THE BEST IN US: PEOPLE, PROFIT, AND THE REMAKING OF MODERN LEADERSHIP
By Cleve W. Stevens
Reviewed by James Srodes
Sometimes it is salutary to restate the obvious. That is essentially what this reasoned, imaginative and easily digested prescription for a modern management strategy accomplishes. I cheerfully predict you will begin to notice copies of this book in airport lounges across the country being devoured by the new generation of business go-getters.
The obvious point being offered by business leadership-development guru Cleve W. Stevens is that something is terribly wrong with most corporate management in today’s United States and most especially within the kleptocracy known as Wall Street.
“We must face up, and when we do, what we see is that much of our business dealings, our financial dealings in particular, have been corrupted, and in some instances have become thoroughly rotten, so rotten that we cannot hope that a few meager reforms (reregulation) are going to rid us of that rot,” Mr. Stevens states.
It takes a moment’s reflection to recall how subtle the corruption has been. I have been a financial reporter long enough to recall a debate at a Business Council meeting between Henry Ford II and Roger Smith, the CEO of General Motors. It was not about some arcane financial scheme but about the relative technical merits of their two pet products — the Mustang and the Corvette. And CEO Charles J. Pilliod Jr.once took me onto the Goodyear factory floor in Akron to show me how to mount the belt in its new design for steel-belted radial tires. These men certainly were motivated by profits, but they also had a visceral pride in the products they made.