Jim McTaggart biography - Marakon

VBM Thought Leader: Jim McTaggart biography

The Value Imperative: Managing for Superior Shareholder Returns

Jim McTaggart biography resume About Jim McTaggart: biography / resume / curriculum vitae

Jim McTaggart used to be Vice President of Wells Fargo Bank, and co-founder of the bank’s Corporate Finance Department. Jim McTaggart is one of Marakon’s founding partners. He has written and spoken extensively on the subject of managing for value.

Jim McTaggart's published work includes:
- The Value Imperative: Managing for Superior Shareholder Returns, coauthored by Peter Kontes and Michael Mankins (Free Press, 1994),
- Feature articles for Strategy & Leadership, Shareholder Value, Mergers & Acquisitions and Interfaces,
- A number of essays in the Marakon Commentary series.

In addition, Jim McTaggart has also served on the Advisory Board for Strategic Management at MIT’s Sloan School of Business. He's an avid runner and plays tennis regularly. In addition, he serves as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Greenwich Hospital and on the Yale-New Haven Health System.

About The Value Imperative: Managing for Superior Shareholder Returns
Moving beyond the strategies that managers have employed to create shareholder value, management consultants Jim McTaggart, Peter Kontes, and Michael Mankins reveal their powerful new framework for the systematic, day-to-day management of shareholder value. The authors attack head-on the fundamental weaknesses in current management practices, namely, the stranglehold that budgeting has over strategic planning and the lack of imagination in management plans that prevents real changes and consequences. They provide a systematic approach to "value based management" that eliminates these weaknesses, offering proven strategies for managing large, complex companies to consistently produce superior results for stockholders.

Building on more than 16 years of consulting experience with many of the largest and best-known companies in North America, Europe, and Australia, the authors delineate the fundamental principles of value creation, as well as the primary obstacles. Starting with the principle that "cash flows drive value," McTaggart, Kontes, and Mankins show how to create a single governing objective that will enable managers to make decisions most likely to increase the company's competitive, organizational, and financial strength.

Building on the objective of maximizing shareholder value, they outline a Value Based Management framework that directly links a company's strategies and organization to its value in capital markets. Using real-world examples, they describe how to develop business and corporate strategies that substantially improve competitive position and increase market value, often within only two to five years.

And as most large companies lack the internal processes necessary to manage for value on a sustained basis, the authors show managers how to build the five key processes that are institutional value drivers: governance, strategic planning, resource allocation, performance management, and top management compensation. Mastering these capabilities is fundamental to the ongoing, consistent creation of shareholder value over time.

All companies, the authors argue, inherently possess an enormous potential to create higher value for their shareholders. With hundreds of examples of companies that have successfully employed the beliefs, principles, and practices of value based management, this book shows general managers how to generate superior returns and realize their business's full value potential.

Some people consider this rather practical than theoretical book the bible of all books on value creation and how to achieve it. It should certainly be on every top manager and financial practitioner's bookshelf. An very good blend of Value Based Management and Corporate Strategy.

“Woe be to him who read but one book”.

(George Herbert 1593 - 1632, English Poet)