Praise for Mean Business by Albert J. Dunlap
“Dunlap has a fine appreciation for the dynamism of business, for the need to focus on a company’s strong suit, and for the peril that awaits complacent and extravagant managers and boards.” — Roger Lowenstein, The Wall Street Journal
“He’s been fixing troubled businesses for more than twenty years… Dunlap’s strength is being able to look at troubled companies objectively.” — Allan Sloan, Newsweek
“His outspokenness is refreshing… workers and shareholders alike will applaud his approach to high-salaried CEOs whose companies are crumbling.” — Patricia Holt, San Francisco Chronicle
“Hate him or love him, this is a fascinating book.” — Barbara Sullivan, Chicago Tribune
Al Dunlap is an original: an outspoken, irascible executive with an incredible track record of injecting new life into tired companies. The business media have coined a new verb–“to dunlap”–when describing a fast company turnaround. In April 1994 he became CEO and chairman of Scott Paper, which had lost $277 million in 1993, was on credit watch for excessive debt, and whose stock had been comatose for seven years. In a mere nineteen months, Scott had record earnings, the stock had increased in value by $6.5 billion (over 200 percent), and Dunlap merged Scott with Kimberly-Clark in a stock swap that valued Scott at $9 billion and created the second largest consumer-products company in the United States.
Mean Business combines Dunlap’s colorful personal history–his working-class background, employment, friendship with such people as Sir James Goldsmith and George Soros, his views on why too many executives think of themselves as corporate royalty–and his provocative ideas on management and leadership. His specific, tested program on how to evaluate and choose a management team, get the lowest costs from suppliers, improve the balance sheet, and develop a real strategy make this an invaluable book.
The controversy about corporate performance and how to achieve it is near the boiling point, as executives face the hard fact of business life: What is good or even excellent today won’t be satisfactory tomorrow. Mean Business is absolutely essential for both companies in trouble as well as those at the top of their game.
In this updated third edition of the original, Dunlap brings the world up to date on new business, including his and his wife Judy’s work with rescue animals, under-privileged children, and Florida State University.
Excerpts from the new content in Mean Business, 3rd Edition
A young lady was kidding around with me in Sam’s Club recently. I said, “How old do you think I am? I’m 59!” She looked at me, paused for a moment and said, in all seriousness, “I don’t know who you are, but if you’re 59, you better get a new doctor!”
I’ve always said that I respect predators because they have to get their own meals. They can’t call room service. But abused and neglected animals can’t get their own meals. They have been put in captivity and rather than be treated with respect and love, they’ve been mistreated. That greatly affected us.
Mean Business by Albert J. Dunlap, Mr. Media Books
