Editorial Review:
The Harvard Business Review paperback series is designed to bring today's managers and professionals the fundamental information they need to stay competitive in a fast-moving world. Here are the landmark ideas that have established the Harvard Business Review as required reading for ambitious businesspeople in organizations around the globe. Harvard Business Review on Leadership gathers together eight of the Harvard Business Review's most influential articles on leadership, challenging many long-held assumptions about the true sources of power and authority.
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Customer Reviews
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Enduring insights from multiple perspectives  2007-05-15
Much of the contextual material in this volume is out-of-date, given the fact that the eight articles originally appeared in the Harvard Business Review years ago (1975-1998). However, I think the core concepts remain sound and provide a valuable frame-of-reference for understanding the advances in effective decision making that have occurred during the last five years. For example, if anything, Henry Mintzberg's article ("The Manager's Job") is even more relevant today than it was when it first appeared in the July/August issue in 1975. In it, he examines "four myths about the manager's job that do not bear up under careful scrutiny of the facts," such as "the manager is a reflective, systematic planner." In fact, Mintzberg suggests that managers work "at an unrelenting pace, that their activities are characterized by brevity, variety, and discontinuity, and that they are strongly oriented to action and dislike reflective activities." Mind you, this was an opinion expressed more than 30 years ago.
No brief commentary such as this can do full justice to the rigor and substance of the eight articles. It remains for each reader to examine the list to identify which subjects are of greatest interest to her or him. My own opinion is that all of the articles are first-rate. One of this volume's greatest benefits is derived from the fact that a variety of perspectives are provided by a number of different authorities on the same general subject. In this instance, leadership.
Readers will especially appreciate the provision of an executive summary that precedes each article. They facilitate, indeed expedite frequent review of key points which - presumably - careful readers either underline or highlight. Also of interest is the "About the Contributors" section that includes suggestions of other sources to consult. Here are questions to which the authors of the other seven articles respond:
What do leaders do? (John P. Kotter)
Comment: "Institutionalizing a leadership-centered culture is the ultimate act of leadership."
How do managers and leaders differ? (Abraham Zaleznik)
Comment: "Managers see themselves as conservators and regulators of an existing order of affairs with which they personally identify and from which they gain rewards [whereas] leaders tend to be twice-born personalities, people who feel separate from their environment."
How do "defining moments" help to develop character? (Joseph L. Badaracco, Jr.)
Comment: "Defining moments force us to find a balance between our hearts in all their idealism and our jobs in all their messy reality."
Note: In Leading Quietly (2002) and then Questions of Character: Illuminating the Heart of Leadership Through Literature (2006), Badaracco develops in greater depth many of the core concepts introduced in this article.
What are the ways in which CEOs lead? (Charles M. Farkas and Suzy Wetlaufer)
Comment: "No matter where a company is located or what it makes, its CEO must develop a guiding, overarching philosophy about how he or she can best add value.... A leadership approach is a coherent, explicit style of management, not a reflection of personal style. This is a critical distinction."
Why are there so few great managers? (Thomas Teal)
Comment: "Great management involves courage and tenacity. It closely resembles heroism."
How to lead others during adaptive change? (Ronald A. Heifetz and Donald L. Laurie)
Comment: "Solutions to adaptive challenges reside not in the executive suite but in the collective intelligence of employees at all levels."
"Whatever happened to the take-charge manager?" (Nitin Nohria and James D. Berkley)
Comment: "Pragmatists understand that it is unrealistic to try to avoid uncertainty. Attempts to deny or ignore it can blind managers to the real contexts in which they are working and prevent them from responding effectively."
Those who share my high regard for this volume are urged to check out the recently published Harvard Business Review on Making Smarter Decisions as well as other series title in the Harvard Business Review Paperback Series such as those on Becoming a High-Performance Manager, Change, Corporate Strategy, Decision Making, Effective Communication, the Innovative Enterprise, Leadership, Leadership at the Top, and Measuring Corporate Performance.
Essential Resource for Executives 2007-03-25
Another fantastic resource from HBR.
The article titled, "The Manager's Job: Folklore and Fact", by Henry Mintzberg, has been requested for reprint more than 22,000 times in the past two years. Mintzberg did a fascinating study of how managers worked to analyze behavior.
"What Leaders Really Do", by John Kotter, provides a wealth of helpful information. Among the passages I've underlined:
"Leadership complements management; it doesn't replace it..."
"Planning is a management process, deductive in nature... Setting a direction is more inductive..."
"One of the most frequent mistakes that overmanaged and underled corporations make is to embrace 'long-term planning' as a panacea for their lack of direction and inability to adapt to an increasingly competitive and dynamic business environment..."
"In a company without direction, even short-term planning can become a black hole capable of an infinite amount of time and energy."
"Leaders also regularly involve people in deciding how to achieve the organization's vision... This gives people a sense of control..."
All of the articles in this volume are helpful, but these two are the ones I found most interesting.
Worthwhile read for entrepreneurs 2005-08-30
There are many books with an entrepreneurial bent available, most of which are aimed at folks considering starting a business. This is a solid compilation of HBR white papers on various aspects of entrepreneurship. Although the information is useful to those exploring the possibility of starting their own venture, it is more useful to those who have taken the plunge and are immersed in the day to day challenges of building and sustaining a new business venture.
Amar Bhide ("New Business Ventures and the Entrepreneur") is one of the primary contributors, with analyses of entrepreneurial strategy and financing.
This book is useful for those starting, seeking financing, or growing a new venture (I define new as <5 years old). For someone exploring starting a new venture, it may be useful or information overload, depending upon the person.
Is leadership managment? 2005-07-23
This book encapsulates the responsibilites of a leader and the diffirenciation between a leader and a manager. A leader is always in front... never in second place. Thats where managers are... because they are not as good, as the book states. Every manager should strive to be a leader.
Great articles on defining and teaching about leadership  2004-07-25
The wide variety of articles on leadership covers well items from the basic topics such as the difference between managers and leaders to how someone can be both (and the tensions that can cause!). Two of the best articles were on how leaders really spend their time during the day and how leaders foster an environment in which other people can also be identified and brought forward as leaders.
I would've rated this five stars, but there are a couple of articles (on 'defining moments' and CEOs) that weren't a complete waste of time but seemed too far divorced from the typical leader within a company that I was surprised the HBR didn't find something more likely to be widely applicable to fill the space.
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