I gleaned from Bill the idea that a company should start not so much with a business plan, but almost with a Declaration of Independence that begins with a statement of values: We hold these truths to be self-evident. Values come first, and all else follows —in business, in career, in life.

The choice is not between hands-on or hands-off. In our research, the entrepreneurs who led their companies from start-ups into some of the greatest corporations in history generally had both a hands-on style and an empowering style. No matter how big their companies became, they remained closely connected to their people, hyper-aware of facts on the ground, and directly engaged in strategic imperatives. If you lose your voracious curiosity about tactical details, if you lose passionate interest in people and how they are feeling, if you insulate yourself in the protective cocoon of executive comforts, you may well wake up one day to discover your company has already entered a doom loop of decline and self-destruction.

Therein lies the secret, if there is one. Great companies are built on a foundation of respect. They respect their customers, they respect themselves, they respect their relationships. Most important, they respect their people— people at all levels, and from all backgrounds.

As a leader, you are the embodiment of that company. What that means is this: Your values—your sense of integrity and decency and honesty, the way you comport yourself in the world—are a stand-in for the values of the company. You can be the head of a seven-person organization or a quarter-million- person organization, and the same truth holds: what people think of you is what they’ll think of your company.

Businesses do not maximise anything. The most successful business leaders such as Marks or Walton or Gates pursued the unquantifiable, but entirely meaningful, objective of building a great business. A great business is very good at doing the things we expect it to do— rewarding its investors, providing satisfying employment, offering goods and services of good quality at reasonable prices, fulfilling a role in the community— and to fail in any of these is, in the long run, to fall in all of them.