Book Review - Why Smart Executives Fail

I think I'll get the book.

Source of review: http://www.boardoftrade.com/bbro_page.asp?pageid=2596
-------------------------------
Published in Sounding Board, May 2006.
Dr. Owen A. Anderson

Why Smart Executives Fail and What You Can Learn from Their Mistakes — by Sydney Finkelstein (Penguin, 2004, New York)

This book focuses on failure and what you can learn from it. Author Sydney Finkelstein breaks the mold of most business books and writes about "worst practices" instead of best practices. His book profiles the seven habits of spectacularly unsuccessful people.

Habit No. 1
Many CEOs suffer from the illusion of personal pre-eminence and believe that they are personally able to control all aspects that will determine the company’s success or failure. Rather than scrambling to keep track of changing conditions, these CEOs succumb to this illusion and believe that they can create the conditions under which they and their company will operate.

Leaders who suffer from this illusion reveal this in the way they treat people. These leaders consider their employees as instruments to be used and materials to be molded. Business leaders who think this way often use intimidation and excessive behaviour to dominate the people who surround them.

Habit No. 2
Unsuccessful business leaders identify so completely with the company that there is no clear boundary between their personal interests and their corporation’s interests.

Habit No. 3
Ineffective leaders think they have all the answers. This is the image of executive competence that we’ve been taught to admire for decades. Movies, television shows and journalists continually offer us recognizable vignettes of dynamic executives making dozens of decisions a minute, snapping out orders that will redirect huge enterprises, dealing with numerous crises at once, and taking only seconds to size up situations that have obviously stumped everyone else for days. Generally these leaders are also control freaks who try to have the final say on everything their company does.

Habit No. 4
Unsuccessful leaders eliminate anyone who isn’t 100 per cent behind them.

Habit No. 5
Unsuccessful leaders are consummate company spokespersons and are obsessed with company image.

Habit No. 6
CEOs who succumb to this sixth habit tend to see obstacles as though they are minor difficulties, when many of them are, in fact, major hurdles. They constantly underestimate major obstacles. Executives who have achieved a string of successes are particularly prone to underestimate obstacles.

Habit No. 7
Unsuccessful leaders stubbornly rely on what worked for them in the past. Many CEOs on their way to becoming spectacularly unsuccessful accelerate their company’s decline simply by reverting to what they regard as the "tried and tested." These and many other high-flying CEOs failed, not because they couldn’t learn, but because they had learned one lesson all too well.

One of the most vital skills for a successful executive to have is the ability to create a learning organization. By studying mistakes and failures, we open up a window to learn not just what we shouldn’t do, but also what we should do. Smart executives succeed by learning from the mistakes of others, by understanding the underlying causes of failure and how to be alert to them, and by creating organizations that are open-minded enough to acknowledge and learn from their own mistakes.

Lost and found Hawker: Eng Huat Fishball from old Zion Road hawker

I finally found my favourite fishball mee stall. This was the stall I frequented almost every Saturday with my wife at the old Zion Road (not the new one but the one directly beside the Boys Brigade) for its salty fishball and fishcake. I chanced upon it a few days ago after a failed lunch attempt to eat at Beo Crescent Hawker Centre as the food selection was lousy and there was a strong odour from the wet market section. So I walked over to the Havelock Cooked Food Centre and saw the familiar faces of the uncle and the old auntie (uncle's mother). I was so delighted to find this stall that I went back again the following day to eat mee kia tah ($3) with more chilli. I ordered a separate whole fishcake ($2) as well. Woo! Shiok!

A little history on Deng Xiaoping

I was having tea with some colleagues last week when we discussed the many China engagements we had now. A little history was discussed and we could not agree on how and why Deng Xiaoping was purged and later returned to power.

As I just finished reading a book written by his daughter Deng Rong on Deng Xiaoping during the Cultural Revolution, I thought I might share some information I gathered from the book.

The Cultural Revolution was endorsed by Mao Zedong. Then premier Liu Shaoqi and 2nd man Deng could see the negativeness of its impact and hence instituted a few measures to try to mitigate and soften the impact largely by slowing down the process and interpreting it in a positive way.


For doing this, Liu and Deng were criticised, demoted and purged. Liu died before the Cultural Revolution ended. Deng was however spared although he was also purged and sent to Jiangxi to labour. It is possible that Mao understood that Deng was important for the economy of the country and did not want to destroy Deng.

Deng came back into the limelight when the economy turned bad and then Premier Zhou Enlai maneuvered to have Deng return.

On Zhou's death (he suffered from cancer), Deng was once against purged by the Gang of Four. He was reinstated only after Marshal Ye captured the Gang of Four (after Mao's death) with then Premier Hua Guofeng's endorsement.

After Mao's death, history books were rewritten and the Cultural Revolution became sort of a holocaust for the Chinese people. As for Mao, Deng labelled him 70% good and 30% bad. But that was of course after Mao's death.

The learning point for me is first the perseverance of Deng who bounced back time after time and served his country till old age, way past the official retirement age in Singapore. In fact, when he was first purged, he was already in his 60s.

Second, if anyone should think he is not moving fast enough in his career, he can take comfort in Deng.

Third, I believe Deng did not seek personal gratification nor power but instead for meaningful contribution to his country and country men. I think this was the reason how he was able to survive the tribulations in his life and not become cynical and defeated.

Dr Lee Kai Fu

For this post, I would like to introduce a person and his website. I came to know of Dr Lee Kai Fu, fomerly of Microsoft and now Google, from a book I was reading on Microsoft's strategy in China. Only after reading the book did I realised that Microsoft had been tapping the vast talents that China offers for some time. In fact, as testament to the importance of Chinese talent, Dr Lee rose to Corporate Vice President by the time he left Microsoft.

In China, Dr Lee led the research center of Microsoft in Asia and having a Chinese person helm it was strategic because of the need to work through the many layers of government. But my post is not on this subject of the 'guanxi' building.

Dr Lee became well known in China because of his Microsoft work. For the Centre, he had to recruit and interview many Chinese students and through this, he set up a website to offer advice to youths on career options and life in general. Like many Chinese, their roots are unshakebly Chinese and contributing back to the motherland was always on their mind. The website was one of the ways Dr Lee engaged the youths.

I visited the website and was impressed by the vast content available. The resources are open to anyone who can understand Mandarin. Shortly, I will share some of the articles which I find useful and translate them to English.

The URL is http://www.5xue.com/