Customer Reviews

Economic Value Management: Applications and Techniques

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Corporate senior executives are subjected to pressure for performance from many constituents - shareholders, customers, employees, governmental and regulatory authorities, rating agencies, board members, and securities analysts. And, since these are by definition high achieving individuals, some of the greatest pressure is from within. The existence of many constituents, many with conflicting objectives, often makes it very difficult for CEO's, CFO's and board members to focus on key performance goals and metrics. Over the course of my 34 year career as a corporate banker, I've seen many confused executives, pressured for EPS growth, revenue growth, ROE, but not necessarily understanding the long run impact of any or all of these performance metrics.

Ms. Bloxham has produced a superb book that takes a "holistic" view of the process of identifying performance criteria for senior executives, and not just for those in the private sector. She and I share common views about the benefits of economic value added metrics, but she has gone well beyond this to address many of the conflicts for performance faced by executives. She provides an excellent framework for establishing a set of logical goals and performance metrics for managing complex businesses and non-profit organizations.

When practitioners, who have actually rolled up their sleeves and implemented, write a book, it is usually a good read. In Eleanor Bloxham's case, this is a great read.

There is so much confusion about what operational and strategic levers an organization should push or pull to create rather than destroy shareholder wealth. Most articles slip into gross platitudes and sloganeering and sidestep the "how to." Bloxham's book dives in but explains adnmittedly complex interelationships in a way you can understand them. She does a fine job integrating the component tools, like the balanced scorecard and activity based costing, into economic value management.

Some day boards of directors may find this to be the standard book for assisting their shareholders make, not lose, money.

A friend of mine recommended this book to be, but when I first saw the title of the book I wasn't sure what it was going to
be about. It seemed a bit intimidating. However, the book is very easy to read, has incredible insights and having read it, I now can certainly understand why the book was named a late addition candidate to "ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS of 2002" and a CEO "RECOMMENDED READ" by CEO refresher, an independent editorial board recognized by the Harvard Business School and
the Wall Street Journal. I think it is one of the best books on business I've ever read.

I'm on my second reading of this book and as I go through it I'm revising my business unit's plans for the coming fiscal year. As Bloxham points out, change is a difficult process, but worth it, so I'm sure I'll be referring to this book for years to come.

This book is a winner! It emphasizes stewardship of resources, and explains in detail with excellent examples, how to implement a new way of thinking about responsibility. The book is an enjoyable read and packed with suggestions for action.

This book provides a conceptual framework and a high-level introduction to the practice of Economic Value Management, which is a set of methods and metrics that are used to evaluate and predict business performance and strives to provide overview free of the biases introduced by typical accounting-based measures. This book is written for members of the board of directors (especially those who serve on audit committees) and for executive managers who want to build a performance measurement and reporting system that fosters trust between management, the board, shareholders, and the capital markets.

Overall the book is very clearly written, has good flow and examples, and can be read in short order (two short or one long flight). "Economic Value Management" begins by providing a foundation and rationale for a new way of evaluating and predicting business performance. The rationale includes typical tricks and traps of traditional accounting-based measures and the need to move to a system that provides more clarity to all the constituents and stakeholders. The case studies in Part Two (Applications and Techniques) show how the methods and metrics can be put into play and used to make better executive-level decisions. The only criticism that I have for the book is that all of the examples used in the book are somewhat suspect as they are unreferenced and use alias names for the businesses, so it is unclear whether the stories were pulled from thin air or if they are veritable stories.

A friend of mine highly recommended this book to be, but when I first saw the title of the book I wasn't sure what it was going to be about. It seemed a bit intimidating. However, the book is very easy to read, has incredible insights and having read it, I now can certainly understand why the book was named a late addition candidate to "ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS of 2002" and a CEO "RECOMMENDED READ" by CEO refresher, an independent editorial board recognized by the Harvard Business School and
the Wall Street Journal. I think it is one of the best books on business I've ever read.

I'm on my second reading of this book and as I go through it I'm revising my business unit's plans for the coming fiscal year. As Bloxham points out, change is a difficult process, but worth it, so I'm sure I'll be referring to this book for years to come.

This book is a winner! It emphasizes stewardship of resources, and explains in detail with excellent examples, how to implement a new way of thinking about responsibility. The book is an enjoyable read and packed with suggestions for action.