Discover the attributes of the 25 greatest business leaders and how they can enhance your own leadership. - Organized thematically, leaders describe a major challenge in their business lives and how they dealt with it. - The focus: actionable insights you can use to deepen your influence and grow your career.

Mukul Pandya is editor and director of Knowledge@Wharton, a web-based journal of research and business analysis published by The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Introduction

xiii

Best of the Best: Inside Andy Grove's Leadership at Intel

1

(20)

Leadership and Corporate Culture

21

(26)

Truth Tellers

47

(26)

Identifying an Underserved Market

73

(30)

Seeing the Invisible

103

(28)

Using Price to Gain Competitive Advantage

131

(28)

Managing the Brand

159

(24)

Fast Learners

183

(26)

Managing Risk

209

(28)

Conclusion

237

(6)

References

243

(18)

Index

261

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Introduction IntroductionIn June 2000, John Bogle, founder and former CEO of the Vanguard Group, spoke about leadership at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. As an avid group of executives listened to the man who popularized the principle of index-based investing--and in the process built the Vanguard Group into a firm managing more than $550 billion in assets--Bogle ended his speech quoting James Norris, a Vanguard manager, who wrote: "While it is revealing to consider...what constitutes a leader, your search for understanding, for some kind of leadership formula, is apt to end in frustration. It is like studying Michelangelo or Shakespeare: You can imitate, emulate, and simulate, but there is simply no connect-the-dots formula to Michelangelo's David or Shakespeare's Hamlet. I suppose, when all is said and done, it really comes down to this: People are leaders because they choose to lead."The heart of leadership is as simple as that: It is a matter of choice and determination. It is equally true, however, that no two leaders are exactly alike. Gandhi and Churchill rallied millions behind them, but not quite in the same way or for the same reasons. In the business world, John Bogle's leadership of Vanguard might have something in common with the way Warren Buffett runs Berkshire Hathaway, but the two also have big differences--although both are involved, broadly, in the "investment" business. Andrew Grove and Bill Gates are chairmen of high-tech companies with commanding positions in their respective markets--but while Gates grew up as the privileged son of a wealthy attorney, Grove spent his early years enduring the rigors of Stalinist Hungary. These vastly different backgrounds are reflected in their approaches to leadership.If this is true, then people who choose and are determined to become influential business leaders can benefit from observing other leaders and using their observations to discover and nurture their own leadership style. The purpose of studying other business leaders is not so much to imitate their qualities as to discover which attributes resonate with one's own and, thus, can be cultivated to further enhance one's leadership skills and capabilities. Leaders are made, not born. Discovering the attributes of lasting leadership can help people increase their impact in their own spheres. Someone who does this might not become another Jack Welch or Mary Kay Ash, but he or she might become a better leader than would otherwise be possible in the absence of this knowledge.Our book,Lasting Leadership: What You Can Learn from the Top 25 Business People of Our Times,is based on that premise. It is the result of collaboration betweenNightly Business Report(NBR), the most-watched daily business program on U.S. television, andKnowledge@Wharton( http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu ), the online research and business analysis journal of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. To celebrate NBR's 25th anniversary in January 2004, Wharton and NBR worked together to identify the 25 most influential business leaders of the past 25 years. NBR's viewers nominated more than 700 business people from around the world, and a panel of six Wharton judges selected the Top 25.The winners are, in alphabetical order, Mary Kay Ash, founder of Mary Kay Inc.; Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com; John Bogle, founder of The Vanguard Group; Richard Branson, CEO of Virgin Group; Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway; James Burke, former CEO of Johnson & Johnson; Michael Dell, CEO of Dell Inc.; Peter Drucker, the educator and author; William Gates, chairman of Microsoft; William George, former CEO of Medtronic; Louis Gerstner, fo