Abstract
When you first lay eyes upon it, ‘My Value Creation Journey: An Autobiography of My Work’ attracts you immediately because of its title and its connotation that it might not be pedantic or heavy to read, and it stays close to that premise in the sense of the flow that resembles a bestseller. Nevertheless, as you begin to read and proceed through the chapters, you are taken through a myriad landscape of the author’s journey that ends up demanding the reader’s attention much more than at the beginning.
It starts like an autobiography of Madden, including his grandfather’s boxing life, then his own and then the beginnings of his career, how his awareness to value creation took birth, corporate finance, society and economics, through generous references to key ideas and metrics pertaining to value creation. There is also a chapter devoted to The Madden Center for Value Creation, which is more of a promotional piece than anything else.
There are some key takeaways from the book in terms of ‘knowledge building’ that the author argues would be a kind of a Rosetta stone to establishing the idea, creation and upkeep of the notion of value creation for organizations. To this end, there are many references, examples and metrics that the author provides to articulate how systems thinking, asking better questions, feedback, etc., would pave the way to a holistic knowledge building and value creation system. And that value is created when the customer feels that they have got a ‘good deal’.
Madden does a great job of enumerating his concepts into tasks that take you through what he calls the ‘knowledge building loop’ and how you can improve efficiency and move away from silo-based thinking. He talks of the concept of ‘value streams’ that is, in itself, very interesting, and how perceptions, duly measured through scorecards, are critical in managing ‘out-of-control situations’ and creating learning opportunities. And that analysis of problems and understanding actions and their consequences, experimentation and monitoring external environment will help quickly adapt to change the impact to the firm’s operations. He then goes on to link these with the five primary discovery skills to help promote the knowledge building loop.
On the whole, this book seems to reflect the author’s thought process in value creation and an autobiographical view of operational efficiencies in a business finance setting, but there is also a section on net zero and environmental, social and governance (ESG) metrics that appears out of place in relation to the general theme and tone of the book. Barring some of these, the language of the narrative is light and easy to comprehend, and the pace is very good that it presents a decent perspective on value creation.