"In Lead Like Ike, Geoff Loftus provides keen insights on management lessons that can be drawn from one of the greatest battlefields in military history. The lessons may appear simple, but it’s the simplest management principles that we often forget. Listen to your people. Set your vision. Be consistent about your message. Let your managers manage."
Dwight Eisenhower's leadership methods during the most daunting project in history, the D-Day Invasion, provide invaluable strategies for today's business person.
No modern CEO has ever led such a large organization-the immense Allied military forces of the U.S., Great Britain, and Canada-in the face of such crushing pressure to succeed. Lead Like Ike begins with Eisenhower reporting for work as the CEO of D-Day Inc., facing a ridiculously tight timeline, having to create an executive staff and company, and then managing D-Day Inc.'s early projects, the invasions of North Africa and Sicily.
By analyzing military operations as business operations, and the commanding general as CEO, Lead Like Ike finds management lessons for modern corporate executives, such as:
- Determining the mission
- Risk management
- Handling the board of directors: FDR, Churchill and the Combined Chiefs of Staff
- Building and leading an executive staff
- Creating the company: Making the Allied military into a single force that could fulfill its mission
- Understanding the competition and the market: Hitler and Occupied Europe
- Preserving his stakeholders: Eisenhower was loathe to waste his soldiers' lives on anything less than complete success.
