A Passion for Excellence: The Leadership Difference.

Following In Search of Excellence, this book is, according to its foreword, not a book on theory. It is rather an avowed Whitman's Sampler of the passion for excellence observed and celebrated. Each chapter tells paradoxical tales of obsession in pursuiting both detail and a dream. Each has scores of examples, as well as suggestions for practical actions that you can start immediately. It concentrates on areas of competence that determine any organization's long-term excellence: superior service to customers or clients and constant innovation, both based on consistent creativity by everyone in the company. It describes daily acts of leadership at each management level that are at the base of superior performance. The basics of managerial success are examined: naive customer listening; pride in one's organization and enthusiasm for its works, customer perception of a service's or product's quality, employee commitment and sense of ownership, internal corporate entrepreneurship (or entrapreneurship), championing, trust, and vision. Technique; 8--The Smell of the Customer; Some (More Good