The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success

William Thorndike is the founding partner of a $1 billion private equity fund (Housatonic Partners), which gives him better standing than most of his peers to describe what makes CEOs successful. The Outsiders profiles eight CEOs of large companies (ranging from the Washington Post to General Dynamics) with a goal of identifying similarities in how they approached profitability metrics and management techniques. By focusing on extremely large companies and using such an imperfect barometer as share price to measure success, Thorndike has a hard time proving his thesis. Nonetheless, the book contains a number of useful ideas and best practices that can be applied to companies of any size.