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PLAIN TALK: LESSONS FROM A BUSINESS MAVERICK by Ken Iverson. Published by John Wiley & Sons, 1997. Hardcover, 196 pages.
Reviewed by Bruce Merrifield
I first met Ken Iverson and became one of his fans in 1983 on the luncheon dais of a Steel Service Center Institute event. As the CEO of a then small, "mini-mill," steel-manufacturing business called Nucor, he was to be the after-lunch speaker. I visited with him briefly before his speech and was initially underwhelmed, but charmed. He wasn't the fast-talking, smart-phrasing, sharpdressing, risk-taking kind of guy that you might think would take on steel producing giants with leading-edge technology. He was, instead, quite plain in every sense.
The steel distributor attendees were more intrigued than awed by this guest. He was only a small supplier to some of them, a gnat in comparison to US Steel, Bethlehem and other big, integrated mill suppliers. But in 1983, the big, integrated mills and the service centers were trying to come out of their worst downsizing, money-losing experience in history. Nucor had, on the other hand, gone through the 1982 industry recession profitably and had gained market share. So, what was this guy's secret?
In his presentation, he talked about how they ran everything as simply as possible. He discussed Nucor's open-book, highperformance culture that was totally egalitarian - all employees were paid essentially out of the bottom line. He did admit that Nucor was scarred by the 1981-1982 recession, but no one had been laid off and that his salary had taken the biggest...