Companies like GE and Procter & Gamble have been in business for a long time. Over decades or a century you're bound to figure out a management structure that works.
We all know the mortality of companies is less than human beings.
You can always think that we're old and not innovative, but there is no company that can limp on for 139 years without being creative and having the genes to change.
Many companies don't exist after 25 years. It's a rarity. Or if they do exist, they're like IBM, with a totally changing personality.
Unlike people, companies outlive their founders and their leaders.
You have family-owned businesses that have been around for 500 years. You cannot name a corporation that survives intact for even a few decades.
P&G started in 1837, Nestle in 1857. These companies have been around for so long because they are in tune with society. They are very responsible companies, despite the challenges that they sometimes deal with, all the criticism they get.
I think businesses live longer that are on the stock market.
21 years as CEO is a long time. I was and probably still am the longest serving CEO in America. Certainly I am in the media industry, bar none.
Companies that have been built and operated for a long time are the most successful companies.
It is in the long run that the corporation lives.
The half-life of companies is shrinking. So in the same ease in which you can start a company today to disrupt an incumbent, you have to also realize that somebody will do that to you as well just as easily. So if you're not just going to get on top but stay on top, that will require a real prepared mind across many companies.
CEOs can stay too long.
Any company that cannot imagine the future won't be around to enjoy it.
Growth isn't central at all, because I'm trying to run this company as if it's going to be here a hundred years from now. And if you take where we are today and add 15% growth, like public companies need to have for their stock to stay up in value, I'd be a multi-trillion-dollar company in 40 years. Which is impossible, of course.
Traditionally, in the technology industry, companies need to re-invent themselves every 3-7 years to survive. If the company misses one transition, it can still recover, but if it misses two, it is usually fatal.
Unilever has been around for 100-plus years. We want to be around for several hundred more years.
If longevity is the best index to measure a company, a basic requirement is the ability of the corporation to generate new and new leaders.
Very few companies can perform at scale over the course of decades, and Yahoo has done that.
All of us can expect to live longer than any organization that we would work for. That continues apace. Human longevity is increasing; corporate longevity is decreasing.
Our biggest challenge is how to create a self-renewing company.
I don't know another Philippine company that has lasted three generations, except for Ayala. Maybe Aboitiz is going to the third.
I've done it 30 years. I don't know what there is to gain by doing it 40. But I think there is something about doing it over that length of time that says something. That's seven U.S. presidents and five presidents of McDonald's.
We must start with the reality that corporations cannot guarantee anyone a lifetime job any more than corporations have a guarantee of immortality.
Technologies will come and go, so you need to be able to both ask and answer the question: What do you do as a company, why do you exist?
