Why Should the Boss Listen to You?: The Seven Disciplines of the Trusted Strategic Advisor

By James E. Lukaszewski

This is a book about gaining influence and becoming a key trusted advisor. It is for everyone who advises leaders and senior managers (accounting, finance, human resources, IT, law, marketing, public relations, security, and strategic planning) and for outside consultants in these functional staff areas. It’s also for operations people yearning to finally be heard and heeded by their boss.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wiley
• Release date: Dec 3, 2010
• ISBN: 9781118041123

Book preview

Introduction

Leaders and Their Advisors

This book had its genesis several years ago on a bitterly cold winter day. Late on a Friday afternoon, I received a call from the president of a huge aluminum processing company. He was in the middle of labor talks, and things were going badly. In addition, he had just learned from his manager of health and safety that the Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC) had publicly announced that day in Washington that his plant was a national target for reduction of excessive aluminum oxide emissions. (Aluminum oxide, at that time, was on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s list of toxic substances. It has since been delisted.)

On top of this, the union and the NRDC had apparently formed a team to bring pressure on the company from different directions. The CEO’s general counsel had found me through a colleague suffering a similar fate.

The CEO wanted me to arrive on Sunday night so that I could spend some time with the senior management team before all hell broke loose. He mentioned that his director of corporate communications (whom I will call Susan) would meet me at the airport Sunday

Reviews for Why Should the Boss Listen to You?

[librarythingaliba · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This was probably the best "Business Self-Help" book I have read, ever. Mr. Lukaszewski comes from practical experience and provides easy to understand concepts and advice on how to be a trusted advisor. While I found some of the material to be common sense and ratified my current methods, much of it was eye opening and I definitely get to change my approach from here on out. I borrowed this one from the library, AND I'm pretty sure I'm going to order it from Amazon as I want to have it on hand for easy reference.