Value Leadership: The 7 Principles That Drive Corporate Value in Any Economy - Paperback

by Peter S. Cohan (Author)

In Value Leadership, renowned management and investment expert Peter Cohan -- whose 2002 stock picks gained 81percent when the S&P 500 plunged 24 percent-- provides a new and powerful concept of sustainable corporate value. Using his expertise in understanding shareholder value, Cohan offers executives seven management principles that were tested in periods of economic expansion and contraction. These principles are: valuing human relationships, fostering teamwork, experimenting frugally, fulfilling your commitments, fighting complacency, winning through multiple means, and giving to your community. Cohan illustrates these principles by drawing on examples from eight Value Leaders-- Synopsys, WalMart, Goldman Sachs, MBNA, Johnson & Johnson, J. M. Smucker, Southwest Airlines, and Microsoft. Through two recessions, these companies grew 35 percent faster, were 109 percent more profitable, and generated five times more shareholder wealth than their peers.

Front Jacket

With consumers and investors losing confidence in corporate America, executives are under heightened pressure to perform. As the risk of failure grows ever greater, executives scramble for solid principles to help them prosper.

If you are an executive, you want to know how to create higher levels of value for your employees, customers, and communities. You want to power your organization to superior profitability in bad times and good.

In Value Leadership, renowned management and investment expert Peter Cohan-whose 2002 stock picks gained 81 percent when the S&P 500 plunged 24 percent-provides a new and powerful concept of sustainable corporate value. Using his expertise in understanding shareholder value, Cohan offers executives seven management principles that were tested in periods of economic expansion and contraction. These principles are: valuing human relationships, fostering teamwork, experimenting frugally, fulfilling your commitments, fighting complacency, winning through multiple means, and giving to your community. Cohan illustrates these principles by drawing on examples from eight Value Leaders-Synopsys, WalMart, Goldman Sachs, MBNA, Johnson & Johnson, J. M. Smucker, Southwest Airlines, and Microsoft. Through two recessions, these companies grew 35 percent faster, were 109 percent more profitable, and generated five times more shareholder wealth than their peers.

Cohan offers a tool, the Value Quotient-which is tightly linked to this superior performance-to help executives quantify their performance and learn from the Value Leaders' best practices.

Back Jacket

Create Value AND Improve Performance in your Organization

"Peter Cohan achieves the rare feat of showing how companies can link values, leadership, and human relationships to competitive success and financial performance."
--George S. Yip, professor and associate dean, London Business School, and author, Total Global Strategy

"We all have a problem with investments. We don't trust what we see and hear. Without trust, values are destroyed. Peter Cohan's Value Leadership is a clear and accessible guide for each individual to make intelligent choices and to restore value. You will want to read this book more than once."
--Robert A. G. Monks, founder, Institutional Shareholder Services and LENS

"Corporate America and the investing public would have been far healthier if the wisdom of Value Leadership had been integrated into the cultures of those once great firms recently savaged by self-serving rogue executives. The lessons are powerful and yet readable. They come off as rich dramas rather than ethical scolding."
--Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, professor and associate dean, Yale School of Management

Author Biography

Peter S. Cohan is president of Peter S. Cohan & Associates, a management consulting and venture capital firm. He has written seven books, including The Technology Leaders (Jossey-Bass, 1997), which was selected as one of the ten best management books of 1997 by Management General, and Net Profit (Jossey-Bass, 2001), which the Washington Post called "A savvy, discriminating guide to Internet business." He has appeared on Good Morning America, CNN, and CNBC and has been quoted in the New York Times, Time, Fortune, and Business Week. Cohan is also an executive-in-residence at Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts.