The millennium CEO.

What will define the 21st Century CEO? What specific challenges will he or she have to face? What skills do today's CEOs wish they'd acquired to prepare for the world they're dealing with today - let alone tomorrow? These are some of the questions Chief Executive, in partnership with Deloitte & Touche LLP, posed to two groups of executives - 23 current CEOs and 15 emerging leaders -at two Roundtables held in June at the St. Regis Hotel in New York. Here are their answers.

Emerging Leaders on GLOBALIZATION 

Jeanette Wagner: This may be heresy, but I think people have been talking about globalization and saying they're global, and it's lip service. I don't think most people really understand what global really is. It's not taking your culture and transplanting it someplace else. We've not really come as far as I would hope we would have come by now on what really is globalization.

Brenda Lauderback: I believe we are going to have to understand cultures in much more depth. We wrestle with how you put the formula together so people can use that knowledge as they go from country to country. And the formulas are very different in each culture and country.

Andrew Carter: As we globalize the economy and as we have our information revolution, this is going to strengthen the individualism of different parts of the globe, geographically, ethically, and spiritually, because if we can communicate so readily, then we can and will maintain our individual identities and customs.

Edward Kangas: There are companies that are international companies; there are some that are multinational companies; and some that are global companies. And to me, the difference of a global company has to do with substance almost before culture. The issue is that global companies are those that are not just operating or selling or trading or buying on a global basis; they are driving to achieve economy and power of scale through global consistency. When you drive toward being a truly globally intertwined company, through telecommunications and computerizations, you can operate 24 hours a day as an intertwined ball of yarn. The ability to manage an intertwined entity with global consistency in methodologies is an absolutely overwhelming task for a CEO.

Nina Henderson: I'm concerned about the degree of sophistication that we have among ourselves. I think all of us, regardless of where we are in the world, are not yet sophisticated enough to understand how this interconnection can really play out. We have to educate ourselves to be able to understand and get beyond just the toys so you can determine whether globalization is correct for your business, your family issues, your living issues.

Paula Cholmondeley: You won't get the power out of globalization until we figure out how to take the technological capability down to the level of the primary worker. Unless we can educate the worker in Singapore as well as the person in the back woods of India as well as somebody on a factory floor in the U.S. all to use the same computer system, you're not going to get the power out of it.

Emerging Leaders on CULTURAL CHANGE

Waring Partridge: I think the No. 1 challenge for a CEO will be managing a more horizontal organization and a much more diverse work force. And by diversity I mean as much technical or skilled diversity as cultural. You start adding dimensions of globalization, technology change, discontinuous change, new entrants into the work force, your competitor is coming from Bombay, the best talent in the world in computers is coming from a technical university in Manchester...the capability of understanding that is probably beyond the capability of all mortals.

Ngaire Cuneo: The biggest advantage we had [in adapting our culture] is that we didn't have a tradition, we didn't have to protect other decisions that had been made earlier. And that leaves you a lot more time to decide what to do.

Partridge: The hardest point is to figure out when the time is to change - identifying the point of discontinuous change and managing through it.

Jeanette Wagner: If you're really paying attention and you are the CEO, it is a continuous process. Organizations need to be as biodegradable as packaging. You need to be able to change the structure as you see things evolve. Most people have great difficulty with that because it's much easier to stay where you are.

Henry McGee: If you take that point, you're managing to a higher example. You're no longer worrying about prosperity, perhaps, as a corporate goal. The stakes are higher.

Nina Henderson: I believe that if you really go to the base, the very bottom of your organization at each level and try to have some tentacles out there that give you your information so you can try to spot that - that's really an incredible talent. You've got to be able to switch your head to be able to figure out how to extract from all the different types of people who make up your organization who will communicate to you differently and who will interpret differently. People make things happen, not companies.

Brenda Lauderback: I think understanding the population base of your employees is very important. I'm in a company where 75 percent of our associates are women. Fifty percent of our management happens to be women. We have to make sure that everything that we're putting in place really fits what the employees' priorities are. Everyone wants opportunities, but a lot of it is, "What flexibility do I have in my job today? DO I have opportunities to continue to grow?"

Emerging Leaders on VISION AND COMMUNICATION:

Brenda Lauderback: Strategies may change based on where you want to go, but the vision, really, should not necessarily change if you really know what you want your corporation to be and what you want to accomplish.

William Hickey: The question is, how far down in the organization does the vision go?

Lauderback: It should go all the way.

Nina Henderson: If you do get your vision clearly stated and drive it all the way through your organization in a way that's very warm and receiving to those people, the key issue then is to keep playing on that. You need to get people to buy in and you need to be open on your own to get people to hear what it is they're taking away from what you're saying, because it's probably interpreted many different ways.

Daniel Stern: Are you able to actually build a business on the basis of vision?

Jeanette Wagner: If you live it and don't just publish a vision statement. A shared vision that people feel they are cooperating in, that they are personally contributing to.

Henderson: No matter what you're telling people and believe in, you have a tremendous credibility gap. Belief systems break down. It's a matter of recreating that.

Ngaire Cuneo: That's exactly the question: If the CEO's responsibility is to share the vision, how does he or she create a vision?

Frederick Bush: How do you distribute this vision on a global basis?

Paula Cholmondeley: Well today, CEOs have all become the great communicator. It's at the basis of whether you educate. It's at the basis of e-mail. All of a sudden, the role of the CEO is to communicate.

Edward Kangas: The creation of the vision is more important than being able to communicate it.

Henry McGee: I disagree. You can have a great vision, but if you have an inarticulate CEO who cannot sell that idea equally to the plant worker in Leon as he can in Lansing, MI, that corporation will fail, no matter how great the vision. The great CEOs of the future will be the greatest salespeople.

Kangas: The great Japanese companies today do a marvelous job of building committed commitment to vision, and many of their CEOs are totally inarticulate. And the reason they're successful at it is they involve so many people in the consensus- building process that they end up with 25, 30, even 50 disciples in these huge companies, and the CEO sits back and is relatively inarticulate.

Lauderback: I don't think preaching the vision is really the issue. I think we've had people stand up and preach the vision and then it's like "go out there and get it done." The issue is more, do your vision practices fit into what the vision of the company is? Do the strategies you're embracing and supporting fit the vision? And that's why when we talk about "living the vision," that's what's really important because a lot of the decisions you make will support it, and that's how the vision will really filter down into the company.

Kangas: Then it isn't so much whether the CEO is able to communicate the vision broadly; it's whether the CEO can cause the organization to live by it.

Lauderback: I think there used to be a time when you sat and waited to hear the CEO speak - the Almighty. But people are going to be listening to a lot of other leaders, as well.

Waring Partridge: I think lots of people can communicate vision. Very few can figure out when to change it. Half the companies around this table won't exist in 10 years, and a lot of them won't exist involuntarily. And they will be great at communicating yesterday's vision.

CEOs on TRUST AND LOYALTY

Thomas Wajnert: The challenge is to be able to trust someone else to do something. And trust is a very big word right now. It's part of this openness and listening. The attribute a CEO needs now more than ever is vulnerability, not knowing what to do, being open to listening to others and building trust with customers, joint venture partners, and employees, in order to achieve the business results that are required.

Now building trust is a tough thing to do. You don't just say, "We're in a trust relationship."

J. Michael Cook: The majority of young people in our organization tell us they will work for four or five companies during their careers. This is hard for somebody to understand who's only had one job. I don't know that it's disloyalty. It's just a different environment. But it changes your outlook toward the work force.

James Ericson: All these things go back to the principles of trusting your employees and building relationships and building culture. And one of the things we're suffering from now when we talk about people having four or five jobs over a lifetime, is not the people that are coming into the corporation, it's people who have seen corporations downsized by a fourth, a third, a half. And their reaction is, "Hey, I can't afford to invest my life in something like this." We've got to get back into the ball game of competing for our own employees.

David Weil: I've been at this 40 years, and some major changes have taken place. I'm not talking about technology and information systems. I'm talking about trust and respect. I'd like to reverse the equation and talk not about our trust in our people, but the trust of our people in us as their leaders. And ladies and gentlemen, I think we have been grossly deficient, and we ought to recognize why the changes - the mobility, the constant change of employment, etc. - have taken place.

How do you think an employee feels when he's told from one day to the next, one month to the next, that we have to downsize? Industry demands it, whatever the reason. And in one swift move, 500, 5,000, 10,000 people are let go. Then they read the annual report on the company in which they may own some shares and they find out that the chief executive, instead of getting $2 million has made $20 million because of bonuses and salaries. I think there's something radically wrong with that kind of situation.

T.J. Dermot Dunphy: Trust is the new fad. Everybody's talking trust. But that's the most difficult of all, because you can't fake it. You can only build it over time. And the vast majority of U.S. CEOs, in my opinion, have abdicated trust. You can't just fire millions of people, pay yourself a lot of money, and have a golden parachute and then say trust me. Trust is the key element of the future, but I think it's going to require new leadership to really make it effective.

Matthew Luca: The point is, how do you nurture trust? We've been at it for eight years, and we started with the principle that you have to not only hire the right people, you've got to create the right kind of environment for them to succeed, give them a vision of who the clients are, what role they play, how important they are, and how you care about them. And you want them to care about you. This is all the soft stuff that people are talking about now.

William Woodside: Trust comes from results. The reason we have downsized is that we've had several generations of top management failures. This is tough for business to realize, but that's exactly what happened. They brought on too many people, they didn't get rid of people, they didn't retire people when they should have, and suddenly it becomes an overload where something has to be done dramatically. And that's what's so destructive of trust.

If you're a CEO you really are captain of the ship, you have to take the risks; you have to have the forward vision. You can have all the input you want, and you have to lead them successfully. If you don't, you're not going to have trust.

Gary Wendt: Trust is necessary, but it's not going to be enough. We're going to have to provide opportunity in addition to trust.

Emerging Leaders (and CEO ambassadors) on TRUST AND LOYALTY

Jim Ivy: The other group talked about much of the sequence and trends that have occurred over the years. We've gone from the late '80s to building infrastructure, building size through acquisition and merger, to downsizing that which we've acquisitioned and merged. We hire everybody - and then we let them all go. As a result of this, no one trusts management, and we wonder why. Where we are today as CEOs is managing an organization where we need to build on trust and at the san time build an organization that not afraid to take risk to change the company - an atmosphere where people aren't afraid to make mistakes.

Edward Kangas: I'm wondering if there isn't a scar that exists among a bunch of CEOs that had to lead us through the downsizing of 1989-91. People come to us today and they use the word "trust," but they don't use it to mean "Will I have a job for a long time?" They use it to say, "Can I trust you to treat me fairly? Can I trust you to live by a set of values? Can I trust you to give me growth opportunities? Can I trust that I will get ahead? Can I get ahead on merit whether I'm a man, a woman, a black, or whatever?

Mark Biestman: This whole trust issue is something that can be turned into an advantage with future employees. What it has done, at least in Silicon Valley, is create Silicon Valley, is create agent that comes to the company with the pragmatic reality, again, that what's more important than trust is corporate performance - exhibited by the leaders of the company.

Carol Evans: I think it's the issue of free agency, and it really does fit in a lot of industries where the feeling is merit: If I perform well and do well and I have a management that smart, recognizes that, then I can, as a free agent, choose to stay with a smart management team or leave, but it's a matter of merits.

Albert Gamper: I'm a firm believer that one should work at building employee loyalty and having that bridge built to employees that you should work to minimize turnover and minimize free agency. You'll end up having better companies if you don't have to recycle everybody 20 times in their lifetimes.

Biestman: The significant change is that the onus used to be on the employees to perform for the corporation, but now the playing field has been balanced, and there's an equal onus on the part of the corporation to provide performance for the employees as well. Loyalty can't be demanded. It has to be earned. Employees look to leadership by example and strap their loyalty and their trust to that.

Nina Henderson: I think it goes down into the individual's sense of contributing to the overall vision. People like to feel they are respected for what it is they can contribute, and if they are, they will contribute a lot more. If you're just giving them lip service, they're going to ignore you.

Paula Cholmondeley: And a lot of that goes back to what's the definition of trust. It's not that you will guarantee me a job for the rest of my life. It's that if I do this, what's the contractual relationship that's established between you and me about how I leave?

CEOs on THE RIGHT PEOPLE

Leonard Harlan: One of the critical items the CEO has to focus on more today is the culture of his organization. That means he really must be focusing on developing a culture within a highly mobile society. And that means going out to the far reaches of the world and bringing people in.

Albert Gamper: I think the skill that's going to be most exceptional is the CEO's ability to really pick and surround himself or herself with good people. The CEO who has the ability to put together a team of outstanding people and motivate them will be the more successful one. Because you can't do it alone.

Matthew Luca: The one thing you have to have in the service business is highly motivated employees. Everything else - technology, products - can be duplicated. You can't duplicate the people.

Christie Hefner: Hiring and motivating good people is one of the principal tasks of the CEO. It's not just about getting good people, it's about creating a way of leading those people that makes them effective. One of the things that is already different and will increasingly be different - and that is both a blessing and a burden - is that there's a much more diverse pool from which the people we hire are coming. And one of the things that is different from the issue of job security is the issue of the quality of the work environment. And if we're still in an environment in which acknowledging the fact that there are a lot of dual career couples is challenging, we have a long way to go toward an environment where people whose language is not English or whose religion is very different or who are openly gay or whatever will feel comfortable because they'll feel a part of that culture and that vision. One way to create an environment in which people want to come and do their best work that is different from a false promise of job security is the promise of being respected as an individual. Companies that can create that environment will have an enormous competitive advantage.

Ronald Gross: Your skills at being able to surround yourself at the top with a team of people who bring this information to you and that have different skills and different motivations but are participating people - and change that team around - is essential for today and the future.

CEO PARTICIPANTS

* Phillip D. Ashkettle is president and CEO of $1.2 billion Reichhold Chemicals, Inc., a Durham, NC-based supplier of plastic materials and resins.

* William J. Catacosinos(*) is chairman and CEO of Hicksville, NY-based Long Island Lighting Co., a $12.4 billion supplier of electric and gas services.

* J. Michael Cook is chairman and CEO of Deloitte & Touche LLP, a professional services firm. He is also chairman of the Financial Accounting Foundation and chairman of United Way of America.

* John S. Chalsty is chairman and CEO of New York City-based Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, Inc., an investment banking and securities firm with $55.5 billion in assets.

* R. Chad Dreier is chairman, president, and CEO of The Ryland Group, a $1 billion residential home construction and mortgage financing company based in Columbia, MD.

* T.J. Dermot Dunphy is chairman and CEO of Saddle Brook, NJ-based Sealed Air Corp., a $790 million manufacturer of protective packaging products and systems.

* James D. Ericson is president and CEO of Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co., a Milwaukee, WI-based life insurance firm with $62.7 billion in assets.

* Albert R. Gamper, Jr.(*) is president and CEO of The CIT Group, Inc., a Livingston, NJ-based commercial and consumer lending company with $19 billion in assets.

* Donald W. Griffin is chairman, president, and CEO of $2.7 billion Olin Corp., a Norwalk, CT-based maker of electronic industry parts, chemicals, metals, and ammunition.

* Ronald M. Gross is chairman and CEO of Stamford, CT-based Rayonier, a $1.2 billion forest products company.

* Leonard M. Harlan is president of New York City-based Castle Harlan, Inc., a $2 billion private merchant banking firm.

* Christie Hefner is chairman and CEO of Playboy Enterprises, Inc., a $300 million Chicago-based media company.

* Jim Ivy(*) is president and CEO of Stamford, CT-based Savin Corp., a $275 million distributor of office equipment.

* Edward M. Kopko is chairman and CEO of Montvale, NJ-based Butler International, a $450 million provider of outsourcing and technical staff.

* Matthew M. Luca is chairman and CEO of Valhalla, NY-based Prudential Resources Management, a provider of relocation, human resources, and real estate services and a unit of The Prudential Insurance CO. of America with $333 billion in assets.

* Joseph J. Melone is president and CEO of The Equitable Cos., a New York City-based insurance and investment management company with $240 billion in assets.

* Bernard G. Rethore is chairman and CEO of Dallas-based Flowserve Corp., a $1.1 billion international provider of industrial flow management services.

* Michael I. Roth is chairman and CEO of The Mutual Life Insurance Co. of New York, an insurance company with $20 billion in assets.

* Lawrence I. Sills is president of $750 million Standard Motor Products, a Long Island City, NY, manufacturer of automotive replacement parts.

* Thomas C. Wajnert is chairman of Morristown, NJ-based AT&T Capital Corp., a $1.9 billion equipment leasing and commercial finance firm.

* David Weil is president of Tarrytown, NY-based Ampacet Corp., a $310 million manufacturer of color and additive concentrates for plastics.

* Gary C. Wendt is chairman and CEO of Stamford, CT-based GE Capital Services, a financial services company and wholly-owned subsidiary of $79.2 billion General Electric.

* William S. Woodside(*) is chairman of LSG/SKY Chefs, Inc., a $1.5 billion airline caterer based in Arlington, TX.

* Also served as ambassador to Emerging Leaders group.

RELATED ARTICLE: It's the Soft Issues that are Hardest to Get Right.

Humorist Jean Shepard once wrote "In God We Trust; All Others Pay Cash," a sly observance of the dual role faith and skepticism play in our lives. The CEOs in this roundtable emphasized repeatedly the importance of trust and relationship building. It's not surprising. In a world beset by change, trust may be the only constant. Sometimes it's the only leadership tool the CEO has. Technological change is important, but most of the CEOs felt there are more fundamental issues, however soft or hard to define. A decade of downsizing has severed people's traditional ties to their organizations. CEOs are aware the levers of command and control don't work as well as they did. Accepting that people expect to work at least four or five jobs in their career changes one's assumptions about the workplace environment. Loyalty is transactional today, tethered to one's career, not the organization.

How does a CEO lead in such an environment? As Northwestern Mutual Life's Jim Ericsson said, "We have to get back in the ball game of competing for our own employees." Others were more adamant. "We have been grossly deficient," said Ampacet's David Weil. "How do you think an employee feels when he is told we have to downsize and later reads that the CEO has made $5 million or $10 million in salary and bonus? We can talk about the challenges posed by technology and information systems, but these will take care of themselves." Sealed Air's Dermot Dunphy reckoned the vast majority of U.S. CEOs have abdicated trust: "You can't fire millions of people, pay yourself a lot of money, have a golden parachute and then say, 'trust me.'"

The issue of trust was felt more acutely by the CEOs than by the emerging leaders. The latter appeared to be more forgiving (or less directly bloodied by overseeing organizational turmoil). They expect CEOs to be educators who articulate a vision and can figure out when to contradict the vision they had yesterday.

"Seeing around corners," suggested Olin's Donald Griffin, will not be easy in an increasingly chaotic, globalized, competitive world. CEOs must listen, not be constrained by their own career experience as a frame of reference, be tolerant of ambiguity, and still not take their eye off the hard stuff like accountability and maximizing rates of return. A leader, above all, has to be a dealer in hope.

- J.P. Donlon, editor-in-chief, Chief Executive

RELATED ARTICLE: Trust and the Corporate Generation Gap

What impressed me most about the discussion was that the two groups had markedly different ideas of what constitutes a present-day exploration of employee trust and loyalty. The Emerging Leaders - the group of younger divisional leaders that I moderated - got into some heady conversation on matters as far ranging as globalization, corporate values, and leadership. The issue of trust was brought up as we concluded that the primary role of the CEO for the next 10 years should be to articulate a shared corporate vision to employees and customers.

Already comfortable with a genuinely global view of the world, the group felt corporate leadership would need to embrace varying beliefs of what is trust or what is loyalty, depending on indigenous values and customs. This local "social capital" would challenge the management of each individual employee and the ultimate goal to satisfy each customer.

About three quarters of the way into our discussion, we invited four of the CEOs into our roundtable. Listening to reports of the senior contingent's discussion, we heard a striking contrast. Paula Cholmondelay astutely pointed this out: "I really feel like we had one conversation before the CEOs joined us and a different conversation afterwards."

As the CEOs recounted successful turnarounds that incorporated the personal strains of downsizing and losing trusted employees, one younger leader spoke of his experience in the world of high tech: "Loyalty to a talented person in Silicon Valley means working at the organization for as long as it is valuable to him or her." Another added: "The definition of trust is not that you will guarantee me a job for the rest of my life. [It's] if I do this, what's the contractual relationship that's established between you and me about how I leave?" Departure of the talented employee, the younger group agreed, is likely and probably inevitable.

The CEOs saw the focus of the loyalty and trust discussion emanating from their own profoundly deep professional lessons - learned well into their careers - that their corporations and all the institutionalized social agendas needed to be fundamentally changed or tossed out. Both groups agreed that leading visionary companies are those that embrace ideologies that mean something to people and offer them a challenging and good place to work.

Maybe both generations of corporate leaders have had to struggle with businesses that were focused on labor agreements, cultures of entitlement, old factories that needed to be modernized or closed down, a generation steeped in skepticism, the surprising realities of competing in a global economy, and the end of the Cold War. Maybe such complexities make it difficult to synthesize a defining, cross-generation understanding of loyalty and trust.

- Daniel R. Stern, president, The Leigh Bureau

LEADERS PARTICIPANTS

* Mark S. Biestman is vice president, commercial applications for Sunnyville, CA-based Actra Business Systems, an electronic commerce software company and joint venture between Netscape Communications and GE Information Services.

* Ambassador Frederick M. Bush(*) is the finance chairman for Greater Washington's Exploratory Committee for the Summer Olympics 2012 and former president, global products division of Angus Reid Group, Inc., a Vancouver market opinion research company.

* Andrew M. Carter is president of Andrew M. Carter & Co., LP, an investment management firm based in Boston.

* Paula H.J. Cholmondeley is vice president and general manager of the residential insulation business at $3.8 billion Owens Corning, based in Toledo, OH.

* Ngaire Cuneo(*) is executive vice president, corporate development at Carmel, IN-based Conseco, Inc., a financial services company with $27 billion in assets.

* Nina Henderson is president, specialty markets group, at CPC International, Inc., a $9.8 billion consumer foods manufacturer based in Englewood Cliffs, NJ.

* William V. Hickey is president and COO of Saddle Brook, NJ-based Sealed Air Corp., a $790 million manufacturer of protective packaging products and systems.

* Edward A. Kangas is chairman and CEO of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu International, a $6.5 billion professional services firm.

* Brenda Lauderback is a group president of wholesale/retail at Nine West Group, Inc., a $1.6 billion footware and accessories manufacturer and retailer based in Stamford, CT.

* Henry McGee(*) is president of New York City-based HBO Home Video, a division of the $1.76 pay-television network Home Box Office.

* Keith R. Miller is president of Palmyra, NY-based Garlock Sealing Technologies, a manufacturer of industrial sealing products and the largest division of $1 billion Coltec Industries' industrial segment.

* W. Lee Nutter is president and COO of Rayonier, a $1.2 billion forest products company based in Stamford, CT.

* Waring Partridge(*) is vice president, corporate strategy and business development, for $52 billion AT&T Corp., a communications and information services company based in New York City.

* Zuheir Sofia is president and COO of Columbus, OH-based Huntington Bancshares Inc., a bank holding company with $21 billion in assets.

* Jeanette Sarkisian Wagner is president of New York-based Estee Lauder International, Inc., a division of The Estee Lauder Co. - a $3 billion cosmetics manufacturer and retailer.

* Also served as ambassador to CEO group.

NEW MILLENNIUM, NEW ROLES

What's the CEO's current and future role?

* The CEO is really the high priest of the corporate value system. - Henry McGee

* The CEO is an educator - whether it's an American, a European, or an Asian employee - to educate them on how we do business, what are the values of the company, what's important to us, what's consistent around the world, and what's local. - William Hickey

* I've learned that, as a CEO, I need to listen very carefully to people who will tell me what's really important to our organization, even though what they tell me is entirely different from my own work experience. - Mike Cook

* The CEO has to be flexible and willing to change, while not sacrificing the company's core values. - Mark Biestman

* A reactor: someone who sees what's happening and reacts to it, rather than imposes some sort of preconception on events as they evolve. - Andrew Carter

* The CEO needs to develop a passion to instill a sense of urgency, needs to be flexible, open-minded and challenge the status quo. - Zuheir Sofia

* The role today is to build an empowered organization of employees that will make the organization more competitive, creating an atmosphere where people are not afraid to make mistakes, not afraid to run the company, not afraid to deal with the customers' issues. - Jim Ivy

* The CEO's main role is as an agent of change within the corporation. - William Woodside

* Getting closer to the customer, aligning everything with the customer helps people understand within any organization. - Keith Miller 

* The skills of being a CEO still derive from providing the leadership, the culture, the vision, and, most importantly, the people to see that that gets executed well. - John Chalsty

* The essential ingredient to a leader is that he or she have followers. - Bernard Rethore

* One of the key and critical jobs of the CEO is managing succession. - Robert Lear

* The CEO is ultimately accountable for what happens in his organization. They have to provide the vision, the leadership, and all the good things we've talked about. - Michael Roth 

* The CEO has to have the capacity to digest a good deal of input and movement and try to put it together. - Joseph Melone

TEN EXPERTS, TEN QUESTIONS

In preparation for the Millennium CEO Roundtable, Danny Stern asked a number of the business gurus who speak through his company, the Leigh Bureau, to submit questions they would ask CEOs if they had the chance. Here's their chance:

Warren Bennis - How do you achieve some balance in your life, between performance, profits, productivity and family, friends, festivals, and fun?

Jim Collins - With all the changes you've seen and expect to see, what one fundamental truth of management still applies? What one fundamental concept is as true today as when you began your career - and will continue to be true no matter how much change you face?

Jay Conger - What keeps you up at night?

Stan Davis - The average person will work for at least seven companies during his or her career. What kinds of incentives and leadership are called for to keep people wanting to work in large companies?

Gary Hamel - If you inherited an extremely lean organization with world-class processes and market leadership, what kind of contribution would you need to make?

Ed Lawler - Is the superstar CEO era over or beginning?

Nicholas Negroponte - What kinds of business do you do on the Web?

Ricardo Semler - What criteria should one use to pick the team that will rise - and work - with the chief executive?

Strat Sherman - In an age of layoffs and high mobility, what are you doing to foster voluntary commitment and loyalty among your most valuable people?

Fred Wiersema - The companies we most admire are those that shape their customers' expectations and set new performance standards. The gap between the standard setters and the standard chasers is widening; there's less room for mediocrity. What does that imply for your management agenda - and for the leadership attributes necessary to address this?

LESSONS FROM LILCO 

For 13 years, our company has been embroiled in controversy that was not the responsibility of the employees. They went through downsizing in 1984, and I led that. And I learned what downsizing and its effects are on a company as you go forward, and I vowed I would not do that again.

During this period of time, we had anger in the work force, directly primarily at me - a non-utility person who came into a disrupted 75-year-old company that had always had stability. But our company was like a majestic ocean liner that was slowly sinking, and there was no recognition in the organization that she was about to go under.

It took time to rebuild that trust among employees. And our concern has been, as we merge two companies into a larger company and then take one apart: How are we going to be able to maintain the morale? The work ethic? Service to our customers?

Surprisingly, the service component continues to improve; the employees are comfortable because they trust management. And the reason for that trust is two-fold.

One, at a public meeting, a county executive got up and demanded I lay off 2,000 people. I told him I'm not going to do it. Forget it. Go home. Get lost.

The second thing: When we entered into discussion with the state to break up our company, there were three principles we laid out: We had to protect our investors, our customers, and our employees.

We have reduced our work force by 20 percent over the last four years. But we've done that through attrition. And I didn't make that decision. The work force made that decision. I went to all of them, literally, and said, We have to reduce the work force. There are two ways we can do it: through a layoff or through attrition. You tell me what you want me to do because I'm not making that decision. And that was the decision. So we have not replaced people who have left. We've retrained and moved people out, and it's working very well.

- William Catacosinos

EXECUTIVE LEARNING CURVE

What challenge has your career least prepared you for?

* The lack of total computer literacy is both a shortfall and a challenge. And I'm working very hard at it. - John Chalsty

* It is much more complicated when you make your company a global organization and try to dialogue with people with different cultural backgrounds and yet have that same open communication that we're having difficulty doing in our own language, in our country, in our own culture. - Phillip Ashkettle

* I do not speak a foreign language, some would say at all, I'd say very well. And I never lived outside the U.S. for any extended period of time. So I feel greatly disadvantaged in the perspective that we have a business that now operates in 23 countries. - Thomas Wajnert

* Being in a business that deals primarily in the technology area and not being a professional in the technology area keeps me challenged in terms of staying ahead. - Edward Kopko

* Coming as a non-CEO to be a CEO of a public company, I was totally unprepared for the '90s version of corporate governance. - Chad Dreier

* I share a great sense of inferiority when it comes to technology. - T.J. Dermot Dunphy

* I wish I had a great deal more facility and capability in technology areas. And I wish had more life experiences living abroad, rather than just running in and out for three-day sessions. - Joseph Melone

* Because I didn't intend to go into business, I didn't spend any time having the benefit of experiencing other corporations and other ways of doing things. - Christie Hefner

* I often lament: Why as an undergraduate didn't God form me as an engineer rather than an economist? - Bernard Rethore

* My biggest challenge and shortcoming is to accept doing things differently and learn how to do things differently. - Michael Roth

* It's the whole idea of learning and then unlearning what I've learned and then learning it again. - Matthew Luca

* I would say the same thing about being deficient in the information technology area, given my tenure. But I have come around: I have a computer on my desk; I'm using e-mail and all the new techniques. - Ronald Gross