Winners Dream
A Journey from Corner Store to Corner Office
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5.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $29.99
Publisher Description
A leadership and career manifesto told through the narrative of one of today’s most inspiring, admired, and successful global leaders.
In Winners Dream, Bill McDermott—the CEO of the world’s largest business software company, SAP—chronicles how relentless optimism, hard work, and disciplined execution embolden people and equip organizations to achieve audacious goals.
Growing up in working-class Long Island, a sixteen-year-old Bill traded three hourly wage jobs to buy a small deli, which he ran by instinctively applying ideas that would be the seeds for his future success. After paying for and graduating college, Bill talked his way into a job selling copiers door-to-door for Xerox, where he went on to rank number one in every sales position he held and eventually became the company’s youngest-ever corporate officer. Eventually, Bill left Xerox and in 2002 became the unlikely president of SAP’s flailing American business unit. There, he injected enthusiasm and accountability into the demoralized culture by scaling his deli, sales, and management strategies. In 2010, Bill was named co-CEO, and in May 2014 became SAP’s sole, and first non-European, CEO.
Colorful and fast-paced, Bill’s anecdotes contain effective takeaways: gutsy career moves; empathetic sales strategies; incentives that yield exceptional team performance; and proof of the competitive advantages of optimism and hard work. At the heart of Bill’s story is a blueprint for success and the knowledge that the real dream is the journey, not a preconceived destination.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
It's the journey, not the destination: an adage that many can't appreciate. Not so for McDermott, CEO of the software giant SAP, who in this uplifting and enjoyable memoir chronicles his life from boyhood to the present day. Born to working-class parents, McDermott's family suffered intermittent tragedy and perpetual financial instability throughout his childhood. Inheriting his father's strong work ethic, he began at the age of 11 as an enterprising paperboy, eventually doubling his initial route of 150 homes and expanding his wares to include holiday cards and cookies. An astute businessman from the get-go, McDermott purchased and operated a deli while still in high school, the first indication of an ability to turn struggling businesses into successful ones without any starting capital. His will to win, coupled with a strong sense of ethics, landed him a sales job at Xerox, where he soon began generating enviable sales numbers. The narrative of his rise through the company's ranks and eventual move to SAP is engaging, if not something that the average reader can replicate. More valuably, McDermott emphasizes that a never-satisfied curiosity was the primary quality that enabled him to meet his customers' needs and further his own goals. His wisdom should prove valuable to readers at every level of their careers, or in life in general.
