Best And Worst American Leaders And Managers

AMERICA’S BEST MANAGERS Indra Nooyi, PepsiCo CEO: She played lead guitar in an all-women rock band in her hometown of Madras, India. She was a cricket player in college. Today, Indri Noyil presides over 185,000 employees in nearly 200 countries as the chief executive of PepsiCo. Her parents had told her she was out of her mind and should have stayed in India and gotten married. "I always had this urge, this desire, this passion," she once explained, to "settle in the United States," where she is now the married mother of two daughters. By 2006, Noyil was one of just two finalists to succeed CEO Steven Refinement as leader of one of the world's best-known brands. After getting the nod, Nooyi flew to visit the other contender. "Tell me whatever I need to do to keep you," she implored. They had worked together for years, both loved music, and Nooyi was persuasive, offering to boost her competitor's compensation to nearly match her own. He agreed to serve as her right-hand man, creating her version of a team of rivals. Steve Jobs, Apple CEO: Steve Jobs is the CEO of Apple, which he co-founded in 1976. Apple leads the industry in innovation with its award-winning Macintosh computers, OS X operating system, and consumer and professional applications software. Apple is also leading the digital music revolution, having sold almost 200 million iPods and over six billion songs from its iTunes online store. Apple has also entered the mobile phone market with its revolutionary phone. Steve grew up in the apricot orchards which later became known as Silicon Valley, and still lives there with his wife and three children. It is a tribute to this CEO that Apple, which ten years ago seemed headed for the slag heap, is No. 1 on this list. Steve Jobs has always had a knack for weaving magic out of silicon and software. But who knew he could build a $24 billion (in sales) company on the strength of a portable jukebox and a computer with a singledigit market share?

John F. Welch Jr., General Electric CEO: When John F. Welch Jr. resigns from General Electric in April 2001, he will actually leave two vacancies: those of G.E.'s chief executive and corporate America's most admired manager. Mr. Welch, who announced his retirement date on Monday, is not the most famous chief executive in the country. That title probably belongs to William H. Gates of Microsoft or Warren E. Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway. But among board members, executives, and businessschool students and professors, Mr. Welch's name is a touchstone for smart corporate management in a way that no other chieftain matches. ''He's the best manager in America,'' said Gerard R. Roche, the chairman of the executive search firm Hedrick & Struggles. ''What he's done at G.E. has become the benchmark for other companies,'' said Christopher A. Bartlett, a professor at Harvard Business School.

AMERICA’S WORST MANAGERS Charles Prince, former CEO, Citigroup: The nation's largest banking company announced Prince's widely expected departure in a statement following an emergency meeting of its board. City also said Sir Win Bischoff, chairman of City Europe and a Member of the City management and operating committees, would serve as interim CEO. Rubin, a former co-chairman of Goldman, Sachs & Co., has served as the chair of City’s executive committee, and it was also expected he would take a greater role in leading the company. In a separate statement, City, which took a hit of $6.5 billion from asset write downs and other credit-related losses in the third quarter, said it would take an additional $8 billion to $11 billion in write downs. "It was the honorable course, given the losses we are now announcing," Rubin said of Prince's resignation in an interview with The Associated Press. John J. Harris, chairman and CEO, Nestle Waters:

His branch of Nestle, Nestle Waters, threatened to sue Miami-Dade County in Florida after the county aired public serves messages telling people that the county’s public tap water was cheaper, safer, and purer than bottled water. Nestle Waters North America, which makes close to $4 billion each year through bottled water sales, says the ads are an “attack on the integrity of the company”; the International Bottled Water Association, a trade association representing the bottled water industry, and is considering similar legal action. Multiple studies uphold Miami’s claim that tap water is just as safe, if not safer than bottled water. Investigations have even discovered that some bottled water actually comes from the same sources as tap water. Rick Wagoner, chairman and CEO, General Motors: He (b. February 9, 1953, Wilmington, Delaware) is an American businessman and former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of General Motors. Wagoner resigned as Chairman and CEO at General Motors on March 29, 2009, at the request of the White House. In the last four years of Wagoner’s leadership, GM lost $82 billion. With the future of his company depending on whether or not Congress will grant them a multi-billion dollar bailout, you might think that the CEO of General Motors would go out of his way to prove that the company has done everything it can to save money. But traveling by private jet to Washington, DC to attend Congressional hearings where he was to plead his case for a bailout in mid-November was not the image Congress—and taxpayers—wanted to see. It’s not exactly going to make people want their tax dollars going towards a huge bailout of your company, when your company still maintains costly expenses like a private jet.

TOP AMERICAN LEADERS David Baltimore, California Institute of Technology:

He (born 7 March 1938) is an American biologist, university administrator, and Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine. He served as president of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) from 1997 to 2006, and is currently the Robert A. Millikan Professor of Biology at Caltech. As is traditional in the AAAS, he now serves as the Chairman of the Board of Directors. David Baltimore's influence on science has stretched far beyond the Nobel he won at age 37 for his work on retroviruses. An early advocate for federal research on AIDS, he served as president of Rockefeller University and the California Institute of Technology, all while continuing to do research. U.S. News’s Nancy Shute asked him about the challenges of incubating innovation. He believes one of the fundamental differences between institutional leadership and running a lab is that you have to overpower your own desires for personal indulgence to the needs of the society.

Manny Diaz, Mayor of Miami: Mayor Manuel A. Diaz has led Miami toward a renaissance of prosperity and opportunity since he was first elected in 2001. Now in his second term, Mayor Diaz is recognized as one of America’s most innovative Mayors. He is also president of the United States Conference of Mayors, the country’s official non-partisan organization of urban leaders, and has launched an ambitious agenda to raise awareness of the Mayors’ 10-Point Plan through Mayors Action Forums held throughout the country. Mayor Diaz has continued to lower costs, improve performance and introduce private sector business approaches that have led to better service delivery and recognition awards for several city departments. Robert Gates, U.S. Secretary of Defense:

He is (born September 25, 1943) is currently serving as the 22nd United

States Secretary of Defense. He took office on December 18, 2006. Prior to this, Gates served for 26 years in the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council, and under President George H. W. Bush as Director of Central Intelligence. Before he joined the CIA, he served with the United States Air Force (USAF). With its wry realism and emphasis on the American military's "soft power," a speech by Defense Secretary Robert Gates at the National Defense University this fall offered a crystallizing snapshot of his tenure and, Pentagon officials point out, its ultimate departure from that of his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld. In the speech, Gates told officers that in 42 years of service, he had learned two big things: a sense of humility and an appreciation of limits, "Not every outrage, every act of aggression, every crisis can or should elicit an American military response," he said, advising them to "be modest about what military force can accomplish and what technology can accomplish”.

WORST AMERICAN LEADER President George W. Bush's: Critics are already calling him the worst American president in history. George W Bush will leave office on Tuesday as America's most unpopular leader ever. He has been dismissed as a buffoon and a war-monger - a man who made the world a more dangerous place, while sending it spinning to the brink of economic collapse. He has been the world's most powerful man through turbulent times. His mood, especially in front of the cameras, was usually playful, whatever the world threw at him. He winked at the Queen. He greeted the then-British Prime Minister with the words: "Yo, Blair" and teased him about a Christmas jumper. He put Gordon Brown in his golf buggy and raced round in circles. He massaged German leader Angela Merkel. He walked into a door in China, crashed his bike at the G8 summit at Gleneagles and fell off a Segway scooter He

possibly has committed the greatest strategic blunder in modern memory. To put it honestly, he attacked the wrong target. It is believed that he is by far the most corrupt American president since Harding in the Twenties I believe that future historians will look back on the past three years with disbelief and utter disdain, because America has become a Nazi monster in the eyes of the whole world - a nation of bullies who would rather kill than live peacefully.