Tom Murphy and Dan Burke were two of the most authentic people I've ever met, genuinely themselves at all times. No airs, no big egos that needed to be managed, no false sincerity. They comported themselves with the same honesty and forthrightness no matter who they were talking to. They were shrewd business people (Warren Buffett later called them "probably the greatest two-person combination in management that the world has ever seen or maybe ever will see"), but it was more than that. I learned from them that genuine decency and professional competitiveness weren't mutually exclusive. In fact, true integrity—a sense of knowing who you are and being guided by your own clear sense of right and wrong is a kind of secret weapon. hey trusted in their own instincts, they treated people with respect, and over time the company came to represent the values they lived by. A lot of us were getting paid less than we would have been Paid if we went to a competitor. We knew they were cheap. But we stayed because we felt so loyal to these two men.

Tom Murphy and Dan Burke hired people who were smart and decent and hardworking, they put those people in positions of big responsibility, and they gave them the support and autonomy needed to do the job. They were also tremendously generous with their time and always accessible. Because of this, executives working for them always had a clear sense of what their priorities were, and their focus enabled us all to be focused, too.

Roone Arledge's storytelling instincts were as sharp as ever. But it was such a stressful way to kick things off, and a reminder of how one person's unwillingness to give a timely response can cause so much unnecessary strain and inefficiency.