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THE LEADERSHIP SHELF
Fit In Stand Out
Blythe McGarvie
McGraw-Hill
2 Penn Plaza, New York NY 10121-2298
www.books.mcgraw-hill.com
0071460799 $21.95 1-877-833-5524

There are important connections between success, business ethics, and financial strengths: connections illustrated in Fit In Stand Out: Mastering The Fiso Factor. Author Blythe McGarvie is a leadership expert who has taught effectiveness for many years: during the course of her teachings she discovered a basic lesson: in order to be a successful leader you must both fit in and stand out. The two are not opposites necessarily, as chapters here demonstrate: McGarvie reveals a FISO Factor program which helps business professionals learn how to achieve both.

MANAGING BOOKS: IDEAS
Loyalty myths shredded like old air-miles statement
By HARVEY SCHACHTER
Wednesday, November 30, 2005 Page C5

The yin-yang of leadership is that you must fit in with everybody else yet stand out from the pack, according to Blythe McGarvie, a former chief financial officer with several major companies.

In Fit In Stand Out: Mastering the FISO Factor (McGraw-Hill, 213 pages, $29.95), she explains how to do that through six catalytic agents: financial acuity, integrity, creating linkages with others, constant learning and growth, the ability to maintain perspective by seeking alternate points of view, and approaching the world as a global citizen.

The over-all concept makes sense, and while her six key themes aren't earth shattering she does offer interesting thoughts, particularly on financial acuity and global citizenship.

OFFICE READS By MacKenzie Dawson Parks LIF Group President Blythe McGarvie wants to teach you about the FISO factor.

The oddly named strategy might sound more like a new brand of lawn fertilizer, but it actually stands for the two forces that power business systems: integration (fitting in) and transformation (standing out).

With that in mind, it's time to FISO! The book presents a formula for helping business people become more effective leaders.

There's also the six pillars of the FISO Factor to master - financial acuity, integrity, linkages, perspective, and global citizenship.

The duality of "fitting in" and "standing out" is stressed - "those who are focused only on fitting in will never get themselves or their company beyond the status quo ... conversely, those who are focused only on standing out will never establish the platform of support required to succeed."

Book Review: How to Climb the Corporate Ladder
Learn to fit in and still make your mark
BY EDWARD PREWITT

Blythe McGarvie has done well in the corporate world, first as a CFO for several large companies and now as a corporate director for Accenture and The Pepsi Bottling Group, among others. She believes unabashedly in corporations—their moneymaking mission, their ability to do good and the opportunities they afford for career success. Fit In, Stand Out: The Key to Leadership Effectiveness in Business and Life is a career guide to the corporate world.

Business success boils down to two actions, says McGarvie: fitting in and standing out.

Fitting in means finding your way in the culture and structure of a company. People who are new to an organization or a position should focus on showing colleagues that they can conform to company norms and are trustworthy and credible.

Standing out means separating yourself from the corporate crowd. Doing outstanding work is not enough—you must seek opportunities to be noticed. While it is important for employees to demonstrate their ability to fit in at the start of a job, the ambitious ones must then market themselves to move upward.

The lengthiest part of McGarvie’s book is devoted to six characteristics that people need in order to advance.

These characteristics include financial acuity—the development of deep financial comprehension—which McGarvie calls the most important catalyst for gaining a leadership position; integrity, an attribute that’s important in an era of public mistrust in corporations; and global citizenship, necessary for success in a global world.

McGarvie dresses up her framework as systems thinking, which is a theoretical approach to analyzing how interactions between parts of an entity affect overall performance. That’s a stretch in this case—and an unnecessary one. The true value of this book is in its practical advice and insights based on McGarvie’s experience.

McGarvie is president of LIF Group and sits on the board of several major corporations. As former CFO of Bic Group, she was one of only 10 women CFOs in the Fortune 500. Her take on the making of great leaders revolves around the paradox that to lead effectively, you have to both fit in and stand out from the crowd, two seemingly opposing concepts that appear contradictory. But solving this puzzle may be the key to opening the door to the C-Suite (the chief executive team) to get an inside look at how senior business leaders undertake their work. McGarvie approaches the Fit In Stand Out (FISO) concept from a number of angles, including "Financial Acuity," "Integrity" (an increasingly rare commodity these days), "Linkages" (the pathways of networks), and "Global Citizenship," which entails mastering the ability to transcend geographical boundaries in pace with the exponential increase of globalization. A fundamental guide to choosing a path in the maze of corporate culture-from someone who has been there and done it.