The five messages leaders must manage

If you want to know why so many organizations sink into chaos, look no further than their leaders' mouths. Over and over, leaders present grand, overarching-yet fuzzy-notions of where they think the company is going. They assume everyone shares their definitions of"vision;" "accountability," and "results". The result is often sloppy behavior and misalignment that can cost a company dearly. Effective communication is a leader's most critical tool for doing the essential job of leadership: inspiring the organization to take responsibility for creating a better future. Five topics wield extraordinary influence within a company: organizational structure and hierarchy, financial results, the leader's sense of his or her job, time management, and corporate culture. Properly defined, disseminated, and controlled, these topics give the leader opportunities for increased accountability and substantially better performance. For example, one CEO always keeps communications about hierarchy admirably brief and to the point. When he realized he needed to realign internal resources, he told the staff: "I'm changing the structure of resources so that we can execute more effectively." After unveiling a new organization chart, he said, "It's 10:45. You have until noon to be annoyed, should that be your reaction. At noon, pizza will be served. At one o'clock, we go to work in our new positions." The most effective leaders ask themselves, "What needs to happen today to get where we want to go? What vague belief or notion can I clarify or debunk?" A CEO who communicates precisely to ten direct reports, each of whom communicates with equal precision to 40 other employees, aligns the organization's commitment and energy with a well-understood vision of the firm's real goals and opportunities.     

Almost ready: how leaders move up

Most designated CEO successors are talented, hardworking, and smart enough to go all the way--yet fail to land the top job. What they don't realize is, the qualities that helped them in their climb to the number two position aren't enough to boost them to number one. In addition to running their businesses well, the author explains, would-be CEOs must master the art of forming coalitions and winning support. They must also sharpen their self-awareness and their sensitivity to the needs of bosses and influential peers because they typically receive little performance feedback once they're on track to become CEO. Indeed, the ability to pick up on subtle cues is often an important part of the test. When succession doesn't go well--or fails altogether--many people pay the price: employees depending on a smooth handoff at the top, investors expecting continuous leadership, and families uprooted when jobs don't pan out. Among those at fault are boards that do not keep a close watch on the succession process, human resource organizations that should have the capacity to help but are not up to the task, and CEOs who do a poor job coaching potential successors. But the aspiring CEO also bears some responsibility. He can dramatically increase his chances of success by understanding his boss's point of view, knowing his own limitations, and managing what psychologist Gerry Egan has called the "shadow organization"--the political side of a company, characterized by unspoken relationships and alliances--without being labeled "political." Most of all, he must learn to conduct himself with a level of maturity and wisdom that signals he is ready--not almost ready--to be chief executive.     

The CEO as organizational architect: an interview with Xerox's Paul Allaire. Interview by Robert Howard

As chairman and CEO of the Xerox Corporation, Paul Allaire leads a company that is a microcosm of the changes transforming American business. With the introduction of the first plain-paper copier in 1959, Xerox invented a new industry and launched itself on a decade of spectacular growth. But easy growth led Xerox to neglect the fundamentals of its core business, leaving the company vulnerable to low-cost Japanese competition. Starting in the mid-1980s, Xerox embarked on a long-term effort to regain its dominant position in world copier markets and to create a new platform for future growth. Thanks to the company's Leadership through Quality program, Xerox became the first major U.S. company to win back market share from the Japanese. Allaire describes his efforts to take Xerox's corporate transformation to a new level. Since becoming CEO in 1990, he has repositioned Xerox as "the document company" at the intersection of the worlds of paper-based and electronic information. And he has guided the company through a fundamental redesign of what he calls the "organizational architecture" of Xerox's document processing business. Few CEOs have approached the process of organizational redesign as systematically and methodically as Allaire has. He has created a new corporate structure that balances independent business divisions with integrated R&D and customer operations organizations. He has redefined managerial roles and responsibilities, changed the way managers are selected and compensated, and renewed the company's senior management ranks. And he has articulated the new values and behaviors Xerox managers will need to thrive in a more competitive and fast-changing business environment.     

Micromanager

George Latour considers himself a good leader. As CEO of Retronics, George has a mandate to grow revenues with an eye toward taking the software-engineering firm public by 2006. At the behest of the chairman of the board, he has hired a new marketing director, Shelley Stern--"a thoroughbred" who, the chairman insists, just needs a little training in the business. George does his best to bring his new hire up to speed. He has Shelley sit in on developers' meetings, has her accompany the sales force on client calls, and even has the CFO explain the company's cash flow situation to her. He also takes pains to help her correctly position marketing and press materials. But Shelley never seems to really take the bit. In fact, Shelley considers George's hands-on management style oppressive, and she's dreadfully unhappy. What George sees as efforts to bring her up to speed, like making her go on those sales calls when she has other work to do, she views as signs that he doesn't trust her judgment. What's more, Shelley is spread too thin. Yet when she asks for help--if not additional staff, at least an outside contractor--George asks for a list of everything she's working on and tells her he'll help her prioritize. In this fictional case, a he-said, she-said debate erupts over competing management styles. Four commentators--Jim Goodnight, the CEO of SAS Institute; Mark Goulston, a psychiatrist and the senior vice president at Sherwood Partners; J. Michael Lawrie, the CEO of Siebel Systems; and Craig Chappelow, the senior manager of assessment and development resources at the Center for Creative Leadership--offer their perspectives on the problem and how to solve it.     

Gilt Groupe's CEO on building a team of A players

Ryan believes that a CEO should spend more time on recruiting and managing people than on any other activity, and that the head of HR is one of the most important people in the company. He insists on his freedom to bypass managers and speak with any employee at any time. And he espouses certain talent-management principles, such as that your best people are usually underpaid (reward them with performance pay) and that people leave jobs mainly because they don't like their managers. Recruiting at Gilt Groupe focuses on references more than on résumés and interviews because, Ryan says, resumes only establish basic qualifications for a job, and interviewers can't help being influenced by well-spoken or attractive people. But reference checks need to go beyond the names supplied by a candidate: Employers should dig up people in their networks who are willing to speak candidly.     

美国企业界的哈佛——通用电气克劳顿管理学院

GE的董事长兼首席行政官杰克·韦尔奇曾说:“我要以克劳顿管理学院,以及‘克劳顿式的学习过程’在GE掀起一场文化革命。”本文介绍了GE的领导艺术学院及决策者大本营-克劳顿管理学院的历史及在GE辉煌发展史中所起的作用。     

A time for growth: an interview with Amgen CEO Kevin Sharer. Interview by Paul Hemp

Fast growth is a nice problem to have--but a hard one to manage well. In this interview, Kevin Sharer, the CEO of biotech giant Amgen, talks about the special challenges leaders face when their companies are on a roll. Sharer, who was also head of marketing at pre-WorldCom MCI and a division head and a staff assistant to Jack Welch at GE, offers insights drawn from his own experience--and from his own self-proclaimed blunders: "I learned the hard way that you need to become credible and enlist support inside the company before you start trying to be a change agent. If you think you're going to make change happen simply by force of personality or position or intellect, you'd better think again." And change there was: Under Sharer's leadership, Amgen overhauled its management team, altered its culture, and launched a couple of blockbuster products. How do chief executives survive in that kind of dizzying environment? "A CEO must always be switching between different altitudes--tasks of different levels of abstraction and specificity," Sharer says. "You might need to spend time working on a redesign of your organizational structure and then quickly switch to drafting a memo to all employees aimed at reinforcing one of the company's values." Having a supportive and capable top team is also key: "A top management team is the most revealing window into a CEO's style, values, and aspirations.... If you don't have the right top team, you won't have the right tiers below them. [The] A players won't work for B players. Maybe with a company like GE, the reputation of the company is so strong that it can attract top people to work for weaker managers. In a new company like Amgen, that won't happen."     

The leadership journey

It isn't always easy to change leadership hats or to alter the way you assess a business problem. Under pressure, most executives fall back on the management style or approach that worked in the last crisis they faced. But old approaches rarely work in new and demanding situations. Just ask Leonard Schaeffer, chairman and CEO of WellPoint Health Networks, one of the country's largest and most successful managed-care companies. In this account, he describes how he consciously adopted three very different styles of leadership at critical points during his 30-year career, depending on the business challenges at hand. Schaeffer headed up the U.S. Health Care Finance Administration during the Carter years--and led the charge toward more efficient work practices at that agency. Then he transformed Blue Cross of California from a floundering bureaucracy losing close to $1 million each day into a strong public company, WellPoint. The dire circumstances at Blue Cross had dictated that Schaeffer initially be an autocratic leader, which he considers the managerial equivalent of being an emergency room surgeon--forced to do whatever it takes to save a patient's life. But as the company rebounded, the CEO shed that "any decision is better than no decision" style. He has become a participative, hands-off leader-setting strategies and goals from above but letting WellPoint's line managers and executives figure out how best to achieve those goals. Most recently, Schaeffer has turned into a reformer--a leader who works with one foot outside the company to spur changes in health care and society. There are pitfalls in switching leadership styles, Schaeffer admits, but this flexibility is necessary for realizing corporate- and personal-success.     

Organizing for empowerment: an interview with AES's Roger Sant and Dennis Bakke. Interview by Suzy Wetlaufer.

The topic of empowerment is receiving a lot of attention, but how many employees are truly empowered? At the global electricity giant AES Corporation, the answer is all 40,000 of them. In this interview, chairman Roger Sant and CEO Dennis Bakke reflect on their trials and triumphs in creating an exceptional company and explain how their employee-run company works. When they founded AES in 1981, Sant and Bakke set out to create a company where people could have engaging experiences on a daily basis--a company that embodied the principles of fairness, integrity, social responsibility, and fun. Putting those principles into action has created something unique--an ecosystem of real empowerment. What does that system look like? Rather than having a traditional hierarchical chain of command, AES is organized around small teams that are responsible for operations and maintenance. Moreover, AES has eliminated functional departments; there's no corporate marketing division or human resources department. For the system to work, every person must become a well-rounded generalist--a mini-CEO. That, in turn, redefines the jobs of the people at headquarters. Instead of setting strategy and making the "the big decisions," Sant and Bakke act as advisers, guardians of the principles, accountability officers, and chief encouragers. Can other companies successfully adopt the mechanics of such a system? Not unless they first adopt the shared principles that have guided AES since its inception. "Empowerment without values isn't empowerment," says Sant. "It's just technique," adds Bakke.     

Bob's meltdown

Annette Innella is just coming into the lunchroom at Concord Machines when Bob Dunn starts screaming at her. After throwing his lunch tray against the wall, he stomps out, leaving Annette stunned. Naturally, Annette, the new senior VP for knowledge management, is beside herself. She knows her proposal to establish a cross-functional knowledge management committee is progressive thinking for this oldline manufacturer, but Bob's reaction is totally over the line. If Bob stays, she goes--that's all there is to it. Bob is contrite, but he's under a lot of pressure. The general manager of the Services Group, he's just returned from a two-week trip around the globe to gear up his troops to beat revenue targets again, despite shrinking budgets and hiring freezes. And what does he see when he gets back? An e-mail from Annette requesting that two of his best people devote half their time to what he calls her "idiotic" Knowledge Protocols Group. He's carrying the company on his back, and she's throwing this nonsense at him. Graphics specialist Paula Chancellor is surprised. Sure, Bob's gruff, but his staff loves him, and he's the only one of the big shots who ever talks to her. But HR director Nathan Singer is incensed; Bob's never been a team player, Singer complains, and it's time he learned a lesson. CEO Jay Nguyen is in a bind. Bob is his top manager; he brings in all the money. And even though future revenues are going to have to come from somewhere else, Jay is not totally behind Annette's initiative in the current business climate. He can't afford to lose Bob. But if he reins in Annette, it will look like he's condoning Bob's outburst. What should he do? Four commentators offer advice in this fictional case study.     

High-performance marketing: an interview with Nike's Phil Knight. Interview by Geraldine E. Willigan

Nike's advertising slogans--"Bo Knows," "Just Do It," and "There Is No Finish Line"--have moved beyond advertising into popular expression. Its athletic footwear and clothing have become a piece of Americana. Its brand name is as well known around the world as IBM and Coke. Behind the slogans and the flashy TV commercials is the vision of its founder, chairman, and CEO, Phil Knight. Since forming the company in 1962, Knight has taken Nike from a small-time distributor of Japanese track shoes to the top of the athletic shoe and apparel market. But not without a stumble. Along the way, Knight discovered that technological innovation alone could not continue to drive growth. When sales stagnated in the mid-1980s, Knight and Nike learned several hard lessons on how to build brands and understand consumers, and they transformed their technology company into a marketing company whose product is its most important marketing tool. "Ultimately," says Knight, "we wanted Nike to be the world's best sports and fitness company. Once you say that, you have a focus. You don't end up making wing tips or sponsoring the next Rolling Stones world tour." To keep the company growing, Nike began splitting its brands into sub-brands. In tennis, Nike divided its shoes into Challenge Court--for younger, more active players--and Supreme Court--for older, more mature players. That approach brought the company to a broader range of consumers while preserving the customer base. And to create an emotional tie with the consumer, Nike started advertising on TV. "Sports is at the heart of American culture," Knight says. "You can't explain much in 60 seconds, but when you show Michael Jordan, you don't have to. It's that simple."     

The case of the downsizing decision

New CEO Charles Rampart's decision to make deep across-the-board cuts at Universal Products Company, Ltd. presents division manager Andrew Jordan with a thorny problem. Plagued by slow growth, a declining stock price, and an increasingly skeptical investment community, UPC needs to control costs and control them fast. But Jordan's division is the most profitable in the company, and the 11% cut proposed by Rampart could destroy already shaky morale and seriously threaten the division's ability to compete. "There comes a time in every manager's career when he has to fight a bad decision made by his boss," argues Sam Godwyn, Jordan's vice president for marketing and sales. "To cut across the board is to take a blunt axe to the company when a surgeon's scalpel is called for." He suggests it is better to line up support for an alternative plan that links cuts to a long-term strategy and that differentiates between successful and unsuccessful divisions. "It would be a terrible mistake for us to focus only on the narrow needs of the division when the future of the whole company is at stake," counters Mary Wyatt, Jordan's vice president for finance. Yes, the downsizing will hurt the division in the short term, but the real issue is getting behind the new CEO. Supporting the downsizing decision is a necessary investment in this future credibility and effectiveness--whatever the short-term costs. Four commentators debate Jordan's dilemma and how he should resolve it.     

Leading change from the top line. Interview by Thomas A Stewart and David Champion

Most CEOs who specialize in turning around struggling companies focus on costs. But for Fred Hassan, chairman and CEO of Schering-Plough, the primary focus in a turnaround is the top line. Since 2003, when Hassan took the helm at the global pharmaceutical company, he has overseen a remarkable recovery in performance. And consistent with his philosophy, the turnaround started with sales. Considering sales reps as less than crucial to strategy, Hassan cautions, is a big mistake. At Schering-Plough, he has concentrated on motivating and organizing salespeople to create trusting relationships with doctors. "You have to differentiate the salesperson in the customer's mind--just like you differentiate brands," he explains. A doctor may see 60 pharmaceutical reps on a regular basis but actually trust far fewer. To earn a spot in this inner circle, Schering-Plough reps try to turn each customer encounter into an occasion to help doctors provide better care for their patients. Schering-Plough also restructured its sales forces so that reps carry not just one kind of product, as they do in most pharmaceutical companies, but several. Covering a broad range of treatments gives reps more ways to build value-adding relationships with doctors. In this interview, Hassan discusses his success at Schering-Plough and his experiences at other pharmaceutical companies. During his career, he has built a reputation for being in tune with the front lines, as well as for reaching out to the managers who supervise salespeople. He has found that this level of personal attention not only makes reps feel respected but also gives him valuable strategic insights.     

The shakedown

Customer Strategy Solutions, a California-based developer of order-fulfillment systems, is facing a shakedown. Six months after the firm's CEO, Pavlo Zhuk, set up a software development center in Kiev, local bureaucrats say the company hasn't filed all the tax schedules it should have. Moreover, Ukrainian tax officials claim that the company owes the government tax arrears. Zhuk is shocked; he and his colleagues have done everything by the book. This isn't the first time Zhuk has encountered trouble in Ukraine. In the process of getting the development center up and running, a state-owned telecommunications utility had made it difficult for Zhuk to get the phone lines his company needed. Senior telecom manager Vasyl Feodorovych Mylofienko had told Zhuk it would take three years to install the lines in his office-but for a certain price, Mylofienko had added, the lines could be functioning the following week. Even as the picture of rampant bribery and corruption in Ukraine becomes clear, Zhuk still doesn't want to pull out of the country. Of Ukrainian descent, he has dreams of helping to modernize the country. By paying his programmers more than they could make at any local company, he hopes to raise their standard of living so they can afford three meals a day without having to barter, stand in queues for hours, or moonlight. And yet, he isn't sure he can keep compromising his principles for the sake of the greater good. Should Customer Strategy Solutions pay off the Ukrainian tax officials? Commenting on this fictional case study are Alan L. Boeckmann, the chairman and CEO of Fluor Corporation; Rafael Di Tella, a professor at Harvard Business School; Thomas W. Dunfee, the Kolodny Professor of Social Responsibility and a professor of legal studies at Wharton; and Bozidar Djelic, the former finance and economy minister of Serbia.     

The very real dangers of executive coaching

A personal coach to help your most promising executives reach their potential--sounds good, doesn't it? But, according to Steven Berglas, executive coaches can make a bad situation worse. Because of their backgrounds and biases, they ignore psychological problems they don't understand. Companies need to consider psychotherapeutic intervention when the symptoms plaguing an executive are stubborn or severe. Executives with issues that require more than coaching come in many shapes and sizes. Consider Rob Bernstein, an executive vice president of sales at an automotive parts distributor. According to the CEO, Bernstein had just the right touch with clients but caused personnel problems inside the company. The last straw came when Bernstein publicly humiliated a mail clerk who had interrupted a meeting to ask someone to sign for a package. At that point, the CEO assigned Tom Davis to coach Bernstein. Davis, a former corporate lawyer, worked with Bernstein for four years. But Davis only exacerbated the problem by teaching Bernstein techniques for "handling" employees--methods that were condescending at best. While Bernstein appeared to be improving, he was in fact getting worse. Bernstein's real problems went undetected, and when his boss left the company, he was picked as the successor. Soon enough, Bernstein was again in trouble, suspected of embezzlement. This time, the CEO didn't call Davis; instead, he turned to the author, a trained psychotherapist, for help. Berglas soon realized that Bernstein had a serious narcissistic personality disorder and executive coaching could not help him. As that tale and others in the article teach us, executives to be coached should at the very least first receive a psychological evaluation. And company leaders should beware that executive coaches given free rein can end up wreaking personnel havoc.     

The leadership team: complementary strengths or conflicting agendas?

Senior leadership teams whose members play complementary roles have been chronicled as far back as Homer's account of the Trojan War: Although King Agamemnon commanded the Greek army, Achilles, Odysseus, and Nestor each played a distinct role in defeating Troy. Today, complementary-leadership structures are common and, in some cases, even institutionalized. Think of a CEO concerned mainly with external issues and a COO who focuses internally. The authors describe four kinds of complementarity: task, expertise, cognitive, and role. The two top executives at the software company Adobe Systems, for example, represent the second kind. As CEO, Bruce Chizen draws on his sales and marketing knowledge, while COO Shantanu Narayen adds his engineering and product development expertise. Roberto Goizueta, formerly the CEO of Coca-Cola, and Douglas Ivester, his COO (who later became CEO), were famous examples of the fourth type: Goizueta, the diplomat, maintained good relations with external stakeholders; Ivester, the warrior, drove the company to defeat the competition. Bringing together two or more people with complementary strengths can compensate for the natural limitations of each. But with the benefits comes the risk of confusion, disagreement about priorities, and turf battles. Leadership succession also presents substantial challenges, especially when a COO or president who has worked in a complementary fashion with the CEO moves into the top role. An organization's board of directors and CEO can manage the risks by fostering a shared vision, common incentives, communication, and trust. They can also ensure smooth succession processes in various ways, such as brokering a gradual transfer of responsibilities or allowing the CEO and the COO to share duties as long as they maintain the logic of complementarity.     

The CEO's real legacy

The literature on CEO succession planning is nearly unanimous in its advice: Begin early, look first inside your company for exceptional talent, see that candidates gain experience in all aspects of the business, and help them develop the skills they will need in the top job. It all makes sense and sounds pretty straightforward. Nevertheless, the list of CEOs who last no more than a few years on the job continues to grow. Implicit in many, if not all, of these unceremonious departures is the absence of an effective CEO succession plan. The problem is, most boards simply don't want to talk about CEO succession: Why rock the boat when things are going well? Why risk offending the current CEO? Meanwhile, most CEOs can't imagine that anyone could adequately replace them. In this article, Kenneth W. Freeman, the retired CEO of Quest Diagnostics, discusses his own recent handoff experience (Surya N. Mohapatra became chief executive in May 2004) and offers his approach to succession planning. He says it falls squarely on the incumbent CEO to put ego aside and initiate and actively manage the process of selecting and grooming a successor. Aggressive succession planning is one of the best ways for CEOs to ensure the long-term health of the company, he says. Plus, thinking early and often about a successor will likely improve the chief executive's performance during his tenure. Freeman advocates the textbook rules for succession planning but adds to that list a few more that apply specifically to the incumbent CEO: Insist that the board become engaged in succession planning, look for a successor who is different from you, and make the successor's success your own. After all, Freeman argues, the CEO's true legacy is determined by what happens after he leaves the corner office.     

A question of character

For the most part, Glamor-a-Go-Go's board has been thrilled with CEO Joe Ryan's performance. Ryan, after all, had transformed the private-label cosmetics company into a retail powerhouse with flashy outlets from New York to Los Angeles. In addition to saving the company from bankruptcy shortly after his arrival in 1992, Ryan had made Glamor-a-Go-Go a fun and exciting place to work, increasing workers' wages and creating boundless opportunities for anyone willing to work hard and think out of the box. He had also brought more women and people of color on board. And he had made many employees wealthy, with generous stock giveaways and options for the most senior employees down to the most junior. Glamor-a-Go-Go's stock price had grown tenfold during Ryan's tenure. But Ryan's personal affairs were beginning to call into question his leadership abilities. The local paper's gossip column recently ran a photo of Ryan--a married man--leaving a gala event with a beautiful young woman from the company, with the headline "Who's That Girl?" Indeed, rumors about Ryan's philandering were starting to take on a harsher edge. Some people believed his secretary left because Ryan had sexually harassed her. Others believed a mail-room employee had been promoted to factory supervisor because of her affair with the CEO. Having warned Ryan several times about his alleged infidelities, the board is stuck. What should it do about Ryan's extracurricular behavior? Does Ryan's personal behavior even affect the company? Is what Ryan does outside the office the board's concern? Six commentators weigh in.     

When your star performer can't manage

Vic, the CEO of a sporting goods company in this fictional case study, is pleased with the numbers. For several years now, they've gone steadily in one direction: up. But there's trouble in paradise Hidden from the public's view of industry-dominating winners--from the coolest snowboards to the hottest in-line skates--lies a product development department that may be ready to shatter like cheap fiberglass. There's one reason in particular for the dark rumblings that periodically reach Vic, and his name is Linus Carver. Carver, the company's chief of product development, is the workaholic mad genius who is responsible for most--he might say all--of the company's successful products. At the same time, he has managed to alienate the rest of his staff, including the two whizkid Generation Xers he brought in. He has been charged with everything from stealing ideas to squashing the initiative of the rest of the team. From his perch as CEO, Vic preaches "team". And he's even made a few stabs at reining Carver in--his latest move has been to recommend that his mercurial star get some coaching. But Vic also knows who butters his bread. In short, he's bewildered. Four commentators suggest how Vic can keep the company's product-development group intact and it sales growth strong.     

Succession and failure

Norman Windom, the chairman of Tiverton Media, may not know much about the world of popular music, but he does fancy himself a careful planner and a superb judge of managerial talent. That's why he's been grooming COO Sean Kinnane, a Wharton-minted numbers man, to take over an important division, Aleph Records, and one day Tiverton itself. But Derek Solomon, Aleph's 68-year-old CEO and founder, remains a creative force and a father figure to the label's artists. What's more, he's touchy about anything that might slow down Aleph's responses to the market's ever-shifting preferences--or that might call into question his indispensability. Though Sean dutifully participates in Tiverton's broad-based and elaborate executive development plan, he senses that Aleph's future leadership structure is uncertain. As impatient as he is ambitious, he announces that he's leaving Tiverton for more suitable pastures. Several of his associates, also unsure about their fate within Aleph, are following him out the door. In one fell swoop, they've torn Norman's proud succession plan apart. What kind of plan should the board adopt going forward? Commenting on this fictional case study are Francis N. Bonsignore, a senior vice president at Marsh & McLennan; Michelle L. Buck, a clinical associate professor of management and organizations at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management; Jon Younger, who heads leadership development at National City Corporation, a financial holding company in Cleveland; and Thomas Leppert, the chairman and CEO of the Turner Corporation, a large construction company in Dallas.