CEO/Leadership Profiles

Steve Jobs/Apple Computer For the past 29 years, ever since he built the first Apple computer in a garage with a design and a dream, Steve Jobs has been a commercial innovator, cultural inspiration and entrepreneurial icon and iconoclast who has enhanced our society's digital self-image. Indeed, Jobs' passionate perfectionism, a contradictory blend of hot temper and cool temperament, is embedded in the soul of many new machines -- iMacs, iBooks, iPods -- and he has almost single-handedly altered the way we compute, play music and view video. In the process, the 50-year-old Jobs has established an aura around his products, which are beautiful and brash, fabulous and functional. Have you ever run your thumb around the iPod's sleek, smooth track wheel? Do you remember the tutti-fruity-colored bubble iMacs? And what about the sheer plastic elegance of the all-white iBooks? This is technology, but much more than bits and bytes; this is fashion, but hardly iCandy. Jobs himself has been labeled a saint, a sinner, and now a saint again. Orphaned and a college dropout, he fomented a generation of rebellious post-adolescent start-ups, was cast out of his own company at 30, and then wandered in the wilderness going gray until it was time to come home and rescue his business as a creative crusader. Last year, Jobs cheated death and escaped a cancer scare; this year, Apple will generate robust revenues, and its stock is bristling with good health. He was lucky. We are, too. Because our lives are different and much more interesting with this man leading us to the promised land of what's next. -- from a profile of Apple Computer's Steve Jobs, written for U.S. News & World Report magazine

Howard Schultz/Starbucks Howard Schultz's body language says it all. He's on stage, taking questions from about 250 of his top managers in a monthly town hall meeting. The give and take is frank and free flowing but Schultz, the 52-year-old chairman of Starbucks, doesn't hide behind the podium. Nor does he stand ramrod tall and deliver a lecture or key message points. No, Schultz, dressed casually in pressed chinos, white V-neck sweater and brown loafers without socks, simply engages in a dialogue with the senior executives of his company. He lets it all hang out -- and is, by turns, sensitive, passionate and responsive. What the managers see is what they get. It's Schultz -- the corporate care-giver and truth teller. And it's a distinctive leadership style based on uncanny and unabated idealism that seems at odds with today's sharp-edged global economy, which has bloodied both business credibility and employee morale ... Several days later, Schultz reviews the town hall interchanges and explains how these meetings help him lead a fast-growing $5.3 billion global company with 95,000 employees, 9,700 stores and 34 million customers a week. "People aren't interested in how much you know," he says. "It' s how much you care." -- from a profile of Starbucks chairman Howard Schultz, written for U.S. News & World Report magazine

Meg Whitman/eBay Meg Whitman leads by not leading, bosses by not bossing and manages by not managing. And yet, the 49-year-old CEO of eBay, who has been called the most powerful woman in American business, presides over a company that in its first decade has grown faster than any other enterprise in the history of capitalism. Guided gracefully by Whitman, eBay is re-defining the bedrock business principles, including leadership, that have anchored successful corporations since the Industrial Revolution. In the process, it has created a radically new, super-fluid and vastly more democratic company, a model 21st century organization. This highly fragmented and participatory business model -- influenced by the surge of blogs, customer-generated reviews, group-edited sites and open-source software development on the Web -- requires an entirely new kind of corporate leader like Whitman, who keeps a steady hand on the tiller rather than gripping and pulling the levers of power hard. That means subtly steering and influencing relationships -- instead of controlling them -- to generate returns. It means working from a cube, not a corner office, and conversing, not commanding. It means asking questions, as opposed to providing answers, and then sharing what's been observed, heard and learned. It means building constant and continuous consensus, and earning trust through transparency, in order to coordinate and facilitate. Finally, it means understanding that bottom-line success often stems from experimenting and failing -- or from doing nothing when bold action seems desperately needed. -- from a profile of eBay CEO Meg Whitman, written for U.S. News & World Report magazine

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