Creative learning: how dyslexic CEOs have turned a weakness into a leadership strength.

The determined Stanford University freshman was struggling miserably to keep up with his studies. Hampered by dyslexia, he had flunked English twice, not to mention French, and was on the verge of being asked to leave the school. Math and science came easily, but any course that demanded critical reading and writing overwhelmed him. It was a daily battle just to move his eyes across a page and absorb what he read.

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A harbinger of a lifetime of failure? Not exactly. Today, that once-floundering college freshman, Charles Schwab, is internationally known as a financial services entrepreneur. The San Francisco-based firm that he founded in 1971 and still bears his name has $857 billion in assets under management. Schwab, now 66, attributes his success to the fact that he recognized his limitations early on and resolved to surround himself with trusted, talented people who could offset them.

Surprising as it may be, Schwab's story is not unique. Some of the most accomplished CEOs have risen to the business world's highest ranks despite having difficulty doing something as basic as reading a memo. At a time when chief executives are expected to absorb copious amounts of information about their highly complex organizations and the industries in which they compete, the success of these dyslexic CEOs offers a lesson in leadership. Rather than futilely try to plow on, they have created simpler ways of doing things and relied on the abilities of others.

"It's impossible to know how many titans of industry suffer this way because few have the courage to admit it," says Stanford University professor Jerry Porras, coauthor of the acclaimed Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies. "But it's clear that many CEOs who have struggled with so-called learning differences have been among the most gifted entrepreneurs." In addition to Schwab, he notes, the list includes John Chambers, Richard Branson, Ted Turner and Craig McCaw. Historically, there were Henry Ford, Walt Disney, F.W. Woolworth and Alexander Graham Bell. All of these visionaries, says Porras, "were quick to recognize what other CEOs often take too long to learn: No leader builds a large successful organization alone. They must have a great team to build a great company."

Just how much difficulty did Schwab's dyslexia present for him early on? "I could manage--with effort--the little chunks of text you see in a memo or a newspaper," the financial guru says. "But a long book or a speech was almost impenetrable." In other words, he couldn't deliver a talk by reading from a simple, written script. "The usual way you see a speech typed is all in upper case, but for me that made every paragraph look like illegible gray blocks of type," Schwab says. To manage, he would have each phrase typed in a different fashion--large, small, bold-faced or underlined. That way, he explains, "when I looked down at the page all the words wouldn't run together." By the end, what would look like a ransom note to most people, Schwab says, was much clearer to him.

Schwab began to overcome his learning disability by working with bright, reliable peers. In college and, later, business school, he found tutors and organized study groups to help him get his work done. As an entrepreneur, he hired people who were not merely competent but especially gifted to fill those organizational roles that Schwab himself could not. "I knew from my own difficulties I needed to have other people who could help me out in different parts of the business that I was developing," he says. "I have been able, I think, to recognize my strengths and my deficits and build up around me great people in the deficit areas. I think that probably has been the single most important benefit that I received from having this learning issue early on in my life."

That's a powerful insight that often takes other entrepreneurs much longer to discover. "Learning to recruit and rely on your management team can be a painful lesson for leaders, particularly gifted entrepreneurs who grow up thinking they can do anything better than anyone they hire for the job," says Porras. For some, it takes a heart attack or a collapsing stock price to convince them to get religion about developing the strong bench needed to create a sustainable, thriving enterprise. "During a crisis they may finally learn the hard way that they can't do it all and that they shouldn't try," Porras advises.

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Also remarkable is that anyone who has seen Schwab speak in public or watched his nationally televised commercials might have no idea about his dyslexia and the discomfort it causes him. He is among the most believable and charismatic leaders in business. The reason may be simple: "I won't do anything that I don't strongly believe in personally," Schwab insists. Not only has he worked hard at his communication skills, he devotes his time only to projects he truly believes in. That way, Schwab says, he can speak convincingly because he is speaking from the heart.

Stressing the Personal

Cisco Systems Chief Executive John Chambers sounds similarly polished when speaking in public. But you won't find him reading a script either. Those stirring speeches of his that evoke the oratorical style of an evangelical minister are memorized. "I struggled in school and it was painful to read," he explains. "My teachers thought I wasn't very smart, and I wasn't sure either. I couldn't understand why I couldn't keep up." His parents found the right tutors for him and, he sighs, "I had to work really hard." Chambers dreaded the extra work, but it instilled him with a Spartan-like ethic. He went on to graduate second in his high school class.

In part because of his dyslexia, Chambers has created a leadership style that favors personal contact over mountains of paperwork. He would rather speak to people face to face than read a detailed memo they prepared. Not only does he reach out to fellow executives and employees at Cisco, the $18-billion San Jose-based computer routers and switches maker, he also recruits customers around the world. To do so, Chambers draws on his impressively high energy level and the confidence that comes from years of working his way up the hard way. His public appearances, Web casts and broadcasts reflect serious practice and a consistently clear, compelling message. "We prepare like we mean it," he says, "and we never take the efforts of our employees or the challenges of our customers for granted--ever."

Chambers' interpersonal skills were on full display at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in January. During one session at the gathering in Davos, Switzerland, he spontaneously leapt to his feet to describe the future of telecommunications, painting a detailed picture with logic and clarity. In a follow-up interview, he said that such extemporizing on complex topics comes naturally to him. "I don't know why, but I can easily picture multiple dimensions of a problem," Chambers said, in his rapid-fire West Virginia twang. "It's kind of second nature. I can visualize issues and make them clearer and simpler."

Like a blind person whose hearing becomes ultrakeen, Chambers and Schwab have spent a lifetime learning how to turn complicated ideas into simple, bold concepts. As Schwab puts it: "Frankly, I don't have the luxury of leaving things complicated. I have to work every day at deciphering things for myself to make them clear. As it turns out, smart people like our customers hate overly complicated stuff, too." As he strived to demystify the mutual fund business for masses of individual investors, for example, Schwab had an epiphany. "You don't have to have a problem with reading to have a problem reading a pile of mutual fund statements from 10 different companies," Schwab says. His solution was to invent simpler, one-stop shopping for mutual funds--a move that launched a new industry.

Cutting Through the Clutter

Similarly, Sir Richard Branson, the founder and mastermind of the Virgin empire, has an obsession for basic ideas, which in turn helps Virgin's marketing efforts. "The good thing about being dyslexic is that I need everything simplified for me," Branson says. "By simplifying everything and making things clear to me, I can then make it clear to other people."

For Branson, the biggest personal learning challenge has always been math. "If I were good at it," he laughs, "I probably never would have started an airline." He's used that line for years, but he is only half-joking. "We run the biggest group of private companies in the U.K. and up until last year I couldn't work out the difference between net and gross," Branson claims. His board of directors knew that, he says, so "instead of saying, 'That's our gross,' they would say, 'That's good news, Richard,' or 'That's bad news, Richard.' Bizarre things like that."

A Virgin board member finally gave Branson a simple image that is now a rather famous lesson in finance that the entrepreneur has been sharing in his speeches for years. "He said, 'Look, think of a big ocean and you are catching fish. What's left inside the net is 'net' and what you are left with at the end of the year, and everything else, is 'gross,'" Branson says. "Wonderful. Now I know that a net has holes in it."

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For decades, leaders like Branson, Chambers and Schwab kept their learning disabilities a secret from the public. "I wasn't sure people would find my problem reassuring," Branson says. But ultimately, for almost every CEO, telling their stories provides its own rewards. "I was amazed to see the impact I could have on the lives of people with learning differences," says Schwab. Both Schwab and Chambers have sponsored and led extensive research efforts to help teachers and parents understand dyslexia.

The biggest dividend may be what the rest of us can learn from their struggle. The challenges these leaders faced made them better CEOs, as they were forced to recruit talented teams and delegate authority to achieve their goals long before most other entrepreneurs come to that necessary realization during their careers. Their customers may be the biggest beneficiaries: Only a dyslexic would volunteer to engage in a daily battle to demystify complex issues and find a way to build a business by making things simpler for the world.