Good morning.
IBM CEO Arvind Krishna spent an hour with Fortune Connect Fellows earlier this week, discussing how he rose to the top of the 111-year old tech company, and how he aligns his personal goals with the company’s goals. His best advice to the fellows was something he said a mentor shared with him:
“You should live every day in the pleasure of getting fired…That is so freeing, and so deep…It’s definitional for me. If it's not aligned to how I want to do things, I will leave go someplace else. I have pretty good confidence that you can get kind of role, some job, somewhere. Will it be exactly the same? Probably not. But if you got to some level of fulfillment where you are, you can probably do it again. So you should never be in fear of taking one or two steps back, because if you are, then you are a hostage.”
Krishna’s comments came at the end of a six-week “learning sprint,” in which the Connect Fellows, who are part of a learning community of senior executives potentially headed for the C-suite, explored their own purpose as well as their company’s purpose as a means of building leadership skills. You can learn more about the program here.
Separately, the Yale School of Management this morning is announcing a new program on “Stakeholder Innovation and Management”—an effort to disseminate best practices from the new era of stakeholder capitalism. Former IBM Chief Brand Officer Jon Iwata is one of the founders of the program, which he says is a response to the need of leaders to develop “new skills, capabilities and management systems” for a new era. I wouldn’t be surprised if other business schools follow suit.
More news below.
Alan Murray
@alansmurray
alan.murray@fortune.com
