management and leadership

I thought this was one of the best leadership books I have read. Steven Sample acknowledges that leadership is highly situational and complex. But he also offers a number of principles to keep in mind as you walk the path. As I read the book, situations from my own work lept to mind and I found myself seeing things from a different perspective. I was so engaged, I finished the book in a day.

This book intrigued me for a couple of reasons. First, here was a book written by a university president - and an extraordinary one at that - on a subject traditionally dominated by corporate executives, professors of business, and, no kidding, professional basketball coaches. And second, ever since my graduate school days I've been especially absorbed by unconventional strains of thought, and here's a book that drives a wedge into the most predictable of genres.

Steven Sample, who assumed the presidency of an already upwardly mobile university and made it that much better, does not disappoint. His chapter entitled "Work for Those Who Work for You" really hit home. I've always believed that managers and leaders should empower their people and set them up for success. This approach frequently requires that I perform some rather mundane tasks like making phone calls and sending out meeting requests. But according to Sample, that's what real leaders should be doing. "Virtually all leadership experts, whether they subscribe to traditional or au courant theories, depict leadership as a glamorous and majestic calling. But the contrarian isn't fooled. He knows that effective day-to-day leadership isn't so much about himself, as it is about the men and women he chooses to be his chief lieutenants. He knows that a lot of the things on his own plate will be minutiae and silliness, while his lieutenants will get to do the fun and important things."

This book is exceptionally Western; that is, there are numerous references to Machiavelli (including an entire chapter), Clausewitz, and Plato, for instance, but none to Confucius, Lao Tzu, or Sun Tzu. I was somewhat surprised by this if only because Sample, throughout his tenure as president of USC, has consistently reached out to the Pacific Rim. This is more of an observation and not necessarily a criticism; the breadth of Sample's knowledge of Western thought is pretty impressive - especially for an engineer by trade - and that know-how coupled with his extraordinary experience in academia and some interesting folksy anecdotes makes for a very readable and useful text. Read this book and carve out a permanent place for it in your office.

"For example, I feel that polygyny is morally wrong, but I recognize that a sizable fraction of the world's current population...would disagree with me. While my own views are strongly held, I would be disinclined to try to impose my aversion to polygyny on peoples for whom it is a time-honored and respected practice." At that point, I stopped reading this book further. If the author can't 'impose' his views on others regarding multiple marriages, I wondered if he would have ever imposed his views on the those leading Enron, Tyco or Worldcom if they had sought his counsel? Even up to this point in the book, I felt that the author's views were not applicable to the business world where we often don't have the luxury of time and distance that the author does in formulating his opinions. I'm also disappointed in Warren Bennis' advocacy for this book as I'm a big fan of Bennis' books and have read most of them. Now, I will have to be more careful about books Mr. Bennis recommends. There are far better leadership books in the market than this one. My copy is going straight in the trash.