丹尼尔•尼瑞

    公司：奥马哈互助保险公司

    《财富》500强排名：394

    尼瑞也算得上是奥马哈保险公司的终身老兵了。来自美国中西部的尼瑞在获得爱荷华大学（University of Iowa）精算学硕士学位后，于1975年加入奥马哈互助保险公司，不过他上世纪90年代曾短暂离开公司去纽约工作。他发现新公司与之前的公司完全相反——而且经营方式并不好——于是，在不到一年之后，他又回到了奥马哈，继续在老东家发展。

    尼瑞在这家保险公司已经从事过许多个岗位，他经常被要求做一些精算方面的杂活：他曾管理过团队销售和证券承销业务。他说：“对于这种安排，我总能以开放的心态去面对。虽然没有正规的主管人员培训，但公司有需要。”他认为：“在这里，大多数成功的领导人都将自己排在第三位，”这种态度恰好契合了公司的文化。他在2005年成为公司CEO。他认为对于公司而言，更重要的并不是下一位领导人是否曾一直在公司工作，而是他们对于公司而言是否是“合适的”人选。不过他补充说，一直在公司工作的人对公司制度上的了解有更多优势。“如果公司有伟大的文化，你知道如何将其保持下去；如果公司文化出现问题，你就能知道需要对哪些地方进行改变。”如果问到有什么劣势的话，我的回答是“你可能会变得有一点目光短浅。”（财富中文网）

    译者：刘进龙/汪皓

Daniel Neary

    Company: Mutual of Omaha

    Fortune 500 rank: 394

    Neary is an almost-lifer. The Midwesterner, who started at Mutual of Omaha in 1975 after collecting a Masters in Actuarial Science at the University of Iowa, left his company ever so briefly in the 1990s for a job in New York. He found this new gig to be a complete contrast—and not in a good way—to his old one, and in less than a year, he headed home to Omaha and resumed his rise through the ranks there.

    Neary had already worked in various capacities at the insurance company and he was often asked to take up odd jobs for an actuary: he managed group sales and underwriting operations for a time. "I was always open to them," he says. "There was no formal executive training, there was a need." This attitude—"the most successful leaders here think of themselves third", he says —fit well with Mutual's culture, and he became CEO in 2005. He says more important to companies than whether or not their next leader is a 'lifer' is whether they're the 'right' person for the company at the moment. But he adds lifers have an advantage in their institutional knowledge "If it's a great culture you know how to perpetuate it; if it's got problems, you know what thinks need to change." The drawbacks? "You can become a little myopic."