When the hard-nosed Harold Geneen was driving the growth of ITT in its heyday in the 1960s and '70s from a $760 million company to a $17 billion conglomerate, his management philosophy was blunt: "In business, words are words, explanations are explanations, promises are promises, but only performance is reality.
When Jim Kilts showed up at Gillette in 2001, the first outsider to run the Boston-based company in more than 70 years, he found a business with great brands losing market share. Its acquisitions of Duracell and Braun were not delivering. Sales and earnings were flat, the company had missed its earnings estimates for 15 straight quarters, the stock had plummeted, and Wall Street had lost patience. Yet two-thirds of the top managers were getting top ratings. People were being rewarded for effort; performance, under Mr. Kilts regime, became the new measure.


As he recounts in "Doing What Matters," Mr. Kilts was fortunate to have a wise board that included Warren Buffett......

Join Now to view the rest of this term paper!
Members: Login to view this research paper.

Title: Doing What Matters
Approximate Word Count: 980
Approximate Pages: 4 (250 words per double-spaced page)

With the Term Papers Lab Membership Pass, you get instant access to every essay on this site, including this essay on Doing What Matters, for as long as you remain a member.

Other essays sites charge almost $100 for a single term paper. At Term Papers Lab, you can get instant access to over 100,000 research papers for as little as $29.95!