Good leadership doesn't begin with emotions but with a company's business processes. Process design comes before design of the corporate culture. The employees of a company find and enact their roles more easily within the framework of first-rate processes. For a CEO it is important to position himself appropriately in the shareholder-customer-employee triangle. If he doesn't succeed in communicating to the workforce that their company is only defined through the customer and for the customer he will waste a great deal of money on processes which will never be recovered from the customers.
These are just some of the theses Gerhard Zapke-Schauer discusses in his letters to executives in Europe and overseas - letters written on a variety of occasions. They contain reactions to current books on management topics or commentaries on important events. A treasure trove of contemporary management know-how in an entertaining style.
When I gave up my career as a professional manager fifteen years ago to start working as a lecturer at a college of management, I never supposed for a moment that there would be such a large need for know-how on leadership. This book is a collection of letters written between 2000 to 2003 to my clients on a variety of topics. In these letters I referred to recently published works on management or my thoughts on large companies which were very much in the news and about which my clients asked for comments. Before publication, references to the original inquiries were removed from all the letters, which were then generalised and summarised, with the result that a compendium has been produced with generally applicable rules and advice for day to day management. i Many of my clients used the letters for meetings with their first line managers, which led to useful discussions within the company. This book would never have been written if these letters hadn't been requested time again by outstanding company leaders and had not led to agreement - and disagreement - on their part. I would like to thank all those with whom I have had intensive discussions.
