When I was president of the company, I said, 'Okay, I can do this - piece of cake.' Then when you are the CEO, the responsibilities multiply enormously because you worry about everything.
The issues that cross a president's desk are never easy. The easy questions don't even get to the president.
I always go back to Harry Truman: Should we drop an atomic bomb to save 100,000 lives? That's a hell of a decision to make. Did he make that decision by himself? No, he had advisers.
I honestly think that Donald Trump's only adviser is his doorman.
President Trump is doing what he can to act decisively. And if there's one thing most people have in mind in distinguishing the business world from the political world is that the CEO of a business can act decisively.
As president, I could run the Trump organization, great, great company, and I could run the company - the country. I'd do a very good job, but I don't want to do that.
The executive moves we are announcing today will strengthen American for the long-term future and reflect well on the depth of the Company's management team.
Making choices is what the Presidency is about.
Abby Johnson has agreed to become Chief Executive Officer of Fidelity, reflecting a further step forward in our leadership succession plan. Abby will retain her role of President, and I will continue to serve as Chairman of the Board.
It's easier to solve the problem more quickly with directors than with writers.
I'm the non-executive chairman of nine or so major companies, and on the nine companies, it's a little trying because you jump from one industry to another, as the case might be. But one had the reasonable knowledge of those nine activities, and it's been an exciting job.
For a hot-shot CEO taking over a troubled company, mass firings are the ultimate quick fix, the accounting equivalent of crack: cheap, easy to score, instantly gratifying, and highly addictive.
He [President George W. Bush] really doesn’t want a lot of advice from me.
In the alternate universe of conservative talk radio, the killing of Bin Laden coincidentally happened on Barack Obama's watch. He had to be kicked dragging and screaming into authorizing it, and even then he made lots of mistakes.
I was a very senior minister in the Howard government and I sat around this particular table [in the prime ministerial office] in many discussions. The difference between being a senior minister and the prime minister is that ultimately the buck does stop with the prime minister and in the end the prime minister has to make those critical judgement calls and that's the big difference.
Decisions of the kind the executive has to make are not made well by acclamation. They are made well only if based on the clash of conflicting views...The first rule in decision-making is that one does not make a decision unless there is disagreement.
Being the leader means you have to make life or death decisions sometimes.
More often than not, CEOs are conflict-avoidant because their role is to define vision and strategy than it is to get into confrontations with negative and toxic people which they can't stand.
I met with President Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago in February. So he'd been in office about a month. It was for an hour. Went over there on a Saturday. They invite... Reince Priebus called and said, "The president wants to see you." He never once asked me what I thought. He never asked me once what he thought I ought to do. He never asked me what I think of this or that. My impression is this man is more self-informed and decisive.
My hope is that's something [Donald Trump] is thinking about, because not only is the president of the United States somebody that the entire country looks to for direction but sets the agenda internationally in a lot of ways.
The only thing that prepares you to run a company is running a company.
Despite his unimpressive appearance and manner, he was a brilliant fellow with a crystal-clear mind.... It was just that, when it came time for him to act like an executive, he was like a great many other people; when the time comes to make decisions, they have difficulty doing it.
When in 1969 I became publisher of the 'Washington Post' as well as president of the company, my plate was fuller than ever. I had partly worked myself into the job but not, except for rare occasions, taken hold. I had acquired some sense of business but still relied on others more than most company presidents did.
The problems of the country look very different from the Oval Office than they do from the campaign trail.
If you look at any normal organization, the CEO is the person with the highest E.Q. The person with the highest IQ is often in the back room running the financials or the operations. That's topsy turvy.
