BOSS TALK Top CEOs Share the Ideas that Drive the World's Most Successful Companies

BOSS TALK is a textbook on corporate leadership composed of 21 interviews with top CEOs, conducted by WALL STREET JOURNAL columnists. The interviews are arranged topically, with a checklist of main points provided at the end of each. Included are chats with GE's former boss Jack Welch on how to motivate employees, Boeing chairman Phil Condit on beating the competition, J. Crew's Emily Woods on spotting trends, and the heads of Amazon, Nortel, and Dell Computers on the New Economy. The narrators do an admirable job trying to bring these interviews to life. But as reconstructions of the real thing, they come off sounding stagy. The use of an ersatz foreign accent in interviews with Daimler-Chrysler's Juergen Schrempp, Novartis AG's Daniel Vasella, and TALK MAGAZINE's Tina Brown, among others, is intended to add realism. But this unnecessary prop merely compounds the staginess. S.E.S. (c) AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine [Published: FEB / MAR 03]