I got this book from my Brothers shelf.
It was old, dusty.
I took it partially because of an interesting name and the way this guy sat on the chair itself say a lot of stories.
After checking the year of edition I found that this book is as old as me.
Anyway I must say that this is one of my favorite books by the time I finished it.
What you say? Roller Coaster Ride?
May be not enough.
You can roughly say that it is like reading the script of Hollywood action blockbuster.
If you are a MBA aspirant, perhaps you may consider opting out of study and then start a business.
And at the same time you realize that an MBA degree alone make a successful business man. Not every successful businessman is MBA holder or all MBA holders are successful business men.
There is only one thing that makes a business man.
Raw guts with common sense.
Let me Paste some things I never want to forget from this book.
1. There are times in everyone’s life when something constructive is born out of adversity. There are times when things seem so bad that you have got to grab your fate by the shoulders and shake it. (xv)
2. Our family was so close; it sometimes felt as if we were one person with four parts. (3)
3. “You have got to accept a little sorrow in life”, he would tell me when I was upset about a bad grade in school or some other disappointment.” You will never know what happiness is unless you have something to compare it to”.
During hard times , he was always optimist.” Just wait”, he would tell me whenever things looked bleak, “the sun is gonna come out. It always does”. (11)
4. If you really want to be a waitress, then you should work at being the best damn waitress in the world. Otherwise, find yourself another line of work.
5. I learned something from that crisis that has stayed with me ever since: it often takes a shot of adversity to get people to pull together. (19)
6. An important lesson in leadership is that you should know how to shake hands and be friendly with others. (18)
7. By the time I got in to college, I knew how to concentrate and how to study without a radio or other distraction. I used to tell myself: “I am going to give this my best shot for the next three hours. And when those three hours are up, I will set this work aside and go to the movies”. (20)
8. Every Sunday night I get my adrenaline going again by making an outline of what I want to accomplish during the upcoming week. (21)
9. If you want to make good use of your time, you have got to know what is most important and then give it all you have got. Anyone who want to be a problem solver in business has to learn fairly early how to establish priorities. (21)
10. Our assignment was to make a diagnostic analysis of each one in few minutes.
As a result of this training , I learned to figure people out pretty quickly. To this day I can usually tell a fair amount about somebody from our first meeting. That is an important skill to have because the most important thing a manger can do is hire the right new people.
But there are two really important things about a candidate that you just cant learn from one short job interview. The first is whether he is lazy, and the second is whether he has got any horse sense. There is no qualitative analysis to check out whether he has got some fire in his belly, or whether savvy have or street smarts- when it comes to decision making time. I wish there are some kind of machine that would measure these traits, because they are the ones that separate the men from the boys. (24)
11. Charlie Beacham was the closest thing I have ever had to a mentor.(37)
12. McNamara taught me never to make a major decision without having a choice of at least vanilla or chocolate. And if more than a hundred million dollars were at stake, it was a good idea to have strawberry, too.(45)
13. But there is something about putting your thoughts on paper that forces you to get down to specifics. That way it is harder to deceive yourself or anybody else. (50)
14. Management is nothing more than motivating other people.
15. people who visit my office at Chyrsler are often surprised that I don’t have a computer terminal at my desk. May be they forget the fact that everything that comes out of a computer , somebody has to put it in. (63)
16. The key to success is not information. It is people. (64)
17. I have always believed that every operation in c car company could be measured in terms of its profitability. (99)
18. Hal Sperlich is one of those Detroit types about whom people say: “He has got gasoline in his veins”. (128)
19. The Fiesta was his greatest coup, but almost everything he touched tuned in to gold. (129)
20. He tore me up inside. He tore up my wife and my kids. (131)
21. They say that the bigger you are the harder you fall. (136)
22. My father used to say that when you die, if you have got five real friends, you have had a great life. (137)
23. When the times are tough there is no choice except to take a deep breath, carry on, and do the best you can. (149)
24. John Riccardo and his wife, Thelma were two of the finest people I have ever met. Unfortunately the crisis at Chrysler was so severe that I never really got to know them. But one thing was perfectly clear. John was sacrificing himself to save the company. He was over his head and he knew it. Although it meant the end of his own career, he bent over backward to make sure that the transition would go as smoothly as possible. He blew himself out of the water to bring Chrysler back to life. And this is the test of real hero.
25. Nobody at Chrysler seemed to understand that interaction among the different functions in a company is absolutely critical. People in engineering and manufacturing almost have to be sleeping together. These guys were not even flirting.
26. That meant they were dealing with day to day crises always focusing on next month instead of next year.
27. In the end, all business operations can be reduced to three words: people , product, and profits. People comes first. Unless you have got a good team you cannot do much with the other two.
28. Style and value for money are what sells the cars, but quality is what keeps them sold.
29. If everyone is suffering equally, you can move a mountain.
30. I talked tough to them. “Hey, Boys”, I said. I have got a shotgun at your head. I have got thousands of jobs available at seventeen bucks an hour. I have got none at twenty. So you better come to your senses.” (245)
31. It was one of the shortest speeches I have ever given: “You have got until tomorrow morning to take a decision. If you don’t help me out, I m going to blow your brains out. I will declare bankruptcy in the morning and you will be out of work. You have got eight hours to make up your minds. It is up to you. (245)
32. Few taglines :
If you buy a car without considering Chrysler , that will be too bad – for both of us.
You can go with Chrysler or you can go with someone else and take your chances.
Let us make America mean something again.
If you can find a better car – buy it. (284)
33. I certainly like being recognized for what I have done. But I am always being reminded that my fame has little to do with my accomplishments. (287)
34. If you are not number one you have got to innovate. (297)
35. I guess imitation really is the sincerest form of flattery. (297)
36. Our traffic death rate is 3.15 per 100 million vehicle miles which is the lowest in the world.
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