In a world of uncertainty, we could all use a little advice. So CNN asked a host of influential leaders to share with us the wise words that changed their lives forever.


When I was young, maybe 6 or 7 years old, I'd play on the Navy golf course with my pop. My dad would say, "Okay, where do you want to hit the ball?" I'd pick a spot and say I want to hit it there. He'd shrug and say, "Fine, then figure out how to do it." He didn't position my arm, adjust my feet, or change my thinking. He just said go ahead and hit the darn ball. My dad's advice to me was to simplify. He knew that at my age I couldn't digest all of golf's intricacies. He kept it simple: If you want to hit the ball to a particular spot, figure out a way to do it. Even today, when I'm struggling with my game, I can still hear him say, "Pick a spot and just hit it." When I'm making adjustments during a round, I know some of the television commentators theorize that I'm changing this or moving that, but really what I'm doing is listening to Pop.


Gary Hart [the former presidential candidate from Colorado] gave me the advice over beers at the Quadrangle Club at the University of Chicago in 1987, where he had just given a speech. He said Washington was one big echo chamber of conventional wisdom clanging around. He told me, "Washington is always the last to get the news." I didn't think much about his words then, but they stuck with me and helped me later in life and in the Obama campaign. There were many times when Washington conventional wisdom wrote us off or insisted we were making suicidal mistakes.

They questioned our focus on Iowa, saying we needed to run a national campaign. For most of 2007, from July to November, the conventional wisdom insisted we had blown our opportunity. Hillary Clinton had a 30-point lead. But we thought that if we won Iowa we could prevail, and we just got pummeled by people in Washington saying we were going to lose. In the spring of 2008 they said we were crazy to oppose eliminating the gas tax when our opponents were proposing it as a way to ease the crush of high gas prices. People thought we'd made this critical error. But we thought our position was honest and forthright and people would recognize a gimmick when they saw one. The interchange on those issues actually propelled us to a strong position in the North Carolina and Indiana primaries. The third time we ignored Washington was when Sarah Palin was picked. They said it was a masterstroke by McCain. But Obama said it took him four to five months to get the hang of being a candidate, so I knew it would be tough to make that adjustment in three weeks.

When I was a political reporter, the paper tried to send me here [Washington, D.C.], and I refused. In 1998, when the Monica Lewinsky story broke and reporter friends said Clinton would resign, I went to Manny's Deli in Chicago, where there was an older woman, 68. She was a cashier who had to keep working to make ends meet. She said, "This guy Clinton seems to be trying to help us, so why don't they get off his ass?" I called my reporter friends in D.C. and said they need to come to Manny's.


When I was a young infantry officer at Fort Benning, we had a lot of old captains who had served in World War II and Korea. They were not going to go higher in rank, but, boy, did they know about soldiering. So I didn't learn this piece of barracks wisdom from an Eisenhower or Pershing. I heard it from these wonderful reserve captains. This is the story: There was a brand-new second lieutenant who was very ambitious and wanted to be a general. So one night at the officer's club the young officer spotted this old general sitting at the bar. So he went up and said, "How do I become a general?" And the old general answered, "Son, you've got to work like a dog. You've got to have moral and physical courage. There may be days you're tired, but you must never show fatigue. You'll be afraid, but you can never show fear. You must always be the leader." The young officer was so excited by this advice. "Thank you, sir," he said, "so is this how I become a general?" "No," said the general, "that's how you become a first lieutenant, and then you keep doing it over and over and over." Throughout my career, I've always tried to do my best today, think about tomorrow, and maybe dream a bit about the future. But doing your best in the present has to be the rule. You won't become a general unless you become a good first lieutenant.


The best pieces of advice I got occurred around the holidays in late 2006. The first piece of advice came from former President Bill Clinton at the Saban Forum in Washington. I told the President about my idea to sell electric cars through dealers. He listened to the whole thing, and then he looked at me and said, "You're solving the right problem at the wrong time. The average Joe doesn't go to a dealership; he buys a nine-year-old used car and drives it into the ground, and then he buys another nine-year-old car. You need to figure out how to get the average Joe in an electric car for free and still make money." When I asked how, President Clinton said, "You're the smart guy--you figure it out." And he turned and walked away. President Clinton was the guy who ultimately drove us to switch our model. A few weeks later I was in Israel, and I was speaking with Israeli President Shimon Peres [who also heard my presentation at the Saban Forum]. When I originally pitched the idea, I suggested that the government create an agency to make it happen. I wasn't thinking about it as a company, but more as an arm of government. President Peres told me, "Agencies don't do things. Entrepreneurs do things." He said, "You have to start a company. Otherwise, this is just an idea. You have a good job, but this is a better job because you can save the world." A few days later I quit my job at SAP.

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