| Even in their most difficult moments they are sustained and cheered by their servant, Leo. The journey goes reasonably well until, inexplicably, Leo disappears. |
| The group quickly falls into bickering factions. Before long, the journey is abandoned. One member of the group, after years of wandering alone, stumbles upon Leo, and is dumbfounded to discover that Leo, far from being a servant, has all along been the revered leader of the Order. |
| This story has been told and retold many times but its retains its interest because it breaks the fundamental myth that quick-fix leadership books in general seeks to propagate "" that leaders have to wear a standard uniform of personality, and that there are only a dozen set formulas by which one can choose the men from the boys. |
| The lessons given in How to Run a Company may sometimes be contradictory and do not add up to a coherent primer, but the best part of the book is its refreshingly different approach. |
| It doesn't sermonise, and has no management theory or must-do lesson. It is essentially a collection of war stories by many current and former CEOs who have actually been in the trenches. |
| For example, former DuPont CEO John Kroll's account of cutting environmental waste from a mind-boggling $1.3 billion a year to $700 million makes riveting reading. |
| Kroll, who is credited with dramatically shifting the company's business focus, writes animatedly about how he changed people's mindset by introducing what he calls a blue book that became the performance bible for strategic business unit leaders because it tied managers down to specific performance commitments. |
| Some of the prescriptions by the CEOs look drastic but become convincing, as these are people who are not ivory tower theoreticians and have actually done it. |
| Former Northwest Airlines CEO John Dasburg talks about selling his board a new strategy and then liquidating holdovers (75 per cent of upper and middle managers) from the old regime. |
| Ed Breen, the new CEO of scandal-rocked Tyco, fired his entire board, moved quickly during his first 100 days to build a new senior management team and began to restore trust in a company battered by scandal and bad publicity. |
| One of the most powerful lessons from the accounts of these incredibly successful CEOs is this: these are people who haven't made the mistake of looking only at the mirror to get their decisions approved. |
| They learnt to surround themselves with people who are willing to tell the truth, people who question and people who have passion for the company. |
| Listen, for instance, to John Dasburg. The key moment in a corporate rescue mission, Dasburg says, can happen in unusual ways and at surprising times. |
| Soon after taking over as CEO of Northwest Airlines in 1990, Dasburg got a call at home from a junior executive describing the core of a turnaround strategy that he was convinced would work. It had been a long day, but the young man insisted that Dasburg hear him out. |
| The executive came to Dasburg's home and presented his ideas in his library. They talked for almost four hours, late into the night. |
| The CEO found the proposal compelling and was convinced with the proposal that he could turn around Northwest by abandoning the prevailing strategy of developing or acquiring as many hubs as possible and instead focusing on just three hubs. |
| When Northwest launched the three-hub strategy, it was ridiculed in the industry "" the conventional wisdom was that an airline was required to serve every market. But as subsequent developments proved, the strategy saved Northwest. |
| Quite a few of the articles in the book deal with the political role of the CEO. Shareholder rights activist Nell Minnow urges the boards of directors to keep a close eye on the CEO, while ex-Office Depot chief David Fuentes reminds readers not to alienate the powers that be in his story of how the Federal Trade Commission blocked a proposed merger with Staples (he shifts blame to the "angry and hostile posture of our attorneys"). |
| Powerful lessons, the only exception being Goldman Sachs vice chairman Robert Hurst's somewhat unconvincing warning to CEOs that pressuring analysts for favourable stock recommendations won't work anymore. |
| How to Run is essentially presentations made at the prestigious CEO Academy run by Dennis C Carey, vice chairman of Spencer Stuart in the US, and Marie-Caroline von Weichs, dean of the Academy which organises a six-monthly immersion course for newly appointed CEOs of the world's leading companies. |
| What participants pay $10,000 to hear at the Academy is contained in this book, says Carey. From that perspective, the modest price tag of the book should be money well spent. |
| What comes as a bonus is the conversational style and countless anecdotes. Read, for example, this gem from The Economist's business editor Matthew Bishop who advises CEOs on how to get fair news coverage. |
| Bishop was interviewing the head of a Wall Street trading firm who had spent a long time avoiding the interview, and naturally, the first question was why he had been so elusive. |
| The CEO's answer cut right to the chase: "I hate talking to you bastards in the press and I'm only talking to you now because my PR person has told me I've got to." |
| HOW TO RUN A COMPANY |
| Lessons from top leaders of the CEO Academy |
| Dennis C Carey and Marie-Caroline Von Weichs Crown Business ISBN 1-4000-4927-X |
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