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SB: What does it mean to lead a company? SF: The only way you can really drive a company in any industry is through effective leadership, not just being the boss. And, that starts with top-line revenue. You can have brilliant financial people, but unless you have someone who understands how to build the top-line, it won’t go anywhere. In the case of Condé Nast, it was putting the magazines editorial up front. Look at the quality of Vogue. It’s about [editor] Anna Wintour and her staff. At the end of the day, she is a demanding, tough boss. She will not compromise the quality of the magazine that she was charged with. That’s leadership. Then the publisher takes the product and sells it to advertisers and readers. SB: Demanding bosses often get tagged in the media with certain labels. SF: When I did it as CEO I was, "a street tough Italian guy from Queens who rose to the top, an effective charismatic leader." When a woman does it, people write novels about her, like The Devil Wears Prada. Martha Stewart, who is a good friend of mine, is another example of that. She’s no less tough on driving her business than I was. They label her with unflattering labels too. SB: You showed a clip from the film "Patton" in one session on leadership. What did that illustrate? SF: The reason I showed that clip is to show that sometimes you need different leaders for different types of companies. I don’t know if you’d want Patton in the White House after the war was over. He was determined to march into Russia, for God’s sakes. But for his time and his assignment, he was the perfect leader. In the clip, he’s saying that the object is not to die for your country, the object is to have the other poor guy die for his country. That scene from Patton was about identifying who your competitors are, and then to have laser focus. SB: William Lauder, the CEO of Estée Lauder, was one of your guest speakers. What did he bring to the discussion? SF: We were trying to talk about the difference between being a boss and being a true leader. From the time he could breathe, William Lauder knew his challenge would be to develop into an effective leader. He had to fill the shoes of his grandmother, Estée Lauder, and his Dad, Leonard Lauder, and keep the company moving forward. We talked about family-run companies, and how some of them essentially die with the third generation, which too frequently operates with a sense of entitlement. I wanted William in there because he didn’t have a sense of entitlement. He once said that he works twice as hard for half the credit. He’s a good human being. People like working for him because he’s a leader. He never felt that because his family had started the company he was entitled to respect. He earned it. SB: Does leadership have a different meaning when it comes to running a public and a private company? SF: The answer is yes. If you work for a privately held company, you’re held to the same standard, but you’re not so quick to burn the furniture on a quarterly basis. S.I. Newhouse was my boss for 25 years, and the lesson I learned from him was to build for the long-term. Was he interested in profit? You bet! But he wasn’t willing to make short-term, quick decisions based on monthly earnings. Unfortunately, Wall Street has put the pressure on modern-day CEOs of public companies to hit earnings figures on a short-term basis. I’ve often said to people, look at the great job that Michael Eisner did at Disney. If you had invested $1,000 the day he took the job, you’d have $50,000 now. And yet he had eight, nine, 10 quarters in a row that weren’t particularly good, and they’re trying to paint him as a terrible CEO. He did a brilliant job. He always took the long-term view. SB: Donald Trump was another guest lecturer. What did he bring to the class? SF: I told everybody there were three Donald Trumps: (1) the personality, the character you see on television; (2) the real estate developer, who is brilliant; and (3) Donald Trump the guy, the friend. When you’re really his friend, he’ll take a bullet for you. When I got really sick and was in the hospital, he was there. But I asked him to be Donald Trump, the MBA from Wharton. And he gave them a rousing lecture about building a business and a brand. SB: Who were some of the others? SF: Michael Wolf, the head of McKinsey’s media and entertainment practice, came and talked about what you look for as you examine the CEO for leadership. I had Michelle James, who runs the executive search firm James & Co., who talked about what you look for in trying to match an executive with the culture of the company. SB: It sounds like you had a bunch of living case studies. SF: You can read case studies anywhere. Someone once asked me why I went to NYU. I said if I wanted to learn how to ski, I would have gone to Aspen. I wanted a career in business, so I came to New York. The benefit of going to school at NYU is going to a classroom and learning from a guy that ran a $3 billion business, listening to a woman who hires seven-figure executives, talking to the president of McKinsey, and shooting your hand up and asking a question. That’s the great benefit of NYU — it’s not just the quality of the teaching, but the universe that it operates in. SB: What did you learn from this course? SF: It really forced me to think about what kind of a leader I am. Preparing three-hour lectures makes you do that. And it forced me to think now about what kind of leader I will be in the future. I have to tell you very selfishly that a big part of my healing from heart surgery took place in that classroom.
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