Leaders Talk Leadership: Top Executives Speak Their Minds

By Meredith D. Ashby

Book Overview

Leaders Talk Leadership is an impressive collection of interviews with some of the world's most respected corporate leaders and management scholars. Edited by Ashby and Miles of the preeminent executive search firm Heidrick and Struggles, this compilation of thought leadership spanning industries and geographies addresses the key issues facing executives today such as governance, leadership and strategy, how to lead in volatile times or through a corporate transformation, how to best leverage human capital and how to achieve competitive advantage in today's environment. Some of the CEO's featured in the book include Ken Chenault, of American Express, Steve Reinemund of PepsiCo, Heinrich von Pierer of Siemens, Ken Lewis of Bank of America, Edward Tian of China Netcom, Fred Smith of FedEx, Hank McKinnell of Pfizer, A.G. Lafley of Proctor and Gamble, Klaus Zumwinkel of Deutsche Post World Net, William Haseltine of Human Genome Sciences, Linda Sanford of IBM, Larry Weinbach of Unisys and Michael Dell of Dell Computer. Framing these cutting-edge concepts are interviews and written essays by preeminent academics, including Jay Conger from London Business School, Jim Collins of Good to Great, Mohanbir Sawhney of Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and Jeffrey Pfeffer of Stanford University. Serving as the line executive's roadmap to recruiting, retaining and developing talent and an encyclopedia of MBA students worldwide, this book represents path-breaking leadership perspectives from path-breaking leaders.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195152832
• ISBN13: 9780195152838
• Release Date: September 2002
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 1.24 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.4" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

The New Leader: Catalyst of Distributed Leadership

There is really nothing new in this book and yet the interview material it provides is first-rate and brilliantly presented by Ashby and Miles. After the Foreword ("Leading in the New Century: Storm Clouds and Silver Linings on the Horizon") and Introduction ("Factors Affecting Leadership and Human Capital Management"), they organize 49 interviews within five chapters, followed by an Epilogue ("Optimizing Human Capital with a 'People Operating System' Approach"). Actually, during their research for this book, they conducted hundreds of interviews with all manner of executives, selecting responses which, to varying degrees, helped to answer questions such as these:* What gives companies competitive advantage?* What are the burning issues for corporate leaders today?* How do leaders lead in times of crisis or instability?* How do companies identify, attract, develop, and retain the best and brightest people in the marketplace?The title of each chapter correctly indicates the primary focus of the interviews assembled within it: Leadership, Managing Human Capital, Establishing Competitive Advantage, Strategic change and Transformation, and finally Chapter 5, The Stakeholder's View. The value of this book will no doubt be determined by each reader in terms of the nature and extent of material most relevant to the reader's specific needs and interests. Here are brief excerpts from a few of the conversations which were of greatest interest to me. Hopefully they give those who read this review a sense of the quality of the responses to important issues.Jim Collins on leadership: "We [Collins and his research associates] concluded that the answer to making companies great was not leadership itself. The real distinction was that there is a special form of leadership that takes companies from good to great....Level Five leaders are ambitious first and foremost for the company and its long-term greatness, not for themselves as individuals. As a result, they tend to be personally modest, humble and reserved,, but enormously willful on behalf of the organization....They tend not to become celebrities. They don't have their egos wrapped up in making themselves well-known....We found that there is an inverse relationship between high-profile, charismatic, egocentric leadership -- the Level Four leaders -- and the journey of the company from good to great."John Hagel on how to respond to increased performance demands, shifts of surplus from from a structural advantage to a human capital advantage, and a bottleneck to value creation caused by shortages in key skill sets/experience: "What can companies do about these trends? As talent increases its ability to capture value, companies will need to rethink their businesses on a profound level. This includes even the most basic question of all: What business are we in? What business are we really in? Perhaps the most significant challenge involves the need to adopt a different mindset. Rather than looking at cost-cutt

user-friendly guide

Top CEOs give their views on all that matters in business.Strong on visionary leadership of talent, these top execs all view employees as their most valuable assets. You'll find innovative thinking on finding, hiring, developing, challenging, retaining and continuing to motive workers in demanding, volatile environments. User-friendly format with helpful Contents and Index tables allow you to dip into this book just to glean your favorite moguls' musings. But most readers will probably devour it in one sitting, start to finish. It's that captivating.