Business & Economics
Thomas Nelson
2010-06-01
304
“A novel, intriguing—and more importantly—highly instructive approach enabling us to truly grasp fundamental management principles. In the person of Dwight Eisenhower planning and executing the D-Day landings and the subsequent liberation of Europe, these basic concepts are vividly brought to life. As Loftus rightly observes, no CEO ever faced a more daunting, pressure-filled, obstacle-laden mission than did Ike. Perfect reading for these turbulent times.” —Steve Forbes, Chairman & CEO, Forbes Media “Geoff Loftus has written an intriguing and highly useful book on Dwight Eisenhower’s extraordinary ability as a leader. If you liked Ike before, you’ll like him even more now. And you’ll be grateful to Geoff Loftus.” —Christopher Buckley, author of Boomsday and Thank You for Smoking “In Lead Like Ike, Geoff Loftus provides keen insights on management lessons drawn from one of the greatest battlefields in military history. The lessons may appear simple, but it’s the simplest management principles that we often forget: Listen to your people. Set your vision. Be consistent about your message. Let your managers manage.” —Salvatore J. Vitale, Senior Vice President, The Conference Board Who was the greatest CEO of the 20th century? A persuasive case can be made for General Dwight D. “Ike” Eisenhower, who undertook history’s most harrowing executive assignment: Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe on June 6, 1944. In Lead Like Ike, business journalist and communications guru Geoff Loftus weaves a fly on-the-wall narrative from Ike’s perspective as supreme allied commander overseeing the Normandy invasion. While swept into a gripping story that honors the sacrifice of all who fought and died on D-Day, you’ll also be drawn to a cache of battle-tested strategies and tactics with direct applications to modern-day business leadership.
This is a little embarrassing as I have had this book to review for at least a year (or three), courtesy of the Book sneeze program for bloggers. Booksneeze has since changed companies and name to become Booklook bloggers.
The premise of Lead Like Ike is to make the case that Dwight Eisenhower, as the commander of one of the world’s largest military operations, is the greatest CEO of the 20th century. The first time I started reading this book, I found it hard to get into. This time I decided to start from the beginning again and give it a second chance with fresh eyes.
Unfortunately, it was still hard to get into. That is also the reason this review has taken so long; giving bad reviews is hard. Reading it reminded me of another popular business book, “The E-Myth Revisited”. E-Myth was a book that I read review after review and they were all raves, however it was another book I couldn’t get into – it should have been published as a brochure and not a book.
On the positive side, I would rate Lead Like Ike more than E-Myth, although it was still a bit of a struggle to get through.
Throughout the book it basically keeps coming back to ten core strategies, which are:
- Determine Your Mission
- Plan For Success
- Stay Focused
- Prioritize
- Plan to Implement
- Communicate
- Motivate Your People
- Manage Your People
- Avoid Project Creep
- Be Honest
The book, unless I misunderstood it, seems to lack practical application of these strategies and there seems to be a fair bit of repetition. Unless you’re undertaking a business course and this book is one of the official text books I’d have to say, unfortunately: avoid it.
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Disclosure: I received this book free from the publisher through the Booklook Bloggers book review program.
