Best Selling Books by Michael Useem

Eight true stories show that Leaders today aren’t just bosses, they’re self-starters who take charge even when they haven’t been given a charge. Upward leaders get results by helping their superiors lead. They make sure that good ideas don’t die on the vine because a boss’s understanding doesn’t reach down deep enough into the organization. Upward leadership assures that advice arrives from all points on the corporate compass, not just from the top down. And it applies at every level: Even CEOs need to learn about leading up because they ultimately answer to their boards. In Leading Up, Michael Useem offers instructive accounts of this vital and unexplored facet of leadership. Drawing on the extraordinary experiences of real people, Useem shows us what happens when those not in charge rise to the challenge, and also what happens when those who should step forward fail to do so: * Civil War generals openly disrespected and frequently misinformed their commanders in chief, with tragic consequences for both sides. * COO David Pottruck learned how to lead with his superiors at Charles Schwab & Co. in order to radically change Schwab’s core business. * Had he been able to convince his superiors of the dire situation in Rwanda, United Nations commander Roméo Dallaire might have prevented the genocide that claimed 800,000 lives. * The CEOs of CBS, Compaq, and British Airways concentrated on leading down when they needed to lead up to their boards, too. The result: All three were fired. * U.S. Marine Corps general Peter Pace reconciled conflicting priorities while reporting to six bosses with varying agendas by keeping all of them informed and challenging them when necessary. * Mount Everest mountaineers admitted they might have protected themselves and others from harm during a fateful ascent if only they had questioned their guides’ flawed instructions and decisions. * Even in government, representatives often need to first strike a deal, then lead their bosses to embrace it, as examples from the United States and Argentina illustrate. * No one ever had a tougher job of leading up than Old Testament prophets Moses, Abraham, and Samuel, who interceded with the ultimate authority. Leading up is not the same as managing up. Managing up is running the office; leading up is taking the reins and exceeding what’s expected. As hierarchies everywhere shed much of their rigidity, upward leadership at all levels becomes more possible—and more necessary. Leading Up is a call to action. It asks us to build on the best in everybody’s nature, and it offers a pragmatic blueprint for doing so.

The Go Point—the moment of truth when you have to say “yes” or “no” when it’s time to get off the fence. Michael Useem—through dramatic storytelling—shows how to master the art and science of being decisive. He places you smack in the middle of people facing their go point, where actions—or lack of them—determined the fates of individuals, companies, and countries. • Why on earth did Robert E. Lee send General George Pickett on an almost suicidal charge against the Union lines at Gettysburg? • How does the leader of a firefighting crew make life-or-death decisions, directing his people—with little information about weather patterns to guide him—to go up or down the mountain? One direction means safety, the other danger. • You’ve just assumed responsibility for a scandal-wracked corporation, a company teetering on the brink of disaster. What you decide over the course of the next several days will have consequences for thousands of employees and investors. How do you fulfill your responsibilities? Michael Useem makes you feel as if “you are there,” right in the center of the action. He was there: tramping up and down the mountain where firefighters made their momentous decisions; walking the battlefield at Gettysburg to see for himself just what General Pickett faced before making his ill-fated charge; going into a trading pit where million-dollar buy-and-sell decisions are made that affect fortunes of both the firm and the person making the call. You’ll discover why some decisions were flawless, perfectly on target, and others utterly disastrous. Most of all, you’ll learn how to make the right calls yourself, whether you’re changing your career, hiring an assistant, launching a product, or deciding on a potential acquisition or merger. Smartly written and offering unusual insights into the minds of decision makers such as General Lee, The Go Point will provide the guidance for you to move with confidence when it’s your turn to get off the fence. Also available as an eBook

Discover how Japan’s new leadership model has transformed its top companies and created a new paradigm for business success In Resolute Japan, Waseda University’s Jusuke J. J. Ikegami and the Wharton School’s Harbir Singh and Michael Useem reveal a new leadership model that has led Japan’s corporations to make a stunning comeback. In the process, they share what they have learned from interviews with more than 100 CEOs and top executives of Japan’s largest and most influential companies, including Hitachi, Honda, Mitsubishi, Nissan, NTT, and Panasonic. In this book, you will discover: + How Japan’s new leadership model has led to superior performance in the stock market and beyond; + The core principles and practices that characterize Japan’s new leadership model and how they differ from the old models; + How Japan’s new leadership model enables companies to balance multiple and often conflicting objectives, such as shareholder value and social responsibility, short-term results and long-term growth, and agility and stability; + How Japan’s new leadership model fosters innovation, resilience, and competitiveness in a rapidly changing global environment; + Why, even in an environment of macroeconomic stagnation due to economic policies at the national level, individual companies can achieve sustainable development through this new leadership model; and + How Japan’s new leadership model can inspire and inform business leaders in the West and elsewhere who are facing similar challenges and opportunities. Resolute Japan offers a rare and insightful perspective on the new corporate fabric of Japan, one that is sure to both challenge and enlighten leaders around the world.

Your team has faltered at a critical moment. A key member says he can’t continue, requiring you to make a snap decision: Do you write him off? Or do you risk the whole venture by trying to get him back on his feet? It could be a scenario straight from the business world. Yet this one occurred high on the slopes of the world’s deadliest mountain, K2, where lives, not just livelihoods, depended on the leader’s choice. Decisions don’t get much starker. That’s why mountains—though seemingly a world apart from business—hold unique and surprising insights for managers and entrepreneurs at any altitude. More than just symbols of our upward strivings, they are high-altitude management laboratories: testing grounds where risk, fear, opportunity, and ambition collide in the most unforgiving of settings. Upward Bound brings together a remarkable team of nine writers equally at home among the high peaks and in the corridors of corporate power, including Good to Great author Jim Collins, legendary climber and outdoor clothing entrepreneur Royal Robbins, and Stacy Allison, the first American woman to summit Mount Everest. Their riveting, often harrowing accounts, reveal • Why rock climbers’ distinction between failure (giving up before reaching the edge of your abilities) and what they call “fallure” (committing 100 percent and using up all your energy and reserves) can help companies transcend their vertical limits • What happens when a leader abdicates responsibility in the Death Zone of Mount Everest—and how a similar vacuum at sea level can corrupt corporate purpose • How large climbing expeditions use exquisite organization and “pyramids of people” to place just two climbers on top, making heroes of some from the sacrifice of all • What “ridge-walking” between deadly avalanches and the lure of Mount McKinley’s summit taught a venture capitalist about nurturing risky high-tech start-ups • How a simple insight—using “proximate goals”—propelled a faltering climber up El Capitan in a seemingly undoable solo ascent, a ten-day lesson that would later jump-start a business • Why more accessible peaks like Mount Sinai can exert a pull every bit as powerful as Mount Everest • How to think like a guide While most people will never find themselves in the thin air of the world’s highest places, Upward Bound brings those places down to earth for anyone seeking the path to his or her own summit. Whether it’s up the career ladder or toward a creative peak, Upward Bound addresses the fundamental question of why we climb, while capturing the power of mountains to instruct as well as inspire.

In Go Long, authors Dennis Carey, Brian Dumaine, Michael Useem, and Rodney Zemmel take you behind the scenes to witness the business decisions that are enabling leading organizations to outsmart and outlast the competition.

Are you ready for the leadership moment? “Gripping adventure and actionable advice.”—Fast Company Merck’s Roy Vagelos commits millions of dollars to develop a drug needed only by people who can’t afford it • Eugene Kranz struggles to bring the Apollo 13 astronauts home after an explosion rips through their spacecraft • Arlene Blum organizes the first women''s ascent of one of the world''s most dangerous mountains • Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain leads his tattered troops into a pivotal Civil War battle at Little Round Top • John Gutfreund loses Salomon Brothers when his inattention to a trading scandal almost topples the Wall Street giant • Clifton Wharton restructures a $50 billion pension system direly out of touch with its customers • Alfredo Cristiani transforms El Salvador’s decade-long civil war into a negotiated settlement • Nancy Barry leads Women''s World Banking in the fight against Third World poverty • Wagner Dodge faces the decision of a lifetime as a fast-moving forest fire overtakes his firefighting crew.

“If you’re not living on the edge, you’re taking up too much space.” —Jim Whittaker, first American to climb Mt. Everest A leader’s job—in a radically changing world—is standing on the cliff edge, getting a grip on unfamiliar landscapes, and acquiring the skills for leading the enterprise into new territory. In a world facing the unprecedented challenges of global pandemic and economic distruption, every leader needs to find the edge for leaping across the breach and breaking new ground on the other side. Michael Useem provides rare insight into how ten leaders confronted hard realities. He looked close-in at the lide and work of people such as Bill McNabb of Vanguard, Jeffrey Lurie of the Philadelphia Eagles, Alex Gorsky of Johnson & Johnson, and Tricia Griffith of Progressive Insurance. His “you are there” profiles chronicle fateful decisions such as: Meeting the concerns of a next-generation workforce that considers inclusiveness an integral part of business Developing a strategy for growth in a market that is cratering Escaping the confines of an insane, always-on, 24/7 world to learn about the real, granular changes happening in the marketplace Useem’s profiles of leaders on the edge provide the inspiration and the guidance we all need for adapting and thriving in an era of massive disruption and continuous transformation.

Driven by declining profits and government regulation, a new form of class-wide business leadership has emerged: a transcorporate network that is giving a new coherence and power to business in both America and Britain. This book delineates the "inner circle" of top executives who play a leading role in this network, advising the highest levels of government and working to promote a political environment favorable to all business.

From the award-winning author of The Leadership Moment comes a definitive checklist to help today''s leaders act decisively when it counts the most. In this fast-reading and illuminating book, world-renowned leadership expert Michael Useem provides 15 guiding principles that form the core of the Leader''s Checklist. He helps you to personalize your checklist to the unique needs and demands of your organization. To demonstrate the power of the Leader''s Checklist, Useem examines accounts of extraordinary leadership, including the triumphant rescue of 33 miners in Chile. Based on solid research and.

Envision this scenario: An industrial manufacturer is breaking itself in three, and its board chair asks you, the chief financial officer, to step up to the helm of one of the spin-offs. You will take charge of everything, from plant operations and product marketing to human resources and governance practices. Are you ready to lead? In The Leader''s Checklist, 10th Anniversary Edition: 16 Mission-Critical Principles, world-renowned leadership expert and Wharton professor Michael Useem shows you how to lead through any challenge—and shares how ITT''s Denise Ramos did just that when she encountered this situation. In this illuminating guide, Useem offers a Leader''s Checklist that will help you develop your ability to make good and timely decisions in unpredictable and stressful environments—for those moments when leadership really matters. To illustrate the principles, Useem examines where leaders go right—and wrong. He looks at:How Ramos, the former CEO of ITT, turned around the once-struggling enterprise; How AIG''s tone-deaf response to the tumultuous events of the global financial crisis left the company vulnerable to one of the greatest corporate collapses in business history; andHow Virginia Rometty, the former executive chair of IBM, acquired and integrated a cloud-computing company to help turn around IBM''s fortunes. Based on Useem''s own research experience and an array of leadership investigators, thinkers, and practitioners, The Leader''s Checklist offers actionable insights you can put into practice as a leader today.

Fortune Makers analyzes and brings to light the distinctive practices of business leaders who are the future of the Chinese economy. These leaders oversee not the old state-owned enterprises, but private companies that have had to invent their way forward out of the wreckage of an economy in tatters following the Cultural Revolution. Outside of brand names such as Alibaba and Lenovo, little is known, even by the Chinese themselves, about the people present at the creation of these innovative businesses. Fortune Makers provides sharp insights into their unique styles -- a distinctive blend of the entrepreneur, the street fighter, and practices developed by the Communist Party -- and their distinctive ways of leading and managing their organizations that are unlike anything the West is familiar with. When Peter Drucker published Concept of the Corporation in 1946, he revealed what made large American corporations tick. Similarly, when Japanese companies emerged as a global force in the 1980s, insightful analysts explained the practices that brought Japan''s economy out of the ashes -- and what managers elsewhere could learn to compete with them. Now, based on unprecedented access, Fortune Makers allows business leaders in the United States and the rest of the West to understand the essential character and style of Chinese corporate life and its dominant players, whose businesses are the foundation of the domestic Chinese market and are now making their mark globally.

Is your firm’s board creating value—or destroying it? Change is coming. Leadership at the top is being redefined as boards take a more active role in decisions that once belonged solely to the CEO. But for all the advantages of increased board engagement, it can create debilitating questions of authority and dangerous meddling in day-to-day operations. Directors need a new road map—for when to lead, when to partner, and when to stay out of the way. Boardroom veterans Ram Charan, Dennis Carey, and Michael Useem advocate this new governance model—a sharp departure from what has been demanded by governance activists, raters, and regulators—and reveal the emerging practices that are defining shared leadership of directors and executives. Based on personal interviews and the authors’ broad and deep experience working with executives and directors from dozens of the world’s largest firms, including Apple, Boeing, Ford, Infosys, and Lenovo, Boards That Lead tells the inside story behind the successes and pitfalls of this new leadership model and explains how to: • Define the central idea of the company • Ensure that the right CEO is in place and potential successors are identified • Recruit directors who add value • Root out board dysfunction • Select a board leader who deftly bridges the divide between management and the board • Set a high bar on ethics and risk With a total of eighteen checklists that will transform board directors from monitors to leaders, Charan, Carey, and Useem provide a smart and practical guide for businesspeople everywhere—whether they occupy the boardroom or the C-suite.

Events ranging from Hurricane Katrina to the global economic crisis have taught businesspeople an unforgettable lesson: if you don’t plan for “extreme risk,” you endanger your organization’s very survival. But how can you plan for events that go far beyond anything that occurs in normal day-to-day business? In Learning from Catastrophes, two renowned experts present the first comprehensive strategic framework for assessing, responding to, and managing extreme risk. Howard Kunreuther and Michael Useem build on their own breakthrough work on mitigating natural disasters, extending it to the challenges faced by real-world enterprises. Along with the contributions of leading experts in risk management, heuristics, and disaster recovery, they identify the behavioral biases and faulty heuristics that mislead decision makers about the likelihood of catastrophe. They go on to identify the hidden links associated with extreme risks, and present techniques for systematically building greater resilience into the organization. The global best-seller The Black Swan told executives that “once in a lifetime” events are far more common and dangerous than they ever realized. Learning from Catastropheshows them exactly what to do about it.

“We can all become strategic leaders if we stay on the right path.” —Harbir Singh & Michael Useem Even a strong leader can flounder without an effective strategy, and the most powerful strategy can fail without the right leader. Only those who master and integrate both skills can effectively navigate the challenges that lay ahead for today’s organizations. The Strategic Leader’s Roadmap, by Wharton management professors Harbir Singh and Michael Useem, offers a 6-point checklist for leading strategically that will help managers strengthen their capacity to develop strategy and to lead its execution. Drawing on one-on-one interviews with CEOs, in-depth research, and their experience teaching today’s executives and tomorrow’s leaders, Singh and Useem take readers into the offices—and mindsets—of some of today’s foremost strategic leaders, including: Carlos Ghosn, chief executive officer of Nissan Indra Nooyi, chief executive of PepsiCo Jack Ma, founder and chief executive of Alibaba Group John Chambers, executive chairman of Cisco Systems Fast-reading and inspiring, The Strategic Leader’s Roadmap will enable leaders at all levels to master today’s most vital capability.

In The Strategic Leader''s Roadmap, Updated and Revised Edition: 6 Steps for Integrating Leadership and Strategy, Wharton management professors Harbir Singh and Michael Useem offer a six-point checklist for today''s leaders to follow. They explain how leading strategically will help managers strengthen their capacity to develop strategy and to lead its execution.

A behind-the-scenes look at today''s kingmakers: institutional investors. Out of the public eye, a small group of professionals--investment experts who handle other people''s monies--are exerting ever-greater control over corporate managers, firing CEOs and pushing through ''restructurings'' that cost thousands of jobs. Michael Useem''s "Investor Capitalism" portrays the quiet, veiled nature of this dance of elephants, and portrays the enormous implications of its results. --John Rekenthaler, Publisher, Morningstar, Inc.

This book examines how organizations can, and should, transform their practices to compete in a world economy. Research results from a multi-disciplinary team of MIT researchers, along with the experiences and insights of a select group of industry practitioners, are integrated into a model that stresses the need for systemic and transformative rather than piecemeal or incremental changes in organization practices and public policy. This integration of research and experience results in an argument for a new organizational learning model--one capable of gaining advantage from employee diversity, cooperation across organizational boundaries, strategic restructuring, and advanced technology. The book begins with a foreword by Lester C. Thurow.

A quiet revolution came to corporate America during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Large shareholders - pension funds, insurance companies, money managers, and commercial banks - exercised new-found muscle, pressuring senior managers to improve disappointing financial results by reshaping their organizations. Michael Useem reveals how those investor pressures have transformed the inside structures of many corporations, better aligning them with shareholder interests. Useem draws on numerous sources, including interviews with senior managers and intensive studies of seven large corporations representing a range of restructuring experiences and industries - including pharmaceuticals, transportation, chemicals, retailing, and financial services. He shows that organizational changes have affected many areas of corporate life: headquarters staffs have been reduced, authority has filtered down to operating units, and compensation has become more closely tied to performance. Change also extends to corporate governance, where managers have fought back by seeking legal safeguards against takeovers and by staggering board terms. They''ve also put significant resources into building more effective relations with shareholders. As Useem demonstrates, this revolution has reached beyond the corporation, influencing American politics and law. As increasing ownership concentration has caused companies to focus more attention on shareholders, corporate political agendas have shifted from fighting government regulation to resisting shareholder intrusion. This book will be important reading for managers, economists, lawyers, financial analysts, and all observers of American business.