The Outsiders
William Thorndike profiles eight chief executives who beat the market by huge margins over long careers, including Tom Murphy of Capital Cities and Katharine Graham of The Washington Post. What set them apart was not charisma or vision statements but capital allocation, the quiet discipline of deciding where to put a company's cash. They bought back stock when it was cheap, avoided dividends and acquisitions that did not pay off, and ran lean head offices. Thorndike argues that this skill matters more than almost anything else a CEO does. Warren Buffett praised it as an outstanding book about CEOs who excelled at capital allocation.
What you might want to know about The Outsiders
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
A study of eight unconventional CEOs who delivered extraordinary returns by being unusually disciplined about how they spent their companies' money.
No. This is a business book by William N. Thorndike about eight unconventional CEOs and capital allocation. It is unrelated to the S.E. Hinton novel of the same name.
It is how a company chooses to use its money, such as reinvesting in the business, buying back shares, paying dividends, or making acquisitions. Thorndike argues it is a CEO's most important job.
The Outsiders was written by William N. Thorndike, published in 2012 by Harvard Business Review Press.
The Outsiders is 272 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Outsiders takes most readers 4 to 6 hours to finish.
The Outsiders is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
