但是，后来证明斯金纳毫无疑问是麦当劳需要的那个修理师。没有制定任何大计划，斯金纳只是很轻松地执行一个个小计划，长期优化食物的供应环节，保持餐厅的清洁卫生。曾经也是二把手的他，如今非常希望听到自己二把手的意见。不同于乔布斯，斯金纳一旦感到他的想法跟不上顾客的步伐时，就会痛快地放弃自己原先的想法。（他按照顾客喜欢的样子重新设计了一个咖啡盖，尽管他自己其实并不喜欢那个盖子，但他只是把原来的旧盖子私藏起来，财富Beth Kowitt报道。）
在斯金纳的打理下，这个餐饮连锁的全球顾客数量从平均每天4600万人增加到了6000万人，平均每家餐厅的销售额从160万美元上升到240万美元。这一切也让斯金纳的粉丝们在麦当劳的长期观察者中大获全胜。公司股票回报率自斯金纳上任后高达250%。
还有一个人，她同样因知道何时向持异见者妥协而收获良多：她就是艾琳•罗森菲尔德（Irene Rosenfeld），卡夫食品公司的董事长兼首席执行官，也是颇有争议的世界最有影响力的女性之一。
两年前，罗森菲尔德麾下的卡夫享有高额利润，但是她却选择以190亿美元高价兼并只有微薄利润的英国快餐巨头吉百利（Cadbury）。罗森菲尔德坚持认为这是个公道的价格，因为吉百利给卡夫带来了它所需要的成长。“我无话可说了，”沃伦•巴菲特抱怨道，他是卡夫最大的股东之一。其他分析家和股东与内布拉斯加人站在一边。
因此，罗森菲尔德听取了意见，她重新考虑一番之后改变了决定。今年，她宣布了把两个合并了的公司一分为二的决定。选择一家低增长、高利润的美国杂货店还是利润小但增长迅速的快餐公司，明年冬天，股东们将不得不再一次做出选择。罗森菲尔德很聪明地让卡夫一些虚拟的快餐品牌（例如，奥利奥）变身为她即将经营的更大胆的公司。（到时候，会有更多杂货店由她领导。）罗森菲尔德以前的反对者惊呆了，卡夫的股价接近有史以来的新高。
在微软，史蒂夫•鲍尔默（Steve Ballmer）成功让强大的软件制造商停止欺负小软件开发商——这一点至关重要，因为给微软新手机操作系统开发应用程序的独立开发商将掌握该平台持续成功的关键。在雅培制药（Abbott Labs），迈尔斯•怀特（Miles White）正向认为他将公司推向尖端药品研究的成本过高，风险过大，已抱怨多年的反对者们妥协。他正准备放弃过去十年已花费几十亿投资的药品研究分部。
与此同时，那些因坚持独裁管理而著称的CEO们却什么也没有做成。西尔斯控股（Sears Holdings’s）的艾迪兰•巴德（Eddie Lampert）曾被誉为下一个沃伦•巴菲特。当零售业大军都认为席尔斯需要注入一部分资金对商店销售区的地板进行装修时，巴德竟对这个建议嗤之以鼻，这让他的仰慕者也惊出一身冷汗。“我们不会听从这种意见（他似乎经常是这个观点），”他2005年给股东们的信中写道，“每年必须花费在除红利股上的成本有一个固定的数目。”
But Skinner is turning out to be exactly the fixer that McDonald’s needed. Rather than make grand plans, Skinner has been joyfully implementing small, long-overdue improvements to the way the chain serves food and cleans up its restaurants. As a former number two, he now eagerly listens to his own number-two guys. Unlike Jobs, Skinner happily shrugs off his own preferences if he thinks he’s out of step with customers. (He okayed a redesigned coffee lid that customers like even though he himself so dislikes the lid that he keeps a personal stash of the old-fashioned ones on hand, reports Fortune’s Beth Kowitt.)
Under Skinner’s watch, the chain has boosted the number of people worldwide who come by on an average day from 46 million to 60 million, and lifted average per-store sales to $2.4 million from $1.6 million. That has won Skinner fans among longtime McDonald’s observers. The company’s stock has returned 250% since Skinner arrived.
Here’s somebody else who has achieved a lot by knowing when to give in to people who disagree with her: Irene Rosenfeld. She’s head of Kraft Foods, and arguably one of the most powerful women in the world.
Two years ago, Rosenfeld merged the highly profitable Kraft with the less profitable British snack giant Cadbury at an enormous cost: $19 billion. Rosenfeld argued that the price was justified because Cadbury brought Kraft much-needed growth. “Dumb,” complained Warren Buffett, one of Kraft’s biggest shareholders. Other analysts and shareholders sided with the Nebraskan.
So Rosenfeld listened, reconsidered and reversed direction. She announced this year that she would bust the merged company into two. Next winter, shareholders will once again have the option of owning a slow-growth, high-margin U.S. grocery business or a less profitable but faster-growing snacks concern. Rosenfeld is cleverly moving some of Kraft’s fabled snack brands (e.g., Oreo) into the more adventurous company, which she’ll run. (The more staid grocery business will be headed by a lieutenant.) Rosenfeld’s former critics are thrilled, and Kraft stock is near an all-time high.
At Microsoft, Steve Ballmer has succeeded by teaching the mighty software maker to stop stomping on smaller software developers—which is essential, since indie developers of apps for Microsoft’s new mobile-phone operating system will hold the keys to that platform’s sustained success. At Abbott Labs, Miles White is giving in to critics who’ve complained for years that his efforts to push the company into cutting-edge drug research were too expensive and risky. He’s jettisoning a drug-research division that he spent billions to acquire over the past decade.
Meanwhile, the CEOs who famously insist on a more dictatorial style are getting nothing done. Sears Holdings’s Eddie Lampert was once praised as the next Warren Buffett. Lampert thrilled his admirers when he pooh-poohed advice from legions of retail-industry pros inside and outside Sears who insisted that the company’s stores needed a serious injection of capital for fixing up their sales floors. “We do not subscribe to the view (seemingly widely held),” he wrote to his shareholders in 2005, “that there is a certain amount that must be spent on cap ex every year.”
