Managing Upside Down: The Seven Intentions Of Values-Centered Leadership - Hardcover

Chappell, Tom

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9780688170691: Managing Upside Down: The Seven Intentions Of Values-Centered Leadership

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0688170692 ISBN 13: 9780688170691

Publisher: William Morrow, 1999

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Tom Chappell has created one of America's most extraordinary success stories by turning a mom-and-pop natural personal care products company started on a $5,000 loan into a nationally recognized brand with $28 million and counting in sales. Chappell achieved his rapid growth and profitability by "managing upside down" --focusing on social values and respect for the environment to increase customer satisfaction and the bottom line. Now, Chappell shares his straightforward and practical business advice in seven easy-to-follow steps. They show how anyone can:

Manage for social aims and profit
Redefine leadership in a values-driven company
Develop a competitive advantage around shared values among customers, owners, employees, and communities

Businesses throughout America are already using Chappell's Seven Intentions and proving that pursuing a broader social mission can actually strengthen a company's financial performance. Managing Upside Down brings this important message to an even wider audience.

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About the Author:

Tom Chappell is the co-founder and CEO of Tom's of Maine. He is a popular speaker who regularly appears before business, religious, and college audiences. The author of The Soul of a Business, he lives in Kennebunk, Maine.

From Publishers Weekly:

In 1996, Chappell and his wife, Kate, almost sold their successful company, Tom's of Maine, known for its baking-soda toothpaste, chest rubs and other natural-ingredient products. Instead, they found a new COO/partner, Tom O'Brien, former deodorant chief of Procter & Gamble, and embarked on a binge of new product launches. In this well-intentioned but unoriginal handbook, Chappell, founder/CEO of the company that bears his first name, outlines his seven-step program (the "Seven Intentions") designed to help business managers focus on social and environmental responsibility rather than on the bottom line. "Managing Upside Down" means "letting your own deepest beliefs and values... drive your business," and Chappell, who went to Harvard Divinity School, expands here on the message of his first book, The Soul of a Business (1993), which stressed that spiritual goals and the pursuit of profit are compatible. But much of his advice has a very familiar ring (flatten the hierarchy; give employees permission to act and think creatively; establish interlocking teams, etc.). As it concentrates on his own company's success story, the book often comes across as shameless self-promotion, and it is padded with testimonies from the company's stars. Platitudinous and preachy, this manifesto may nevertheless reach segments of corporate America, though its most receptive readership will probably be like-minded entrepreneurs. Chappell's insistence that companies large and small have an obligation to serve the community and protect the environment deserves to be widely heard, and Tom's of Maine practices what it preaches, giving grants to various organizations and encouraging employees to spend 5% of their paid work time volunteering in community jobs and services. Author tour. (Sept.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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