Customer Reviews

Elizabeth I CEO: Strategic Lessons from the Leader Who Built an Empire

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I read Alan Axelrod's "Patton on Leadership" last year and found the book to be a witty, informative primer on management, so I naturally looked forward to this, the second installment in his opus. I couldn't have been more disappointed. This book seems to have been thrown together in such haste that it hardly seems to constitute more than the margin notes from "Patton." The prose is tedious and labored, and the information contained within it rather trite. I'm not an expert on English history of this period and at the very least, I figured I'd learn something on this front, but even as history the book fails. Its presentation is bland, confusing, and often seems rather sugar-coated. Most irritating to me of all, however, is that the book's title is somewhat misleading. The subtitle refers to "the leader who built an empire" but all throughout the book, Axelrod coyly dances around this issue without lucidly identifying what he's talking about. He refers to the enormous empire stretching from North America to India upon which "the sun never set," but this was in the 1800s; Queen Elizabeth died in 1603, and I was curious to know what part of the empire had been initiated at that point. Yet all throughout the book, all I got was confusion and frustration on this issue. I later dusted off my old history textbook from sophomore year and found out why: The Jamestown Settlement in 1607 (along with the Pilgrims about a decade later) was the first overseas colony the British even started, and the "empire-building" phase apparently didn't begin until Cromwell's Commonwealth period, about half a century later. So by the time the Queen's reign came to a close, England hadn't even begun settling, much less initiated the "building of an empire" (unless Ireland is considered to be the start of the "empire," which if anything was a case study in mismanagement-- perhaps why Axelrod conveniently glosses over it in this book). This especially ticked me off, because I felt as though I'd wasted a whole weekend reading this book. If you're interested in a book of this type, then read "Patton on Leadership"-- don't bother with the sequel.

Those who do not learn their history are doomed to repeat it, but those who learn it badly are doomed to write books about it.

Elizabeth I is an amazing figure on the historical stage. She took a confused country and made a great nation out of it. Her guidance and tolerance in religious matters made her one of the greatest monarchs of all times. She was a woman on the throne at a time when most women could not hope to have their opinions taken seriously. In times of crisis she rallied her armies to defend the nation she ruled and despite much religious strife she earned the loyalty of both her protestant and catholic subjects.

Alan Axelrod makes an attempt to carry forward her leadership secrets into wisdom we can all use today. Sadly, he seems to have written the book first and then filled in the blanks about the history. Each chapter Axelrod gives a quick overview of the topic to be covered and then gives the "leadership secret" followed by an anecdote to illustrate the point.
A fictitious example would be :
" 108 Eat Your Veggies"
"As Queen of England, Elizabeth often received letters from Mary Queen of Scots, saying how much she hated broccoli. In the end Elizabeth had Mary's head chopped off and the letters stopped."

Sounds good? Well in practice it falls flat. First problem was that there seems to not be enough secrets to go around so they repeat. Topics like `loyalty', `gratitude', `remember others', and 'be thankful' are all very much the same as Axelrod presents them and don't bear the amount of repetition that he gives them. Each time there is another anecdote but their aim is all the same.

Another sticking point I, of course, the fact that some of the history is inconvenient and so has to be worked around. There is a point about avoiding playing favorites illustrated with Elizabeth having to execute her erstwhile favorite the earl of essex and how she learned the error of her ways and never did it again. In fact the reign of Elizabeth I is littered with her playing favorites most notably Robert Dudley. The blatant favor she showed him was a major factor in destabilizing her privy council on more than one occasion.

The lesson on taking responsibility likewise falls flat. One example not given is how Elizabeth signed the death warrant for her cousin Mary Queen of Scots and the repudiated it as soon as she was executed. She threw some of her loyal servants in the tower for following her orders and wrote to all the European Monarchs to deny her responsibility. I wonder how that one never made it into the book.

Many other facts of her reign are likewise skipped when they prove to be contrary to the author's intention. Her life and times were filled with many issues and problems unlike modern day. While there are many insights that can be gleaned from her life, they are not well presented in this book.

There are a lot of great books on leadership in the market and lot of great books on history. This one is neither.

Managing a nation in the 16th century took stamina and skill for a leader of either sex during such a volatile period of exploration and conquest -- the time period also offers an excellent opportunity in which to examine successes and failures. Alan Axelrod's Elizabeth I, CEO is an interesting analysis of the strong management skills that Queen Bess brought to the task and developed in the process of ruling Britannia -- and he is adept at showing how we can apply such strengths to our own management approaches and develop new strengths, as well. Nice, too, that we can see what worked and what didn't work for Elizabeth I.

This book first came to my attention because of a very creative interview with the author on CNBC in which their female commentators-in Elizabethan costume-read passages from this book, the actual words of Queen Elizabeth I, according to the author, one of the greatest CEO's of all time. He makes a strong case for that view in his discussion of the financial disarray of England at the time of Elizabeth's ascencion contasted with the wealthy and glorious empire she created, surviving assasination attempts, plagues, and medieval male chauvinism along the way. What moved me most, however, were Elizabeth's own words revealing her philosophy of leadership: how she inspired, motivated and cared for her flock. My thought was to give this book to my own "Fearless Leader" (read:boss) so she might see that she's employing the techniques pioneered by the great Elizabeth I.

For many years, Japanese business experts have attempted to apply the code of the samurai to the rough-and-tumble world of Japanese corporate life. In fact, during the 1980s, it was often said that if you wanted to understand Japanese business you had to master early Japanese history. In his own brilliant prose, Alan Axelrod suggests that the Western historical tradition has a lot to offer today's Western businessman. The tale of history influencing the present is not owned by the Japanese, and Elizabeth I proves the point. In contrast to the recent Big Bucks film on Elizabeth I, and a slew of popular histories as well, Axelrod sticks to the no-nonsense facts. Letting Elizabeth's own record of leadership tell the tale, Axelrod does not have to invent history, exaggerate, or introduce fictional characters. The past, he argues convincingly, is a treasure trove of lessons learned and examples set. It's too precious to be left to historians alone. Axelrod was guided by this approach in his previous work on General George Patton, and he succeeds again in his analysis of Elizabeth I. A complex figure, sometimes lost in the general discussion of England's long road to democracy, Elizabeth is resurrected here as a patron of corporate excellence. Anyone interested in excellent writing and history made relevant is in for a good read.

This book is a follow-up to Axelrod's book on leadership lessons for executives drawn from the example of George S. Patton. Here, he's picked another historical figure, Queen Elizabeth I of England. This had the makings of a potentially valuable book, save for the slight problem that the history is so poorly rendered that little of value can be gleaned for anyone facing the unrelenting pressures of running an actual business.

Axelrod portrays the Elizabethan period with such rose-coloured glasses that he fails to impart a useful or realistic message here. The book has numerous references to the queen's fiscal management of the country, to the Spanish Armada, to the outpouring of literature of Shakespeare and his fellow masters of the pen, with little bits of wisdom relayed in the process. All well and good.

But in recognising and deriving lessons from the queen's many undoubted successes, he should have been balanced and also discussed where things went wrong. There is scant if any attention paid to Elizabeth's policy in Ireland, which had a particularly bloody legacy and in which England's undertakings gave rise to failure at every turn from the 1570s onward. The consequences of this policy failure are still with us today. Nor is there mention of England's military defeats against Spain after the Armada, which devastated English plans to settle the new world and gain control of trade routes. Nor does Axelrod note the cases of financial mismanagement and corruption that plagued Elizabeth's reign in the late 1500s. And where is this empire he talks about in the book's title, "the leader who built an empire"? Axelrod skips the specifics on this because there was no empire by the time King James I succeeded Elizabeth in the early 1600s. England would not have an empire to speak of for another 150 years.

There is nothing wrong or unexpected about these setbacks in Elizabeth's reign-- she had many successes and, like any monarch, some missteps as well. If one wishes to use such a monarch as an example for a business, it is a disservice to readers to trumpet the successes while ignoring the failures. What business, after all, turns in profitable quarters with every fiscal year and pleases its investors and even competitors with its every move? You'd be hard-pressed to find any such firm gracing the pages of the Wall Street Journal. Real businesses learn from their failures as much as their successes, and Axelrod has denied his readers a valuable example by focussing too much on the latter and too little on the former. This book would be more valuable with a little more depth and a little more perspective in its treatment of its historical subject.

Alan Axelrod's book adds relatively little to the well-trammeled ground of self-help and business advice books already on the market. There are a few useful sections (as on the need for restraint in bestowing honors), but generally the book merely repackages the same old refrains: variations on the importance of good timing, resource allocation, command structure, etc. The author uses an incident from Queen Elizabeth's early experiences to point out the need to focus on "what's really important," but in this and other cases it just seems like cliched sayings for which he could have offered up hundreds of historical figures as examples. Moreover, there were undoubtedly quite a few successes during the Queen's reign (which Axelrod cites) but it wasn't the uniformly cheerful picture that he presents here. The war with Spain continued for 16 agonizing, inconclusive years beyond the Spanish Armada, spawning corruption at home to meet its costs and widening to become a painful guerrilla war in Ireland. And, there was no empire by reign's end; the first long-term English settlements sprang up later in the 17th century, and the expansive overseas empire did not begin to form until much later, after many wars with France in the 1700s. Had the author analyzed these policies to examine where they succeeded and where they fell short, he would have written a thoughtful, useful, and nuanced book that would have been informative as a management guide, but without this the book instead comes off as superficial and not very helpful.

"Elizabeth I CEO" started out as a promising idea but it has the feel of a labour without a foundation. The business tips and examples seem perfunctory and forced. The problem here is that the author has written a business self-help book based on a particular historical figure and events, yet the history is fundamentally inaccurate. He lionises his subject but in doing so, lacks even-handedness and does not give the book enough analytical rigour, and so ironically fails to consider the often difficult and messy challenges that any real business must face.

The author spends a lot of time discussing the success of the English defence against the Spanish Armada for example, but he seems to overlook the fact that the English fought Spain for over a decade in its aftermath, with Spain on the winning side far more than her opponent. The English suffered from inadequate funding, shortages of supplies, confused strategy, tactical wavering, and the improved soldiering of their enemies, winning some battles but coming up short most of the time. Like any business struggling with a deficiency of liquid assets, so did Elizabethan England battle repetitive deficiencies in the war chest, a challenge which was met at times with clever solutions and at other times with inadequate response and questionable strategies that aggravated the economic damage. The country also became involved in a draining war with Ireland that pushed her nearly to bankruptcy. Contrary to what the author appears to believe, England was not rich and riding high by the end of the reign, but ridden with debt and exhausted from war. And "The Leader Who Built an Empire"? I'm afraid not. England would not have even the stirrings of empire for another 150 years, and she would have to battle with Holland and France first.

The irony of this is that Queen Elizabeth's reign indeed is an excellent model for the challenges a business will likely have to overcome since like most real businesses, it had a mixture of identifiable succeses and failures. At the end of Elizabeth's reign, England was more culturally unified, had overcome religious strife, had experienced an outpouring of great literature, and had defended herself from attack. At the same time, she had lost numerous soldiers, suffered many land and naval defeats, been driven into debt, and been drawn into an agonising conflict against Ireland. This reads much like the balance sheet of many a Fortune 500 company, with some fabulous deals and great products yielding profits, along with some sour contracts and poor products draining away capital. If he had simply been more even-handed I'm sure Mr. Axelrod could have written a classic management-help guide, but as it stands, this will be of little use to anyone running a business, large or small.

This book is a combo of business self-help and facile history. You won't learn much history, and the business lessons are just plain unconvincing. I'm one-fourth of the way through this book and just can't finish it!

I'm interested both in history & in business, so I was very much looking forwards to this book. Now that I've gotten halfway through, I've realized that it is basically sugar coated fluff. It's a collection of modern management homilies illustrated with cute little stories about Elizabeth I. I was hoping for a dicussion of the problems and opportunities she faced, with an in-depth discussion of how she and her people addressed them, which is not at all what is offered. It's a pity, because she did live in very interesting times and an insightful exposition could be quite valuable - perhaps someone will write the book I was hoping to read someday.

If you have extra time & enjoy stories, this is worth reading, otherwise don't bother.