There are pros and cons of experience. A con is that you can't look at the business with a fresh pair of eyes and as objectively as if you were a new CEO. Fire yourself on a Friday night and come in on Monday morning as if a search firm put you there as a turn-around leader. Can you be objective and make the bold change?
When Jack Welch was the CEO of General Electric, he was able to produce record growth year after year by using a few simple principles relentlessly. The system of management he used was called differentiation.
Clearly, every company needs a leader. That's an important part of being the CEO of the company.
Just because you are CEO, don't think you have landed. You must continually increase your learning, the way you think, and the way you approach the organization. I've never forgotten that.
When I became CEO, I just didn't think about my age too much. I'm sure many people did think that my age mattered, but I didn't. That was probably because of my age.
When you're the CEO, you take responsibility.
Being a CEO still means sitting across the table from big institutional investors and showing your leadership and having them believe in you.
One of our first jobs was at Saba Software. We were helping them build their products for the cloud. We wanted to build our own product and move away from consulting. We were looking for a change. The CEO of Saba introduced me to Marc Benioff.
The chief executive officer is also the chief sales officer. He or she is responsible for the success of the company and making a profit. The closer the CEO is to the everyday selling process, bringing in business, the more successful the company will become.
I need to aspire to be a great CEO and not just a great product engineer.
The problem with New Year's resolutions - and resolutions to 'get in better shape' in general, which are very amorphous - is that people try to adopt too many behavioral changes at once. It doesn't work. I don't care if you're a world-class CEO - you'll quit.
Everyone in the United States asks me about being a woman CEO. To be honest, it has had no impact on my career. While I was at BCG, it didn't matter whether you were a man or a woman. The only thing that mattered was that you were good at your job.
It's my experience at Fiat and, now, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles that when there is a very strong CEO, it's a good thing to be chairman.
I always felt the gifts you need as governor were more suited for my personality. I'm a good team player, but I'm not a policy wonk. In Congress, you need 218 votes to make anything happen. When you're governor, you're the CEO of the state. You establish the vision and standards for the state. You're the leader.
A leadership culture is one where everyone thinks like an owner, a CEO or a managing director. It's one where everyone is entrepreneurial and proactive.
If I spend all of my day in the details as a CEO of a company like Wal-Mart, I think it would be trouble, because I wouldn't really be prepared to speak to the big issues that the country or the world should face.
When I came into the music, I was forced to be a CEO. I was forced to be an entrepreneur; I was forced to... because I was looking for a deal. I didn't have this grand scheme of starting a record company and then morphing into a clothing empire.
I've said I will be CEO as long as my colleagues want me.
I became CEO at the beginning of the hit on old economy stocks. When something like that occurs in your first six months as a CEO of a more traditional branded firm, it makes for a fast learning curve.
I don't hold myself out as a role model. I don't believe that everyone should make the same choices; that everyone has to want to be a CEO, or everyone should want to be a work-at-home mother. I want everyone to be able to choose. But I want us to be able to choose unencumbered by gender choosing for us.
At the 'Vanity Fair' New Establishment Summit, I asked Alibaba CEO Mike Evans - who has nine kids! - how he does it, as well as Didi President Jean Liu, a mother of three. Evans said he couldn't do work well without the support of his family and vice versa.
I'm the CEO; I'm the one who should be looking out for risk.
As a serial entrepreneur, angel investor and public company CEO, nothing irks me more than when a startup founder talks about wanting to cash in with an initial public offering.
I never set out to be CEO. I always set out to be a good team member, a good colleague.
Whether you are a low-income elderly woman living at the end of a dirt road in Vermont or a wealthy CEO living on Park Avenue, you get your mail six days a week. And you pay for this service at a cost far less than anywhere else in the industrialized world.
I worked with the best - Givenchy, Dior, Yves Saint Laurent - and it gave me an ability to be confident. It turned me into a CEO and a creative director and a brand.
If I invest in a CEO, I need him or her to have experience in sales.
Michael Eisner let it be known last week that he had no intention of leaving the entertainment business once he steps down as CEO of Disney in October.
I'm so glad I didn't become a doctor, because I do more than any doctor can do. I am an administrator, a CEO, doctor, psychiatrist, an activist, a campaign funder. I think I did well.
Everything ultimately becomes the CEO's problem, no matter where it starts. I can see why some CEOs crack under the pressure.
I think they, Peter McCullough was, turns out was not a good CEO.
Marketing is selling an ad to a firm. So, in some sense, a lot of marketing is about convincing a CEO, 'This is a good ad campaign.' So, there is a little bit of slippage there. That's just a caveat. That's different from actually having an effective ad campaign.
We ought to start running the government like a private-sector business. I have that ability as CEO of our companies. I have line item vetoes, and if I didn't, we'd probably be out of business by now.
I've been a comedian since I was fourteen. But I've never really been a CEO.
For me, if I knew that I wanted to be a CEO and I set that final destination right up front, that helped me develop a career track.
My role is really just to try to make sure that the voice of all shareholders and employees is heard - that no one is bullying their agenda, their choice of a CEO, or their selection of who should be the board members. Benchmark, I believe, has been pushing their agenda at the expense of those stakeholders.
