Robert Lee Frost in “The Road Not Taken” (Frost, 1916) famously described a poetic narrator thinking back to a point in life as “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood”, and the persona had to decide which road to take. Harlan Steinbaum, author of Tough Calls from the Corner Office, had such a defining moment. It was the day he decided to buy back the family business. At the time he did not realize “how way leads on to way” (Frost's phraseology), but the decision touched off a sequence of experiences which developed into Express Scripts, a Fortune 500 company, which, blessed by the innovation of the Internet, has fostered the concept of mail delivery of prescription drugs. A “defining moment”, writes Steinbaum, “is the decision or action a person takes that has the greatest impact on his or her career” (2011, p. 2). Although Steinbaum writes for a mostly practitioner audience, the topic has been of widespread interest to academicians as well (see, e.g. Baraldi, 2013).
After graduation from Tulane University and service in the US Air Force, Steinbaum went to work with his in-laws in their family-owned Medicare-Glaser Corporation, a chain of retail pharmacies (the name antedated the “Medicare” agency of the US government, the use of the same name being accidental). While Steinbaum was the President of Medicare-Glaser, the firm was acquired by Pet, Inc., with Steinbaum becoming a Group President within Pet, Inc. But after years of growing frustrated with the larger company's bureaucratic management procedures, Steinbaum and his brothers-in-law decided to arrange a leveraged buyout to reacquire Medicare-Glaser and restore its entrepreneuring ways. That decision, which was burdened by a lot of debt, was Steinbaum's defining moment. After piloting the mail-order prescription business, Medicare-Glaser, in a joint venture with Sanus Health Corporation, established Express Scripts, which, in 1992, became a publicly traded company and, as of 2013, employed > 30,000 people and filled prescriptions for > 50 million Americans.
Pursuing his hypothesis that other corporate leaders had experienced comparable defining moments, Steinbaum set up interviews with 39 CEOs, summarized in Table I, which, although Steinbaum's book has been extensively reviewed, is possibly the sole venue where readers can find the gist of Tough Calls from the Corner Office collapsed into one synopsis. Observe that most, but not all, of the defining moments resulted in improvements for the decision-making CEO (but because of the negative quality of his defining moment, Frank Jacobs lost everything).
As Steinbaum interviewed the CEOs about their defining moments, he made notes about digressions and tangents which had a way of revealing other topics that the CEOs found important. Steinbaum decided that he needed to solicit their kernels of advice, which he presents in what may even be the most useful part of Tough Calls from the Corner Office – the Appendix titled “Executive Advice and Wisdom”, wherein each interviewee provides a list of suggestions to aspiring managers. The advice is quite varied but often mentions the need for ethics, integrity, example, listening, sustainable relationships, delegation, bodily conditioning and responsiveness. A couple of the interviewees (Barney Ebsworth and Jerry Finger) mention a positive relationship with one's mother as critical to having a wholesome view of other people (Ebsworth, p. 251) and net cash flow (Finger, p. 253). Here are some other samples of the advice (pp. 258, 259):
Richard Mahoney: If you can't communicate an idea, you don't have one. Sanford N. McDonnell: The only thing worse than having a contract with the government is not having a government contract.
Tough Calls from the Corner Office has few deficiencies. A helpful emendation would be to bold the statement of the defining moment for each interviewee. At present, with some interviewees the reader really has to hunt for it. Perhaps a higher prevalence of diversity among the interviewee demographics would help, but one can easily understand that the CEOs Steinbaum treats are at least typical and that he did well to include a number of women. Although the term “corner office” is loosely understood to refer to a physically desirable set of windows identified with prestige (thus the CEO), the book never really defines the term “corner office” even though it is in the title. Also, it seems that the tough calls for many of the interviewees were not made from the corner office but rather years before the interviewee even foresaw being in such location. The absence of an index could also be cited as a drawback but does not come across as a problem, partly because the book is so well organized and articulated.
Many strengths stand out in Tough Calls from the Corner Office. One set of strengths is the persistence and time which Steinbaum had to invest in finding the interviewees, gaining access to them and getting them to speak on the record. A second strength is Steinbaum's methodology of presentation. Each chapter begins with an essay wherein Steinbaum discourses in general on the topic of that chapter; then, successively, each interviewee is introduced with a vignette in which Steinbaum sets the stage for that interviewee and his or her defining moment, followed by the essay written by the interviewee. The margins are wide enough for notations, and the paper is of a traditional sort which accepts either pencil or ink readily. The book makes for a smooth read and may be considered inspiring. For an original edition in particular, the absence of typographical errors and other distractions is comparatively impressive.
Tough Calls from the Corner Office by Harlan Steinbaum should be read by all practitioners and managers who want to know “how way leads on to way”. The younger you are, the more profitable you will find this book as failure or success turns on being ready for your defining moment. Are you ready for yours?
References
The reviewer's special thanks go to Harlan Steinbaum for his reading of an earlier version of the submitted manuscript and correcting errors of substance. The opinion, however, is entirely the reviewer's own.
