Business biographies provide a great insight into the minds of individuals who have been there, run that.
Alan Sugar
Lord Alan Sugar’s What you see is what you get is very aptly named. A household name in the UK long before The Apprentice, Sugar makes no attempt to portray himself in a positive light. He makes no allowances for people who have screwed him or sued him. He tells it like it is – and it makes for an addictive and refreshing read.
This is a real tale of rags to riches – real rags, real riches. His book makes a compelling case for the resourcefulness, initiative and quick-thinking that any true entrepreneur needs. Sugar repeatedly points out the positive and negative lessons he learned along his journey. Any business reader who absorbs the tips and warnings that Sugar itemises, will be better protected from shysters, temptations, tricks and disasters.
My favourite passage is when Sugar describes what happened when he told his family that he was giving in his notice and start his own business. He is all of 20. ‘ “My father looked at me as if I were mad. “What do you mean, you’re going to work for yourself? Who is going to pay you on Friday?” That was an expression I’ll never forget, and it really sums up his whole outlook on work and life. Who is going to pay you on Friday? I told him that I was going to pay myself on Friday.’
Buffett
If you fear that everyone in financial markets is greedy, predatory or incompetent, says a review in the Houston Chronicle, Alice Schroeder’s The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life will convince you that there's at least one wholly rational person managing money. This biography gives us a glimpse of how Buffett made his fortune through his Berkshire Hathaway investment vehicle, and how he rigorously analyses a company's fundamentals.
Buffett doesn't invest often, but when he does, it’s on a grand scale. Once he spots opportunity, he moves boldly. He proclaims that he only invests in a business that he fully understands, which is why he avoided investing in high tech stocks at a time when everyone else was doing so – and avoided making spectacular losses when the bubble burst. He has always distrusted new-fangled investment instruments that made no sense to him. Some of the principles that have always guided Buffett include having more information than the other guy, analysing that information and using it rationally.
Buffett always knew he had to work for himself. “I didn’t want other people directing me. The idea of doing what I wanted to do every day was important to me. If you go to work every morning with your stomach churning, you’re in the wrong business.”
One of Schroeder’s most surprising revelations is the degree to which Buffett was influenced by the book that pioneered the development of personal business skills, self-confidence and motivational techniques, Dale Carnegie’s How to Make Friends and Influence People. Buffett first read the book at age eight or nine, and constantly returned to read and reread Carnegie’s advice. He was greatly impressed by such admonitions as: Make someone want to do what you want them to by seeing the situation from their point of view.
Giuliani
Being a leader is never a guarantee of popularity. Whatever our view of Mayor Rudy Giuliani as a person or as a presidential candidate, there can be no doubting his record as an innovative mayor of New York City. And when leadership was most needed on 9/11, Giuliani steered New York with an authority that turned a major local figure into a world famous figure, eclipsing his nation's president as a leader of renown. Giuliani completed the manuscript of Leadership before 9/11, but revised it after 9/11. He describes the characteristics that you need in a crisis: Instant recognition of the severity of the crisis – real, urgent, now. Preparation – he already had in place an Emergency Command Centre. Improvisation – setting up separate fire and police command centres. Communication – immediate press briefing. Undiluted assessment from the people on the spot. Keeping your head even in the face of unspeakable damage. Clear priorities – keep the city government operating. And focus on primary goal – save as many people as possible.
Leadership contains several useful pointers for anyone in a leadership position. Giuliani was particularly good at recognising special effort, and made a habit of singling out city employees who had done something brave or noteworthy. He invited them to attend his daily press conference, where the local and even the national media could follow up the story. Giuliani states categorically: Don't hold back with the praise, don't be afraid to give praise.
Steve
Walter Isaacson’s masterful biography of Steve Jobs describes the American dream writ large - a California boy with nothing but an idea and a lot of chutzpah, who together with his friend Steve Wozniak, built a computer in his dad’s garage and gave birth to the fastest-growing company in American history. Jobs had the breathtaking nerve to sit at the junction point of cataclysmic disruptions in not one but seven game-changing iconic inventions that became embedded in the culture: the Apple II, the Macintosh, the Macintosh operating system, the movie studio Pixar, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad. We can easily add two more major game-changing innovations: the iTunes Store and the chain of iconic Apple stores.
The book describes one of Jobs’ most famous escapades. In 1979, while negotiating with Xerox’s venture capital division over their participation in a new round of Apple financing, Jobs made Xerox an offer they should have refused: “I will let you invest a million dollars in Apple if you will open the kimono at PARC.” He was referring to Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center, where, thousands of miles away from the scrutiny of Xerox corporate headquarters, Xerox engineers were developing the most advanced user-friendly graphics anywhere on the planet. Xerox did extremely well out of the deal – a year later, their $1 million investment was worth $17.6 million. But Jobs got an even more spectacular deal. Overriding the grave misgivings of some senior PARC executives, Jobs got more than a peek of what was under the Xerox PARC kimono. And that peek stunned him. However, what stunned him even more was Xerox’s stupidity in not commercializing its breakthrough technology.
After being diagnosed with a rare form of pancreatic cancer, Jobs gave what is widely regarded as the best commencement address in history to the Stanford graduating class of 2005. He told the nearly 5,000 graduates that dropping out of Reed College in Portland, Oregon, after eight months study was one of his best decisions ever. “The minute I dropped out, I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me and begin dropping in on the ones that looked far more interesting.... Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me, and we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts, and since Windows just copied the Mac, it's likely that no personal computer would have them."
Shackleton
We all have childhood heroes. Mine included Ernest Shackleton. Yes, I know that he was not a businessman, but he deserves his place on this list because of his outstanding leadership qualities. He joined the Merchant Navy and worked his way up through the ranks. In 1902, he was a member of Scott's Discovery Expedition, and in 1907 he returned to Antarctica with his own expedition. He got within 97 miles of the South Pole, 360 miles closer than anyone previously, before having to turn back. After Amunsden achieved the distinction of being the first to reach the Pole, Shackleton was determined to be the first to cross the continent. In 1914, he embarked on the ill-fated Endurance expedition, and it was on this expedition that Shackleton displayed leadership qualities that earned him the description: “The greatest leader that ever came on God's earth, bar none."
Shackleton's Way - Leadership lessons from the great Antarctic Explorer, by Margot Morrell and Stephanie Capparell, is a biography, a travel narrative and a leadership handbook. The book recounts how Shackleton led his entire crew of twenty-seven men to safety after a death-defying two years in freezing Antarctica. What makes the book special is the way the authors weave valuable leadership lessons into the story of the voyage. They show how Shackleton inspired his men to perform beyond their perceived limits.
Shackleton made a conscious decision to be as different in leadership style from Scott as possible. Where Scott was dour, bullying and controlling, Shackleton was warm, humorous and egalitarian. Where Scott tormented his underlings, Shackleton teased but never humiliated his subordinates. Where Scott tried to orchestrate every movement of his men, Shackleton gave his men responsibility. Where Scott was secretive and untrusting, Shackleton talked openly and frankly about all aspects of the voyage. Where Scott put his team at risk in order to achieve his goals, Shackleton valued his men’s lives above all else. Where Scott was unwilling or unable to adapt his formal training to a harsh and unfamiliar environment, Shackleton was flexible. In all respects, Shackleton’s maverick leadership habits were highly unusual in the context of the early twentieth century.
Long before anyone coined the term Continuous Professional Development, Shackleton took a special interest in the personal and professional development of his men. He was forever proactively searching for meaningful work for each crewman, matching personality types with work responsibilities. Any modern company could take a lesson from Shackleton’s attitude.
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