What's Your Corporate IQ?: How the Smartest Companies Learn, Transform, Lead [Illustrated] [Hardcover]

Jim Underwood (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2004

Based entirely on original research, What's Your Corporate IQ? is the first of its kind to describe the interrelationships between corporate strategy, CEO attributes, leadership, values, and ethics.

In What's Your Corporate IQ?, Jim Underwood presents the results of a breakthrough study of 15 global competitors and determined that high-corporate-IQ companies consistently ranked among the top performers of their industries. Likewise, low-IQ companies ranked at the bottom of their industries. Just what is corporate IQ? Underwood describes it as the interrelationship between a firm's strategy, organization, character, and competitors.

In a reader-friendly style, Underwood profiles the high IQs of the ""ten smartest companies in America."" Underwood states that organizations using a clear-cut ""people philosophy""-one that focuses on the long-term success of its people-strengthens a company's overall foundation. While taking a humorous look at some of the self-defeating practices managers employ to sabotage themselves, he uses the situations to point out that leaders who commit to good strategy have definite advantages over their competition, and statistics confirm that reality. What's Your Corporate IQ? outlines:

* The 17 corporate attributes that drive corporate success.

* The foundation for corporate success-three rules of leadership and strategy.

* The power of significance building-an employee's basic desire to be recognized.

* Fifteen self-defeating habits of highly ineffective leaders.

* Measuring success on performance, not by financial quarters.

* Organization entrepreneurial support systems.

* Company character-values, people, ethics, and sustainability.

* Why initiatives for change fail or succeed on implementation.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

To uncover the reasons for corporate success is the driving force behind every business professor's research. Dozens of authors in the last decade, from best-selling Jim Collins in Good to Great (2001) to little-known Peter Burrows in Backfire (2003), have trumpeted their unique perspectives. Now Professor Underwood builds on the 1991 work of H. Igor Ansoff, spending time and thinking on crafting the 17 attributes of corporate IQ, then finding its top practitioners. The three IQ areas--strategy, organization, and character--sound suspiciously familiar; after all, how many times have the words "innovation," "excellence," and "value of people" been eulogized as those qualities endemic to business success? Yet Underwood, by dint of metrics and interview anecdotes and without benchmarking, explains exactly why the combination of these 17 traits makes up the best performers. Who are they? Some of the usual suspects, including Microsoft, Costco, and Fidelity. And some that are unexpected, including Kingston Technology, Zeus Electronics, and Luxottica Retail. Sections at the end detail the methodology behind this IQ. Barbara Jacobs
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author

Jim Underwood’s previous work, More Than a Pink Cadillac, was a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller that is currently studied by top business schools and corporations worldwide. A prolific author, he has penned numerous articles for national business publications and is in demand as a consultant and speaker for many Fortune 500 companies. Underwood is a professor in residence at Dallas Baptist University and has received numerous business and academic awards.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Kaplan Publishing; illustrated edition edition (September 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0793185734
• ISBN-13: 978-0793185733
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,502,151 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars How to Know You are Working for the Right Company, September 12, 2004

By 

B. Sullivan (Dallas, TX) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: What's Your Corporate IQ?: How the Smartest Companies Learn, Transform, Lead (Hardcover)

While reading Dr. Underwood's Understanding Your Corporate IQ, it gives one the ability to measure if you are working for the right company. There were several discussions throughout the book to help the reader make these determinations:

- Discussions about companies that last for more than 100 years
- Different ways to measure the internal forces of a firm
- Easy-to-understand analysis of complex business theories
- How to measure the "Character" of a company
- Real-world examples to clarify each chapter's concepts

For me, the book comes at the right time. With managers and workers struggling with terrorism and outsourcing demands, how do we measure ourselves to make sure that we (as managers and workers) are making the right choices?

Of special interest to this reviewer, there was an entire chapter devoted to the character of a company. Management theory often discusses how corporate culture can affect a company. Rarely, if ever, does a management book explain the various components of corporate culture.

For me, a small business owner and IT manager, knowing how to measure a company is critical because: "If you cannot measure it, you cannot manage it." Your Corporate IQ gives you a way to measure your firm.

When you consider how Dr. Underwood's Corporate IQ fits with the explanations and analysis of the Mary Kay Cosmetics firm in More Than a Pink Cadillac, the reader walks away with a blueprint on how to run a successful company and how to potentially turnaround a failing one.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must read for managers, graduates and career changers, October 7, 2004

By 

TLA (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: What's Your Corporate IQ?: How the Smartest Companies Learn, Transform, Lead (Hardcover)

Thank you Jim Underwood for writing this book. This is a much needed piece of literature in the business strategy section and is a must read for all managers who aspire to lead - not only the people within their firm, but also within their industry. This book provides a logical way to understand and evaluate a firm, an industry and its associated competitive environment

I would also highly recommend this book to business graduates and anyone who is looking to change to another firm or industry. After spending seven years in a Wall Street investment bank and recently changing to a different firm within the financial industry, I am certain that I now work for a smart company. Jim Underwood's description of what a smart company looks like is exactly on key. The people I work with are satisfied, they are valued and they stay for decades. They also make a lot of money for the firm.

In his narrative, Jim Underwood uses case studies from many firms that you may or may not have heard of. His strategic model defines 17 attributes that underpin corporate success provide a roadmap to implement the concepts outlined and discussed within each case study. While other firms cling to "core values", Jim Underwood challenges the reader to embrace the idea of change. He not only validates his strategic model through numerous case examples and studies, he also tells the reader how to ascertain the level of change and complexity that their firm must match. The "one size fits all" strategy or "mission statement" approach really does not work and simply breaks down under this paradigm.

In addition to the basics of change, Jim Underwood also focuses on another area that is often ignored in the business literature of strategy and is, more often than not, thought of as a human resources issue. This is the area of ethics. All one has to do is read the daily financial press to understand how a lack of ethics can hobble a firm. Jim Underwood folds this topic beautifully into ongoing corporate strategy.

All in all, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and plan on loaning my marked up copy to friends and colleagues.