2.3 Leading
Our third management function, leading , involves inspiring and motivating workers to work hard to achieve organizational goals. When Anne Mulcahy became Xerox's CEO, the company was on the brink of bankruptcy—it was $17.1 billion in debt and had only $154 million in cash. In addition, 3 years of steeply declining revenues and increasing losses had dropped the company's stock price from $64 a share to just $4.43. Mulcahy admitted that the responsibility of turning the company around frightened her: “Nothing spooked me as much as waking up in the middle of the night and thinking about 96,000 people and retirees and what would happen if this thing went south.”16 Still, she took the job.