Mean Business: How I Save Bad Companies and Make Good Companies GreatMean Business is Al Dunlap's specific battle-tested program for business success. It's all based on his incredible track record of injecting new life into tired companies, best exemplified by the dramatic turnaround he quarterbacked at Scott Paper. When Dunlap became chairman and CEO in April 1994, Scott was in woeful shape: a $277 million loss in 1993, on credit watch for excessive debt, a stock that had been comatose for seven years. In a mere nineteen months, Scott had record earnings, the stock had increased in value by $6.5 billion (over 200 percent), and Dunlap merged Scott with Kimberly Clark in a stock swap that valued Scott at $9 billion and created the second largest consumer-products company in the United States. Mean Business provides the inside story behind the strategic thinking that guided Dunlap's quest to once again make Scott a world-class competitor. |
Contents
A Microcosm of Bad Business | 3 |
Shock Therapy | 13 |
Get the Right Management Team | 31 |
Pinch Pennies | 45 |
Know What Business Youre In | 69 |
Get a Real Strategy | 91 |
A Nothing Kid from Hoboken | 107 |
Rambo in Pinstripes aka Chainsaw Al | 125 |
Real Jobs Real Cuts | 167 |
The Best Bargain Is an Expensive CEO | 177 |
Whose Company Is It Anyhow? | 193 |
Boards of Directors God Forgive Them | 207 |
Feed a Company Starve a Culture | 229 |
Impressing the Analysts | 245 |
Now Theres a Bright Idea | 271 |
Fighting Words | 299 |
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Al Dunlap analysts asked assets Away-From-Home Basil Anderson believe better board of directors brand Burnett cash Cavenham chairman company's compensation consultants consumer products Coopers & Lybrand corporate headquarters cost Cottonelle created Crown-Zellerbach culture Dailey deal decisions Dunlap earnings employees everything going hired industry investment Jimmy John Murtagh Kerry Packer Kimberly-Clark knew Lily-Tulip looked manufacturing meeting ment merger million months Murtagh never Newt Nicolosi operations options outsourcing Owens-Illinois Packer pany percent person plant problem Procter & Gamble profit restricted stock restructuring Roubos Russ Kersh S.D. Warren Salomon Brothers Scott Paper Scott Paper Company sell shareholder value shares Sir James Goldsmith sold staff strategy Sunbeam Sunbeam products supplier takeover talk tell things thought tion tissue told took unions Wall Street