The ex-Kellogg CEO who learned he had ADHD at 65 says it had upsides in the corner office |
The ex-Kellogg CEO who learned he had ADHD at 65 says it had upsides in the corner office
In today’s CEO Daily: Carlos Gutierrez reflects on his late-in-life diagnosis.
The big leadership story: The non-gamer CEO racing to save Microsoft’s Xbox
The markets: Up in the U.S. and Europe after positive earnings
Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune
Good morning. Carlos Gutierrez has long been a man of firsts. When he took the helm of the Kellogg Company in 1999 at the age of 45, he was the youngest CEO in its nearly century-old history and the only Latino CEO of a Fortune 500 company. He went on to become Secretary of Commerce in the Bush administration, from 2005 to 2009. After that illustrious career as a leader in the public and private sectors, he was diagnosed with ADHD at the age of 65. (About 15.5 million U.S. adults have ADHD, according to the Centers for Disease Control, more than half of whom were diagnosed as adults.)
“Looking back, it now makes sense,” he told me during our conversation at the HACR Symposium yesterday in New York, listing traits like impulsiveness, excess energy, procrastination and disorganization. But a lot of the characteristics of ADHD were also a source of strength: the pattern thinking, how he connects with people, the curiosity and ability to hyper-focus. The diagnosis helped him understand how he operates.
Gutierrez writes about that, his early childhood in Cuba, and leadership lessons from his career in his new book, Sheer Will. Among other things, he notes that being in top leadership roles is often good........