How to Run a Company: Lessons from Top Leaders of the Ceo Academy - Hardcover

Carey, Dennis C.; Von Weichs, Marie-Caroline; Ceo Academy

 
9781400049271: How to Run a Company: Lessons from Top Leaders of the Ceo Academy
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 140004927X ISBN 13: 9781400049271
Verlag: Crown Pub, 2003

Inhaltsangabe

Valuable insights, practical strategies, and indispensable business advice from such successful CEOs and business professionals--including Larry Bossidy, Jeffrey Immelt, and Nell Minow--highlight a guide to effective business management and how to attain operating excellence and profitability while restoring faith in the corporate system. 50,000 first printing.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

DENNIS C. CAREY is vice chairman of Spencer Stuart, U.S., and has recruited CEOs and directors for some of the largest global companies. He is the founder of G100 and the CEO Academy, and the coauthor of <b>CEO Succession</b> and<b> The Human Side of M&A</b>.<br><br>MARIE-CAROLINE VON WEICHS is CEO of G100 and dean of the CEO Academy.

Aus dem Klappentext

LESSONS FOR EVERYONE IN BUSINESS FROM AN ALL-STAR TEAM<br><br>Every six months Dennis C. Carey and Marie-Caroline von Weichs run the CEO Academy, an immersion course for newly appointed CEOs of the world’s leading companies―what Business Week called a “boot camp” for the next class of top executives. Those attending get a priceless range of unvarnished advice and invaluable lessons from an all-star team of veteran CEOs about how to get the results they were hired to achieve. <br><br>What participants pay $10,000 to hear is now contained in this book, the insights and secrets of some of the most influential business leaders of our time. Here is advice from high-caliber businesspeople such as Larry Bossidy, the recently retired CEO of Honeywell International; Ray Gilmartin, the CEO of Merck; John Smale, the former chairman of General Motors and retired chairman and CEO of Procter & Gamble; and John Dasburg, who has run Northwest Airlines, Burger King, and now DHL Airways. <br><br>Successful CEOs aren’t the only attraction. How to Run a Company also presents America’s leading business observers and watchdogs: Nell Minow, the shareholder rights activist; Ira Millstein, the legendary attorney and power broker; Matthew Bishop, business editor of The Economist; and Joseph Badaracco, Harvard Business School’s top professor of ethics. <br><br>The combined team offers original and revealing observations on how business leaders at the top of the corporate world tackle pressing challenges, such as:<br><br>• How an industrial goliath like DuPont dramatically shifted its business focus<br>• How The Home Depot changed from fast-growing, free-wheeling adolescence to the management discipline that will help it mature and continue to expand<br>• What Michael Armstrong, who oversaw the transformation of Hughes Electronics and AT&T, advises to companies whose core business begins to disappear<br>• How the CEO of Tyco moved quickly during his first 100 days to build a new senior management team and began to restore trust in a company battered by scandal and bad publicity<br>• The role of the board of directors and how corporate governance should be reformed<br>• What strategies Jack Welch’s investor relations team at GE used to constantly probe who was buying the stock, who wasn’t, and why<br><br><b>How to Run a Company</b> is not just for CEOs, but anyone interested in the critical make-or-break factors in today’s ever-challenging business environment. As the demands and expectations in business become ever greater and the competition tougher, here in one volume is the accumulated wisdom and experience of people who have been in the trenches during a remarkable time. <b>How to Run a Company </b>is the success manual for the twenty-first century.

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Assessing a Company As an Outsider Coming In
Raymond V. Gilmartin, chairman and CEO of Merck & Co.

Raymond V. Gilmartin has worked in the healthcare industry for more than twenty-five years. He has been chief executive of both the medical device manufacturer Becton Dickinson and, since 1994, the drug giant Merck. During his tenure, the industry has faced dramatic changes and challenges, including the introduction of managed care, budget constraints, and remarkable innovation. These developments have presented several different strategic options for drug companies, and pharmaceutical executives have had to set clear direction for their companies.

Gilmartin has had the advantage of watching these industry changes from two key but very different leadership experiences. At Becton Dickinson, he was an insider who rose through the ranks to become CEO. At Merck, he was recruited from the outside and arrived at the job with a stellar record as an industry CEO. Unlike some corporate leaders who parachute into a position, Gilmartin did not launch wholesale changes among Merck's senior management team. Instead, he established a very flat and open organization structure and helped reassert the company's reputation as a leader in breakthrough research. In recent years, Merck has been included on Fortune's list of the most admired global companies and the 100 best companies to work for.


WHEN A FORMER Harvard Business School professor learned that I was leaving the CEO job at Becton Dickinson to become CEO of Merck, he told me I now had a second chance to do it right. His forecast was accurate. I had an advantage my second time around--the advantage of being an outsider.

As it happened, I had a rewarding and successful career at Becton Dickinson. I had joined the company in 1976 as vice president of strategic planning. Over time, I moved up through various line positions until I became president and CEO thirteen years later. During my tenure the company grew, our stock price did well against the S&P 500, and, having groomed a successor, I felt comfortable moving to a new company.

But my experience at Becton had been strictly that of the insider. One of the most important things I learned at Merck is how valuable it is to approach corporate issues from an outside perspective. In fact, that makes sense even for a CEO who has been promoted from within the company. Becoming CEO is an opportunity to step back and take a good look at the company, even if you think you know it well.

Nineteen ninety-four, the year I arrived at Merck, turned out to be a pivotal year for the pharmaceutical industry. In many respects, the industry was in turmoil. President Clinton had proposed a far-reaching health-care plan that many observers believed would lead to government-imposed price controls on prescription drugs. Stock prices across the industry were depressed. Managed care had also emerged in the early nineties, and it was clear that, one way or another, it would have an impact on the drug business.

Merck, too, was going through a period of uncertainty. The company had developed only a few new drugs in the early 1990s, and some questioned the company's commitment to research. The year before I arrived, Merck had acquired Medco, the pharmacy benefit manager, which suggested a change in direction for the company. Many at Merck wondered what the future held.

A new CEO is expected to make changes, often dramatic changes. Given the industry environment, I suspect that's what many expected from me at Merck. But I believe that before any changes can be introduced, a new CEO has to take a close look at three constituencies within the first six months on the job: the management team, the board, and the previous CEO. Identifying your key constituencies and addressing them quickly is critical for anyone who takes on a new management responsibility.

The fact is that when you come in from the outside, the management team you inherit is someone else's management team. It was put in place by your predecessor. At the CEO level, it is very likely that one or two people on that team expected to get the top job and experiences lingering disappointment. Similarly, the board is not the new CEO's. Its members were appointed by the CEO's predecessor, perhaps even by prior CEOs. And more often than not, the former CEO is still involved, either as a director or possibly continuing as chairman; in some instances he may have an office down the hall.

CEOs who have not paid attention to these different constituencies whose companies are in the midst of some very dramatic change have gotten into a lot of trouble, and many have lost their positions.


Building Support in the Company

Dealing with your constituencies and carrying out corporate change is possible only with support throughout the company. Determining what changes need to be made requires tapping into the knowledge that is available throughout the corporate ranks. Ironically, that requires being able to look at a company from the outside. The knowledge you need--in terms of the kind of change that is required and where to enlist support for those changes--already exists in the organization.

I started my career as a consultant with Arthur D. Little. I worked on an assignment for an executive I respected very much. The company was about to embark on a major restructuring of its sales and marketing division. Although he was supportive of the plan, he was not directly involved with it. On his behalf, I gathered information from within the organization about employee attitudes toward the restructuring, which I then presented to him. What I shared with him was that there was considerable anxiety among employees about the restructuring. Many thought it was taking the company in exactly the wrong direction. Indeed, the restructuring seemed to have very little support below the senior levels of management. After I presented this situation to the CEO, he said to me: "What you found out is very important, it's very critical, but it's also very sensitive. I think one of the things we should talk about is how we're going to maintain the confidentiality of what you found out." And I said to him, "With all due respect, your organization knows all these things. What they are worried about is that you do not know them." To his credit, he reacted the right way and did not go through with the planned restructuring.

That's an important lesson for the CEO. People in the organization know its strengths and weaknesses. It is the CEO who has to get to know them and tap into the organization's institutional knowledge.

On the day my appointment was announced, I introduced myself to senior management. After a short hiatus between jobs, I started working right away. I brought considerable experience in how an organization works--how it operates across functions and locations. But I didn't want to impose anything. The first thing I wanted to do was get people's views as to where things stood. So in the first couple of weeks on the job, I undertook a series of interviews with about sixty people at all levels of the organization.

The interviewing process was easy. I was asking people to share their ideas and knowledge. As the incoming CEO, I was giving them an opportunity to talk about what was important to Merck. I asked only two questions:

*What do you think are the major issues that we face?

*If you had my job, where would you spend your time and attention?

These two questions formed the basis for candid conversations, because people care a lot about the future of their company and how to resolve some of the frustrations they must deal with. I gathered a great deal of candid information about what was wrong in terms of how the company worked, and what issues people were really concerned about. At...

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Verlag
Crown Pub
Erscheinungsdatum
2003
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
140004927X
ISBN 13 
9781400049271
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Auflage
1
Anzahl der Seiten
289
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Verantwortliche Person
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