Leadership expert John Baldoni has some words of advice for executives when publicly delivering leadership messages: No ego, please, it's not about you.

William Weldon surely has little choice in the matter--the chairman and CEO of healthcare giant Johnson & Johnson oversees more than 250 operating companies across three sectors, including consumer products, pharmaceuticals and medical devices.

That's one big family--some 119,500 employees in 57 countries--but Mr. Weldon's messages must be getting across. While unseated by Google this year, J&J's reputation has been number one in the eyes of consumers responding to the Harris Interactive Reputation Quotient survey every year since its inception in 1999.

Talking to the employees is a J&J tradition. In fact, the current post on the company's Kilmer House blog recalls how founder Robert Wood Johnson once recorded radio talks that were broadcast in J&J plants and offices worldwide.

In 1949, Johnson published a book called Robert Johnson Talks it Over, a compilation of his radio talks broadcast to J&J employees worldwide. These recorded talks were meant to replace the informal conversations Johnson once had "when the Company was much smaller and he knew everyone who worked there."

How does Mr. Weldon manage leadership in a company now many times larger?

By accepting a measure of lost control in a global, decentralized environment, while embracing the ability of local leaders to run markets according to their local cultural and business knowledge.

And overall, by seeing decentralization as a benefit: "...the problem with centralization is if one person makes one mistake, it can cripple the whole organization. This way, you've got wonderful people running businesses. You have to have confidence in them, but you let them run it -- and you don't have to worry about making that one big mistake."

Jeff Heilman

7/1/08