Nightly Business Report Presents Lasting Leadership: What You Can Learn from the Top 25 Business People of our Times (Wharton School Publishing Paperbacks)
By admin • Aug 5th, 2009 • Category: Business
Nightly Business Report Presents Lasting Leadership: What You Can Learn from the Top 25 Business People of our Times (Wharton School Publishing Paperbacks)
by: Mukul Pandya, Robbie Shell, Susan Warner, Sandeep Junnarkar, Jeffrey Brown
en | Wharton School Publishing
0131877305 9780131877306 9780768668834
Nightly Business Report Presents Lasting Leadership: What You Can Learn from the Top 25 Business People of our Times (Wharton School Publishing Paperbacks)
By Mukul Pandya, Robbie Shell, Susan Warner, Sandeep Junnarkar, Jeffrey Brown
Publisher: Wharton School Publishing
Number Of Pages: 320
Publication Date: 2006-02-10
ISBN-10 / ASIN: 0131877305
ISBN-13 / EAN: 9780131877306
Product Description:
Now in paperback…What outstanding leaders do, and how they do it. Building corporate culture that can withstand anything. Reinventing your business: when it’s time, how to do it. Key attributes of lasting leadership. The greatest business leaders of our generation. How they achieved the impossible. What you can learn from them. How to use those lessons to supercharge your career. Two of the world’s leaders in business knowledge and insight come together to select and profile the 25 most influential businesspeople of the past quarter century. The team: Nightly Business Report, the United States’ #1 daily TV business news program, and Knowledge@Wharton, The Wharton School’s online journal of research and business analysis. The book’s incisive profiles show exactly how each business leader became so influential. They teach lessons you can use to discover, refine, and nurture your own leadership style — and gain powerful influence in your own career. You’ll gain new insights into familiar faces (Jack Welch, Lou Gerstner, Bill Gates).But you’ll also gain greater appreciation for less heralded individuals — from Mary Kay’s Mary Kay Ash to Mohammed Yunus, whose ‘microlending’ revolution is helping millions of poor people around the world transform themselves into entrepreneurs. No other book offers this much actionable insight into this many extraordinary business leaders. A Conversation with Jack Welch xiii Introduction xxiii Chapter 1 Best of the Best: Inside Andy Grove’s Leadership at Intel 1 Chapter 2 Leadership and Corporate Culture 21 Chapter 3 Truth Tellers 47 Chapter 4 Identifying an Underserved Market 73 Chapter 5 Seeing the Invisible 103 Chapter 6 Using Price to Gain Competitive Advantage 131 Chapter 7 Managing the Brand 159 Chapter 8 Fast Learners 183 Chapter 9 Managing Risk 209 Chapter 10 Conclusion 237 References 243 Index 261
Summary: Mandatory reading for all young CEO-track junior executives
Rating: 5
"Lasting Leadership; What you can learn from the Top 25 business people of our times," by Mukul Pandya and Robbie Shell is without a doubt mandatory reading for all young CEO-track junior executives. This book…which is a collaboration of Nightly Business Report and Knowledge@Wharton is filled with superb shaded historical sidebars that provide for quick visual downloads of information. The balance of the text is filled with well-written narratives on how these special 25 individuals attained success.
The introduction identifies eight attributes or qualities that have enabled the 25 individuals to overcome major challenges as well as to nurture their own leadership styles. Don’t skim over it…the eight attributes are threaded into practically every page of the text. It is difficult to point a finger at the best of the 25. Certainly, Warren Buffet who resisted the pressure to jump into tech stocks and who harshly criticizes George Bush’s proposed tax cuts as an unfair break for the wealthy…stands tall.
Peter Drucker is also a giant pioneer that greatly impacted this nation. Steve Jobs, saw "the invisible." John Bogle, used "common sense." James Burke, was a "risk-taker." George Soros, had "balls." And Mary Kay, nurtured "women who worked for her and the customers who bought her products." They were my favorites. On the downside…this book lacks photos which gives it a sterile look. Recommended.
Bert Ruiz
Summary: Intriguing Though Cursory Look at Twenty-Five Who Lead by Example
Rating: 4
Now that Bill Gates is stepping down from his day-to-day responsibilities at Microsoft to devote more time to his philanthropic work, it’s especially worthwhile to read about how twenty-five prominent business leaders – including Gates – reached their positions of power and influence. Although the advice they impart fluctuates in quality and applicability, it is intriguing to compare notes on their individual profiles and leadership styles. Authors Mukul Pandya and Robbie Shell, editors of the online publication, Knowledge@Wharton, do a somewhat cursory job but it’s full of nuggets. They have smartly divided the leaders into ten separate chapters that make sense for their unique personalities and companies.
Chapter One, Best of the Best, spotlights Andy Grove of Intel, a man who escaped Nazi persecution during WWII to eventually build the world’s largest semiconductor company. Building a distinct corporate culture is the focus of the second chapter, and three highly individual personalities are showcased here – Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines and his focus on ingratiating but committed customer service, the late Mary Kay Ash of Mary Kay Cosmetics, Inc. and her enthusiastic endorsement of the Golden Rule in business practice, and James Burke of Johnson & Johnson and his focus on corporate ethics in light of the Tylenol scare of the early 1980’s. Chapter Three covers the intractable value of integrity at the top and shows three executives who have illustrated it by revealing the full truth – former GE CEO Jack Welch, management expert Peter Drucker, and Medtronic’s William George.
The book’s more tangible middle chapters are particularly interesting given the erratic nature of the economy. The fourth chapter discusses the art of serving underserved markets by seeing the invisible competitive advantages ahead of rivals. Several companies derive their success from such opportunities, especially in the evolving financial services arena, for example, Vanguard Group founder Jack Bogle seized the untapped potential in focusing on what he believed was the superiority of index funds over traditional actively-managed mutual funds; Charles Schwab, who built a company under his own name based on the untried concept of a deep-discount brokerage; and perhaps the least known of the group, Muhammad Yunus, the head of Grameen Bank, which gives loans to the poor in Bangladesh to enable them to become self-supporting entrepreneurs. In Chapter Five, Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs, CNN founder Ted Turner, and George Soros, chairman of Soros Fund Management – epitomize the classic visionary who sees things others simply cannot comprehend and remain committed to their visions. Pricing as a competitive advantage is a high-risk strategy that only a handful of leaders have proven an acute ability to sustain, and the sixth chapter highlights the successes of Sam Walton, Michael Dell and Jeff Bezos of Amazon in this area.
The last chapters tackle more nebulous, individualistic areas that require distinctive talent. For instance, brand identity is the critical factor covered in Chapter Seven and the co-authors share the highly regarded experiences of Oprah Winfrey, Richard Branson, and Lee Iacocca who immortalized Chrysler. The eighth chapter demonstrates that a voracious and expedient facility to learn and adapt is key to executive success as evidenced by Gates, Federal Express CEO Frederick Smith and former IBM CEO Louis Gerstner. The high wire acts of the most stellar leaders are examined with scrutiny in Chapter Nine, which shows how Berkshire CEO Warren Buffet, Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, and Fidelity Investments vice chairman Peter Lynch all manage risk. Chapter Ten wraps it all up by summarizing the lessons learned. Pandya and Shell have come up with an eminently readable business book that should inspire those who find in themselves the talent to lead.
Summary: What are the Qualities of Great Leadership?
Rating: 4
Lasting Leadership" is a book presented by the Wharton School Publishing with contributions from several people who run the editorial board and who work as members of the faculty at the famed Wharton School of Business. This book is a combined effort that includes words from the Wharton editorial board along with interviews from most of the twenty- five business leaders featured in this book, allowing the reader to soak up the knowledge as it is presented from the businessmen and businesswomen themselves.
This book is well- organized with the various business leaders sorted into groups based on the specific type of contribution that each particular leader made to his/her place of business and to society itself. A brief introduction begins each chapter and this is followed by the spotlights of each of the twenty- five leaders. In each instance, the man or woman in the spotlight has a page taken from his/her history, showing how a specific challenge was faced and what was done to rise to the occasion. A leadership lesson is also shared, with plenty of quotations from the leaders that summarize what they think are the important components of sound management and what they feel are some of the significant reasons why their companies have prospered the way they have. Also included with each individual is a timeline of events illustrating the important life events for each of these business leaders.
Besides the organization, one of the other things I like about this book is the fact that it lets the leaders themselves explain how they approached a difficult situation and how they were able to combine their own knowledge, their ability to delegate, and their strategic vision to overcome the most difficult situations imaginable. Instead of simply writing about what these men and women did and paraphrasing where necessary, the authors of this book let the people themselves do the talking. The twenty- five leaders highlighted in this book are the ones responsible for the tough decisions so it makes sense that they should be the ones talking directly to the reader. The advice they share is sometimes brief, but there is much to be learned and much wisdom in the way they approach business.
One other interesting thing I got from this book is the different management styles exhibited by these leaders. Each of them is his/her own person and each of them approaches business in a different manner. But in spite of their different approaches, they each have achieved a great deal of success. Part of the reason is that each of these leaders positioned himself/herself in the appropriate business environment where their strategic management style would have the greatest chance for success. In other words, a guy like Jack Welch may not have been very successful heading up Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway and vice versa. But one of the key ingredients to a successful leader is knowing his/her strengths and how best to use them. These two men (and the other leaders featured in this book) knew what they were best at, found their business niche, and then succeeded to the extreme.
This book is written like other management books in that it tries to be informative and pragmatic. It deals with real world events, changes in customer preferences, changes in the business climate, and trends in product and service offerings. But unlike many other management books, this one is more entertaining to read. The main reason lies in the fact that this book isn’t one continuous text that emphasizes a specific style of management or management theory. Instead, it offers different ideas from many different managers showing how these men and women approached problems in different ways but still succeeded in the long run. Also, this book is easier to read because it is broken up into twenty- five small pieces. This makes it easier to read because there is always a place to pause and resume at a later time.
Overall, "Lasting Leadership" is a very good business book, one that demonstrates the importance of vision and strong decision making when it comes to successful business operation. Best of all, it shows how business can be approached in many different ways while still reaching the final end result: A successfully managed crisis that benefits rather than hinders a company’s progress and sets it on the path for future success.
Summary: Light Management, Not Lasting Leadership
Rating: 3
"Nightly Business Report Presents Lasting Leadership: What You Can Learn from the Top 25 Business People of Our Times" has a long title, but does not meet its meaning. It is not about leadership. It is about management. There is not an ethos espoused, or an explanation of people development. Instead, it aims at what the leader did, rather the outlook and purpose for doing those things.
The difficulty with leadership books highlighting celebrity leaders is in separating the truth from the publicity campaign. The other challenge is in sorting out what we readers can learn from people in positions many steps above us. What, for example, can I, a mere marketing manager, learn from Alan Greenspan or Bill Gates? Both of their jobs involve a caliber of thinking far beyond my own, in fields I do not understand at an even rudimentary level.
The question, then, is does the book understand my needs, or are they just trying to trumpet the success of others? Are they trying to teach me something practical, or inspire me in a more amorphous way? "Lasting Leadership" does both. Neither category is focused enough for me to give it top marks, but there is enough for a casual, interested look into how the 25 people profiled made it to, and stayed at, the top of their game.
Each chapter is broken down into two essential parts.
The first part is the long sidebar timeline providing a minimal biography for each leader. We learn more than where and when they were born (Soros and Grove, for example, are both from Budapest, born in 1930 and 1926, respectively), but also some trivia (Turner was expelled from Brown University as a junior after breaking dorm rules), and some hardship (Oprah was raped at age 14).
The second part fleshes out the business side of the biography. For example, we learn about how Sam Walton took his first Wal-Mart in 1962 to make him America’s richest man. Throughout this section are topical instruction. In the case of Walton and his stores, the focus is "Using Price to Gain Competitive Advantage."
Where the book lands into PR fluff is that each profile is too short, and relies on anecdotes. Good business is not a few anecdotes, but such is what curses most well-meaning business books. The reader leaves inspired without substance rather than having gained useful tools for the marketplace.
Amazon.com customers will appreciate founder Jeff Bezos’ inclusion. As much of a fan I am of Amazon.com, his profile may be too early. The company’s success is still in the engineering stage. While it easy to argue its force in book selling, and the selling of almost anything online, it is as easy to argue that profits are still unsure in the long-term. The popular online retailer is only 11 years old, having been officially launched in July of 1995. In fact, it was not until 2004 that they reported a profit. Considering Bezos a lasting leader is a question we can ask in 20 years, but not now.
The book is an easy read, the kind a young manager might read on a business trip or train commute. It is not a serious leadership book, but can be inspiring to think strategically and aggressively in order to make it once he or she reaches a position of influence.
Anthony Trendl
editor, HungarianBookstore.com
Summary: Well formatted, Refreshing, invigorating
Rating: 5
This is one of the most readable books on Leadership! The quick, snappy format wastes little time in delivering the essential skills that made each of the 25 leaders unique in this world. Each of the leaders is examined in his/her own world solving that unique problem that made them exemplary. The biography sidebar shows how that person reached that point in life, how he/she took hold of the problem, turned it into an opportunity and led the team through.
I teach Leadership and Project Management classes, in addition I am a believer in the power of the individual leader. I use this book to highlight real world examples on the virtues of real leaders.
Please Login or Register to read the rest of this content.
Related Posts
One Response »
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Can someone please provide an updated download link ??? thx