Master Class
Learn from the best to be the best.
After studying 1,000 of the last century's top
entrepreneurs, managers and leaders, Harvard professors Nitin
Nohria and Anthony Mayo credited these paragons' prominence to
a combination of who they were and the times they operated in.
In Their Time: The Greatest Business Leaders of the
Twentieth Century (Harvard Business School Press, $35)
details how the personal idiosyncrasies of leaders from Henry Ford
to Sam Walton combined with their particular eras to create epochal
economic success.
A Ford quote summarizes the authors' premise: "Had I
worked 50 or 10 or even five years before, I would have
failed." They buttress their case for the importance of
circumstance with tales of entrepreneurs like Clarence Saunders,
who revolutionized retail with his Piggly Wiggly self-service
groceries, then failed repeatedly and disastrously with other
concepts that were too advanced for his time. To be like Ford and
unlike Saunders, study business history and learn what worked in
the past. Read voraciously and travel widely to stay on top of
regulatory, technological and political trends. In short, to master
the present, think hard about both the future and the past.
Head for HR
Does it take you months to hire key employees? HR executive Rusty
Rueff and recruiting entrepreneur Hank Stringer say that's too
long. In Talent Force: A New Manifesto for the Human Side of
Business (Prentice Hall, $24.99), they tell how to
cultivate a ceaseless flow of peerless talent that will let you
complete critical hires almost as rapidly as the need arises. A
good place to start: Recognize that the internet gives candidates
more information about you than you have about them. So log on and
research yourself, your company and your competitors. Then at least
they won't know things about you that you don't know about
yourself.
Mark henricks is Entrepreneur's
"Staff Smarts" columnist.
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