Churchill on Leadership: Executive Success in the Face of Adversity
224Churchill on Leadership: Executive Success in the Face of Adversity
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Overview
"Perhaps the finest book on practical leadership ever written." — Brian Tracy
Churchill on Leadership demonstrates that the principles that guided Churchill ably translate to private industry today. Author Steven F. Hayward gives strong evidence that, if you remove Churchill from his political context, he would have the resume to be among the great business leaders of any age. Churchill:
• was a financier (as chancellor of the Exechequer) and labor negotiator (as home secretary)
• managed a large transportation network (as head of the British Navy) and far-flung property holdings (as colonial secretary)
• persevered through bankruptcies and other financial disasters
• conceived and introduced innovative new products over the opposition of his colleagues, and reorganized major production operations in the midst of crisis.
With wit and insight, Hayward reveals Churchill's secrets for business success from assembling and inspiring a first-rate team to preparing a wise budget, from communicating a vision to structuring effective meetings, from acting decisively to rebounding from a failure. Laced with epochal events from the historical stage, enlivened with stimulating speculation, and leavened with wit, Churchill on Leadership is both an enjoyable read and a thought-provoking lesson on leadership.
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9780761514404 |
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Publisher: | The Crown Publishing Group |
Publication date: | 09/01/1998 |
Pages: | 224 |
Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.50(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 3: Confronting Failure and Learning from Mistakes
Avoiding failure in business is the route to failure. Avoiding risks in politics, however, is the route to a long career in office. A failed risk in politics is far more dangerous than a failed risk in business. In business, shareholders and customers will quickly forgive you if you recover from a disaster - think of CocaCola after the "New Coke" debacle, or Ford after the Edsel.
But in politics, partisans will keep alive and distort and magnify any failure or mistake in your career. Often small mistakes are punished more severely than disasters. Churchill observed: "In all great business very large errors are excused or even unperceived, but in definite and local matters small mistakes are punished out of all proportion." This is one reason politicians are risk-averse, and why modern government administration seeks to minimize risk and avoid failure through a mindless bureaucratic process that delivers mostly mediocrity.
Churchill's refusal throughout his career to practice bland, risk-averse politics stands out as his most striking leadership attribute. Churchill's audacious and risk-taking character was at the core of his genius, but also constituted the chief liability of his long career and nearly led to his ruin. The lessons he learned from the mistakes and setbacks early in his career proved instrumental in his future success as war leader in World War II.
The Lessons of Failure:
CHAPTER 6: The Power of Decision -- Churchill's Thought Process
War decisions offer a close parallel in form to entrepreneurial decisions. Both the war leader and the entrepreneur or CEO need to be able to judge risk and chance. Information is usually limited or insufficient to provide certainty as to the outcome of a venture. One can't be sure how the enemy (the competition) will respond. Hence almost all decisions must be made in the shadow of uncertainty. Most people shrink from risk and are unable to reach firm decisions because they are paralyzed by uncertainty.
Churchill remarked that it is never possible to guarantee success; it is only possible to deserve it. One deserves success only by reaching and implementing clear and consistent decisions, and factoring in the element of chance by some method. Chapter 1 commented on Churchill's decisiveness and the historical imagination that informed his decisions, especially his war decisions. This chapter takes a closer look at Churchill's thought process and at the do's and don't's derived from his deliberations about how decisions should be reached.
The Do's and Don't's of Churchill's Thought Process:
© copyright 1997 by Steven F. Hayward. Permission obtained from Prima
Publishing
Table of Contents
ContentsPreface
Introduction: The World of Politics and the World of Commerce–What Business Leaders Can Learn from the Great Statesmen
Chapter 1: The Keys to Understanding Churchill
Chapter 2: The Executive Churchill: A Brief Survey of His Career in Public Office
Chapter 3: Confronting Failure and Learning from Mistakes
Chapter 4: Churchill on Administration: Responsibility and Organization
Chapter 5: Churchill on Personnel: Managing People and Managing Yourself
Chapter 6: The Power of Decision: Churchill's Thought Process
Chapter 7: Churchill the Communicator
Chapter 8: Churchill's Personal Traits: The Completion of Leadership
Chapter 9: Churchill the Inventor and Innovator
Chapter 10: Substance Over Style–Moral Purpose, Destiny, and the Force of Personal Leadership
Appendix: A Biographical Sketch of Churchill's Executive Career
Source Notes
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Index