BE 2.0 (Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0): Turning Your Business into an Enduring Great Company

The function of leadership—the number-one responsibility of a leader—is to catalyze a clear and shared vision for the company and to secure commitment to and vigorous pursuit of that vision.

Clearly, it is virtually impossible to lead a company and have only one “to do” on your list. But you should be spending the bulk of your time on your number one priority, concentrating your efforts on that priority until it is complete.

Like such a teacher, a leader idealizes people and has resolute conviction that people can rise to this ideal. A leader grabs the spirit in people, pulling it forward and waking it up. A leader changes people’s perceptions of themselves, getting them to see themselves in the idealized way that he sees them.

we’ve identified the elements of style that are common among effective leaders. They are: Authenticity Decisiveness Focus Personal Touch Hard/Soft People Skills Communication Ever Forward

If you have people who are unsuited to anything except the specific idea or business strategy you have in mind, what happens when that idea fails and you need to move on to the next idea and the next one after that?

“When I was being wheeled into the operating room,” Bill began to explain, “I bet they saw a smile on my face. I realized that if this was to be the end of my life, well, so be it. Dorothy and I had had a fabulous run, a wonderful life. To know that—I mean, to really feel it—while heading into the operating room . . . that’s the moment I knew I’d h

Leadership is the art of getting people to want to do what must be done.

Corporate vision provides a context within which people at all levels can make decisions. The importance of this cannot be overemphasized.

If you define success by money, you always lose. The real scorecard in life is how well you build meaningful relationships and how well you live to your core values. This means that values come before goals, before strategy, before tactics, before products, before market choices, before financing, before business plans, before every decision. I gle