(FORTUNE Magazine) – You probably don't know Bob Eckert. And he would just as soon keep it that way. A dentist's son raised in Elmhurst, Ill., he was so low wattage in high school that "you never would have predicted that I'd be a CEO someday," he says. At Kraft Foods, a meritocracy that is known to sink showboats, Eckert toiled in obscurity for 23 years before reaching the top. Blandness becomes him. Two years ago, when Mattel was looking for someone to replace flamboyant CEO Jill Barad, Eckert's modest style was a big attraction. Loyal to Kraft, he shunned the recruiters until his wife, Kathie, nudged him. "She's smarter than I am," he says.

Since he arrived at the world's largest toy company in May 2000, Eckert has focused, as he says, "on cash, cash, cash rather than growth, growth, growth"--because growth was previous management's fatal obsession. He never hypes the stock. He never forecasts profits. The most extravagant thing that Eckert, 48, does is drive a black Porsche 911 convertible--though he is quick to add, "I don't do vanity plates." All work may make Bob Eckert dull copy, but his pragmatic leadership has hardly been dull for Mattel: Since he took charge, operating profits have nearly doubled, and the stock is up 63%.

Bob Eckert personifies the new-breed CEO. The larger-than-life CEO of the past decade is out of fashion (or awaiting prison time). Replacing him are the people on these pages: chief executives of Fortune 500 companies, all new to the job within the past two years or so, about whom you will likely be hearing much more in the future. Not all of them are thriving. Many, such as Sears chief Alan Lacy, are cleaning up messes, putting out fires, and struggling to prove that they are up to the challenge of running a huge public company. But whatever their circumstances, these CEOs have a lot in common. Unlike such magnetic, swaggering, self-aggrandizing figures as Jack Welch and Michael Eisner, they pride themselves on being diligent, dutiful, and yes, a bit dull. (That doesn't mean they can't have fun: as the pictures in this story show, they don't take themselves too seriously.) They are also eager to present themselves as a squeaky-clean contrast to bosses like Ken Lay and Bernie Ebbers. Says Paul Pressler, a 15-year Disney veteran who was tapped to be Gap's new CEO: "Maybe the new breed is the old breed. A few CEOs ran amuck, and now we're swinging back to an era of accountability, integrity, and responsibility."

It might even be true. CEOs are certainly vetted more closely than they were a few years ago. Heidrick & Struggles's Gerry Roche, the veteran recruiter who helped place Pressler at Gap, says he is doing 15 reference checks, compared with eight or so in the past. CEO searches are "twice as difficult," he says, because companies and candidates fail to pass each other's smell tests. "The level of risk aversion is extraordinarily high."

Back in vogue are steadfast organization men and women who prefer anonymity to celebrity. Jim Kilts, who is leading a turnaround at Gillette, hasn't spoken to the press at all since he joined the company almost two years ago. Until now. While he and his fellow CEOs "can't do a lot about the things going on at the Tycos and the Enrons of the world," Kilts says, "one thing we have to do is reinforce the importance of doing the right things the right way." The right way, according to PepsiCo CEO Steve Reinemund, is "to set up a system where no one has absolute authority." Observes General Motors chief Rick Wagoner: "The glimmer is off the personality-driven company."

Indeed, by the standards of the past decade, this is a positively self-effacing bunch. When they look in the mirror (which isn't often) they see warts--and they're even willing to talk about them. "Let's start with the negative," says Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis when asked about his strengths and weaknesses as a leader. "I'm not very well rounded." It's true. Just about the only thing that Lewis, 55, has done since he took charge of America's second-largest bank in the spring of 2001 is to improve returns and tighten controls. His predecessor, Hugh McColl, a blustery empire builder, did some 70 acquisitions. Lewis has not done a single one. "Boring is beautiful," he quips. While some big banks, notably Citigroup and J.P. Morgan Chase, are reeling from bad loans and other missteps, BofA has delivered ever-increasing earnings and won Wall Street's favor. The shares, up 27% since Lewis took charge, have outperformed all major bank stocks.

The new CEOs know they don't know it all. Headhunter Roche says that boards are looking for executives who aren't arrogant--"who walk into a company with a healthy level of ignorance." Gap's Pressler, who previously ran Disney's theme parks, is a good example. "My first 100 days are all about listening and learning," says Pressler, 46, in his first interview as CEO. He vows to spend several days working in the stores stocking shelves in order to understand Gap's customers and its operations. "The last thing you'll get from me is a grand vision in the first 100 days," he says. "You need to give yourself time to be a sponge."

That includes soaking up the wisdom of certain respected elders. Consider Jamie Dimon, who lost a father figure when Sandy Weill dismissed him from Citigroup in 1998. Now CEO of Bank One, Dimon, 46, has tapped former Citigroup co-chief John Reed, 63 (whom Weill also ousted) for advice on how to make his board of directors more productive. Reed urged Dimon to shrink the board--which he did, from 20 directors to 11--and focus the discussion on big questions like, "What are the things that could blow up the company?"

At General Motors, Wagoner, 49, recruited two old hands: Bob Lutz to head North American operations and John Devine to be CFO. Wagoner says he likes having the veterans in GM's leadership development classes "to help prepare the next generation." While Devine, 58, is helping Wagoner grapple with GM's enormous pension-fund problems, Lutz has been key to streamlining car development. From the 70-year-old Lutz, a legendary product guy, Wagoner says he's learned not only about design but also "about discipline on the value side. Bob will say, 'Hey, do you want to put that on the car? It costs 30 bucks--better to sell it as an option.' "

John Smale, who chaired GM in the '90s and led Procter & Gamble the decade before, says that Wagoner and P&G CEO A.G. Lafley are two of a kind: "They're not driven by ego. Both of them are very open to suggestions, not just from their elders but from associates." And at a time when boards of directors are expected to take a more activist role, these CEOs are asking them to do just that. For example, Lafley, 55, recently started sending P&G's 14 outside directors to visit the company's divisions. Their feedback has alerted him to various problems and, he says, "it helps me with succession planning--so it's not me promoting my buddies."

At PepsiCo, Steve Reinemund leans on several directors--such as Fannie Mae CEO Frank Raines and former chief executives John Akers of IBM, Bob Allen of AT&T, and Arthur Martinez of Sears--for guidance on his own performance. "He's quite open," says Martinez, 63. "He asks, 'How can I improve? What should I work on?' " A few months ago Reinemund conducted an executive-development program for 40 middle managers at the University of Virginia's Darden Graduate School of Business (where he earned his MBA) and invited PepsiCo's board members to tag along. The directors not only addressed the group but also sat in on classes, attended breakout sessions, and were urged to share their views with anyone. "Considering that so many CEOs try to wall off their boards, this is admirable and courageous," says Martinez. Reinemund, 54, reasons, "It's a different world that we're operating in. CEOs need to be more transparent and interactive."

New-breed execs aren't afraid to call it as they see it. Soon after taking charge at Bank One two years ago, Jamie Dimon horrified his colleagues by insisting that he explain to investors how bad credit losses might become in a recession. "Excuse me. This is reality. Deal with it!" he told his fretting advisors. (Sure enough, losses rose by $1.5 billion, just as he had warned.) Dimon is a hawk on details. He fired Arthur Andersen, Bank One's auditor, for shoddy performance at the beginning of 2001, long before most people knew how perfunctory Andersen's auditing could be. Like BofA's Lewis, he raised reserves and slashed expenses early on. Hard-nosed and impatient, Dimon doesn't tolerate CEOs who whine about the difficult economy. "Didn't they know it was going to rain someday?!" he asks. "You tighten up. You buckle your belt. You work harder!"

And you don't shrink from doing what you perceive to be right, no matter what the immediate consequences. In October, Sears chief Lacy fired two top executives in his credit business, which generates more than half of Sears's profits. When he explained to investors that he did it because the managers had misled him about the outlook for the business--and then detailed how gloomy that outlook really is--Sears stock lost one-third of its value in less than two weeks. Lacy, 49, has no regrets about coming clean. "There's a higher standard today. As a CEO, I've got to sign a certificate affirming that our financial reporting is not just in conformance with GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) but that it fairly presents the business." Analysts criticize Lacy for shocking the Street ("Shame on us," he concedes), and some investors wonder whether he has a handle on all of Sears's problems. Maybe what really shocked people was that Lacy, who moved up to the top job two years ago, was brutally honest. It's a rare trait in a CEO but one that will be in ever greater demand. "He did the right thing," says Prudential analyst Wayne Hood.

Doing the right thing is also an overriding concern for Dick Notebaert, a plainspoken Midwesterner who joined Qwest Communications as CEO in June. Notebaert, 54, says that he lives by the "newspaper test": He would never do anything that he would mind seeing on the newspaper's front page. His predecessor, the mercurial, Brooklyn-born Joe Nacchio, whom the board pushed out, engaged in aggressive accounting and once blew up at analysts who wanted detailed information on sales. This is how happy Qwest employees were to get a CEO they perceived as more stable: On Notebaert's first day, when he mentioned to 10,000 of them that he has been married to the same woman, Peggy, for 34 years, he got a round of applause. Peggy, he added, was out that very day house hunting in Denver (more applause!). Nacchio, by contrast, lived in New Jersey and commuted to Qwest's Denver headquarters.

Given the trust gap between CEOs and their employees, a different kind of leadership is called for. Among the new breed, charisma still matters. But it's not the roguish charisma of Kozlowski or the larger-than-life charisma of Welch. What sells now is a quieter charisma, a more intimate dynamism, an ability to energize employees one on one. Even the most charismatic of the new-breed CEOs, Jamie Dimon, is a renowned team player. "Leadership is about building camaraderie and trust," he says. Says Xerox CEO Anne Mulcahy: "There's been a bit of an overreaction against charisma. It's important to be liked. But you can't get by just by being liked."

The ideal mix, of course, is charisma and credibility. Mulcahy is leading a company that nearly slid into bankruptcy because a thoroughly uncharismatic chief executive, IBM import Rick Thoman, failed to galvanize employees behind his vision. In contrast, Mulcahy, a 26-year Xerox veteran, is open, communicative, and honest to a fault. Though she began her career in sales, Mulcahy cannot spin to save her life (see "The Day I Was Too Candid"). Says former CEO Paul Allaire, who stepped into the job briefly after Thoman failed: "If Anne disagrees or thinks that an idea is bullshit, you can always see it in her face. I'd say, 'Okay, Anne, let's have it'--and she gives it to you."

She also eggs on employees to identify weaknesses. Recently Mulcahy has been gathering Xerox's top 500 executives, 80 at a time, to talk about the company's strategy--and urging them to poke holes in it. "The meetings are designed to be critical," says Mulcahy, 50. While she is making progress at Xerox (the company has returned to profitability), she is collecting from the meetings' participants a long list of concerns. "They worry about growth," she says, "and whether our strategy is sufficient to deliver growth, especially with the economy we're in."

Where did these earnest new CEOs come from? Most of them--including Lafley, Wagoner, Notebaert, Kilts, Eckert, General Electric's Jeff Immelt, Home Depot's Bob Nardelli, and 3M's Jim McNerney--hail from the Midwest. Coincidence? Not likely, says Jim Kilts, 54, a product of Chicago's South Side and Knox College in Galesburg, Ill. "People in the Midwest have a clear idea of what's right and what's wrong," he says. "Gray is not a color that's highly valued. In fact, gray turns to black almost immediately."

One of the things Kilts--and his former Kraft colleague Bob Eckert--have no gray about: refusing to guide Wall Street on profit targets. Their reasoning goes beyond any commitment to integrity. Kilts, who has done quite a few turnarounds in his career, contends that "companies get in trouble the same way. They drive the organization to make a number rather than do the right thing." That is, they set profit goals too high. They overbuild capacity and inventory, and then they must overspend on deals and discounts to try to meet the target. This is the "circle of doom," Kilts says. To reverse the circle and six years of flat earnings at Gillette, he lowered capital spending, cut inventories, and increased advertising. Profits are growing again.

Eckert is just as adamant that Wall Street guidance leads to bad behavior. The smartest thing he did coming into Mattel, he says, was to discard the company's targets of 15% annual earnings growth and 10% revenue growth. "They were not realistic," he says. "We were not going to play that game anymore." Today Eckert talks generally about long-term goals. He also sends colleagues copies of what he calls "my all-time favorite business article ever": a 2001 FORTUNE story titled "The 15% Delusion," about the dangers of ambitious growth goals (by Carol Loomis, who hails from Cole Camp, Mo.; see fortune.com). Like Kilts, Eckert took flak for declining to specify targets. At a meeting with one big investor in New York, he recalls, "this young analyst said to me, 'Let me tell you what your job is. Your job is to tell us what earnings are likely to be and then to beat that.' " Eckert swears the guy was that blunt. "It floored me," he says. "These are the kind of investors we don't want as our shareholders."

If there is a downside to these new-breed bosses, it is that they're not nearly as much fun to watch as the grand-scheming, lavish-living CEOs of yesterday. They don't reside in $30 million mansions or vacation on their own private islands. (Eckert's idea of living large is to rent a motor home every summer in Michigan's Silver Lake State Park with his wife and four kids, his parents, his brother and sister, and their families.) They don't write autobiographies congratulating themselves on their business triumphs. Shockingly, most of them don't even engage in that classic CEO pastime: golf. Eckert, Lafley, Mulcahy, and Reinemund aren't golfers. Dimon says he has never played a single round. BofA's Lewis complains, "Golf takes way too much time. It's five or six holes too long." Gap's Pressler predicts, "In this job, I don't think I'll ever play golf again."

To some, this may be sad news. But for a business world that is trying to recover, the notion that a new breed of CEOs is working harder on their businesses than on their handicaps is encouraging. Right now, all work and no play may be just the medicine that corporate America needs.

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