Jim earned a doctorate in Business Administration from Southern Cross University. He also has master’s degrees in arts and commerce, a Bachelor of Arts degree, diploma in teaching and certificates in mortgage broking and financial planning.
He sits on numerous boards including TAFE NSW Western Sydney Institute, Western Sydney Institute of Sport, Parramatta Stadium and Breed Inc. He is a former Chairman Salvation Army Red Shield Appeal Western Sydney and in 2010 he was awarded an OAM for his community work.
Jim’s innate talent lies in understanding people. He has a genuine interest in human kind. People skills are at the cornerstone of his business success. Social capital and its value is a belief system that still drives his actions in “retirement”.
He built a business with over 5,000 clients in 26 years. In mid-2013 he sold the business, called The Taggart Group, to listed company Ausbrokers.
Today, his main interests are philanthropy and caring for his grandchildren. He is also a presenter on Alive 90.5 FM and an Adjunct Professor with the University of Notre Dame.
Jim Taggart spoke exclusively to WSBA editor, Michael Walls about the value of social capital and attitudes to life and business.
WSBA: Jim you are well known for your expertise in social capital. It’s a complex subject. How do you explain it?
Jim: One of the problems is you’re dealing with is a construct which is an abstract and as a result of that, it’s very hard to measure. Now there are those academics who say that you can measure it and you can do all that. All I’m suggesting is the deposit – it’s over time – and relationships are over time. You never make a relationship in one minute. You may start to commence the relationship. Now you’ve got to do what I call maintenance – relationship maintenance. And that bit then becomes the debit and the credit – the deposit and the withdrawal – of actions and values. It’s illustrated simply with examples of everyday life. You say to someone you have a relationship with: I’ll pick you up at 4 o'clock. 10 to five I get there. You’ve had a terrible day. You want to have a beer around 4 o'clock. You’ve waited and so on. They didn’t call you. And if that continued two or three times what am I doing to that relationship? I’m eroding trust. I am withdrawing a whole range of values that tie our relationship. It’s a bit like a razor blade. It’s just sometimes it’s a big cut; sometimes it’s a little cut. And it just keeps dragging that relationship away.
WSBA: So you make withdrawals?
Jim: And they will vary depending on the “raison d’etre” which is the reason for being of that relationship. The challenge and maintaining it; the whole area where people fall down in relationships is what I call relationship maintenance. That’s a term I haven’t seen it in any literature. It’s one I’ve made up. So what happens is the elements of social capital, like trust and honesty and mateship and all of those they start to fall and so they fall out of that social capital equation when relationships are not maintained. How much? I don’t know. That depends on the giver and the receiver.
WSBA: To me there are certain businesses where social capital works immensely well and some where it doesn’t have much influence. If you’re a listed company for example, as long as your key people have the key relationships that rubs off on the organisation, not so much at the individual level.
Jim: Yes. There are different levels of social – you’re right. Both horizontally and vertically. But the interesting thing with the whole thing of social capital is that people underestimate who you’re connected to.
WSBA: I think that happens all the time.
Jim: That’s exactly right; the influence that you can have on people and a whole range of other things – and that’s what people don’t understand. The sociologists talk about social capital embedded – right – embedded, in an economic system – which it’s really the relationships that emerge in the transactions and people don’t have a value. See, social capital or relationship capital, I’ll call it, has an exchange rate. And it has an exchange rate live with each and every person. You see, at the end of the day you’re dealing with people. And one of the problems a lot of people are finding at the moment is how to deal with relationship with technology.
WSBA: Exactly right.
Jim: And so there’s this whole world that’s emerging with social capital and technology. You know; all the social media. And I think a lot of people – where – I can see resurgence back to nearly the cave mentality where you’re finding pockets of little restaurants, pockets – like the inner city is now getting the corner shops back. What I’m trying to say is that people long for belonging. But the world in which we belong now is in here.
WSBA: I think you’re right. I also I think that we are so far off knowing how to leverage and the internet and technology, it’s not funny. The most powerful social function now on the internet is Facebook. Nothing against Facebook but I don't think we’ve come anywhere near what could be done with regards to people’s health – physical and mental using Internet technology. And I think we’re at the embryonic stage of how to use it for business.
Jim: Oh no question about that. But Michael, see, for me at the end of the day, we’re human beings that long for affection in the sense of the physical part of things - without going into a big rave. In my research, one of the things that came up was that a number of people went to home base networking and chambers of commerce who are over 50, not to do business.
WSBA: Just to have a social outlet?
Jim: To team up with someone to go to dinner or to make a friend to catch up and come to their place. By meeting people and talking to them, looking at them, seeing their face light up or whatever, so I think that’s still an extremely important part and I think the technology of the future – the challenge is always to bridge that – and the technology. But I think there are more social applications and more social purposes coming online. I mean Facebook is always updating their ways to communicate more clearly but I think it’s never going to replace the face to face thing because that’s the way people really feel. The problem today is that people think they can just give their social capital away. But at the end of the day, we’re human creatures. We all make decisions on what motivates us.
See http://www.youtube.com/user/AccessNewsAustralia for video interview with Dr Jim Taggart OAM.
