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Title: Co-Leaders: The Power of Great Partnerships by David A. Heenan, Warren Bennis ISBN: 0-471-31635-0 Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Pub. Date: 05 February, 1999 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (2 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Packed With Knowledge!
Comment: Although the business press likes nothing more than the rise and fall of mighty corporate monarchs, authors David A. Heenan and Warren Bennis (co-leaders themselves, clearly) contend that today's most important management trend is the movement toward collaborative leadership. While it's become common wisdom that the lightening-fast pace of contemporary business demands more flexible command structures than traditional corporate hierarchies can provide, the cult of personality still dominates public perception. Heenan and Bennis present compelling theory as a basis for their co-leadership model, and reinforce their thinking with a string of examples of executive dynamic duos, like Gates/Ballmer, Grove/Barrett and Merrill/Smith. The case histories are not used to blindly buttress the authors' point, however. The bloody Eisner/Ovitz debacle at Disney is presented in gruesome detail, an apt illustration of the danger of ego in a collaborative age. We [...] recommend this book as required reading for any corporate executive.
Rating: 5
Summary: The Right CEO and COO Pairings Can Accomplish More
Comment: The title of this book is a little misleading. I assumed that the book was about co-CEOs, something that is usually a disaster waiting to happen. In fact, the book is about partnerships of complementary talents where one person is willing to work hard out of the limelight. Not all of the examples are business examples either. The authors also look at Chairman Mao and Chou En-lai, President Truman and General Marshall, Bernice Pauahi Bishop and her husband, Charles Reed Bishop (founders of the Bishop Estate in Hawaii), Helen Keller and her teacher Anne Sullivan Macy, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, and two pairs of basketball coaches.
The book correctly points out that many leaders don't want (or cannot tolerate) having a powerful second-in-command. A COO is often a position created by the board to assist in a transition to picking a new CEO. If the old CEO can sabotage the COO, the old CEO may get to keep the job longer than planned. So what could be co-leadership often doesn't get off the ground. In fact, the COO job is often a dead-end for the inhabitant.
The advantage of the teams, when they work, is that much more can be accomplished by dividing tasks and by challenging each other's thinking so that better ideas are created and more mistakes avoided. The authors feel that every organization should have co-leaders. Frankly, that's unlikely to happen.
The book nicely summarizes 10 lessons for how co-leaders should operate and another 10 lessons for creating a co-leader environment. Most of these will seem like common sense to you, but they are worth considering.
My own research on CEOs shows that the number of roles they are expected to excel in continues to grow. On the other hand, those who are most successful year in and year out as CEOs usually have no co-leaders. They tend to operate with a top management team that more broadly shares the responsibilities and challenges. It would be interesting to put some quantitative measures on the co-leader concept to see how it performs compared to the alternatives.
The main benefit I got from the book was learning more about people who have toiled out of the limelight before becoming CEOs (and who made important contributions as COOs) like Craig Barrett at Intel and Steve Ballmer at Microsoft.
If you are thinking about having a COO or taking a COO job, this book is a must read!
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Title: Competing on the Edge : Strategy as Structured Chaos by Shona L. Brown, Kathleen M. Eisenhardt ISBN: 0875847544 Publisher: Harvard Business School Press Pub. Date: 15 April, 1998 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: Transforming Leadership: The Pursuit of Happiness by James MacGregor Burns ISBN: 0871138662 Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press Pub. Date: February, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: The Contrarian's Guide to Leadership by Steven B. Sample ISBN: 0787967076 Publisher: Jossey-Bass Pub. Date: 02 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: ON LEADERSHIP by John W. Gardner ISBN: 0029113121 Publisher: Free Press Pub. Date: 12 March, 1993 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: Emotional Intelligence : Why It Can Matter More Than IQ by Daniel Goleman ISBN: 0553375067 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 02 June, 1997 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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