Wisdom From The Top with Guy Raz

By Guy Raz | Luminary

Society & Culture Business Careers

What's Wisdom From The Top with Guy Raz about?

From the creator of How I Built This, host Guy Raz invites you to listen in as he talks to leadership experts and the visionary leaders of some of the world's biggest brands. Along the way, you'll hear accounts of crisis, failure, turnaround, and triumph, as the leaders reveal their secrets on their way to the top. These are stories that didn't make it into their company bios, and valuable lessons for anyone trying to make it in business.

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Etsy: Josh Silverman

12.06.2023

Josh Silverman built Evite and turned around eBay. Then, in 2017, Etsy came calling. The online marketplace for creative goods was in deep trouble. Growth had plateaued and the company was on the verge of being sold. Josh stepped in ...

Wisdom From The Top with Guy Raz episodes:

12.06.2023 Etsy: Josh Silverman Josh Silverman built Evite and turned around eBay. Then, in 2017, Etsy came calling. The online marketplace for creative goods was in deep trouble. Growth had plateaued and the company was on the verge of being sold. Josh stepped in ...
11.29.2023 Cultivating a Culture of Candor: Kim Scott Since 1992, Kim Scott has worked in almost all levels of management—from a diamond business in Moscow to startups in the Silicon Valley to leading teams at Google. Along the way, she developed a management philosophy called “radical candor” that ...
11.22.2023 A New Way to Think: Roger Martin Over a career spanning four decades, Roger Martin has been a management consultant, an influential business strategy thinker and author, as well as the Dean of the Rotman School of Management at University of Toronto. He advises CEOs of global ...
11.15.2023 Marvel: Peter Cuneo When Peter Cuneo joined Marvel as CEO in 1999, it was a struggling publishing house teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Ten years later, Disney bought Marvel for $4.5 billion. Cuneo tells his unlikely origin story and how he became ...
10.04.2023 The Campbell Soup Company: Doug Conant In 2001, Campbell's Soup was in freefall: the company's value had halved and employee engagement was at an all-time low. Doug Conant knew he could salvage the iconic company, but first, things were going to have to get worse. How ...
09.27.2023 Covey Leadership Center: Stephen M. R. Covey Back in the 1980s, Stephen R. Covey anticipated a new kind of leadership with his book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. It wasn't the table-pounding, charismatic kind of leadership, but an empathetic one, which prioritized listening and collaboration. ...
09.20.2023 Autodesk: Carl Bass Carl Bass, a renegade and reluctant executive, took the helm at Autodesk and steered the company out of the global economic crisis. At one point, he was so sure it would fail that he was desperate to find a buyer. ...
09.13.2023 United Talent Agency: Jeremy Zimmer Jeremy Zimmer was not supposed to be heading one of the "big four" talent agencies in Hollywood. As a child, he struggled in school and eventually dropped out of college to become a parking lot hustler, making money running schemes ...
09.06.2023 Macy's: Terry Lundgren Terry Lundgren, former CEO of Neiman Marcus and Macy's, has been instrumental in shaping the American retail landscape, but the road to bringing two notoriously competitive retail giants together wasn't easy. How he merged famous department rivals, double-downed on retail, ...
08.30.2023 Carnival Corporation: Arnold Donald How a New Orleans native turned around a cruise company sinking from a public relations disaster... to one of the most valuable brands in its industry. When Arnold Donald took over Carnival Corporation and the nine cruise lines it operates, ...
08.23.2023 PayPal: Dan Schulman Mixing business and social justice isn't a strategy most companies are willing to adopt, which is why Dan Schulman's actions as CEO of PayPal have garnered so much attention. In 2016, he canceled a plan for an operations center in ...
08.16.2023 GE: Beth Comstock Beth Comstock is comfortable with change. In college, she wanted to be a doctor, but organic chemistry wasn't her strong suit, so she shifted to journalism. When journalism didn't work out, she started working in publicity. So, when GE bought ...
08.09.2023 Lego: Jørgen Vig Knudstorp For years, it was a secret: the family that owned Lego was actually losing money on the company. The man who built the company back up into one of the biggest toymakers in the world, Jørgen Vig Knudstorp, reveals his ...
08.02.2023 General Stanley McChrystal General Stanley McChrystal was born into a military family: three generations of men in his family were officers in the armed forces. He followed the family tradition and eventually rose up the ranks to become a General in the Army. ...
07.26.2023 NASA: Ellen Ochoa After one of the most deadly disasters in the history of space flight, Ellen Ochoa was a leader in NASA's recovery. She fixed the technical things that went wrong, but the most critical changes, she says, were human. Why she ...
07.19.2023 Avon: Andrea Jung For over a decade as CEO of direct-sales giant Avon, Andrea Jung was one of the most powerful women in the cosmetics industry. During her tenure, Jung saw striking success, but also faced daunting challenges with a failed product rollout ...
07.12.2023 Built to Last: Jim Collins It's not an understatement to say that Jim Collins is one of the most influential business writers in modern history. Collins, however, thinks of himself more as a researcher than an author. Each of his books, which includes Good to ...
07.05.2023 PepsiCo: Indra Nooyi After becoming the CEO of PepsiCo in 2006, Indra Nooyi became the first woman and immigrant to run a Fortune 50 company. From Chennai, India, to Yale's School of Management, Nooyi worked her way up from The Boston Consulting Group, ...
06.28.2023 Best Buy: Hubert Joly In 2012, to say there was a crisis at Best Buy — is an understatement. In January, Forbes published an article with the headline: WHY BEST BUY IS GOING OUT OF BUSINESS. And then, in March, the company reported a ...
06.21.2023 BET: Debra Lee Black Entertainment Television helped make the first Black billionaire in the US and was the first Black-owned business traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Debra Lee, a young lawyer drawn to the company's mission, was pivotal in turning the ...
06.14.2023 Continental Airlines: Gordon Bethune Gordon Bethune took an unlikely path to becoming a leader in the airline industry. A self-described "hoodlum," Bethune dropped out of high school, joined the Navy, and became an airplane mechanic. With that experience, he gave Continental Airlines a tune-up, ...
06.07.2023 Mastercard: Ajay Banga How Ajay Banga ran one of the world's largest companies with an unusual leadership philosophy... something he calls "the decency quotient." And how he turned Mastercard from a credit card company into a company that's known for technology, innovation, data, ...
05.31.2023 Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen: Cheryl Bachelder Cheryl Bachelder decided to go into business after an early setback derailed her potential career in music education. She became President of KFC years later, but a job that started as a major opportunity wound up being a massive failure. ...
05.24.2023 General David Petraeus General David Petraeus took on a uniquely complex leadership challenge in Iraq in the aftermath of the U.S.-led war there. He oversaw the training of a new and entirely Iraqi army. He says that the key to leadership is first ...
05.17.2023 Peloton: Dara Treseder As a child growing up in Ibadan, Nigeria, Dara Treseder was often told to get her head out of the clouds. But her mother encouraged her to dream big and to follow her ambition if it would lead her to ...
05.10.2023 Marvel: Peter Cuneo Today, Marvel is one of the most substantial forces in American media, but when Peter Cuneo joined the company as CEO in 1999, it was a struggling publishing house teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Ten years later, Disney bought ...
05.03.2023 Lowe's: Marvin Ellison Marvin Ellison took the tough jobs nobody wanted, and it got him from retail security guard all the way to CEO of two Fortune 500s. Now, when things are precarious, companies like JCPenney and Lowe's call him in. Marvin Ellison ...
04.26.2023 Gap: Mickey Drexler When Gap was failing, Mickey Drexler didn't just increase sales. He made it into a pop culture staple of the 80s and 90s. But that wasn't enough to keep him from getting fired. At his next job, he was not ...
04.19.2023 Uncharted: Margaret Heffernan Margaret Heffernan is an entrepreneur, CEO, executive leadership coach, and author of six books. Her often counter-intuitive insights on collaboration, consensus-building, and decision-making have earned her a reputation as a smart thinker who challenges conventional business wisdom. In her latest ...
04.12.2023 Zelnick Media Capital: Strauss Zelnick Strauss Zelnick has a real knack for saving companies in crisis. A Hollywood wunderkind, he's led major film studios, record labels, and gaming companies since his early 30s. How he turned a small, self-financed Zelnick Media Capital into an industry ...
04.05.2023 Biogen: George Scangos How do you get from the cubicle to the C-Suite? George Scangos started out doing scientific research, but he says his people skills got him all the way to the CEO's office at one of the biggest biotech companies in ...
03.29.2023 Docusign: Keith Krach When Keith Krach first heard of Docusign, he knew it could be huge. He was convinced it would capture one of the biggest markets ever seen. He also knew exactly the play he needed to run to get it there, ...
03.22.2023 Zenefits: Jay Fulcher Why growth isn't always good, and how to infuse integrity into a toxic company culture. Zenefits was on its way to a multi-billion dollar valuation but, behind the scenes, it was all about to come crashing down. When Jay Fulcher ...
03.15.2023 Harvard Business School: Bill George, author of 'True North' When Bill George was a kid, he didn't dream of becoming a pro-athlete or an astronaut or a famous musician. Instead, he imagined the Fortune 500 companies he would lead as CEO. He achieved the dream when he took a ...
03.08.2023 H&R Block: Jeff Jones Jeff Jones is no stranger to crisis. From the 2013 Target data breach to a tumultuous period at Uber, he's helped navigate companies out of some tough situations. So, when Jeff became the President and CEO of H&R Block in ...
03.01.2023 Qualcomm: Steve Mollenkopf Steve Mollenkopf started working as an engineer at Qualcomm right out of college. After ascending to the top of the Engineering division, Mollenkopf thought that he'd reached his peak promotion in the company — that is, until he became CEO ...
02.22.2023 Dave Ramsey Dave Ramsey learned about debt the hard way: he'd made money, lost money, and declared bankruptcy, all before his 30th birthday. How he went from selling books out of his trunk to becoming a best-selling author and financial advisor to ...
02.15.2023 Foot Locker: Ken Hicks When Ken Hicks became CEO of Foot Locker in 2009, the company didn't have a leg to stand on: the economy was in a recession, sales were down almost a billion dollars, and the brand was widely expected to collapse ...
02.08.2023 Basecamp: Jason Fried Jason Fried, the CEO and co-founder of Basecamp, doesn't want you to come to meetings. He insists that you work no more than 40 hours a week; 36 in the summer. He doesn't really want you coming to the office ...
02.01.2023 Graeter's (Ice Cream): Richard Graeter There are a few dirty little secrets about the way modern ice cream is made, but Graeter's ice cream is different. They use a process that's well over one hundred years old, even though that means the company has to ...
01.25.2023 GE: Beth Comstock Beth Comstock is comfortable with change. In college, she wanted to be a doctor, but organic chemistry wasn't her strong suit, so she shifted to journalism. When journalism didn't work out, she started working in publicity. So, when GE bought ...
01.18.2023 Macy's: Terry Lundgren Terry Lundgren, former CEO of Neiman Marcus and Macy's, has been instrumental in shaping the American retail landscape, but the road to bringing two notoriously competitive retail giants together wasn't easy. How he merged famous department rivals, double-downed on retail, ...
01.11.2023 Marvel: Peter Cuneo Today, Marvel is one of the most substantial forces in American media, but when Peter Cuneo joined the company as CEO in 1999, it was a struggling publishing house teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Ten years later, Disney bought ...
01.04.2023 Covey Leadership Center: Stephen M. R. Covey Back in the 1980s, Stephen R. Covey anticipated a new kind of leadership with his book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. It wasn't the table-pounding, charismatic kind of leadership, but an empathetic one, which prioritized listening and collaboration. ...
12.28.2022 Honeywell: David Cote When David Cote started working in manufacturing, he was a self-described "wrench turner, the lowest on the totem pole." He worked his way up through the ranks of GE, and was eventually offered the helm of mega conglomerate Honeywell. At ...
12.21.2022 Sonic: Cliff Hudson Cliff Hudson's childhood was marked by instability. At a young age, he watched his family struggle to recover after his father's roofing business collapsed. So, after college, he was determined to find a safe and stable job. In 1984, Cliff ...
12.14.2022 Dunkin' Donuts: Bob Rosenberg In 1963, Bob Rosenberg became CEO of his father's company, Dunkin' Donuts, at age 25. About a decade later, after an overly-ambitious expansion put the company in jeopardy, the board almost threw him out. But Bob matured into his leadership ...
12.07.2022 Acumen: Jacqueline Novogratz When the COO of Chase Bank told Jacqueline Novogratz that she had the potential for a high level career at Chase, she knew she had to quit her job. She continued to use the skills she learned from investment banking ...
11.30.2022 PayPal: Dan Schulman Mixing business and social justice isn't a strategy most companies are willing to adopt, which is why Dan Schulman's actions as CEO of PayPal have garnered so much attention. In 2016, he canceled a plan for an operations center in ...
11.23.2022 Perdue Farms: Jim Perdue Jim Perdue wasn't that interested in becoming a third-generation head of the family meat processing business. Still, he became CEO in 1991 and his leadership turned out to be pivotal for building Perdue Farms into a nationwide brand. How Perdue ...

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