Doing What MattersMany years ago, Patrick Rivett described his efforts to teach problem solving model building to his students as showing them "what goes on in an analyst's head when he is taken round a soap factory." You can describe Jim Kilts' Doing What Matters as "what goes on in an experienced CEO's head when he takes over a company that needs to turn around." Hardly anyone has better credentials to write a book like this one. Kilts had an exemplary career in packaged goods. He was a successful CEO at Kraft and led turnarounds at Nabisco and Gillette. When he took over at Gillette, the company had missed estimates for years. The stock had tanked, shedding 60 percent of its value. Even so, 65 percent of the executives received "exceeds expectations" evaluations. Every one of them thought their department or division was performing above average. What would you do in a situation like that? This book is about what Jim Kilts did. The subtitle is really better than the title: "How to get results that make a difference—the revolutionary old-school approach." The book is divided into four sections. The first is "Fundamentals, Attitudes, and People Matter." It's worth the price of the book all by itself. Kilts starts, appropriately enough, with advice to focus on fundamentals. Unlike most management writers, though, he tells you what he thinks fundamentals are and how he focused on them when he approached the challenge at Gillette. Throughout this section and the book there are dozens of bits of wisdom. Here are some. "Key metrics will vary, but they always exist." "The time that really matters is the work I do before the clock starts ticking on the first one hundred days." "Most companies get into trouble not because they make world-class blunders, but due to a succession of well-intentioned yet flawed decisions that build on one another." "If a company's cost structure is high, winning is almost impossible." There are also valuable insights into concepts like cost-cutting. In most companies, cost cutting is something you do when you're in trouble, after which it's back to business as usual. For Kilts, Zero Overhead Growth (ZOG) is a way of life. Throughout the other sections of the book, on Leadership, the Future, and doing the Right Thing, Kilts pounds away on certain critical principles. Get the facts. Figure out what matters and concentrate on it. Face the truth. Maintain momentum. Enthusiasm is for every day. Act with discipline. Execute strategy. Control costs. Only performance matters. Do not reward effort, only results. There's wisdom and good advice all the way through this book, but, fortunately for you if you don't read books from cover to cover, most of the really good stuff is front-loaded. The first section is excellent. The second and third are OK. But by the time you're wheeling into the chapter on "The Right Road Map," you'll find yourself getting weary of "strat plans" and "FE" and other klunky jargon. I found myself starting to scan about half way though. I hunted out the pearls of wisdom, but I didn't read every word. You can skip section four. It's about the sale of Gillette to Proctor and Gamble. This section is Kilts turned whiner. He may have a case about how awful and unfair the Boston media were to him, but whatever lessons there are in this section simply get lost. If you leave section four out, though, the book is extremely well done. I liked the bits of practical wisdom that I found throughout. I loved the use of examples from Kilts' entire career, not just the Gillette years. And I loved the fact that Kilts shares the spotlight and the credit with his team, advisors and mentors. Buy and read Doing What Matters if you're headed into a turnaround situation, if you're coming in from the outside to take over a company, or if you just want solid advice and well-told and well-chosen stories from someone who's got management street cred. To see what other folks thought of this book, or to purchase it from Amazon, click here.
 This book review first appeared in the Three Star Leadership Blog.
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