John A. Byrne is the editor in chief of Fast Company. Formerly a senior writer for Business Week, he is the author of several other books, including Odyssey (coauthored with John Sculley), The Whiz Kids, and Informed Consent. Most recently, Byrne was Jack Welch's collaborator on Jack: Straight from the Gut.
"Byrne's rendition of Dunlap's year-and-a-half tantrum is remarkable, enriched by interviews with most of the top players in thedrama...Byrne does an excellent job of chronicling the human tormentresulting from plant closures where experienced and efficient life-timeemployees of Sunbeam were suddenly thrown onto unemployment rolls."Washington Monthly"John Byrne is simply the best investigative business journalist in the land. Byrne rightfully nails an executive who sorely deserves nailing. The documentation is powerful and chilling. Moreover, this extraordinary yarn also provides a cautionary tale that should be read closely on Wall Street as well as in the boardroom." -Tom Peters, author of Thriving on Chaos and Liberation Management "From Greek Tragedy through Shakespearean tragedy, we have learned important human and leadership lessons. John Byrne has written a business history tragedy. The Al Dunlap failure is a must read for its lessons in leadership. Through detailed story telling, Byrne not only gives us the story but provides a set of tragic lessons on how bad leadership ultimately destroys shareholder value and people's lives." -Noel Tichy, author with Eli Cohen of The Leadership Engine, and University of Michigan professor"I haven't been consciously searching for the antithesis of excellence, but I think I've found it anyway. In this extremely well-researched and well written book, Byrneshows us how the American system of market capitalism can be completely perverted. Under the banner (false as it turns out) of shareholder value, Chainsaw Al has repeatedly destroyed people, companies, and ultimately, himself.-Bob Waterman, coauthor, In Search of Excellence"This is a captivating book that deserves to be a movie. Chainsaw is to the nineties what Barbarians at the Gate was to the eighties. It is a riveting story filled with compelling characters who wrestle with one of today's most important business issues: The enduring value of the long-term versus what is simply short-term and expedient. Never before has this question been more dramatized than in this remarkable tale." -Gerard R. Roche, chairman, Heidrick & Struggles, Inc."A superbly written book. John Byrne provides a riveting and frightening tale of how egos and greed can destroy a company and people's lives. Every person who cares about the long-term health of American business should read this book, and shudder at its implications."-James C. Collins, coauthor of Built to Last"John Byrne has done us a great favor with his magnificent book on 'Chainsaw Al.' It is a fitting tribute for a CEO who has defined for our age the worst of Corporate Darwinism and brutal short-termism. This book will serve as a template every senior executive and corporate ethicist will use to evaluate the responsibilities and consequences of leadership in Corporate America."-Warren Bennis, University of Southern California Distinguished Professor of Business Administration and coauthor of Organizing Genius"If he were on fire, I wouldn't piss on him." -Albert Dunlap on the authorThe Sunbeam Chainsaw MassacreAl Dunlap and his crew cut down to size?a riveting account that captures the zeitgeist and dark underside of the 'Nineties restructuring boom, as surely as the 'Eighties Era of Greed was laid bare by The Predators' Ball and Barbarians at the Gate. And what a cast of characters the book brings alive. One is mutual-fund manager Michael Price, who brought Dunlap in to run Sunbeam in 1996 and led the cheering on Wall Street as the new boss laid off half the company's employees and wiped out the economies of entire towns by closing factories and distribution centers, all in the name of boosting the bottom line. Price's mutual-fund empire prospered mightily for a time as Dunlap pushed Sunbeam's stock from 12 1/2 to over 50 in just a year and a half.Byrne recounts a wonderful vignette that lays bare Price's consuming greed and insouciance toward others. At one point during a tour of his huge New Jersey estate, the author relates, the fund czar harangued two former Sunbeam managers, telling them that they were now his "slaves" and would have to "work like hell" to make him "millions." As he says this, he takes his riding crop and repeatedly smacks a wooden horse in his polo stables to drive the point home.? the book is at its best in describing Chainsaw himself in all his nuttiness andhypocrisy. His epic tirades and rages are recounted in delicious, unexpurgated detail. In his self-congratulatory autobiography, Mean Business, Dunlap portrayed himself as the indefatigable friend of the shareholder, cutting out extraneous costs and perks to burnish the bottom line. Yet the Dunlap that Byrne describes at Sunbeam was an incredible pig, demanding huge pay packages, a free Mercedes, first-class air fare and overnights at the Four Seasons when he journeyed from Sunbeam's home in Florida to visit
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