Eric SchmidtGoogle, Executive ChairmanUniversity of California at Berkeley, May 12“Find a way to say yes to things. Say yes to invitations to a new country. Say yes to meeting new friends. Say yes to learning a new language, picking up a new sport. Yes is how you get your first job, and your next job. Yes is how you find your spouse, and even your kids. Even if it’s a bit edgy, a bit out of your comfort zone, saying yes means you will do something new, meet someone new, and make a difference in your life, and likely in others’ lives as well. … Yes is a tiny word that can do big things. Say it often.” Dan AkersonGeneral Motors, CEOColumbia Business School, May ... Continue reading →
The study, which looks at average CEO tenure, the performance of insider and outsider CEOs, and how many CEOs also hold the chairman’s title, examined the differences between turnover rates in large versus small companies for the first time this year. As one might expect, the study found that the largest 250 companies in the study had a slightly higher level of turnover than the smaller ones. “There’s a lot of public scrutiny for these large companies,” says Neilson. That’s just one piece of evidence that the pressures on boards of directors by shareholder activists and other investor watchdogs are having an effect. Here’s another: The number of CEOs being appointed to combined CEO-chairman roles has dwindled to just 18 percent of new CEOs.When Booz ... Continue reading →
HBS alumnus and Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook, graduated from the Harvard Business School in 1995. Today (May 23), she returned to campus to deliver the Class Day keynote address to graduating students as part of a student-led ceremony traditionally held the day before Harvard University’s Commencement exercises and the HBS diploma ceremony. She appeared with a red button with the initials NGB to honor the death of Harvard MBA Nathan G. Bihlmaier who accidentally drowned over the weekend. Her speech: It’s an honor to be here today to address HBs’s distinguished faculty, proud parents, patient guests, and most important the class of 2012. Today was supposed to be a day of unbridled celebration, and I ... Continue reading →
I’m talking instead about what you can control: the avoidable missteps made by myself and by many other millennials I know. Despite this generation’s economic challenges, you are some of the most optimistic, flexible and entrepreneurial people out there. So from my towering perspective of a decade out in the world, here are the five biggest mistakes I made as a new graduate, so you can steer clear. 1. I thought I was done learning. As a former literature major, I dreaded anything having to do with spreadsheets. But after interpreting international education studies, writing columns on consumer finance and even splitting bills with roommates, I conceded that Excel is actually pretty useful. I also had to become conversant in classical economics, presentation skills and ... Continue reading →
Our recent recounting of how Jack Welch clashed with a group of female executives over how best to advance to the top of corporate America touched a raw nerve in the business world. Readers fired off a barrage of comments. "He's right," one wrote about the former CEO of General Electric . "RESULTS—that's all that counts, period."Not so, wrote another: "Mr. Welch's notion that his career, or anyone's, is a result of a single androgynous metric—'performance'—is false." The workplace is still an "old boys' network." So I went to the 18 women who are CEOs of Fortune 500 companies—a record number but still just 3.6% of the total—and asked their opinion. What factors, personal or in the workplace, fueled their careers and what myths about ... Continue reading →
