What the Best CEO's Know: 7 Exceptional Leaders and Their Lessons for Transforming Any Business

An excellent encapsulation of real life situations and how to approach them. It affirms the good things a CEO might be doing now and offers great tips for how to possibly add a bit more cutting edge. Easy to read, easy to apply, entertaining, applicable. A real delight to read.

If you have already read books by or about Michael Dell, Bill Gates, Lou Gerstner, Andy Grove, Herb Kelleher, Jack Welch and Sam Walton, you will probably think this is a two star book. If you are unfamiliar with any of these gentleman and their companies, you will find this book to be a helpful introduction that can direct you to more detailed reading on subjects that interest you. What's new about this book is that Mr. Krames positions thought experiments in the sections about each CEO so you can address a business problem . . . and compare your answers to those the CEOs might have supplied. These are a cinch if you have read about the people involved, and are otherwise quite challenging. There are also helpful questions to test your organization's current applications of the concept at the end of each CEO's chapter.What's not new about the book is any information that hasn't been written before about what the CEOs did in their own companies. I cannot remember seeing anything that I hadn't seen already. As a result, the book serves as a condensation of past learning. That's helpful for those who read little and have limited time. I didn't detect too many problems with the material. The consistent pattern of misfocus was concentrated in not in explaining enough about the context for the ideas. All of Jack Welch's big theme ideas were borrowed (as Mr. Krames points out for Sam Walton), and Mr. Welch was often quite late in picking up on and applying those ideas. Many of the initiatives in expanding service at IBM were well underway before Lou Gerstner arrived. I graded the book down one star for these slight misfocuses. If you have the time, there's a better book either by or about each person than this one. Feel free to go to the better source!As I finished the book, I began to realize that much study of great leaders is influenced by the size of their success . . . rather than the size of their accomplishment. If we were looking at leaders who had made great transformations, we would also be reading about Millard Fuller at Habitat for Humanity International, Jack Bogle at Vanguard, Mike Ruettgers at EMC, Richard Reese at Iron Mountain, Rob McEwen at Goldcorp, and Bernard Liautaud at Business Objects. I wonder what it will take before studies of best practices turn to those who are best at those practices.

Krames has an excellent concept for this book: select several exceptional corporate leaders, examine each in terms of a specific objective to which both he and his organization are fully committed, and then explain what can be learned from HOW that objective is conceived. Of course, he could have selected a different seven...or perhaps add several others to those he did. Few can question the inclusion of Dell, Welch, Gerstner, Grove, Gates, Kelleher, and Walton. After explaining "What Made Them Great" in Part 1, Krames devotes a chapter to each in Part 2 as he explains those defining strategies which have made each exceptional. I commend Krames for including exercises which actively engage the reader's mind. For example, a brief scenario "that puts the reader in the seat of the [given] CEO." Krames offers a series of business situations which enable his readers "to test their business acumen against that of each of the seven subject CEOs." Each chapter is filled with various lessons as well as "Assess Your CEO Quotient" questions which can be asked both of the individual and of her or his own organization. Throughout his narrative, Krames also inserts brief comments from the works of business thinkers such as Peter Drucker and Philip Kotler so as to provide different perspectives on the given business issue. Here are the seven CEOs and their respective defining strategies:Michael Dell: Place the customer at the epicenter of the business modelJack Welch: Create an authentic learning organizationLou Gerstner: Focus on solutionsAndy Grove: Prepare the organization for [in italics] drastic changeBill Gates: Harness the intellect of [in italics] every employeeHerb Kelleher: Create a performance-driven cultureSam Walton: Learn from competitors, but remain faithful to the visionListing the CEOs and their respective defining strategies is easy to do. The great value of this book is derived from Krames's rigorous analysis of each CEO and defining strategy within the context of their respective organizations. The reader learns not only the WHAT but also the HOW and WHY. I agree with Krames that these seven as well as other exceptional leaders have much in common: an "outside-in" perspective; an evangelical leadership gene; an understanding of the critical role of culture; a passion to create next-generation products, processes, or solutions; a determination to implement the best ideas, regardless of their origin; and, meanwhile, a commitment to increase and thereby advance the leadership body of knowledge. This is an exceptional book about exceptional leadership, one which I highly recommend to business students and recent graduates as well as to those well along in their business careers. I also presume to insist that maximum value will be derived only if the various "Assess Your CEO Quotient" questions are answered with appropriate care and then rigorously evaluated. Stated another way, there is much to learn from the CEOs but perhaps even more can be