Book Review: Where Have All the Leaders Gone?

Studying in an MBA degree program? Lee Iacocca wants you to know that you'll need more than a piece of paper to be a great leader. In his latest book, he unravels the management style at the White House.

One Nation, Under Mismanagement
by Gabby Hyman
MBA-Business-Schools Book Reviewer

Where Have All the Leaders Gone? by Lee Iacocca with Catherine Whitney; hardcover, 192 pp; Scribner, $25

That confident charmer you see on Chrysler television ads is done smiling. In fact, he’s sputtering with rage. He’s had it up to here with the Bush administration and has filled nearly 200 pages with his disgust with the media, Congress, and the voters who have given a carte blanche to erosion of personal freedoms, economic mismanagement, and a foreign policy akin to global insanity. “I’ve never been a Commander of Chief,” writes Lee Iacocca in Where Have All the Leaders Gone?, “but I’ve been a CEO.”

Iacocca renders a top-down analysis of this MBA-led Administration that he claims lacks the fundamental “C” qualities that make for successful leadership: courage, conviction, charisma, competency, and common sense. The book is a popular springtime read at MBA degree programs and leadership seminars, and it has ridden atop The New York Times Hardcover Business Book List this May.

It’s “A Hell of a Mess”

Iacocca pulls few punches. His literary style mirrors the management panache wielded to rescue Chrysler in the 1980s. Iacocca claims that Bush’s management of the country over the last six years has resulted in:

• “a bloody war with no plan for winning and no plan for leaving
• the biggest deficit in the history of the country
• skyrocketing gas prices
• borders like sieves.
• the loss of the manufacturing edge to Asia
• schools in trouble
• and once-great companies getting slaughtered by health care costs.”

As for Congress, Iacocca wants it to know, “we didn’t elect you to sit on your asses and do nothing and remain silent while our democracy is being hijacked and our greatness is being replaced with mediocrity.”

People change. The man who had once reaped great profits from the creation of Chrysler’s minivans now wants us to adopt stringent fuel-economy standards. The 82-year-old Iacocca scoffs at Bush’s business training: “Thanks to our first MBA President, Social Security is on life support and we’ve run up a half-a-trillion-dollar price tag (so far) in Iraq.”

About Lee Iacocca

Lido Anthony “Lee” Iacocca is primarily known for his monumental car designs for the Ford Motor Company and his revival of the Chrysler automobile brand in the 1980s. A graduate of Lehigh and Princeton, Iacocca was appointed by then-President Ronald Reagan as head of the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation that raised money for the renovation of that historical landmark.

About the Author

Gabby Hyman has created online strategies and written content for Fortune 500 companies including eToys, GoTo.com, Siebel Systems, Microsoft Encarta, Avaya, and Nissan UK.

Posted on September 19, 2007 at 11:45 AM

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