Four essentials of leadership.

• Position: Views of Paul Fireman, Chairman and CEO of Reebok International Ltd. - Special Section: Being a Global Leader

Four Essentials of Leadership

In the wake of glasnost and perestroika, we learned that the people of Eastern Europe wanted four things - freedom, Levi's, Ray-Bans, and Reeboks. So it is around the world, as we transition from a time when America's biggest exports were armaments and food to one when foreign markets crave our movies and life style products - those things that embody our values and culture at a price the common man can afford.

Reebok is intent today on replicating in foreign markets its phenomenal domestic success in the athletic footwear industry. We haven't yet fulfilled all our ambitions, but our experience so far may have taught us some lessons that may have meaning for other U.S. companies.

Reebok has enjoyed exciting growth in the U.S., with revenue growing from $12 million in 1983 to $2.16 billion in 1990, and with continued strong growth expected. In fact, this camouflaged a tough decision that we faced in the mid-1980s - a choice between keeping our sales growing rapidly or slowing up and building the infrastructure necessary to manage and control the much bigger (than-we'd-ever-anticipated) company we'd become. We went for growth. Then, the rapid growth abated and we spent the 1987-to-1989 period building infrastructure.

Partly due to our structural weaknesses during Reebok's hypergrowth, we quickly achieved significant penetration of international markets - basically, it was success by default. Joe Foster, president of J.W. Foster, a predecessor company, didn't have time for elaborate planning and control. He simply picked good people and put them in the key international markets. He was too busy to manage them to death. As a result, most of them flourished. This affirmed, again, one of our cultural attributes, for Reebok is a place where ordinary people achieve extraordinary things.

Today, with a solid management infrastructure in place domestically and abroad, Reebok's growth is quickening again. This time we aim for controlled, managed growth, but at a rapid rate.

We haven't lost sight of what our own mistakes have taught us.

In summary, we've learned that, at least for us, global leadership comes down to four essentials: * You've got to make a difference - in your products, with your people, and in the values you project inside and out. That only happens in an environment in which freedom of expression is encouraged, as it is very clearly at Reebok. * Listening to the customer is the foundation of any...