Book Description

In 1957 Jerry Greenwald began his career at the Ford Motor Company - right on the eve of the Edsel fiasco. In the next forty years he rose to the top during some of the most exciting, turbulent times in corporate history, from the near collapse of Chrysler to the employee buyout of United Airlines. All the while Greenwald did business the way he felt in his heart: as a straight shooter, and by listening and learning every step of the way. In this book, he shares his wealth of expertise as he looks back at his career, and looks ahead to the greatest challenges facing tomorrow's corporate managers.

Unabashedly old fashioned, shaped by the Great Depression and his Midwestern childhood, Greenwald made a career out of empowering others to work toward a common goal. Here he tells aspiring managers how they can achieve consensus, build partnerships, react to crisis, and steer a corporate ship through both smooth seas and storms. And he presents an overall view of management that is cliche- and fad-free, resting instead on principles of hard work, teamwork, respect for labor, and absolute, no-holds-barred communication.

Along the way, Greenwald shares his memories. Here is the inside story of the last-minute signing of the Chrysler bail-out arrangement - including the office fire that nearly had the deal go up in flames - and a look at the radically different managerial styles of Ford legends Phil Caldwell and Ed Molina, as well as Chrysler's Lee Iacocca.

From Publishers Weekly

"These days in business, there are many views about what process, what strategy, a CEO might put into place to improve his situation. I have reached a surprising conclusion about that: It's still just about hard work, and it always has been." Part autobiography and all solid advice, Lessons from the Heart of American Business: A Roadmap for Managers in the 21st Century is a no-frills, hardcore yet intimate business book with a surprisingly fresh and unaffected narrative by Gerald Greenwald who has served as the top executive of United Airlines and Chrysler with Chicago Tribune senior writer Charles Madigan. Greenwald's first lesson, which has served him well for more than four decades, is that managers must have the courage to confront what they don't know.

Book Dimension

Height (mm) 236 Width (mm) 161