Why Life Means More When youre

Building


Serving as the chairman and chief executive officer at Abbott for almost 15 years, Im often
asked for management advice: What was your greatest lesson? What advice do you give college
graduates entering the workforce? How do you effectively lead a large organization? How do
you anticipate future business needs? These questions all lead to great conversations and I hope
to address many of them in this forum from time to time.
This past summer, Abbott held its annual internship program for undergraduate and graduate
students where more than 500 students from around the globe pour their hearts and minds into
real-world projects for our various businesses. Each year, I spend time with many of these
students and see the foundation of a future generation of leaders. Occasions like these remind us
of our own educations, our early career experiences and most importantly the lessons we
picked up along the way. And, the one lesson that stands out to me is a simple one its the idea
that has been most important to me over the years: Be A Builder. Use your experiences to build
yourself and the world around you; to make all that you see and touch in your life as good as it
can be.
My undergraduate degree was in engineering and I was going to build things. It turns out that
was true just not in the way I expected. The building Ive done is less literal, but every bit as
real. Looking at Abbott today and where the company is headed, building has been at the core of
what our people have accomplished over the past 125 years. And its what were committed to
for the next 125 and beyond.
Before working at Abbott, one of the first jobs I held was with the consulting firm McKinsey &
Company. There was a legend at McKinsey, named Marvin Bower. He was one of the founders
of the firm and is widely credited as the creator of professional management consulting. He was
with McKinsey for 60 years and led the firm for almost 20 of them. Every year, Marvin would
have a session with the young employees who were new to the firm.
He talked about what mattered most not about competition or profits. Marvin taught us about
doing what is right and thinking and working for the long term. And one reason his words made
such an impression on me was the way that he couched them. He talked about building about
building the company, your community, your family, and, always, the people they comprise.
And, he encouraged us to be builders, too.
Marvin was a servant leader. He knew that by helping to build those around him by raising and
strengthening their abilities, their understanding, their confidence, their principles they would
help build the outstanding firm that he envisioned and the good community of which it would be
part; and that this would help build him, as well as a leader and as a person. Marvin put the
goal, the principle, the value first. And he led people toward it. In doing so, he built the worlds
leading business consultancy, and, by working with corporations and philanthropies and
governments, that firm helped build the post-war world.
Marvin was a member of what weve come to refer as the greatest generation the people who
built the world of today on a set of strong, fundamental values. Life means more when youre
building, and when you participate in it more actively. When you build, youre thinking of the
future and acting in the present. To me, this is the essence of leadership: to see a goal,
somewhere in the future; to commit oneself to making it real; and to change often in difficult
ways, at personal cost to achieve it. You are willing to sacrifice to meet your goals to invest
in yourself in order to grow, personally and professionally.
As were speeding along in our careers and personal lives, its important to stop and look both
ways to see what we have already accomplished and where we want to go next. And the
prospect you take in when you look across that vista will be much more satisfying if you bear
that one guiding principle in mind: Be a builder.



Quotes[edit]
The performance of business leaders during the next decade will play a major role in
determining not only business but political and social trends for a long time to come. Here are
some of the principal reasons:
- Business leaders control the economic well-being of and stockholder.
- The course of business shapes public opinion.
- Business leaders shape public opinion.
So, in addition to his or her prime responsibility of managing his or her enterprise at a profit, the
business leader of today is faced with new and larger responsibilities. And, at the same time, the
job of managing his or her enterprise at a profit is increasing in complexity. Consequently, the
imposition of additional responsibilities makes the nations task of developing an adequate
number of properly equipped executive leaders a staggering one indeed.
Marvin Bower (1949) The development of executive leadership. Harvard University.
Graduate School of Business Administration. p. v
The Will to Manage (1966)[edit]
Bower, M., (1966). The Will to Manage: Corporate Success Through Programmed
Management. New York: McGraw-Hill, ISBN 0-07-006735-X
I believe that leaders and leadership teams working together in a proper design will run
the business more effectively than by hierarchical, command-and-control managing. But I
can't prove that. And there are no models.
p. 7
People should be judged on the basis of their performance, not nationality,
personality, education, or personal traits and skills.
p. 24 cited in: Rodney B. Plimpton (1976) Top management leadership and
organizational performance. p.52
Decisions should be based on facts, objectively considered what I call the fact-founded,
thought-through approach to decision making.
p. 24
A business of high principle generates greater drive and effectiveness because people know
that they can do the right thing decisively and with confidence.
p. 25
A business of high principle attracts high-caliber people more easily, thereby gaining a basic
competitive and profit edge.
p. 25
Fourteen basic and well-known managing processes make up the components from which a
management system for any business can be fashioned.
1. Setting objectives: ...
2. Planning strategy: ...
3. Establishing goals: ...
4. Developing a company philosophy: ...
5. Establishing policies: ...
6. Planning the organization structure: ...
7. Providing personnel: ...
8. Establishing procedures: ...
9. Providing facilities: ...
10. Providing capital: ...
11. Setting standards: ...
12. Establishing management programs and operational plans: ...
13. Providing control information: ...
14. Activating people: ...

p. 26
The business with high ethical standards has three primary advantages over competitors
whose standards are lower:
A business of high principle generates greater drive and effectiveness because people
know they can do the right thing decisively and with confidence. ...
A business of high principle attracts high-caliber people more easily, thereby gaining a
basic competitive and profit edge. ...
A business of high principle develops better and more profitable relations with
customers, competitors , and the general public, because it can be counted on to do the
right thing at all times. By the consistently ethical character of its actions, it builds a
favorable image.
p. 26
In large-scale organizations, the factual approach must be constantly nurtured by high-level
executives. The more layers of authority through which facts must pass before they reach
the decision maker, the greater the danger that they will be suppressed, modified, or
softened, so as not to displease the "brass". For this reason, high-level executives must
keep reaching for facts or soon they won't know what is going on. Unless they make visible
efforts to seek and act on facts, major problems will not be brought to their attention, the
quality of their decisions will decline, and the business will gradually get out of touch with its
environment.
p. 31
The difference between a leadership and a command company can be very great indeed,
because in a hierarchical situation, people who have concerns about reactions against
themselves would simply not put forward negative information.
p. 34
I believe that in a leadership company most people will like their work. But the company will
be an even more enjoyable place to work if the culture is designed to make it that way.
Leading fosters a working atmosphere that stimulates an open exchange of ideas and
fosters dissent. People should show a genuine concern for one another and treat one
another with fairness, as peers and friends. With such an atmosphere it should be a
pleasure to come to work.
p. 131
... for all the reasons we have discussed in these pages, judgments brought to the board by
leaders are likely to be better than those coming to the board in a command company.
Moreover, the effective working relationships between leaders and directors in a leadership
company further ensures the exercise of sound judgments for such momentous decisions ...
p. 134