Guts!: Companies That Blow the Doors Off Business-As-Usual

The recent corporate scandals and layoffs may have damaged the public's trust in business, but corporate consultants Kevin and Jackie Freiberg could well restore some of that lost confidence with their inspiring descriptions of""gutsy leaders"" who""have dismantled fear-based management and replaced it with heart, soul, discipline, loyalty, humor--and long-term record profits."" Mostly men and a few women, the leaders in this round-up include James Blachard, CEO of Synovus Financial, and Colleen Barret, president and CEO of Southwest Airlines--a company that the Freibergs explored in depth in their first book Nuts!: Southwest Airlines' Crazy Recipe for Business and Personal Success (1996). A model of employee-manager relations, Southwest didn't lay off a single person after 9/11, and it met its employee profit-sharing and savings plans and even opened new flight routes, all while increasing its share of the U.S. domestic market by about 25 percent. Among the Freibergs' other examples are the companies Planet Honda, Whole Foods, SAS Institute (a company that provides intelligence-software services), Ernst & Young and the U.S.S. Benfold (a Navy combat missile destroyer). The authors describe these entities' workplace strategies and philosophies on everything from""hiring people who don't suck"" (a real no-brainer) to making work itself fun, and their bullet-point lists and sidebars suggest ways that managers can apply these strategies to their own businesses. An energetic leadership primer that's dynamic, entertaining and easy to read, this book should be popular among readers interested in finding new ways to make business work.