Have you ever wondered how the true “Best of the Best” got to where they are?  Fortune Magazine just named their 2010 Top People In Business.  Here’s who they are, what made them distinctive, and what they accomplished.  We all need to save this post as one of our Favorites and refer to it often in 2011!

  1. Reed Hastings, CEO, Netflix – Risk – “Hastings has thrown his company’s muscle behind delivering television and movies over the internet, risking his $2 billion-in-sales DVD-by-mail business.  The result – the company has grown from gnat to giant.”
  2. Alan Mulally, CEO, Ford – Alignment – “His level-headed leadership (develop a clear point of view and an operating plan; align culture with plan) soothed a factious management team.”
  3. Steve Jobs, CEO, Apple - Technology – “its still-very-much-in-charge CEO have introduced the game-changing iPad months ahead of the largely absent competition.”  Interestingly, he also “escaped any bad publicity over the dozen-plus suicides this year at its main supplier, Foxconn.”
  4. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, Facebook –  Legacy – “Unlike many young leaders, he’s already started crafting a legacy (not a bad move, considering the negative press around privacy he and his company generated).  This year he gave $100 million to a foundation to support the Newark public schools.”
  5. Ellen Kullman, CEO, DuPont – Innovation – “Her secret, in part: innovating and bringing to market new products at a faster clip.  Nearly 40% of DuPont’s 2009 revenues came from products that were introduced in the past five years…Kullman expects the 70 research centers the company operates around the world to keep the new stuff coming.”
  6. Robin Li, CEO, Baidu – Opportunity – “In March, Google stopped censoring its search results in China and redirected Chinese searchers to its Hong Kong site.  The company’s market share began tanking – and there to take up the slack was Robin Li’s Baidu.”
  7. Larry Ellison, CEO, Oracle – Talent – “He took on the HP board, declaring that CEO Mark Hurd’s ouster was ‘the worst personnel decision’ since Apple fired Jobs…he hired Hurd as president.”
  8. Warren Buffett, CEO, Berkshire Hathaway - Partnership – “Buffet spent much of the year enlisting his billionaire brethren to pledge the bulk of their wealth to philanthropy…He finalized the acquisition of Burlington Northern Santa Fe…tapped into Bershire’s $35 billion war chest to buy Marquis Jet.  Then he surprised the world with a talent acquisition…little-known hedge fund manager Todd Combs.”
  9. Ray Dalio, President, Bridgewater Associates – Reality – “The self-described hyperrealist uses computer models to help predict global economic trends.”
  10. Jeff Bezos, CEO, Amazon – Restlessness – “Amazon’s restless chief kept pushing into the e-book space: He quickly launched a Kindle app for the iPad, a Wi-Fi-only Kindle, and a cheaper, slimmed-down machine too.”

Risk, Alignment, Technology, Legacy, Innovation, Opportunity, Talent, Partnership, Reality, Restlessness. 

These are just some of the lessons from the world’s Top 10 business leaders.  For everyone that reads this post, if we don’t incorporate these 10 practices we will never achieve our full potential.

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