The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success

There were two basic sources of this astonishing influx: a remarkable tightening of operations and the sale of businesses deemed noncore by Anders’s strategic framework.

only purchase companies if the price translated into a maximum multiple of five times cash flow after the easily quantifiable benefits from programming discounts and overhead elimination had been realized. This analysis could be done on a single sheet of paper (or if necessary, the back of a napkin). It did not require extensive modeling or project

cable television business, the more he liked it. Three things in particular caught his attention: the highly predictable, utility-like revenues; the favorable tax characteristics; and the fact that it was growing like a weed.

“Computers require an immense amount of detail . . . I’m a mathematician, not a programmer. I may be accurate, but I’m not precise.”

As Burke said in describing his early years in Albany, “Murphy delegates to the point of anarchy.”7

“The system in place corrupts you with so much autonomy and authority that you can’t imagine leaving.”