THE 80/20 CEO

Canady offers a guide to perfecting a profitable business through better management.

In this nonfiction debut, the author, who’s the CEO of OTC Industrial Technologies and Arrowhead Engineered Products, breaks down the philosophy and practical elements of a solid “profitable growth operating system,” or PGOS. He writes that he learned the basics of leadership in the U.S. Navy; began his post-military career in the heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) field; earned an MBA at the University of Chicago in the early 2000s; and joined an unnamed “global tech company” with the aim of rising to its upper echelons: “The fact that the company had urgent problems gave me a greater opportunity to climb faster and establish myself sooner,” he notes, quipping that “you can’t fall out of a basement.” He moved into private equity, where he repeatedly observed the wisdom of the Pareto principle, from which he takes the title of his book: “Just 20 percent of what you do or spend generates 80 percent of your revenue.” (He sardonically adds, “Don’t get too happy, though, because the other 80 percent of what you spend generates just 20 percent of your revenue.”) In a series of chapters liberally broken up with bullet points, key takeaways, and colored insets, Canady lays out the workings of the Pareto principle as it applies to everything from meetings to workflow. At every stage, he employs a pitch-perfect combination of common sense and wit, clearly informed by long experience. When discussing the essential need to simplify in business procedures, for instance, he notes that his own candidate for the greatest authority in that area would be the great naturalist writer Henry David Thoreau, although he admits that “you probably wouldn’t want him as a customer.” (“In fact,” he adds, “you probably couldn’t get him as a customer because he bought almost nothing from anybody.”) Canady not only effectively demonstrates that the 80/20 principle is “the single most important assumption” in management; he also entertains his readers at every step along the way.

A brisk, enjoyable management manual to help CEOs develop “a bias for action.”