The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success

by William N. Thorndike Jr.

They were all, however, new to the CEO role, and they shared a couple of important traits, including fresh eyes and a deep-seated commitment to rationality.

emphasis on cash informed all aspects of how they ran their companies

At the core of their shared worldview was the belief that the primary goal for any CEO was to optimize long-term value per share, not organizational growth.

Growth, it turns out, often doesn’t correlate with maximizing shareholder value.

Charlie Munger, calls “a prosperity-blinded indifference to unnecessary costs.”

leading by example, Murphy responded, “Is there any other way?”

These hired guns tend to ignore longer-term considerations like culture, capital investment, and organizational structure, focusing instead on short-term cash needs.

The result was a dramatic shrinking of the company through a series of highly accretive divestitures.

“It was a little like Nixon, the longtime anticommunist, opening relations with China: no one else could have done it.”

Graham worked hard to identify the best people and then was very comfortable leaving them alone.

Buffett believes the key to longterm success is “temperament,” a willingness to be “fearful when others are greedy and greedy when they are fearful.”

Although the outsider CEOs were an extraordinarily talented group, their advantage relative to their peers was one of temperament, not intellect.

They had the perspective of the long-term investor or owner, not the high-paid employee—a very different hat than most CEOs wear to work.