Elizabeth I, CEO: Strategic Lessons from the Leader Who Built an Empire
Author: Alan Axelrod
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ISBN: 0735201897
Publisher: Penguin Putnam Inc. (05 September, 2000)
Sales Rank: 16,148
Average Customer Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Customer Reviews
Rating: 3 out of 5
Still more leadership lessons from history
There has been such a glut of books teaching management and leadership lessons from historical figures and spiritual traditions (Attila, the Tao, Machiavelli, etc.) you'd think the market would be saturated by now. Apparently not, for they keep coming. As far as this kind of book goes, Elizabeth l CEO isn't bad. Of course, the theory's premise is basically contrived. While we can draw analogies between 16th Century politics and 21st Century business, the two environments are fundamentally different. For example, one subject Alan Axelrod often refers to in Elizabeth l (he has the unfortunate habit of repeating the same points many times) is Elizabeth's struggle to enforce religious conformity in England. Elizabeth was a devout Protestant in a nation where Catholics still had a strong influence. How exactly does this translate into a modern business context? The fact is, it doesn't. There is nothing in the business world that even remotely resembles Medieval/Renaissance religious orthodoxy. Only someone who takes management platitudes such as the "vision" of a business could fail to realize this. Visions aside, corporations all have the same goal --profit. They are essentially amoral. Any attempt to indoctrinate employees of a corporation with something akin to religious fervor would be absurd (this isn't to say that such efforts are not made by overzealous CEOs and managers). Despite these serious objections, I still enjoyed Elizabeth l CEO and found some worthwhile lessons in it (though not necessarily in the realm of business). Axelrod does a good job of presenting history in an informative and entertaining manner. He effectively portrays Elizabeth as a powerful and innovative leader who kept her many virtues --intelligence, courage, frugality, pragmatism-- in balance. I suspect, however, that the realms of politics and business are both far too complex to be mastered by any simple set of principles. The audiobook version is narrated by Nelson Runger, who does a fine job of presenting the book.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Elizabeth I - Benchmark CEO
Many history-applied-to-business books are a stretch. Their authors attempt to apply historical situations to modern day business, but the comparisons often lack relevance. Not true with 'Elizabeth I, CEO: Strategic Lessons from the Leader Who Built an Empire' by Alan Axelrod. The author provides interesting lesson's from one of Great Britain's most famous monarchs that can readily be applied to today's business solutions. The manner in which Queen Elizabeth I deals with restructuring, developing leadership and fighting the competition that are benchmarks for modern leaders. No, we all don't have Armada's to battle, but even more minor skirmishes will be easier to deal with after reading this book.
Rating: 1 out of 5
Poor rendition of history leads to not-so-useful conclusions
This book is a follow-up to Axelrod's book on leadership lessons for executives drawn from the example of George S. Patton. Here, he's picked another historical figure, Queen Elizabeth I of England. This had the makings of a potentially valuable book, save for the slight problem that the history is so poorly rendered that little of value can be gleaned for anyone facing the unrelenting pressures of running an actual business.Axelrod portrays the Elizabethan period with such rose-coloured glasses that he fails to impart a useful or realistic message here. The book has numerous references to the queen's fiscal management of the country, to the Spanish Armada, to the outpouring of literature of Shakespeare and his fellow masters of the pen, with little bits of wisdom relayed in the process. All well and good.
But in recognising and deriving lessons from the queen's many undoubted successes, he should have been balanced and also discussed where things went wrong. There is scant if any attention paid to Elizabeth's policy in Ireland, which had a particularly bloody legacy and in which England's undertakings gave rise to failure at every turn from the 1570s onward. The consequences of this policy failure are still with us today. Nor is there mention of England's military defeats against Spain after the Armada, which devastated English plans to settle the new world and gain control of trade routes. Nor does Axelrod note the cases of financial mismanagement and corruption that plagued Elizabeth's reign in the late 1500s. And where is this empire he talks about in the book's title, "the leader who built an empire"? Axelrod skips the specifics on this because there was no empire by the time King James I succeeded Elizabeth in the early 1600s. England would not have an empire to speak of for another 150 years.
There is nothing wrong or unexpected about these setbacks in Elizabeth's reign-- she had many successes and, like any monarch, some missteps as well. If one wishes to use such a monarch as an example for a business, it is a disservice to readers to trumpet the successes while ignoring the failures. What business, after all, turns in profitable quarters with every fiscal year and pleases its investors and even competitors with its every move? You'd be hard-pressed to find any such firm gracing the pages of the Wall Street Journal. Real businesses learn from their failures as much as their successes, and Axelrod has denied his readers a valuable example by focussing too much on the latter and too little on the former. This book would be more valuable with a little more depth and a little more perspective in its treatment of its historical subject.
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