The Mind of the CEO

This book provides another perspective on the mind of the CEO. Worth reading.

The CEO has, for me at least, always been something of a celebrity. I have always wondered what life is like for a person who is responsible for 1000's of jobs and millions of dollars. When we see CEO's on the news, they are a lot like politicians - providing neutral answers to probing questions. This book does what the media fails to do, which is getting this business mavens to talk about real issues concerning their business and society in general. The responses are less formal, more relaxed and appear to be honest. Suprisingly, this book make CEO's appear to be servants of a complex circle of Customers, Employees and Shareholders. Which, I suppose, in the grander scheme of things that is what they are. The only dissapointment of this book is that 85% of it is the author filling in his own interpretation and editorial comments between actual quotes from the CEO's. It would have been nice if the book was a series of interviews. This would have given readers more objective content and allowed us to decipher the language for ourselves. With only 15% of the reading being actual pull quotes from several CEO's, I would have to say that we only get a small glimpse of the CEO's mind. But all in all, the author does a great job of posing the right questions to the right people. He certainly has a moral agenda that most of the consumer population would side with. It was nice to know that someone is willing to hold up the mirror of social responsibilty to the business world.

In the Introduction, Garten explains that his objective is to share "the most important thoughts that run through the minds of some of the world's leaders as a group. I was looking for patterns from which to draw conclusions, patterns derived from what was said and what wasn't." He interviewed 40 prominent CEOs worldwide who include C. Michael Armstrong (AT & T), Michael Bloomberg (Bloomberg L.P.), Richard Branson, (Virgin Management Ltd.), Stephen M. Case (American Online, Inc.), Michael S. Dell (Dell Computer Corporation), Roger A, Enrico (PepsiCo, Inc.), Andrew S. Grove (Intel Corporation), Rupert Murdoch (The News Corporation Limited), Hiroshi Okuda (Toyota Motor Corporation), Jurgen E. Schrempp (DaimlerChrysler AG), George Soros ((Soros Fund Management LLC.), and John F. Welch, Jr. (General Electric Company). "I tried to come to grips with what I thought of the environment CEOs faced, how they were dealing with it, and what more, if anything, they ought to be doing." This is a very revealing statement because it correctly suggests that the mind of Jeffrey E. Garten is as much involved in this book as are the minds of those CEOs he interviewed. Indeed, Garten shares several judgments of his own. For example, Garten asserts that global CEOs are not nearly as powerful as many people now assume as they struggle with three kinds of challenges amidst the third industrial revolution: "First, they have their hands full with the central strategic problems of how to take advantage of the Internet and the global economy. Second, they face certain everyday dilemmas of leading and managing corporate Goliaths.. And third, they have roles to play on the world political, economic, and social stage." In the final chapter, Garten suggests that the three challenges "will be assessed by historians as having been too difficult for most CEOs to successfully handle all at once." This is especially true in larger organizations as their structures become "flatter", as delegation of authority becomes both wider and deeper, as "virtual" operations expand, and as strategic alliances (even with traditional competitors) proliferate. What intrigues me, frankly, is the relevance of the suggestion to owners/CEOs of small-to-midsize companies who, also, find many challenges "too difficult...to successfully handle all at once." Bennis and others have correctly identified the inadequacies of the authoritarian leadership style. In their book whose title is especially appropriate, O'Dell and Grayson suggest what could be accomplished in collaboration "if only we knew what we know." CEOs in years to come will have (indeed must have) quite different values, perspectives, and mindsets than those which today's CEOs possess. As indicated in what they say and do not say to Garten, many of today's CEOs agree.

If you need an authentic report on what the men at the helm of Corporate America have on their agenda for action, this book certainly adds value. The CEOs' are bogged down with short-term goals in meeting quarterly market expectations rather than work for the long term good of the Company or Society. This trend is certainly what one needs to worry about; especially in the context of social responsibility of Business.The impact of Globalization and the Internet on Business Strategy is major area of discussion in this book. At the end of it what remains as a memo to the CEOs is the fact that they need to play a greater role in the Political and Social arena and contribute a larger share of their time and resources to make this globe a better place to live in. In the process of driving this message, Jeffrey Garten's current role as the head of one of the best-known Business Schools comes to the fore.Excellent narration of complex issues facing our Business leaders.

I picked up this book at the airport and literally couldn't put it down throughout a six-hour flight to the West Coast. Not that this means anything to anyone else, but normally I couldn't even finish a single newspaper article on the plane because I've always fount it hard to concentrate, even in the slightly more comfortable seats of the business class. I assume the author is someone all of you who are decision-makers at corporations large and small and who have gone to business schools in the past 10 or 20 years will have heard of, if not actually studied. So I'll just say here that this book fully lives up to both the author's high reputation and its title. This is a must-read for anyone interested in the business world today, and not only for its elite either.