Churchill on Leadership: Executive Success in the Face of Adversity by Steven F. Hayward

From the Publisher

Success often depends on the strength of a single quality: leadership. Winston Churchill is universally recognized as one of the 20th century's great political leaders and his words ring just as true in the world of commerce. A wise, witty, and inspiring leader, Churchill ran Great Britain like a great corporation.

"Perhaps the finest book on practical leadership ever written." — Brian Tracy

Churchill on Leadership demonstrates that the principles that guided Churchill ably translate to private industry today. Author Steven F. Hayward gives strong evidence that, if you remove Churchill from his political context, he would have the resume to be among the great business leaders of any age. Churchill:
• was a financier (as chancellor of the Exechequer) and labor negotiator (as home secretary)
• managed a large transportation network (as head of the British Navy) and far-flung property holdings (as colonial secretary)
• persevered through bankruptcies and other financial disasters
• conceived and introduced innovative new products over the opposition of his colleagues, and reorganized major production operations in the midst of crisis.
With wit and insight, Hayward reveals Churchill's secrets for business success from assembling and inspiring a first-rate team to preparing a wise budget, from communicating a vision to structuring effective meetings, from acting decisively to rebounding from a failure. Laced with epochal events from the historical stage, enlivened with stimulating speculation, and leavened with wit, Churchill on Leadership is both an enjoyable read and a thought-provoking lesson onleadership.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

Publishers Weekly

It seems such a natural idea to distill the "management" wisdom of an inspirational leader such as Winston Churchill for today's corporate chiefdoms. Unfortunately, Hayward, who works for the think tank Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy, does not deliver. He identifies four strategies that he believes made Churchill a successful leader: "candor and plain speaking, decisiveness, the ability to balance attention to details with a view of the wider scene, and a historical imagination that informed his judgment." But instead of using those strategies as an organizing principlegiving managers examples of how Churchill put those traits into practiceHayward treats us to truncated versions of numerous Churchill biographies. Except for his chapter on Churchill the communicator, there is never any analysis of Churchill's effective leadership. Even the pithy quotes from the prime minister at the end of each chapter lack a "how to" component. Given Churchill's autocratic nature, perhaps it's just as well. (June)

Library Journal

Strock, an attorney with a long career in public service, aims to provide guidance to those in leadership by distilling lessons from the official conduct of former U.S. President Ronald Reagan. The topics covered include Reagan's commitment to a vision, decisiveness, ability to learn from failure, and management techniques such as delegating, holding meetings, and setting priorities. Each chapter contains a summary of the principles covered and supposedly demonstrated by Reagan, the only value in the book, and the author borrows heavily from memoirs by former Reagan aides, appointees, lackeys, and sycophants. The effort to portray Reagan's style as exemplifying sound principles of leadership borders on sanctification and seems far-fetched at best. Neither biography nor history, this book represents a feeble attempt to derive leadership principle from insubstantial sources, a phenomenon of serious concern to executives well documented in John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge's The Witch Doctors (LJ 12/96). Harried executives interested in leadership advice should instead seek out the solid works of Stephen Covey and Peter Drucker, for example, and pass on this lightweight tome. Recommended for presidential libraries and only on demand for smaller public libraries.Dale F. Farris, Groves, TX

Product Details

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Table of Contents

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CHAPTER 3: Confronting Failure and Learning from Mistakes

Avoiding failure in business is the route to failure. Avoiding risks in politics, however, is the route to a long career in office. A failed risk in politics is far more dangerous than a failed risk in business. In business, shareholders and customers will quickly forgive you if you recover from a disaster - think of CocaCola after the "New Coke" debacle, or Ford after the Edsel.

But in politics, partisans will keep alive and distort and magnify any failure or mistake in your career. Often small mistakes are punished more severely than disasters. Churchill observed: "In all great business very large errors are excused or even unperceived, but in definite and local matters small mistakes are punished out of all proportion." This is one reason politicians are risk-averse, and why modern government administration seeks to minimize risk and avoid failure through a mindless bureaucratic process that delivers mostly mediocrity.

Churchill's refusal throughout his career to practice bland, risk-averse politics stands out as his most striking leadership attribute. Churchill's audacious and risk-taking character was at the core of his genius, but also constituted the chief liability of his long career and nearly led to his ruin. The lessons he learned from the mistakes and setbacks early in his career proved instrumental in his future success as war leader in World War II.

The Lessons of Failure: