Management Lessons from Oz

Prepare to be entertained, educated, and enlightened all at the same time. Based on a successful leadership and consulting career spanning four decades and four global industries, Paul S. Zygielbaum reveals the fundamentals of effective leadership, and especially the role of courage. He does so by leading us through many entertaining and illuminating stories of his work with executives, middle managers, first-level supervisors and individual contributors. His narrative invokes iconic...
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Prepare to be entertained, educated, and enlightened all at the same time. Based on a successful leadership and consulting career spanning four decades and four global industries, Paul S. Zygielbaum reveals the fundamentals of effective leadership, and especially the role of courage. He does so by leading us through many entertaining and illuminating stories of his work with executives, middle managers, first-level supervisors and individual contributors. His narrative invokes iconic characters from "The Wizard of Oz" to demonstrate the personal and professional qualities that are most important to successful leadership, presenting these ideas as lessons that Dorothy, cast as a student of leadership, learns along her Yellow Brick Road. At the end, the Wizard teaches Dorothy, and us, a last, transcendent lesson that is not only about leadership, but about living a successful life. Zygielbaum draws on various sources from business literature, as well as his professional interactions with top executives of global giants like Hewlett Packard, General Electric, and Raytheon, and stretching from the Washington Beltway's bureaucratic offices to Cold War Moscow's sequestered engineering laboratories. In specific areas of business knowledge, such as manufacturing and product development, Zygielbaum provides fresh insight into where success comes from, and he relates these ideas back to the fundamental qualities of leadership. This book stands out among modern business books by analyzing courage as an attribute and calling attention to the different kinds of courage that successful leaders must summon in various circumstances. Behind the words of this book, the reader will not fail to perceive that Zygielbaum is well qualified to discuss these matters. The book should appeal to leaders in any type of endeavor, as well as others who aspire to leadership or who seek to understand how to evaluate and interact more effectively with the leaders around them.