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

I suppose I was motivated by five factors: I did not enjoy the practice of law—and recognized that real career success depends on having a passion for what one is doing. I read about a highly successful buyout that former secretary of the treasury Bill Simon had done of Gibson greeting cards, achieving financial results far beyond what is possible

WARREN BUFFETT Founder and CEO, Berkshire Hathaway

If I look at our success over the last thirty years, it really comes down to having learned to trust people, to trust their judgment, and to delegate to skilled people.

A leader can persuade others to follow through one of three basic means of communication: writing something that inspires readers; saying something that motivates listeners; or doing something that sets an example for others to follow.

BILL GATES Cofounder, Microsoft; Cochair, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

“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

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

Let me just give you a good piece of news. A single bag of Lay’s has less salt than a slice of bread. DR: Really? IN: Yes, because it’s surface salt. For bread you need it as a leavening agent. In soup you need it as a preservative. With potato chips, it’s a surface salt, so it’s actually three ingredients in a bag of Lay’s: a little bit of salt, p

We view the stock price and revenues and profits as a result of doing things right on the innovation side, on the creativity side, focusing on the right products. Treating customers like they’re jewels and focusing on the user experience. I didn’t even know the numbers that you just quoted. This is not something that’s even in my orbit, to be hones