William N. Thorndike
The most successful CEOs of the last half-century were not charismatic visionaries or operational experts, but master capital allocators who acted like investors to generate extraordinary per-share value.
The ultimate barometer of executive success is the long-term increase in per-share value, which is driven primarily by mastering the toolkit of capital allocation.
True corporate value is determined by maximizing free cash flow rather than optimizing for Wall Street's preferred metric of reported accounting earnings.
Exceptional returns are achieved by pairing highly decentralized daily operations with fiercely centralized capital allocation decisions.