Expand Your Mind: CEO Potpourri
by Miki Saxon
I hope you have some time today, because I have some great interviews with, and commentary on, some great CEOs.
However, I’m going to start at the opposite end of the spectrum. As you well know, there are plenty of CEOs that aren’t great or even mediocre, but are just plain lousy. Here is Forbes list of the 10 Biggest CEO Screw-ups Of 2010.
Enough of that, now on to the positive
First up is one of my favorite CEOs, GE’s Jeff Immelt, who took the hard road in taking the company back to its roots building real products based on creativity and innovation—as opposed to the financial engineering that drove the company under his predecessor, Jack Welch—and building people for the long term.
It’s a bottom-up approach that shuns hierarchy, and places most of the responsibility for continuous improvement on the teams. … Mr. Immelt also sees himself as the champion of what he calls “large-scale entrepreneurship” at G.E. By that, he means identifying long-term market shifts — “what’s next,” he says — and then marshaling the company’s research, manufacturing and marketing resources to capitalize on the opportunity.
Next is Kathy Savitt, C.E.O. of Lockerz, a social network and e-commerce site, who sees cynicism as the start of corporate cancer.
“Another cell of cynicism is when you feel a company is not actually living out its core values.”
Sometimes CEOs step out of the top role with the explanation that they want to focus on a more strategic role, but how many of them say publicly that they aren’t very good? Barry Diller did just that when he stepped down at IAC.
“I told them the company wasn’t being managed correctly,” Diller, 68, said. “I never thought I was a very good manager. I mean I am decent, but I want to go back to what I am good at, which is looking for opportunities to grow the business.”
Finally, a leadership lecture at Wharton by Robert Wolf, chairman and CEO of UBS Group Americas and president of UBS Investment Bank, who talks about his career, risk and the future. Watch the lecture or read the synopsis.
Flickr image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pedroelcarvalho/2812091311/
