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Jim Collins GOOD TO GREAT: why some companies make the leap and others don’t. New York: Harper Business, 2001 ISBN 0-06-662099-6 LIST PRICE: $27.50 BOARD OPTIONS/AMAZON PRICE: $19.25 YOU SAVE: 30% |
Twenty-one researchers looked for public companies with the following patters: Fortune 500 Companies with fifteen-year cumulative stock returns at or below the general stock market, a transition period followed by cumulative returns at least three times the general market over the next fifteen years. Eleven companies were identified and compared to similar companies within industry that had not transitioned from good to great. For example, Abbott was compared with Upjohn; Circuit City with Silo; Gillette with Warner-Lambert, Kroger with A&P, etc. The project involved coding 6,000 articles, 2,000 pages of interview transcripts, and 384Million bytes of computer data. What was learned? Since THE key role of the Board of the hiring and firing of the CEO, we will focus on this area only. But the book has lots of strategic implications for Board members and senior executives beyond CEO recruiting. Boards of public companies often assume that salvation can be achieved by hiring a well-known, charismatic CEO from outside the company. In a world of supply & demand, Boards ask shareholders to pay dearly for such rare talent. Are the results worth it? According to Collins and his team, such charismatic leaders are NEGATIVELY associated with good to great companies. Ten of the eleven good to great CEOs came from within the company. Good to great CEOs are self-effacing, even shy. They have a blend of personal humility combined with fierce determination for the organization as a whole. Boards of Directors are looking for Julius Caesar when they should be looking for Abraham Lincoln. The research-based nature of this effort takes the book out of the ordinary category of “pop” management books. It is a book to read, digest, and re-read. Larry Stybel & Maryanne Peabody |
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Jay W. Lorsch and Thomas J. Tierney. ALIGNING
THE STARS: how to succeed when professionals drive results. Boston:
Harvard Business School, Press, 2002. ISBN
1-57851-513-0 LIST
PRICE: $29.95 AMAZON/BOARDOPTIONS
PRICE: $20.97 YOU
SAVE 30% |
Jay Lorsch is the Louis Kirstein Professor at the Harvard University Graduate School of Business. Thomas J. Tierney is former Chief Executive Officer for Bain & Company. Lorsch and Tierney are a powerful duo for an examination of the world of Professional Service Firms (PSF). Eighteen highly successful U.S.-based PSFs were examined. They represented the fields of accounting advertising, retained search, investment banking, IT consulting, law, and management consulting. Firms surveyed included McKinsey, Bain, Skadden Arps, Wachtell Kipton, IBM Global Services, J.P. Morgan H&Q , Goldman Sachs, Young & Rubicam, Ogilvy & Mather, Ernst& Young, Price WaterhouseCoopers. The authors argue that when leaders exclaim, "people are our most important asset" they are being hackneyed and inaccurate. Within the business world outside PSFs, the honest statement would be "competent people are a necessary component of our success but even they are expendable." Critical differentiators exist apart from the individuals who created them: distribution channels, cost position, brand strength, location, technology, etc. In the PSF world, most people are also expendable. But there is a category of people that determine the future of PSFs: Stars. Stars build enduring client relationships and become role models for junior professionals. PSFs stars may be partners but not all partners are stars. Aligning stars with the PSF strategy is the foremost job of PSF leaders. This book deals with the complexities involved in creating such alignment. For those on Boards of Directors of PSF organizations, ALIGNING THE STARS helps to crisply focus on what are critical questions to be asked: who are the stars, what system is in place to insure continuity of stars, what system is in place to align individual star needs to strategy. Maryanne Peabody & Laurence J. Stybel |
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Morgan W. McCall, Jr. and George P. Hollenbeck Developing
Global Executives: The Lessons of International Experience Harvard Business School Press, 2002 Boston, Massachusetts ISBN 1-57851-336-7 List: $29.95 BOARDOPTIONS/AMAZON PRICE: $20.96 YOU SAVE: $8.99 (30%) |
Alexander (Sandy) von Stackelberg is a senior international marketing/sales executive whose career includes medical devices and other high tech equipment. Here is Sandy's reaction to the book: More and more firms are expanding their horizons beyond their own border and need competent managers to be successful. This book is perfect for those domestic individuals who must direct the companies that are expanding abroad without having much direct experience in the subject. Similarly, those who have had a more extensive international familiarity may find this book a bit too basic, however the various tables offered were of particular interest.
Properly the authors queried not just US expatriates say in France, but also Asians posted to Latin America, etc. The book defines what characteristics make up a "global executive" and contrasts those to their purely domestic counterpart. The individual's stories may be of interest to a few of the uninitiated; for they define some of the experiences that were most critical to mastering their profession. More important for the organization is how to identify potential Individuals and how to have the right "internal bias" to foster growth overseas. Further the authors define what the Organization's role should be and describe what the responsibilities are of the individual. All in all this is a worthwhile book on the subject. |
San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2001 ISBN: 0-7879-5620-1 PRICE: $31.95 |
Jay Conger, Ed Lawler, and David Feingold are professors who have written a review of corporate governance issues. This book best serves as an overview for new Board members. The topics cover the "usual" corporate governance issues: evaluation of the CEO, term limits, Board responsibilities, term limits, etc. etc. I have mixed reactions to this book. On the negative side, I think the authors put too much reliance in a survey conducted by Korn Ferry. As a result, the book has a dry tone, integrating survey results and academic papers. I think the authors spent too much time reviewing one survey and not enough time talking to Board members. The result is an academically skewed perspective. For example, in reading this book one would think that there is a keen debate among Board members today regarding which constituency or constituencies Board members are responsible to: shareholders versus employees versus society, etc. I think this is a debate academics WISH board members would have! Perhaps I am on the wrong Boards, but this is not an issue that is "hot" among my colleagues. Here is another example of how this book is skewed to towards an academic perspective: there is a very interesting section on the relationship between Board practices and company performance. The tables are hard to interpret and the entire section merits only three pages of a 206-page book. A McKinsey study called "Putting a value on Board Governance" is mentioned in the introduction but never discussed. On the positive side, each chapter concludes with a statement of Principles and concrete practices that can be established. On one hand, the authors discuss how valuable it is for Boards to get outside perspective through the use of external Board members and term limits. On the other hand, this team of authors lacked outside perspective. There is too much academics talking to other academics in this book. CORPORATE BOARDS would have been stronger had one of the three authors been a current or retired CEO. Larry Stybel STYBEL PEABODY Sixty State Street, S. 700 Boston, MA 02109 Email: lstybel@stybelpeabody.com |
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E-BOARD STRATEGIES: How to survive and win By Ram Charan and Roger Kenny New York: Boardroom Consultants, 2000 ISBN 0-615-11524-1 BOARDOPTIONS/AMAZON PRICE: $27.95 |
Roger Kenny is managing partner of Boardroom Consultants and Ram Charan is a consultant and professor at Northwestern University Kellogg School of Business. The heart of this slender volume is a mention of a study done by the venture capital firm, Onset Ventures. Nearly 80% of startups fail to survive the first 18 months of life. Onset surveyed 360 startups and found that one group had a 70% chance of making it. This group of companies had CEOs who used mentors with experience running both startups and large businesses. Such mentors can often be developed and effectively employed in a Board of Directors/Board of Advisors capacity. Effective Boards in startups involve partnership between Board members and managers, not oversight. The term "E-Board" is used to differentiate this kind of structure from the traditional governance-oriented Boards of established companies. We think this is a book well worth having if you are a CEO or someone interested in serving on a Board. Facilitating and advancing such E-Boards is really what boardoptions.com is all about. Stybel Peabody Sixty State Street, S. 700 Boston, MA 02109 |
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THE PRESIDENTIAL DIFFERENCE: leadership style
from FDR to Clinton. Fred I. Greenstein |
Fred Greenstein (Greenstein, 2000) provides us at Peabody Stybel Lincolnshire with a template with which to evaluate presidential leadership. While his focus is on the U.S. Presidency, we find Greenstein's analysis appropriate for Nominating Committees of Boards seeking a template for evaluating CEO candidates. Greenstein is Professor of Politics at Princeton University and Director of Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School program in leadership studies. Analyzing Presidential leadership from FDR to Clinton, he articulates a six-factor model: (1)
Public communication---effectiveness in communicating with key
constituencies. We use these six factors as frameworks for checking references of candidates. You might consider them as reference checking frameworks as well. Standard job descriptions tend to focus on variables 1,2, 4, 5. It is rare that variable 3 gets explicit attention in business. But the CEO role requires mastery in the art of power. We have developed a series of reference questions that focus on this issue. In our work with corporations, we find skilled communicators and highly organized managers overvalued by Boards. And yet factors 1 and 2 may not be the most important factors. People may be great communicators in job interviews, highly organized, and still be ineffective leaders! Factor 6 is hardly mentioned in job descriptions. And yet we all know it is totally critical. Presidents Johnson, Nixon, Carter, and Clinton had emotional handicaps that impacted the United States in extraordinarily negative ways. Haven't we all seen emotional handicaps within a CEO crippling the total organization? In our retained search work, we find the best way to get a handle on emotional intelligence is to carefully, carefully, carefully check references with with former subordinates. Good leadership creates good followership. In the case of U.S. Presidents since FDR, only Truman, Eisenhower, Ford, and George Bush had subordinates who praised their leader without reservation. Of the eleven Presidents evaluated, only these four stand out as fundamentally free of distracting emotional perturbations. There is a correlation here! How important is emotional intelligence as a factor in selecting a leader? None of the U.S. Presidents surveyed were paragons. All had flaws in one or more of the six leadership variables. Most organizations can work around the leader's inevitable human weaknesses. Professor Greenstein reminds us that the United States has survived and even thrived under less than perfect leadership. In the area of emotional intelligence, however, "beware the presidential contender who lacks emotional intelligence. In its absence all else may turn to ashes." It is this critical that nominating committees tend to spend the least attention. Laurence
J. Stybel,Ed.D. SINCE 1979, HELPING COMPANIES ACHIEVE "SMOOTH TRANSITIONS" OF SENIOR EXECUTIVES IN, UP, AND OUT: retained search, executive coaching, and helping senior executives find new chapters in their professional lives. * ONE HUNDRED THIRTEEN OFFICES AND 224 CONSULTANTS TO SERVE CLIENTS IN NORTH AMERICA, WESTERN EUROPE, EASTERN EUROPE, ASIA, AND AUSTRALIA. * STRATEGIC PARTNERS WITH THE AMERICAN MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATION, THE WORLD'S LARGEST MANAGEMENT DEVELOPMENT ORGANIZATION WITH 70,000 COMPANIES AROUND THE GLOBE. * SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP WITH THE FINANCIAL EXECUTIVES INSTITUTE REPRESENTING 14,000 SENIOR FINANCIAL EXECUTIVES IN THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA * SELECTED AS PARTNERS BY THE ASSOCIATED INDUSTRIES OF MASSACHUSETTS TO PROVIDE SENIOR EXECUTIVE TRANSITION SERVICES TO THE MEMBERS OF MASSACHUSETTS' LARGEST EMPLOYER ORGANIZATION * SELECTED AS PARTNERS BY THE MASSACHUSETTS HOSPITAL ASSOCIATION TO PROVIDE SENIOR EXECUTIVE TRANSITION SERVICES TO MASSACHUSETTS' LARGEST HEALTH CARE INDUSTRY ORGANIZATION * REFERRALS FROM THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION * WINNER, MASSACHUSETTS LAWYERS' WEEKLY "BEST" IN CLASS AWARD FOR THE FOLLOWING YEARS: 1996, 1997, 1998, and 1999. * THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS RESOURCE CENTER: ** The following review appeared in THE WALL STREET JOURNAL (July 20, 1997, p. 27). "Technically savvy corporate leaders don't have to rely on old fashioned techniques. www.boardoptions.com offers a wide variety of services for top managers, including career tips, innovative ideas on corporate governance, and a Board of Director Talent Bank." Margaret F. Riley, author of THE GUIDE TO INTERNET JOB SEARCHING, calls www.boardoptions.com "unique in the ocean of Internet career and management sites. The resources assembled to serve executives are well chosen, authoritative." Jared Hendler, Vice President of Creative Services for a division of Grey Advertising in New York City, calls www.boardoptions.com a "most comprehensive site.....a consideration for the future." |
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PROFIT PATTERNS: 30 ways to anticipate and profit
from strategic forces shaping your business. |
I think of this book as first rate meat placed between two stale pieces of bread. Let's get to the meat first. This book challenges Board members and senior management to get beyond the obvious question, "What does our team need to know?" It addresses the more profound question, "What is our team afraid to find out?" The authors, all Mercer Management Consultants, argue that business leaders who first understand and then act on industry-wide patterns are the inevitable winners. Those who fail to understand or those who understand and fail to act are the inevitable losers. There are only a limited number of these business patterns and they are predictable. Reading through this book, I had a number of "Ah Ha!!!" experiences similar to the experiences of watching John Madden diagram the strategy of a just completed football play. I thought it was just a bunch of over-weight, over-paid guys chaotically smashing into each other! Here is one example of the authors at work: A classic business pattern is called moving from multi-polar standards to defacto standards: customers crave compatibility and some competitor will create high value by providing it. But moving to industry standards is not always the best choice for a company. For example, what is the rationale for NOT conforming to ISO9000 standards? The rationale is simple: standards tend to organize customer thinking about the performance side of the price/performance equation. This leaves the customer free to focus on…price! The authors conclude that "The widespread rise in standards of the past twenty years is a testament to the ……widespread threat to supplier profitability." Isn't it better to set your own standards? The first 260 pages focus on showing the reader different patterns and then discussing them. The next fifty pages provide concrete examples of how companies implement pattern analysis using well known organizations such as Cisco Systems, Capital One, SAP, Staples, Nokia, Dell, Amazon.com, and Bang & Olufsen. There is lots of sirloin in this sandwich! The two slices of bread are my problem and my only problem with this book. To allow the reader a metaphor to "get it," the authors spend the first part of the book focusing on chess and the works of Picasso. They come back to the chess metaphor at the conclusion of the book. And just in case you don't get it, they also throw in football metaphors as well. I think this is overdone, particularly the expensive Picasso drawings. Chess alone would have been sufficient. But this is minor carping about what is ultimately a real contribution. PROFIT PATTERNS deserves a place on your library shelf. It also deserves to be in a less expensive paperback version, minus all the expensive Picasso pictures. Picasso plus chess plus football contributes to intellectual overkill and raises the book's cost beyond what is really necessary. LINCOLNSHIRE
STYBEL PEABODY |
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HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW ON CORPORATE GOVERNANCE |
This paperback is designed to be a reference, focusing on both policy and strategic challenges for senior managers working with Boards and Board members. Some of the chapters are articles; others are transcripts of interviews with key business leaders. Like any edited series, there is a range of quality here. Some of the pieces are far-out prescriptions from academics that will never see the light of day. And some of the pieces are practical, thought-provoking ideas written by academics, consultants, and Board members themselves. For example, Walter Solomon serves on the Board of Neiman Marcus Group, Hannaford Brothers Company, Tufts Health Plan, and Circuit City Stores. He has an excellent article that provides a framework for Board size and composition. Philip Caldwell is former CEO of Ford Motor Company and former member of the Boards of the following companies: Chase Manhattan, Federated Department, and the Kellogg Company. He notes that the selection of the CEO is one of the most important roles of a Board. It is in the interests of the company that there be viable internal candidates and that the Board have options. It is sometimes in the interests of the incumbent CEO that the CEO be the one to nominate the one and only internal candidate. For this reason, the Board needs to annually monitor CEO Succession development. The Board also must make sure the program is focused on the competencies of chief executive officers. For example, being a better team player may or may not be a critical issue in the role of CEO. Great team players don't necessarily make great CEOs. Laurence
J. Stybel,Ed.D. SINCE 1979, HELPING COMPANIES ACHIEVE "SMOOTH TRANSITIONS" OF SENIOR EXECUTIVES IN, UP, AND OUT: retained search, executive coaching, and helping senior executives find new chapters in their professional lives. * ONE HUNDRED THIRTEEN OFFICES AND 224 CONSULTANTS TO SERVE CLIENTS IN NORTH AMERICA, WESTERN EUROPE, EASTERN EUROPE, ASIA, AND AUSTRALIA. * STRATEGIC PARTNERS WITH THE AMERICAN MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATION, THE WORLD'S LARGEST MANAGEMENT DEVELOPMENT ORGANIZATION WITH 70,000 COMPANIES AROUND THE GLOBE. * SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP WITH THE FINANCIAL EXECUTIVES INSTITUTE REPRESENTING 14,000 SENIOR FINANCIAL EXECUTIVES IN THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA * SELECTED AS PARTNERS BY THE ASSOCIATED INDUSTRIES OF MASSACHUSETTS TO PROVIDE SENIOR EXECUTIVE TRANSITION SERVICES TO THE MEMBERS OF MASSACHUSETTS' LARGEST EMPLOYER ORGANIZATION * SELECTED AS PARTNERS BY THE MASSACHUSETTS HOSPITAL ASSOCIATION TO PROVIDE SENIOR EXECUTIVE TRANSITION SERVICES TO MASSACHUSETTS' LARGEST HEALTH CARE INDUSTRY ORGANIZATION * REFERRALS FROM THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION * WINNER, MASSACHUSETTS LAWYERS' WEEKLY "BEST" IN CLASS AWARD FOR THE FOLLOWING YEARS: 1996, 1997, 1998, and 1999. * THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS RESOURCE CENTER: ** The following review appeared in THE WALL STREET JOURNAL (July 20, 1997, p. 27). "Technically savvy corporate leaders don't have to rely on old fashioned techniques. www.boardoptions.com offers a wide variety of services for top managers, including career tips, innovative ideas on corporate governance, and a Board of Director Talent Bank." Margaret F. Riley, author of THE GUIDE TO INTERNET JOB SEARCHING, calls www.boardoptions.com "unique in the ocean of Internet career and management sites. The resources assembled to serve executives are well chosen, authoritative." Jared Hendler, Vice President of Creative Services for a division of Grey Advertising in New York City, calls www.boardoptions.com a "most comprehensive site.....a consideration for the future." |
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Channel Champions |
Booz, Allen & Hamilton consultants Steven Wheeler and Evan Hirsh ask you to respond to the following question: how do you keep your customers too happy to look elsewhere for the goods / services they want? If you don't have a crisply articulated answer, then perhaps you should purchase their book and read it CAREFULLY! The authors argue that product based differentiation strategies are ephemeral. What can't easily be copied are differences in service and support. To cite an example, think of Amazon.com vs. Barnes & Noble bookstores. Same physical product but very different customer experiences! Think of Saturn vs. Pontiac. Is it the physical car or the customer experience that is key in the buy decision? Think of Dell vs. Radio Shack. How much effort is being spent at your company on focusing on that customer experience? The authors bring in excellent real world examples from a variety of industries: General Electric, Home Depot, Wal-Mart, Providian Bancorp, Snap-on-Tools, Armstrong, Pella, and W.W. Grainger. Too many companies think customer service is a function within the company. Typically it is called customer support. The authors argue that such a perspective dooms the company. The business process necessary for creating the desired customer experience is cross-functional in nature, requiring the intense cooperation of finance, information systems, sales, operations, and marketing. That means that the CEO must exhibit a passion for cutomer service. Think about your last Board meeting. How much time was spent in understanding how the company defines and operationalizes the customer experience from an enterprise-wide basis? If the Board does not consider the subject appropriate for discussion, then why should your CEO care? This book is focused, practical, and important. |
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RIGHT FROM THE START:
taking charge in a new leadership role. |
Our firm provides senior level consulting for companies seeking to ensure "smooth transitions" for very senior level people: retained search, coaching, and outplacement. We plan to provide RIGHT FROM THE START as a gift to all successful senior level job candidates we work with. That gives you a sense of how much we value this book! The authors focus on how new senior executives can make the first steps positive steps. The Tables on pp. 134-139 are a nice framework to use during the initial six months. RIGHT FROM THE START does have flaws. When a book is co-authored, I usually make an assumption that I am going to be reading a combined perspective. I expect a duet and not two soloists humming their own tunes. There is a lack of unified voice that detracts from RIGHT FROM THE START. The first half to three quarters of the book appear to have been written primarily by one author. It is time sensitive, focused, and practical. Chapters 8,9, and 10 have a very different flavor. While it constantly refers to earlier chapters, the author of this chapter lacks the time sensitivity and the practical-application of the earlier part of the book. For example, the earlier part of the book simply speaks about the following dilemma: senior executives get to their high level positions by having confidence in their abilities, and yet if they don't reach out and quickly develop a source of inside and outside advisors, they will surely fail. The authors come back to this simple dilemma with an entire chapter about the taxonomy of advise versus counsel. This taxonomy might make some sense in an introductory textbook on management. In the context of the proposed readers of this book, however, such a taxonomy doesn't add much value. There is a sense that Chapters 8, 9, 10 are too much "Cut and Paste" from some other work and are not focused on the needs of the readers of this particular volume. The three chapters could easily have been deleted from the entire work. |
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LEGACY:
the giving of life's greatest treasures. |
Barrie Greiff is a psychiatrist who works with corporations and executives. I have known Barrie for a number of years and he is a first class "Mensch." That quality comes through in this book. The author of LEGACY writes, "Words that come from the heart enter the heart." You will feel that Dr. Greiff is speaking from his heart to yours. Those of us who work on Boards of Directors of family businesses or work with families of wealth often know that the concept of "net worth" is not necessarily the same definition we learned in Accounting 101. In family businesses, net worth is the sum of three things: cash and securities, material objectives, and values. Passing on wealth without effectively passing on values through the generations dooms families of wealth to the stereotypic "From Poverty to Poverty in Three Generations!" Greiff ties the lessons of his personal and professional life to define values as a legacy consisting of loving, learning, laboring, laughing/lamenting, linking, living, leading, and leaving. The core of the book focuses on defining these issues. Freud was once asked to define mental well-being. His famous reply: "To Love and To Work." Most of us don't need to be told what it means to work! But we do need a conceptual template of what it means to love. Dr. Greiff gives us such a template from which to measure how we are doing for ourselves and as role models for the next generation. The cover of LEGACY shows Michelangelo's famous picture of God's finger ALMOST touching Adam's finger. It's inclusion on the cover is designed to highlight both the importance of passing on a legacy of values and the fact that most of us will do well if we can ALMOST get it right. This book is a great companion piece to Marshall B. Paisner's book SUSTAINING THE FAMILY BUSINESS. That book also is available on our website and is reviewed by us. Maryanne
Peabody & Laurence J. Stybel,Ed.D. |
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VALUE-CREATING
GROWTH: how to lift your company to the next level of performance. |
Did you know that less than 2% of all public companies created 32 percent of all jobs. Tom Doorley and John Donovan are with Deloitte Consulting. The theme of this book is simple, but the "how-to" is hardly simplistic. The theme is that "high growth companies generate five to ten times the return of slow-growth companies. Such companies churn out new products at twice the "normal" rate. Employee satisfaction soars in high growth companies. High growth companies are an elite class. These companies are not merely competitive. They are thumping their competition. The authors provide a conceptual road map for achieving high growth status, based on analysis of a large sample of companies combined with case studies of key companies in North America, Western Europe, and Asia. They show how their ideas are being used in manufacturing, consumer products, financial services, and technology. This is a small but dense book. It only covers 163 pages. But there are lots of ideas here, and some are very practical. For example, the authors found that 60% of fast growth companies have clearly articulated commitments to growth in writing. On the other hand, only 15% of slow growers have such written commitment. Is your company following the practices of high growth companies? At the time of this writing, the United States is experiencing a sustained period of rapid expansion. A book that focuses on rapid growth suits these times to perfection. But what do rapid growth companies do during inevitable times of economic downturn? Doorley and Donovan have done their homework. Based on a longitudinal analysis plus their own consulting experience, the authors found that those companies that fought hardest to sustain their commitment to growth survived the recessions in best shape. Some specific action steps included: substitution of relative growth during a period when absolute growth could not be achieved. They targeted growth at greater than market rates or faster than key competitors. During bad times, high growth companies protected their long term investments in R&D, marketing, and employee development from the budget ax. Maryanne
Peabody & Laurence J. Stybel,Ed.D. |
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SUSTAINING
THE FAMILY BUSINESS |
The dreary statistics are familiar to all of us who work with family businesses: family businesses make up 90% of the 15 million operations in the United States. Only one-third make it to the second generation. And only 10% make to the third. Given such depressing numbers, isn't it only logical that owners can easily be convinced by industry consolidators to turn their ownership into cash? Marshall Paisner takes strong objection to this view. Accountants can only consider market value when making pricing decisions. Family business owners need to take market value into account, but they also need to consider family values. In the long run, family value is more important. The goal of a family business is to live a desired lifestyle and give the next generation the opportunity to do the same thing. And if you don't like Paisner's "soft" view of business, he argues that the return on a successful family business is almost always greater than the after-tax return of an estate produced by the sale of such a business. Much of what Paisner says has been said elsewhere. This book is worth reading because Paisner is the Chairman of Scrub-A-Dub Auto Wash Centers, Inc., one of the world's largest car-wash chains. Founded in 1965, he has successfully transitioned the business to his two sons. And we can personally attest that Scrub-A-Dub is one of the best consumer products marketing companies we have ever seen! And we have seen many. SUSTAINING THE FAMILY BUSINESS is a "How I Did It" book plus an integration of published research plus an integration with other family businesses around the country. Topics include: Creating a Family Culture, Managing Family Conflict, Developing Tax Strategies, Developing Estate Strategies, When Selling Makes Sense, Navigating a Successful Sale. For those of you who serve on Boards of family businesses, Paisner speaks positively about the use of true outsiders to serve on his Board of Advisors, how he selected them, and how he compensated them. He has a section on what actions to take when spouses perceive that their mates are being unfairly treated. Such perceptions can poison both the business atmosphere and the family atmosphere. Paisner has a cogent prescription for what those steps ought to be. Dr.
Laurence J. Stybel & Maryanne Peabody |
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THE AMERICAN DESIGN ADVENTURE |
Once upon a time it was possible to grab market share and hold it by offering the lowest price or having the greatest technology, or by having the best distribution system on the planet. No longer. Price, technology, and distribution appear to be transitory advantages at best. Without price, cutting-edge technology, and a great distribution system your business will surely fail. But will they ensure long-term success? Great product design can be a factor to keep customer mindshare long term. IBM understands this in its design of the personal computer. Packard Bell, however, does not. Think of the distinctive brown color of United Parcel Service, the shape of a Jeep, or the classic Bau Haus Chair. In 1956, Charles Eames designed a lounge chair for the Herman Miller Company. More than 100,000 of these leather and wood two piece units have been sold and continue to be sold. (You probably don't know what is it called, but you have seen this chair in many, many homes). Arthur Pulos provides you with a richly photographed review of America's premier design products. It is a great business gift for a friend or a way to stimulate your own creativity. Its most important value for a member of a Board of Directors is to help ask the right questions about product design. The book ends with an intriguing question that Board members should think about as members discuss new products: as separate nations become one, can we achieve a truly global design for our products? Coke and McDonald's have achieved this universality. On the other hand, there may be no single mass market for our products. Will we require an infinite variety of demographic groups that determine final configurations? For example, Virginia Slims is designed for a very specific market. Maryanne
Peabody & Laurence J. Stybel |
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SHAKESPEARE:
The Invention of the Human |
The Board of Directors Career Resource Center (www.stybelpeabody.com) usually reviews books about corporate strategy, corporate governance, and senior level career management. Why should a book about Shakespeare's plays be in our line up? At a professional level, Bloom sensitizes the reader into understanding that Shakespeare is a master, timeless psychologist who still has much to teach us. Here is but one example: I was working with a CEO who had a brilliant subordinate. But that subordinate appeared to delight in creating chaos in the office. The CEO was failing in attempts to rehabilitate this brilliant individual. The CEO could not comprehend why this subordinate would spend the time and energy on chaos-producing behavior. The CEO's image of himself was as someone who knows how to master chaos. Rather than get into a lengthy discussion with my client, I simply asked the CEO to re-read Shakespeare's "Othello" and pay attention to the character of Iago. Such people do exist in our own companies! Not only was my client able to appreciate the Iago-like qualities of the subordinate, but he also comprehended his own, unflattering Othello-like failings. Bloom believes that Shakespeare was THE master psychologist of the Western World in addition to being THE major poet and dramatist. Indeed, Bloom makes the case that our core Western notions of ourselves are essentially inventions of Shakespeare. What other author before Shakespeare created characters that simultaneously value and deplore themselves? Shakespeare took literature beyond eloquent caricatures. Our concept of personality is Shakespearean more than it is Freudian. SHAKESPEARE: THE INVENTION OF THE HUMAN makes a great gift. It can simultaneously be used as a reference book when thinking about specific plays or as a text for reading about Shakespeare. But I think of the book as a core book about understanding people. Ask me "Why Shakespeare?" and I will say. "Who else is more worthy of your reading time?" Laurence
J. Stybel |
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SMART
ALLIANCES: a practical guide to repeatable success |
Booz.Allen & Hamilton consultants John Harbison and Peter Pekar make a compelling case for the following:
The ambitious goal of this book is captured by its title: provide leaders with a repeatable, pragmatic framework for alliance planning and implementation. Through this framework, the experience curve might be shortened. The framework is based on the authors’ consulting experiences as well as surveys of more than five hundred major corporations. From a Board of Director perspective, alliances create value but how the investment community reacts to alliances will vary depending on the structure of the alliance and the industry within which the alliance is formed. Pages 85-86 offer a useful framework for Board members when questioning CEOs about alliance efforts. Based on our own experiences in developing an alliance of international firms offering senior level career consulting services as ours, we think the book is a useful addition to your bookshelf. But it is a dry, abstract book. In relation to our own experience, we think the authors did not devote enough space to the unanticipated pleasant and unpleasant conceptual leaps that one must make in day-to-day alliance work. The term “transfer of technology” does not capture these unanticipated leaps. For example, we had certain expectations about an alliance we formed in 1987. These expectations materialized but only weakly. On the other hand, the alliance created opportunities we had not planned for. These opportunities included leveraging our participating in the original alliance to yet another alliance that was even more fruitful. The alliance forced us to create new services and gained leverage in areas unrelated to the original alliance objectives. We call these events happy surprises. Both the happy surprises and the unhappy surprises are worthy of more mention. They are one of the reasons to enter alliances.....and one of the reasons to be careful about them! STYBEL
PEABODY & ASSOCIATES |
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Christina
Maslach and Michael P. Leiter THE
TRUTH ABOUT BURNOUT San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1997 |
THE TRUTH ABOUT BURNOUT is that it is not an imperfection of the individual employee. Burn-out is a symptom of an organization in trouble. Christina Maslach is Professor of Psychology at the University of California at Berkeley and the creator of The Maslach Burnout Inventory. Michael P. Leiter is Dean of the Faculty at Acadia University in Nova Scotia, Canada. The traditional perspective about burnout is that it is an individual problem. The natural solutions to this perspective focuses on providing courses on stress management, bringing in Employee Assistance Programs, and doing a better job of selecting in people who can handle stress. The authors argue that these interventions are positive but incomplete. If employee burnout really is a symptom of an organization in trouble, then the interventions need to be organizational in context. They begin by analyzing job-person fit from the following dimensions: workload, control, rewards, community, fairness, and values. There is a case description of a 750 bed hospital which illustrates these concepts in practice. As it stands, the book makes its case well and provides concrete suggestions. The Maslach Burnout Inventory would appear to be an excellent tool for use in organization development interventions. The authors clearly have a solid grasp of their subject. But will CEOs take employee burnout seriously? For CEOs to take employee burnout as seriously as Maslach and Leiter would like, we think there needs to be some recognition at the Board of Directors level that this is an important issue. In our work with Boards of Directors, we seldom see that recognition. Future editions of THE TRUTH ABOUT BURNOUT would benefit from more discussion about how burnout effects share holder value. Only five pages out of 178 focus on how burnout impacts the financial performance of a company. To get CEOs to take burnout seriously, the Compensation Committee of Boards would have to add that a percentage of each CEO's bonus pay be determined by positive or negative deviation from some desired employee turn-over statistic or some desired customer satisfaction statistic. As it currently stands in North America, few companies even bother to collect employee turnover and customer satisfaction statistics. Few companies bother to collect the true costs of recruiting/training new employees. If it is not important enough for the Board of Directors to measure, then why should the CEO assume that it counts? That's a problem we would love to see Maslach and Leiter address. Fortunately for them, a model exists. When a Board is serious enough to count diversity as a component of a CEO's variable compensation, companies often seem to take diversity seriously! And if the Board does not count it important enough to be part of the CEO's variable compensation system, then the company is apt to engage in more talk and training than action. But THE TRUTH ABOUT BURNOUT is that it is well worth having on your library shelf. If you have any reactions/comments, please make them to stybel@aol.com. We will add them to our review of this book. Laurence
J. Stybel,Ed.D. & Maryanne Peabody |
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Ford
Harding. RAIN
MAKING: the professional's guide to attracting new clients. Holbrook, MA:
Adams Media Corporation, 1994 |
What is a rainmaker?Rainmakers have the ability to gain access to decision makers while they have high concern about confidentiality and are still in the process of formulating their needs around specific problems. This access means knowing key people so well, they feel comfortable confiding in you. One has to be a good sales professional to be an effective Rainmaker. But one need not be a Rainmaker to be an effective sales professional. Sales and Rainmaking are not necessarily the same thing, even though both contribute to the revenue side of the accounting equation. At Stybel Peabody, we value this book so highly we use it as the basic text in our work with professional service providers who seek to develop rainmaking skills. The title of this book, however, is somewhat misleading. Ford Harding has written a first rate "how to" book on attracting new clients via all kinds of sales and marketing techniques. Rainmaking is only one of those techniques. One of the book's strengths is that Ford Harding doesn't "preach." He talks about his own failures as well as his successes. Harding integrates his own experiences with survey research he has done with practitioners. Finally, his approach is contingency-based. By contingency, we mean that he provides readers with descriptions of different client development techniques available and some frameworks when tech technique is appropriate or inappropriate. We'll be surprised if you don't get at least three good, useful ideas from this book. If you have any reactions to the book please write them to stybel@aol.com and we will post them on this website. If you have any reactions to the book please write them to stybel@aol.com and we will post them on this website. |
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Cliff
Hakim. WE
ARE ALL SELF EMPLOYED: the new social contract for working in a changed
world. San Francisco, CA: Barrett-Koehler, 1994. ISBN 188 105 2478 |
The title says it all. The theme is to develop a mentality of self- employment, regardless of whether you are actually self employed or currently working for someone else. Cliff Hakim probably wrote this book in 1993, when the message might have been startling to some of us. Five years later, the message is no longer novel. I will cite two examples: Most job search books talk about networking in terms of a "random walk." You know the drill. It goes something like, "I'm not looking for a job. I'm just looking for opportunities to talk with people who might be able to tell me what is going on in sales." Cliff would propose standing that nonsense on its head with what he calls the "I Am Looking For" summary. Another example of Cliff's ability to provide practical yet poetic advise is his suggestion to forget about career ladders. With ladders, up is the only way to advance. Cliff argues for the career lattice. The image is both simple and powerful. Just to give the book even more grounding, the end of it contains mini biographies of some of the people who have turned their professional lives into powerful career lattices. It was fun to read because I know and admire some of the people he mentions! Laurence
J. Stybel,Ed.D. THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS RESOURCE CENTER
(www.stybelpeabody.com) Boston, MA |
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M.
Wheatley.LEADERSHIP
AND THE NEW SCIENCE. |
I don't like this title. It is too bland. The heading of Chapter Two of the book would have been a more meaningful and accurate title: "Newtonian Organizations in a Quantum Age." Wheatley says that many of our models and metaphors about effective management are explicitly or implicitly derived from a Newtonian perspective. She says: "The universe that Sir Isaac Newton describe was a seductive place. As the pendulum swung with perfect periodicity, it prodded us on to new discoveries. As the Earth circled the sun, we grew assured of the role of determinism and prediction. We absorbed expectations of regularity into our very beings. And we organized work and knowledge to fit this universe. "It is interesting to note just how Newtonian most organizations are. "Until recently, we really believed that we could study the parts to arrive at knowledge of the whole. We have reduced and described and separated things into cause and effect, and drawn the world in lines and boxes. "A world based on machine images is a world filled with boundaries." This essentially Newtonian view of management conflicts with the current knowledge we are deriving from quantum physics and chaos theory. In years to come, the metaphor for management will be chaos theory and quantum physics. This elegant book helps the novice manage begin to understand these complex ideas in terms of how they can influence your perspective about the management of people and events. This book is a testament to Wheatley's command of writing, command of the scientific subjects she explains, and her practical experience in organization behavior. She pulls of a complex exercise off with grace, interest, and practicality. We are selling the audio tape, but you can go into www.amazon.com to order the book itself. The book has some wonderful pictures which illustrate chaos theory. Laurence J. Stybel. Board of Directors Resource Center, www.stybelpeabody.com tel: 617/736-0900 Boston, MA USA |
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BUILT
TO LAST: successful habits of visionary companies |
FAMILY BUSINESSES ARE BUILT TO LAST By Richard L. Narva, Esq. Attorney Richard Narva is co-founder of one of the nation's premier consulting firms specializing in helping family businesses. His perspective his shaped by the fact that he grew up in a family business and managed one. Richard can be contacted at 781/444-9200. Some family businesses are built to last. Many are not. In my view there are two clear indicators of whether a family business is built to last: its balance sheet and its vision statement. My experience tells me that when the balance sheet of a family business is relatively unleveraged because the owners reinvest the bulk of their profits consistently each year, they are voting with their dollars to build a family business that will endure. I do not question the choice of business owning families who choose to maximize withdrawals of cash for personal consumption. I simply argue that their companies are built to serve the current generation of owner/managers--a legitimate choice, but one which is inconsistent with an enduring family controlled business enterprise. My primary purpose in this brief article, however, is to address the vision of family businesses that are managed to endure for generations. In their classic text, Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies, two Stanford Business School professors, James Collins and Jerry Porras, compare and contrast 18 of America's large corporations who dominate their industries with their largest (and less successful) competitors. In the process of a six year long empirical study which compared truly great companies who became industry leaders and their less successful competitors, such as Marriott with Howard Johnson, Motorola with Zenith, Hewlett-Packard with Texas Instruments, the authors concluded that the primary distinguishing characteristic of the truly great companies (which their competitors lack) is that these truly successful firms "...[P]reserve a cherished core ideology. Put another way, they distinguish their timeless core values and enduring core purpose (which should never change) from their operating practices and business strategies (which should be changing constantly in response to a changing world)." The book reaffirms the competitive validity of being a values driven enterprise and offers abundant research based, practical recommendations for owners who wish to create a business that is "built to last." I recommend this book to all of the readers of our newsletter and we have copies available upon request for our clients. Rather than give a more comprehensive review of the book, I want to point out something that intrigued me about the list of 18 companies selected by the authors as paradigms of visionary companies, a point not made explicitly by the authors in their text: that is the extent to which family control is a characteristic of these now huge and hugely successful visionary companies. Of the 18 companies, four founding families (whose patriarchs were the architects of their vision) continue to control the companies through ownership: Ford, Marriott, Nordstrom and Wal-Mart. Of these, Nordstrom and Marriott retain family CEO's and Ford appears to be grooming a fourth generation member for that position. Of the remaining 14 companies, four others enjoyed at least two generations (and many decades) of family leadership in the CEO position: IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Motorola (where a third generation Galvin is now CEO). My purpose in highlighting this observation is that at Genus we find that most of our clients are truly values driven organizations, although often the enterprise's core values are assumed rather than articulated. Moreover, these core values are often rooted in the multigenerational history of the founding family. We believe that these family businesses have, therefore, a running head start on the journey of becoming visionary companies that are "built to last." We encourage you all to consider the wisdom in this powerful book. |
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TUESDAYS
WITH MORRIE: an old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson. |
Peter Rabinowitz of PAR Associates of Boston gave me this book as a gift. I passed it along to my wife as a gift. I am sure she will pass it along as a gift as well. Peter called the late Professor Maurice Schwartz of Brandeis University someone "you know but didn't know you knew." A victim of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or Lou Gehrig's disease, he was interviewed several times by NIGHTLINE host Ted Koppel on what it is like to die. This book is an extension of the Kopppel interviews, lovingly and beautifully written by one of Professor Schwartz' former Brandeis students. Who would want to spend time on such a depressing subject? Professor Schwartz said, "Every one knows they are going to die, but nobody believes it." This book is about learning to really, really believe in your own death and how it can make living the remainder of your life a more vibrant experience. Peter Rabinowitz passed on Morrie Schwartz' wisdom wisdom to me, and I am passing it to you. Laurence
J. Stybel |
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David
Savageau and Geoffrey Loftus |
For a senior executive contemplating relocation, this is an outstanding reference book---with one caveat. WHAT IS GOOD ABOUT THIS BOOK 350 statistical metropolitan areas are compared on such issues as job markets, cost of living, housing markets, educational standards, crime rates, health care, recreational facilities, climate, etc. The information is presented in an unbiased manner. ONE CAVEAT The last chapter of the book sums up all the different factors and statistically derives the top ten areas to live. The assumption behind the last chapter is that all people will give all factors equal weight. That assumption is bogus, to say the least. |