Alan Axelrod - Elizabeth I CEO: Strategic Lessons from the Leader Who Built an Empire

Elizabeth I

CEO

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alan Axelrod is the author of the national Business Week bestseller Patton on Leadership: Strategic Lessons for Corporate Warfare, based on the philosophy and battlefield victories of General George S. Patton, and of the national bestseller What Every American Should Know About American History: 200 Events That Shaped the Nation. His many other works of military history, military biography, and general history include Dictators and Tyrants; The War Between the Spies: A History of Espionage During the American Civil War; Chronicle of the Indian Wars: From Colonial Times to Wounded Knee; Complete Idiots Guide to American History; and Encyclopedia of the American West. He has also written numerous books on management, business communications, and career development.

Axelrod studied history and English at Northeastern Illinois University, and went on to receive his Ph.D. in English, with an emphasis on American literature and civilization, from the University of Iowa. He taught at several colleges before embarking on a career in publishing. After holding executive positions at the Henry Francis Du Pont Winterthur Museum, Van Nostrand Reinhold, and Abbeville Press, he became Director of Development for Turner Publishing, Inc., a subsidiary of Turner Broadcasting System, based in Atlanta. Since 1997, he has been President of The Ian Samuel Group, Inc., a book packaging and consulting firm. He specializes in bringing together authors and publishing professionals with hands-on experience in a variety of fields to create major works of reference for professional and general audiences.

Elizabeth I

CEO

STRATEGIC LESSONS FROM
THE LEADER
WHO BUILT AN EMPIRE

ALAN AXELROD

PRENTICE HALL PRESS

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Copyright 2000 by Alan Alexrod

All rights reserved.

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PRINTING HISTORY

Prentice Hall Press hardcover edition / September 2000

Prentice Hall Press trade paperback edition / April 2002

Prentice Hall Press ISBN: 978-1-101-65949-6

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Axelrod, Alan.

Elizabeth I, CEO: strategic lessons from the leader who built an empire./

Alan Axelrod.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references (p.) and index.

1. Elizabeth I, Queen of England, 15331603Views of leadership. 2. QueensGreat BritainBiography. 3. Leadership. I. Title.

DA355.A94 2000

942.055092dc21 00-034691

CIP

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For Anita, my queen

INTRODUCTION

T he last year of the old century, 1999, witnessed the usual Hollywood harvest of movies, most bulging with the requisite stock of car chases, explosions, dismemberments, supernatural horrors, sexual misalliances, and bathroom humor. Among these, however, was one highly unlikely blockbuster, Elizabeth, the film biography of a 466-year-old queen of England. Literate, rich in subtlety, immersing the viewer in a remote and highly complex time, Elizabeth was hard to imagine as a big box-office draw. But, then, who could have imagined, 466 years earlier, that a slender, pale, golden-red-haired girl, frail in health, declared a bastard by her ruthless father and an uncompromising Parliament, held prisoner through much of her childhood, under a cloud of accusation of treason, would survive to adulthood, let alone assume, at age twenty-five, the throne of England?

And not just survive to become queen, but to become the greatest monarch ever to rule England, a leader who bequeathed her name to a golden age of English achievement and cultureindeed, a consummate example of effective leadership that has endured for five centuries and will doubtless endure for many more.

So Elizabeth I is a fascinating woman, a great monarch, and a figure of extraordinary historical importance. You, on the other hand, are a supervisor, a manager, an executive, a CEO, a boss. Your business isnt a royal realm, and your staff is certainly not your lowly and beholden subjects. What, then, can you learn from this woman who took her nation from the bottom of the European barrel to the summit of the worlds great powers?

You can learn that being a leader is being a leader, whether your enterprise is a renaissance kingdom, a small business, a major corporation, a corporate department, or a three-person work group with a job to do. Elizabeth I, CEO distills and delivers the key leadership lessons of a long, challenging, and highly successful reign, a leadership career that turned a failing enterprise around and shaped the enduring destiny of a people.

An Elizabethan Prologue fills you in on the dysfunctional family and barely functioning world from which Elizabeth came and also furnishes an executive summary of the queens career. The ten chapters that follow the prologue explore that career in selective detail, drawing from it concise lessons for leadership in ten key leadership areas: