Leadership and Adversity: The John Malone, Ph.D. Story,
Chairman and CEO, Liberty Media, Inc.
By: Howard Edward Haller, Ph.D.
This article offers an insight into groundbreaking proven research
into how to overcome adversity and how to become a successful
leader which is well researched and fully documented in my new
book “Leadership and Adversity: The Shaping of Prominent
Leaders.” This new Leadership book has received extensive
endorsements and enthusiastic reviews from well-known prominent
business, political, and academic leaders, best-selling authors,
and leading scholars who either participated in the study or
reviewed the research findings.
You will discover the proven success habits and leadership secrets
of people who, in spite of adversity, discrimination, abuse, or
difficult or life threatening challenges shaped their own destiny
to become successful, effective leaders.
The full results of this research are presented in the just
published book, “Leadership and Adversity: The Shaping of
Prominent Leaders,” by Howard Edward Haller, Ph.D., which is
available on www.amazon.com,
www.amazon.ca,
www.amazon.de, and
www.amazon.co.uk.
The nine initial prominent successful leaders, who’s stories are
told and shared their secrets about how to overcome adversity
were: Dr. Tony Bonanzino, U.S. Senator Orrin Hatch (UT), Monzer
Hourani, U.S. Senator Daniel Inouye (HI), Dr. John Malone,
Laurence Pino, U.S. Army Major General Sid Shachnow (Ret.), Dr.
Blenda Wilson, and Zig Ziglar.
The data from the above nine research participants was materially
augmented by seven other successful individuals who overcame
adversity including: Jack Canfield, William Draper III, Mark
Victor Hansen, J. Terrence Lanni, Angelo Mozilo, Dr. Nido Qubein,
and Dr. John Sperling.
Additionally, five internationally known, highly respected
Best-Selling authors, and major academic scholars offered their
peer debriefing comments, reviews and their agreement with the
findings of my research findings including:
Dr. Ken Blanchard, Dr. John Kotter, Professor Jim Kouzes, Dr. Paul
Stoltz, and Dr. Meg Wheatley.
This is a short biography of one of the principal participants for
my Leadership and Adversity research who generously contributed
their time and insights into the phenomenon of how individuals can
successfully overcome adversity and obstacles and even go on to
become prominent successful leaders. This John Malone’s story:
John Malone was born in 1941 into a modest middle-class family in
Connecticut. His father was, as John described him, “a junior
scientist and inventor,” and was the sole breadwinner in the
house. His “mother was a supportive wife and mother.” John’s
father was gone nearly all the time and “John rarely saw his
father” (Robichaux, 2002, p. 22).
John qualified for a work-scholarship to a nearby, well-respected
preparatory school. John met the love of his life, Leslie Ann
Evans, when he was 17 and she was 15. After completing high
school, John attended Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut on
a work-scholarship.
For Malone three important milestones in his life happened in
1963: (a) He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Yale with a Bachelor’s
degree in Electrical Engineering; (b) he married his steady
girlfriend, Leslie Ann Evans; and (c) he accepted a job as a
systems engineer at Bell Labs (Robichaux, 2002, p. 26). During our
two-hour initial interview at his office in Englewood, Colorado,
John shared that he “took the job at Bell because they would pay
completely for my education all the way through my doctorate in
operations management [at John Hopkins University] and pay me [a
salary] to boot.”
After completing his doctorate in Operation Research, John
continued to work for AT&T’s Bell Labs. He presented to the AT&T
Board of Directors a massive and complicated mathematic model of
his own design, “proving that AT&T should make a radical change in
its balance sheet and shift its debt-to-equity ratio into more
debt.” After the presentation to the Board the chairman told him
in essence that the AT&T Board would never accept his radical
idea. John was disillusioned, so he decided to quit working for
AT&T.
John soon accepted a position with the consulting firm of McKinsey
& Co., where he worked for two years, until one of his clients,
General Instruments, hired him to run their troubled acquisition
of Jerrold Electronics. Malone became President of Jerrold when he
was 29 years old. A disgruntled competitor who was losing sales to
Jerrold petitioned the Federal Trade Commission, “alleging that
Jerrold was trying to build a monopoly by selling below their
cost.” John promptly compiled all the information and proved to
the FTC that the charges were untrue.
John came to realize that even his hard-won respect “would never
be enough to overcome the ongoing internal political battles.” He
began to know that he “would never be in line for promotion to
Chief Executive Officer of General Instruments.” Then, at age 30,
John received and accepted an offer from one of his clients, Bob
Magness, who was the founder and chairman of TeleCommunications,
Inc. (TCI).
John took a “significant cut in pay” when he joined TCI, but was
eager to embrace the challenges of the new job and run “the entire
business as the new President and CEO.” Malone’s “first crisis at
TCI was a dangerous cash flow problem.” Over the next thirty years
Malone fought many battles with other operators, suppliers, local
politicians, state and federal cable regulators, and the U.S.
Congress. Malone and his mentor, Magness, battled their foes
together.The death of Robert Magness, the majority shareholder,
created a number of major obstacles for Malone, both personally
and professionally. Magness’s widow and two surviving sons
struggled and battled with Bob’s hand-picked trustees, who were
trusted TCI employees. Malone, knowing that Magness’s shares were
the controlling interest in TCI, sought financial support from
Bill Gates of Microsoft and Brian Roberts of Comcast Corporation.
Magness’s trustees sold Bob Magness’s TCI stock, but the stock
sale was overturned in the Colorado courts. This court action put
the TCI stock and the controlling interest in TCI “back into
play.” In 1997, “Bill Gates stunned the cable industry by
investing $1 billion in cash in Comcast.” John recognized he would
not have Gates and Roberts as allies. Malone acted promptly to
protect TCI, his personal interests, and his control of the firm.
In early 1998, John negotiated with Magness’s heirs, “agreeing to
pay them $200 million for the right to vote Magness’s stock which
they still owned.” This creative move gave Malone the control he
needed to thwart the takeover bid of Roberts and Gates. With the
control of TCI secured, John then moved to spin off as a separate
affiliated company everything except the cable business. This
separate TCI affiliate was Liberty Media, which controlled most of
the programming and all the non-cable interests. John was
preparing to sell TCI’s cable operations in the very near future.
John finally sold the cable interest of TCI to AT&T for $58
billion, increasing his personal worth to over $3 billion. John
now sat on AT&T’s Board of Directors. This brought Malone little
joy, for now he “had to watch as the AT&T Board made a series of
painfully poor and costly decisions.” In spite of his suggestions
and many objections, “AT&T repeatedly made decisions which
materially devalued my AT&T stock.” As a result, nearly half of
John’s personal $3 billion net worth was gone.
Ultimately, Malone resigned from AT&T’s Board of Directors,
selling most of his now significantly devalued AT&T stock. As part
of his resignation from the AT&T Board, Malone “successfully
negotiated to be able to resume the full-time management of
Liberty Media, as Chairman and CEO,” a position he still
maintains. I met with Dr. Malone, Liberty Media Headquarters, for
just over two hours in Englewood, Colorado. Dr. John Malone will
continue to make history in the cable and programming arena with
his ever expanding and successful firm, Liberty Media Corporation.
Copyright 2008 ©Howard Edward Haller, Ph.D.
Howard Edward Haller, Ph.D.
Chief Enlightenment Officer
The Leadership Success Institute
Author: “Leadership and Adversity: The Shaping of Prominent
Leaders”
Publisher: VDM Verlag Dr Müller AG & CoKG ISBN 978-3-639-09841-9
[Now available on www.Amazon.com]
Website:
www.TheLeadershipSuccessInstitute.com
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