Revisiting a Good to Great CEO: Nucor’s Ken Iverson

I’m calling Ken Iverson the Alan Mulally of CEOs in the 1980s and 1990s. “Plain Talk” by Ken Iverson is one of my favorite business books, despite its lack of self-congratulation and the absence of so-called transformational management concepts. Instead, this is a book about how people were treated, the idea of decentralization, bonus structures, and using instincts to make business decisions. In this conversation, find out why we rate this a five-star book.

Episode Highlights

1. Bruce likes Townsend, Mark likes Iverson
2. Be careful about putting leaders on a pedestal
3. A book that’s lacking in a bigger-than-life personality
4. Nucor did not fall apart when Iverson was pushed out
5. The four principles of treating people rightly
6. Employees determined their job descriptions while performance appraisals did not exist
7. The numbers that Nucor tracked daily
8. On being thin-skinned
9. Nucor’s company bonuses
10. The reason underpaid employees are a cost to the company
11. CEOs who are opposites

Books Mentioned

• Up the Organization
• The Halo Effect
• Snapshots From Hell
• Railroader
• The HP Way

Episode Pairings