The league of extraordinary CEO's

Like many others of my age, i look upto role models in my life and in fact i have a few in every walk of life who i admire and try to emulate( to a certain extent).

So below are few CEO’s who I respect and look upto for what they are and what they have done. This may not be an exhaustive list since there may be many more of them who are unsung heroes who have never been captured in articles for me to read and know about them. Or there may be many who others would consider as great but somehow failed to capture my attention. I will keep updating this when time permits or when i find more of them . One thing i am sure is that there are many more like these people out there who i would admire.

1) Narayana Murthy of Infosys: Many non Indian readers might not have really known about him and his visions but he is an icon for many of we Indians. Infosys was set up by Narayana Murthy with an initial capital of just 250 USD. Today the company is one of the largest IT companies in the world and has a revenue of more than 5 billion USD. His working principles move around two Sanskrit sentences: Sathyannasti Paro Dharma (there is no dharma greater than adherence to truth); and Satyameva jayate (truth alone triumphs). Today the company is rated amongst the top ten in leadership capabilities across the world. Infosys gets consistenly rated as one of the best companies in India to work for. He stands in lunch line along with his employees, drives still a small sized car and lives in a modest apartment. His is an epitome of ethics and socialy responsible employer. His thoughts and ideas lead the youngsters in India and is one of the most sought after companies in India with more than 1 million people applying every year to them.

2) David Packard of HP: In 1949, 37-year-old David Packard attended a meeting of business leaders. Fidgeting while they discussed how to squeeze more profit from their companies, he was finally unable to contain himself. "A company has a greater responsibility than making money for its stockholders," he asserted. Eyes turned toward his six-foot-five-inch frame. "We have a responsibility to our employees to recognize their dignity as human beings," Packard said, extolling his belief that those who help create wealth have a moral right to share in that wealth.To his elders, Packard's ideas seemed borderline socialist if not outright dangerous. "I was surprised and shocked that not a single person at that meeting agreed with me," Packard reflected later. "It was quite evident they firmly believed I was not one of them, and obviously not qualified to run an important enterprise."That was just fine with David Packard. He never wanted to be part of the CEO club; he belonged to the Hewlett-Packard club. He practiced what would become famous as "management by walking around." Most radical of all for the time, he shared equity and profits with all employees. Despite being one of Silicon Valley's first self-made billionaires, he continued to live in the small, understated house he and his wife had built in 1957. And though he donated (with Hewlett) to Stanford University an amount comparable to the present value of Jane and Leland Stanford's original endowment, he never allowed his name to appear on any of its buildings while he was alive. By defining himself as an HP man first and a CEO second, Packard did more than demonstrate humility. He built a uniquely dedicated culture that became a fierce competitive weapon, delivering 40 consecutive years of profitable growth.

3) James Burke of J&J: Ask people to single out a courageous CEO action, and many will cite James Burke's decision to pull Tylenol capsules off the shelves in response to the cyanide-poisoning crisis of 1982, taking a $100 million hit to earnings along the way. It's a wonderful story. But it misses the point.Burke's real defining moment occurred three years before, when he pulled 20 key executives into a room and thumped his finger on a copy of the J&J credo. Penned 36 years earlier by R.W. Johnson Jr., it laid out the "We hold these truths to be self-evident" of the Johnson & Johnson Co., among them a higher duty to "mothers and all others who use our products." Burke worried that executives had come to view the credo as an artifact—interesting, but hardly relevant to the day-to-day challenges of American capitalism."I said, 'Here's the credo. If we're not going to live by it, let's tear it off the wall,' " Burke later told Joseph Badaracco and Richard Ellsworth for their book Leadership and the Quest for Integrity. "We either ought to commit to it or get rid of it." The team sat there a bit stunned, wondering if Burke was serious. He was, and the room erupted into a debate that ended with a recommitment. Burke and his colleagues would conduct similar meetings around the world, restoring the credo as a living document. Later when the Tylenol case happened the company had no need for debate whether customer safety was important than the profits. It was ready and aligned.

4) George Merck of Merck & Co.: His philosophy was simple: Put profits second. He did not really worry much about what wall street thought and yet increased profits by about 50 folds. Why I admire him is that when we see many pharma companies today stopping or not funding research if they don’t have a large commercial viability he did what every responsible leader of pharma company should do – spend time and resources on the disadvantaged. Medicine is for people, not for the profits," George Merck II declared on the cover of Time in August 1952—a rule his company observed in dispensing streptomycin to Japanese children following World War II. Another great example follows. Late one afternoon in 1978, Dr. William Campbell did what all great researchers do: He wondered at the data. While testing a new compound to battle parasites in animals, he was struck with the idea that it might be effective against another parasite—one that causes blindness and itching in humans so horrific that some victims have committed suicide. Campbell might have simply scribbled a note in the files and gone to lunch. After all, the potential "customers"—tribal people in remote tropical locations—would have no money to buy it. Undaunted, Campbell penned a memo to his employer, Merck & Co., urging pursuit of the idea. Today 30 million people a year receive Mectizan, the drug inspired by his observation, largely free of charge.

5) Sam Walton of Walmart: 'I have the personality of a promoter,' the Wal-Mart founder wrote, but 'the soul of an operator.

Here is what Jim Collins have to say about Sam Walton.A Brazilian businessman once told me how he'd sent letters to the heads of ten U.S. retailers in the1980s, asking to visit to see how they ran a retail operation. Most didn't bother to reply, and those who did sent a polite "No, thank you." All except Sam Walton.When the Brazilian and his colleagues stepped off the plane in Bentonville, Ark., a white-haired man asked if he could help. "We're looking for Sam Walton," they said, to which the man replied, "That's me." Walton led them to his truck and introduced his dog, Roy. As they rumbled around in the front cab of Walton's pickup, the Brazilian billionaires were pummeled with questions. Eventually it dawned on them: Walton had invited them to Bentonville so that he could learn about South America. Later Walton visited his friends in Sao Paulo. Late one afternoon there was a phone call from the police. Walton had been crawling around in stores on his hands and knees measuring aisle widths and had been arrested.The story encapsulates some of Walton's greatest strengths, notably his hunger for learning. But it also points to his biggest liability: his singularly charismatic personality. Companies built around a cult of personality seldom last. After Sam, would Wal-Mart decline like a church that loses its inspirational pastor?Yet Walton himself refused to let his colorful personality distract from his central message: to make better things ever more affordable to people of lesser means. And before his death in 1992, he made two brilliant moves to ensure that idea would outlast him. First, he set a goal that he knew would be unachievable in his lifetime: to grow annual sales from less than $30 billion to $125 billion by the year 2000. Second, so that no personality would become bigger than the idea, he picked a successor who had seemingly undergone a charisma bypass. Under David Glass, Wal-Mart blew right past the $125 billion goal, clocking in at $165 billion in 2000.

6) JRD TATA of TATA Group: TATA group is a 70 billion USD global corporation headquartered out of India and operating brands like Taj Hotels, Land Rover, Tata Stee, Tetley Tea amongst many others.

The wealth gathered by Jamsetji Tata and his sons in half a century of industrial pioneering formed but a minute fraction of the amount by which they enriched the nation. The whole of that wealth is held in trust for the people and used exclusively for their benefit. The cycle is thus complete; what came from the people has gone back to the people many times over." -- J R D Tata

His achievements have to be seen through the lens of India's economic and political history. Under British colonial rule until 1947, India was strait-jacketed by a foreign exchange crunch for almost forty years after independence, which gravely limited industrial entrepreneurship.From 1964 to 1991 severe government controls on big business further curbed the growth of the Tata Group.Analysing his own performance, JRD Tata insisted that his only real contribution to the group's smorgasbord of companies was Air-India. For the rest, he generously gave credit to his executives.Any chronicle of the Tata Group's growth therefore has to take the contribution of these larger than life men into account. JRD's story is, in many ways, as much theirs as his own. Yet, it would be a mistake to under-assess JRD's role. As one of the senior Tata executives, Darbari Seth, once said, 'Mr Tata was able to harness a team of individualistic executives, capitalizing upon their strengths, downplaying their differences and deficiencies; all by the sheer weight of his leadership.'

Leadership, according to JRD meant motivating others. 'As chairman, my main responsibility is to inspire respect.'

A university dropout, JRD was something of a self-taught technocrat, and died long before the phrase 'war for talent' was coined. Yet, almost every senior Tata director from the 1930s onwards held a degree from a foreign university. Tata willingly financed bright young boys who wanted to go abroad for further education at that time when Indian education was at its infancy.Before JRD took over, the labour situation at key Tata plants was frequently tense despite the fact that management had poured millions into subsidised housing for workers, offered free medical and hospital treatment, as well as free education and was miles ahead of government legislation in terms of labour practices.For example, Tata Steel pioneered the eight-hour day in 1912, long before the principle had been accepted in the United States or Europe (Britain introduced the twelve-hour day in 1911).Tata Steel introduced leave with pay in 1920, and in India this was established by law in 1945. Tata Steel set up a provident fund in 1920, which was not legalised until 1952.