In this book, Mike Useem describes nine situations in which leadership emerges. The situations outlined are very diverse, including a mountainclimbing expedition, a pharmaceutical company's decision, a firefighter's dillemma, and a Central American emerging democracy's negotiation with terrorism, to name a few. Roughly half of the stories are cases of success, half are failures, which makes it interesting exploration of both sides of the coin.

Overall, the stories are very interesting per se, and worth the read. Some of these are classics of management and ethics, such as the Merck Riverblindness case. At the end of each story, Useem tries to do an analysis of what the leader did right or wrong. In this section, I did in fact disagree with some of Useem's conclusions, and what bothered me was the fact that I felt like the author did not leave enough space for alternative views. For example, he argues that Roy Vagelos of Merck was a great leader because he guided his company to do the right thing and spend all the money on the disease though it would not recoup costs. I would argue that he did recoup, by the free publicity, which Useem helps extend, but Useem never mentions the possibility of it being worth it.

I did like the book and would recommend it, especially the stories, which are told in a very fast paced and easy to read manner. However, not so sure about the analysis.

This book by Michael Useem was the first book I tackled in my MBA class on current managegemt theory. It fullfilled my need to research leadership, and captivated my subconscious mind as well. Everyday that has since passed has presented many opportunities for recall from one of the nine impactful stories on leadership.

This book teaches one how to be prepared to be a leader when the opportunity presents itself. The subject of vision, a necessary tool for individual and corporate leadership, is so completely incorporated in the first story of Roy Vagelos and Merck that the reader will never find the topic of vision as a pie-in-the-sky theoretical corporate gimmick without deep-seated attachment to core values again.

Searching for a book on leadership for a graduate level management class, I came across this title and was fascinated. If you are going to read one book on leadership, it should be this book. Michael Useem has written an amazing book in which he shares the stories of nine leaders and the decisions they made in leadership moments. Within each chapter the true story is explained, followed by implications noting the leadership skills applied to make the decision that was made in each case.

Some leaders I would follow, others leave me high and dry; what a fun task- interviewing leaders....

I was totally motivated in reading this very comprehensive book. I felt my purpose in life was revived after many years of suffering a busy yet empty life. Now I have found what specific personal interests and career to pursue and my skills and abilities are already showing up. I have evaluated myself on every level and decided on a new set of values to follow. I'm a new man. And I believe now that I too can be a leader in what I love to do. So I recommend this book to my family and my business partners and customer. You will be definitely motivated and shown exactly how to lead a better life by reading this book.

I'm a CEO and found this book so inspiring and empowering for every part of my life and work, that I have given it to my executive team, staff, customers, business associates and friends. There are all kinds of good ideas for running a successful company and really any organization large and small, including non profit and community groups. This book helped me get on track with my vision, our company mission, and accomplishing what we set out to do. Many leaders in this book are great examples to follow and they become your mentors. Rare it is to find such a positive helpful book. We should encourage college kids to read this too, so they start early knowing how to be a leader and follow their life path.

I would think the first and foremost principle of management would be that human beings are individuals, each with unique properties; and that to entice them into fulfilling your needs is a complex process with many variables. It seems the authors would have us believe that there are only two or three human beings, inhabiting 6 Billion bodies across the globe; that there's a set formula to deal with each hive-mind; that ingenuity and creativity are not required in a manager.

There are, of course, characteristics that can be found in most IT professionals. I'd say it's even remotely possible that all MBAs share a pencil tick or two in common on the Myers-Briggs. But to lump all people who in any way interface with computers into one group, and label them with an insulting name, is indicative of a small-mindedness not at all appropriate to any kind of leadership.

I don't believe any offense was meant, but the tone was extremely insulting. No matter how many times the authors protest that these are "intelligent and creative" people they're writing about, they're still making sweeping generalizations and advancing offensive stereotypes. These factors tend to overwhelm what useful advice may wait within.

I bought this for my brother-in-law who considers himself a computer geek. He said the book described him perfectly and thought it would be helpful for anyone having to lead this type of person. I thought he'd enjoy it because his job requires he have technical expertise as well as managerial skills. NPR's positive review of the book gave me the idea of buying it for him.

This was a clear, concise book illustrating a number of simple concepts in managing scientists and engineers- also known as Geeks. The book clearly illustrates- through narrative and example- that beliefs, values , work and motivation of Geeks is unique, and what techniques work and don't work in motivating these creators of technology and innovation.

This book should be read by both new and seasoned managers and supervisors that have or will be managing technologists, scientist and engineers. Leading Geeks has clearly illustrated why I have succeeded/ failed in managing geeks in the past and given me new insight into what makes them tick.

(Each chapter is concluded with a summary and Key Ideas. Read these first for a Chapter Road map.)

The Secret Of A Winning Culture: Building High Performance Teams is a groundbreaking, practical study based on the management principles developed by the Senn-Delaney Leadership Consulting Group. Senn-Delaney Leadership's philosophy is based on a simple concept: culture and teamwork are everything. The character of the culture, how employees and managers perceive it and their roles within it, how the culture supports teamwork and reacts to change (whether occasioned by expansion, merger, acquisition, technological advances, fluctuations in domestic or global economies) are critical to a company's short-term and long-term success. The Secret Of A Winning Culture is a superbly written, "reader friendly" guide that is highly recommended for anyone aspiring to or charged with managerial responsibilities at any corporate level.

This slim volume has packed so many practical and wise ideas, examples and tools gleaned from "20 years of consulting with hundreds of organizations and over 200,000 managers." It is worth repeated readings and reference. The authors have focused on the key components of building winning culture and high-performance teams. Many other approaches to management change fall short because they failed to integrate or align strategies, structures with culture. Different phases in reshaping the corporate culture are clearly explained and illustrated. There are many useful questions, measurement tools, quotes, lists of attributes, guiding behaviors for teamwork and tables of comparison. The listing of "Ineffectual Organizational Habits (old culture) in contrast to "High Performance Behaviors (desired culture) on p. 51, the "high-performance pyramid" chart on p. 136 and the table of "Transitions Toward Leadership in 21st Century" on p. 172 alone are already worth the price of the book. There is much more. For example: a quote from Jack Welch, CEO of GE, General Electric. "Our job is to provide a culture in which people can flourish and reach their dreams--in which they can be all they want to be." (p. 92)

When I started Class 27 of the Command College I was repeatedly exposed to the concept of a post-industrial leadership model, a new organizational paradigm for the 21st century. Over the past several months the concept of a new organizational model has been repeatedly visited, as it is throughout Kenneth Cloke and Joan Goldsmiths very enjoyable book, Thank God It's Monday! 14 Values We Need to Humanize the Way We Work.

After laying a good foundation (with many of the same tenants as other organizational authors of the day) Cloke and Goldsmith lay out a number of self assessment steps for the reader who is persuaded to shift to what they see as the new organizational and leadership model of self directed work teams. One of the main reasons the authors see this paradigm shift is because they see work as a relationship that needs to provides personal fulfilment.

The book is packed with a number of lists and fill in the blank assessments to help the reader make the transition to a more humanized and empowered organization. The fourteen values they believe will humanize organizations, empower workers, reduce conflict and increase employee satisfaction includes: INCLUSION - involving everyone in the process, COLLABORATION - working together for consensus, not compromise; TEAMS and NETWORKS - small work teams; VISION - toward something better and worthwhile; CELEBRATION of DIVERSITY - diversity valued as a source of richness, vitality and strength; PROCESS AWARENESS - the value of process (listening, ability to work with others, ...) more then technical ability; OPEN and HONEST COMMUNICATION - and how destructive poor information sharing can be to an organization's health; RISK TAKING- and the need to trust those we work with; INDIVIDUAL and TEAM OWNERSHIP of RESULTS; PARADOXICAL PROBLEM SOLVING - willingness to solve problems with outside the box solutions that are not necessarily consistent with popular notions of the problem; EVERYONE is a LEADER - shift from a leader to everyone playing a role in decision making; PERSONAL GROWTH SATISFACTION - seeking to make work personally and emotionally rewarding for employees; SEEING CONFLICT as an OPPORTUNITY - the positive value of conflict; and EMBRACING CHANGE.

If the various concepts described in Thank God It's Monday! were applied collectively, in the manner described, and with a group of people who could work under this model, I have no reason to doubt that the workers and those who were the recipient of their service/product would see the efforts of the leader as a success. If these types of cooperative, self led work groups became a work model of the future, our work places would be very different. Creativity and employee satisfaction would no doubt increase. Customer satisfaction would likely also improve, as would profit because of a better work product and a reduction in overhead costs (less managers, less oversight, less litigation, less conflict management).

Two of the themes that Cloke and Goldsmith explore are, "Who Selects the Managers and How do the Manage," and "Who Gets Promoted, How and by What Criteria." If our organizational structures shifted along with our selection processes to those of a self managed group, our para military, hieracical organizations would no doubt change dramatically.

This text does a very good job of making a case for more humanized, employee operated work units. Even the skeptic should find himself closing the back page and asking, "Could we really be more effective and have less employee trouble and the associated costs with a model like this?" Given that possibility, I think the forward looking leader will seek out opportunites to implement the concepts communcated in the 233 pages of this publication. The transition might be difficult, and the model may not work in every police situation, but it defintely could improve our work environments and improve many of the distracting situations we deal with daily.

The success of this effort would fit well with our community oriented policing efforts. Organizations would be able to easily see self directed work units identify and resolve community problems in a manner that was not only prompt, but also with a degree of creativity that our current structure likely inhibits. The success of this model could also be measured by reductions in management problems, such as worker's compensation claims, medical retirements and grievances. The humanized, self managed work group should reduces the numbers of these actions (and when they do arise they will typically be handled at the work group level) and the management time/cost required to address them.

While participative management has for some time been the mantra of leadership experts, the level to which this proposal for humanized organizations takes it, will likely push the comfort level of not only police managers but line level personnel as well. To expect that such a dramatic shift could occur quickly and without some serious transitional problems is unrealistic. However, we live and work in a changing environment. There is no reason to believe that we should not at least have a role in choosing the battles we want to fight. Would we rather have conflict over trying to keep operational a model that will no longer work with the employee of the 21st century, or do we want to deal with conflicts moving us in the direction of making work and our organizations better than they were in the 1990's?

If we choose to move forward, and retool our organizations to optimize the potential of our personnel, we will more likely be able to keep pace with an ever increasing work demand and externally imposed mandates to do more with less.

Lest it not yet be apparent, I would highly recommend this text for any manager or aspiring leader. The concepts are thought provoking and helpful, and the format of the book is such that it can be used as personal or organizational assessment tool.

T.G.I.M. provides a type of How-To discussion for the enrichment of your personal and professional life. It discussed some major issues commonly facing individuals both at work and at home: values, conflict, relationships. The underlying principles, if applied in daily life, could improve current situations making your life much more successful. Cloke did a fine job at bringing some 'real' issues to light in his enjoyable book, Thank God It's Monday.

this book is one of the greatest book that you have to read so read it and tell me what you tought. syed omar the American University in Cairo- egypt

You will like this book only if you are a non-analytical thinker. It's not really a book that educates with facts, data, arguments, or insights. It's more of a book where the author says "Here are some bits of facts and myths that I have run across in my readings and here are some unsupported, unoriginal thoughts I have that may be related (or not) to what I just talked about."

If you are a well educated, thoughtful, reasonably creative person who has some insight into your life, you will read this book and say, "everything in this book is obvious." If you are a person who has difficulty thinking things through, you probably would find this of value.

I know MOST people seem to find this book of some value. I am probably in the minority. If you are trying to decide whether to buy this book, you might ask this question: when you read the book, "7 habits of highly effective people," did you think

A: I know everything in this book already and I can't believe there is anyone out there who doesn't

or

B: Wow this is a great book and I learned a lot from this book.

If you answered A, then you will find this book to be a waste of money.

I had to both laugh at and give a helpful vote to the review below which accused the author of citing half-maked fragments of myths and anecdotes as evidence. To a certain degree, it's a fair cop, particularly if you're looking for a book which is going to really stunningly predict the future.

_The Age of Unreason_ isn't about predicting the future, it's about training yourself to look at the future in ways that you might otherwise not have done. As such, I found it a valuable and interesting book which is clearly based in a lot of meditation on learning and learning theories.

Some of the things Handy mentioned turned out to have become true since the book was written. Other things didn't-- but it doesn't matter ultimately. What the book asks is this: Can you recognize the real causes for pain that you identify? Can you think differently to force discontinuous change? Is your vision of the future based on an accurate perception of the past, or are you looking past major factors because you don't recognize the role of gradual change?

People who like this book may like some of the books on developing strategies using scenario exercises. This book also contains a decent (if dated) bibliography.

A company at which I worked adopted one of the philosophies in this book -- the core business -- and outsourced all of the functions it considered non-core, such as human resources, accounting, info technology etc. The resulting situation was miserable, I've never worked with unhappier people, and I'm glad as heck to be away from that outfit. The "unreason" concept is definitely nothing to be proud of.

This is a book that uses anecdotes and copious quotations from famous people to tell us to be ourselves, express ourselves, and learn to live with integrity. Although it pretends to be a book about leadership, it is not. For example, it claims that Lincoln was a good leader, while Hitler was a bad leader. No matter how horrific and evil Hitler may have been, he was one of the greatest leaders of all time. To say that he was a poor leader is to deny reality. The first quarter of the book rants about how the world has lost all its great leaders. That is why it is in such a mess, and if only we could go back to the good old days... What good old days! He claims that we don't have any Kennedys or Lincolns, but he fails to mention that we don't have any Hitlers or Stalins either. Is the world really as bad as Bennis claims? Sure there are problems but overall I think we are a lot better off than we were. He talks about all the scandals in politics and business that show how we have lost our morals and ethics. Au contraire! The truth is that we live in a world where scandal can be laid bare rather than covered up. You don't think politicians were crooked 100 or 1000 years ago? You don't think that clergy were abusing children 100 or 1000 years ago? I think we live in a pretty good world and Bennis' polemic about the lack of leadership in the world is misplaced at best. After all that, Bennis says "the ingredients of leadership cannot be taught." (p.73) If that is so, why does he expect anyone to read this book?

On the positive side, I did like the parts of the book that dealt with the importance of taking control of your life and following your dreams. If you want an easy to read motivational book, this one isn't bad. If you want to learn how to be a leader, look elsewhere.

It's hard not to read the pearls of wisdom written in this book. Bennis does a fantastic job of expressing his thoughts and concepts on leadership. This book is not a one - two step solution on becoming a great leader. Bennis really attempts to drive down into the depths of what it takes to be a 'self made leader.' He talks about learned childhood behavior and how it can effect the humane psyche. He also talks about unlearning old habits and reinventing oneself. Basically, drilling down into how to express yourself without any influence from external factors (society's influence). According to Bennis, this is critical in defining your place as a leader. He drives home how one can live, work, and think on his own terms without any influence. Good stuff...

The books premise is laid out in Bennis' own terms, with supporting leadership behavioral backing point throughout the book. He gets most of this behavioral input from a series of interviews taken from various leaders; such as, John Sculley (Apple Computers) and Sydney Pollack (Director).

What I liked about this book is its simple truth. Bennis makes a lot of since, plain and simple. I do feel however that there is a lot of filler text. The book could easily be condensed by a third.

Definitely worth the money...

I'm not sure that reading this book will make anyone a better leader, but it sure couldn't hurt! The author does a marvelous job of communicating the essence of leadership and the qualities that make effective leaders. The short stories, examples, and quotes in this book make it enjoyable reading. If you're looking for a "10 things you must do to be a great manager" type of book, this book is NOT for you. If, however, you're interested in management through a shared vision, you'll definitely want to read this book. If you have any questions, please feel free to email me - adamleft@webspan.net.

I have just finished watching Bennis talk about his book on C-Span's book reviews and have just read the individual book reviews here--and I don't get it. Isn't this stuff just common sense? Leaders have to be resilient? Leaders have to have charisma? Leaders have to be deep and have a vision that comes from introspection? Leaders have to have a moral compass? And the one I truly don't get is why the hoopla over the "crucible". My goodness, who has gone through life without a "crucible" experience? We are all men of clay--put into the kiln of life to see what comes out--if anything is patently obvious you would think that would be. What comes out of the other end of the crucible for Bennis is the myopic focus on "leaders". So what I get out of this is that Warren Bennis is a genius in finding the center of the watermellon--an easy life in southern California writing about stuff that is just plain obvious--and getting paid wildly for it. Bennis came out of the crucible not as a leader, but as crafty. How about you?

.
What I find most thought provoking is the authors' notion of the crucible (difficult event/test such as failure, imprisonment, or any personal defining moment) as an important input towards shaping the competencies of the leader as he/she extracts wisdom after having endured it.

The bulk of this book explicates the Leadership Development Model and how it applies to leaders of all ages, both geeks and geezers. In this Model, individual factors (e.g. gender, IQ, race) and the era (with a given shared history/culture/arena) determine how the leader would interpret the crucible, which in turn impacts the development of four leadership competencies:
1. adaptive capacity - hardiness & learning how to learn is key
2. engaging others by creating shared meaning
3. voice (purpose indentified after periods of self-introspection; EQ)
4. strong moral compass or integrity.

I applaud the authors for the elegance of the Model, and its usefulness in serving as a framework for self-introspection - so crucial in the development of timeless leadership.

This latest addition to the leadership category finally offers a useful, applicable model to those interested in developing their own leadership skills as well as those around them. I found the concept of "adaptive capacity" to be particularly helpful. In these times of economic uncertainty, change, and management failures, I now have a better sense of the leaders to seek out: those resilient individuals who adapt, thrive, and lead because of their ability to "confront unfamiliar situations with confidence and optimism".

As a frequent reader of all the usual business and current event magazines as well as a good number of business books of all kinds, Blood, Sweat, and Tears was a huge disapointment. If one has been in a cave their whole life and has never read a book or been part of an organization, perhaps some of the many Peter Drucker or Edwards Deming quotes may be interesting.

Beyond that, there are numerous grammatical and factual errors that give the book a feel of being written for the sake of getting something to market. For example, page 159 of the hardcover version, "The Ford hunger march on 7 March 1932 was reminiscent of that occasion back in 1812 when the Luddites marched on Rawfold's Mill in the North of England. Two hundred and twenty years later history was repeating itself." Evidently the author doesn't know how many years separates 1932 from 1812 which, considering the contents of the book, doesn't surprise me.

I've seen it; you have too: people working under terrible bosses for low pay in abysmal conditions but loving their jobs. I've seen hundreds of engineers in a huge open office with row after row of desks, and they can't wait to get to work in the morning. I've seen men and women working for Theory X managers they hated. But nevertheless they worked hard with superb art and skill producing great and elegant products. Why? I never found a satisfactory answer.
This is the riddle Richard Donkin addresses in this remarkable book: Why do we work and why do we work so hard. Donkin is a columnist writing about work and associated subjects for the Financial Times since the mid-1990s. He came to see work as a complex economic, political, cultural, social, psychological, sociological, organizational and belief phenomenon, the qualifying hallmarks of civilization that separate man from the other animals. Now he has assembled his insights and research into a book, which unlike thousands of one-dimensional management books, has value precisely because it treats work as a complex tapestry interwoven with our lives.
Donkin's story of work starts in the Stone Age when two central aspects of work emerged: organization and earning. Fossil records show that men organized themselves for hunting hundreds of thousands of years ago. The evidence is also clear that there were workers who made stone tools beyond their own needs. Many such artifacts are found far from their mother lode, apparently carried by traders. Before they could write, people made products to sell and created the first wealth.
The earliest historic records and the observation of contemporary primitive cultures suggest that slavery was not far behind early social organizations. Slavery was one of the first experiments in the economic relationship between manager and managed, and one that was the economic engine of empires for thousands of years.
Once history leaves pervasive slavery and serfdom behind and employment emerges, the manager-managed relationship really gets interesting. Donkin gives us a guided tour of great thoughts on the social, cultural, economic, organizational and yes, religious aspects of the relationship between boss and worker. We watch Abraham Darby create cheap effective iron products from his iron smelter at Ironbridge and evolve the idea of permanent jobs. The clock rather then the steam engine is the key machine of the industrial age.
We see how the Puritan ideas of John Calvin exerted immense influence on the modern American psyche. Donkin dissects Robert Owen's Utopian enterprises at New Lanark in Scotland and New Harmony in Indiana. Donkin shows us how a century ago George Pullman's vision of mutually beneficial cooperation between capital and labor ended in a tragedy of bitter strikes that left labor and capital in suspicious and adversarial relationships that still bedevil us.
I especially enjoyed Donkin's look at industrial efficiency. Fredrick Taylor gave us the idea of breaking work into its elemental parts and analyzing them to achieve best efficiency. It was Taylor who taught the industrial world to use the then newly invented stopwatch for make necessary scientific measurements.
The story of the genius of Henry Ford and his industrial engineers in applying the ideas of interchangeability and breakdown of work to automobile assembly has freshly found insights. While Taylor designed work to the pace of the worker, Ford forced workers to the pace of his assembly line. I've seen a lot of fuzzy writing about how Ford tripled the wages of workers to an unheard of $5 a day and gave them the wealth to buy his cars and launch the US consumer economy. Donkin gives us the reality. Life on Ford's assembly line was hell. The first moving assembly line built magnetos. It went into operation on Monday, April Fools Day in 1913 and immediately delivered an astonishing 30 percent increase in productivity. Ford's engineers rushed to convert the remainder of automobile assembly to the moving line, including the famous icon of mass production, the chassis assembly line.
Ford's forced industrial march destroyed human spirits. By the end of that year, turnover approached 900%. The wage hike to $5 in early 1914 was simply a bribe to get people to work under inhuman conditions. The consumer economy was in fact a consequence of the dramatically improved productivity delivered by moving assembly lines. But what a price the consumer economy extracted - and still does.
Henry Ford said that workers don't like to think and designed an manufacturing system that didn't require it. In my view Toyota's production breakthrough was that it again harnessed the minds of the worker. Just-in-time parts, defect-free flow and Toyota's other innovations in manufacturing practices enable workers to take control of production and achieve remarkable levels of productivity and quality. I wished Donkin had given us a deeper analysis of the industrial revolution kicked off by Toyota's Tiichi Ohno, but that is a quibble. Hopefully it will be his next book.
Donkin covers the waterfront of great men of industrial efficiency, Deming, Juran, Drucker and many others. At the end, he gives us his suggestions for grappling with the problems of work. But you won't find closed solutions for the riddles and controversies of why we work and the extraordinary relationship between manager and managed. We emerge with man's best thoughts about the mysteries of work. If you tire of the deluge of how-to books on management awash with metaphysics and anecdotes, Donkin's book is for you. You'll need the wisdom he culls from millennia of human history on your journey to leadership.

If you've ever wondered about how your workplace came to be as it is, or where the work ethic comes from, you'll love Richard Donkin's absorbing exploration of the history of work. From the caveman to the man in pinstripes, he covers it all in a journey that also includes plenty of wit and wisdom. Delving deeply into societies of every era, the book's strength lies in its context and insight. Donkin even provides a good "a-ha!" or two in each chapter, you know, those moments when you smile, nod and say, "Oh, so that's where that comes from." We [...] highly recommend this book to all workers, from hunter-gatherers to CEOs.

This is a good book on leadership -- another Bennis classic. A good airplane book, it is a quick read and worth the time.

However, if you have to read ONE Bennis book, I suggest reading "Organizing Genius".

I like the authors emphasis on the learnability of leadership. Though a little dry in sections, it's rewarding for those that see it through to the finish.

This book is great for anyone who wants to find a compelling vision for their company. Rich with anecdotes and better organized than "On Becoming A Leader," this book provides the essential ingredients on what it takes to be a courageous, innovative leader, not just a manager. I also recommend John Gardner's On Leadership