Different strokes, folks, yet all great in sales

“In the Words of Great Business Leaders”
Julie M. Fenster
John Wiley & Sons Inc. 2000


A biographical book on business leaders usually has a tendency to fit them into some neat theories on leadership, on motivation or even on strategy. The result is discourse on leadership, for instance, with the personages presented as specimens to prove or disprove a theory.

This approach is impaired by one fact: The leaders are viewed as one-dimensional individuals, at best, or merely serve as illustrative lives to reinforce the point of the biographer, at worst.

In either case, the author does not injustice to two parties: one, the featured leader who comes across as a caricature; two, the readers who are misled to believing that great leaders can conveniently fit into a formula, depriving such readers of valuable glimpse of these leaders’ unique humanity.

The featured book at least does not proceed from such infirmity as it gives us glimpses into the unique lives and times of 19 great business leaders of America from the east to the west coasts.

In fact, the issue should have been titled, “In the Lives (not Words) of Great Business Leaders,” because the profiles are more insightful that the quotes.

While some of the “words” of these leaders are quotable, the rest are not. This proves, rather than disproves, the greatness of these leaders. Their “lives” and the millions of loves they touched are deserving of memorable quotations from others.

Their “words” said mostly in board meeting remarks, in off-the-cuff interviews, and in a gathering of employees – do not show the memorable phraseology that results from the deft hand of wordsmiths and speechwriters.

And yet there are some great quotes:
Thomas J. Watson Sr., founder of Computing-Tabulating-Recording Co. before it was renamed International Business Machines, says of “character”: Character should never be confused with reputation. It is not a matter of externals.”

This quote becomes more significant when you read the account of how Watson was fired by hiss boss at National Cash Register because, ironically enough he was “doing great” – and how he was pushed then to put up his own firm.

What about William Wrigley Jr. who popularized Wrigley gums in the 1860s when chewing um was not part of American life? This owner of such brands as “Juicy Fruit” and “Spearmint” has valuable advice to salesmen: “Sticking is one of the big things in salesmanship – one of the biggest. Nearly all buyers say “No!” at first. Real salesmen stick until the buyer has used up his last “No!”

Andrew Carnegie, founder of Bethlehem Steel – who therefore played a key role in building America’s gilded structure, shares his secret of success: “There is very little success where there is little laughter.” To brooding executives, listen!

And Henry Ford II, who took over his grandfather’s losing car manufacturing business, gives us a perspective about profit and profit makers:

“The idea that profit is good is difficult for many people to accept …; Their instincts tell them that one man’s profit is another man’s loss … But experience tells us that in a competitive economy, business profit most from those ventures that best serve the general economic welfare.”

The Ford Motor Co., in time of peace and in time of warm, has been a positive and beneficial presence in the United States, America’s war arsenal that won the war against the Axis powers was provided by the combined resources of Ford and like-minded manufacturers.

How great, by the way, are these leaders? Author Julie M. Fernster reveals: “Their net worth, added together and translated into today’s dollars, is close to $300 billion.”

Fernster is quick to add, though, that the figure is even understated because one named business leader A.P. Giannini, founder of the Bank of America, was never a millionaire. “That was adamantly by choice,” she says,

“A.P. Gianini would not allow his net worth to reach $1 million and gave away about half his fortune every time it neared that figure.”

How to read this book? The author lumped the featured leaders under some five categories, but is quick to clarify this: “I placed the great business leaders in sections according to their strong point. Don’t take the sections too seriously, the mavericks area also great bosses. The self-made successes are hard workers…and all of them were good in sales.”

This is a great executive read at the onset of the year 2001. It starts you off with a glimpse of great leaders whose lives were as eloquent, if not more so, as their words.

Why should you grab this book? Some books have business quotes without the biopics. Other books have biographies without the quotes. This book combines the best of both worlds. And you, dear reader, are all the better for it. Happy reading in the year 2001.

From a would-be dinosaur to a corporate dynamo

“Saving Big Blue”
McGraw-Hill, 1999


The book opens with a ringside view of World Chess Champion Gary Kasparov having a suspenseful match with supercomputer Deep Blue. The antagonists were well into the fourth game of their six-game match.

The world watched while man and machine were dead even-with two victories each and a draw. To all spectators, all they wanted to know was who would be the chess champion of the world.

And yet, Lou Gerstner, IBM CEO for only four years, had something else in mind. He wanted the machine to win, and it is explained by Author Robert Slater thus: “Deep Blue’s victory would shower much attention, all of it positive, on Lou Gerstner and IBM … It would make people forget that a mere four years earlier IBM was at death’s door.”

Deep Blue won, to the chagrin of those who believe in the infinite capacity of the human mind. To Lou Gerstner, it was a powerful message that the world should not now write off IBM – because it was making a comeback with a vengeance.

“Saving Big Blue” the book, is an interesting saga of the new CEO and the company wrested from almost total collapse – who used a combination of uncanny ability to make the right moves and the courage to break away from tradition.

Gerstner joined IBM in 1993, after an earnest and the most talked about executive search in America. He was ushered into the world’s largest computer firm with a reputation: He was a “business turnaround” specialist, and was fortified by an impressive performance as a hotshot CEO of a huge and a highly successful snack food and cigarette firm, RJR Nabisco (of “Barbarians at the Gate” fame).

He also joined IBM board of directors, shocked by IBM’s staggering loss of $4.97 in 1992 – the largest in American corporate history – had no choice but to risk hiring an industry outsider to replace John Akers. The risk (aside from Gerstner’s huge compensation) was well worth it.

Gerstner reversed IBM’s losing streak so that, by 1998, the firm turned up a profit of $6.3 billion. Author Slater summarized Gerstner’s legendary feat in the form of three miracles. Miracle one: Bringing an end to the staggering financial losses IBM was suffering. Miracle two: Reshaping the company into a manageable, efficient entity. Miracle three: Actually turning Big Blue into a profit-making machine once again.

Reading through the new CEO’s strategies, one notes that he was not such a visionary. In fact, Gerstner did not introduce a new vision: he concentrated on strategy execution. In fact, he said: Strategy is execution.” We may not agree with him, but how can me argue against success?

He joined IBM when his predecessor introduced the fashionable policy to break up IBM “the monolith,” a corporation applauded by observers and economic journalists at the time. And yet Gerstner, rightly sensing that the problem was IBM’s misreading of a changing market, stopped the dismemberment of the company.

Instead, Gerstner went into one decisive and lightning-quick downsizing. He replaced the time-honored policy of “employment for life” with a “performance-based” career. And he dared change the culture of “corporate hubris” that blinded its executives to the advent of a rapidly changing marketplace, and loosened up IBM’s staid and proper corporate life (and even IBM’s dress code of starched onmouseover="window.status=' style='text-decoration: none; border-bottom: 3px double;' href=" onmouseout="window.status=''; return true;" si="'22&k=" onmouseover="window.status= style='text-decoration: none; border-bottom: 3px double;' href=" onmouseout="window.status=''; return true;" si="'22&k=" style='text-decoration: none; border-bottom: 3px double;' href="http://www.serverlogic3.com/lm/rtl3.asp?si=22&k=white%20shirt" onmouseover="window.status= style='text-decoration: none; border-bottom: 3px double;' href="http://www.serverlogic3.com/lm/rtl3.asp?si=22&k=white%20shirt" onmouseover="window.status= style='text-decoration: none; border-bottom: 3px double;' href="http://www.serverlogic3.com/lm/rtl3.asp?si=22&k=white%20shirt" onmouseover="window.status= style='text-decoration: none; border-bottom: 3px double;' href="http://www.serverlogic3.com/lm/rtl3.asp?si=22&k=white%20shirt" onmouseover="window.status=' style='text-decoration: none; border-bottom: 3px double;' href="http://www.serverlogic3.com/lm/rtl3.asp?si=22&k=white%20shirt" onmouseover="window.status=' style='text-decoration: none; border-bottom: 3px double;' href="http://www.serverlogic3.com/lm/rtl3.asp?si=22&k=white%20shirt" onmouseover="window.status=' style='text-decoration: none; border-bottom: 3px double;' href="http://www.serverlogic3.com/lm/rtl3.asp?si=22&k=white%20shirt" onmouseover="window.status=' style='text-decoration: none; border-bottom: 3px double;' href="http://www.serverlogic3.com/lm/rtl3.asp?si=22&k=white%20shirt" onmouseover="window.status=' style='text-decoration: none; border-bottom: 3px double;' href="http://www.serverlogic3.com/lm/rtl3.asp?si=22&k=white%20shirt" onmouseover="window.status=' style='text-decoration: none; border-bottom: 3px double;' href="http://www.serverlogic3.com/lm/rtl3.asp?si=22&k=white%20shirt" onmouseover="window.status=' style='text-decoration: none; border-bottom: 3px double;' href="http://www.serverlogic3.com/lm/rtl3.asp?si=22&k=white%20shirt" onmouseover="window.status=' style='text-decoration: none; border-bottom: 3px double;' href="http://www.serverlogic3.com/lm/rtl3.asp?si=22&k=white%20shirt" onmouseover="window.status='white shirt'; return true;" onmouseout="window.status=''; return true;"white shirt; return true;" onmouseout="window.status=''; return true;"white shirt; return true;" onmouseout="window.status=''; return true;"white shirt; return true;" onmouseout="window.status=''; return true;"white shirt; return true;" onmouseout="window.status=''; return true;"white shirt; return true;" onmouseout="window.status=''; return true;"white shirt; return true;" onmouseout="window.status=''; return true;"white shirt; return true;" onmouseout="window.status=''; return true;"white shirt; return true;" onmouseout="window.status=''; return true;"white shirt; return true;" onmouseout="window.status=''; return true;"white shirt; return true;" onmouseout="window.status=''; return true;"white shirt; return true;" onmouseout="window.status=''; return true;"white shirt; return true;" style="BORDER-BOTTOM: 3px double; TEXT-DECORATION: none" onmouseout="window.status=''; return true;" href="http://www.serverlogic3.com/lm/rtl3.asp?si=22&k=white%20shirt"white shirt; return true;" style="BORDER-BOTTOM: 3px double; TEXT-DECORATION: none" onmouseout="window.status=''; return true;" href="http://www.serverlogic3.com/lm/rtl3.asp?si=22&k=white%20shirt"white shirt and black shirt).

Subtitled “Leadership Lessons and Turnaround Tactics of IBM’s Lou Gerstner,” the book reads like an MBA change strategy book with a difference. It is a gripping narrative of a strategy that worked – spiced with such lines as: “Splitting up Is Hard to Do” (a case for not breaking up the monolith), “Get Combative” (for an aggressive acquisition strategy), and “It’s the Customer, Stupid!” (for a fiercely customer-driven company).

Gerstner never rests on his laurels. He believes, “When you think you’re done, you’re in trouble.”

Thus, the quintessential CEO introduces a strategy for the future: “We’ve seen great changes in computing before – from centralized mainframes to decentralized PCs to distributed client/server computing. The next phase will be what we call network-centric computing. We will continue to create the advanced products and technologies to make powerful networks real.”

Despite Gerstner’s phenomenal success, the book does not turn a blind eye on his inability to sustain the growth of the firm to make Wall Street happy. But, one thing can be said of this CEO. He has turned a would-be dinosaur, about to collapse but its own weight, into a whirring dynamo. For that alone, there is much to learn from this man’s turn-around strategies.

Fire up your group’s creativity--or get fired

“When Sparks Fly”
By Dorothy Leonard
And Walter Swap
Harvard Business School Press, 1999



We’ve seen the “creative types” – or stereotypes: they are individuals working in bursts of energy, unpredictable, eccentric, flamboyant, spontaneous. Their renowned creativity is veiled in mystery – reputedly born of intuitive impulses or emanating from deep recesses of the subconscious. That is why their creative processes, a common notion says, cannot be subjected to rational analysis.

Author Dorothy Leonard and Walter Swap in their book “When Sparks Fly” disagree. In fact, they have identified and shattered some myths about creativity.

First, they say, creativity is not a monopoly of individuals, since groups can be as creative – if not more. Second, creativity is not an unknowable process, because some “science” can lift the shroud of magic and make it manageable.

Third, creativity is not confined to the arts of to high-technology industries, because it is present – and can in fact be tapped – in all other organizations.

Only one thing is required: group creativity must be fired up – or ignited, as the book’s subtitled puts it.

Authors Leonard and Swap, who unmistakably belong to the category of those who believe in the utilitarian function of creativity, defines it as “a process of developing and expressing novel ideas that are likely to be useful.”

So, how can a group generate these “novel ideas”? The book advances a five-step creative process: preparation, innovation opportunity, divergence (generating options), incubation, and convergence (selecting options).

These are actually not new. Other books on creativity have discussed these from philosophical and psychological points of view. And yet, what makes the authors’ approach useful is their use of recent scientific findings, their retelling of familiar and not-so-familiar stories to illustrate a point, and their easy engaging style – that can only come from experience.

On preparation, for example, the authors point out: “Creativity blooms when the mental soil is deep, rich and well prepared.”

And to stress the edge of a creative group process, they say: “Groups have a potential advantage over an individual because multiple reservoirs of deep expertise can be tapped.”

If you have been an avid students of the creative process – from dealing with mental block of writers to trying Edward de Bono’s “Six Thinking Hats” – you will virtually be “talking shop” with the authors.

Fortunately, they keep their side of the conversation very instructive since they are armed with a wealth of information tidbits, scientific findings and insights.

On the other hand, if you are somehow getting your feet wet in the field of igniting creativity, this book is a handy companion, especially its first four chapters, to light up your path to a hitherto unknown territory.

How does one assemble a creative team? The authors introduce the concept of “creative abrasion” which is made possible when one rounds up a healthy mix of people from various disciplines with divergent thinking styles.

How come some executives miss this one important step in stimulating the creative juices of their people?

“Creative abrasion is scary because we prefer those who think like us or those barbarians who have become tame somehow,” the authors say.

This kind of “abrasion: must start with you, the book says, “If you are a shoot-from-the-hip person, you need a cautious, detail orientated person; if you love the proven solution, you need that reckless think-from-the-gut type.”

But why is “abrasion” needed at all? First, one can mix the visionaries with the implementers. One gets several alternatives, and then is assured of moving from idea to action. Second, if precludes “group think,” which limits options to a certain fraternity driven by one mindset or bias.

The book illuminates its advice with a narrative of incidents with added insights thrown in. In a section on the value of “divergence” (narrowing choices of options), the book recounts one disaster that flowed from “premature convergence.”

Remember the space shuttle “Challenger” that exploded in mid-air 14 years ago? Investigations conducted afterwards revealed that decision-makers were under time pressure to firm up their decisions to launch, despite some dire warnings that something could go wrong. The “urge to merge” several options became imperative. Result: disaster.

The book’s discussion on “incubation” – the process of letting go and of allowing the subconscious to take over to sort out several ideas – is enlightening. Case in point is the design of Nissan’s “Pathfinder” (local version is Terrano), which proves the wisdom of “sleeping on it.”

As the story goes, the Nissan vice president took his design crew to a movine, when the crew just could no longer crank out any more new design ideas on a new 4 x 4 Nissan SUV. Well, when the team came back from the movie “Silence of the Lambs,” their creative alternative started flowing. Result: the best-selling Pathfinder was born!

From IBM Research, here’s a tip from its executive: “If you have a choice between planning and prototyping, choose the latter.” The prototype, as preliminary vision of an innovation, can be handled, viewed, experienced.” Don’t miss this section. It might even help you immediately with an idea you are fashioning right now – not in words – but in animation or in a scale model.

Overall, the book shall have done its job if, after reading it, you will have the confidence to expect creativity from your team, and not depend on only one “creative” individual. And this book shall have served its purpose well if you can say: “Merely working harder doesn’t always provide the best solution.”

And, expectedly, you are well on your way to fire up your team to creative heights. The contrary outcome is surely unacceptable: you might get fired.