CEOs are worried they're going to get fired any minute. They're worried about their portfolios.
I am far more a fan of aggressive entrepreneurs than I am of major CEOs. You look at major CEOs, and they are almost to a person quite timid. They don't act to defend the free market principles that are vital to growth.
CEOs make hard decisions; sometimes, the least worst is the right one.
The best CEOs I know are teachers, and at the core of what they teach is strategy.
CEOs hate variance. It's the enemy. Variance in customer service is bad. Variance in quality is bad. CEOs love processes that are standardized, routinized, predictable. Stamping out variance makes a complex job a bit less complex.
I was with top CEOs in 2009, and they were clearly shaken. Top leaders of Wall Street and elsewhere, shaken. The ones at the top did get by because if they are seeing a decline somewhere, there is also growth elsewhere, like in emerging economies.
Visionary CEOs don't need someone else to demo the company's key products for them. They deeply understand products, and they have their own coherent and consistent vision of where the industry/business models and customers are today, and where they need to take the company.
I've talked to several CEOs - from a recycling company in Indiana, a furniture company in Kentucky, a brewing company in Colorado, and more - who believe paying higher wages is both the right thing to do and part of a successful business model.
I know a lot of CEOs who are looking for three- to four-year varsity athletes - not necessarily because these people are going to be doing pushups or spiking volleyballs in the workplace, but because they're looking for that continuity, that person who was gritty about something.
Critics might contend that putting former private-sector CEOs in the president's Cabinet places the fox in the henhouse. But it's unlikely such executives would expose themselves to the headaches if they weren't genuinely motivated by the call to service.
The world is full of CEOs that think that just because they write a memo or they write a letter inside an annual report or they give a little video speech that gets sent around the company, they think that's what's really going to affect employees.
One of the things I've had the advantage of, growing up and being close to the top management of this company and other companies for most of my life, is seeing how CEOs start to believe in their own infallibility. And that really scares me.
ObamaCare is working. I talk to a lot of CEOs of hospitals. It is working.
'Job Killer.' Those are the two words you are most likely to hear uttered by most American CEOs when confronted with proposals to enact family-friendly work policies.
After formulating and communicating the right strategy and optimizing operations to execute that strategy, CEOs and other top leaders then must be able to build management teams that truly understand the big picture.
As a CEO, you get sucked into dealing with all the tasks of being a CEO. There's a big meeting, a big discussion, and you get into all the big issues, which is your job. But what CEOs often lose sight of is that it's all about the people who work for you. For every 1,000 decisions, 999 were being made when I was not in the room.
Someone needs to remind American CEOs that if you can't run a company that is innovative, financially sound and doesn't poison the rest of us, You can't run a company.
I mentor a lot of CEOs and entrepreneurs, and when I see that product is the number-one thing, the only thing that matters, that's a real red flag.
I worked with Congress on legislation, gave speeches to CEOs, military generals and Hollywood executives. But I also worked to ensure that my efforts would resonate with kids and families - and that meant doing things in a creative and unconventional way. So, yeah, I planted a garden and hula-hooped on the White House lawn with kids.
When my co-founder and I first had the idea for IronPort, an email security company, we triangulated a list of the 20 most relevant people in email - former CEOs, open source technologists, investors and thought leaders.
I want little girls to believe that they can be CEOs.
Uber, and Airbnb to a different extent, implemented the same battle plan. Bezos is an investor in both companies and, to some degree, has relationships with both CEOs. It is not a surprise that they are heirs to Amazon.
If I get asked to talk to a group of CEOs or a group of high school students, I pick high school students.
CEOs of large corporations earn 400 times what their workers make. That is not what America is supposed to be about.
I don't feel I'm at liberty to speak about the actions of any one CEO. That's not fair; given CEOs have duties to their shareholders.
I grew up watching my mom and dad selling rooms in our motels. We had CEOs coming to our house so that my dad could persuade them to have their executives stay in Hyatt hotels.
Success is no longer about changing strategies more often, but having the agility to execute multiple strategies concurrently. And success requires CEOs to develop the right leadership capabilities, workforce skills, and corporate cultures to support digital transformation.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution demands that CEOs take responsibility for the massive transformation of their businesses and for the extraordinary impact that this transformation will have on wider society.