Denial: Why Business Leaders Fail to Look Facts in the Face--and What to Do About It - Softcover

Tedlow, Richard S.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 159184391X ISBN 13: 9781591843917

Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group, 2011

Synopsis

"Wise. Relevant. Riveting." -Jim Collins, author of Good to Great

Denial is the unconscious belief that a certain fact is too terrible to face and therefore cannot be true. It turns challenges into crises, dilemmas into catastrophes. It's the single greatest obstacle business leaders face.

Now Harvard business School professor Richard S. Tedlow tackles two essential questions: Why do so many sane, smart leaders often refuse to accept and act on the facts that threaten their companies and careers? And how do we find the courage to resist denial when facing new trends, changing markets, and tough new competitors?

Tedlow highlights strategies the best leaders use to face hard facts and turn challenges into opportunities. His book will help you become one of them.

About this title

About the Author:

Richard S. Tedlow is the Class of 1949 Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and the author of Giants of Enterprise (one of BusinessWeek’s ten best books of  2001) and The Watson Dynasty.

From Publishers Weekly:

Starred Review. Author and Harvard business administration professor Tedlow (Andy Grove: The Life and Times of an American Business Icon) asserts that "denial goes hand-in-hand with short-term thinking," a problem that arises when a business "that once might have focused on getting the job done now is concerned with getting done with the job." The history of industry is rich with such cases, a number of which Tedlow examines with thorough understanding of both business and psychology: the initial brilliance of Henry Ford's Model T assembly lines gave way to significant setbacks when they failed to take the threat of Europe's radial tires seriously; the "great" grocery chain A&P was sunk by executives who "celebrated the statistics they liked." Tedlow also surveys the "edifice complex," in which struggling but respected companies erect monuments to themselves (like the Sears Tower) rather than tackling real challenges. Contrasting successes include tenacious DuPont, Intel's chief truth-seeker Andy Grove, and Johnson & Johnson, which faced almost insurmountable challenges head-on during the toxic Tylenol crisis. Tedlow discusses ways to overcome the denial inherent to human nature as well as the institutional variety, cautioning against "yes" men, the vocabulary of euphemisms, and trash-talking the competition: "What am I using this derision to hide-perhaps from myself?"

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 159184391X
• ISBN 13: 9781591843917
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288