The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success Author: | Language: English | ISBN:
B00F3HEXEO | Format: PDF
The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success Description
"It is impossible to produce superior performance unless you do something different." - John Templeton.
What makes a successful CEO? Most people call to mind a familiar definition: a seasoned manager with deep industry expertise. Others might point to the qualities of today's so-called celebrity CEOs charisma, virtuoso communication skills, and a confident management style. But what really matters when you run an organization? What is the hallmark of exceptional CEO performance? Quite simply, it is the returns for the shareholders of that company over the long term.
In this refreshing, counterintuitive audiobook, author Will Thorndike brings to bear the analytical wisdom of a successful career in investing, closely evaluating the performance of companies and their leaders. You will meet eight individualistic CEOs whose firms' average returns outperformed the S&P 500 by a factor of twenty in other words, an investment of $10,000 with each of these CEOs, on average, would have been worth over $1.5 million twenty-five years later. You may not know all their names, but you will recognize their companies: General Cinema, Ralston Purina, The Washington Post Company, Berkshire Hathaway, General Dynamics, Capital Cities Broadcasting, TCI, and Teledyne.
In The Outsiders, you'll learn the traits and methods striking for their consistency and relentless rationality that helped these unique leaders achieve such exceptional performance. Humble, unassuming, and often frugal, these "outsiders" shunned Wall Street and the press, and shied away from the hottest new management trends. Instead, they shared specific traits that put them and the companies they led on winning trajectories: a laser-sharp focus on per share value as opposed to earnings or sales growth; an exceptional talent for allocating capital and human resources; and the belief that cash flow, not reported earnings, determines a company's long-term value.
Drawing on years of res...
- Audible Audio Edition
- Listening Length: 5 hours and 52 minutes
- Program Type: Audiobook
- Version: Unabridged
- Publisher: Audible, Inc.
- Audible.com Release Date: October 29, 2013
- Whispersync for Voice: Ready
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00F3HEXEO
Please note, I received a copy of this book for review from the publisher, Harvard Business Review Press, on a complimentary basis.
Capital allocation uber alles
"The Outsiders" rests on a premise, that the increase in a public company's per share value is the best metric for measuring the success of a given CEO, which lends itself to the book's major thesis: that superior capital allocation is what sets apart the best CEOs from the rest, and that most modern CEOs seem to be only partially aware, if at all, of its critical performance to their companies long-term business success.
Notice! This book is examining the efforts and measurements of CEOs of public companies, not all businesses (public and private), so as a result in comes up a bit short in the "universal application" department. Yes, capital allocation is still critical even in a private business, but you can not measure a private business's per share value (because there isn't a marketable security price to reference) and the CEO of a private company is missing one of the most powerful capital allocation tools available to public CEOs, the share buyback (because there is no free float for them to get their hands on at periodically irrational prices).
There are countless examples of once-great companies such as Kodak and Sears that became victims of what had once been the reasons for their success. When George Eastman founded Eastman Kodak (in 1901) and Richard Sears and Julius Rosenwald founded Sears, Roebuck (in 1906), they did so with what William N. Thorndike characterizes as a "radically rational blueprint for success." Both companies eventually became among the largest and most profitable in the world. However, for reasons that vary from one company to another in nature and extent, that is no longer true.
The business lessons to be learned from companies such as Kodak and Sears were obvious to CEOs such as Tom Murphy (Capital Cities Broadcasting), Henry Singleton (Teledyne, Bill Anders (General Dynamics), John Malone (TCI), Katherine Graham (the Washington Post Company), Bill Stiritz (Ralston Purina), Dick Smith (General Cinema), and Warren Buffett (Berkshire Hathaway). They are the "outsiders," focal points of this book. As Thorndike explains, there are immensely valuable lessons to be learned from the "radical rationality" of their leadership.
These are among the dozens of passages that caught my eye:
o The Capital Cities culture (Page 23)
o The Cap Cities Publishing Division (Pages 31-33)
o Buffett and Singleton: Separated at Birth?
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