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

by William N. Thorndike Jr.

To do this, they needed to ignore the quarterly earnings treadmill and tune out Wall Street analysts and the cacophony of cable shows like Squawk Box and Mad Money, with their relentless emphasis on short-term thinking. When Tom Murphy insisted on a huge spike in capital expenditures for a new printing plant or when John Malone bought expensive cutting-edge cable boxes in the late 1990s, they were consciously penalizing short-term earnings to improve their customers’ experiences and defend long-term competitive positions. This long-range perspective often leads to contrarian behavior. In contrast to its controversial decision to reduce production, ExxonMobil, alone among the major energy companies, resolutely maintained its spending on exploration during the financial crisis with a view toward optimizing long-term value. When other large players retrenched from the Canadian oil sands after energy prices plunged in early 2009, ExxonMobil moved forward with a large exploration project in Alberta even though it would penalize near-term earnings.