Guts!
Companies that Blow the Doors off Business-as-usual
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2.0 • 1 Rating
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Kevin and Jackie Freiberg’s previous book, Nuts!: Southwest Airline’s Crazy Recipe for Business and Personal Success, described the unconventional leadership that made Southwest an airline industry dynamo. In GUTS!, the Freibergs look at twenty-five gutsy and extraordinarily successful businesses and introduce the chief executives who are creating a new corporate ethos that blows the doors off business-as-usual.
Drawing on five years of research, the Freibergs provide a behind-the-scenes look at these intensely focused, passionate, and unconventional leaders and their companies. Among them:
• James Blanchard, CEO of Synovus Financial, a financial services giant with more than 16 billion dollars in assets
• Roy Spence, Jr., President of GSD&M Advertising, which AdWeek magazine named Southwest Agency of the Year seven times
• James Goodnight of SAS, a world leader in intelligence software
Although the leaders in the book represent a wide-range of industries, they share a common vision: They see business as a heroic cause and understand that good leadership isn’t a matter of position, but of influence. They reject hierarchical rules, rituals, and expectations, and have replaced in-the-box management with a culture based on passion and innovation. They regard their employees not as “human resources,” but as individuals with unique gifts and talents. And make everyone in the company responsible for the company’s brand and culture.
An exciting follow-up to Nuts!, which has sold nearly 500,000 copies in hardcover and paperback, GUTS! proves that it is possible to have fun, live your values, and still make money.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The recent corporate scandals and layoffs may have damaged the public's trust in business, but corporate consultants Kevin and Jackie Freiberg could well restore some of that lost confidence with their inspiring descriptions of"gutsy leaders" who"have dismantled fear-based management and replaced it with heart, soul, discipline, loyalty, humor--and long-term record profits." Mostly men and a few women, the leaders in this round-up include James Blachard, CEO of Synovus Financial, and Colleen Barret, president and CEO of Southwest Airlines--a company that the Freibergs explored in depth in their first book Nuts!: Southwest Airlines' Crazy Recipe for Business and Personal Success (1996). A model of employee-manager relations, Southwest didn't lay off a single person after 9/11, and it met its employee profit-sharing and savings plans and even opened new flight routes, all while increasing its share of the U.S. domestic market by about 25 percent. Among the Freibergs' other examples are the companies Planet Honda, Whole Foods, SAS Institute (a company that provides intelligence-software services), Ernst & Young and the U.S.S. Benfold (a Navy combat missile destroyer). The authors describe these entities' workplace strategies and philosophies on everything from"hiring people who don't suck" (a real no-brainer) to making work itself fun, and their bullet-point lists and sidebars suggest ways that managers can apply these strategies to their own businesses. An energetic leadership primer that's dynamic, entertaining and easy to read, this book should be popular among readers interested in finding new ways to make business work.
