Leadership by Geoff Colvin

Power Point: Worry about your people

May 5, 2009: 6:57 PM ET

"At the end of a day the performance of a company like Kraft has everything to do with the quality of the people that we have in the key roles and so I spend most of my time worrying about whether that's the case, making sure...we have the right people in the right places, that they have the resources that they need to get the job done."

-- Kraft (KFT) CEO Irene Rosenfeld in a recent interview with NPR's Marketplace. Today Kraft reported first-quarter profits were up 10% over last year. It was the one bright spot in a sea of bad quarterly earnings news from companies with top women from Fortune's Most Powerful Women list.  Avon (AVP), whose chief is Andrea Jung, and Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), led by CEO Pat Woertz, suffered steep profit drops of 36% and 98% respectively. The announcement from Disney (DIS)--where Anne Sweeney is president of the Disney-ABC Television Group--was also dismal: net income plunged 46% to $613 billion from $1.13 billion a year ago. While Rosenfeld pays lip service to the importance of people, cost cuts and price increases are credited with Kraft's standout performance this time around. --Jessica Shambora

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Pattie Sellers
Patricia Sellers
Senior Editor at Large, Fortune
Executive Director of MPW/Live Content, Time Inc.

Fortune senior editor at large Pattie Sellers has written some of Fortune's most talked-about cover stories, including "Marissa Mayer: Ready to Rumble at Yahoo," "Oprah's Next Act," "Can Meg Whitman Save California?" "The $100 Billion Woman" (Melinda Gates), and "Remodeling Martha" (Martha Stewart). She has helped oversee Fortune's "Most Powerful Women in Business" package every year since its launch in 1998. Pattie is Executive Director of the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit, the preeminent gathering of women leaders in business and beyond. She oversees MPW programs that enable women leaders to extend their influence and empower the next generation—such as Fortune MPW Entrepreneurs and the Fortune-U.S. State Department Global Women Leaders Mentoring Partnership. Beyond her Fortune duties, she is also developing Live Content across Time Inc. Pattie grew up in Allentown, PA, graduated from the University of Virginia, and started at Fortune in 1984. Her blog, Postcards, is about how power players lead, manage others, and navigate their careers.

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