Personal Perspective On Two Recent Book Releases From Gerstner And Grove

Andy Grove's most recent title, "Swimming Across," is not a business book. The hard-nosed co-founder of Intel, who already has two successful titles on the bookshelf, has this time penned a personal account of his youth in Nazi-occupied Germany and his ultimate escape to the United States.

If you have read either "Only The Paranoid Survive" or "High Output Management," you already know Grove can write well. I was surprised and delighted, however, by Grove's willingness to detail stories of his youth, some of which quite frankly are less than flattering. We learn an awful lot about the man through his recounting of childhood experiences. A case of scarlet fever at 4 left him hard of hearing and forced him to compensate in a number of ways. His father's internment in a concentration camp during the war forced Grove and his mother to change their name and become incredibly resourceful in order to survive.

But Grove goes well beyond the difficulties of his youth and writes openly and with true humor about his childhood experiences with sexuality. On several occasions I found myself saying, "I can't believe he wrote this passage." In the end, I shouldn't have been surprised. The book proves he has the guts to tell it like it is, without regard to how it may be perceived.

"Swimming Across" is a book I can fully recommend.

Lou Gerstner's "Who Says Elephants Can't Dance?" is a very different book. With the subtitle "Inside IBM's Historic Turnaround," the reader's expectation is that the charismatic Gerstner is about to lead us into the inner workings of the turnaround of one of the country's most important companies.

For me, at least, this book seems only to skim the surface. Gerstner, for instance, deals with the acquisition of Lotus in less than two and a half pages. There's little to no detail about the discussions Gerstner had internally that led him to make the decision to launch the hostile but successful takeover. Given that the deal at that time represented the largest software acquisition in the history of the industry, let alone a hostile one, this account left me wanting to know much more.

Gerstner does a better job describing IBM's culture and how it led the company into its decline than he does detailing his interaction with senior-level IBM executives in directing the turnaround. It could be that he bit off too much in writing about his entire tenure at the company and would have been able to delve more deeply into the subject had he really concentrated on the challenging years of the actual turnaround.

There are some short passages where Gerstner does let us inside. One of the more interesting anecdotes is when he gets into his limousine for his ride to work and finds Tom Watson Jr. sitting inside.

Unfortunately, there are far too few stories like this and far too much theory. In reading the book, there were times when I thought Gerstner was going to let us get to know him. Like the time he got on the corporate jet and discovered an IBM policy prohibited liquor from being served on board,a policy he immediately reversed.

In the end, for those of us in this industry, Gerstner's book doesn't go nearly far enough. But I do think for those that are not as knowledgeable about high-tech and IBM, it could be a worthwhile read.

Make something happen. I can be reached at (516) 562-7812 or via e-mail at [email protected].