Charlotte Beers, former chairwoman and C.E.O. of Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, now runs seminars called “The X Factor” for female leaders. She says it’s vital to make self-assessments, and to include “the good, the bad and the ugly.” Q. Tell me about your early management roles. A. I was in my early 30s, and I [...]

When they graduated from the Harvard Business School, they took jobs that paid less than $4,000 a year. Yet, every member of the class had in his possession a piece of paper that was rare and exotic: an MBA. In the spring of 1949, when there were only 3,000 people in the world with MBA [...]

Why is it that between 25% and 50% of people report feeling overwhelmed or burned out at work?   It’s not just the number of hours we’re working, but also the fact that we spend too many continuous hours juggling too many things at the same time. What we’ve lost, above all, are stopping points, [...]

The fellow in the photo above is John Stevens, a self-taught civil engineer who made a huge contribution to the development of the Panama Canal over a hundred years ago.  I’ve been learning about him through the pages of David McCullough’s amazing work The Path Between the Seas, which is the story of how the [...]

5 LEADERSHIP LESSOS FROM THE TWITTER:   Twitter will celebrate its sixth birthday; boasting over 500 million registered users and, among other impressive numbers, one billion tweets a day.   Not only are at least 100 million people actively tweeting (the rest are lurkers, or completely inactive), the social impact of Twitter has become a [...]

  One morning in 1965, Robert Ellis Smith, then-recent Harvard University graduate, received a phone call that would change his life. On the other end was a former fellow student who was starting a newspaper in Montgomery, Ala., strictly dedicated to covering the Civil Rights Movement. The voice on the other line asked Smith, former [...]

  Larry Page, Google’s CEO   Larry Page took the reins as CEO at Google on April 4. Google’s (GOOG) general counsel Kent Walker portrayed the acquisition as a strong defense against patent trolls, but acknowledged that it also gives the company room to grow and add to its Android apps and usability. Spending $1 [...]

  Every couple of years, I like to take out this old essay, brush off the dust, and shove it back in the spotlight. Maybe this time it’s because I’ve given up eating sugar, so it’s a way to satisfy my still abating sweet tooth. Whatever the reason, I hope you get a kick out [...]

This question-and-answer session is with Performics CEO Daina Middleton. How is online advertising changing? What do businesses need to do to keep up? Beyond advertising or even online advertising, marketing in general is in the midst of a drastic evolution. Think about the environment we live in today, and remember that nearly all of the [...]

FORTUNE — Daniel Akerson is every inch the businessman. In fact, he uses that word to describe himself, as if he needs to remind listeners that the man running a company so prominently saved by the U.S. taxpayers comes from the world of commerce. After a career in telecommunications and private equity, Akerson is an [...]