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

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

Accomplishments in themselves bring little meaning or lasting satisfaction, but the pursuit of accomplishment arm in arm with the right people can produce tremendous satisfaction.

If you spend your life keeping your options open, that’s exactly what you’ll do . . . spend your life keeping your options open.

Here, then, is a basic architecture of executive decision making we found in our research: Determine how much time you have to decide, whether minutes, hours, days, months, or even years. Stimulate dialogue and debate—guided by facts and evidence—to determine the best options. Make a decision, firm and unambiguous, once you’re clear on what must be

I’ve asked multitudes of gatherings of executives this question: “Which of the following two categories of mistakes have you more frequently made? Category 1: In retrospect, you waited too long before you acted to move the person out of the key seat. Category 2: In retrospect, you acted too quickly and you should have been more patient. Stop and th

Some love to give speeches; others are nervous in front of a crowd. Some are charismatic; others are not. (Do not confuse leadership with charisma. Charisma does not equal leadership, and some of the most effective leaders have very little charisma.)

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident. Most of us are familiar with situations where people are unwilling or afraid to present unpleasant truths. In many cases, who can blame them? The unspoken rule in all too many companies is: We don’t want to see anything negative, even if it is true; we like our rose-colored glasses. Ignoring facts, e

Cultivate your own style; don’t try to be someone you’re not or to take on a style that doesn’t fit. Can you imagine Winston Churchill trying to imitate Gandhi’s style, wearing a loincloth and speaking in a soft, almost inaudible voice?

Lemann and his partners focused on building a “People Machine” to hire and train an ever-larger pool of aggressive, ambitious, young leaders for eventual deployment. Their ultimate “strategy” was to find passionate, driven young people; put them in an intense meritocratic culture; challenge them with audacious goals; and give them a stake in the ou