There is a hair raising observation among corporate America that most of the successful CEOs including Pepsico's Indra Nooyi part their hair to the left.
NEW YORK: For those who believe only grey cells set apart leaders from the rest, there is another hair raising observation among corporate America that most of the successful CEOs including Pepsico's Indra Nooyi part their hair to the left, says US business magazine Fortune.
Legendary investor and chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway Warren Buffett and Jamie Dimon of investment bank J P Morgan Chase are among the others joining Nooyi in the club of highly efficient CEOs who comb their hair to the left side.
In recent years, a pseudoscience has emerged around the theory that left-partedness signals leadership potential, while parting on the right suggests something a little off-kilter, Fortune said in a report published in its May 5 issue.
The magazine quotes John Walter, a systems engineer at New York City's Marymount Manhattan College as saying, it's difficult for right-parters to be leaders.
Interestingly, a cursory look at the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies reveals only three among them of top 50 firms, part their hair on their right side. They are General Motors Rick Wagoner, AT&Ts Randall Stephenson and Sears interim CEO Bruce Johnson.
According to the magazine, Walter is credited with the theory (of parting hair to left) three decades ago, after he discovered that only a few American presidents parted their hair on the right.
Meanwhile, in the Fortune 500 there are highly successful chief executives who neither part their hair to the left or right. Such names include General Electrics Jeff Immlet, Goldman Sachs Lloyd Blankfein and Exxon Mobils Rex Tillerson.
In the report, the magazine said going by the theory, left-parters attract attention to the left side of their face, which conveys left-brain functions like logic, while right-parters come across as creative but also mysterious.
Describing Buffet as America's richest man, the report said that he comes across as the classic left-brainer: rational and assertive.
As CEO of the 39-billion dollar consumer giant, the leftie ranks No.1 on Fortunes Most Powerful Women in Business List, the magazine said.
Pointing out that no-parters-often-bald rarely reach the top, Fortune said that those who do, like Immlet, tend to take balanced approaches.
However, the magazine asserted that Walter-nomics is by no means a perfect tool for financial analysis and added that the world is better off with right-parters in it.
Fortune said that GEs founder, Thomas Edison, was one and so are Melinda Gates, Xerox CEO Anne Mulchaly, and John Donahoe, Meg Whitmans successor at eBay.
Hair-part aficionados are abuzz over whether right-parter John McCain stands a chance of winning the 2008 presidential race, the report noted.
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