Lead Like Ike

Loftus, Geoff. Lead Like Ike: Ten Business Strategies from the CEO of D-Day. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2010.

This book was definitely an interesting read, even though it is out of my normal range of genres. Lead Like Ike takes the history of D-Day, specifically the history of Eisenhower's actions leading up to and following D-Day, and examines them as if D-Day were a corporation and Eisenhower the CEO. Eisenhower used many strategies throughout the war which are useful for CEOs and managers of corporations today.

The ten lessons in the book are fairly simple: determine your mission, plan for success, stay focused, prioritize, plan to implement, communicate, motivate your people, manage your people, avoid project creep, and be honest. The lessons are each explained and described using Eisenhower's actions in D-Day as well as more modern examples from corporations such as General Motors and AOL.

I enjoyed learning more details about D-Day, and it was interesting to see the way in which the author tied the information to lessons to use in business. I appreciated the take-away points listed at the end of each chapter, as well as the sidebars in each chapter with examples from modern corporations. The writing is clear and easy to read. It was easy to get bogged down in the details of the war itself instead of focusing on the lesson to be learned, but I enjoyed learning more about the war and Eisenhower's role in it.

I would recommend this book for people in management positions - the information is invaluable. I would not necessarily recommend that history buffs read this book for information, as the focus is more on the business side than the historical facts, but it is, nonetheless, a good read and worth the time spent on it.

I received a complimentary copy of this book for the purposes of review.