How to Lead: Wisdom from the World's Greatest CEOs, Founders, and Game Changers

GINNI ROMETTY Former Chairman, President, and CEO, IBM

ERIC SCHMIDT Former Chairman, Google/Alphabet

In discussing what makes a leader, Eric emphasizes the importance of mastering one skill or area before branching out to other areas.

But remember, it’s not up to me. It’s also up to a board of directors. To me the thing is to make the company as good as you can, and it actually creates all the opportunities you have.

“Make you like them” is a cognitive bias we have in interviewing people. You actually want to avoid being caught in that trap. I’m looking for two key drivers in a candidate. I’m looking for their passion. Do they actually love what they do? There was a young woman who worked for us fifteen years ago, a year or two out of an Ivy League school, I fo

For simplicity’s sake, I have divided the leadership experience of those in this book into six categories: Visionaries: Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Oprah Winfrey, and Warren Buffett Builders: Phil Knight, Ken Griffin, Robert F. Smith, Jamie Dimon, and Marillyn Hewson Transformers: Melinda Gates, Eric Schmidt, Tim Cook, Ginni Rometty, a

The most important thing is to keep both ears open, because you never know if a nugget of an idea can actually translate to a big success in the company. One of the things I have learned is not to dismiss the ideas. I catalogue all the ideas I get, then I send it out to my people, saying, “Hey, I listened to this group of people talk about our prod

MARILLYN HEWSON Executive Chairman and Former Chairman, President, and CEO, Lockheed Martin

I go back to the beginning, way back in 1911. When IBM started, it wasn’t IBM. It made cheese and meat slicers. Then it was clocks, then tabulating, then it was an era of the mainframe, which was the back office. Then the company reinvented itself again and got into software and services. Now we’re reinventing ourselves again. To me, that art of re

We bought businesses that we thought were decent businesses at sensible prices, and we had good people to run them. But we also bought marketable securities in Berkshire. Over time, the emphasis shifted from marketable securities to buying businesses. At first we bought some stocks. Then in 1967 I bought a local insurance company for $8.7 million.