Churchill on Leadership
Executive Success in the Face of Adversity
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- $19.99
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
Success often depends on the strength of a single quality: leadership. Winston Churchill is universally recognized as one of the 20th century's great political leaders and his words ring just as true in the world of commerce. A wise, witty, and inspiring leader, Churchill ran Great Britain like a great corporation.
"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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
It seems such a natural idea to distill the "management" wisdom of an inspirational leader such as Winston Churchill for today's corporate chiefdoms. Unfortunately, Hayward, who works for the think tank Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy, does not deliver. He identifies four strategies that he believes made Churchill a successful leader: "candor and plain speaking, decisiveness, the ability to balance attention to details with a view of the wider scene, and a historical imagination that informed his judgment." But instead of using those strategies as an organizing principle--giving managers examples of how Churchill put those traits into practice--Hayward treats us to truncated versions of numerous Churchill biographies. Except for his chapter on Churchill the communicator, there is never any analysis of Churchill's effective leadership. Even the pithy quotes from the prime minister at the end of each chapter lack a "how to" component. Given Churchill's autocratic nature, perhaps it's just as well.
