What the Best CEOs Know[c] 7 Exceptional Leaders and Their Lessons for Transforming Any Business

A Reader's Guide to What the Best CEOs Know

While this book will provide some historical context for each of the companies and CEOs discussed within it, I haven't tried to write a business history, or even a sustained narrative. Instead, I've tried to create an easy-to-follow road map that will not only help managers and aspiring managers understand the traits and strategies of these successful leaders, but also show them how to apply these traits and strategies to their own organizations.

The first part of the book, "What Made Them Great," consists of a single chapter that is intended to accomplish two goals: (1) to explain the criteria that I used to choose the CEOs for inclusion in this book, and (2) to identify and discuss the defining traits and/or accomplishments that these leaders had in common. While not every CEO excelled in every one of the areas identified, each of the traits identified in this chapter can be found in the majority of the seven CEOs.

For example, one of the hallmarks of exceptional CEOs is their willingness to implement within their own organizations the very best ideas out there, regardless of where those ideas originated. The late Sam Walton, for example, created Wal-Mart by studying competitors and doing what they did—only better. Later, that behavior would be the key to developing a learning culture. In the 1990s, Jack Welch took the concept of a learning culture to a new and previously unexplored level by creating one of the world's largest learning organizations, involving a myriad of diverse global businesses.

Part 2 of the book, "Defining Strategies of Exceptional Leaders," includes seven chapters devoted to the CEOs and their signature strategies. The focus of each of these chapters is on introducing the leader's key strategy, explaining it and its origin in depth, and showing how it can be applied in other organizations or situations. To achieve this, and also to help the reader "think like a leader," each chapter includes the following:

• WHAT WOULD [THE CEO] DO? Each chapter begins with a brief scenario that puts the reader in the seat of the CEO. A business situation set within a particular industry is briefly described, usually in two pages. In these cases, the readers get the chance to test their business acumen against that of each of the seven subject CEOs.

  At the conclusion of the case, the reader is encouraged to decide on a particular course of action. The case ends with the question "What would Michael Dell do?" (or Jack Welch, Herb Kelleher, and so on). The business scenario is placed at the beginning of the chapter to challenge readers, stimulate their thinking, and put them in the proper mind-set. Each is in a sense a quiz, but not a disqualifying quiz. Since the clues to "passing" each quiz are included in each chapter, I hope that they will be intriguing and even entertaining. And I hope that by the end of each chapter, the appropriate course of action—or at least an appropriate course of action—will be more apparent.

  One disclaimer: To make a point, I may describe a situation that stretches the limits of business reality (although only by a little bit, in most cases). So please suspend disbelief and grant me some poetic license. My goal is not to immerse you in the dynamics of seven industries or businesses with 100 percent accuracy. Instead, I want to paint a business situation in broad brushstrokes in order to stimulate your thoughts and responses.

  Furthermore, while no one (probably even including the leaders themselves) knows exactly how these leaders would respond to the particular hypothetical challenge presented to them, I suggest one solution at the end of each chapter. These proposed solutions are possible and plausible, in my opinion, and reflect my understanding of how each of the subject CEOs has tackled similar problems in the past. You are entirely free to come up with better answers.

• EVERY CHAPTER HAS LESSONS THROUGHOUT. In addition to the lessons inherent in these cases and their solutions, each chapter also includes other kinds of lessons at regular intervals. These are usually placed at the end of a section to emphasize a particular insight or leadership action. The point of these editorial asides, as you might expect, is to help translate ideas from a specific industry context to a larger context and to suggest how the knowledge presented in that section can be applied by managers in other organizations.

• EACH CHAPTER HAS "ASSESS YOUR CEO QUOTIENT" QUESTIONS. The "solution" to the case or scenario ("What Would Michael Dell Do") at the end of the chapter is followed by a brief (and unscientific) assessment exercise. It is intended not only to help readers gauge their own leadership abilities vis- -vis each of the business leaders profiled, but also to put the reader's organization to the test—to ascertain whether or not the organization employs the practices of each of the CEOs.

• MORE LESSONS FOLLOW THE ASSESSMENT. The chapter concludes with several additional ideas for implementing the strategies discussed in the chapter.

• SELECTED CHAPTERS INCLUDE THOUGHTS FROM BUSINESS THEORISTS such as Peter Drucker and Philip Kotler. The point of this is to study the CEOs' strategies or tactics from another viewpoint, and to add insight into a particular strategy or concept.