Summary: Think of this as getting to audit a little bit of a leadership master class. Bruce Chizen has the kind of unique executive experience that would fill a book of business school case studies. As the CEO of Adobe – the company that makes Photoshop, Premiere and more – Bruce mentored his replacement, Shantanu Narayen – and he often sat across the bargaining table from Apple CEO Steve Jobs. That's when I met him, as a young reporter in Silicon Valley, nearly 20 years ago now. Today, Bruce sits on many boards of directors, most notably the board of Oracle – run by the one and only Larry Ellison. At the same time, Bruce is executive chairman at Informatica. Informatica works with businesses to manage the trove of data they store in the cloud. There, he's working with new CEO Anil Chakravarthy on navigating a tricky job. Not only does Anil have to inspire the rank and file, he's got to develop his lieutenants and manage a board of directors stacked with impatient private equity investors.
