Doing What Matters

In a business book that reads like a case study, turnaround artist and brand-builder Kilts walks managers and CEOs through the lessons he learned while resuscitating shaving-company Gillette. Having revived Nabisco, Kilts was planning to retire until famed investor Warren Buffett persuaded him to upgrade Gillette. With an analytical tone, Kilts describes how he moved the company off the ledge and paved the way for a bidding war. The book is likely to resonate with CEOs accustomed to dense discussions of corporate successes, businessy acronyms (like ZOG, or “zero overhead growth”) and sorting through heaps of advice. On rare occasions, Kilts gets folksy, as when describing the loss of perspective that comes with immersion in an organization's culture: “If you put a frog into boiling water, it jumps out,” Kilts writes. “If you put a frog into cool water and slowly raise the temperature, the frog gets cooked before it knows what's happening.” The slow boil is bad for business, he reasons. But overall, it works as an approach for this book. (Sept.)