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In Their Time: The Greatest Business Leaders Of The Twentieth Century

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When I ordered In Their Time I was expecting a book of business biographies. I thought the usual suspects--Gates, Ford, Channel, Walton--would all be featured. Instead the book went three steps further.

First the great business leaders were not only described but they were also characterized by their ability to seize the opportunities that existed in their time.

Second the book breaks down the "happenings of the time" into 6 key components.
1. Government Intervention
2. Global Affairs
3. Demography
4. Social Mores
5. Technology
6. Labor

Third it taught me how to look upon our current world to better identify where we are heading (while providing me with a solid understanding of where we have been.)

In Their Time was a massive undertaking by Tony Mayo and Nitin Nohria. Like good researchers they changed their focus several times as new trends became evident. The result is a book that is provocative and profound, entertaining and educational.

Jason C. Steinle.

The field of leadership is littered with numerous books that are nothing more than anecdote based accounts that conclude with a list of platitudes for successful leadership. For those who want to go beyond the cute lists of success factors for leadership that lack much substance to a well researched, historically grounded, and comprehensive account of what really makes great leaders, this is your book. This book is among one of the first to try to go beyond contemporary fads and fashions that may be in vogue to take a detailed look over a 100 year time period and distill the essential qualities that have made great leaders across this extraordinary century in human history. The authors uncover the important quality of contextual intelligence evident in great leaders across this time period and provide inspiration and insight for those who aspire to follow in their footsteps. A must read for anyone on the journey to great leadership!

This book explores how context, over time, creates different types of opportunities, and how business legends can be defined by the types of opportunities they pursued. What distinguishes this book from similar studies of legendary leaders, managers and entrepreneurs, is the underlying theme of contextual intelligence-the profound awareness and sensitivity to macro-level factors driving the creation, growth or transformation of business at a particular time. The authors discuss and assess the great names in business in the context of their time, organizing the book by decades, beginning in 1900 through the end of the last century. The book makes for fascinating,d enjoyable reading. This is a top-notch contribution to the study of those who have created and shaped business enterprises.

What makes some leaders of some businesses soar to success over their competition? The authors of this book has studied some 1,000 of the centuries business leaders that have made their companies into household names. They were attempting to find out what made these leaders succeed while others languished.

One factor recognized by the leaders is something they call 'contextual intelligence.' This is an ability to understand the times in which they are working. Through this factor, they are able to direct their company to take advantage of the times. Bill Gates and Microsoft for instance came along at just the right time to capitalize on new personal computer market. There were other software companies with competing products, but they are now just part of the history.

The business leaders that have succeeded so well are put into three general categories:

Entrepreneurial Innovation - Here is Microsoft, but also Ford, Disney, Wal-Mart. This is the biggest category

Savvy Management - Such as Alfred P. Sloan who took over a struggling auto company and made is a giant - General Motors.

Transformational Leadership - Jack Welch who transformed GE from a faltering conglomerate into a powerhouse in selected industry segments.

Gives good sense of American economy combined with history and the leaders who shaped the economy.
It gives excellent details about how the business leaders leveraged the environment (business context) to succeed.
It is very inspirational to anyone thinking of creating a business and dreaming of making it big.

I recently read Paths to Power, co-authored by Anthony Mayo and Nitin Nohria with Laura G. Singleton, as well as this book in which Mayo and Nohria also focus on some of the greatest business leaders of the twentieth century. As in Paths to Power, rather than limiting their attention to a set number of exemplary leaders - in chronological order -- and then devoting a separate chapter to each, Mayo and Nohria chose instead to examine the evolution of 20th century business leadership in terms of the ten decades, assigning to each an appropriate theme while frequently cross-referencing throughout the entire century. For example, Chapter One (1900-1909) is titled "The Land of Opportunity"; Chapter Six (1950-1959) is "Feeding the Machine of Consumption"; and Chapter Ten (1990-1999) is "Reengineering, Restructuring, and Reality Check."

In my opinion, as in their later book (Paths to Power), Mayo and Nohria's role, is more that of cultural anthropologists than as biographers or even business historians. They create a social and economic context within a 100-year framework as they examine what differentiated outsiders from insiders in business leadership in the 20th century.

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 such as these from a book to help those who read my review to get a "taste." Here is a representative selection from the material that Mayo and Nohria provide:

"The business executives of the first decade were driven, opportunistic, and innovative. They operated on a large scale and constantly expanded their base of power. They built businesses that often had far-reaching impact on the way society lived, but they were, for the most part, less concerned about the way people worked; there was generally little regard for progressive employment practices. The focus was not on the quality of work life or necessarily on the quality of the product; it was often the quantity of the output. For many, there was no better way to secure quantity in the 1900s than through consolidation, and the move toward consolidation subsequently spawned another fundamental shift in business - a focus on productivity and efficiency." (Chapter One, Page 31)

Note: The business leaders discussed in this chapter include Clarence M. Wooley (American Radiator Company), Cyrus H.K. Curtis (Curtis Publishing Company), and Frank C. Ball (Ball Brothers Company).

"Although innovation and technical competence were the principal drivers of products in the 1940s, marketing, advertising, and standardization drove products and services in the 1950s. Sales volume was further increased because many products followed a planned-obsolescence life cycle. Successful businesses adopted this use-and-replace strategy, which was aided significantly with the rise in products manufactured with plastic or other synthetic materials. The lack of focus on product quality would eventually become a major liability for U.S. manufacturers, but that was hard to see in the general prosperity of the 1950s and 1960s as corporate profits continued to rise."

Note: The business leaders discussed in this chapter include Howard J. Morgens (Procter & Gamble), C. Kemmins Wilson (Holiday Inn), Raymond A. Kroc (McDonald's), and Malcolm P. McLean (SeaLand Service).

"As we have seen in our analysis of previous decades, the full impact of the entrepreneur's work is often not visible for many years; these businesspeople often push the limits of what is possible and even what is conceivable. By their nature, entrepreneurs and their businesses are ahead of the curve, and it is relatively dangerous to assess performance and impact as it is unfolding.

Note: The business leaders discussed in this chapter include Alfred M. Zeien (Gillette Company), Louis V. Gerstner Jr. (IBM Corporation), and Meg Whitman (eBay).

Those who share my high regard for this brilliant book are urged to check out the aforementioned Paths to Power as well as Stuart Crainer's The Management Century and Stewart H. Holbrook's The Age of the Moguls: The Story of the Robber Barons and the Great Tycoons. (obtaining a copy of it is well worth the effort.) In his book, Holbrook examines a number of "lords of capital" who, in his words, "made `deals' purchased immunity, and did other things which in 1860, or 1880, or even 1900, were considered no more than `smart' by their fellow Americans, but which today would give pause to the most conscientiously dishonest promoter....They were a motley crew, yet taken together they fashioned a savage and gaudy age as distinctively purple as that of imperial Rome, and infinitely more entertaining." The group Holbrook considers is divided into three categories: promoters, bankers, and industrialists, with merchants in the latter group. They include Jim Fisk, Jay Gould, Charlie Gates, Thomas William Lawson, Henry H. Rogers, Henry Morrison Flagler, and Samuel Insull; Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., Cyrus McCormick, Philip D. Armour, Henry Clay Frick, Henry Ford, and the Du Ponts; also the Guggenheims, Andrew W. Mellon, James J. Hill, Edward Henry Harriman, Henry Villard, the first two Vanderbilts, and the Astors. Some of these names remain familiar in our own time; others do not. All were "tough-minded fellows, who fought their way encased in rhinoceros hides and filled the air with their mad bellowings and the cries of the wounded." A colorful lot indeed.

Holbrook's account of 19th century robber barons and great tycoons "sets the table" for the "feast" of information and analysis that Anthony Mayo and Nitin Nohria so skillfully provide.

This is an important read beyond the standard insights of Collins, Charan and others. The historical settings of each leader are detailed to set the traits and skills of each business leader in context of the social and economic realities of their times.

Get two copies and give one to someone you admire and start a conversation on how important the social and economic realities are to business.

I bought this book for one of my MBA courses. It is a great outline of business in America. I really enjoyed reading the book from the intro to the conclusion!

I expected that a book on business leadership published by the Harvard Business School would be solid reading and I was anticipating the traditional 10 Best with honorable mentions. I was very pleased to find MUCH more - 10 chapters reflecting the 10 decades with excellent insights to the world at large and how people thoiught at the time and looking ahead.

This book describes 100 people in many different roles, industries and with varying perspectives. Well done!

As always, comments are appreciated and welcome

John Hogan, CHA CHE
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