Performance Without Compromise: How Emerson Consistently Achieves Winning Results.

Performance Without Compromise: How Emerson Consistently Achieves Winning Results. By Charles F. Knight, with Davis Dyer. Harvard Business School Press, 245 pages. $29.95

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In some ways, the story of Emerson Electric sounds a bit like that of a family company: In the 46 years from 1954 to 2000, it had only two CEOs. The second of those, Charles F. Knight, served from 1973 to 2000, becoming chief executive at age 37 and leading the company on a tremendous growth spurt that vaulted revenues 15-fold and earnings 18-fold by the time he retired. During that span, moreover, return on shareholders' equity averaged 15 percent a year.

An enviable record, to be sure, and one worth trying to understand. That's why Knight, now chairman emeritus at Emerson, and his co-author Dyer, a consultant, attempt to explain it. The book looks back over Knight's tenure, providing both a historical chronicle of the decisions Emerson made and a framework for how it was run. In the course of that narrative, Knight makes it clear that the company had to work through adversity time and again, and to continually evolve in terms of managerial talent and depth.

A central pillar of the book is a "dynamic management process" that Knight says the company used to "link strategy and action, establish a common set of values, provide a structure for setting priorities, evaluate results and solve problems." These notions are distilled into six key tenets that are laid out in the first chapter.

There may be a bit too much detailed company history here for readers who don't know much about Emerson or the electronics industry. But this is a well-written narrative that offers effective lessons about how one company achieved great things.