Postcards

Power Point: Find a new business model

"The world's looking for a new business model."

-- Citigroup (C) CEO Vikram Pandit, defending his leadership, in an interview with CNN Tuesday. During the past week, news media outlets have reported that FDIC Chair Sheila Bair thinks Pandit lacks the retail banking experience to revive Citi and wants him out. Meanwhile, others speculate that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner believes that Pandit deserves a shot at the turnaround and that a MORE

P&G's Lafley: Lessons in leadership

by Patricia Sellers

There aren't many hero CEOs anymore. So it's remarkable that two of the most admired chiefs have announced their retirement within the past three weeks.

First came Anne Mulcahy, who saved Xerox (XRX) from near-bankruptcy.

Now comes the news that Procter & Gamble (PG) CEO A. G. Lafley is stepping down after reviving that consumer giant and doubling its size to $83.5 billion in less than a decade. Like Mulcahy, MORE

Power Point: Look for your mismatch

"I am a materialist who cares about money, and Anya's all about giving back. Mismatching is the ultimate match."

-- Jonah Staw, CEO and co-founder of LittleMissMatched, a spunky purveyor of vibrantly colored and patterned clothing. Staw and his wife, Anya Emerson -- a lawyer at the nonprofit New York Legal Assistance Group -- were featured in the "Vows" column in yesterday's New York Times, endorsing the notion that "mismatches" attract. MORE

More women fall off the tracks

The ouster of Bank of America's (BAC) chief risk officer, Amy Brinkley, was inevitable, as I wrote in "Behind the shakeup at BofA" on Friday.

And as I mentioned in that piece, two years ago, Fortune featured Brinkley and five other execs in "One Step Away," about rising-star Most Powerful Women on track to be CEOs of Fortune 500 companies someday. So what's happened to the other five?

One woman made it MORE

Power Point: Stay nimble like David

"We need to see ourselves and conduct ourselves not as Goliath, but as David—not as a giant, but as a nimble and innovative competitor in every market."

-- Wal-Mart (WMT) CEO Mike Duke at Friday's annual meeting for shareholders and employees in Fayetteville.  Fortune's Suzanne Kapner attended the gathering, which given Wal-Mart's success in this economy, was more of a celebration. Actor Ben Stiller emceed a program with surprise performances from MORE

Behind the shakeup at BofA

by Patricia Sellers

The news that another Fortune Most Powerful Woman -- Bank of America (BAC) chief risk officer Amy Brinkley -- has fallen was inevitable.

The surprise is that she lasted as long as she did.

The pressure is that intense inside CEO Ken Lewis' financial-services empire -- now the largest U.S. bank by revenues and No. 11 on the Fortune 500, thanks to a run of aggressive acquisitions. The topper, Merrill MORE

Power Point: Celebrate and give thanks

"Every time you celebrate an achievement, be thankful to those who made it possible."

--Steven Chu, U.S. Secretary of Energy, in his address to Harvard grads Thursday. Chu encouraged students to give a shout out to parents, friends and inspirational professors. "Especially thank the other professors whose less-than-brilliant lectures forced you to teach yourself. Going forward, the ability to teach yourself is the hallmark of a great liberal arts education and MORE

How women work -- and how to profit from it

I've been studying women and power since the mid-'90s. And as I've learned, women leaders think about power very differently from the way men do.

Power, to most women leaders, is horizontal -- about influence across many areas. The careers of successful women tend to be less vertical than a ladder -- more like jungle gyms. Many women I know who have reached the top -- the top 50 in business, MORE

MPWomen in New York: the evening in pictures

Fortune Most Powerful Women gathered for a blow-out celebration in May. We kicked off our 2009 MPWomen's Summit theme, Betting on the Future, with a panel discussion with Google's (GOOG) Marissa Mayer, Goldman Sachs' (GS) Dina Powell, and Meredith Whitney, the influential bank-industry analyst. Also part of the evening: 32 rising star women leaders from 23 developing countries -- participants in the 2009 Fortune-U.S. State Department Mentoring Partnership. For more MORE

Power Point: Learn from your children

"The absence of standards is the social equivalent of the absence of an acknowledged fair price for a good in the marketplace. At best, it leads to haggling; at worst, to market failure."

- Michael Lewis, the best-selling author of Moneyball and The Blind Side, in Home Game, his new book released this week. Tonight, Meredith Whitney, the bank-industry analyst who appeared on the cover of Fortune last August, interviewed Lewis at MORE