Lessons from the Top: The Search for America's Best Business Leaders

This book is a valuable reference and a good read. The leaders featured come from diverse industries and have diffirent leadership and management philosophies.Helpful in a host of circumstances and Highly recommended to anyone serious about business.

Among the many books which examine "America's best business leaders", this is one of the best-written and most informative. Part I consists of three chapters: What Makes Business Leaders Great, Evaluating Today's Business Leaders, and Methodology: A Closer Look at the Numbers. The authors then proceed to 50 "Profiles" in Part II, beginning (in alphabetical order) with Mike Armstrong (AT & T) and concluding with Jack Welch (GE). Part III consists of three chapters: The 51st Business Leader: Peter Drucker, Doing the Right Things Right: A New Definition of Business Success, and Common Traits: A Prescription for Success in Business. The reader is then provided with three Appendices to supplement and enrich the material which precedes them. So much for the book's organization.There are several reasons why I rate this book so highly. First, as previously indicated, it is exceptionally well-written. Also, each of the 50 "Profiles" probes deeply into the specific talents and skills of its subject. Biographical information and quotations supplement the authors' own analyses. Moreover, each "Profile" illustrates a key point. For example, the discussion of Bill Steere (Pfizer) illuminates the implications of his assertion that "Fads come. Fads go. We concentrate on what we do best." In the "Profile" of him, Jack Welch observes "I don't think anyone appreciates the value of informal." Obviously, Welch does. I also was very impressed by the quality of the content of Part III. The discussion of Peter Drucker is among the most insightful I have ever read. The authors redefine "business success in the next chapter and then review the "common traits" of the 50 great business leaders they have analyzed. For those who are eager to learn, the "lessons" identified and then discussed by Neff and Citrin are invaluable.

I have read a lot of business books about leadership. While most of them have been interesting, they have also been a little dry because the references to real people have only been used by way of example. Therefore, I liked this book because it allowed me to spend a liitle time with 50 people that one has to respect and acknowledge for their accomplishments. They have had to do something right in order to achieve what they have. But, then the book takes these 50 real life experiences and distills it down into a framework and a few basic lessons that helps all these individual experiences make sense within the larger scheme of things. People might say that there is nothing new here, only common sense notions, yet until one sees things within a larger picture or framework that ties things together, these are just disjointed ideas with little context, synergy or power to change. I can apply these lessons for the top to my own life situation and career and that makes the book work for me.

"If you want to learn what makes someone successful, you want to go directly to the source..." This is the source. Especially valuable because it doesn't offer a single "right" way but surveys a range of situation-specific leadership styles, this book well written and insightful.

Citrin and Neff have succeeded in the nearly impossible -- achieving remarkable access into America's corner office where they divined the essence of what got (and keeps) the best of the best corporate leaders to (and at) the top. This is a readable and humane primer that is rigorous in its analysis to boot.