Mean Business: How I Save Bad Companies and Make Good Companies Great - Hardcover

Mean 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.

an original: an outspoken, irascible executive with an incredible track record of injecting new life into tired companies. The business media have coined a new verb--"to dunlap"--when describing a fast company turnaround. In April 1994 he became CEO and chairman of Scott Paper, which had lost $277 million in 1993, was on credit watch for excessive debt, and whose stock 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 combines Dunlap's colorful personal history--his working-class background, employment, friendship with such people as Sir James Goldsmith and George Soros, his views on why too many executives think of themselves as corporate royalty--and his provocative ideas on management an