Many retired executives write autobiographies that readers scoop up in hopes of finding secrets of success.

After Bill George left Medtronic (MDT) in 2002, he started writing books for the same audience. But in them, he relegated himself to the rare cameo.

It may seem like an odd move, since George, 64, has real bragging rights. During his 13 years as CEO of Medtronic, the medical device maker's market cap grew from $1.1 billion to $60 billion, and its stock price rocketed 3,000%.

But George has been a dissenter against the "star CEO" phenomenon that pumped up the salaries and book sales of so many of his peers. In his 2003 book "Authentic Leadership" and this year's follow-up, "True North," he contends a CEO's biggest obstacle can be his own ego.

"I think that charisma is way overrated," George told IBD. "Often charisma becomes a substitute for openness, vulnerability and character. In the media it's important, but most great business leaders are not charismatic."

So when George set out to study and write about leadership, he didn't focus on himself or on such self-promoters as Lee Iacocca, Jack Welch and Donald Trump. Instead, he featured lower-profile winners such as Starbucks (SBUX) founder Howard Schultz, eBay's (EBAY) John Donahoe, Xerox's (XRX) Anne Mulcahy and Wells Fargo's (WFC) Dick Kovacevich.

George also ranged outside of business by describing leaders of nonprofits and political movements.

Like IBD, George saw commonalities among successful leaders. Somewhat to his surprise, those captains didn't boil down their qualities to a series of bullet points.

Push The Passion

"We expected them to give us more of the traits and characteristics they brought to leadership that made them successful," George said. "But virtually without exception, they didn't want to talk about that. They talked about the experiences in their lives — the crucibles, the teachers, the coaches. One's life story is not just formative; it (provides) the passion to lead."

Their process toward leadership, George says, helped him see the common thread in his own life story.

Born and raised in Michigan, George was the only child of an idealistic homemaker and a frustrated businessman.

"My father wanted me to be the head of a major organization, to make up for his perceived failures," he said. "My mother wanted me to make a difference."

For many years, those mandates fought for dominance in George's life. He says he always saw himself as a leader, although the people around him didn't always agree. In high school and college he kept running for student government positions and losing.

In college, some friends finally told him the truth: People didn't like him because he seemed more interested in winning than in the people he was supposed to be leading. In this he learned a lesson that other leaders would tell him later: Always listen to feedback.

George changed his approach enough to finally win positions in student government. But once he got into the world of work, he was back focusing on his personal ambition. He simply wanted to become CEO of a large company.

That pursuit fulfilled him for a while.

After he got his MBA from Harvard, he joined Litton Industries in 1969 and was soon running its microwave division. But he ran into a problem: the company's values.

"I overheard conversations with peers, talking about what amounted to paying bribes," he said. "You do these things, and you don't get caught. There was a sense that people don't matter very much."

George eventually left Litton and joined Honeywell (HON) in 1978.

While Honeywell didn't involve the ethical compromises he saw at Litton, the industrial firm didn't give him much of an uplift. "I finally looked at myself in the mirror and admitted this was not how I wanted to spend my life," he wrote.

So he left Honeywell in 1989 and soon found a sweeter job in a much different field. Medtronic, then a niche pacemaker company, had offered him its top spot several times. George had disdained it as too small for his ambitions. But he began to realize this was his chance to join a mission much larger than himself.

About 15 years earlier, George lost his mother and his fiancee to illness within 18 months of each other. As with the other leaders he talked to for his books, one of the most painful parts of his life offered him a cause. When he took over Medtronic in 1991, the company already had a mission statement declaring its objective to "restore people to fuller lives by alleviating pain, restoring health and extending life."

George took that to heart and pushed all of Medtronic's employees to do so. He regularly brought in patients who benefited from Medtronic's devices — reminding everyone in the firm why they were in the medical product business.

He continued a company tradition of giving new employees medallions that showed a person rising from an operating table and that had the engraving "toward full life."

The experience of leading a mission-driven company changed — even radicalized — George's idea of why companies exist. For years, he's dissented from an obsession with shareholder value.

In a speech to the American Academy of Management in 2001, George enumerated the sins of trying to pump up the share price:

• It leads to short-term fixes at the expense of long-term strategy.

• It rewards a few people at the expense of others.

• Worst of all, it fails to motivate workers.

"This is true even if every employee is a shareholder," he said in that last year as CEO. "In my experience, the typical employee response to maximizing shareholder value is one of cynicism. Employees believe management is just trying to enhance its own wealth, not theirs."

Lest this make IBD readers nervous, George assured in his interview that the mission-driven approach improves shareholder value in the longer term.

"I believe that shareholder value is created through customer value," he said. "The delta between an average organization and a great organization is the motivation of its employees, which comes from focusing on the customer — not the shareholder."

Hold Them Off

George admits he was tempted to take shortcuts when Medtronic's growth stalled in the late 1990s. He responded by masterminding a series of buyouts, paying top dollar over the objections of some board members. When one buyout failed to meet its numbers, he said, "I had people calling me a liar."

The charges stung, but George ignored the top shareholders and sold employees — eventually numbering 26,000 — on Medtronic's larger purpose. The strategy worked and the stock rose again — even through the market sickness of 2000.

After he left Medtronic, George taught his philosophy at Harvard Business School. Now, he says, he wants to pass on a legacy.

"I'm really trying to have an impact on the next generation of leaders," he said. "I'm disappointed in my own generation of leaders, but I'm very hopeful for the next generation. I hope to have a very modest impact on that in creating more values-oriented leaders — more focused on character than on charisma."


BY AMY REEVES