Choose Character Above All Else

Brian Roberts
Chairman & CEO
Comcast Corporation

In the end, you are going to live and fall by the people you surround yourself with.  So don't make choices based on who can make you the better offer or give you a bigger title, but who has character.

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Communicate Tough Decisions in Person

Anne M. Mulcahy
Chairman & CEO
Xerox Corporation

Accept the fact that these are tough decisions and be there.  Make it personal.  Make sure that your employees understand that you are trying to do the right thing. Turnarounds are not a spectator sport…your people must be part of the solution.

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Diversity is a Business Imperative

Clarence Otis, Jr.
Chairman & CEO
Darden Restaurants

Create an environment that fosters those difficult conversations where one can put one’s assumptions on the table and ask questions of one another. Diversity is hard and it means asking yourself some tough questions, but you have to have the dialogue.

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Listen More

Cathleen P. Black
President
Hearst Magazines

As you mature in business, you don't have to put your own point of view and your own opinion out so quickly, because it can shut down communication. Sit there. Take in the strategy ideas. Process them. You will get more buy in and buy in is very helpful in running any kind of business.

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Empower Your Employees

Blake W. Nordstrom
President
Nordstrom, Inc.

In our company, everything we do is about the customer and selling and we stay close to the customer by empowering employees to deal with their needs right on the spot. We train our employees to treat the customer the way the employees would want to be treated themselves.

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You Don’t Get to Do Just the Things You Like to Do

John W. Thompson
Chairman & CEO
Symantec Corp.

Accept it. Be prepared to deal with people who may not have the same point of view or perspective that you have. Some interactions may not be exactly what you'd like to have, but that comes with the territory.

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Take Risk

Jim Donald
President & CEO
Starbucks

At Starbucks we encourage our partners – we call our employees partners – to have an entrepreneurial, risk taking mentality, with the freedom to fail.

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Be Open to Creative Ideas

Bobby Kotick
Chairman & CEO
Activision, Inc.

In the business of ideas, make sure that anybody with a creative idea – whether it's you or someone from accounting – has access to the people who make the decisions.

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At the Height of Success, Break Your Business

Ed Zander
Chairman & CEO
Motorola, Inc.

Just when you think it's going well, just when you think you had the best quarter, just when you think you've got the best product designs, go inside your company and break it to find out what more you can do to encourage innovation.

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Look for Enthusiasm

Ken Lewis
Chairman & CEO
Bank of America Corp.

People would rather be around enthusiastic people than cynical people. Many times that level of enthusiasm, combined with hard work differentiates the people who will grow in the business.