The 10 Lives of George Stalk

Becoming the chief evangelist for this new idea meant that Stalk's already taxing life turned into months, then years, of constant around-the-globe travel. A typical schedule: 10 days in Japan, 10 days in Europe, 10 days back in Japan, 10 days in the United States. He became a regular on Pan American Flight 01, the famous globe-hopping flight. Stalk figures he flew as many as 500,000 miles a year for a decade, appearing in exotic locales wearing a fly-fishing vest over a suit jacket (more pockets) and lugging an enormous, beat-up old briefcase full of Diet Coke.

In 1985, he came back to the States, yet he had trouble getting people to believe his theory. Frustrated, he decided to take a year's leave of absence from BCG and prove his ideas himself with a real factory in the United States. He landed at Hillenbrand Industries, a conglomerate with a struggling hospital-bed factory. Stalk took two years instead of one, but turned the factory around. The book that followed in 1990, Competing Against Time: How Time-Based Competition Is Reshaping Global Markets, written with Tom Hout, made him a star and gained him entree into the most elite companies.

At GE, for example, Stalk spent about 18 months answering Jack Welch's challenge to help him find companies that were improving continuously while still delivering higher profits. "He stood out as a guy who was the sharpest leading-edge thinker but also one who was so down-to-earth and so operational," says Mike Fraizer, now CEO of Genworth Financial and then a GE executive who traveled with Stalk. Welch and his team eventually brought Stalk's case studies to GE's executive learning center, where they were taught to thousands of executives.

Stalk gained a reputation as a brilliant thinker, but one who didn't suffer fools gladly. He sometimes abandoned projects if he felt that his clients didn't share his passion or commitment to change. And when he stopped learning, it was time to move on. Implementation wasn't his thing. "One of the things I learned early on was I always have to pair myself with someone who has patience with a client," he says. "I'm not going to be the guy that's there to get it done."

In the midst of this chaos, Stalk's family was growing as well, now consisting of six kids, four of whom were special-needs children adopted from Korea, Japan, and Russia. They lived on an island off the coast of Maryland while Stalk's home office was in Chicago. And while, unlike most work-obsessed sorts, he speaks constantly of his family, he's the first to admit he missed a lot of homework sessions and birthday parties. In 1992, Stalk moved the family to Toronto and took over BCG's practice there, figuring he wouldn't have to travel as much.

Yet Stalk simply couldn't downshift. There was the development of BCG's worldwide innovation group, the revamping of the firm's marketing and communications arm, and in 1997, an e-commerce unit, which grew into a $450 million business. "His limits were just beyond [the norm]," says Lachenauer, Stalk's coauthor on Hardball and now CEO of GEO2 Technologies. "Some partner in Auckland would say, 'George, we really need you doing something with the Dairy Board,' something with no self-interest whatsoever. He'd go there at the drop of a hat." Tom Andruskevich, CEO of Canadian luxury company Henry Birks & Sons, remembers his first meeting with Stalk. "I spoke to him on the phone, and he literally got on a plane the same day and arrived at about 6 p.m. We talked until 11 p.m.," he says.

As he contemplated his own death, Stalk suddenly had an idea for a management story: Where have all the gurus gone? He consoled himself with the fact that he wasn't the only one about to disappear; many of the management strategists who had been big names throughout Stalk's career were dead or no longer adding new ideas to the field. But Stalk couldn't write the story because he was going to die. So how could he communicate it to someone on the ground? There was no way, he discovered, to send faxes or email from Heaven. "I have to come up with something better here," he thought.

It had been almost five years since Stalk had really felt healthy. As BCG went into warp speed during the New Economy boom, Stalk did too. In 1998, he contracted hepatitis in Thailand. In 2000, he came down with pneumonia, spending a month in bed unable to work. That same year, he decided to take a life-insurance physical. He didn't pass it.

Then 2001 hit, bringing with it the dual blow of the dotcom collapse and September 11. BCG's executive committee issued an all-hands-on-deck call, and Stalk, ever the good soldier, responded. He became interested in pricing as a competitive strategy and built up a pricing group within the company to $50 million in revenue. He also began work on Hardball. "The common theme is that [all my ideas] are about taking advantage to the point where competitors are left astounded by what's happened. And that's actually how I get through the day. I'm constantly looking at what's the opportunity to create advantage here. This is the lens I use over and over."