The Strategy of Leadership

Dean Benjamin Akande

Charles Knight is an icon in the annals of corporate leadership. What makes him an icon is that he successfully combined longevity with accomplishments - significant long-lasting industry changing accomplishments.

For 27 consecutive profitable years he led Emerson Electric. In his more than quarter-century tenure as CEO of Emerson, Knight spearheaded Emerson's evolution from a primarily domestic producer to a technology-based global manufacturing grant. The company's record of increased earnings per share and increased dividends for each year he served as CEO is nothing short of remarkable. And so as we dedicate this issue of Nota Bene to strategy, I would like to take a thing or two from Knight's recent best-seller published last year by the Harvard School Press—Performance without Compromise:

•  Success is the ultimate measure of a leader's contribution and legacy

•  Prioritization is difficult but necessary

In my opinion, Knight's singular contribution as a leader of Emerson is that he ensured that his contribution will not have an expiration date and that the ultimate measure of his significance is to ensure that Emerson never loses step and that it would continue to succeed far into the future. He ensured this with the appointment of David Farr as his successor.

The big lesson here is that the ultimate and most gratifying aspect of leading is recognizing who you are, what you do well, and how you can make things much better and long-lasting. That is the strategy of leadership and Charles Knight is my reference point, the modern day benchmark.

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