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

I don’t think it was any of the things you listed. If someone said, “Only name one thing you did,” I think it’s this idea of being a constant learner, of always being willing to say to yourself, “You don’t know everything and you can learn something,” from whoever. From this interview, from whoever you talk to—it doesn’t have to be people you work

“One of the things I’ve learned about data and the data we collect is we think data is objective. Data is actually sexist. We don’t actually know why women have dropped out of computer science, but there’s some theories looking at the data we do have.… When I played home video games, it was Pong, Pac-Man. Then, with the advent of computers, they we

Being a really good listener is one of the most key things. When I sit around listening to the Elders talk in meetings, I realize they’ve become Elders because they spent their lifetimes listening and absorbing and then only speaking by choosing their words carefully. Another key thing is loving people—a genuine love of everybody, and looking for t

There’s a saying I like—I think about it in business a lot—“Success has a thousand parents, and failure is an orphan.”

MELINDA GATES Cochair, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Every company was inspired by his vision: be daring; offer something new and exciting; appeal to people’s willingness to take a chance; and sell an enjoyable experience as well as a product or service.

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

You need to be working two or three years in advance.

Surrounding yourself with great people. Learning to delegate early on—not trying to do everything yourself. Making sure you’ve got the kind of people who are praising the team around them, not criticizing them. And having people who are willing to really innovate, be bold, and create something that everybody who works for the company can be really

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