Short reviews of business books recommended for the CEO.
LEARNING HOW TO LEAD
Corporate Lifecycles: How and Why Corporations Grow and Die and What to Do About It, by Ichak Adizes (Prentice-Hall, 1988)
Company founders rave about the relieved recognition they feel when reading this book -- which outlines the fits and starts and patterns autocratically run companies typically experience while growing, and how to get past them. "It described everything we went through in frightening detail," says John Katzman of The Princeton Review, a test-preparation service based in New York City. "It was my business, in print."
Katzman actually had an unopened copy of the book for almost two years before he saw author and consultant Adizes (interviewed in Inc. in January 1991, [Article link]) at a seminar. He devoured the book when he returned, had his managers read it, and even brought in the Adizes Institute to run a session. "It was a nasty thing; I sat there and heard what was wrong with the company for three days." He says the book changed his business; the company is trying to practice Adizes's theories about broadening and improving the way decisions are made and implemented. "We're moving from a monarchy to, if not quite a democratic system, then a constitutional monarchy."
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The Executive Odyssey, by Frederick G. Harmon (John Wiley & Sons, 1989)
A look at the tension springing from the inevitable gap between a leader's capabilities and what's required of him or her, and a prescription for evaluating skills and moving forward. Although the language tends toward new-age cant ("channeling energy," finding "hidden power") some CEOs rank it as the best professional development book out there.
The Greatest Thing in the World, by Henry Drummund (Whitaker House, 1981)
The favorite book of Donald Burr, founder of People Express Airlines. "It's a short book that I still carry around. Drummund was a 19th-century Scottish clergyman, and this is a sermon he gave about Corinthians and how the greatest thing in the world is love. I don't think of it as religious; it's a beautiful piece of prose, and to me the best management book I've ever read. Not that you can read it and know how to run a company. But leadership requires care, compassion, and skill -- and this book speaks to all three quite powerfully," says Burr.
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On Becoming a Leader, by Warren Bennis (Addison-Wesley, 1989)
Bennis has written a number of books on leadership, but this synthesis of interviews with notables from Betty Friedan to John Sculley is a favorite. "Especially good," says Jimmy Calano of CareerTrack, a professional training company in Boulder, Colo., "is the last chapter, 'Forging the Future.' It tells how to shift from being a manager to being a leader; it's a synthesis of the book. I think you can learn vicariously, which is why I like to see how high-profile people work."
Also recommended: Bennis's Leaders, written with Burt Nanus (Harper & Row, 1985), which looks at artistic, political, and corporate leaders and finds a common trait in their ability to retain original and compellingly articulated points of view.
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The Art of War, by Sun Tzu, translated by Thomas Cleary (Shambhala Publications, 1988)
This volume of ancient Chinese wisdom on waging war (example: the battle is won long before the enemy is even engaged) is consistently rated higher than most modern leadership books. "I think it's 50 times better than all of them," says Tom Golisano of Paychex, a payroll-processing company based in Rochester, N.Y. Business as a battleground may be overworked territory (remember Wess Roberts's Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun?), but Sun Tzu's treatise still gets cited regularly and enthusiastically.
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The One-Minute Manager, by Kenneth Blanchard and Spencer Johnson (Morrow, 1982)
The best-seller admonishing managers to define tasks, measure results, praise regularly, and criticize concisely gets high praise both from executives who hardly ever read and from those who read everything. Some complain the book is too light; others commend its direct and simple style.
COMPETING IN THE MARKETPLACE
Changing the Game: The New Way to Sell, by Larry Wilson and Hersch Wilson (Simon & Schuster, 1987)
"I've read 50 books about selling, and this one is the best," says Robert Sloss of Connor Formed Metal Products, based in San Francisco. Half popular, half academic, "it speaks to how to change the way you're perceived in the market. We're in a hard-to-distinguish-us-from-the-rest business -- metal fabrication -- and this book got everybody thinking about how we needed to change from selling product to selling service. It pulled everybody together; if people had trouble understanding me, they could understand the book." Salespeople now pass information about accounts to people in customer service and on the shop floor, heightening awareness of customer needs. Chapters 1 through 6, describing types of customers and how to successfully serve them, are required reading for Connor employees.
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Building a Chain of Customers, by Richard J. Schonberger (Free Press, 1990)
