It takes a global village.

For the past 20 years, Chief Executive magazine has served as a chronicle of the lives, times, challenges, and triumphs of CEOs throughout America and the world. In celebration of our 20th anniversary, we've asked a number of CEOs who have held their positions for the better part of that period

- or longer - to reflect on the changes they've witnessed during that time: Changes in their industry, changes in their company, and, most particularly, changes in the job of chief executive. In the first installment in this series, Joe Dionne, McGraw-Hill's self-proclaimed corporate evangelist, moves his company out of paperbound silos into a far-flung electronic universe.

Conquering reluctance to change and asserting a bold corporate vision are the most challenging and most rewarding tasks of a chief executive. And they are especially relevant to all of us now, as we face an electronic universe in seemingly endless transition. Amid such turbulence, old ways of doing things can seem protective and cozy.

When I became CEO of The McGraw-Hill Cos. in 1983, ours was still largely a print-on-paper world; the transformation into the computer age was barely under way. We were known to most people as either a textbook or a magazine company. Within the company were multiple silos - housing dozens of separate business units, each of them working within a limited universe on a limited product.

Things were moving along, and everyone was meeting deadlines. I was confident we would continue to have the superb reputation that comes from being a nearly 100-year-old publishing company built on a firm base of quality and respect. However, I was less confident we could take advantage of the coming electronic age so long as our information was stored in those walled-in silos. My task was to tear down the silos and rebuild our company for the digital age. There was a sense of urgency: Change was coming - fast.

How do you arrive at a corporate vision that allows for rapid and coordinated transformation across multiple business units? How do you encourage a company to change and grow? Partly it takes corporate evangelism finding the right words to describe the right vision, and spreading them through the management ranks. Fortunately, we had those words right in-house, through one of our authors whose vision neatly matched our direction.

Forty years ago, when I was a school teacher on Long Island and my own practice of management consisted of coaching the high-school basketball team, Marshall McLuhan was already writing - for McGraw-Hill - about the electronic age shrinking the world into what he later termed the "Global Village."

Adapting that vision to The McGraw-Hill Cos. was the challenge. The metaphor I adopted was a giant information turbine that took all the bits of data and analysis generated by our myriad writers, editors, and analysts and generated an ever-changing matrix of new products to meet customer demands for information.

By the early '80s, it was clear that if McGraw-Hill didn't transform itself to fit into the new information age, it could fade from the forefront. We knew that to succeed in the electronic era, we needed to transform ourselves continually to meet the emerging global markets, and the customer expectations of high-tech information-sharing.

To become an information turbine, the first step was to replace the silos with cross-functional divisions where information could be shared, combined, and reassembled in new formats.

In 1985, we made the change. Any of our units, for instance, that were associated with the building industry now reported to one team of executives. We gathered in one spot Architectural Record and Engineering News-Record magazines along with F.W. Dodge construction-industry reports, Sweet's building products information and directories, and other related products. This allowed us to focus on bringing industry customers a package of goods tailored to their individual needs.

We also needed to revamp all our products to be prepared for digital platforms, which would allow us to mix and match information into customized reports that could take a broader view of the industry.

But transformation isn't just technological know-how; it's also the ability of senior management to unify its message. This has meant frequent employee forums that I conduct at our home and branch offices around the world. It has meant team-building - again by market focus rather than type of medium. It has meant challenging our executives to look beyond improvements on what they already have, to find what the customers need and to devise new products to fit those needs.

Customer focus can mean developing a new magazine title in response to new information needs. It can mean expanding the list of assets for our Standard & Poor's Ratings Services to reduce the group's elasticity by broadening its base of assets that can be securitized, packaged, and rated as debt instruments.

We have honed our vision over the past 14 years to three standards and three themes, all of which are translatable into any size business in any industry:

Listen to your customers. An example: Professors don't like to assign multiple textbooks for a single class, and students cringe at the cost when they do. So we pioneered the field of custom publishing for the college market - capturing value along the way. A professor can now call up our Primis unit and tell us that his class will cover these specific topics; together we will design a book that matches his syllabus, drawing the chapters from a database that comprises a number of books, articles, and case studies, as well as the professor's class notes. Within a week we can have the book printed and in that professor's college bookstore.

Build on your strengths. More than a decade ago, we made a decision not to get into the network hardware business. We would supply content to the owners of networks, but we wouldn't be the pipelines ourselves. That was a tough decision that had all sorts of control and pricing ramifications. But in the end, we are content providers, not hardware managers.

Through thick and thin, we have stayed constant to our vision of a global electronic village. All our products have been digitized, allowing us to gather information for any medium and purpose customers have.

Over the past 14 years, we have acquired companies that strengthened our core competencies - companies such as Times-Mirror's higher education and Random House's school and college publishing divisions, MMS global market analysis, and Macmillan's elementary publishing. And we have shed companies that fit less perfectly - Shepard's legal publishing, consumer trade-book publishing, Nikkei publications in Japan. Those standards have brought us to a place in 1997 where we can expand virtually all of our information centers to meet emerging markets and new media platforms. It is our core strength, developed through the '80s, that allowed us to progress to growth themes in the '90s.

Stay true to your core beliefs. For our company, I stay close to the word "integrity" and use it as a litmus test for any major change or acquisition under consideration. Having a core belief in pride and integrity - a corporate ethos that insists on respecting the intelligence of our customer - helps us in a lot of ways. It helps us maintain the highest accuracy for our financial services, which must consistently outperform a highly competitive field. It reminds us we are responsible for providing educational materials that aren't just marketable, but that deliver messages that will prepare the coming generation of world citizens.

Global growth. Last year we added a new tier to our global strategy division, designed expressly to find ways to expand our operations internationally and add new international products to the ones that already exist. In 1996, for instance, Standard & Poor's Ratings Services unit entered the markets of Argentina, Chile, India, and Indonesia through its growing network of affiliations.

We keep our eyes on the emerging international markets, which will need our business and educational information as their standards of living improve and their financial markets professionalize. Truly free markets depend on a wealth of available information and an educated population that can analyze the information.

Innovation. In a time of change, it is doubly important to maintain creative thinking and visionary strategies. The computer revolution is being led by non-conformists, tinkerers, and visionaries who combine invention and commerce in a single transforming package. Nurturing creative people is as important as building an effective sales staff. With a truly innovative staff, you'll sometimes enter new electronic markets too quickly, and you'll have to then scale back and wait until the market catches up with you. That kind of mistake a corporation can survive; mistakes of complacency are another matter.

Management. Finding the people who can anticipate change is paramount. Very quickly, Java, writeable CDs, and innovations we haven't dreamed of will ship today's technology to the same computer-relic junkyard the Apple IIc, Visicalc, and the dot matrix printer inhabit. Look for smart people who are focused on future opportunities, who can see global trends and take advantage of them.

As a former history teacher, I like to point out that this electronic revolution isn't so different from the industrial revolution 100 years ago. Everything changed fast then, too, and laggards were ruined. Virtually overnight, the workplace and marketplace had to be rethought - just as it does today.

At The McGraw-Hill Cos., we are no longer just a print-on-paper publisher. The silos have been removed. We have managed a vibrant transformation, and now, as change continues to accelerate, we're engaged in a continuous transformation to keep pace with the world. And the next stage of the electronic revolution is upon us: cyberspace. We're seeing the turbine metaphor come alive on our more than 60 web sites, where a single shared plat-form is providing customers and producers with huge opportunities for customizing information for the newest uses.

It is a global village now, 35 years after Marshall McLuhan predicted it. Those companies that can adapt quickly to change will thrive as a multitude of new markets open up, and as worldwide demand for American information, ingenuity, and products continues to expand.