Winners Dream: Lessons from Corner Store to Corner Office
4/5
()
Unavailable in your country
Unavailable in your country
About this ebook
Bill McDermott
Bill McDermott is the CEO of SAP, the world’s largest business software company. Before joining SAP in 2002, McDermott served as executive vice president of Worldwide Sales and Operations at Siebel Systems and president of Gartner, Inc., where he led the company’s core operations. He spent seventeen years at Xerox Corporation, where he rose from a sales professional to become the company’s youngest corporate officer and division president. McDermott holds an MBA in business management from the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University and he completed the Executive Development Program at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Related to Winners Dream
Related ebooks
Reset, Rebuild, Reignite: Build Your Business to Thrive in a Crisis Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLead, Sell, or Get Out of the Way: The 7 Traits of Great Sellers Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Summary of Michael Dell & James Kaplan's Play Nice But Win Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Sprat To Catch A Mackerel: Key Principles To Build Your Business Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDrive Your Career Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsReality Check (Review and Analysis of Kawasaki's Book) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAnthill: Lessons from the Ants Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Strong Woman: The Truth About Getting to the Top Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOutgrow Your Space at Work: How to Thrive at Work and Build a Successful Career Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/510 Secrets to Life's Biggest Challenges: How You Can Prepare For a Better Tomorrow Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Winning Habits of Steve Jobs Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Winning Playbook: Strategies For Life On And Off The Field Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsStart Now: Unlock the Money Value of Time Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHow to get Rich from Trading Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Rendezvous With Destiny Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings"Oh Yes You Can": What You Say Is What You Get Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsALL IN: 101 Real Life Business Lessons For Emerging Entrepreneurs Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsVision Is Not Enough: A Proactive Approach to Living a Fruitful Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Proverbs Management Handbook Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGod, Your Money and You Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Internet Millionaire: How to Make a Fortune Online Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSummary: Becoming: Michelle Obama Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Art Of Significant Selling, Marketing And Closing More Deals Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWealthy By Choice Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Formula: 7 Principles to Transform Doubt and Despair into Confidence and Success Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLeading with IT: Lessons from Singapore's First CIO Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsInspired Success: Designing Your Own Definition Of Success: Designing Your Own Definition of Success Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Leader in You: Realising Your Leadership Qualities for Greatness Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Personal Memoirs For You
A Child Called It: One Child's Courage to Survive Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression – and the Unexpected Solutions Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Glass Castle: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I'm Glad My Mom Died Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Stash: My Life in Hiding Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Stolen Life: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Everything I Know About Love: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dry: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, HER Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Just Mercy: a story of justice and redemption Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Diary of a Young Girl Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Becoming Free Indeed: My Story of Disentangling Faith from Fear Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Down the Rabbit Hole: Curious Adventures and Cautionary Tales of a Former Playboy Bunny Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Son of Hamas: A Gripping Account of Terror, Betrayal, Political Intrigue, and Unthinkable Choices Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Becoming Sister Wives: The Story of an Unconventional Marriage Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: the heartfelt, funny memoir by a New York Times bestselling therapist Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bad Mormon: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mediocre Monk: A Stumbling Search for Answers in a Forest Monastery Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Choice: Embrace the Possible Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Pity the Reader: On Writing with Style Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 1]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Billion Years: My Escape From a Life in the Highest Ranks of Scientology Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for Winners Dream
2 ratings1 review
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Winners Dream: A Journey from Corner Store to Corner Office
I received an advanced copy of this book from Simon & Schuster via Goodreads for the purpose of reviewing. Opinions are my own.
If you've read Peter Thiel's Zero to One this year, then you'll note that McDermott is a Peter Thiel character-- one in which hard work and determination determine the outcome rather than luck. It's a story of someone who worked hard for success and got everything he ever wanted and more. McDermott writes "my humble hope is that my book furthered the pursuit of your own winner's dream."
Still, the SAP's CEO benefited from the luck of having parents who were always supportive and encouraging optimists. His mother always tells him "you can be whatever you want," and he believes it. His father is a coach and McDermott learns coaching and teamwork lessons from him. It's a very stable home, albeit not a wealthy one. McDermott does not delve into much of the difficulties or any conflicts with siblings. No personal sins, regrets, heartbreaks, etc. show up in the book. As such, it's quite shallow personally. The deepest he gets emotionally is enduring his wife's breast cancer and the death of his mother (fairly recently). He alludes to some sort of faith, but it seems opaque and not essential to his person.
But at least it's a book on leadership and management by a leader who has both led and followed. It's a solid look at corporate culture and how the right leader with the right message and personal integrity can galvanize support and motivate people to perform for a cause greater than themselves. My issue is that the cause is pretty much the corporation's sales and the individual's personal achievements. What good is it a man to gain the whole world and yet forfeit his soul? (Jesus).
Here's a look at the timeline:
McDermott was born into a lower middle class family, his father a welder. They moved from various apartments into a small home in Amityville, a home which often flooded. McDermott is a serial entrepreneur starting as a paper boy then as an ambitious stock boy for a grocer. He's willing to take on risk, he took out a loan to purchase a deli and leads it to greatness. There is very little mention of the overall economy during his formative years and I suspect he dodged a few economic bullets; his risks seemingly all paid off handsomely.
After attending a local college, he essentially talks his way into an entry-level sales job at Xerox (about the time David Kearns comes on as CEO with a new focus on quality), then leads Xerox in sales for the next two years. He is tasked with leading Team F at Xerox, expanding sales in a new territory and taking that region to #1.
McDermott travels on his salespeople's calls, coming up with innovative ways to motivate but not breed competition. He constantly focuses on how it's a team game. Once one employee has hit his sales target and earned his vacation/bonus, McDermott assigns that employee to work with another until everyone hits their targets.
McDermott then gets asked to look at the Puerto Rico/Virgin Islands branch, which is 64th in the world for Xerox and in bad need of a turnaround. He moves his family there, aggressively learns Spanish, while creating a new culture in the office. He takes the region to #1 in sales growth, again being the "winner," as he sees it. Xerox moves him to Chicago to turn that region around, which appears to be one of the more difficult tasks in the book. As he works his way up the corporate ladder, he begins to chafe under the traditional Xerox mentalities that he feels is holding the company back. He is constantly reinventing Xerox's marketing in his own regions/departments, pushing the envelope of their business model.
I looked up Xerox's stock price during this period:
- relative peak of 11.63 on 10/3/80.
- bottoms at 4.56 in 8/6/1982. (Kearns takes over as CEO in 1982, just before McDermott is hired.)
In 1983- Xerox buys Crum & Forster, starts Xerox Financial Services in 1984. McDermott later cites this as a bad move for Xerox.
- climbs to 14.11 8/21/87
- Stock tanks again to 4.85 10/26/90
- Rockets through the 90's to 62 on 1/29/1999, around the time McDermott finally left.
After McDermott jumps ship at Xerox, he ends up at Gartner and another company before landing at SAP America. He is recruited to turn the business around in 2002, and establishes his own vision for the company in 2003.
- SAP stock price bottomed at 10.28 on 10/4/02.
- Was 42.30 on Jan 2, 2004. This represents McDermott's value added. Under his leadership, the company broke a years-long streak of not hitting its quarterly revenue target.
At SAP, conflict arose among managers who couldn't live up to McDermott's new expectations, or just didn't like the job. People who didn't buy in left. 85% of his leadership team moved on. So, McDermott simply taps his own network to replace them, demonstrating the importance of building relationships and not burning bridges.
In February, 2010 he is named co-CEO and successfully co-manages the company with his counterpart friend. This is post-financial crisis and the company needs another turnaround. Like most tech companies, SAP lost most of their share price, as companies became scared to invest in new fields. McDermott is determined to embrace the Cloud and makes strategic mergers with other companies. "Trust is the glue" with the CEOS of acquired companies.
McDermott finally became sole CEO in May, '14. Recent press releases state that SAP is cutting about 3 percent of its 67,000 workers, or about 2,000 jobs as McDermott repositions it to develop more cloud-computing software. The company plans to hire enough new people to offset the cuts.
The key takeaways can be found as the subheadings within the chapters, which together reads like a compilation of every leadership text ever produced.
I have copied and pasted this list from someone else's review (with my additional comments in parentheses):
~Focus on the customer. If your customer isn't happy with your product or service, he will find an alternative, and you won't have a job.
~Find ways to distinguish yourself from your competition. Figure out what you can do that they can't.
~Goodwill gestures can help seal a deal by making your customer feel like you trust them. (This may mean bending the rules of corporate policies)
~Keep your word. (Trust is the glue that binds organizations and partnerships together).
~Give your employees audacious goals, it will motivate them.
~Keep alert to the culture around you. Serve food in a food culture, celebrate things that should be celebrated, provide perks and incentives that boost morale and solicit employee feedback about them.
~Build rapport with all people because it makes them feel valued and makes them want to help you. (ask "How can I help?" of both clients and co-workers).
~Don't discount yourself, your product, or your services. Have faith in their/your value.
~Identify your own goals and aspirations (and don't settle for a path that takes you away from these).
The importance of inter-departmental communication is also highlighted. You can't have sales people out promising something that your engineers and customer service can't deliver. McDermott found the red tape in order processing and human resources at Xerox maddening for this reason. Bureacracies are hard to manage.
I learned quite a bit about Xerox and a little about SAP. McDermott gave good examples of how he learned from other leaders, but generally he had no problems working for the bosses he had because they saw his aggressive energy and "let me do my thing."
I recommend this book as an example of leadership and good management practices. I would give it to individual students to show them what is possible. I would not assign it for a class or use it as a case study. In all, I give it three stars out of five.