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Crash: Lessons from the entry and exit of CEOs
While many people talk about the path to the top of organizations, very few are honest about how difficult it is to stay at that position. R. Gopalakrishnan analyses the 'software' challenges, which leaders confront every day, and shares the insights he has gained developing, managing, investing in and supervising a variety of companies. The author shows that great leaders continue to excel not just because of their skills and intelligence but also by connecting with others using emotional competencies like empathy and self-awareness.Filled with anecdotes, analysis of various situations CEOs may find themselves in and unconventional advice to help them, Lessons from the Entry and Exit of CEOs is for veteran leaders as well as for those who aspire to start their own ventures.
- GenresBusiness
304 pages, Kindle Edition
Published December 17, 2018
10 people are currently reading
55 people want to read
About the author
R. Gopalakrishnan
56 books21 followersR. Gopalakrishnan has been a professional manager for forty years. He has a wealth of practical managerial experience, initially in Unilever and more recently in the Tata Group. He has lived and worked in India, the UK and Saudi Arabia, and has travelled extensively all over the world. He began his career in 1967 as a computer analyst with Hindustan Lever after studying physics at Kolkata and electronics engineering at IIT, Kharagpur. He worked in the marketing function before moving to general management. During his years with Unilever, he was based in Jeddah as CEO of the Arabia unit; later, he was managing director of Brooke Bond Lipton India and then vice-chairman with Hindustan Lever. He has been president of the All India Management Association. Currently, he is the executive director of Tata Sons based in Mumbai. He also serves on the boards of other companies.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 17, 2019
CRASH. I had come across this book on a airport bookstore sometime back. Like I generally do, I added it in my cart on amazon, and had forgotten about it. Recently, while browsing through the cart, and my interest in marketing books and life stories/biographies got me interested in this book and I immediately ordered the book ,after failing to find it online to download.
As I started reading the book, I was not enthused by the format of the book. The initial four chapters have some gyan, and then it is about 20 individuals who had rose to become the CEO of the company to eventually fall from that position. I instantly applied to return the book, as this is not a book I would be interested to own and keep for long.
The first four chapters have nothing great to talk about, and majorly explains that as a leader the most important trait is to communicate at all levels, and ensure you are fitting into the culture before seeking out any major scatching changes.
The individual 20 stories are good in the sense, it gives you a glimpse on the individuals trajectory in 15-20 pages, and the bibliography is extensive for any further reading. The book encompasses stories right from Carly fiorina of HP, to Vishal Sikka of Infosys. The interesting ones amongst them were – Anshu Jain from Deutshe stuck in a dual CEO setup, Sarin from Vodafone, Disney, Ford succession wars, etc..
Some of the learnings from the book for me are –
1. You have to consistently perform extraordinarily well to be a part of the elite circle
2. Have your opinion, and strong ones at that, to get at the top
3. No matter how high you rise, you are as good as your last role
One other thing i noticed looking at the biography is the kind of material that is generally read and followed throughout. I would eventually want to get to imbibe this in my regular reading. The list is -
1. New York Times,
2. Wall Street Journal
3. Financial Times
4. Economist
In addition to the newspapers, other commonly referenced sources were the business reviews, and the case studies from -
1. Harvard Business Review
2. MIT Sloan Review
3. Nikkei Review
4. Stanford GSB Case Studies
Once at the top, or for that matter at any level I believe, communication is the key. Keep talking about your strategy and vision for the role and the impact you intend to leave and get everyone on board.
At a CEO level the game becomes much bigger, and you have multiple stakeholders right from the team, stakeholders to the board, the story is the same at every level. In my role, I have a boss and a hierarchy, a direct team to fulfil aspirations, an extended team to inspire and extract the best from and all the stakeholders to get them excited about my brand and the extended. Getting them all on the same page requires constant communication, and no amount is good enough.
Overall, an okayish book, worth a one time browse over.
As I started reading the book, I was not enthused by the format of the book. The initial four chapters have some gyan, and then it is about 20 individuals who had rose to become the CEO of the company to eventually fall from that position. I instantly applied to return the book, as this is not a book I would be interested to own and keep for long.
The first four chapters have nothing great to talk about, and majorly explains that as a leader the most important trait is to communicate at all levels, and ensure you are fitting into the culture before seeking out any major scatching changes.
The individual 20 stories are good in the sense, it gives you a glimpse on the individuals trajectory in 15-20 pages, and the bibliography is extensive for any further reading. The book encompasses stories right from Carly fiorina of HP, to Vishal Sikka of Infosys. The interesting ones amongst them were – Anshu Jain from Deutshe stuck in a dual CEO setup, Sarin from Vodafone, Disney, Ford succession wars, etc..
Some of the learnings from the book for me are –
1. You have to consistently perform extraordinarily well to be a part of the elite circle
2. Have your opinion, and strong ones at that, to get at the top
3. No matter how high you rise, you are as good as your last role
One other thing i noticed looking at the biography is the kind of material that is generally read and followed throughout. I would eventually want to get to imbibe this in my regular reading. The list is -
1. New York Times,
2. Wall Street Journal
3. Financial Times
4. Economist
In addition to the newspapers, other commonly referenced sources were the business reviews, and the case studies from -
1. Harvard Business Review
2. MIT Sloan Review
3. Nikkei Review
4. Stanford GSB Case Studies
Once at the top, or for that matter at any level I believe, communication is the key. Keep talking about your strategy and vision for the role and the impact you intend to leave and get everyone on board.
At a CEO level the game becomes much bigger, and you have multiple stakeholders right from the team, stakeholders to the board, the story is the same at every level. In my role, I have a boss and a hierarchy, a direct team to fulfil aspirations, an extended team to inspire and extract the best from and all the stakeholders to get them excited about my brand and the extended. Getting them all on the same page requires constant communication, and no amount is good enough.
Overall, an okayish book, worth a one time browse over.
March 28, 2020
These days investment in books in terms of time can be quite expensive, for there are so many of them competing for your attention. Consequently, the feeling of disappointment when a book fails to meet your expectation could be quite devastating. So is the case with Crash. The title of the book may lead you to conjure up images of stock markets, speculations and big money. The author tries to inform us through the subtitle to the book that the expected takeaways are lessons from the entry and exit of CEOs, an exciting prospect indeed. However, a rather long critique, albeit with a sense of disappointment is the only complement that I can extend to the book written by R Gopalakrishnan, a storied corporate honcho. It is quite natural to expect some extraordinary insights into the rarefied corporate world from the author from his vantage position of having sat on the Boards of some of India’s famous companies. He just flattered to deceive.
Collated data is sought to be passed off as distilled knowledge with little efforts put in to glean lessons from real life cases and still lesser investments in any kind of research done on available information. The narrative is so disjointed that a reader is left wondering what the author is trying to convey through the book. One gets an uncanny feeling that the writing of the book in parts had been outsourced with the author putting it all together with his own pontification in the first part – lessons first and cases next. When the author in the first part of the book talks of leadership monomyth one expected more interesting discussions to follow. Alas, that was not to be. Instead of lessons what follows are a few disparate anecdotes and information culled out from the public domain some of them repeated and some reproduced not in any logical order. The author gives 15 cases that are well publicised and frequently quoted general information where CEOs were involved in incidents ranging from the mundane to the salacious. Readers are left wondering what lessons one learns by just reading about these incidents, some of them not even remotely connected to the eventual departure of those CEOs.
The only persons who could possibly be happy with this book would be the management students for whom this book could serve as some kind of a quick tutorial guide to familiarise themselves with names of companies and those of some famous CEOs without having to do any serious reading about both. Only other tribe to whom this book could be of immediate use are those imprisoned at home by the Corona lockdown with no hope in hell of laying their hands on any worthwhile reading material nearby.
Collated data is sought to be passed off as distilled knowledge with little efforts put in to glean lessons from real life cases and still lesser investments in any kind of research done on available information. The narrative is so disjointed that a reader is left wondering what the author is trying to convey through the book. One gets an uncanny feeling that the writing of the book in parts had been outsourced with the author putting it all together with his own pontification in the first part – lessons first and cases next. When the author in the first part of the book talks of leadership monomyth one expected more interesting discussions to follow. Alas, that was not to be. Instead of lessons what follows are a few disparate anecdotes and information culled out from the public domain some of them repeated and some reproduced not in any logical order. The author gives 15 cases that are well publicised and frequently quoted general information where CEOs were involved in incidents ranging from the mundane to the salacious. Readers are left wondering what lessons one learns by just reading about these incidents, some of them not even remotely connected to the eventual departure of those CEOs.
The only persons who could possibly be happy with this book would be the management students for whom this book could serve as some kind of a quick tutorial guide to familiarise themselves with names of companies and those of some famous CEOs without having to do any serious reading about both. Only other tribe to whom this book could be of immediate use are those imprisoned at home by the Corona lockdown with no hope in hell of laying their hands on any worthwhile reading material nearby.
September 11, 2020
Fantastic narration. Its essentially a composition of short stories describing real-world CEOs journeys in various companies. The writing is fluid and engaging.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews