Ego Check: Why Executive Hubris is Wrecking Companies and Careers and How to Avoid the Trap
Mathew Hayward





Format: Hardcover, 272pp.
ISBN: 9781419535352
Publisher: Kaplan Business
Pub. Date: January 2, 2007

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Description and Reviews
From The Publisher:

In the business world, how much self-confidence is too much?

That’s the question Mathew Hayward sets out to answer in his exciting new book, Ego Check: Why Executive Hubris is Wrecking Companies and Careers and How to Avoid the Trap. Hayward, one of the foremost writers and researchers on the topic of executive hubris, examines the critical point at which the same self-confidence necessary for success crosses the line into destructive behaviors that can ruin careers and companies.

Ego Check offers original research gleaned from more than 200 interviews he conducted with executives at premier companies, such as Cisco, Dell, Goldman Sachs, Intel, Morgan Stanley, and Pearson, on the topics of leadership, confidence, and hubris. Hayward also includes over 50 interviews with entrepreneurs whose firms were successfully acquired by larger companies. CEOs profiled range from convicted felon Bernard Ebbers to talented executives like John Sculley and Dean Kamen, whose successful careers have been disrupted by hubris.

In Ego Check, readers learn:

• How extreme optimism leads executives to unrealistic expectations for the future.
• Why a sense of self-worth tied to money, title, or fame is a dangerous illusion.
• What can go wrong when executives extend beyond their capabilities.
• Why it’s critical for executives to reduce dependence on others and shift focus from extrinsic to intrinsic rewards.
• How executives from Apple, Segway, Dell, and Vivendi have fallen prey to hubris—and how today’s leaders can avoid the same mistakes.

About the Author

Mathew Hayward, PhD, worked as a consultant with Accenture and an investment banker with UBS. In 1992, he left the corporate world for academia to pursue a doctorate at Columbia University in New York. He is now an assistant professor at the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado, and his writing has appeared in The Economist, the New York Times, Harper’s magazine, and USA Today.


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