Lasting Leadership: What You Can Learn from the Top 25 Business People of Our Times

A sign of wisdom is being able to learn from the successes and failures of others (without having to make the same mistakes yourself). In the business world, this trait can be worth millions (or even billions). A good resource for starting your learning is the book Lasting Leadership - What You Can Learn From The Top 25 Business People Of Our Times by Mukul Pandya and Robbie Shell. Contents: Best of the Best - Inside Andy Grove's Leadership at Intel; Leadership and Corporate Culture; Truth Tellers; Identifying an Underserved Market; Seeing the Invisible; Using Price to Gain Competitive Advantage; Managing the Brand; Fast Learners; Managing Risk; Conclusion; References; Index This book is laid out a bit differently than other business leader biographies I've read in the past. The material is grouped into specific sections that focus on a particular trait, such as the skill of managing the brand of your company. Within each section, a number of business leaders are covered with special attention paid to their skill in that area. This is a welcome departure from books that tend to deify a business legend, making it sound as if they never made a mistake. In the post-Enron era, we know that the public hype doesn't always equate to reality. For each business leader covered, there's a few pages of side bars that recap his/her career, along with a brief write-up about their skills as it relates to the area being discussed. Following that information, there's a "Leadership Lesson" that helps take the leader's skill and make it a bit more generic to allow you to think about applications to your own business arena. The other thing that was nice about this title is that it didn't gloss over errors or mistakes. Richard Branson didn't turn everything he touched into gold. Overextension of resources forced him to choose between his record company and his fledging airline. But there's lessons to be learned there. Likewise, Fred Smith of FedEx hasn't exactly missed all the potholes in the road to where they are today. Again, the skill to learn quickly from mistakes and adapt is a critical trait, and you can learn from his mistakes. For business people looking to tap into the collective experience of those who have gone before them, this is an excellent read with many points to apply...

What a wonderful book this turned out to be. Not only did it give me an insight into what these individuals key strengths were, but the book also had enough personal information about them that you came away from the book feeling you knew more about them as individuals. The book starts off by making the assurance that great leaders are not only capable individuals, but they also have a desire to lead and chose to do so above all else. They are not just great because of smarts or drive, but because they want to be and work at it continuously. Thus the authors provide a book that is not a road map to greatness, but a review of these 25 leaders and what they do that has made them successful. It is a broad group of people and it is interesting that the traits highlighted in the book are also wide spanning. I had incorrectly assumed that the book was going to give me a simple list of the things I needed to get good at, no such luck. The goal of the book is to help current day leaders observe proven and successful leaders to help them in coming better. The purpose is not so much to imitate their qualities but really to discover which attributes resonate with yourself and the cultivate those traits to expand and improve your leadership skills. There are so many good examples in the book that it is almost too much to take in with one reading, this is one of those books that you will find yourself highlighting and marking pages for further review. It comes as close as possible to a how to guide for personal improvement. Overall I not only enjoyed the book, but I learned a great deal from it. This book as so many helpful bits of info that all managers and business owners can learn from it. The book is not only worth the money, but also worth the time to read.

This is one of the most powerful and inspiring book on leadership. It must be a required reading for MBA students and senior executives.

Who doesn't want to know about leadership? It is a discipline that has been called an "art" by Max DePree and dissected by countless academics. Wharton School Publishing has created, in collaboration with Nightly Business Report (NBR) and Knowledge@Wharton, a perfect book for those of us who like to discover how leadership is done. The book identifies the 25 most influential business leaders of the past 25 years-side note, I didn't make it. The NBR viewers nominated more than 700 business people from around the world-once again, I was skipped. A panel of six Wharton judges selected the top 25. Seriously, it is a great list. Iacocca, Welch, Branson, Buffett, Bezos, and Kelleher. The panel was asked to pick the "best" of the 25. Andy Grove won that honor. 2 of the 25 have died-Sam Walton and Mary Kay Ash-and they interviewed 15 of the remaining 23. They have identified eight characteristics that have enabled the 25 individuals to overcome major challenges as well as create their own leadership style. 1. Building a strong corporate culture-Herb Kelleher. 2. Truth telling-Peter Drucker, Bill George 3. Finding and catering to under-server markets-John Bogle, Charles Schwab 4. Seeing the invisible-Steve Jobs, Ted Turner 5. Using price to build competitive advantage-Jeff Bezos 6. Managing and building their organizations brand-Oprah Winfrey, Lee Iacocca. 7. Being a fast learner-Lou Gerstner, Bill Gates. 8. Managing risk-Alan Greenspan, Peter Lynch. The history and challenges of these 25 leaders are thoroughly covered with tidbits of information on side bars, which includes detailed information on birthdays, marriages, schooling and highlights in their respective careers. What's great about this is that you can pick and choose what you want to read and everything is in bite-sized morsels. The stories ends with what is titled "The Leadership Lesson" which gives further insight into how these 25 leaders got to be where they are. Their stories are told with many verbatim quotes, which really helps this book to be both interesting and motivating. This makes it a great holiday gift book for anybody in business.