I described the CEO job as knowing what to do and getting the company to do what you want. Designing a proper company culture will help you get your company to do what you want in certain important areas for a very long time.
The industry has to learn how to do CEO succession well. If your definition of success is Intel or Microsoft or HP or IBM, that’s not a good track record, and yet they are the most successful ones.
What I’ve realized is most leaders cannot reinvent themselves at the CEO level or at the operational level.
If Albert Einstein was right, Cal Ripken should have been a CEO or politician rather than a shortstop, because Ripken led by example over and over… and over again.
As board members, we only meet infrequently and are not as engaged with the front line, necessarily. The first thing I did as CEO was I left this board room.
The organization reflects the behavior and characteristics of the CEO, and that establishes the culture. Foster an environment of open communication, and the organization inherits a culture of open communication.
When I got a call from Hansal Mehta, the CEO of White Feathers, asking me to come for one of their films, I was very happy. I thought they’d have an interesting role for me. But when I got to know they just wanted me to stand in for Sanjay Dutt for some scenes, I decided to give this offer the pass.
Silicon Valley’s involvement with Washington dates from one event, which was John Scully – who was the CEO of Apple – had dinner with President Clinton and Vice President Gore in 1993. And we’re all going, like, ‘What’s going on? Why would we have dinner with the president?’
As a CEO, I had significant exposure to private equity, enough that I had in no way bought into the media’s caricature: rapacious privateers who destroy companies.
I don’t feel I’m at liberty to speak about the actions of any one CEO. That’s not fair; given CEOs have duties to their shareholders.
Don’t be afraid to let someone go if it’s not working. You’re not a bad boss. You’re not a bad CEO.
There is a difference between hiring a CEO and turning over control of the business.
Interestingly, many Indian companies where there’s a father-and-son combination are being run as joint CEO organizations because the father has not given up running the company and the son is actively involved in running the company, and there is division of responsibilities.
In 1997, my father appointed me CEO but acted as player-coach, keeping busy on long-term clients such as KFC and international travel brands.
There is almost nothing more painful for a leader than seeing good people leave a growing organization, whether it’s a priest watching a Sunday school teacher walk out the door or a CEO saying goodbye to a co-founder.
It used to be that you would go in to see a CEO, and you would ask them, ‘Is your company for sale?’ and if they said ‘No, we have no interest in selling,’ that was sort of the end of the conversation.
When I came into the CEO office, I basically changed the entire management team. We knew that we had to change the company, so we needed a new set of leaders.
Keeping a ‘CEO blog’ or ‘founder’s blog’ can be a great platform for engaging your users in a nontraditional way, reaching people outside of your product pitch and building rapport without selling them anything except a belief in your ideas.
Unless you are a lawyer or Fortune 500 CEO, carrying a briefcase is, well, nerdy.
The first lesson my kids got about the ocean was to respect it. You can never turn your back on the ocean when you’re dealing with tides and currents – factors beyond your control. You have to be the CEO of your family on the water. CEO stands for ‘constant eyes on,’ and it’s something I never forget.
One of the first acts during the second coming of Steve Jobs as CEO in 1997 was a major board overhaul.
When a politician bends the truth or a CEO breaks a promise, trust takes a beating.
You learn really quickly how not only to be an artist, but you also become all of a sudden the CEO and owners of a company that you have to make major decisions about that I don’t think we were fully prepared for in the beginning.
In every investment, before I get involved or invest, I always see what the mindset of the founder, the CEO, is.
I love spreadsheets. I do all the finances. I pay the publicists. I have to compartmentalize the creative and the business, so there are sacrifices. But ultimately, I get to be the CEO of my own business.
Most companies don’t have a good mechanism to give the CEO real, honest feedback.
In 1976, I was invited to interview for the CEO position of the Girl Scouts of the U.S.A.
When I was CEO, and I’d listen to music, a lot of people listen to music and you get inspiration from it. And a lot of things in hip hop are very instructive for being in business. Particularly, hip hop is a lot about business, and so it was very useful for me in any job.
I’m a blue-collar kid who went on to become a successful entrepreneur. I was the youngest CEO in the history of the New York Stock Exchange. Now I’ve served my country for six years in the House of Representatives.
Larry Fink, 61, tall and outgoing and passionate about his business, is the chairman, CEO, and co-founder of the largest asset-management company in the world, BlackRock.
I’ve developed a much greater respect for our politicians and every high-tech CEO. It’s very easy to read about the things they did that you, of course, would have avoided in hindsight.
The day I was announced as CEO, I think the stock dropped another 20%.
When it comes to meetings and preparing for that, it doesn’t matter if it’s a meeting with the U.N.; with a large operator, CEO, or chairman; or if I have an internal meeting – in all cases, I know that the energy and the engagement in every discussion is extremely important.
Strategy is not really a solo sport – even If you’re the CEO.
At the end of the day, if you’re a professional athlete in track and field you are the CEO of your company.
I’m a capitalist, I’m a CEO, I run a big business, I’m an employer.
I can tell you, because I serve on so many nonprofit boards – where half of us are academics and half of us are from Wall Street – that there’s no CEO who understands at all a derivative. All they know is that somebody tells them in their organization, ‘We’ve got a wonderful profit center.’
Being a CEO still means sitting across the table from big institutional investors and showing your leadership and having them believe in you.
The President is the CEO of this business that we call America.
The chief executive officer is also the chief sales officer. He or she is responsible for the success of the company and making a profit. The closer the CEO is to the everyday selling process, bringing in business, the more successful the company will become.
As a first-time CEO, I wasn’t sure if I would scale to run IronPort long-term. But I wanted a legitimate shot at it.
The chief strategist of an organization has to be the leader – the CEO.
If you spend your time away from work looking at emails and making sure your inbox went down to zero, that’s not an effective way to spend your time as a CEO or an entrepreneur. Often times, those emails aren’t that important.
Michael Eisner let it be known last week that he had no intention of leaving the entertainment business once he steps down as CEO of Disney in October.
I don’t believe it’s appropriate for me or any other CEO to wade into every political dispute. That’s not what we’re here for.
My wife, well she has extensive experience, because before becoming the first lady, she was the wife of the CEO of a large conglomerate. So I have very high hopes that she will carry out her job successfully as first lady of the Republic of Korea.
Most of my ideas come from drawing patterns across conversations I have with different types of people – technology investors, young fashion design students, a CEO. This variety is stimulating and offers many different perspectives on the things I am thinking about.
Whether you stay private or go public, after all is said and done, a CEO’s job is to create lasting shareholder value.
21 years as CEO is a long time. I was and probably still am the longest serving CEO in America. Certainly I am in the media industry, bar none.
I think having a visionary CEO is awesome, and visionary leadership is one thing, but you also need checks and balances on whether this company can withstand a very honest and critical look at itself.
I think people tend to underestimate you when you have a Northern accent, for instance if you have to talk to the CEO of an international company. But then when I’m talking to someone in a factory, it’s just like being with my mum’s mates.
My role is really just to try to make sure that the voice of all shareholders and employees is heard – that no one is bullying their agenda, their choice of a CEO, or their selection of who should be the board members. Benchmark, I believe, has been pushing their agenda at the expense of those stakeholders.
We’re living under the Obama economy. Any CEO in America with a record like this after three years on the job would be graciously shown the door. This president blames the managers instead. He blames the folks on the shop floor. He blames the weather.
