Boards that don’t exercise an ownership approach are complicit in poor-performing companies. - Sam Zell

Prudence was his mantra; he was always deeply respectful of risk.

My takeaway was a whole new respect for simplicity. Development required multiple steps, and every step meant one more chance for something to go wrong.

I’ve always valued long-term relationships, but John Hsieh, the former head of Itel’s container leasing business, taught me that you simply cannot succeed in-country without them. Hsieh had extensive international experience and contacts. He took me under his wing, and we traveled the world meeting Itel’s customers and suppliers — from a cocktail party in Rotterdam with British and German customers to a dinner in Hong Kong with a Chinese shipping company. The deep relationships he had with his customers enlightened me. I learned that the extreme degree to which you rely on strong personal relationships is perhaps the single biggest difference between doing business in the emerging markets and the U.S.