'Mac' Attacks Bureaucracy--Again
November 7, 2007
Robert W. "Mac" MacDonald, the entrepreneur who recently emerged from retirement to lead Allianz's short-lived income annuity venture, has published his third book--one that's just as authority-tweaking as his first two.
The new book, "Beat The System: 11 Secrets to Building an Entrepreneurial Culture in a Bureaucratic World" (John Wiley & Sons), expands on the iconoclastic themes that MacDonald aired in "Cheat to Win" and "Control Your Future," his earlier works.
A self-described college dropout, MacDonald started out in 1965 as a life insurance agent for New England Mutual Life. In 1987, he created the Minneapolis-based carrier, LifeUSA, and sold it to global insurance giant Allianz in 1999 for $540 million, personally netting more than $50 million.
In "Beat The System," MacDonald once again derides the powers-that-be and explains how to challenge or evade what he believes are the hidebound corporate rules that stifle creative, energetic, entrepreneurial individuals. He describes the book as a "survival manual for living in a bureaucratic world."
MacDonald retired as CEO of Allianz Life Insurance of North America in 2002 after establishing it as the leading marketer of equity-indexed annuities. In 2006, he started AIMS, an Allianz unit aimed at marketing indexed income annuities through the independent agent channel. The venture, and his tenure there, ended this past August.
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