Customer Reviews

Doing What Matters: How to Get Results That Make a Difference - The Revolutionary Old-School Approach

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What really matters to Kilts is the P&L. Interesting watching Flip this House, where they find neglected, undervalued properties then rip out sections, cut down trees, paint, touch up, add cosmetic touches and then sell for a profit. Reading Kilts Kilt's book, somehow reminded me of the show. "Let me tell you how I flipped two distressed properties", Nabisco and Gillette. "The prior management screwed up, but I saved them. Let me tell you how".

At the same time, I have also started reading "What Really Matters - Service, Leadership, People & Values", by John Pepper from P&G. These two books seem to provide a very interesting contrast between Kilts the Manager and Pepper the Leader. I'll come back to this contrast later.

Overall, I find Kilts book a tough read, drab, bouncing topics and oft repeating. At times it drifts into irrelevant details, not tightly linked to the point of the chapter. For example while discussing the need for intellectual integrity; he drifts to telling us about his invention of Country Time Lemonade and Crystal Light. It could have benefited from better editing for readability and flow. I find it hard to guess what Lorber and Manfredi added, other than writing and maybe analogies like boiling frogs?

Content:
Kilts' is a proven excellent manager of the P&L and in his book reminds us of a number of very valid business basics, which amazingly some CEOs forget. Kilts' book discusses the fundamental that the P&L needs to be controlled and highlights the disasters of companies (Nabisco and Gillette) who lost sight of a disciplined P&L and focus on building brands. Using examples from Kraft, Nabisco and Gillette, he highlights fundamentals:
* Consumer products are about building brands
* Benchmark the best in class for a couple key measures
* Accountability - hold yourself and others to achieve those measures.
* Market share on key brands matters
* Control overhead
* Control capital spending
* Control working capital and capital spending
* Control cash flow
* The need for growth to survive
* The need for major innovations to survive long term

He also reminds us of deadly business sins:
* Ballooning overhead
* Building siloed kingdoms. My function does its job great, if only everyone was as good as my function, we would not have problems
* Trade loading to hit quarter and annual numbers
* Trade promotions out of control - trade push vs. consumer pull
* Cut advertising spending to hit quarter and annual numbers
* Keep adding meaningless SKU's to push volume
* Assign innovation to be only the realm of a few, instead of all
* Managing & deciding based on opinions instead of business facts

Kilts also emphasizes the basic control principals:
* Hold people accountable to know and meet their numbers
* Analyze your numbers, know the details. Data based decisions
* Institute controlled processes for your key business activities, in all functions
* Corporate wide, integrated strategic planning with 3 year horizons
* Annual plans
* Quarterly plans, with updates and revisions
* Weekly staff meetings to review the results and measures in detail.

Contrasting vs. John Pepper's book
Things I find missing in Kilts What Matters, as contrasted to John Pepper discussions in his book on "What Really Matters". Pepper makes very valid leadership points on the importance of:
* People are key
* Stakeholders other than top shareholders
* Value of and respect for diversity
* Family
* Community
* Really wanting to serve consumers and seeing the value in that service
* Importance of Quality
* A balanced life - Kilts often notes with pride, his Sunday staff meetings
* Change is a fact. The adaptability is key.
* A passionate sense of ownership
* Company ownership by employees
I find reading Pepper refreshing and inspiring. Reading Kilts makes me tired and leaves me feeling empty - there must be more to life than this?

Other notes on Kilts book:
A specific contrast example of the Manager, comes in Kilts Kilts chapter 4 on Enthusiasm. Reading Kilt's Chapter 4, I understand his view that enthusiasm consists of:
* Cutting costs
* Create acronyms for cutting costs "ZOG"
* Spend enormous time preparing Power Point presentations

The book leaves an overall impression of, "I saved the day from the incompetents who ran it into the ground before me". It comes across often as "look at what I created (red razor)", "what I did"

Chapter 13 is used by Kilts a chance to vent some frustration against William Galvin, Secretary of State for Mass. ("that self serving political hack") and the local papers. They try to fit this in a discussion of political and media relations, but it is forced and comes across as sour gapes.

Net
What really matters to Kilts is managing the P&L. You can flip a neglected, undervalued property by fixing the P&L. Maybe good for a short term investment, but I would not want my kids to work there? Reading Kilts made me tired and left me empty - is that all there is to life? I couldn't get through it fast enough and definitely won't pick it up again. I look forward to spending more time on John Peppers book.

As I began to read this book, I was reminded of an observation by Peter Drucker in 1963: "There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all." That observation should be kept in mind by those who assign work as well as those who are then expected to do it ("to do more and better work in less time and at a lower cost," etc.) With the assistance of John Manfredi and Robert Lorber, James Kilts has written a book in which he shares what he has learned from his business career thus far, especially from his years as CEO of Kraft, Nabisco, and Gillette. The book's title would even more accurately indicate his core business principles if it were "Do Well What Really Matters" or "Do Well What Matters Most" but the subtitle is just fine: "How to Get Results That Make a Difference - The Revolutionary Old School Approach." The inclusion of the word "revolutionary" is intentional and its appropriateness best revealed within Kilts's narrative.

In the city where I live, we have a number of outdoor markets at which slices of fresh fruit are offered as samples of the produce available. In that same spirit, I frequently include brief excerpts from a book to help those who red my review to get a "taste." Here is a representative selection of Kilts's insights from his years as a CEO:

"You not only have to sort out what you should pay attention to and what you should ignore, you must do so with [begin italics] revolutionary [end italics] speed and decisiveness. Yet, even with disaster staring them in the face, people from the lowest to the highest levels in many organizations often prefer to `rearrange the deck chairs.' They'll give lip service to stepping up performance, but in practice they go about business as usual." (Page 3)

"During my tenure at Kraft, we developed something called IMI - Integrated Marketing Intelligence - which gave us state-of-the-art insights into our brands, their categories, and consumer dynamics; how responsive they were to different forms of advertising and promotion; how much spending was optimal; and much more that will be explored later [in this book]. When we spent marketing dollars at Kraft, we were truly [begin italics] investing [end italics] in brand building." (Page 94)

"A company must function like a finely tuned engine of a racecar. It must not only have all the right components - injectors, valves, pistons, and the like - but each element must also be connected with all the others, and the timing and movement of all components must be absolutely in synch. Even the slightest miss in timing will result in poor performance." (Page 149)

"Many managers fail because they have a punch list of all the individual elements and when they see check marks against them, they assume the heavy lifting is over. Actually, the opposite is true. The heaviest lifting comes when all of the individual pieces are in place and you must make them work together to drive the company toward its objectives. At this point you need the right road map." (Pages 213-214)

Note: Kilts explains how to formulate such a "road map" in Chapter 11.

"Making the tough decision to fire someone, and doing it promptly, is something that I took to heart early on. Terminating someone is tough, but it doesn't get any easier if you put it off. Once you make the decision to fire someone, you start sending out signals, consciously or unconsciously, that are difficult to ignore. The intended employee's time on the job may be prolonged, but it will not be quality time, so say the least. If you level with someone, a termination or separation can be positive. Unless you are dealing with a bad actor, people lose their jobs because their position has become redundant or unnecessary, or because the person's individual skills are a mis-match for the position." (Page 288)

In the next to last chapter, "Politicians and Media Matter," the book's narrative sags somewhat as Kilts expresses his irritation with the Boston news media's coverage of the purchase of Gillette by Procter & Gamble, notably the Boston Globe's coverage that he characterizes as "piling on" big business and its leaders. In particular, he cites an op-ed article by Jack Falvey in which he shares a number of opinions about Gillette that were "unfounded and untrue." Kilts acknowledges the importance of the news media and concludes the chapter with some sound advice as to how to conduct effective press relations.

I agree with Kilts that "continuous dissatisfaction with the status quo is the best way to keep growing as an individual and an organization, or company." (Andrew Grove expresses essentially the same idea when explaining why "only the paranoid survive.") To me, the greatest strength of this book is its focus on real-world situations, especially those that involve a serious challenge, when it is imperative to determine what really matters (i.e. what is most important) and then concentrate on doing it well, thoroughly and consistently, to achieve the desired results, whatever those results may be. If some view this approach as being "old school" and obsolete, so be it.

Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out Noel M. Tichy and Warren G. Bennis' Judgment: How Winning Leaders Make Great Calls, Gary Hamel's The Future of Management, Ram Charan's Know-How: The 8 Skills That Separate People Who Perform from Those Who Don't, The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge into Action and Hard Facts Dangerous Half-Truths and Total Nonsense: Profiting From Evidence-Based Management by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton, Pfeffer's What Were They Thinking?: Unconventional Wisdom About Management, and The Leader of the Future2 co-edited by Frances Hesselbein and Marshall Goldsmith.

Many years ago, Patrick Rivett described his efforts to teach problem solving model building to his students as showing them "what goes on in an analyst's head when he is taken round a soap factory." You can describe Jim Kilts' Doing What Matters as "what goes on in an experienced CEO's head when he takes over a company that needs to turn around."

Hardly anyone has better credentials to write a book like this one. Kilts had an exemplary career in packaged goods. He was a successful CEO at Kraft and led turnarounds at Nabisco and Gillette.

When he took over at Gillette, the company had missed estimates for years. The stock had tanked, shedding 60 percent of its value. Even so, 65 percent of the executives received "exceeds expectations" evaluations. Every one of them thought their department or division was performing above average.

What would you do in a situation like that? This book is about what Jim Kilts did. The subtitle is really better than the title: "How to get results that make a difference--the revolutionary old-school approach."

The book is divided into four sections. The first is "Fundamentals, Attitudes, and People Matter." It's worth the price of the book all by itself.

Kilts starts, appropriately enough, with advice to focus on fundamentals. Unlike most management writers, though, he tells you what he thinks fundamentals are and how he focused on them when he approached the challenge at Gillette.

Throughout this section and the book there are dozens of bits of wisdom. Here are some.

"Key metrics will vary, but they always exist."

"The time that really matters is the work I do before the clock starts ticking on the first one hundred days."

"Most companies get into trouble not because they make world-class blunders, but due to a succession of well-intentioned yet flawed decisions that build on one another."

"If a company's cost structure is high, winning is almost impossible."

There are also valuable insights into concepts like cost-cutting. In most companies, cost cutting is something you do when you're in trouble, after which it's back to business as usual. For Kilts, Zero Overhead Growth (ZOG) is a way of life.

Throughout the other sections of the book, on Leadership, the Future, and doing the Right Thing, Kilts pounds away on certain critical principles.

Get the facts. Figure out what matters and concentrate on it. Face the truth.

Maintain momentum. Enthusiasm is for every day.

Act with discipline. Execute strategy. Control costs.

Only performance matters. Do not reward effort, only results.

There's wisdom and good advice all the way through this book, but, fortunately for you if you don't read books from cover to cover, most of the really good stuff is front-loaded. The first section is excellent.

The second and third are OK. But by the time you're wheeling into the chapter on "The Right Road Map," you'll find yourself getting weary of "strat plans" and "FE" and other klunky jargon. I found myself starting to scan about half way though. I hunted out the pearls of wisdom, but I didn't read every word.

You can skip section four. It's about the sale of Gillette to Proctor and Gamble. This section is Kilts turned whiner. He may have a case about how awful and unfair the Boston media were to him, but whatever lessons there are in this section simply get lost.

If you leave section four out, though, the book is extremely well done. I liked the bits of practical wisdom that I found throughout. I loved the use of examples from Kilts' entire career, not just the Gillette years. And I loved the fact that Kilts shares the spotlight and the credit with his team, advisors and mentors.

Buy and read this book if you're headed into a turnaround situation, if you're coming in from the outside to take over a company, or if you just want solid advice and well-told and well-chosen stories from someone who's got management street cred.

This book could have been titled "Going from Stuck in a No-Win Rut to Profitable Growth." Jim Kilts, a successful veteran of General Foods, Kraft, Nabisco, and Gillette, describes the key principles involved in improving a consumer products business or company from poor performance to good or excellent results. You'll also a lot about being a change leader.

Unlike most success cases, this one has enough detail and examples to give you a flavor for what such a turnaround is like. The focus is on Gillette from the time Kilts took over until the company was sold to Procter & Gamble. But there are also extensive examples from the successful turnaround of Nabisco that Kilts led while CEO, plus some earlier examples from Kraft and General Foods days.

The essence of his approach is to focus on the key things that lead to significant improvement and be sure those things get done. In this method, there's no magic potion . . . just clear thinking and concentrated leadership based on metrics that make sense. The essence of the approach is to set realistic profit growth goals. Then start achieving those goals by freeing up some money to expand advertising and superior new products by cutting out huge sources of waste such as excess overhead, paying too much for supplies, inefficiencies in operations, low-performing products, and large trade discounts to retail customers. From there, you develop excellence in operations, focus on the best opportunities, and improve your understanding of the innovation choices that remain. By tracking performance compared to competitors, you move from rewarding effort to rewarding performance.

This is the same formula that's been working in consumer packaged goods for decades. So don't expect anything new. But I think the thought process is better described here than in other books I've read.

The book's main drawbacks are two:

1. There's no description of how to move from improved to superb . . . such as by innovating with new kinds of highly profitable products and services that the company has never developed and marketed before.

2. The material is not structured very well. A lot of material is endlessly repeated. A better editor was needed, or different examples should have been included rather than referring to the same people and examples so many times.

"Doing What Matters" is no substitute for a Harvard MBA; however, at only $16.50 it probably offers a better return on investment. Readers learn much about Kilts' thinking as he went about turning Gillette around; careful readers will also gain insight into the fact that not all turnarounds are created equal.

Kilts begins by relating how "quick screen" thinking helped him initially assess what to do with Duracell, a premium battery product line that only marginally fit into Gillette's other wares. Selling Duracell was one possibility - Kilts could have spent a lot of time and effort researching the possibility, distracting from other important issues. Instead, he simply observed that Gillette's relatively high P/E ratio meant Duracell was worth more to Gillette than anyone else. Another alternative was to simply "milk" Duracell - cut prices, and work it like a commodity. This didn't make sense either because consumers had a strong preference for Duracell and its formulation worked much better than regular zinc batteries. Thus, Kilts was quickly led to conclude that since Duracell was a category leader, Gillette needed to increase advertising (had been cut) and stop the rampant promotions and discounting.

Another major option reviewed through Kilts' quick screen was to strip everything down to shaving products - Gillette's core and most profitable business. This would reduce sales from $10 billion to $4, vs. the $48 billion at competitor Unilever and $70 at Nestle, and relegate the firm to minor player status vs. eg. $400 billion Wal-Mart.

Moving on, Kilts decided to take the Personal Care product line (shaving preparations, deodorants) out of Blades and Razors management because the Personal Care products required greater attention to detail and new product development.

Setting reasonable, but challenging and sustainable, goals is a major Kilts' concern. It's easy to temporarily boost profit and stock price through raising prices on brand leader products - however, this is not sustainable. Similarly, it is also easy to temporarily boost the stock price by declaring multiple-year double-digit revenue growth goals. This, however, is the path to what Kilts calls the "Circle of Doom," since only about 15% of companies that have done such succeeded doing such for five years. The more likely outcome involves building overhead and capital investment, followed by sales shortfalls, discounting (in an attempt to build volume - G.M., are your reading this?), then price increases (to recover revenue), cuts in marketing, and channel-stuffing (builds inventories throughout the system, end-of-month games, and drives production people nuts due to heightened peaks and troughs.

Three major (and early) decisions were to 1)severely reduce the number of products (SKUs), 2)set benchmarks throughout the company based on performance at leading competitors, and 3)commit to zero overhead growth (ZOG). Gillette recognized the need to cut SKUs prior to Kilts - a committee had been working on it for 18 months, but accomplished nothing (there were always counter-arguments). Kilts re-energized the group by telling them to come up with a 50% reduction list in one week, to be implemented within 3 months. (They actually cut 2/3 of Gillette's products, representing all of 2% of sales and a much greater proportion of headaches, in 9 months.) As for #2, everyone recognized the need to cut costs, but saw the problem as existing in other peoples' areas; Kilts' approach got things moving. (Kilts, however, did not tell us much about this benchmarking information was obtained, other than using a consulting firm to review IT, and instituting real-time reverse-bidding for suppliers on eg. PCs.) Area #3 included not only the obvious, but focusing on improved equipment utilization to eliminate the need for more.

Finally, Kilts offers one additional important tip - hit the ground running on Day One. Kilts did so via analyses of the firm's strengths and weaknesses prior to walking in the door; these findings were immediately and honestly (eg. the potential for layoffs) communicated at all levels, and the progress began.

A pretty good education for $16.50!

If Warren Buffett and Jack Welch both recommend a book, I don't need any additional incentives to buy it. Doing What Matters is a well written book by James M. Kilts, the former CEO of Gillette and prior to that the CEO of Nabisco & Kraft.

The book is divided into four sections:

Section I Fundamentals, attitudes, and people matter
Section II Leadership matters
Section III The future matters
Section IV Doing the right things matter

In the first section he talks about his arrival at Gillette, after having been given the blessing by Warren Buffett, who at that time owned 10% of the Gillette stock. He talks about the tough decisions that had to be made right from the start. Gillette had been missing the earnings estimates for FIFTEEN consecutive quarters and had taken a beating with Wall Street. What should they do with Duracell, which had been bought at a premium just four years ago and had been loosing market share ever since? There were three options on the table and he goes through the process of decision making. He also immediately halted the statements of short term estimates and forecasting to analysts and investors.

Kilts warns about the Yo-Yo effect that plagues companies that uncompromisingly set out to be number one in their market. He writes that "Setting the objective of being number one year in and year out virtually assures the opposite."

He also covers, on this section, a focus on the fundamentals and on keeping it simple. "Articulate three to five concepts that will drive your performance; the fewer the better, but definitely don't exceed five." He goes on to advice that one should always stick to these fundamentals and be as consistent as possible.

He also covers the need to see things as they are, echoing, what Jack Welch calls "Facing Reality". Kilts writes, "It is the ability to hold a mirror to your organization - whether that's just a few people in a small office or thousands of workers in hundreds of global locations - and the willingness to view the reflection with total honesty."

He continues with the importance of enthusiasm as something that has to be sustained over time. "Why wouldn't a company want to approach any important external audience with all the excitement of Billy Graham on a crusade?" Good point!

The action section is very informative; I specially liked the snake killer metaphor.

Section II is the one that deals more with leadership issues. He sees the role of a leader as a facilitator and considers "one of the most important responsibilities of a leader is to create the right environment and then give the employees development opportunities that enable them to realize their full potential."

He later discusses strategic planning and one of the common themes of his tenure at Gillette had to be his dogged determination to ZOG (Zero Overhead Growth). Another thing that he immediately corrected after becoming CEO of Gillette was their performance grading. It turned out that, although, the company was missing all their quarterly estimates, over 60% of managers rated above average or outstanding on their grading system. This of course, created a counterproductive system of rewards and incentives. Going back to ZOG, there is an interesting conversation that took place during a meeting. Kilts asked the division heads, how many of them thought that costs were very high in the company. All of them raised their hands in agreement. However, when he asked how many thought that costs were high in their particular departments, none of the hands went up. This is often the case when it comes to making tough choices; most see the problem as foreign to their department thus crippling the chance of a solution.

Since leadership has to do with the future it is appropriate that the third section deals with this topic precisely. In this section the book covers from road maps, instilling a sense of purpose and urgency in the organization to the mastery of incremental innovation. Of course, the end result of all this is the formation of a new culture that sees the big picture and works in unity to achieve it.

In the final section he covers his relationship with the media and politicians; his relationships with mentors and the things that matter the most to him. In short, the last section is Mr. Kilts reflecting on his stellar career.

Doing What Matters reads like a biography with lots of anecdotal stories to make it an entertaining and informative read. I'll sum up this review with my favorite quote from the book. "It takes guts to say these are the things that matter; I'll pay absolutely no attention to the rest. That's the challenge everyone faces. This book helps you meet that challenge." Enjoy!

Writing as if speaking to MBA students, the former Gillette turnaround CEO, James Kilts, tells the story of his very successful consumer products career and passes along his experience-based marketing and leadership wisdom. From his introduction on quick screening options to his Zero Overhead Growth (ZOG) philosophy, he tells about events which shaped his successes, lavishes praise on the scores of executives and consultants he has worked with, and ends each chapter with a listing of what to do or not do. The book ends with Kilts' summary of things that matter:
* Growth matters
* Relationships matter
* Loyalty matters
* Small moments matter
* Timely decisions matter
* Doing what you enjoy matters
* Life's early lessons matter
* The right team matters
* Confronting reality matters

While the book is not an in-depth analysis of how-to succeed at any business, it presents many marketing lessons and a leadership process for a consumer products business from the perspective of a highly successful executive. In offering up his advice, Kilts comes across as decisive, competitively driven, demanding high performance standards, and very human - a good combination of traits for someone you would like to work for and learn from. Take the opportunity and learn from this book.

Dennis DeWilde, author of
"The Performance Connection"

If Warren Buffett and Jack Welch both recommend a book, I don't need any additional incentives to buy it. Doing What Matters is a well written book by James M. Kilts, the former CEO of Gillette and prior to that the CEO of Nabisco & Kraft.

The book is divided into four sections:

Section I Fundamentals, attitudes, and people matter
Section II Leadership matters
Section III The future matters
Section IV Doing the right things matter

In the first section he talks about his arrival at Gillette, after having been given the blessing by Warren Buffett, who at that time owned 10% of the Gillette stock. He talks about the tough decisions that had to be made right from the start. Gillette had been missing the earnings estimates for FIFTEEN consecutive quarters and had taken a beating with Wall Street. What should they do with Duracell, which had been bought at a premium just four years ago and had been loosing market share ever since? There were three options on the table and he goes through the process of decision making. He also immediately halted the statements of short term estimates and forecasting to analysts and investors.

Kilts warns about the Yo-Yo effect that plagues companies that uncompromisingly set out to be number one in their market. He writes that "Setting the objective of being number one year in and year out virtually assures the opposite."

He also covers, on this section, a focus on the fundamentals and on keeping it simple. "Articulate three to five concepts that will drive your performance; the fewer the better, but definitely don't exceed five." He goes on to advice that one should always stick to these fundamentals and be as consistent as possible.

He also covers the need to see things as they are, echoing, what Jack Welch calls "Facing Reality". Kilts writes, "It is the ability to hold a mirror to your organization - whether that's just a few people in a small office or thousands of workers in hundreds of global locations - and the willingness to view the reflection with total honesty."

He continues with the importance of enthusiasm as something that has to be sustained over time. "Why wouldn't a company want to approach any important external audience with all the excitement of Billy Graham on a crusade?" Good point!

The action section is very informative; I specially liked the snake killer metaphor.

Section II is the one that deals more with leadership issues. He sees the role of a leader as a facilitator and considers "one of the most important responsibilities of a leader is to create the right environment and then give the employees development opportunities that enable them to realize their full potential."

He later discusses strategic planning and one of the common themes of his tenure at Gillette had to be his dogged determination to ZOG (Zero Overhead Growth). Another thing that he immediately corrected after becoming CEO of Gillette was their performance grading. It turned out that, although, the company was missing all their quarterly estimates, over 60% of managers rated above average or outstanding on their grading system. This of course, created a counterproductive system of rewards and incentives. Going back to ZOG, there is an interesting conversation that took place during a meeting. Kilts asked the division heads, how many of them thought that costs were very high in the company. All of them raised their hands in agreement. However, when he asked how many thought that costs were high in their particular departments, none of the hands went up. This is often the case when it comes to making tough choices; most see the problem as foreign to their department thus crippling the chance of a solution.

Since leadership has to do with the future it is appropriate that the third section deals with this topic precisely. In this section the book covers from road maps, instilling a sense of purpose and urgency in the organization to the mastery of incremental innovation. Of course, the end result of all this is the formation of a new culture that sees the big picture and works in unity to achieve it.

In the final section he covers his relationship with the media and politicians; his relationships with mentors and the things that matter the most to him. In short, the last section is Mr. Kilts reflecting on his stellar career.

Doing What Matters reads like a biography with lots of anecdotal stories to make it an entertaining and informative read. I'll sum up this review with my favorite quote from the book. "It takes guts to say these are the things that matter; I'll pay absolutely no attention to the rest. That's the challenge everyone faces. This book helps you meet that challenge." Enjoy!

Why Jim Kilts wrote this book is a mystery. He was given a simple assignment by his good friends Buffet and Kravis: Get the numbers in line and sell it. It was a two year project that took Jim five.
His euphemism for slash and burn is negative overhead growth. If you are fired, what that is called doesn't make much difference and thousands were fired by Jim Kilts in order to carry out his masters wishes of cashing in their chips.
The way he tells it, the destruction of a great company was all in a days work for him. He was paid almost two hundred million dollars personally in blood money.
He justifies going to P%G hat in hand by saying that an eleven billion dollar global company with dominant market shares couldn't stand alone! It had somehow managed to do so for a hundred plus years.
Jim Kilts brings little to the discipline of management with this book other than the details of destruction.It is a chilling read. The lessons learned: Keep Buffet and Kravis off your board and if Jim Kilts comes in the door cut yourself the best exit deal you can.

I remain grateful to have worked, somewhat closely, with Mr. Kilts for twelve months at Kraft. DOING WHAT MATTERS succinctly describes Jim's management style.

What Matters, in this case, is how to make an enterprise more valuable for ALL -- customers, employees, vendors, shareholders, and community. (If only Jim had been ensconced at General Motors, I am sure that the whole Detroit area would be much better off today.)

Jim's approach is to sort through "all the clutter", find the heart of the business, prepare the best plans, and execute those plans timely. So far, that's Strategy 301.

Jim's genius, however, is in doing what many execs forget to do: get rid of "all the clutter".

That is, circle back around on company "initiatives" that, in the annual budget process or similar, didn't seem to jibe with What Matters, and just eliminate them... freeing money, time and attention for only What Matters.

This is an entertaining read, and a valuable tool to challenge C-level managers to find and work on What Matters in their businesses. Highly recommended.