How to Run a Company: Lessons from Top Leaders of the CEO Academy

This is an intermittently engaging hodge-podge of war stories by current and former CEOs and associated advisers and observers. A few of the essays, like former DuPont CEO John Kroll's account of cutting environmental waste along with 40,000 jobs, delve into actual managerial issues. Most, though, deal with the political role of the CEO. Ex-Northwest Airlines CEO John Dasburg tells of selling his board on a new strategy and then liquidating holdovers (75 percent of upper and middle managers) from the old regime. Merck CEO Raymond Gilmartin adopted a less ruthless approach of holding endless rounds of discussions with managers and promoting from within. Shareholder rights activist Nell Minnow urges boards of directors to keep a close eye on the CEO, while Ed Breen, new CEO of scandal-rocked Tyco had to fire his entire board. Ex-Office Depot chief David Fuentes reminds readers not to alienate the powers that be in his story of how the Federal Trade Commission blocked a proposed merger with Staples (he shifts blame to the""angry and hostile posture of our attorneys""). Goldman Sachs vice chairman Robert Hurst warns CEOs, unconvincingly, that pressuring analysts for favorable stock recommendations won't work anymore. Former DaimlerChrysler PR executive Christoph Walther admonishes CEOs to""never answer a hypothetical question,"" while Economist editor Matthew Bishop, with seeming self-interest, advises them not to stint on schmoozing with reporters. The lessons here are too contradictory and ad hoc to add up to a coherent primer, but new CEOs (and the larger audience of wannabes) will find some interesting food for thought.