Leaders and Strategies in Real Life: 4/16/19

  |   Leaders and Strategies in Real Life Print Friendly and PDF

Instead of studying leadership, why not spend some time studying leaders and strategies in the wild? You can learn a lot from leadership experts, but you always see the leader and what he or she does through the expert’s personal lens. Supplement that learning with studying real leaders in real life situations and draw your own conclusions. The posts in this series will help you.

Every week I’ll point you to articles by and about real leaders in real situations and to articles about how real companies are faring in the marketplace. Read them. Think about them. Draw your own lessons and conclusions from them. Then try to apply those lessons in your own real life.

This week I’m pointing you to articles about Greg Foran, Michelle Gass, Michael Moritz, Indra Nooyi, and Bob Martin.

From Hayley Peterson: Walmart US CEO tells rivals Amazon, Aldi, and Lidl to ‘bring it on’ as he offers a rare look inside the company’s competitive strategies

“We woke up at some point in 2000 and whatever and found out we were Goliath. And when you are Goliath you find that there are other Davids that start throwing stones at you and you’ve got to learn to deal with that. If you become immobile, you just end up taking a lot of hits.”

Thanks to Smartbrief on Leadership for pointing me to this story

From Robin Lewis: Michelle Gass: Kohl’s Chief “Daredevil”

“A little over a year ago, I wrote an article, ‘Kudos to Kohl’s CEO Kevin Mansell – Greatness Agenda Kicks In,’ It was entitled rightfully so, as Kohl’s Chief Mansell deserved kudos for leading his teams to successfully implement the strategies framed in the Agenda, which broke five years of flatlining revenues, yielding a 7 percent jump in the 2017 holiday season (a 30 percent online increase). However, larger kudos should be sent his way for hiring his successor, Michelle Gass, in 2013 as Chief Merchandising and Customer Officer.”

From Beth Jensen: Sequoia’s Michael Moritz: Look out for “the Unexpected”

“As one of Silicon Valley’s top venture capitalists, Sequoia Capital’s Sir Michael Moritz has helped launch some of the globe’s most significant tech companies of the past 30 years. He’s done it by continually educating himself, despite no formal technical training.”

From David Gelles: Indra Nooyi: ‘I’m Not Here to Tell You What to Eat’

“In her conservative Brahmin family in India, education was everything. That prepared her to thrive in corporate America and rise to become chief executive of PepsiCo.”

From Dale Buss: Masters of Manufacturing: Thor CEO Bob Martin Leads RV Industry’s Adjustments

“Thor Industries CEO Bob Martin is just coming off the recreational-vehicle industry’s biggest annual exhibition, and the RVX show in Salt Lake City earlier this month underscored two major ways in which the business that Thor leads is changing.”

For some ideas about how to get more from this series of posts, check out “Studying Leaders in the Wild.

Join The Conversation

What People Are Saying

There are no comments yet, why not be the first to leave a comment?