The Hindu Business Line : <I>A leaf from the leaders </I>

In the jungle of management, bosses like Howard Solomon may be rare finds. He is the CEO of Forest Laboratories, a 50-year-old pharma company with nearly $3 billion in revenues and employing 5,000 people, as www.frx.com informs.

Solomon's style of leadership is to admit his vulnerabilities. "His employees are more likely to view him as a multifaceted, down-to-earth person than to fear him as an intimidating, infallible demigod. A culture of fear may be profitable, but it isn't sustainable; a culture of respect is both," reads a profile about Solomon included in `Leadership Power Plays' from Tata McGraw-Hill (www.tatamcgrawhill.com) .

The book is a bunch of case studies, all drawn from BusinessWeek. The first one is about Jack Welch, a man who managed to leverage surprise. Every week, there were `unexpected visits to plants and offices, hurriedly scheduled luncheons with managers several layers below him, and countless handwritten notes to GE people that would suddenly churn off their fax machines. Next comes Steve Ballmer, who created `management sync weeks' in Microsoft. These are `weeklong events every quarter with day after day of meetings involving the executive staff and board members', aimed at coordinating themes and strategies. "Bill Gates had his `think weeks,' where he secluded himself... to ruminate on the Next Big Thing in technology."

The book introduces you to the `unsung hero' of United Technologies, George David. His counterintuitive business model is to `run a bunch of unrelated companies and give employees tons of money to play with'. One of his `controversial investments' is the `Employee Scholar Program' that costs $60 million a year. Workers don't have to tie their studies to the job. "Anything goes, from medieval poetry to medical training, with UTC picking up the tab, including the cost of books and time off."

When big things fail, try Alan G. Lafley's technique that worked well in P&G. "In a company famed for requiring employees to describe every new course of action in a one-page memo, Lafley's preferred approach is the slogan." For example, when he felt that P&G was letting technology rather than consumer needs dictate new products, the slogan that turned the ship was simple: `The consumer is boss.' Street language, he'd concede.

http://BookPeek.blogspot.com

D. Murali