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

Today, with the Internet, you get that gift of free distribution. We had to take advantage of that gift. That was the basic strategy. We had to switch from a business model where we made a lot of money per reader, with a relatively small number of readers, to a tiny bit of money per reader on a very large number of readers. That’s the transition we

“Look for the job that you would want to hold if you didn’t need a job. You’re probably only going to live once. You don’t want to go sleepwalking through life… Look for the job that turns you on. Find a passion.”

So what does it mean if you want to get speed in a big company? Not just a little start-up—we’re 350,000 people. So, we set about it in a couple of fundamental ways. One is we’ve built design thinking. In fact, we have thirty-two labs around the world. We’ve hired every design graduate there is on this planet. And the idea is that everything you us

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

I don’t think there’s an automatic rule that it’s seven years. When you look at the economy, you always look for the potholes. We did see potholes in 2007, in 2008, in leverage and mortgage. There are no real potholes there now. Fifteen million more people are working. Wages are going up. Stock prices are much higher than where they were. We need t

So I’ll ask the team to do a case study and find the real root cause or causes, and then find real root fixes, so that when you fix it, you’re not fixing it for that one customer, you’re fixing it for every customer. That process is a gigantic part of what we do. If I have a failed order or some bad customer experience, I would treat it just like t

PHIL KNIGHT Cofounder and Chairman Emeritus, Nike Inc.

We had breakfast or lunch over at the Madison hotel [in Washington, D.C.]. He said, “What do I do with this money?” I said, “Investing is just about assigning yourself the right story.” I said, “Imagine Ben Bradlee [then the executive editor of the Post] this morning said to you, ‘What is the Washington Post Company worth?’ What would you do? You h

But this is what I learned sitting in that chair for twenty-five years. At the end of the day, whether you are interviewing me or I get to interview you, whatever your profession is, wherever you are in your life, in your relationships, every person that you encounter, after every experience, wants to know, “Was that okay?” What people are really s