The former top editor of the Boston Globe and the Washington Post talks about the Globe's investigation of the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal, attacks on the Post by President Trump, truth as a casualty of political polarization, and more.
The former Xerox CEO Ursula Burns, whose life journey began in a Manhattan tenement, is an outspoken champion of inclusive capitalism and racial equity--themes that animate her just-published memoir, "Where You Are Is Not Who You Are." In this conversation with HBR's editor in chief, she talks about good leadership in a multistakeholder world, income inequality, battling an activist investor, how being both Black and female affected her career trajectory, and more.
Climate change is a pressing concern for Bill Gates, who has just published a new book on the subject. He spoke with HBR's editor-in-chief about the need to reduce carbon emissions to zero by 2050--and the difficulty of that undertaking. It will require new government policies, changes in corporate and individual behavior, and, above all, more R&D funding and innovation to create cleaner technologies and green products. Gates is optimistic that we can succeed but clear-eyed about what lies ahead if we don't: rising temperatures, the disappearance of ecosystems, disastrous crop failures, economic pain, and massive loss of life.
Dimon has been at the helm of JPMorgan Chase, the biggest bank in the United States, for more than 12 years. A straight-talking guy from Queens (albeit a billionaire with an MBA from Harvard Business School), he has led the bank on a steady path of growth, having weathered both the 2008 financial crisis and the "London Whale" trading scandal. Dimon calls that latter episode "the stupidest and most embarrassing situation I have ever been a part of." In this edited conversation with HBR's editor in chief Adi Ignatius, Dimon talks about the public's view of Wall Street, post-recession regulations, the risk of cyberattacks, globalism, inequity, and the rebuilding of U.S. cities. JPMorgan has a plan to invest $150 million in Detroit by 2019 to help launch small businesses, retrain workers, and revive the property market. It has announced similar investments in underserved areas of Chicago ($40 million) and Washington, DC ($10 million). "It's good to help society," Dimon says. "Our customers love it; our employees love it."
One of only a handful of African-American CEOs in the Fortune 500, Frazier gained widespread attention when he withdrew from President Trump's business advisory council after the events of August 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia. He says, "I didn't see this as a political issue. It's an issue that goes to our fundamental values as a country." Frazier grew up in the inner city, in a household that valued education highly. He was fortunate, he says, to be bused out of his neighborhood to "the best schools in Philadelphia," which he credits with closing "the opportunity gap" for him. Despite a degree from Harvard Law School, however, he had to work to become "user-friendly" for the clients and partners at his white-shoe law firm. In this conversation with HBR's editor in chief, Frazier talks about balancing short-term pressures with long-term needs, the dauntingly high percentage of research projects that fail, the rationale for pricing lifesaving drugs so high, and the importance for a CEO of diffusing power "to people in a position to make a difference."
Ginni Rometty has spent 36 years at IBM, where she now serves as president, CEO, and chairman of the board. She is on a protracted mission to reinvent the company as a cloud-based "solutions" business. That transformation involves moving into areas that have higher value and shedding ones that don't. IBM's new businesses around cloud, data, and security account for almost $34 billion in revenue. They're growing by more than 13% a year and constitute 42% of the company. In this interview Rometty says that IBM is trying to "unlock" the 80% of data behind the firewalls of client companies so that those organizations can use it to make better decisions, adding, "There's a $2 trillion market around better decision making." She talks about why IBM's earnings have declined for 20 consecutive quarters, what kinds of employees the company's new course demands, gender-related challenges in her career, and more.
Sheryl Sandberg's life seemed ideal--she had a great job, a best-selling book, a loving family. But in the spring of 2015, her husband was felled by a cardiac condition while the couple was vacationing in Mexico. Struggling to regain her footing after his death, she reached out to her friend Adam Grant, a Wharton professor and author, to explore what research tells us about resilience. That led to their collaboration on the newly published book "Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy." In this edited interview with HBR editor in chief Adi Ignatius, Sandberg and Grant share what they learned about developing resilience in yourself, your team, and your organization. They discuss how to respond when a colleague suffers a loss ("Acknowledge that there is a ginormous elephant sitting in the room"), how to grow not just in the wake of tragedy but before it, and ways that individuals and organizations can "fail well" and adapt to changing circumstances and unforeseen crises. "The best thing you can do is build routines that might be applicable in an unexpected situation," they say.
For years, Walmart's unrivaled customer research capabilities helped it dominate retailing. Then along came the internet, and Walmart suddenly found itself playing catchup to e-commerce pioneers like Amazon. In 2014 the board appointed Doug McMillon as CEO and gave him an imperative: Bring Walmart into the future--without sacrificing its longtime strengths. McMillon, who began his career unloading trucks at a neighborhood Walmart, respects tradition but is impatient for change. In this interview with HBR editor in chief Adi Ignatius, he describes the ups and downs of transforming America's largest company. Going digital is a top priority--which is why Walmart recently paid $3 billion to acquire e-tailer Jet.com. But the company also wants to strengthen the in-store experience. "The reality," notes McMillon, "is that customers want everything"--low prices, convenience, and seamless interactions online and in person. In this new world, all employees, including those on the sales floor, will need to be tech savvy. And the management team can no longer make strategic decisions on an annual or even quarterly basis; "strategy is happening on a much faster cycle time," says the CEO.
Carlos Ghosn's official title is CEO and chairman of the Renault-Nissan Alliance, but he's more colorfully known as "Le Cost Killer" and "Mr. Fix-It." He earned those nicknames by rescuing first Renault and then Nissan back in the 1990s. Now he's hoping for yet another turnaround--at struggling Mitsubishi, where Nissan recently acquired a controlling share. A Brazilian-born Lebanese-Frenchman, Ghosn deftly handles the challenges of managing companies on two continents. In this interview, he describes how he does it--meeting with his teams in Tokyo and Paris for a week each month and spending the rest of his time in operations, talking to suppliers and buyers, and looking for new opportunities. In the next five years, he says, "you'll see more electric cars, more autonomous drive, and more connectivity." He's excited about using technology "to make the car an indispensable personal space" and developing a fully self-driving vehicle by 2020. And he's not worried about competition in the electric-car market from companies like Apple or Google: "We have a long tradition of taking technology from the outside and putting it into our products." Ghosn believes the role of a CEO is to be "the guardian of the integrity and sustainability of the company." He sees his most important tasks as selecting the right people and directing strategy. "I want to make sure the Nissan-Renault Alliance continues to be solid," he says, "with good performance and good governance."
In September 2011 Hewlett-Packard had just dismissed two CEOs in quick succession before inviting Meg Whitman to step into the role. She was taking the reins of a badly damaged company, and although she has presided over more than 80,000 layoffs, she has restored stability in her four and a half years on the job. In November 2015 HP became two new $50-billion-plus companies, with Whitman the CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise and the chairman of HP Inc. In this edited interview she talks about why she agreed to take the job ("I thought that HP was a global icon and that nothing was fundamentally wrong with the bones of the company"), how the disastrous Autonomy acquisition happened ("It was financial misrepresentation"), the company's core values ("the ability to do incredible innovation; a passion for customer support and service; giving back to the community"), the role of a leader ("You have to communicate that you believe your goal can be achieved. You have to exude confidence. You have to celebrate the victories along the way"), and much more. Whitman says she is the product of her experiences in a variety of companies--Procter & Gamble, Bain, Disney, Hasbro, FTD, Stride Rite, eBay--and of her unsuccessful campaign for the governorship of California, during which she significantly developed her communication skills. She also played a lot of sports as a girl, "so I knew how to be part of a team."
One of the most powerful players in global finance, Larry Fink also stands out for his desire to change the very system that made him who he is. He has frequently spoken out about the perils of short-term thinking, especially on Wall Street, and in April 2015 he sent a letter to the world's leading CEOs urging them to ignore their activist shareholders and focus instead on the long-term health of their companies. In this interview with HBR's editor in chief, Fink expands on those ideas and talks about changing the tax code for capital gains, rethinking fiduciary responsibility, the role of government, and what makes companies great.
What's the true test of a leader's worth? At HBR, we believe it's the results he or she produces over the long run. To see who measured up, we analyzed the performance of the CEOs in the S&P Global 1200 over their entire tenures and ranked them from best to worst. In this issue, we reveal who made the top 100. In our analysis, we tracked the shareholder returns each CEO generated, starting from day one on the job, along with the change in each company's market capitalization. We adjusted the returns for each industry and country, to offset any increase that was attributable merely to being in a hot market. Then, to account for the many aspects of leadership beyond financial success, we incorporated a measure of environmental, social, and governance performance. For this we relied on the ratings of the investment research firm Sustainalytics. Our view is that, in an era of big data and greater transparency, consumers and investors want to understand a company's culture and values, not just its share price. And as the number one CEO on this year's list, Novo Nordisk's Lars Sorensen, points out, the two are inextricably linked. "In the long term, social and environmental issues become financial issues," he says. In an interview with HBR's editors, the low-key Sorensen shares his thoughts on counterintuitive strategy, connecting with employees, and managing for a triple bottom line.
PepsiCo's CEO Indra Nooyi believes that each PepsiCo product must engage customers so directly and personally that they fall in love with it. So in 2012 she hired renowned designer Mauro Porcini as PepsiCo's first chief design officer. What Nooyi calls "design thinking" now informs nearly everything the company does, from product creation, to the look on the shelf, to how consumers interact with a product after they buy it. HBR Editor in Chief Adi Ignatius interviews Nooyi about how she transformed the company's strategy, its products, and its organizational culture by placing design at the center. The article also includes a sidebar, written by Mauro Porcini, called "How Design Can Thrive."
In 2014 Sony Pictures Entertainment was subjected to the most devastating hack in corporate history. Highly sensitive data--salary details, private e-mails (some of them harshly critical of top Hollywood talent), unreleased movies--was leaked for all the world to see. For good measure, the hackers wiped out everything on Sony Pictures' servers. Then they threatened retaliation against any theaters that proceeded with the release of "The Interview," a Sony comedy involving the fictional assassination of North Korea's Kim Jong-un. In this edited interview by HBR's editor in chief, Lynton talks about the company's initial reactions: It had to keep the business operating; deal with employees who feared that their information would be made public; deal with the press, which was publishing some of the leaked e-mails; deal with the parent company in Tokyo; and deal with the FBI. He discusses lessons learned, advice for other executives caught up in similar crises, and the paramount importance of projecting "a sort of cheerleading optimism."
The knock on most CEOs is that their focus is too myopic--that they're fixated on achieving short-term goals to increase their pay. If you studied results produced over the long term, which leaders would truly show strong performance? HBR's ranking of the 100 best CEOs provides an answer. To compile our list, we examined how active CEOs of global public companies performed over their entire tenures. We took a scientific, objective approach, basing our evaluation on hard data, rather than on reputation or anecdote. For each executive, we looked at three metrics: the total industry-adjusted shareholder returns produced, the total country-adjusted shareholder returns, and the total increase in market capitalization. The CEOs who made the 2014 list have undeniably been effective. On average, the top 50 have delivered total shareholder returns of 1,350% during their time on the job. That translates into an annual return of 26.2%. Adjusting for industry effects, average total shareholder returns for the top 50 are 1,161%, and for country effects, 1,087%. But the results turned in by the #1 CEO on our list, Jeff Bezos, were especially impressive. Under his leadership, Amazon produced country-adjusted returns of 15,189% and industry-adjusted returns of 14,917% and grew its market capitalization by $140 billion. We also collected biographical and compensation data on the CEOs to see if we could identify what they had in common and whether there was any correlation between performance and pay. While the top 100 have each had unique journeys to success, there do seem to be two preferred pathways: Over a quarter of the CEOs have MBAs, and nearly as many studied engineering. But in some ways, Bezos's place at the top says it all: The best CEO in the long haul turned out to be one who frequently underperformed in the short term--while continuing to make big bets on the future.
Yang assumed the reins at Lenovo (formerly known as Legend) in 2001, when the company's founder, Liu Chuanzhi, moved on to become chairman. He served as CEO for three years before succeeding Liu as chairman, and he and Liu engineered the stunning 2005 acquisition of IBM's personal computer business, which suddenly made Lenovo the world's third-largest computer maker. In 2009, after the company had begun to falter during the global recession, the board asked Yang to return as CEO, a post he's held ever since. Pursuing a strategy the company calls "protect and attack"--defending its core market in PCs (Lenovo is now the world's number one manufacturer) while moving into new growth areas such as mobile and the cloud--Yang has turned things around. Earlier this year Lenovo spent $2.3 billion to acquire IBM's low-end server business and $2.9 billion for Google's Motorola Mobility unit. He talks here with HBR's editor in chief about Lenovo's innovations, competitors, acquisitions, and more.
At 57, Christine Lagarde has held top jobs in government, in the private sector, and now at a big global institution, the International Monetary Fund, where she became managing director in 2011. It was a doubly challenging time to take the helm: Lagarde's predecessor, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, was embroiled in scandal, and the global economy remained in dire straits. In this interview with HBR's editor in chief, Lagarde talks about what it takes to be an effective leader, the differences between "masculine" and "feminine" leadership styles and what women bring to the table in times of crisis, ideas for strengthening the IMF, and opportunities for the Fund and the world's governments to create a more vibrant global economy.
In the 1990s, just out of college, Andreessen went knocking on VC doors in Silicon Valley, looking to fund what became the breakthrough web browser Netscape Navigator. Within 18 months the company had gone public and he'd become a symbol of the internet generation. Now he's a cofounder and partner of Andreessen Horowitz, a venture capital fund that looks for smart tech start-ups. In this edited interview he talks with HBR's editor in chief about what kind of entrepreneur his firm likes to fund, why start-ups are still feeling the effects of the last boom and bust in tech stocks, what they should do to prepare for an IPO, the role of hedge funds, and more.
At 43, Sheryl Sandberg can look back on an already illustrious career that began with her graduation summa cum laude from Harvard and moved through the World Bank, Harvard Business School, McKinsey, the U.S. Treasury Department, and Google before landing her at Facebook, where she manages the social media giant's complex business operations. Nevertheless, she has faced her own internal barriers to success, which is part of the reason for her parallel career as an outspoken advocate for women aspiring to leadership positions. In this interview with HBR's editor in chief, Sandberg talks about her new book, "Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead"; how and why women hold themselves back; understanding gender differences and celebrating them; the "likability" gap, and much more.