NAME: BILL OUCHI

AGE: 62

ORGANIZATION: UCLA ANDERSON SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT

Title: Professor, Sanford and Betty Sigoloff Chair in Corporate Renewal

BORN: HONOLULU

HIGH SCHOOL: PUNAHOU

College: Williams College, B.A., political economy; Stanford University, MBA; University of Chicago, Ph.D., business administration.

Breakthrough job: One-year teaching position at the University of Chicago.

Mentors: First is my dad, who gave me some very reliable advice: Never pick a school or job because of money, status or power. Second is Henry Clark, a vice president at Castle & Cooke who found me a job every summer and advised me to go back to school and get my Ph.D.

Major challenge: Getting published in the top academic journals. In my profession, even with an endowed chair, it's still a very competitive world where you are compared to your peers around the country and around the world. I can get beaten to death in a blind review, but it's a good, honest way to ensure you continue to perform at a high level.

Hobbies: Fly fishing with my sons and sons-in-law; golf, skeet shooting and hunting.

Books recently read: "Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini; "Book Seller of Kabul" by Asne Seierstad. I'm about to start the first in the Harry Potter series.

Q. What are some of the differences between managing people and leading an organization?

A. They're very different, although there is some overlap. Managing involves acquiring, through practice and study, a set of technical analytical skills. It's about understanding how to effectively manage groups and teams of people, with a certain amount of learning about yourself. Leadership is different. I serve on several boards of directors, and as chairman of some. Serving on a board of a company is an extremely lonesome task in many ways. If you think something might be awry in a company, it would be irresponsible to open your mouth and say something without thinking about it. You might cause a lot of unnecessary and destructive commotion within the company. On the other hand, if you are timid and something really is awry and you don't press the point, you have abandoned your duty to shareholders. In that situation you can't really even talk to other members of the board. It's very lonesome period in which you have to reach deep down and ask yourself some tough questions. You have to think everything through and sort it out. You don't learn that in a management class.

Q. What are some of the qualities you've observed in good leaders?

A. Successful leaders I've known have had a very forgiving, human touch. They're the kind of people that can take a younger person who has run into a wall, pick them up, dust them off and say, "Go get 'em again." The best preparation to become a good leader is to study philosophy and religion. Those are two fields that force you to think deeply about about fundamental principles. When we look at the thousands of people that apply for MBA programs, we prefer people who have studied liberal arts, not business. Philosophy, religion and science allow you to think deeply. If you're No. 2 through 5 million in a company, you don't have to think about where to go. But when you're sitting in the No. 1 chair, you've got to figure out where to take everyone else. You have to figure out if it's time for a really dramatic shift or if it's foolhardy.

Q. Can a well-managed company be hurt by bad leadership?

A. Poor leadership absolutely can cancel it out. Good leadership, especially in a large organization, involves putting forward a mission statement that allows all the people who work there to figure out where the company is going. Many times mission statements are too vague. A really useful one tells me whether I ought to be reorienting my efforts. Very few companies or organizations have that, really. An example of a mission statement that worked was one we had when I worked for Dick Riordan, a great leader who was the mayor of Los Angeles. We knew that our job was to take care of the people of Los Angeles. He was great at motivating everyone on his staff, and many elected officials have come out of that staff.

Q. Who are some of the other leaders that stand out in your mind?

A. I've worked with some great ones. Arjay Miller, one of Robert McNamara's whiz kids, was the dean of Stanford Business School. Here was this guy with all this fame and money and he was the most open, childlike, friendly, unassuming guy. But he was also very direct in his approach. Before that, when I was a doctoral student at the University of Chicago, the dean was George Shultz and he was a powerhouse. In business school, you spend a lot of time studying the Hewlett-Packard company. I got to know Dave Packard and Bill Hewlett very well. When Dave Packard was secretary of defense (in the Nixon administration) everyone would have followed him over a cliff. Then there's Akio Morita of Sony who was with the company from the beginning. He always wore an inexpensive watch and the same Sony smock that employees wore. He was just a big kid.

Q. You've done extensive research concluding that the best performing school systems had the most decentralized management systems. Gov. Lingle's proposal to decentralize the Hawai'i state school system, which you supported, has died in the Legislature. What is your outlook for Hawai'i schools?

A. I think the DOE (Department of Education) is going in a good direction. (DOE program manager) Randy Moore is a really high-class person and they're lucky to have him. (Superintendent) Pat Hamamoto very genuinely cares how the district is run and she's making her way through those complexities. I would have to say that I am optimistic about the future.