BUSINESS
NOT AS USUAL
How to Win Managing a Company through
Hard and Easy Times
by Hugh Aaron
ISBN 1-882521-00-5, 240 Pages, Softcover
List price $19.95
A Description of the Book
Consisting of 68 narrative essays, this is a candid account of a CEO's successes
and failures managing a company through twenty years of hard and easy times.
Read an Excerpt
It's the story every CEO in America should
tell, but won't.
It's the truth, and it will surprise you.
Read about:
- What makes entrepreneurs different. Why they fail or succeed.
- How a CEO successfully copes with recession - and a rebound.
- A prescription for improving productivity.
- An outline of an incentive plan.
- How to sell a business.
- Practical wisdom running a business. A CEO's worst mistakes.
- The fundamental role of a business's culture.
- What's wrong with American business.
- And much more
Ten sub-chapters are expanded versions of articles that have appeared in the
Manager's Journal column of The Wall Street Journal, Business Marketing
magazine and Plastics News. To date the author has contributed
18 articles to the Manager's Journal column.
Comments from Readers
"Thank you for sharing your great wisdom and marvelous understanding with
all of us."
Dean Charles W. Jermy, Jr.
School of Continuing Education, Cornell University
"I read your Wall Street Journal article -- an excellent and provocative
piece"
Howard J. Claussen,
Director, Mergers and Acquisitions Dupont
"An engaging business memoir...your technique of presenting the problems
facing a small businessman in terms of concrete parables of your own experience
is highly effective -- more effective, certainly to my mind, than generalized
and stylized catch phrases and dry primers..."
Scott Meredith, President
Scott Meredith Literary Agency, Inc.
"[a] delightful book. I like [Aaron's] direct and refreshing style, as
well as the validity of his examples and the honesty of his reactions. He has
done a fine job"
Harry Levinson, Ph.D.,
Chairman, The Levinson Institute
"...it's knocking my sox off. A jewel."
Harvey Mackay
Author, Swimming with the Sharks
"it is clear [Aaron] has many good ideas and expresses them clearly."
Dr. David Campbell,
Center for Creative Leadership
From the Publisher
Business Not As Usual describes in sixty-eight down-to-earth narrative
essays crucial issues that commonly arise when running a business, and their
surprising and rewarding turn-arounds. For a decade the author's company was
a virtual management laboratory that developed innovative methods for motivating
employees and improving productivity leading to skyrocketing profitability.
Based on the first-hand experience of a creative CEO, these essays are of unsurpassed
value to anyone in business or about to be. The author, a graduate of The University
of Chicago, and CEO of his own manufacturing company for twenty years, has,
to date, contributed nineteen articles to the Manager's Journal column of The
Wall Street Journal.
From the Author
My theme throughout this book is: Accept responsibility for what happens; face
the truth no matter how brutal it is; and don't expect to find quick fixes and
easy solutions.
An Excerpt:
From Chapter 1, The CEO's Reward: Any man or woman who leaves a secure, well
paying job to start a small business has just made the least business-like decision
in his or her entrepreneurial career. It borders on the irrationality of choosing
a marriage partner. Even then we generally know what to expect from a spouse.
But what do we expect from a business?
Read
a review