Transcript: How would I spend it? I’d spend a fair amount on three things: trying to foster global peace; trying to improve the state of healthcare in the world; and trying to improve education around the world. Because I think those three things . . . I think education . . . You can’t get anywhere without health. But health provides security, and education provides the basis for doing better, and can lead to a well-educated world, which also could lead to a more peaceful world.

Recorded on: 7/6/07

Transcript: Well the current age will certainly not be remembered well. And so it depends on what bounds we want to put on “this age” and how we come out. I think the story of the 21st century started off negatively. How it will be written for the long term, it’s hard to tell. Certainly in the United States, September 11th has had a huge impact on our psyche, just like in my generation the Vietnam War had a very negative impact on our safety. And I think that’s why so many people are looking for leadership to kind of inspire us and bring us together rather than leadership that divides us, and separates us, and leads to further problems.

Recorded on: 7/6/07

Transcript: Can we elect a leader who will tell us the truth, and not say one thing and do another? I have a lot of trouble forgiving leaders that blatantly do not tell us the truth; and I think the American public has lost trust in its political leaders because people don’t tell the truth. They say what the people want to hear. One day they’re pro-choice; the next day they’re pro-life. One day they say we’re gonna fight terrorism; then they conflate terrorism and a bad leader in another country like Iraq. And they don’t tell us the truth, and I think the American . . . Everywhere I give a speech, the question always comes up: Can we have an authentic leader run for president, run for senator, run for the House? There are good people there; but I think we’ve turned off a lot of good people from getting into public life. And I’m just hopeful that in 2008, that maybe somebody can slip through and tell us the truth, and then govern in such a way that is consistent without selling their soul. I think that’s a tragedy that so much of that is going on.

Recorded on: 7/6/07

Transcript:  I think that can the U.S. recover ever its global leadership?  The last seven years . . .  It’s now 2007.  The last seven years have been devastating for the United State’s position in the world.  And it affects us in business; but it certainly affects us . . . when you go overseas, the disdain people have for the United States trying to be a unilateral force in the world.  It doesn’t work.  We have to go back to realizing that the only way that we can create a safer world, a better world, a more secure world, a more prosperous world is through collaboration.  And to me, I’m very, very upset about our leadership – our political leadership – being so selfish and so unilateralist in their approach.  And I think it’s harmed us greatly.  And I’m hopeful we can get new leaders who will find ways to bond and collaborate with other nations to realize that, you know, everyone has a right . . . certain human rights, and we need to bring those forth around the globe.  And I hope the U.S. can recover some of its position so it can once again become a force for good rather than a force for ill.

Transcript:  7/5/07

Transcription: if you look at the rapid growth of people in the Muslim faith; look at the rapid growth of the Asian and African populations and the difficulties many of those societies face; and what are we in the developed . . . the so called “developed” nations of the world doing about that?  We seem to be rather complacent, rather concerned with our own wealth, our own good, our own wealth.  That’s certainly true of the United States.  It’s equally true in Europe.  A great nation like Japan is not doing nearly as much as it could.  And I think there needs to become the idea of the global citizen, the global leader; the global citizen that’s comfortable operating in any environment, whether they’re in business, in government, in non-profit organizations; but they’re really concerned about the global problems of the world.  Because if there is . . .  If the Chinese are putting out dirty coal to produce electricity to run their planes, that coal comes in . . . that pollution comes into the United States.  If we run out of energy and no one’s replacing that, that’s a problem that affects all of us.  And so we need to address those.  There’s no way we can address problems of global warming unless people come together as one to address them.  There’s no way we can address problems of, say, AIDS in Africa unless we come together as one body to address those. 

Recorded on: 7/6/07

Transcript: The fact . . . Well certainly politics and how our politicians all around the world, particularly in the United States, don’t say what they believe. Every time I give a speech, I get asked, “Do your ideas about authentic leadership apply to politics?” And I say, “I really don’t know if you could get elected.” Because today’s it’s not clear you can get elected anywhere by saying what you believe. And I think the lack of . . . the compromise that’s taken place in public life is a tragedy. And to me it’s gotten much worse over the last 40 years, to the point where good people . . . young people today don’t want to go into that life.

Recorded on: 7/6/07

Transcript: I would say religious and ethic conflicts have had an enormous force in a very negative sense.  I’m a Christian, but if you look at how many wars have been fought over Christianity – and we see today in the Muslim world, and the Jewish world – I’m very, very concerned about this.  And I think it’s had a very negative force.  And I think it’s a tragedy that people of faith, and people who are people of belief tend to separate today rather than use that to bring people together.  And the fact that we’ve gone off in so many different directions, and we look at people of difference belief sets as evil.  And some of this you can see in an African tribal setting; you can see here in the United States in various groups proselytizing for their set of beliefs, and actually looking for enemies and setting people off almost like Satan and the devil.  And I think this has been extremely damaging in society.  And it’s cost us many, many wars and you know, millions of lives.

Recorded on: 7/6/07

Transcript: Well I think the measure of a good life is knowing what you believe, being true to that, and having close family relationships that can . . . those belief sets and those . . . can be passed on through the generations; and watching others flourish with whom you come in contact; and feeling like that each day that you’re encountering and dealing with people, you’re helping make their lives a little bit better, just like they’re making your life a little bit better; and that you leave something behind in terms of a sense of permanence in making a difference.

Recorded on: 7/6/07

Transcript: Well certainly when people are in there to take for themselves and are not concerned about the long-term histories of the institutions, they become totally focused on satisfying Wall Street – the quarterly earnings – and they wind up destroying companies. But they can’t think beyond Detroit, Michigan and these great automobile companies of the past that were the _______ of the American economy are going away. So it can operate in the United States. Why can’t General Motors? I think it’s been a real tragedy that people have been so short-sighted in their orientation and not look for the long term. How do you build an organization that can really contribute to society, not contribute to us as leaders. We recently saw the CEO of Home Depot take $210 million of the company for failing. Now that’s not capitalism; that’s capitalism run amuck. And too often compensation is paid to people not for success, but for failure. And that’s just wrong. Boards of directors who do that should be let go; should be turned down and we should get a new board of directors. And we’ve seen it obviously in the cases of the Enrons of the world where people actually corrupt in the way that the system . . . But beyond that, the law takes care of people like that. I’m much more concerned with the hundreds of CEOs that capitulated and played the short-term Wall Street game and destroyed their companies. They stopped investing in R&D. They stopped investing in people. They stopped investing in technology, and they wind up without a business. And they’re out of business now.

Recorded on: 7/6/07

Transcript:  Well I think management are the skills of how you do things. Leadership is really the ability to empower people . . . to align people around a common mission and values; to set standards of what you want to be and what you want an organization to become; and then to empower other people to step up and lead.  It’s not about leaders and followers like we used to think.  Leaders are not people who get people to follow them.  It’s people who inspire other people to lead.  And leadership is about service, whether your customers or your students, if you want it in an academic sense.  And a certainly the employees who work with you and people that are your owners; but I think it’s really more about service.  I mean we’ve had so many leaders who saw themselves more as takers than givers, and I think we need leaders who are givers.  And that’s the influence I’m trying to have.

Question: What is good leadership?

Transcript: Sure.  I’d love to.  I just . . .  From my new book “True North”, I interviewed 125 leaders who are authentic leader.  And I think you can’t be a good leader unless you can be the authentic person you were meant to be.  And too much of our leadership development in the ‘70s and ‘80s and even ‘90s was  focused too much on trying to make you into a standard leader to emulate other great leaders; or to be a charismatic leader; or to fit a certain set of traits and characteristics.  And what we learned, and what I’ve learned is leadership is not about any of those things.  It’s about being who you are and having integrity in everything you do; and empowering the other people around a common belief set.  And if you can do that, you can lead.  And I think it doesn’t matter how old you are or how young you are.  You can become that leader.  And that’s the message I’ve been trying to communicate to people.

Question:  How do you teach leadership?

Transcript: Well I don’t think you can really teach leadership.  I think you can learn leadership.  In my classrooms at Harvard Business School, for instance, we believe not in knowledge transfer – as in from the professor to the student – but more knowledge exchange where people are sharing their leadership experiences; studying what other leaders did; saying “What would I do if I were in that situation”; and exchanging ideas about leadership – and particularly where they have failed, or where they have faced crises, or where they faced difficult times, which we call “crucibles”.  That’s where the real learning comes from.  And it’s the magic of the classroom – the dialogue – that I find so precious and such a great learning opportunity.

Question: How can leadership be used as a moral force?

Transcript: Well I think it should be, but it certainly hasn’t been.  I think all too often, business leaders have been in there to take as much as they can get for themselves or for their organization, rather than recognizing the greater good; and that the only reason for business existing in our society is if it makes a contribution to the societal good.  We have no other basis for existing.  And I was on the board of a French company once when the socialist government of Francois _______ came in and immediately nationalized the company, which was Bull – the computer company, on which I was serving on the Board.  And that . . .   From a French sense, the company had no right to exist.  And we saw here in the United States, Sarbanes-Oxley came in to limit the powers of business leaders because they took advantage of the system.  And so I think business has a deep responsibility to realize how it contributes to society.  And at Medtronic, we were very cognizant of the fact that we were storing seven or eight million people every year to full life in ______.  And if we produced a low quality product, we had failed at what we were doing; but if we did that well, we made a great contribution to human life.  And I think each organization in its own way – maybe not saving lives – but contributes to society if they do it well.  And if they don’t they’ll go out of business.  They won’t exist anymore.

Question:  Who are some great business leaders today?

Transcript:  You know honestly, I am very optimistic about the current generation of what I call the post-Enron CEOs. People like Jeff Immelt at General Electric, and Andrea Jung at AVON products, Anne Mulcahy at Xerox.  We have some great leaders coming up.  Sam Palmisano at IBM, A.G. Lafley at Proctor & Gamble.  And many, many leaders of smaller companies like the leaders at Google and a lot of the startup companies.  And Howard Schultz at Starbucks.  There’s just a great new generation of leaders.  You know why?  Because they realize how so many of my generation did it wrong.  And you can almost characterize my generation as the unilateralist leaders who, “We’re going to do it our way.”  And the new generation realizes we have to be collaborative leaders.  We have to collaborate within, and we also have to collaborate with other institutions – either other businesses, governments, or non-profit organizations.  So instead of fighting against those organizations, the wise organizations are now finding ways to bond with them to accomplish greater societal needs.

Question: Are leaders born or made?

Transcript: You know having studied leaders most of my life, and having formally done it through this research, I think it’s really not a question of whether leaders are made or born.  I think because we’re all born with the gifts of leadership – but each of us is unique – there’s no standard set; but we have to develop those gifts.  Just if like you were a great musician, or you wanted to be a great musician and you want to go to Carnegie Hall, you’d practice your . . . using your gifts every day.  The same with great athletes.  I think it’s no different with leaders.  Leaders have to develop themselves as leaders.  And our study of leaders, every single leader who has failed that I’ve studied, failed to lead themselves.  And so if we could help people develop themselves – leadership from within rather than just leadership from without – they can become great leaders, but using the gifts they have.  If they try to emulate someone else’s gifts, they will fail without question.

Question:  What are the tenets of a great leader?

Transcript:  You know for too long, we’ve been studying the characteristics and traits of great leadership, and I could reel off a list of 10 or 25 traits or characteristics.  But every great leader that I could name would miss some of those traits.  And there may be people that have all those traits that are maybe not great leaders.  So I . . . what I learned from the 125 leaders I interviewed, and from my own personal experience in working with literally hundreds of leaders, it’s not about traits or characteristics.  It’s about your life story, and it’s about fidelity to your life’s story – who you are.  Because you have certain tapes running through your head about say, “Who am I in this world?  What are my passions?  What do I want to do?”  And out of that comes your capacity for leadership.  And we’ve just seen time after time leaders be inspired by their own stories, by their own difficulties, by their own crucibles.  Oprah Winfrey talks about the abuse she encountered as a young girl.  But it wasn’t until she was 36 that she was able to frame and see this.  That gave her inspiration to say, you know, what my show is all about is empowering people to take responsibility for their lives.  Howard Schultz talked about wanting to create a company in Starbucks that his father never had a chance to work at . . . that his father would be proud to work at.  And that’s why he gave healthcare to all his workers because he wanted it to be a great place to work, and through that create a relationship between the customers and the employees.  And so through their life stories, we’ve found . . . almost every leader found their inspiration to lead.  And that’s what empowered them to become great leaders.

Recorded on:  7/6/07

Transcript: Well there’s a tremendous amount of exciting things going on in business. I think the breakthroughs in healthcare that I participated in, and what can be done to improve human health; the contributions of technology to many of our businesses, and making them competitive on a global scale. But I would say of all the things, the thing that I’m most excited about is the emergence of great global corporations – companies that can operate anywhere in the globe and take advantage of the best skills anywhere. So I’m not a believer in the criticism outsourcing of those things. I think if we could blend together in a multicultural sense people of all kinds of ethnic backgrounds, religious backgrounds, racial backgrounds, gender and have that kind of unit, we can . . . an organization can make contributions through tough global problems – whether it’s global poverty, economic self-sufficiency . . . I’m a great believer in capitalism. I was a fervent capitalist, and I think the capitalistic model can work if we can be a collaborative capitalism; but what Narayana Murphy of InfoSys calls compassionate capitalism – one that emphasizes fairness, decency, transparency and honesty. But that can be blended in with the principles of capitalism, then I think you have the benefit for using capitalism to create a better society. However there’s a downside to capitalism. And capitalism run amuck can create damage and great harm to people. And that’s why we need authentic leaders running our organizations, not people that are in it for themselves.

Question: What challenge does business face?

Transcript: Well business faces enormous problems going forward.  A lot of companies are not adapted to being in a truly global world, and they’re still fighting against it.  They haven’t created a multi-cultural environment.  That’s certainly one thing.  A lot of companies are fighting against governments and not recognizing their problems. A lot of companies are so short-term oriented in their financial orientation and their financial performance that they destroy the very essence of the company.  And they don’t realize that the only way our share holder value is created is by being customer valued and sustainable customer valued.  And so business faces all those risks; and if business pushes beyond the bonds . . . or the bounds of what society is looking for, then I think business will be increasingly constrained.  And then we can’t let the best side of capitalism – which is creating new companies, new jobs, new products and services that can help people – really flourish.

But I think moving away from a sense of purpose, or making money the only purpose – which we’ve seen over the last 15 years – has become very damaging.  Money, if you . . .  Wealth creation should be the result.  It shouldn’t be the purpose.  The purpose should be creating a product or service that makes a difference in society or in the lives of others, and makes this a better place to live.  As a result, if you do that well, then you’ll be financially well-rewarded.

Recorded on: 7/6/07

Transcript:  What can I do to make a difference in my environment right now?  How can I use my gifts to lead, to be empowered, to empower other people to lead?  How can I use my gifts right today and every day to try to make an impact on problems that I can solve, rather than sitting back and criticizing others from doing it?  I think we have to take the initiative and see what we can do right now to use our leadership gifts.

Recorded on: 7/6/07

Question: Collectively, what should we be doing?

Transcript: What should we be doing? We should be building great global institutions, because it’s a global world. If you have a patent issue, you have it adjudicated in the United States; but what about around the rest of the world? We need global institutions. We’ve been tearing down global institutions like the United Nations; like the World Bank; like the World Trade Organization and the World Health Organization. We need to build those organizations up. And particularly the United States, as the wealthiest nation in the world, it’s in our best interest to build those global institutions. I’m on the board of Exxon Mobil. Exxon has to deal with all kinds of different governments. It’s very difficult today, and we need places where you have courts of law that can adjudicate on a global basis. And we need bodies that can get together and come together to talk about peace; and if nations decide to become war-like, we need to have ways to bring peaceful nations together to stop them from doing that.

Question: What should we be doing as individuals?

Transcript: Well I think individually, each of us has to make the difference right in our own environment. No one of us can change the world, but we can impact the people we meet everyday. Because in my case, I’m trying to help develop more leaders. My wife’s case, she’s trying to help change medicine. And you have to do that starting from at home. And you do that in your own family; you do it in the people you encounter in your own community; you do it in a broader sense by writing, and teaching, and impacting situations on a broader basis. But I think individually we have to act, not sit back and wait for somebody else to act and think they’ll be the leaders we’re looking for. Instead of looking for that perfect leader, we should do what we can in our own way.

Recorded on: 7/6/07

Question: When you read the newspaper or watch the news, what issues stand out for you?

Transcript: The fact . . . Well certainly politics and how our politicians all around the world, particularly in the United States, don’t say what they believe. Every time I give a speech, I get asked, “Do your ideas about authentic leadership apply to politics?” And I say, “I really don’t know if you could get elected.” Because today’s it’s not clear you can get elected anywhere by saying what you believe. And I think the lack of . . . the compromise that’s taken place in public life is a tragedy. And to me it’s gotten much worse over the last 40 years, to the point where good people . . . young people today don’t want to go into that life. And I think that’s a grave concern, the fact that we’re going into a two-tier society in education. We have the best education and we have the worst education, and no one seems terribly . . . they’re concerned, but no one seems really to be addressing it. Here in America, we have 45 million people without healthcare. They get healthcare, but they get it the wrong way in the emergency room after the fact. And so how can we have a society that’s the wealthiest nation in human history and not be addressing ills like that? How can we be turning so much of our attention to war rather than to peace? And I think we need to be . . . have . . . it just worries me that our newspapers are filled . . . I’m also very concerned that our media has focused so much of its attention on image – image building, imagery – and so many of our leaders seem to have fallen into that trap of trying to create an image for themselves. That’s been – to me – very destructive.

Question: What is the world’s biggest challenge in the coming decade?

Transcript: Coming together and understanding. Because if you look at the rapid growth of people in the Muslim faith; look at the rapid growth of the Asian and African populations and the difficulties many of those societies face; and what are we in the developed . . . the so called “developed” nations of the world doing about that? We seem to be rather complacent, rather concerned with our own wealth, our own good, our own wealth. That’s certainly true of the United States. It’s equally true in Europe. A great nation like Japan is not doing nearly as much as it could. And I think there needs to become the idea of the global citizen, the global leader; the global citizen that’s comfortable operating in any environment, whether they’re in business, in government, in non-profit organizations; but they’re really concerned about the global problems of the world. Because if there is . . . If the Chinese are putting out dirty coal to produce electricity to run their planes, that coal comes in . . . that pollution comes into the United States. If we run out of energy and no one’s replacing that, that’s a problem that affects all of us. And so we need to address those. There’s no way we can address problems of global warming unless people come together as one to address them. There’s no way we can address problems of, say, AIDS in Africa unless we come together as one body to address those. And right now there are just far too many egos and self-centeredness involved in a lot of these issues.

Question: What are the challenges confronting the U.S.?

Transcript: I think that can the U.S. recover ever its global leadership? The last seven years . . . It’s now 2007. The last seven years have been devastating for the United State’s position in the world. And it affects us in business; but it certainly affects us . . . when you go overseas, the disdain people have for the United States trying to be a unilateral force in the world. It doesn’t work. We have to go back to realizing that the only way that we can create a safer world, a better world, a more secure world, a more prosperous world is through collaboration. And to me, I’m very, very upset about our leadership – our political leadership – being so selfish and so unilateralist in their approach. And I think it’s harmed us greatly. And I’m hopeful we can get new leaders who will find ways to bond and collaborate with other nations to realize that, you know, everyone has a right . . . certain human rights, and we need to bring those forth around the globe. And I hope the U.S. can recover some of its position so it can once again become a force for good rather than a force for ill.

Question: What should be the big issues of the 2008 presidential election?

Transcript: Can we elect a leader who will tell us the truth, and not say one thing and do another? I have a lot of trouble forgiving leaders that blatantly do not tell us the truth; and I think the American public has lost trust in its political leaders because people don’t tell the truth. They say what the people want to hear. One day they’re pro-choice; the next day they’re pro-life. One day they say we’re gonna fight terrorism; then they conflate terrorism and a bad leader in another country like Iraq. And they don’t tell us the truth, and I think the American . . . Everywhere I give a speech, the question always comes up: Can we have an authentic leader run for president, run for senator, run for the House? There are good people there; but I think we’ve turned off a lot of good people from getting into public life. And I’m just hopeful that in 2008, that maybe somebody can slip through and tell us the truth, and then govern in such a way that is consistent without selling their soul. I think that’s a tragedy that so much of that is going on.

Recorded on: 7/6/07

Question:   Are you generally optimistic or pessimistic about the way the world is headed?

Transcript: Well I’m an optimist by nature, and I am always thinking we can make things better.  I would certainly think that the way things . . . the trends of the last five years would make one rather pessimistic.  Because the situation has worsened in almost every country of the world; and our relationships have of almost every country in the world from here in the U.S.  And so it’s hard to be optimistic; but I think that the power of the American spirit – and the power of American capitalism, entrepreneurship . . . And actually I think America’s rising up as global leaders.  I think we’ll see a new generation.  So I’m quite optimistic about the new generation, but we’re gonna have to go through this kind of generation transfer to move through.  And I think that’s gonna take a lot of hard work and leaders to bring people together

Question: How do think this age will this age be remembered?

Transcript:  Well the current age will certainly not be remembered well.  And so it depends on what bounds we want to put on “this age” and how we come out.  I think the story of the 21st century started off negatively.  How it will be written for the long term, it’s hard to tell.  Certainly in the United States, September 11th has had a huge impact on our psyche, just like in my generation the Vietnam War had a very negative impact on our safety.  And I think that’s why so many people are looking for leadership to kind of inspire us and bring us together rather than leadership that divides us, and separates us, and leads to further problems

Recorded on: 7/6/07

Question: What forces have shaped humanity most?

Transcript: I would say religious and ethic conflicts have had an enormous force in a very negative sense. I’m a Christian, but if you look at how many wars have been fought over Christianity – and we see today in the Muslim world, and the Jewish world – I’m very, very concerned about this. And I think it’s had a very negative force. And I think it’s a tragedy that people of faith, and people who are people of belief tend to separate today rather than use that to bring people together. And the fact that we’ve gone off in so many different directions, and we look at people of difference belief sets as evil. And some of this you can see in an African tribal setting; you can see here in the United States in various groups proselytizing for their set of beliefs, and actually looking for enemies and setting people off almost like Satan and the devil. And I think this has been extremely damaging in society. And it’s cost us many, many wars and you know, millions of lives

Question: Do you see any solution?

Transcript: Yes. I think the solution to this is brining people together so that they understand each other. When I teach at Harvard, about 40% of the people are non-American passports; 70% of the executive education. But then there’s a whole cadre of recently immigrated Americans who are Americans just like anyone else. But this is a melting pot, and people come out of there . . . It’s very hard to have any kind of prejudice on the basis of sexual orientation, gender differences, racial or religious differences. Those are really ameliorated because of the interaction. And I think we’ve created organizations and bodies – whether they’re international bodies, global bodies, global corporation bodies, NGOs that can do this, we can lead to a much more peaceful world where we can turn our technology, and our talents, and our leadership not trying to solve problems of conflict, but trying to solve real problems of human life.

Recorded on: 7/6/07

Question: Do you have a personal philosophy?

Transcript: Well my personal philosophy is built upon basic and ethic . . . of trying to maintain an integrity in my life where you’re the same person in all environments, and you can feel true to who you are and being that authentic you at all times. I’m not always that, but that is my philosophy in trying to collaborate with other people to make a difference where you see problems and try to correct them, whether they’re problems of health, or education, or poverty, or global conflict.

Question: Do religion and faith inform your worldview?

Transcript: I’ve been a person of faith as long as I can remember. Certainly not of an evangelical faith, but certainly a sense that we’re here on life for something. We’re here to make a difference. And my faith is really the basis for that. And it certainly gives me the idea that, you know, we have more than just eat, drink, and be merry; but to try to leave something behind when you leave this earth because you’re only here a very short time. And so my faith comes out of a basic notion that we’re given certain gifts by our creator, and our goal in life is to develop those gifts and then use them to help other people and to make the world a better place.

Question: Has business moved beyond the Judeo-Christian tradition?

Transcript: Well I wouldn’t associate the changes in business so much in veering away from the religious tradition. In fact I worry a lot about religious organizations that try to impose their views on others. But I think moving away from a sense of purpose, or making money the only purpose – which we’ve seen over the last 15 years – has become very damaging. Money, if you . . . Wealth creation should be the result. It shouldn’t be the purpose. The purpose should be creating a product or service that makes a difference in society or in the lives of others, and makes this a better place to live. As a result, if you do that well, then you’ll be financially well-rewarded. And so I love what somebody like Bill Gates is doing. He’s made more money than anyone in the history of business. And he was never in it for creating wealth. He was in it for creating exciting software, and exciting technology, and trying to create his whole idea of personal computing. And then in doing that, now taking a lot of the money he made by doing that and giving it back to try to address problems of global disease. And to me, that’s extremely admirable. Those are the kind of people I think we need. Not people that are hoarders or take the money. I think there’s way too many income disparities in society, and I think it doesn’t serve any of us well. So those that are fortunate enough to give back . . . to have the money should be giving back – should be putting it back into society, not just passing it on to the generations.

Recorded on: 7/6/07

Question: Beyond a simple title, how would you describe what you do for a living?

Transcript: Well I’m a business person that’s now gone into academia. I was in business for 32 years with three major companies, the last of which was Medtronic where I was the Chairman and CEO, and there for a total of 13 years. And I intentionally capped my time as CEO to 10 years, because I wanted to do some other things in life. And I got to . . . I took a working sabbatical, went to Switzerland, taught at two institutions there – a business school IMD and a federal polytechnic – and I got fascinated with teaching and writing, and then came back to my alma mater at Harvard after a short stop at Yale. And since that time, I’ve developed a deep passion in the last five years in trying to have an impact on the future generation of business and non-profit leaders. And the two books I’ve written have been on that subject, most recently the “True North” is aimed at trying to show people of all ages how they can develop into authentic leaders. And that’s what my real passion is these days.

Question: What about leadership interested you?

Transcript: Well I feel like we’ve had so many bad leaders who have destroyed great institutions. I believe in building great institutions. And I get very angry at my generation of leaders that has really failed in many, many ways. I’m speaking of the people that are now let’s say 60 and above. When I was a teenager, I had this idea of having the opportunity to lead a major company, but also set a standard for others on how an ethically-based, value-centered company could be more effective. And I certainly think we did that at Medtronic; but I would have to say I had very little influence on the leaders of my generation. And during the crises in leadership that’s emerged since the fall of Enron with Worldcom, Tyco. But really far beyond that, hundreds of companies and literally thousands of leaders who have failed because they put themselves before their institutions. I have decided to devote the next 10 years of my life to try to have some impact on the up and coming leaders – all the way from the new CEOs to young people coming out of college and graduate school today.

Question: What is the difference between management and leadership?

Transcript: Well I think management are the skills of how you do things. Leadership is really the ability to empower people . . . to align people around a common mission and values; to set standards of what you want to be and what you want an organization to become; and then to empower other people to step up and lead. It’s not about leaders and followers like we used to think. Leaders are not people who get people to follow them. It’s people who inspire other people to lead. And leadership is about service, whether your customers or your students, if you want it in an academic sense. And a certainly the employees who work with you and people that are your owners; but I think it’s really more about service. I mean we’ve had so many leaders who saw themselves more as takers than givers, and I think we need leaders who are givers. And that’s the influence I’m trying to have.

Question: What is good leadership?

Transcript: From my new book “True North”, I interviewed 125 leaders who are authentic leader. And I think you can’t be a good leader unless you can be the authentic person you were meant to be. And too much of our leadership development in the ‘70s and ‘80s and even ‘90s was focused too much on trying to make you into a standard leader to emulate other great leaders; or to be a charismatic leader; or to fit a certain set of traits and characteristics. And what we learned, and what I’ve learned is leadership is not about any of those things. It’s about being who you are and having integrity in everything you do; and empowering the other people around a common belief set. And if you can do that, you can lead. And I think it doesn’t matter how old you are or how young you are. You can become that leader. And that’s the message I’ve been trying to communicate to people.

Question: Can leadership be taught?

Transcript: Well I don’t think you can really teach leadership. I think you can learn leadership. In my classrooms at Harvard Business School, for instance, we believe not in knowledge transfer – as in from the professor to the student – but more knowledge exchange where people are sharing their leadership experiences; studying what other leaders did; saying “What would I do if I were in that situation”; and exchanging ideas about leadership – and particularly where they have failed, or where they have faced crises, or where they faced difficult times, which we call “crucibles”. That’s where the real learning comes from. And it’s the magic of the classroom – the dialogue – that I find so precious and such a great learning opportunity.

Question: How can business leadership be a force of change?

Transcript: Well I think it should be, but it certainly hasn’t been. I think all too often, business leaders have been in there to take as much as they can get for themselves or for their organization, rather than recognizing the greater good; and that the only reason for business existing in our society is if it makes a contribution to the societal good. We have no other basis for existing. And I was on the board of a French company once when the socialist government of Francois _______ came in and immediately nationalized the company, which was Bull – the computer company, on which I was serving on the Board. And that . . . From a French sense, the company had no right to exist. And we saw here in the United States, Sarbanes-Oxley came in to limit the powers of business leaders because they took advantage of the system. And so I think business has a deep responsibility to realize how it contributes to society. And at Medtronic, we were very cognizant of the fact that we were storing seven or eight million people every year to full life in ______. And if we produced a low quality product, we had failed at what we were doing; but if we did that well, we made a great contribution to human life. And I think each organization in its own way – maybe not saving lives – but contributes to society if they do it well. And if they don’t they’ll go out of business. They won’t exist anymore.

Question: Who are some great leaders in business today?

Transcript: You know honestly, I am very optimistic about the current generation of what I call the post-Enron CEOs. People like Jeff Immelt at General Electric, and Andrea Jung at AVON products, Anne Mulcahy at Xerox. We have some great leaders coming up. Sam Palmisano at IBM, A.G. Lafley at Proctor & Gamble. And many, many leaders of smaller companies like the leaders at Google and a lot of the startup companies. And Howard Schultz at Starbucks. There’s just a great new generation of leaders. You know why? Because they realize how so many of my generation did it wrong. And you can almost characterize my generation as the unilateralist leaders who, “We’re going to do it our way.” And the new generation realizes we have to be collaborative leaders. We have to collaborate within, and we also have to collaborate with other institutions – either other businesses, governments, or non-profit organizations. So instead of fighting against those organizations, the wise organizations are now finding ways to bond with them to accomplish greater societal needs.

Question: Are leaders born or made?

Transcript: You know having studied leaders most of my life, and having formally done it through this research, I think it’s really not a question of whether leaders are made or born. I think because we’re all born with the gifts of leadership – but each of us is unique – there’s no standard set; but we have to develop those gifts. Just if like you were a great musician, or you wanted to be a great musician and you want to go to Carnegie Hall, you’d practice your . . . using your gifts every day. The same with great athletes. I think it’s no different with leaders. Leaders have to develop themselves as leaders. And our study of leaders, every single leader who has failed that I’ve studied, failed to lead themselves. And so if we could help people develop themselves – leadership from within rather than just leadership from without – they can become great leaders, but using the gifts they have. If they try to emulate someone else’s gifts, they will fail without question.

Question: What makes a great leader?

Transcript: You know for too long, we’ve been studying the characteristics and traits of great leadership, and I could reel off a list of 10 or 25 traits or characteristics. But every great leader that I could name would miss some of those traits. And there may be people that have all those traits that are maybe not great leaders. So I . . . what I learned from the 125 leaders I interviewed, and from my own personal experience in working with literally hundreds of leaders, it’s not about traits or characteristics. It’s about your life story, and it’s about fidelity to your life’s story – who you are. Because you have certain tapes running through your head about say, “Who am I in this world? What are my passions? What do I want to do?” And out of that comes your capacity for leadership. And we’ve just seen time after time leaders be inspired by their own stories, by their own difficulties, by their own crucibles. Oprah Winfrey talks about the abuse she encountered as a young girl. But it wasn’t until she was 36 that she was able to frame and see this. That gave her inspiration to say, you know, what my show is all about is empowering people to take responsibility for their lives. Howard Schultz talked about wanting to create a company in Starbucks that his father never had a chance to work at . . . that his father would be proud to work at. And that’s why he gave healthcare to all his workers because he wanted it to be a great place to work, and through that create a relationship between the customers and the employees. And so through their life stories, we’ve found . . . almost every leader found their inspiration to lead. And that’s what empowered them to become great leaders.

Question: What are some of the most exciting things going on in business today?

Transcript: Well there’s a tremendous amount of exciting things going on in business. I think the breakthroughs in healthcare that I participated in, and what can be done to improve human health; the contributions of technology to many of our businesses, and making them competitive on a global scale. But I would say of all the things, the thing that I’m most excited about is the emergence of great global corporations – companies that can operate anywhere in the globe and take advantage of the best skills anywhere. So I’m not a believer in the criticism outsourcing of those things. I think if we could blend together in a multicultural sense people of all kinds of ethnic backgrounds, religious backgrounds, racial backgrounds, gender and have that kind of unit, we can . . . an organization can make contributions through tough global problems – whether it’s global poverty, economic self-sufficiency . . . I’m a great believer in capitalism. I was a fervent capitalist, and I think the capitalistic model can work if we can be a collaborative capitalism; but what Narayana Murphy of InfoSys calls compassionate capitalism – one that emphasizes fairness, decency, transparency and honesty. But that can be blended in with the principles of capitalism, then I think you have the benefit for using capitalism to create a better society. However there’s a downside to capitalism. And capitalism run amuck can create damage and great harm to people. And that’s why we need authentic leaders running our organizations, not people that are in it for themselves.

Question: What are the drawbacks of capitalism?

Transcript: Well certainly when people are in there to take for themselves and are not concerned about the long-term histories of the institutions, they become totally focused on satisfying Wall Street – the quarterly earnings – and they wind up destroying companies. But they can’t think beyond Detroit, Michigan and these great automobile companies of the past that were the _______ of the American economy are going away. So it can operate in the United States. Why can’t General Motors? I think it’s been a real tragedy that people have been so short-sighted in their orientation and not look for the long term. How do you build an organization that can really contribute to society, not contribute to us as leaders. We recently saw the CEO of Home Depot take $210 million of the company for failing. Now that’s not capitalism; that’s capitalism run amuck. And too often compensation is paid to people not for success, but for failure. And that’s just wrong. Boards of directors who do that should be let go; should be turned down and we should get a new board of directors. And we’ve seen it obviously in the cases of the Enrons of the world where people actually corrupt in the way that the system . . . But beyond that, the law takes care of people like that. I’m much more concerned with the hundreds of CEOs that capitulated and played the short-term Wall Street game and destroyed their companies. They stopped investing in R&D. They stopped investing in people. They stopped investing in technology, and they wind up without a business. And they’re out of business now.

Recorded on: 7/6/07

Transcript: What inspires me?  Making a difference in the world.  Leaving a legacy or making a difference.  Having an impact on the lives of other people, and feeling like, “Hey, my life has been worthwhile.  I did have some modest impact on the people I encountered in this world.” And leading a life of integrity and being true to what I believe in without compromising that in order to get ahead.

I look for lessons closest . . . from the people closest to me – from my wife, who is my partner, if you will; and from other leaders whom I’ve known and worked with.  I have a men’s group that I learn a lot from them.  And a couples’ group, whom we’ve been meeting together – both of them for more than 20 years.  And so I certainly learned a lot.  And also going back to great books and learning what others have learned over time.  But how do we bring that forward into a current date context?  And watching what other leaders are doing and trying to learn from them.

Question:   Is there a book you look to for inspiration?

Transcript: You know all my life I’ve been interested in leaders.  In part that was imprinted on me by my father, who thought he should have been a leader and never was.  And so from a very early age, I was reading books on great leaders – people like Abraham Lincoln – just a wide range of leaders.  Everything I could get my hands on as a 7, 8, 9 year old boy.

 Question:  Is there anyone in the business world you look to for inspiration?

Transcript: Well teaching takes many forms.  I don’t know if you’re . . .  If you wanna stay with teaching leadership, certainly we have people teaching us great things in many, many forms.  But business leadership, I think, has been under-appreciated as an area of academic concentration.  I think we’ve been too concentrated on financial management and not enough on helping people become better leaders; and creating environments through which they could throughout their lifetime; and teaching them how to learn throughout their lifetime to take on more opportunities and to lead.  So there . . .  I think there’s been a real vacuum in the teaching and leadership at academic institutions.  And I think corporations have looked at it too much as socialization to company norms.

Recorded on: 7/6/07

Question: What impact does your work have on the world?

Transcript: I would like to have some impact on the leaders of the future. And I’m mentoring about four dozen young people right now, and I have a lot of students at Harvard. I also have, I hope, some modest impact on the people who are already in varied leadership positions of great responsibility to try to help people understand that leadership is not about you, and about creating followers; but about building society and addressing societal problems, and making contributions to that. And oh yes. You do make money doing that. If you do that well, you make a lot more. So I’m certainly not against people who are successful making money; but I’d like to think I’ve had some contribution in giving some clarity about what 21st century leadership is all about, and how we can build more leaders; and get away from the succession we have of leadership from the top and start realizing that there are literally hundreds, if not thousands of leaders in every organization just waiting for the opportunity. And why aren’t we giving it to them? Why don’t we empower them to step up and lead? And companies that do that create far greater results over the long term.

Question: What has been your proudest achievement?

Transcript: Well certainly my years at Medtronic and seeing the company go from treating or restoring 300,000 people a year up to today, _____eight million and sustaining that. Medtronic has now had a 22 year unbroken string of double-digit earnings and revenue increases. But I think more importantly, the people have been . . . lives have been improved by that. And building an organization that went from basically a Minnesota-based organization to a global organization has certainly been my proudest achievement. And turning it over to successor and carried that on; and now he’s turning it over to his successor. So I’m very proud of that organization and how well it’s done in helping people lead fuller lives.

Question: What is your legacy?

Transcript: Well I think it’s too soon to write one’s own legacy; but what I would like it to be is I’d like people to say on a one-to-one basis that he had some impact on me and how I thought about my life and my leadership. And I feel empowered or inspired by working with him to find my own gifts, and to step up and become a real leader, and to take responsibility for doing that and make a contribution of my own.

Question: What are the biggest challenges facing business?

Transcript: Well business faces enormous problems going forward. A lot of companies are not adapted to being in a truly global world, and they’re still fighting against it. They haven’t created a multi-cultural environment. That’s certainly one thing. A lot of companies are fighting against governments and not recognizing their problems. A lot of companies are so short-term oriented in their financial orientation and their financial performance that they destroy the very essence of the company. And they don’t realize that the only way our share holder value is created is by being customer valued and sustainable customer valued. And so business faces all those risks; and if business pushes beyond the bonds . . . or the bounds of what society is looking for, then I think business will be increasingly constrained. And then we can’t let the best side of capitalism – which is creating new companies, new jobs, new products and services that can help people – really flourish.

Recorded on: 7/6/07