject, this book is not a quick read. Stick with it, however, and you will wonder why you hadn't applied this approach to your own business earlier.

A Practical and Insightful Guide

There are far too many business books out there. Most at best have 1 or 2 new ideas wrapped in 200 pages of fluff. Well this book is different. It takes a very practical view of what really matters in business - profit - and looks at it from end to end. In general it stays away from conceptual models and focuses on what people can really do to improve their business. It is a great hip pocket book for any business strategist or consultant that cares more about business results than powerpoint.

If you (help) run a big business, this has specific actions that'll help you deliver value growth...

... and it's written in a practical way -- no finance formulae, arcane accounting rules, or esoteric notions. It's great -- it gets to the point quickly and succinctly; gets around accounting and other issues to see real value creation in all parts of the business at a `granular' level. And, then, it sets out why managing the long term is critical, and how that can be done to grow a lot of value. I'm a believer. The middle part could be a lot shorter -- I guess there's stuff in there that's new thinking. The rest of it just distills established value thinking (like The Value Imperative by McTaggart, another favorite) into actionable approaches. Take note -- it doesn't explain WHY we should manage to drive value growth, but I guess we've come to accept that as a mandate in the last few decades. Good luck with it.