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.

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