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Doing What Matters: How to Get Results That Make a Difference - The Revolutionary Old-School Approach (精装)
by Jim Kilts , John F. Manfredi , Robert Lorber
| Category:
Leadership, Management, Change management, Business turnaround |
| Market price: ¥ 298.00
MSL price:
¥ 278.00
[ Shop incentives ]
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| Stock:
Pre-order item, lead time 3-7 weeks upon payment [ COD term does not apply to pre-order items ] |
MSL rating:
 Good for Gifts |
| MSL Pointer Review:
James Kilts is one of the most successful CEOs of the last quarter-century. In this book, Kilts walks the reader through what successful CEOs focus on to build their companies and which time drains to avoid to keep from feeling unproductive. |
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AllReviews |
1 Total 1 pages 5 items |
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Warren E. Buffett (MSL quote), USA
<2007-10-14 00:00>
Jim Kilts transformed Gillette. Before his arrival, the company was a study in self-deception. Great brands were being mishandled, operational and financial discipline was non-existent and fanciful promises to investors were standard practice. In record time, Jim excised these business pathogens. I've learned much from Jim. So, too, will readers of this book.
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Jack Welch (Jack Welch, LLC, MSL quote), USA
<2007-10-14 00:00>
Doing What Matters is an insightful and practical approach to business by a transformative leader with a great track record of success. |
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Publishers Weekly (MSL quote), USA
<2007-10-14 00:00>
In a business book that reads like a case study, turnaround artist and brand-builder Kilts walks managers and CEOs through the lessons he learned while resuscitating shaving-company Gillette. Having revived Nabisco, Kilts was planning to retire until famed investor Warren Buffett persuaded him to upgrade Gillette. With an analytical tone, Kilts describes how he moved the company off the ledge and paved the way for a bidding war. The book is likely to resonate with CEOs accustomed to dense discussions of corporate successes, businessy acronyms (like ZOG, or zero overhead growth) and sorting through heaps of advice. On rare occasions, Kilts gets folksy, as when describing the loss of perspective that comes with immersion in an organization's culture: If you put a frog into boiling water, it jumps out, Kilts writes. If you put a frog into cool water and slowly raise the temperature, the frog gets cooked before it knows what's happening. The slow boil is bad for business, he reasons. But overall, it works as an approach for this book. |
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The Wall Street Journal (MSL quote), USA
<2007-10-14 00:00>
Jim Kilts is a proven wizard at making companies run. |
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Robert Morris (MSL quote), USA
<2007-10-14 00:00>
As I began to read this book, I was reminded of an observation by Peter Drucker in 1963: "There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all." That observation should be kept in mind by those who assign work as well as those who are then expected to do it ("to do more and better work in less time and at a lower cost," etc.) With the assistance of John Manfredi and Robert Lorber, James Kilts has written a book in which he shares what he has learned from his business career thus far, especially from his years as CEO of Kraft, Nabisco, and Gillette. The book's title would even more accurately indicate his core business principles if it were "Do Well What Really Matters" or "Do Well What Matters Most" but the subtitle is just fine: "How to Get Results That Make a Difference - The Revolutionary Old School Approach." The inclusion of the word "revolutionary" is intentional and its appropriateness best revealed within Kilts's narrative.
In the city where I live, we have a number of outdoor markets at which slices of fresh fruit are offered as samples of the produce available. In that same spirit, I frequently include brief excerpts from a book to help those who red my review to get a "taste." Here is a representative selection of Kilts's insights from his years as a CEO:
"You not only have to sort out what you should pay attention to and what you should ignore, you must do so with [begin italics] revolutionary [end italics] speed and decisiveness. Yet, even with disaster staring them in the face, people from the lowest to the highest levels in many organizations often prefer to `rearrange the deck chairs.' They'll give lip service to stepping up performance, but in practice they go about business as usual." (Page 3)
"During my tenure at Kraft, we developed something called IMI - Integrated Marketing Intelligence - which gave us state-of-the-art insights into our brands, their categories, and consumer dynamics; how responsive they were to different forms of advertising and promotion; how much spending was optimal; and much more that will be explored later [in this book]. When we spent marketing dollars at Kraft, we were truly [begin italics] investing [end italics] in brand building." (Page 94)
"A company must function like a finely tuned engine of a racecar. It must not only have all the right components - injectors, valves, pistons, and the like - but each element must also be connected with all the others, and the timing and movement of all components must be absolutely in synch. Even the slightest miss in timing will result in poor performance." (Page 149)
"Many managers fail because they have a punch list of all the individual elements and when they see check marks against them, they assume the heavy lifting is over. Actually, the opposite is true. The heaviest lifting comes when all of the individual pieces are in place and you must make them work together to drive the company toward its objectives. At this point you need the right road map." (Pages 213-214)
Note: Kilts explains how to formulate such a "road map" in Chapter 11.
"Making the tough decision to fire someone, and doing it promptly, is something that I took to heart early on. Terminating someone is tough, but it doesn't get any easier if you put it off. Once you make the decision to fire someone, you start sending out signals, consciously or unconsciously, that are difficult to ignore. The intended employee's time on the job may be prolonged, but it will not be quality time, so say the least. If you level with someone, a termination or separation can be positive. Unless you are dealing with a bad actor, people lose their jobs because their position has become redundant or unnecessary, or because the person's individual skills are a mis-match for the position." (Page 288)
In the next to last chapter, "Politicians and Media Matter," the book's narrative sags somewhat as Kilts expresses his irritation with the Boston news media's coverage of the purchase of Gillette by Procter & Gamble, notably the Boston Globe's coverage that he characterizes as "piling on" big business and its leaders. In particular, he cites an op-ed article by Jack Falvey in which he shares a number of opinions about Gillette that were "unfounded and untrue." Kilts acknowledges the importance of the news media and concludes the chapter with some sound advice as to how to conduct effective press relations.
I agree with Kilts that "continuous dissatisfaction with the status quo is the best way to keep growing as an individual and an organization, or company." (Andrew Grove expresses essentially the same idea when explaining why "only the paranoid survive.") To me, the greatest strength of this book is its focus on real-world situations, especially those that involve a serious challenge, when it is imperative to determine what really matters (i.e. what is most important) and then concentrate on doing it well, thoroughly and consistently, to achieve the desired results, whatever those results may be. If some view this approach as being "old school" and obsolete, so be it.
Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out Noel M. Tichy and Warren G. Bennis' Judgment: How Winning Leaders Make Great Calls, Gary Hamel's The Future of Management, Ram Charan's Know-How: The 8 Skills That Separate People Who Perform from Those Who Don't, The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge into Action and Hard Facts Dangerous Half-Truths and Total Nonsense: Profiting From Evidence-Based Management by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton, Pfeffer's What Were They Thinking?: Unconventional Wisdom About Management, and The Leader of the Future2 co-edited by Frances Hesselbein and Marshall Goldsmith. |
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1 Total 1 pages 5 items |
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