May 16, 2004

THE BOSS

The Pockets With Everything   

As told to MELANIE S. BEST

Published: May 16, 2004

I GREW up in Las Vegas with my mom. My parents divorced when I was 2. In eighth grade, I changed from a Las Vegas private school to Culver Military Academy, in Indiana, which was a 

defining growth experience. This was in the middle of the Vietnam War, and military academies were not popular. What I took away from it was Culver's servant leadership model: that a leader serves his charges, the people he's responsible for, first, before anything else. That makes a big difference in the way I approach a lot of things.

My father and I used to go fishing in Canada, to this unbelievably remote place by floatplane, and 

spend the week. He always wore vests with lots of pockets, and whatever was needed, he had it.

One time, he and I were in a boat far from camp. The boat's motor broke down, and we were stuck. As he took the engine apart, it was clear the spark plug had broken. He had one in his pocket, a 

spare, with a spark-plug wrench. And I remember thinking, how could you anticipate that?

That lesson was very powerful. I try to anticipate the consequences, all the outcomes, all the things you're not thinking about.

When my dad was dying of cancer, he asked me - a middle kid - to be executor. I told him I'd only 

do that if he left me nothing, because the only way you can referee is not to have a stake in it.

It worked out pretty well. In the end, there were only two things I wanted - a sculpture of a hunter, which I'd given him, and his fishing gear. So I got his five tackle boxes, and all that stuff that used to 

be in his pockets, right down to the folded-up toilet paper for the emergency situation; this ball of 

twine; the funnel for pouring gas; this set of waterproof matches - you name it.

I was one of those kids who ended up being elected captain of the team, president of the club, whatever. My senior year at Stanford, I was financial manager of all the student businesses. It was 

like a mini-C.E.O. job, and I was the first undergraduate to hold the position. At that point, I decided 

to go on to business school.

But in business school, I was uncertain about what I wanted to do. So I postponed making a decision, joined McKinsey, the consulting firm, and waited to see what interested me. Marvin Bower, one of 

the founders, would speak to the introductory training program for new hires. His message was "Be a builder," and why that's a noble way of looking at your role in serving a client.

It's dangerous to name just one best boss. I stay in touch with all past living chairmen of Abbott.

Working at Abbott, people think you're on the inside of medicine, and you are. People will say to me: "Someone in my family's been diagnosed with cancer" - or a blocked artery, or whatever. "Can you refer me to a physician, or tell me what the latest clinical study is?" We're organized to deal with such requests pretty efficiently. It's one of the joys in the job.

We just did a spinoff of Hospira, a hospital and pharmaceutical products maker with 14,000 employees, into a separate public company. That was a tough decision, and it was all mine - pending board approval, of course. The group had been part of Abbott for 70 years and was fundamental to the identity of the company. The move made sense for business strategy, but it was difficult from a personal and emotional standpoint.

In a business like ours, with a product development cycle of 10 to 12 years, there's a particularly difficult tension between investing for the long term and accommodating investors' expectations every 90 days. You find yourself making decisions that are disappointing to investors initially, or that accommodate investors to the disappointment of scientists internally. That's the hardest part of the job.

As told to Melanie S. Best.