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Zoom

Name: Zoom
Author: R. J. Matson
ISBN: 9780385501316

by R. J. Matson

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Overview

A groundbreaking new book that examines the companies leading the charge in merging the practices of traditional and e-commerce business -- and the lessons we can learn from them.

In Lessons from the Top, James M. Citrin, of the world-renowned executive search firm Spencer Stuart, identified and interviewed (with coauthor Thomas Neff) the fifty top CEOs in America, and distilled the essential principles of leadership they all share.

In Citrin's compelling new management book, Zoom, he offers in-depth analyses of twelve market leaders -- including General Motors' e-GM, BEA Systems, eBay, Sun Microsystems, and General Electric -- and reveals how they are bridging the complex demands of yesterday's and today's economies. From the hard-won lessons these pioneering market leaders have learned along the way, Citrin identifies the principles that characterize success today and will help chart success in the future -- principles that other companies can use to redirect their thinking, resources, and energies. Among them:

Encourage flexibility. Relationships are much more fluid and multidimensional today. Rather than using a strategic planning process, the best leaders use a strategic framework, with a lot of room for improvisation.

Share the vision. It's not enough to just talk about the company's vision -- you need to evangelize about it, and repeat its mantra so often that it becomes second nature to everyone in the company.

Create a genuine learning organization by shortening feedback cycles, effectively transferring knowledge, and expanding a company's "listeningcircles."

Reward Failure. It is important to find ways to mitigate personal and organizational risk, and identify and encourage risk takers. They are the ones who can transform a company.

What makes this book invaluable are the strategies top managers and executives reveal on how to implement their principles of success: how to flatten the organization, be first to market, measure the right things, and manage customer information. The result is an indespensable road map of the twenty-first century economy that corporate leaders can use to guide and shape their own efforts.

In the bestselling fashion of First, Break All the Rules and Built to Last, Zoom is essential reading for those determined to triumph in the years ahead.

About the Author, R. J. Matson

JAMES M. CITRIN is the managing director of Spencer Stuart's Global Communications and Media Practice. The coauthor, with Thomas Neff, of Lessons from the Top, Cirtrin has a regular column in Business 2.0, has written for The New York Times and Strategy+Business, and has appeared on CNBC, CNN, NBC, and many other national business forums. He lives in New Canaan, Connecticut.

Biography

James M. Citrin is one of the world's leading executive search consultants and an expert on leadership and success. He is a senior director and member of the Worldwide Board of Directors of Spencer Stuart. Since joining Spencer Stuart in January 1994, Citrin has completed more than 350 executive and board director search assignments.

Citrin's previous books are You're in Charge, Now What? (Crown Business 2005), The 5 Patterns of Extraordinary Careers (Crown Business 2003), Zoom: Navigating the Road to the Next Economy (Doubleday 2002), and Lessons from the Top: The Search for America's Best Business Leaders (Doubleday 1999). He has co produced and hosted special series based on the books for CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight (September 2003) and CNBC's Squawk Box (January 2005). Citrin has appeared on The Today Show, Good Morning America, and CBS's The Early Show and has been interviewed by all major national print, television, and radio outlets. In addition, he writes the popular bi-weekly column, Leadership by Example for Yahoo! Finance.

Prior to joining Spencer Stuart in 1994, Citrin was director of corporate planning at The Reader's Digest Association. Before that, he spent 5 years with McKinsey & Company in the United States and France, serving as a senior engagement manager. Earlier, he was an associate with Goldman, Sachs & Company, and spent 3 years as a financial analyst with Morgan Stanley.

A 1981 Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Vassar College with a BA in economics, Citrin has served as a member of the Vassar Board of Trustees since 1999. He earned an MBA from the Harvard Business School, graduating with distinction in 1986. Thanks to The Dynamic Path, Citrin was honored to receive an invitation from the United States Olympic Committee to become an Adjunct Professor at their newly created Olympic University, a groundbreaking program of leadership development based on the principles of the Olympic Movement. He lives in Connecticut with his wife, Gail, and their three children, Teddy, Oliver, and Lily.
Author biography courtesy of Rodale Press, Incorporated

Good To Know

I did not read a book for pleasure until my freshman year in college and as a consequence I was a terrible writer - very immature. However, my English professor at Vassar College, William Gifford, who is a living legend in having taught numerous award winning writers, did not throw me out on my ear. He was encouraging and helpful in his feedback to my early papers, even if they could have been ripped to shreds by the red pen. I really fell in love with writing my junior year when I was in Professor Gifford's expository writing seminar, where each of the 20 students would write a paper on a particular very specific topic, e.g., 'an interaction,' or 'twenty years from now.' On that particular paper, I wrote a story about how as Director of Admissions for Vassar College I was agonizing over two extraordinary finalist candidates, given how prominent Vassar had become as a school in the intervening 20 years. There was a certain degree of foreshadowing to that paper - as I became a trustee of Vassar in 1999 and have for 14 years now, been a professional recruiter!

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Editorials

From Barnes & Noble

This book nicely summarizes much of the conventional wisdom that the business press has offered over the past few years: the need for speed, the paramount importance of customer relations, the necessity for strategic partnerships, and so on. Unfortunately, some of that wisdom has come to have an unintentionally ironic quality. For instance, the chapter entitled "Success Factor #5: Absorb Uncertainty" uses Enron as a case study. Under the header "We Like Change," Enron's fast-forward culture is discussed, with the author giving the company credit for rewarding people with professional mobility and the opportunity to become rich quickly. While this book presents some of the standard knowledge of the past few years, it doesn't push the envelope at all and sometimes it ends up sounding embarrassingly dated.

Publishers Weekly

The snide answer to the subtitle is "not very well." Enron has collapsed amid allegations of accounting fraud and management self-dealing. Soapbox.com did not survive 2000. A $10,000 investment in three other companies (Yahoo!, Akamai and Commerce One) in January 2000 would be worth $400 today. Unluckily, Citrin picked his 13 companies in 2000 and had the hubris to boast how much they had outperformed the S&P 500 at that point. But past performance does not guarantee future returns, and stockholders of these companies have lost 83% of their investment since the beginning of 2000, while the S&P 500 is down only 21%. Of the 13 companies, only eBay has managed to beat the index. Despite these companies' failures, there is much useful information here. Thoughtful interviews with 17 innovative business people are presented with minimal intrusion from the author, and broad themes abound: embrace change, encourage risk taking and obsess about customers. However, the executives differ in how these tenets are implemented in different industries and organizations. For example, George Conrades of Akamai likes to share his vision with employees, then measure how well they can realize that vision; he sees himself as a referee. But Tim Koogle of Yahoo! stresses hiring people who will bring their own visions and views himself as a coach. And John Chambers of Cisco focuses on acquiring companies whose employees have already developed the skills Cisco needs, as if he were a team owner. Although this business management book carries an albatross (the failures of its subjects), it nonetheless has merit. Agent, Rafe Sagalyn. (Feb. 1) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Citrin, a business consultant and coauthor of Lessons from the Top, here presents six factors for success in the modern digital economy: go for speed, create a learning organization, obsess on the customer, reward appropriate risk-taking, absorb uncertainty, and master deal-making and partnering skills. For each factor, he presents his theories and illustrates them with two company case studies. For deal making, he recounts how Cisco Systems and BEA Systems have successfully grown by both partnering with and acquiring other companies. General Electric is presented in a final case study as a company that has implemented all six factors successfully. A couple of the companies cited for exemplary performance have had recent problems. Commerce One, Citrin notes, has been rocked by the dot-com stock market meltdown. Since the book's completion, Enron, another of his case study companies, has suffered a financial debacle that is unresolved as of this writing. Nonetheless, Citrin makes a good case that the Internet and other new technologies will further affect the way business is done and that a study of his six factors would be a good start in coping. Recommended for business collections in larger public and academic libraries. Lawrence R. Maxted, Gannon Univ., Erie, PA Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.