Ego Check: Why Executive Hubris Is Wrecking Companies and Careers, and How to Avoid the Trap.

• Author: Marshall, Jeffrey
• Position: Bookshelf - Brief article - Book review

Ego Check: Why Executive Hubris Is Wrecking Companies and Careers, and How to Avoid the Trap. By Mathew Hayward. Kaplan Publishing | 251 pages | $24.95.

This is far more likely to be a cautionary tale for chief executives, chairmen and company founders than CFOs, who by nature are more cautious, backroom people than polarizing figures at center stage.

But author Hayward, an investor banker-turned researcher and academic, has written an intriguing and insightful book that makes tremendous use of detailed case studies. Two of the better known are the former (and present) CEOs of Apple Computer, Steve Jobs and John Sculley. Both fell victim to rapid success, lionization in the press and a kind of overweening pride that blinded them to dangers, Hayward writes. But Jobs, who was fired by Apple in 1985, only to return in 1997, learned to temper his emotions and recognize the importance of function over just form--an issue that Hayward says had hurt him at both Apple and NeXt, which he had founded after leaving Apple.

Another...