And think about it—as a senior executive, what do you really get paid to do? You get paid to make a small number of high-quality decisions. Your job is not to make thousands of decisions every day. If I make three good decisions a day, that’s enough. Warren Buffett says he’s good if he makes three good decisions a year. I really believe that.

DR: Suppose somebody says, “Look, I don’t care about being healthy, I just want to eat a great snack.” What snack is going to make me the happiest? IN: Fritos. Oh my God, you would feel like you died and went to heaven.

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

ROBERT F. SMITH Founder and CEO, Vista Equity Partners; Philanthropist

So at the dinner table, virtually every day, she would sit down and have this conversation about “Give me a speech as if you were the president.” One day it would be prime minister, one day it would be chief minister, and she would always critique us. She would never give us a compliment. She would just tell us: “No chief minister would do this, no

After books, we started selling music, and then we started selling videos. Then I got smart and e-mailed a thousand randomly selected customers and asked them, “Besides the things we sell today, what would you like to see us sell?” That answer came back incredibly long-tailed. Basically, the way they answered the question was with whatever they

Warren Buffett brings up all the time that great Benjamin Graham quote that in the short run the stock market is a voting machine and in the long run it’s a weighing machine.

PHIL KNIGHT Cofounder and Chairman Emeritus, Nike Inc.

BILL GATES