Churchill on Leadership: Executive Success in the Face of Adversity

Churchill on Leadership: Executive Success in the Face of Adversity

by Steven F. Hayward
Churchill on Leadership: Executive Success in the Face of Adversity

Churchill on Leadership: Executive Success in the Face of Adversity

by Steven F. Hayward

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Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780307774521
Publisher: The Crown Publishing Group
Publication date: 11/24/2010
Sold by: Random House
Format: eBook
Pages: 224
File size: 2 MB

About the Author

Steven F. Hayward is a senior fellow of the Pacific Research Institute, a public policy think-tank based in San Francisco, and a contributing editor for Reason magazine. He holds a doctorate in history from the Claremont Graduate School.

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:

  • Responsibility must be combined with authority. Churchill's maxims: "My one fatal mistake was trying to achieve a great enterprise without having the plenary authority which could so easily have carried it to success." "What you have no right to do is to ask me to bear responsibilities without the power of effective action."

  • Decisiveness depends on the person at the top. Churchill's maxims: "Every decision must be forced to a clear-cut issue." "You must continually drive the vast machine forward at its utmost speed. To lose momentum is not merely to stop, but to fall."

    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:

  • Always concentrate on the broad view and the central features of the problem at hand. Churchill's maxim: "It is a good thing to stand away from the canvas from time to time and take a full view of the picture."

  • Factor in risk and chance by keeping things in proper proportion. Churchill's maxim: "Assume that the favorable and adverse chances equate, and then eliminate them both from the calculation."

  • Keep open to changing your mind in the presence of new facts. Churchill's maxim: "I would rather be right than consistent."

  • Be careful not to look too far ahead. Churchill's maxims: "Only one link in the chain of destiny can be handled at a time." "It is only with some difficulty and within limits that provision can be made for the future. Experience shows that forecasts are usually falsified and preparations always in arrears."

  • Avoid excessive perfectionism. Churchill's maxims: "'Nothing avails but perfection' may be spelt shorter, 'Paralysis.'" "Do not let the better be the enemy of the good."

  • Don't make decisions for decision's sake. Churchill's maxim: "There is great wisdom in reserving one's decisions as long as possible and until all the facts and forces that will be potent at the moment are revealed."

    © copyright 1997 by Steven F. Hayward. Permission obtained from Prima Publishing

  • Table of Contents

    Preface
    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
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