CEO Priorities: Master the Art of Surviving at the Top

by Neil Giarratana

Overview

CEO Priorities provides direct, specific, and valuable real-world advice and insights for CEOs and aspiring CEOs or executives, supported by relevant stories couched in humor and irony.

Neil Giarratana takes you inside the CEO’s office and lays out a top executive's priorities—get these right...or else! He covers the key areas that must be handled well and with smarts, and explains in detail how to do it. Weaving in examples from his 30-plus years of experience, Giarratana packs CEO Priorities full of fascinating, surprising, and always relevant information.

You'll learn what you need to know about the critical areas of concern or activity for a CEO, any one of which could mean the difference between success and failure, plus targeted advice to help you:

• End divisive office politics
• Fast-track new product development
• Handle a bad quarter
• Forecast earnings without being foolish
• Employ moral responsibility as a competitive advantage
• Avoid the dark side of passion
• Successfully effect changes in company culture
• Introduce a new business model

Everything of major significance you’ll have to face as a CEO is identified and analyzed in this important new title.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781601637239
Publisher:	Red Wheel/Weiser
Publication date:	10/20/2010
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
File size:	320 KB

About the Author

Neil Giarratana spent 32 years as a CEO in diverse industries, including cosmetics, toys, leather goods, and durable goods manufacturing. As the senior executive, he managed companies both in Europe (he is fluent in German and French) and the United States. He holds a BA in international relations from Stanford University and an MBA from the Harvard Business School. Neil currently resides in the Chicago area.

Table of Contents

Introduction 9

Chapter 1 Taking Any Road will not get you There 11

Chapter 2 You Sell Something-So Get It Right 35

Chapter 3 You Are the In-House Value Proposition 59

Chapter 4 Earning Your Effective Leader Merit Badge 85

Chapter 5 Speed Bumps 95

Chapter 6 Difficult Situations, Difficult Choices 131

Chapter 7 Your People-The Soul and Sole Power of the Company 151

Chapter 8 Assumptions-Just That and Not Much More 173

Chapter 9 Anticipating, Mitigating, and Avoiding Operational Meltdown 193

Conclusion 215

Index 219

About the Author 223

Editorial Reviews

"Neil Giarratana provides real-world advice for CEO survival based upon more than 30 years experience as a CEO. He weaves humor and irony into many of his critical insights and recommendations—never losing sight of an important central premise for CEO success: the intertwining of toughness and caring in the leadership of a company and its employees."
—Alan Hassenfeld, chairman of the executive committee, Hasbro, Inc.

"Neil Giarratana has written an insightful and compelling book, going beyond the usual rhetoric and generalities to provide an incoming or up-and-coming CEO with a granular and actionable blueprint for settling in, setting new strategies, and changing old patterns and cultures. Neil has lived for decades at the face of the CEO coal mine and provides realistic and practical advice for handling the messy, day-to-day challenges that CEOs actually face."
—Stephen P. Kaufman, senior lecturer, Harvard Business School, and retired CEO and chairman, Arrow Electronics, Inc.

"A truly unique book on business leadership because it addresses thecritical, practical, and behavioral issues you will face as a leader which are not part of any business theory, model, book, or journal nor covered in leading MBA programs."
—Fred Steingraber, chairman and CEO emeritus of A.T. Kearney

Reviews

"Neil Giarratana provides real-world advice for CEO survival based upon more than 30 years experience as a CEO. He weaves humor and irony into many of his critical insights and recommendations—never losing sight of an important central premise for CEO success: the intertwining of toughness and caring in the leadership of a company and its employees."
—Alan Hassenfeld, chairman of the executive committee, Hasbro, Inc.

"Neil Giarratana has written an insightful and compelling book, going beyond the usual rhetoric and generalities to provide an incoming or up-and-coming CEO with a granular and actionable blueprint for settling in, setting new strategies, and changing old patterns and cultures. Neil has lived for decades at the face of the CEO coal mine and provides realistic and practical advice for handling the messy, day-to-day challenges that CEOs actually face."
—Stephen P. Kaufman, senior lecturer, Harvard Business School, and retired CEO and chairman, Arrow Electronics, Inc.

"A truly unique book on business leadership because it addresses thecritical, practical, and behavioral issues you will face as a leader which are not part of any business theory, model, book, or journal nor covered in leading MBA programs."
—Fred Steingraber, chairman and CEO emeritus of A.T. Kearney

From the Publisher