environment? It requires a wholly different set of skills, based
on ideas, people skills, and values. The things I’m talking
about aren’t really new, but are now in a new context. What
used to be peripheral is now mainstream. A shift in orienta-
tion has occurred in just the last ten years. Traditional leaders
are having a hard time explaining what’s going on in the
world, because they’re basing their explanations on their ex-
perience with the old paradigm, and if you place the same set
of events or facts in a different paradigm, you may not be able
to explain them.”
Sculley continued: “My former boss at Pepsico and the cur-
rent head of IBM were both World War II fighter pilots. The
World War II fighter pilot is no longer going to be our princi-
pal paradigm for leaders. The new generation of leaders is
going to be more intellectually aware. What does it mean to
go from an industrial age to an information age? Beyond the
ways we have to change as leaders and managers within the
context of our enterprise, the world itself is changing, becom-
ing more idea-intensive, more information-intensive, so the
people who’re going to surface, to rise to the top, are going to
be people who are comfortable with and excited by ideas and
information.
“I used to go on corporate boards so I could learn, but since
coming to Apple, I’ve resigned from all of them.”
Robert Dockson had to change a negative climate when he
arrived at CalFed: “When I came here, no one ever tried to
teach me the business. It was a divided company, and it had
factions with walls around them. They refused to speak to each
other. I wondered if I’d made a terrible mistake. There were
eleven senior vice presidents, and they all wanted my job. I de-
cided that I wasn’t going to clean house, that I was going to
On Becoming a Leader