WHARTON LEADERSHIP DIGEST 

February, 2001, Volume 5, Number 5  

Contents 

Developing Leaders:  GE’s Steve Kerr to Speak at Wharton Leadership
     Conference 
Leadership on the Air:  NPR Interviews Leaders 
Ethical Leadership:  The Content of Our Character – Voices of Generation X
Leadership Profile:  James Barksdale, former Netscape CEO
International Leadership: China, Europe, Korea, and Taiwan 
Learning Program:  Leadership and Management in Southeast Asia
Leadership Profile:  Steve Jobs Revitalizes Apple Computer
Leadership Quote:  Colin Powell as Secretary of State
 

Developing Leaders:  GE’s Steve Kerr to Speak at Wharton Leadership Conference

The fifth Annual Wharton Leadership Conference, focusing this year on “Developing Leaders,” will be held on June 7, 2001.  

A newly confirmed keynote speakers will be Steve Kerr, the vice president for leadership development and the Chief Learning Officer for General Electric Company.  His responsibilities include GE’s renowned leadership education center at Crotonville, New York.  

Other speakers include Jim Collins, co-author of Built to Last, Dupont CEO Charles Holliday, Xerox president Anne Mulcahy, and Chevron Products president Patricia Woertz.      

For information on conference speakers and the conference agenda, see <http://leadership.wharton.upenn.edu/l_change/conferences/conf_060701.shtml> 

To register online for the conference, go to
<http://www-management.wharton.upenn.edu/chr/registration.htm>
 

Leadership on the Air:  NPR Interviews Leaders  

National Public Radio’s Morning Edition program is interviewing people on “Leadership in America,” including Carol Bellamy, executive director of United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).  When asked what it takes to be a leader today, Carol Bellamy, who had also served as director of the U.S. Peace Corps and president of the New York City Council, said, “You have to be a person of intelligence, you have to have some creativity and vision, and you have to be able to handle change.”  

The interview with Bellamy and others such as Amazon.com chief executive Jeff Bezos are posted for listening at <http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/001031.leadership.html>.


Ethical Leadership:  The Content of Our Character – Voices of Generation X 

Fifty young people gathered in 1998 from around the country to “develop a vision for ethical leadership” in America.  All in their twenties, they were “Democrats and Republicans; whites, African-Americans, Latinos, and Asian-Americans; believers and agnostics; students, activists, bureaucrats, and entrepreneurs.”  

The group came to define ethical leadership as “leadership that is guided by strong principles, infused with a humane and generous spirit, and courageously committed to the common good,”  and it issued a call for dialogue on how such leadership principles should be applied in both the public and private sectors.  In its “covenant on ethical leadership,” the group has placed a premium on responsibility and accountability:

“We view the American marketplace as a nexus of both interests and responsibilities, whether the stakeholders are corporations, communities, consumers, or citizens.  Despite the competitive nature of the marketplace, we maintain that it serves the greatest good when its stakeholders have an eye to more than the bottom line.”

“Leaders, both elected and self-selected, function best and for the best when every action is reasoned and justified.  Whether the actors are caregivers, councilpersons, or concerned citizens, they are obligated to remain answerable to their constituents.  Even more, they should act in ways that adhere to their own concepts of moral behavior. Humanity promises mistakes and blunders, departures from the path of good and right. Accountability in ethical leadership serves, then, to guide us back to the higher road.

“Ethical leadership promotes and demands accountability.  As members of American society, we are bound by our covenant as citizens to agitate for the good of all.  Without clamor for actors of conscience, however, we collectively suffer.  Accountability is not merely the province of a minority, nor is it focused solely on leaders, but rather it trains its eye on each of us.  Accountability is about voting and attending and serving and asking questions.”

“As the future of American political leadership, we can, and must, work to create a political climate where principled leadership is the minimum expectation.  Principled leadership should not mean political suicide.  Indeed, it should be the standard for both private and public character. It should be political suicide not to exhibit principled leadership in personal and professional settings.  However, for values and principles to guide the priorities of political leaders, both the electors and the elected must hold each other accountable.”  

Note:  The complete document is available at <http://www.contentofourcharacter.org>. 

Leadership Profile:  James Barksdale, former Netscape CEO 

By John Joseph, Wharton MBA Student, WG’01  

Jim Barksdale is a living legend.  After revolutionizing the shipping industry at Federal Express Corp. and the wireless industry at McCaw Cellular Communications (now AT&T), he piloted Netscape from 1995 to 1999, putting him squarely at the forefront of the Internet revolution.   

Barksdale first made his mark at FedEx where he built its famous IT system capable of tracking millions of packages.  He became a change agent bent on customer service, establishing a quality program that won FedEx the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award.   

Barksdale also became a growth agent.  During the five years that he devoted to Netscape, the firm’s revenue grew by 14,000 percent to nearly $600 million.  When he joined the firm, it employed 100; when he left, nearly 3,000. 

Speaking to an audience of more than 1,000 MBA students from around the world at the most recent Cyberposium, Harvard Business School’s annual student run technology conference, Barksdale shared his thoughts on leadership from his three decades of running enterprise.  He laid out the basic principles by which he manages people and leads companies, summarizing them as his three “snake rules.” 

The first rule:  “If you see a snake, don’t have conference calls about it, don’t leave voice mails about it, don’t have meetings about it, just kill the snake.”  If you perceive a mortal threat to the firm, waste no time, and attack it before it destroys you.   

The second rule:  Don’t play with a dead snake; keep going even if you’ve attacked the wrong threat or solved the wrong problem.  

The third rule:  All opportunities start out looking like a snake.  If a threatening snake turns out not to be a problem, turn from attacking it to using it.  Barksdale explained:  “Great opportunities are the ones that solve great problems.  And a great opportunity for wealth is solving the last link in the chain that holds the whole system back from working.” 

Before Netscape, navigating the web wasn’t a real challenge.  Navigating was the “last link” that kept the Internet from taking off, and Netscape’s browser solved the problem.  Finding the right solution paid off handsomely.  Barksdale sold Netscape to AOL in 1999 for $10.2 billion, yielding him $700 million personally.  

Barksdale is now applying his wealth and talent to solving a very different kind of problem.  He has given $100 million to the University of Mississippi’s School of Education and the Mississippi Department of Education, and he is devoting his own energies to developing a statewide program for the improvement of reading.  

Note:  John Joseph can be contacted at <John.Joseph.wg01@wharton.upenn.edu>, and information on Cyberposium can be found at <http://www.cyberposium.org>. 


International Leadership: China, Europe, Korea, and Taiwan  

Kazutaka Okada, a Wharton MBA student (WG’01), had compiled a set of links to articles in English with profiles of and information on leaders of Japanese companies, and now he had compiled comparable information on company leaders in Brazil, China, Europe, Korea, Russia, and Taiwan.  These links can be accessed at the following sites, and two examples under each are cited here: 

China:  http://leadership.wharton.upenn.edu/l_change/Interviews/CBL.shtml
    Wang Zhidong, chief executive of Sina.com
    Liu Mingkang, president of the Bank of China 

Europe:  http://leadership.wharton.upenn.edu/l_change/Interviews/EBL.shtml
    Rod Eddington, chief executive of British Airways
    Jürgen E. Schrempp, chief executive of Daimler Chrysler 

Japan:  http://leadership.wharton.upenn.edu/l_change/Interviews/JBL.shtml
    Fujio Cho, president of Toyota 
    Keiji Tachikawa, chief executive of NTT DoCoMo 

Korea:  http://leadership.wharton.upenn.edu/l_change/Interviews/KBL.shtml
   Lee Kun Hee, chairman of Samsung Group
   Chung Ju Yung, founder of Hyundai 

Taiwan:  http://leadership.wharton.upenn.edu/l_change/Interviews/TBL.shtml
   Morris Chang, chairman of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation
   Stan Shih, chairman of Acer Inc.  

Note:  Kazutaka Okada can be contacted at <okadak@wharton.upenn.edu>.


Learning Program:  Leadership and Management in Southeast Asia

A three-week Senior Executive Program is offered from August 12 to September 1, 2001 by the Sasin Graduate Institute of Business Administration of Thailand's Chulalongkorn University in collaboration with the Wharton School and Kellogg School.  The program is intended for senior managers moving into cross-functional or general management responsibilities with strong potential for top leadership.

The program is offered in English at a resort hotel southwest of Bangkok, and it draws participants from the Asian region, including Indonesia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, and Thailand.  Wharton and Kellogg faculty provide instruction in accounting, economics, finance, leadership, marketing, organizational behavior, and strategic management.

For information on the Senior Executive Program, contact Sasin’s director of research and training, Patcharaphorn Phantarathorn at <patchara@sasa.sasin.chula.ac.th>, or see the program website with online registration at <http://www.sep.sasin.chula.ac.th>.  


Leadership Profile:  Steve Jobs Revitalizes Apple Computer 

By Sandy Khaund, Wharton MBA Student, WG’01 

When the board of Apple Computer forced one-time wunderkind Steve Jobs out of the company in 1985, it represented one of the most acrimonious executive departures ever.  In the years that followed, however, Jobs never lost sight of his personal goal of returning to Apple.   

When a struggling Apple purchased Jobs’ NeXT software company eleven years later, it was just a matter of time until Jobs took control of what was fast becoming a sinking ship.  Jobs once told Gil Amelio – Apple CEO in 1996-1997 – that “the only thing that can save [Apple] is a strong leader, somebody who can rally employees, the press, users, and developers.”  Jobs staged a corporate coup in 1997, forcing Amelio out and installing himself as the interim CEO. 

Having already prepared himself for the exercise of strong leadership if given the chance, Jobs believed he knew what needed to be done and acted swiftly.  He saved no sacred cows and was anything but shy.  

Jobs first order of business was to secure outside capital to revive the company, and he obtained it from a most unlikely source:  Microsoft.  With an infusion of $450 million from Bill Gates, Jobs then set about rebuilding the company.  He stopped licensing the Apple operating system, a major cause of Apple’s decline; he opened the Apple Store, an online site for direct purchase of Apple computers based on the model popularized by Dell Computer (selling half a million dollars of equipment on its first day); and he streamlined and reinvigorated Apple’s product design, terminating more than half of its existing projects, adding support to projects he deemed “gems,” and firing-up completely new endeavors.    

Years after introducing Macintosh, Steve Jobs redux saw a computer world that had come to be dominated by manufacturers that offered nothing but Windows and Intel products inside boring boxes with confusing connections.  To challenge what he saw as a monolithic market, Jobs pressed his developers for an aesthetically appealing and simplified device.  The result – the iMac – proved a hit, reviving the glory days that Apple had once savored during the mid-80s. 

Within a year of Jobs’ return to the CEO’s office, Apple had turned its quarterly losses into profits, making believers of some of the skeptics who had long questioned his aggressive management style.  Given Apple’s more recent woes, critics are again wondering if Jobs’ leadership is no right for the task.  But as the visionary who brought his company back from the brink of ruin, he has earned sufficient confidence from employees, customers and investors to allow him wide latitude in steering the company toward his vision of the future. 

Note:  Sandy Khaund can be reached at <skhaund@wharton.upenn.edu>.  


Leadership Quote:  Colin Powell as Secretary of State

Colin Powell, on his first day (January 22, 2001) on the job as new U.S. Secretary of State:  “I’m not coming in to be just foreign policy advisor the president, although that is what the principle title is.  I’m not just coming in to serve the foreign policy needs of the American people.  I’m coming in as the leader and manager of this department.”  

Source: Stephen Fidler, Financial Times, January 25, 2001, p. 4. 

Copyright © 1996-2001, Wharton Center for Leadership and Change Management, University of Pennsylvania.