What It Takes, Charles D. Ellis
What It Takes, Charles D. Ellis
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What It Takes
Seven Secrets of Success from the World's Greatest Professional Firms

Author: Charles D. Ellis

Narrator: Bernard Clark

Unabridged: 10 hr 10 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Ascent Audio

Published: 07/20/2020


Synopsis

What It Takes is the distillation of lessons learned during nearly half a century of working backstage with the leaders of major professional firms as a trusted adviser on strategy and management, observing a few firms rise deliberately to leadership while many others with comparable hopes could not. Over and over again, in dozens of private meetings with firm leaders, the core questions were: Why do some firms rise to leadershipand why do most not make it? What does it take to excel? Perhaps even more important, what does it take to sustain excellence over years and decades, through success and adversity? Experience teaches that in a competitive market, organizations can rise to acknowledged leadership only by excelling in several specific areas: defining a compelling organizational mission and developing a strong complementary culture; consistently recruiting clearly superior people and training them intensively; organizing and motivating them to work in effective teams devoted to serving important clients on their most important problems; and continuously finding new and better ways, both large and small, to deliver distinctive value for clients. The extensive research for this book is based on decades of studying the success and failure of hundreds of professional firms in North America, Europe and Asia, and on over 300 formal interviews with the past and current leaders of the five extraordinary professional firms that exemplify the elements of durable excellenceMcKinsey in consulting, Cravath, Swaine & Moore in law, Goldman Sachs in investment banking, Capital Group in investment management and Mayo Clinic in health care.

About Charles D. Ellis

Charles D. Ellis is a consultant to large institutional investors and government agencies. For thirty years, he was a managing partner of Greenwich Associates, an international business strategy consulting firm he founded that serves virtually all the leading financial service organizations around the world. Ellis earned his M.B.A. from Harvard University and his Ph.D. from New York University. He has taught investment management courses at Harvard and Yale, and he is the author of twelve books, including Capital: The Story of Long-Term Investment Excellence and Wall Street People: True Stories of Today's Masters and Moguls. Ellis has served on the boards of Harvard Business School and Phillips Exeter Academy and is currently chairman of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, a trustee of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a director of Vanguard, and a trustee and chair of the investment committee at Yale University.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Powell

One of the best book I've read in 2019. Well researched and thorough analysis done for each of the firms. Lots of great lessons to learn from it. I was immersed from the beginning to the end. What a book, if you aspire excellence in management this book is for you.......more

What It Takes offers a roadmap of how the premiere professional services firms in the World has distanced themselves from their competitors. Charley Ellis is a legend. He is the founder of Greenwich Associates - a strategy consultancy focused on financial clients where he served for several decades.......more

Excellent insights on how to recruit and build a strong culture of innovation at the tactical and strategic levels......more

Goodreads review by Tom

I highly recommend this book to anyone involved in management of a professional services firm. Ellis is renowned for his knowledge of the investment management and securities industries and was managing partner of Greenwich Associates. He conveys his wisdom about management through telling fascinati......more

Goodreads review by Shaun

This was an interesting read about seven excellent companies from consulting and finance to healthcare. They mention Mayo Clinic as the leader in healthcare with their mantra of the needs of the patient come first. My favorite part was the final chapter, which detailed the demise of Arthur Andersen,......more