First Days

By Unmesh Kher

Few things matter as much to a leader's success as the impression that he or she makes in the first 100 days on the job. So say Thomas Neff and James Citrin, top brass at executive search firm Spencer Stuart, in You're in Charge--Now What?, which presents a detailed "8-point plan" to help aspiring CEOs navigate that crucial phase. Neff and Citrin interviewed dozens of executives while conducting their research, and they illustrate each point of their plan--from shaping a management team to crafting a strategic agenda to engineering corporate culture--with real-life examples of success and failure. To explain the importance of preparation before Day One, for instance, Neff and Citrin cite Xerox CEO Anne Mulcahy, who, realizing she knew relatively little about finance, enlisted the director of financial analysis to give her a crash course in "Balance Sheet 101." To underscore the value of communication, they reveal that Gap CEO Paul Pressler kept a weblog as he visited stores around the country, assessing the retailers' culture and practices and trying his hand at tasks crucial to their operations. ("Stock replenishment," Pressler noted in an entry, "was one of my favorite jobs.") Leavened by anecdote and enriched by the authors' deep understanding of American corporate culture, this book isn't just a navigational chart for the Big Cheese. It is also an entertaining read for the layman. --U.K.