Archive for the '2007 Archives' Category

Lead from where you are

Published on December 29, 2007 in 2007 Archives. 5 Comments

“Midlevel Officers Show Enterprise, Helping U.S. Reduce Violence in Iraq.”

Headline in Wall Street Journal, December 19, 2007

The headline in this morning’s newspaper brought to mind a large reception recently at which I was cornered by a manager at a company that recruits at B-schools. He had listened to my remarks to a large group of prospective applicants—customarily, I talk about Darden’s mission (“…to develop leaders in the world of practical affairs”) and educational programs (“high touch, high tone, high octane.”) He said, “All this talk about Darden preparing leaders is wrong. When I recruit MBA graduates, I’m looking for team-players. We don’t need leaders at the entry-level, we need followers. You aren’t serving the business profession with all this leadership nonsense.” The criticism is nothing new: it has been claimed that B-schools warp their students’ expectations and produce people who want to be CEOs right away. There may be a few students who really want to go from corporal to general in one step like Napoleon, but most of Darden’s MBA students are wise enough to realize that one is not granted leadership, one earns it. More generally, the criticism of B-schools reflects a misunderstanding about how one leads, and where.

The Journal article reported that junior and mid-level U.S. officers serving in Iraq have taken the initiative to engage in outreach to sheiks of warring Sunni and Shiite tribes. The effect has been to reduce the terrorist activity and perhaps lay the foundation for political stability. The reason this is front-page news is that the military is (stereotypically) viewed as among the most hierarchical of organizations. Yet the junior officers did not wait for the senior diplomats and generals to contact their counterparts and for the results to trickle down the ranks of both sides. The people at the front lines saw opportunities and harvested them. Now, here’s the test: were these junior officers “leading”?

Yes. Leaders are good at recognizing problems and opportunities, shaping a vision and strategy, reading the social environment, communicating well, enlisting others—and especially, leaders have a bias for action. You don’t need to be a general or CEO to “lead.” You can lead from where you are. The failure to get this is at the core of the recruiter’s misunderstanding. A leader usually is a team-player. Martinets and autocrats need not apply. One size of leadership does not fit all. In reality, leaders come in many shapes and sizes. Howard Gardner has suggested a wide range of leadership types, including thought-leaders, moral leaders, and political leaders. In all probability, a vibrant organization includes all of these.

Ten years ago, Mark Eaker, Ed Freeman, Robert Spekman, Elizabeth Teisberg, and I published a book [1]in which we argued for the virtue of leading from where you are. To organize one’s career around this concept means that you will likely focus less on linear progression and more on mastery and impact. You will stay at the top of your game throughout your career by emphasizing learning, rather than knowing; then you will focus on teaching, coaching, and shaping strategic vision with others; finally, you are likely to use technology to involve others. I see the footprints of this in reports about junior officers and noncoms in Iraq and Afghanistan. My visits to profitable and rapidly-growing firms such as Google, Goldman Sachs, and Infosys reveal these attributes. And my conversations with current MBA students suggest a strong desire to work in this way.

Society should expect something more from high-end B-schools than simply to train corporate drones. I have argued in my postings that the availability of able leadership is the limiting factor in sustaining good growth (of companies and whole economies) for extended periods. On the other hand, there is no shortage of followers in the world. By and large, companies have plenty of followers, people waiting to be told what to do. Unfortunately, hiring more followers may be politically safe. The problem with that strategy usually shows up in the faltering operating performance of the company: lack of agility; failure to innovate; inability to blow the whistle on inept or corrupt business practices; and so on. This is a problem that leadership corrects. From this standpoint, I’m happy to have Darden emphasize leadership development in addition to mastery of a solid MBA curriculum.

p.s. Darden welcomes applications from veterans of the armed forces of the U.S. and other countries. It seems that many countries now advocate a doctrine of front-line leadership initiative. Such training and experience is solid grounding for the kind of leadership business needs.

Posted by Robert Bruner at 12/29/2007 02:35:13 PM
  1. The book, The Portable MBA (4th ed., Wiley) was revised in 2002 and includes our colleague, S. Venkataraman, among the co-authors. [↩]

Artists and Painters

Published on December 16, 2007 in 2007 Archives. 4 Comments

Recently I saw the special exhibition on Edward Hopper at the National Gallery in Washington D.C. You must see it. Hopper was one of the leading American realist painters of the 20th Century. He captured moments of city life seen in cafes, diners, through apartment windows, and with the eyes of a tourist. If you look for growth in technique across his career, you will be disappointed: his human figures remain a imperfect. But what his brush-strokes lack in detail, his paintings make up in mood. Hopper’s special gift was to portray certain emotions of life in a big city, such as loneliness, detachment, and introspection. His scope was not life triumphant, but rather, everyday life, the kind you have to work at. I like his work very much. But for me, the special impact of the exhibition came from a comment by a guide, halfway through the show: “if Hopper had been a better painter, he wouldn’t have been as good an artist.” Think about that.

Business life is filled with lots of painters and fewer artists. The “painters” are the technicians, such as actuaries, time-and-motion efficiency experts, accountants who get the books to balance down to the last penny, logistics honchos who slim down your inventory, and derivatives analysts. Most entry-level jobs for MBA graduates are to be painters, or assistant painters, or just people who hold the paint pots. The world needs lots of “painters,” the technicians who will deliver the functionality needed by customers, firms, and markets. For many operations, we want information and decisions that are exactly right—for instance, any decision having to do with human health and safety should not be just “sorta” right.

However, the technical mind-set is too often focused on reporting data rather than creating knowledge (or better yet, wisdom). And it is too often given to “silo” thinking rather than reflecting on consequences for other individuals, the firm, and society. “Artists” are the antidote to a superabundance of “painters.” Artists in business are visionaries, inventors, entrepreneurs, and general managers, people who create something larger out of the assembly of resources, 2+2=5. They are quick learners; they recognize problems and opportunities ahead of the crowd; they shape large visions and enlist others in support; they communicate well and are socially-aware (in the “macro” sense of understanding big issues in the world and in the “micro” sense of reading a room full of people to understand their issues); they serve with integrity; and leaders have a bias for action. Carlos Slim of Telmex and Richard Branson of Virgin Group, personify qualities of audacity and vision. Bill Crutchfield of Crutchfield Electronics, exemplifies social awareness when he argues that the most successful firms have a special “soul.” Ann Mulcahey, who turned around Xerox, personifies superior communication. And so on. Perhaps every one of these could be a better “painter” or technician in some respect. We expect a lot of leaders and are disappointed when we learn that they have human flaws. But like Edward Hopper, the “artists” in business create something more sustainable and impactful by deploying their strengths in service of a larger vision.

Can business schools create such artists? The capacity of capitalism to deliver the kind of sustainable growth that will lift the standard of living world-wide simply depends on our ability to generate more of them. Joseph Schumpeter, one of the leading economists of the 20th Century, emphasized that economic advancement is fundamentally led by such people. Given the vast size of the field of management education, it is hard to know today how effective it is in creating the leaders of tomorrow. But speaking for one school, I can say that Darden is focused on serving the business world with people who are both high-potential artists and masterful painters. Our mission is to “improve society by developing leaders in the world of practical affairs.” Our MBA Program is typically ranked among the best for general management. Our flagship executive program, The Executive Program, was recognized as the best in the world by the Financial Times. In all we do, we emphasize integration of functional competencies. Our Batten Institute is deepening our research and teaching in entrepreneurship and innovation. And through our successful honor system and our world-recognized business ethics group, we shape students into leaders with integrity.

Toward the end of his life, Hopper said, “The man’s the work. Something doesn’t come out of nothing.” Perhaps reality imitates art, for one could say the same thing about business. Our task then, as educators and business practitioners, is to focus on developing the depth of character and skill in individuals necessary to deliver on the potential for invention, growth, and sustainability that resides in the free market system.

Posted by Robert Bruner at 12/16/2007 03:44:15 PM

Last Words

Published on December 3, 2007 in 2007 Archives. 2 Comments

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

–Dylan Thomas

A week ago, Lizette Tallon died unexpectedly. An academic assistant at the Darden School, she had been a member of our community for many years and is remembered for her warmth, gregariousness, and eagerness to help. We are saddened by this loss and miss her. Her presence is still felt, however, by the collection of sayings and famous quotations that she taped to the glass doors of her office. Regular themes in the quotations she chose were folk wisdom, faith, and humor. Over the years, I have stopped many times as I passed them, to see what was new and to try to connect the dots between one saying and the next. I often marveled at what Liz seemed to be telling us.

The week before, University of Virginia hosted a lecture on time management by Professor Randy Pausch, Carnegie Mellon University professor of computer science. Dean Jim Aylor of UVA’s engineering school wrote to me that “The lecture may be among Pausch’s last, as he was told in August that his pancreatic cancer had progressed and he has only three to six months of good health remaining. … Last September 18, he participated in an academic tradition at Carnegie Mellon called “The Last Lecture,” wherein top academics are asked to think deeply about what matters to them most, and then give a hypothetical final talk. Pausch’s lecture, entitled “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams,” attracted an onslaught of media attention. In addition to his Oprah Show appearance, Pausch was named “Person of the Week” on ABC’s World News with Charles Gibson on Sept. 21. His “Last Lecture” was viewed online more than a million times in the first month after its delivery. Pausch was a professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Virginia’s School of Engineering and Applied Science from 1988 until 1997. He served as a mentor to many young faculty members, including Gabriel Robins, a professor of computer science at U.Va.’s Engineering School, who was instrumental in bringing Pausch back to Grounds.” I commend these lectures to the reader.

Why did Liz Tallon tape inspirational sayings to her office door? Why did Randy Pausch, a man with a short time remaining to live, take the time to give lectures? I believe they shared an impulse to deliver a message about things that matter in the face of death and limited time.

Dylan Thomas‘ poem is a hymn to strong living in old age, to people facing “that good night.” His words are powerful: “burn,” “rave,” and “rage, rage.” Such words are motivating, but we must look beyond the poem for practical examples about what you and I might do differently tomorrow. Randy and Liz give us such examples—they help us see that to live strongly is to give Illumination about ideas and inspiration so that others might live brightly too. This means bringing energy, example, and light to important things as if today (or the near term) is all you have. Our students have opportunities to practice this every day in learning teams and classes. So do our faculty and staff. It’s a practice that loses its benefit unless you exercise it regularly.

The end of the second quarter is imminent. How will you end the term before we all close for the Holidays? Liz, Randy, and Dylan Thomas would urge us to live brightly in support of the values we hold dear.

Posted by Robert Bruner at 12/03/2007 10:07:08 PM

Fraud on the MBA Market

Published on November 24, 2007 in 2007 Archives. 6 Comments

“Fraud and falsehood only dread examination. Truth invites it.”

** Samuel Johnson

The B-school world has a dark underside, fraudulent applications. The Graduate Management Admissions Council (the organization that administers the GMAT, the standardized test for entry to B-school) regularly deals with outrageous efforts to steal test questions, submit someone else’s work, and impersonate test-takers. At Darden, we require admissions interviews and have discovered impersonators. Perhaps the corruption of applications contributes to the findings of widespread cheating in MBA programs. The latest development along these lines is the following email, received by a faculty colleague here at Darden, offering to pay for each successful admissions essay to Darden that this person had written. This is evidently a clearinghouse operation that buys and resells successful essays on MBA applications. My colleague said, “Perhaps I shouldn’t be, but I was astounded.” The letter stated:

“Dear XXXX,

We are collecting successful admissions essays for top MBA programs, including University of Virginia – Darden – and will pay $XX for each main essay (main personal statement greater than 500 words), and $XX for each minor essay (secondary essay answering a specific question less than 500 words) that we accept for our admissions essay section. … Essays will be used anonymously.”

It all seems so straightforward: a company is buying the essays of students who have been successfully admitted to Darden and other B-schools and is republishing them for download over the Internet. Most forms of publishing are defended as free speech by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. It’s a commercial transaction between consenting adults. Isn’t this just like publishing child-care advice or recipes? You can almost hear the publisher say, “I can’t be held responsible for what the downloaders do with these essays.”

This doesn’t pass the smell test. Someone has something to hide. The tip-off is the statement, “Essays will be used anonymously.” Samuel Johnson had it right: fraud and falsehood dread examination. Note the absence of ownership of the work: unattributed prose is easily adopted as one’s own. This publisher is enabling plagiarism, the nefarious copy-and-paste behavior that we’ve heard about at the primary, secondary, and even collegiate levels of education—it is now at the doorstep of B-schools.

The MBA admissions function is a talent-discovery process. Admission to a top B-school is a ticket into a very bright future. The competition is quite high. So is the temptation to cheat. But let’s be clear: representing someone else’s work as your own creates a fraud.

Fraud is costly and corrupts the talent discovery process. Who is hurt by the trade in admissions essays? Everyone: graduates, schools, employers—and most especially, applicants. Possible fraud in MBA applications evokes a classic problem of asymmetric information in economics, what Nobel Laureate, George Akerlof, called the “lemons” problem. In essence, in the used-car market, sellers know more about the condition of the cars for sale than do the buyers. Good used cars are mixed up with the bad cars (the “lemons”). The buyers know this, and in defense discount the value of all used cars, rendering the used-car market less efficient. The sellers of good used cars are harmed. So are those buyers who ultimately wind up with the lemons. The results of the trade and submission of others’ application essays is the same: good applicants are harmed because it is harder to distinguish them from the rest. And schools, recruiters, and alumni are harmed when they wind up embracing the lemons.

Darden may be less-exposed to the risks of such fraud. We require specialized essays in response to questions that are unique to Darden. And we change the questions each year. Every admitted student will have been interviewed in-person with a mandatory photo ID check. The next step may be computer-based comparison of essays. But many other B-schools don’t have the resources to take the measures we take.

Students and recent graduates have an obvious self-interest in avoiding this. Every school is continually trying to raise the bar on the quality of its students. To the extent that you support the distribution of your successful admissions essays, you heighten the possibility that your own school will admit less-talented students (who are unethical to boot) rather than the high-potential candidates of integrity who will build the franchise of the school.

Applicants, too, have an obvious self-interest in the ability of schools to fight fraud. Good students want to be only with other good students. When you go to class, you want to be stimulated by those around you. Essay fraud heightens the possibility that you’ll be sorely disappointed. Almost by definition, the people who download and resubmit these essays will lack some or all of the following: imagination, initiative, integrity, communication skill, intelligence, and self-confidence. Do you want such classmates?

Don’t get involved with this offer. As a seller, no amount of money can adequately compensate you for the ingenuity you put into your essays or for the social impact of plagiarism. As a downloader, think about what you are admitting about yourself. You will regret plagiarism the rest of your life. And you will pay for it not only in cash to the publisher, but also in the doubts about whether you deserve your achievements.

Make no mistake about it: at Darden, we do not consider acceptable the sale and resubmission of others’ essays. Darden students and graduates know that this behavior is inconsistent with Darden’s values and aspirations. Our Mission Statement affirms that we seek to produce “action-oriented graduates who embrace an enterprise perspective and lead with integrity, vision, judgment, determination, and social responsibility.” We have a community of honor: Darden and the University of Virginia embrace one of the most successful honor systems in the world. We emphasize ethical behavior not as an ancillary topic but as something central to the attainment of business leadership. The kind of people we admit and graduate produce admissions essays that are original and independently-prepared. As Samuel Johnson might say, such people know that truth invites examination and are ready for it.

Posted by Robert Bruner at 11/24/2007 09:41:18 AM

Coming Home

Published on November 23, 2007 in 2007 Archives. 2 Comments

BOB: …I want to be more healthy. I want to eat better. … Like Japanese food.

LYDIA (sarcastic): Why don’t you just stay there, and you can have it every day. [1]

Sofia Coppola’s brilliant movie, Lost in Translation, captures a classic problem facing all globally-minded professionals. Bill Murray portrays Bob, a famous American actor visiting Tokyo to shoot some whiskey advertisements. He has been there for days and is disoriented from jet-lag, strange language and customs, and surroundings. In a phone conversation with his wife, Lydia, he confesses that he likes some of what he sees. Lydia’s reply, why don’t you just stay there, challenges anyone who works abroad. In effect, the reply poses three questions. Where do you call home? How do you bring your home to the rest of the world? And how do you bring the world into your home? Any globally-minded professional has to address the risk of getting lost in translation.

All this came to mind upon my return from India and the observation of two very American [2] holidays, Veterans Day and Thanksgiving (yesterday). I have made no secret of the importance for students and business professionals to engage with the world beyond one’s home. As Dean, I practice what I preach and travel overseas quite a lot. Fortunately, I enjoy the foods of all nations and used to be able to chat in a couple of foreign languages. I have worked for extended periods outside the U.S. On those and all other occasions I have gladly returned to the United States. The Lydias of the world could well ask why I didn’t just stay overseas?

Proximity to family and friends is an excellent reason to come home. A second good reason is affinity for a particular culture [3] . The United States is distinctive for its social mobility [4]; its optimism (the “American Dream”); its edginess (the encouragement of risk-taking and second-chances); its diversity (the “melting-pot”); and its buoyant creativity.

More important than any is the third reason, love of the national institutions and practices. Democracy, relatively low crime and corruption, rule of law, respect for the sanctity of contracts and the rights of investors, freedom of speech and religion, relatively low intrusion by government into private life— the sum total of all this is freedom. My ancestors came to this country to escape oppression. But they also came for the opportunities that freedom would create. Our institutions enable what Batten Fellow, Carl Schramm and his co-authors call [5] “entrepreneurial capitalism,” an economy in which small and entrepreneurial firms play a defining role. It is the small and medium-size businesses in our economy that produce the most job growth, invent the most, and pay the most taxes—and it is through such businesses that one can try to make a better life for oneself.

In his new book, The Age of Turbulence, Alan Greenspan devotes nearly half of the volume to a survey of the main regions of the world and the economic challenges they face. He wrote, “My experience leads me to consider state-enforced property rights as the key growth-enhancing institution.” [6] These rights create economic freedom. He points out that the United States ranks most highly among the large economies on an index of economic freedom and concludes, “The greater the economic freedom, the greater the scope for business risk and its reward, profit, and thus the greater the inclination to take risk. Societies that comprise risk takers form governments whose rules foster opportunities. They have laws that offer few regulatory benefits that government officials can sell or exchange for cash or political favors.” [7] Greenspan reports that economic freedom is highly correlated with economic performance.

The culture and institutions of the United States create a society of great vitality. The country gave us Elvis, Hollywood, Madison Avenue, jazz, Disneyworld, the interstate highway system, the man on the moon, many Nobel Prizes, the modern research university, A-Rod, and the decoded human genome. Over 75 years, real income per capita in the U.S. grew five times. [8] This vitality has produced changes in society that would have destabilized many countries. Generally, the U.S. has handled turbulent societal changes peacefully. The U.S. has problems, lots of them. But the vitality of this country lends the belief that we will weather these issues.

Why don’t you just stay there? I like it here. And I think I can best serve my professional mission here. Today, the United States is leading the advance in management research and education. Working in the midst of the world’s largest economy brings one close to the changes that management scholars need to study. And the challenges this country faces, owing to fundamental forces such as technology, demography (immigration and aging), trade liberalization, deregulation, and the like, suggest that there is important work to be done here.

Yet what is happening outside our borders cannot be ignored. The world remains a dangerous place and needs the contributions of educated men and women so that we can deliver a better and safer future to our children and grandchildren. One can be a globalist precisely because one loves one’s country. The thoughtful business professional needs to be in the world, not of the world. You must actively engage with the world beyond without losing sight of the values that bind you to one country. In this sense, the successful business leader is not lost, but rather found in translation.

Posted by Robert Bruner at 11/23/2007 01:22:39 PM

  1. Lost In Translation script. [↩]
  2. My international students have reminded me that all the countries in this hemisphere are “American.” Using “American,” when referring to a person from the United States, seems to imply that the U.S. speaks for all countries in North and South America. But I have not found a good alternative: “United Statesian” doesn’t glide off the tongue. Even our less affectionate neighbors, such as Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro, have been known to call us Americans. For the sake of convenience, I’ll defer to common usage. [↩]
  3. For centuries, American culture has drawn a mixture of admiration and contempt. Alexis de Toqueville loved our entrepreneurial spirit and egalitarian social mores but hated our food, music, and pretensions. More recently, Bernard-Henry Levy lampooned American culture. For a reply in kind, see the review of Levy’s book by Garrison Keillor, “On the Road Avec M. Levy”, New York Times, January 29, 2007. The United States is, and always has been, a work in progress. [↩]
  4. The American culture retains a rather footloose character, perhaps owing to the heavy influence of immigration and expansion across the Western frontier. Between a sixth and a fifth of the U.S. population changes address each year (see mobility data from the U.S. Census). Despite the icons of self-made fortunes (such as John D. Rockefeller and Bill Gates) the topic of economic mobility in the United States is highly charged and the focus of intense debate. Evidence suggests that income inequality has risen in the past two decades. However, some recent research suggests that economic mobility among groups in the U.S. is relatively high. See the study from the Pew Charitable Trusts and a report from the U.S. Treasury which suggest that mobility among economic strata is high. The Daily Kos and others have condemned the Treasury report as politically-motivated. Is U.S. economic mobility high enough? One study by the Sutton Trust that compared the U.S. to other developed countries found that economic mobility was lower than in Nordic countries and Canada. [↩]
  5. See Good Capitalism, Bad Capitalism by William Baumol, Robert Litan, and Carl Schramm. [↩]
  6. Page 251, The Age of Turbulence, Alan Greenspan. [↩]
  7. Page 276, ibid. [↩]
  8. http://www.clevelandfed.org/Research/commentary/2004/0815.pdf. [↩]

Notes from India

Published on November 8, 2007 in 2007 Archives. 6 Comments

I am returning from a very busy visit to India, reaching out to alumni, corporate partners, prospective applicants, and the business community. Darden may be the best-kept secret among all the top B-schools in the world. But when the secret gets out, the response is warm, engaging, and eager. I’ll return to Charlottesville to consider with my colleagues a number of important opportunities in the Indian Subcontinent. It has been a good trip.

India is changing rapidly. Any country with a GNP growth rate of about 9 percent will appear to explode in slow motion—from one trip to the next, skyscrapers, superhighways, and corporate campuses seem to pop out of thin air. A global consulting firm told me that it would double the number of partners in India (from an already large base) in the next five years. In separate conversations, some large corporations expressed the intent to hire more than 10,000 MBAs annually for the foreseeable future. The top line of major Indian companies is showing growth rates in the range of 50-85% annually.

You also note small, but jarring, changes. For instance, on this trip I saw people of very humble means talking animatedly on cell phones, listening through ear buds to iPods, and ride fairly new motorcycles. The motorways in India offer a breathtaking experience. It is said that there are no driving laws in India, only guidelines. One doesn’t change lanes so much as jockey for slight advantage, not unlike a scrum in rugby. Trucks and buses are required to have the words, BLOW HORN, painted on their rears—all drivers seem to observe this with a panache that would draw rude hand gestures in the U.S. Maybe the horn-blowing is a metaphor for youthfulness—the average age in India is 25. Executives at Infosys told me that the average age in their company is 26—perhaps that’s why it felt like a university. Tata Motors announced recently that it will introduce an automobile for the Indian market priced under US$3,000, a price point that established auto-makers think is impossible. But the attempt will grant mobility to a society that seems to be crying for it. (And let’s hope the Indian roads can handle the added traffic and horns.)

India’s successful growth is a good example for why one should learn to manage in a diverse environment. The country is an unlikely assemblage of numerous races, religions, ethnic groups, and castes. The currency shows no less than 14 officially-recognized languages on each bill. Many observers thought India would dissolve into chaos after its independence in 1947; yet it celebrated its 60th anniversary of independence earlier this year. The secret of its longevity may be the institutions of democracy and rule of law for resolving disputes: certainly, these institutions help to create an environment attractive for foreign investment.

India is not without its problems. The government is a famously bureaucratic in ways that can stifle business formation and investment. The investment in infrastructure is years behind where it should be. Illiteracy and poverty are widespread. Over 300 million Indians subsist on less than US$1.00 per day; income inequality is severe. Various small Maoist groups (such as the Naxalites) are conducting guerrilla insurgencies out in the country. And calm borders and neighbors would be nice to have: earlier this week, General Musharraf suspended Pakistan’s constitution; last month, the rulers of Myanmar suppressed a pro-democracy movement; and political violence in Nepal and Sri Lanka have hit the headlines in recent months.

Still, I remain cautiously optimistic about India’s future. Its trend and impact on the world today suggest that you should go there soon. India will be a major player in the business environment for the rest of this century. To understand its implications for business, you should see it first-hand. At the least, in future years you will be able to say that you knew India when…

Posted by Robert Bruner at 11/08/2007 07:39:27 AM

Halloween with a Central Banker

Published on November 1, 2007 in 2007 Archives. 0 Comments

Last night, I shared the dais at the Bombay Chamber of Commerce and Industry with my friend, Dr. Rakesh Mohan, the Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of India. The subject of our presentations was the current global financial crisis and its implications for business leaders of India. I offered a summary of the classic drivers of financial crises, drawn from the book, The Panic of 1907

What are you waiting for?

Published on October 31, 2007 in 2007 Archives. 3 Comments

Further to my previous blog posting (“What have you got to lose?”), I would like to offer one additional nudge to prospective applicants to MBA schools and to MBA students who may be considering a choice among two or more job offers. I hear a common expression as I engage both groups: “I’ll wait to decide because I want to keep my options open; I want to remain free to choose.”

Hanging loose and waiting to commit are hallmarks of the baby boomer generation and its successors. Economic theory might justify this: if uncertainty is resolved at a rate faster than any changes in the time value of money, it might pay to wait. But in my experience of watching MBA students make life decisions over the past 25 years, such theory is window-dressing to justify indecision. Simply keeping your options open is not freedom; it is chaos. It leaves you dangling, blown this way and that with the arrival of each new fact. As the saying goes, if you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.

Darden looks to admit people of reasonably strong determination. You do not have to have figured out every detail of your future; but you have to know why you want to attend Darden and be able to say so clearly. It is very hard to fake such sentiments. The indecisive person rather stands out in the crowd of MBA applicants.

Much the same could be said for the Darden student who can’t decide among competing job offers. To be sure, it is a big decision. But it is not irreversible. And the longer one waits to decide, the more one’s anguish builds–and perhaps the more the employer begins to question the wisdom of making the offer in the first place.

Harvey Cox said that not to decide is to decide [1]. What is really embedded in your decision to hang loose and keep your options open? Have you weighed the benefits of making a commitment and the possible costs of not doing so? I think that the benefits and costs of committing are, at their core, all about one’s identity. Perhaps Hillel said it best 2,000 years ago:

“If I am not for myself, then who will be for me?

If I am only for myself, then what am I?

And if not now, when?”

What are you waiting for?

Posted by Robert Bruner at 10/31/2007 10:47:12 PM
  1. He actually said, “Somewhere deep down we know that in the final analysis we do decide things and that even our decisions to let someone else decide are really our decisions, however pusillanimous.” [↩]

What have you got to lose?

Published on October 28, 2007 in 2007 Archives. 1 Comment

<![CDATA[The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

---Elizabeth Bishop, “One Art" [1]]>

  1. From The Complete Poems 1927-1979 by Elizabeth Bishop, published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc. Copyright [↩]

Owning Mistakes

Published on October 9, 2007 in 2007 Archives. 5 Comments

“Hit it again!” said Wynton Marsalis.

Last Friday I heard a jazz concert by Stefon Harris, the incomparable vibraphone player. Harris is a brilliant up-and-comer, part of the rising generation to fill the shoes of those who built the house of jazz. A charismatic entertainer, his joy in making music is infectious and fills a place as large as Chicago’s Symphony Hall. Between numbers he told this story: “I was doing a performance with Wynton Marsalis and a collection of jazz greats. The part of the show came where I was supposed to do my riff and the other performers fell silent. I got going and at the very peak of the run I hit the wrong note! It was so obviously wrong that I froze. Then Wynton said, ‘Hit it again!’ That broke the ice. I did hit the wrong note again. The audience laughed and I completed the run. But I never made that mistake again.”

The story of Stefon Harris and Wynton Marsalis is about owning one’s mistakes. Doing so helps you to learn from the mistake and to regain momentum. Wynton seemed to be telling Stefon to acknowledge it and move on. This is good advice for students.

As a teacher, I’ve encountered some students each year who deny a mistake they’ve made, or their role in making it. “Your question wasn’t clear.” “The case is confusing and contains unnecessary data.” “This business problem is flaky/phony/incredible.” “My learning team got bogged down.” “The Internet went down.” “The spreadsheet locked up.” “It’s not my fault.” Each of these claims may be true; but it is also true that each day hundreds of other students manage to avoid the same mistake—there is something in individual behavior that gets things right. Much of graduate education is to discover what that “something” is. The biggest barrier to that discovery is denial—the reluctance to admit mistakes.

What is true at the level of the individual is also true at the level of the corporation or institution. In the past few days, leaders have owned mistakes primarily to get their organizations moving ahead. Stanley O’Neal, CEO of Merrill Lynch, announced a $5.5 billion charge and acknowledged mistakes in risk management related to sub-prime loans. Richard Brodhead, President of Duke University, apologized for the lack of full support for students charged with an alleged crime. Organizations can make mistakes; when they do, it is necessary to own up and move on.

Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric said, “In everything that I have ever attempted, I have met with failure after failure after failure. I have learned that setbacks, disappointments and temporary failure are as normal and as natural as breathing in and breathing out. I failed in school. I failed in my first, second and third attempts to cross the Sahara Desert. I failed at different jobs, at least initially. When I began selling full time, I failed to make a sale hundreds of times. When I moved into management, I made an endless number of mistakes. At every part of my life and my career, I have had failures over and over again before I experienced success. What I have learned from failure is the necessity for persistence. Every single person who has ever achieved greatly has also failed greatly many times.”

The secret to persistence is the capacity to own one’s mistakes. It is exam time at Darden. Mistakes will be made. Students can freeze at this thought. But the advice of Wynton Marsalis is apt: “Hit it again”—accept the possibility of mistakes and the opportunity to learn from them. Then move on and grow in wisdom.

Posted by Robert Bruner at 10/09/2007 10:07:31 PM