Thinking Inside the Box: The 12 Timeless Rules for Managing a Successful Business

For the past decade and more, everyone in business was told that success in a rapidly changing world required constant "thinking outside the box." The result has often been financially and ethically disastrous. Now, in a radical reassessment of what really works, this book shows that the business world lost its way when it forgot how to think inside the box. Challenging the prevailing wisdom and trend-of-the-minute management advice, award-winning journalist and international businessman Kirk Cheyfitz lays out a set of historically proven principles he calls "The Box" -- the 12 unchanging rules for building, expanding, and maintaining a strong business. Everyone with an interest in business -- whether students, entrepreneurs, corporate managers, consultants, or CEOs -- will benefit from the brilliant and fundamental insights of Thinking Inside The Box:

• Learn to tell the difference between what can and cannot be controlled by management, and focus on the areas that will make the most difference.

• Understand the economic principles that never change so you can devote your attention to the things that are changing all the time.

• Rediscover the critical discipline of planning for profit.

• Understand why some acquisitions work and most don't.

• And much more...

The book draws on in-depth research, Cheyfitz's long personal experience as an entrepreneur and corporate manager, and revealing interviews with business leaders such as Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Prudential Securities CEO John Strangfeld. Combining these elements, Cheyfitz presents a compelling, reliable, and well-documented account of successful business practices that have met the challenges of the ages. With a practical approach and carefully documented examples, Cheyfitz mercilessly exposes the hype and inaccuracies of so-called business gurus preaching the need for constant "revolution" in business.

From its very first words -- a preface titled "Don't Do Anything Stupid" -- to its very last, Thinking Inside The Box demonstrates that the only way to think outside the box productively is to learn each plank in The Box and practice it daily. For the first time, a book explains what the dot-com crash, the telecom disaster, the Enron collapse, and all the myriad, multibillion-dollar business catastrophes of the last decade have in common -- a total lack of regard for (or complete ignorance of) the basic rules of business. Here, finally, is the indispensable book that shows managers and investors where to find the path to enduring success again.

Kirk Cheyfitz An award-winning reporter and successful businessman, Cheyfitz has built the world's first and largest global custom publishing network for McCann-Erickson WorldGroup, the world's largest advertising agency. After only four years, The Publishing Agency International has full-service companies in New York, Amsterdam, Brussels, London, Madrid, and Seattle. Cheyfitz was a Pulitzer finalist for investigative work at the Detroit Free Press and won the prestigious Sigma Delta Chi Bronze Medallion for investigative reporting, among many national and regional journalism honors. He started a city magazine in Detroit in the mid-1980s, making a seamless transition from journalist to self-taught entrepreneur. Next he acquired Chicago magazine and built a publishing division with some 1,200 employees and more than 20 operating entities. Cheyfitz lives on Manhattan's Upper West Side with his wife, Ellen, and daughter Amy.