Former Siemens and Alcoa CEO Klaus Kleinfeld dismisses the idea of work-life separation: ‘You are one person’

s·CEO DailyFormer Siemens and Alcoa CEO Klaus Kleinfeld dismisses the idea of work-life separation: ‘You are one person’By Diane BradyBy Diane BradyExecutive Editorial Director, Fortune Media and author of CEO DailyDiane BradyExecutive Editorial Director, Fortune Media and author of CEO DailyDiane Brady is an award-winning journalist and author who has interviewed newsmakers worldwide and often speaks the global landscape

As executive editorial director of the Fortune CEO Initiative, she brings together a growing community of global leaders through conversations, content, and connections

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Geoff Colvin here, sitting in for Diane

In these waning days of summer, in which CEOs and other hard-charging executives observe an unwritten pact to take it easy, or at least easier, they face a rare opportunity to think large thoughts

An appriate beach book for them, offering hefty thoughts decidedly relevant to people, would be Leading to Thrive by Klaus Kleinfeld

The former CEO of Alcoa and Siemens now spends his days in not-yet-public companies while also mentoring CEOs and helping his daughters run their biotics company (he started his career in the pharmaceutical industry)

But he also burned to write a book “by a practitioner for practitioners” and to “separate the theories that sound good from those that work well in the real world.” The result, un most CEO books, doesn’t begin with leadership, team building, managing the board, or other CEO topics

Those are for the book’s second half

The first half is all “the inner game,” demanding personal “energy, focus, and resilience.” Speaking with me recently, he acknowledges his sins, “pushing teams because I had a idea of what I wanted to get done that day.” He’d insist his team keep working past midnight, only to find in the morning that the idea was terrible, and the people were too exhausted to think straight

That’s how he learned that energy management is way more important than time management. “It’s why I have this strong focus on how you gain and retain energy,” he says

His formula involves the ancient Roman philosopher Seneca, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Friedrich Nietzsche, the Dalai Lama, and many others

Kleinfeld disdains the concept of work-life separation

Yes, he says, “you play multiple roles,” but ultimately, “you are one person.” The idea that “I have a private life and I have a life—that’s not the way the world works

It’s actually a very old industrial idea that wasn’t around before the Industrial Age, and it will not survive the post-industrial world.” After all, he says, “It’s one life.” He would advise anyone “to really think what excites them, what gets them up in the morning

Think it and spend some time on it.” When he reflects on his own choices, he says he is always reminded of the work of Bronnie Ware, an Australian palliative nurse who catalogued the regrets of the dying. “One of the top regrets is, ‘I wish I had let myself be happier,’” he says. “This is as simple as it sounds, but it also has the found wisdom that happiness is a decision you take.”—Geoff Colvin More news below

CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.comTop newsThe world waits for Powell Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell ders his long-awaited keynote address at Jackson Hole today, amid intense pressure from the Trump administration over the central bank’s hesitance to cut interest rates

Analysts are struggling to predict the Fed's thinking due to a weak U.S. jobs market and hot inflation readings

The big questions on investors’ minds: Will Powell signal that a rate cut is ly next month? And will he reveal his plans after his term expires next year?China, the U.S….and Nvidia stuck in betweenNvidia CEO Jensen Huang is reiterating that the H20 chip poses no threat to China’s national security, ing reports that Beijing is asking firms to stop buying the company’s chips

The Information reports that Nvidia is asking some suppliers to halt work on the H20

Nvidia strongly denies adding backdoors and kill switches to its ducts

Huang, who is currently visiting TSMC, added that Nvidia is in talks with the U.S. an H20 successor

No U.S. visas for truck driversThe U.S. will pause issuing worker visas for commercial truck drivers after a fatal crash in Florida last week involving an allegedly undocumented driver

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said foreign drivers are “endangering American s and undercutting the lihoods of American truckers.” The State Department separately confirmed that it continues to vet the 55 million foreigners who hold valid U.S. visas, even after they’ve entered the country.DeepSeek emerges once moreChinese AI startup DeepSeek has d one of its AI models just two weeks after the release of OpenAI’s new GPT-5

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