posted by Mike Madison at 8:26 PM /
What do these people have in common?
- Walter Bennis
- Aristotle
- Harold Geneen
- Lee Iacocca
- John Sculley
- Winston Churchill
- Indira Gandhi
- Tom Cruise
14 Comments:
Leadership
Cruise? Leadership. Really? :)
Also, Sculley did more harm than good to Apple, IMNSHO.
You can buy their books cheap at the Mt. Lebo Library used book sale?
Anonymouse 2:01 is headed in the right direction (and may be looking at a useful source), but Matt correctly points out important flaws in A's hypothesis. To put a finer point on Matt's Sculley observation: Sculley's Apple was more marketing than substance. Geneen's ITT was a conglomerate of its time: obsessed with accounting at the expense of innovation, and suffering accusations of complicity in CIA business in Chile and trading Republican Party contributions for kid-glove treatment by antitrust authorities.
Each took unpopular positions in the face of great opposition??
Harold Geneen – CEO of Raytheon then ITT Corp
Lee Iacocca – President of Ford then Chrysler
John Sculley: President of Pepsico and CEO of Apple Computer
Winston Churchill – Prime Minister of England twice
Indira Gandhi – Prime Minister of India twice
Aristotle – Leader in many fields of thought
Tom Cruise – Top star from about (1986, Top Gun and the Color of Money), (1988 to 1989, Rain Man and Born on the Fourth of July) - 1992 when he fell out of favor with Far and Away, then made a comeback staring in A Few Good Men then on to The Firm, Mission Impossible 2 and War of the Worlds.
Walter Bennis - Founding chairman of the Leadership Institute
Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California
All high profile
All believed in serving their constituency/customers well
Some fell out of favor:
Indira Gandhi was shot by her own bodyguards.
Harold Geneen lost CEO Job at ITT for funding the Allende overthrow
Aristotle did little to advance thought in mathematics
Tom Cruise did not make all good movies but yes a leader
Winston Churchill came back to be prime minister in WW II
After an earlier setback
John Sculley’s setback was reported above by Mike
Walter Bennis fits the leadership profile but I haven’t found the setback if there is one.
Lee Iacocca did not get the top job at Ford but he did at Chrysler
Anon 2.01
They're all bipolar scientologist loons? Um... except the first seven.
My breakdown:
One of the greatest thinkers in the history of Western civilization.
Two major figures of 20th century world politics, one of whom was a fine historian.
Three 20th century businessmen who achieved some important successes for their companies, and who also suffered major failures.
One business professor.
One loon who made a mildly entertaining coming-of-age movie set in early 1980s Pennsylvania.
All of them: Cited or quoted by the Municipality of Mt. Lebanon in its current annual report, on the topic of "leadership."
Personally, I'm hoping that the quotations signal an affiliation with Aristotelian wisdom and not with the marketing hustle of Sculley or Iaccoca, with the ethics of Geneen, or (save us) with the inanity of Cruise.
Mike, is there a URL for that report?
Ah, here it is.
No... wait, that's just an absurd amount of information about avian influenza and West Nile virus. (?!)
And for the record, I had my money on "Oprah's dream guests."
I read the Report in the May issue of Mt. Lebanon magazine, now confusingly renamed "mtl," as if we live in Montreal. For disambiguation of "MTL," see this Wikipedia entry).
The May issue is online here. Unfortunately, I can't (yet) locate the report itself.
Mike Madison said:
"Personally, I'm hoping that the quotations signal an affiliation with Aristotelian wisdom and not with the marketing hustle of Sculley or Iaccoca, with the ethics of Geneen, or (save us) with the inanity of Cruise. "
Where do you put the TIF, Mike?
What was the Tom Cruise quote? I'm rooting for "Sometimes you just gotta say 'what the f*ck.'"
Oops... wrong early-80's coming-of-age movie.
Anon 1:51, Jefferson Provost beat me to the punch (line).
JP also preempted my planned contest for a new Lebo slogan.
I'm not judging harshly, even as a TIF critic. TIF proponents have to concede that the case for the TIF is built on speculation about what the future might bring. It's an uncertain world. What the heck, perhaps.
Robert Byrd is a more apt figure to quote than some on the list: Believes in building to build and building to spend. "It is money, money, money! Not ideas, not principles, but money that reigns supreme in American politics.
**Anonymous Mom of 3**
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