800-CEO-READ Blog

Jack Covert Selects - The Trusted Leader

The Trusted Leader: Bring Out the Best in Your People and Your Company by Robert Galford and Anne Seibold Drepeau, The Free Press, $25.00 Hardcover, January 2003, ISBN 0743235398, 260 pages

Robert Galford, David Maister and Charles Green together wrote last year’s bestselling The Trusted Advisor. This year, Galford returns with co-author Anne Seibold Drapeau with an extremely well-written book about trust in respect to leadership. When I read a business book, I mark the pages that I find interesting or important with Post-It Notes so I can go back and digest the morsels later. This book is covered with my little blue Post-It Notes.

The authors have identified three areas of trust that leaders must accomplish. They are Strategic Trust—employees trust that mangers are correct on how the company is positioned, priced, and located in the marketplace. The second trust is Organizational Trust—employees trust the way things are being done in both processes and decision-making. The third form of trust is Personal Trust—employees trust the people leading the company. Later in the book, Galford and Seibold Drapeau list the top 10 benefits of trusted leadership with a thorough (sometimes lengthy) explanation. I found this section quite compelling because the authors gave me many more reasons to be a trusted leader than I came up with on my own.

Interspersed in the book are loads of perfectly selected case studies—some detail common management nightmares, others are inspiring successes. Chapter Two has a very complete self-assessment test that was very eye-opening for me. At the end, the authors give advice on how to follow through on the lessons offered in the book and refer readers to the book’s web site where one can find the self assessment test in order to take it twice a year like the authors recommend.

After the big corporate scandals, the issue of trust is an important one for any organization’s leaders. This book goes right to the point and will help readers gain and maintain their employees’ trust.

Jack Covert Selects - The Cure

The Cure: Enterprise Medicine at Work, by Dan Paul & Jeff Cox, John Wiley & Sons, $24.95 Hardcover, January 2003, ISBN 0471268305, 350 pages

At the end of the last decade, I decided to compile a list of “The Bestselling Business Books of the 1990s.” I was surprised to find that the same guy wrote #1, The Goal, and #2, Zapp!: Jeff Cox. One guy penning our top 2 books of the decade! Pretty impressive. Why is Cox such a successful business author? Essentially, he is an expert at novelizing (did I just make up a new word?) consultants’ philosophies. Eliyahu Goldratt and Bill Byham submitted their philosophies to his magic pen and found a great deal of success. Cox’s newest collaboration pairs him with Dan Paul, producing the fantastic The Cure.

Most business novels are in fact not novels, but fables, with an imaginary “guru” who leads a company to the “Promised Land” of profitability. See either of the two Cox books listed above, if that is what you’re looking for. But The Cure works a bit differently, and in my opinion, very successfully. This story features a company mired in the muck of corporate politics, a weak product line, no vision, and having to do creative bookkeeping to hit the monthly numbers. Defined by Paul and Cox, the company is “sick.” The cure to the company’s ills is a change initiative that will create a boundaryless management culture. Thought only GE could succeed in creating such a reformation? Paul and Cox tell us that it is possible for every company, and shows us the model through this novel. The manuscript I read had the book broken down into four major parts: Symptoms, Diagnosis, Treatment, and Cure. These sections effectively give the reader a way of understanding and participating in the process of change and the creation of a new management culture.

It is Cox’s writing style that really drives the story and serves to make the reader a part of the conversion. By giving each key character a distinct voice, we are reminded of people whom we have met and may even sit in the desk next to us. These characters interact realistically and act pragmatically, and as a result we are invested in how these people tackle their challenges and create real solutions. The company does hire a consultant who helps uncover the hidden issues and agendas of the senior and middle managers, and serves as a catalyst for change. But it is the fictional employees who do the work, and inspire readers to reflect on what our own employees or departments can do to facilitate and sustain change. A guru is all fine and good, but true change has longevity, and to solidify that change, you’ve got to get down and dirty and do it yourself.

To give you an idea of how good this book is, I stayed up late last night to finish it. Think about that: postponing sleep over a business book! Just like a novel, and just, I would imagine, as Jeff Cox planned.

Jack Covert Selects - Stuff Happens

Stuff Happens (And Then You Fix It!): 9 Reality Rules to Steer Your Life Back in the Right Direction, by John Alston and Lloyd Thaxton, John Wiley and Sons, $19.95 Hardcover, February 2003, ISBN 0471273600, 120 pages

When you have a book with this kind of title you can be assured that you’re not dealing with chaos theory as applied to management. However, that does not diminish the value of the book. In fact, if you read it, you’ll find it is a huge positive. While this book is not targeted at a specific area of business (or even at business at all), I sure found tips that were applicable to my little enterprise.

This is a slim volume that will load you with fun, yet valuable insights into this journey called life. The authors are great storytellers and have designed the book for busy people. Each of the nine chapters that correspond to the “9 Reality Rules” has a really concise synopsis of the points in the chapter. I found myself copying them in my notebook to look at later. As I mentioned, the authors are great storytellers, but what moves you forward is how you can relate to each story and each point the authors are making.

The book is chock full of semi-cutesy catch phrases—but they work: “Working hard at what doesn’t work, doesn’t work.” “To win, you have to begin.” My favorite: “Some get it, some don’t. Some will, some won’t. Those that do, do. Those that don’t, don’t.”

This review isn’t long because the book isn’t long, but it sure has value. If you need something to “start you up” besides your double vanilla latte, here it is.

Jack Covert Selects - Perfect Enough

Perfect Enough: Carly Fiorina and the Reinvention of Hewlett-Packard, by George Anders, Portfolio, $24.95 Hardcover, January 2003, ISBN 1591840031, 288 pages

Hewlett-Packard grew up as an old-school, old fashioned family business with strong values and integrity. So much so that their value as a tech company was compromised at times—products had to be perfect before they could be shipped out of the plant. By the time some products made it out of the shop, they were already obsolete, or the market rush had already passed it by. Then comes Carly Fiorina. She changed the whole philosophy of HP without sacrificing its integrity.

George Anders book is a fast-paced, detailed story of Carly Fiorina’s induction into HP and her later transformation of the company. Fiorina, who had great success at AT&T and it’s spin-off company Lucent, came into the stiff, old fashioned corporate environment at HP and found herself warmly welcomed by the board. They desperately wanted her to change the company around—give it the youth and passion the company had been missing for so long. She immediately went to work, giving whirlwind speeches to the employees and asking them for things like lists of the “Ten Stupidest Things We Do.” She went to work on reducing “brand clutter” and created one strong brand based on the company’s culture and history of extreme quality and performance. Soon after, Fiorina made changes to the HP “gene pool” by changing the kinds of people who were hired and the kinds of people that were let go. Most of the changes were made in the top 300 executive level positions. The next step was restructuring the board room, reducing the number of directors from 14 to 10, eliminating many of the Hewlett and Packard family members from their positions. By early 2000, stock went up by 40% since Fiorina’s 1999 arrival.

Her seemingly small decisions also helped to change the company. When the picture of the board of directors was to be taken, she asked everyone to dress casually; instead of standing in a straight row, she had them stand in clusters of three. In her cluster, she stood with chairman Dick Hackborn and board member Walter Hewlett, one of founder Dave Hewlett’s sons. Her representation of herself as being with the company and the family was an important message to convey to the employees and the world.

Fiorina’s biggest feat was the HP merger with Compaq. Not only did she have to negotiate with the people at Compaq, but she had to face harsh internal scrutiny from Walter Hewlett. The skills Fiorina had to use in this battle really showed her value and worth as an exceptional leader, strategist, and over-all human being.
I
n this book, readers will find out how Fiorina’s motto of “perfect enough” led HP to actually become a virtually perfect, innovative, thriving company. She is an awe-inspiring leader who we could all learn something from.

Jack Covert Selects - Making Rain

Making Rain: The Secrets of Building Lifelong Client Loyalty, by Andrew Sobel, John Wiley & Sons, $27.95 Hardcover, January 2003, ISBN 0471264598, 240 pages

The book Clients for Life, which Andrew Sobel co-wrote with Jagdish Sheth has been an 800-CEO-READ bestseller ever since it came out two years ago. Now, Sobel is on his own and brings us Making Rain. It’s sort of the natural extension of Clients for Life. Where the first book gives you what you need to establish client loyalty, Making Rain goes on to tell you how to maintain that loyalty for the long haul.

Sobel argues that “rainmakers,” people hired by companies to bring new customers, are ineffective because they are there for the short-term—they do their job and leave the organization behind. He believes that it would be better to bring out the rainmaker in everyone in an organization, and increase value and loyalty that way—for the long-term—so an organization is always “making rain” for itself, without temporary outside help. Makes sense to me! I like the idea of fostering current employees’ development.

The first part of the book borrows a lot from Clients for Life and shows how to develop yourself into a client advisor who is a deep generalist instead of a narrow specialist. Sobel frowns on the idea of being too specialized since that really limits what you can offer. In one chapter, he gives nine strategies to be a better advisor; another chapter is about relationship capital and how to build it. The second part of the book tells you how to get your foot in a client’s door—how to use what you’ve learned in the first part. The third part gives advice on how to maintain your client relationships for the long term by sustaining your service to them, and constantly assessing your performance and the organization’s needs.

I like all the historic examples that are throughout the book. Sobel uses important figures like Ben Franklin, Leonardo Da Vinci, Loyola, Merlin (yes, the magician!), and the Rothschilds to illustrate his concepts. Not only are the stories interesting; but they are fun and made me see these people in a new light. Most importantly, the stories helped me more clearly understand the points Sobel was making.

Overall, this book is based in common-sense ideas, but Sobel goes the extra mile to show us how to use those common-sense ideas that we all have. Books like this are the best kind to read because they make us fully understand and clearly see what we have always had an inkling of, but were never able to put into action.