Passion and Purpose Discussion

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Discussion 5:

  • A summary of the account, or accounts, from the course text, Passion and Purpose: Stories From the Best and Brightest Young Business Leaders, that resonated with you and an explanation of why those passages were meaningful to you.
  • Your analysis of how the individuals in the accounts you selected practiced leadership in business settings and what you have learned from reading that account. (Hint: For an exemplary response, explain how the account(s) you selected support, expand on, or contradict concepts we have explored in the course to date.)
  • Finally, compare the values, ethics, and goals of the leaders in the accounts you selected to your own. Explain how what you have learned from these readings will impact how you affect positive social change in a leadership role

i think Women in the Workplace would be a good choice.

NOTE: see attached

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m a n ag e m e n t (Continued from front flap) analyst for CNN, and former presidential adviser), Carter Roberts (President and CEO of World Wildlife Fund), Joe Kennedy (CEO and President of Pandora), and Rich Lyons (Dean of Haas Business School, University of California– Berkeley). Passion & Purpose offers profound insight into the values and vision of today’s emerging leaders, with inspiration and ideas for anyone who aspires to catalyze enduring change in the world. “Many baby boomers like to characterize the Facebook generation as entitled slackers. In reading the amazing stories of the leaders in Passion & Purpose, you quickly realize that nothing could be further from the truth. The reality is that this new generation of leaders is committed to making a difference and is ready to lead—not tomorrow, but now.” —B ill George, Professor of Management Practice, Harvard Business School; —Deb Henretta, Group President, Procter & Gamble Asia “The great challenge and the great opportunity we face today is the ability to work almost any time and any way. The new generation of leaders seems to embrace the opportunity side of this, approaching work more flexibly in terms of when and where it takes place.” —Joe Kennedy , CEO and President, Pandora “Leadership is not being the CEO; leadership is influencing outcomes. Leadership is often without formal authority. I think that for a lot of these younger folks, they demonstrate the skills of leadership, but they also embody a new mind-set.” —Rich Lyons, Dean of Haas Business School, University of California–Berkeley “The next generation of leaders will have the opportunity to shape the world. They will deal with exciting and quite different challenges than their predecessors—all in the context of a globally connected and rapidly changing world.” —Dominic Barton, Global Managing Director, McKinsey & Company PASSION PURPOSE john coleman daniel gulati w. oliver segovia foreword by bill george jac k e t d e s i g n : ja m e s d e v r i e s au t h o r p h otos : w e s l e y c h a n n e l , t r acy p ow e l l , PASSION PURPOSE “The younger generation has an integrated identity that is consistent between workplace, home, and society . . . they not only want to make a difference themselves, they want to know that the company they work for is also making a positive contribution.” ISBN 978-1-4221-6266-8 9 0000 pat r i c k a n d pat r i c i a s e g o v i a www.hbr.org/books 9 7 81 42 2 1 62 668 How will the next generation of leaders shape business? F —Carter Roberts, President and CEO, World Wildlife Fund senior political analyst, CNN; and former presidential adviser Get inspired. Stay informed. Join the discussion. Visit www.hbr.org/books Stories from the Best and Brightest Young Business Leaders “It doesn’t matter where you begin your career. What matters most is developing the ability to connect the dots . . . the rarest and most valuable commodity in our work is those individuals who can bridge government, business, civil society, and academia in solving the biggest problems facing our society.” —David Gergen, Director, Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School; To learn more, visit: www.hbr.org/passion-purpose U S $ 2 5.9 5 author, True North “With America—and the world—at a major inflection point, strong and principled leadership is as crucial as it’s ever been. As this book shows, the younger generation is stepping up more and more each day to provide that leadership—in ways all of us should be paying attention to.” John Coleman earned an MBA from Harvard Business School, where he was a Dean’s Award winner, and an MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School, where he was a Zuckerman Fellow and a George Fellow. Daniel Gulati holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, where he was a Baker Fellow and an Arthur Rock Entrepreneurial Fellow, and was awarded the Robert F. Jasse Distinguished Award in Entrepreneurship & Leadership. W. Oliver Segovia was born and raised in the Philippines and received an MBA with Distinction from Harvard Business School, where he was a LeBaron-McArthur-Ellis Fellow. coleman gulati segovia h a r v a r d busi n e ss r e vi e w p r e ss rom questions about globalization and sustainability to issues surrounding diversity, learning, and the convergence of the public and private sectors, tomorrow’s leaders have a lot to think about. But these big issues aren’t the only ones facing young leaders starting out in business today. What else are they focused on? And how do they prioritize the challenges and opportunities before them— while also making the world a better place? In Passion & Purpose, recent Harvard Business School MBAs share personal stories about assuming the mantle of leadership in ways unlike any previous generation. In candid, often moving accounts of their successes and setbacks—from launching start-ups or taking on the family business to helping kids in the Arabian Gulf or harnessing new technology to develop clean energy—they reveal how their generation’s ideas, aspirations, and practices are radically reshaping business and transforming leadership. Drawing on insights from a survey of five hundred students from top U.S. business schools, Passion & Purpose provides an overview of today’s big hot-button issues, followed by firsthand accounts from the young leaders who are tackling these issues headon. Their personal stories are rounded out with broader perspectives from established luminaries in business, academia, and the public sector, including Dominic Barton (Global Managing Director of McKinsey & Company), Deb Henretta (Group President of Procter & Gamble Asia), Nitin Nohria (Dean of Harvard Business School), David Gergen (Director of the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School, senior political (Continued on back flap) This document is authorized for use only by Sherrye Marshall in MMSL-6000-1/WMBA-6000B-1/WMBA-6000-1/MGMT-6000-1-Dynamic Leadership2019 Spring Sem 01/7-04/28-PT2 at Laureate Education - Walden University, 2019. Coleman10343_Mechanical.indd 1 9/26/11 5:03 PM 107124 00 i-xiv r2 vs 9/19/11 8:11 PM Page i PASSION PURPOSE This document is authorized for use only by Sherrye Marshall in MMSL-6000-1/WMBA-6000B-1/WMBA-6000-1/MGMT-6000-1-Dynamic Leadership2019 Spring Sem 01/7-04/28-PT2 at Laureate Education - Walden University, 2019. 107124 00 i-xiv r2 vs 9/19/11 8:11 PM Page ii This document is authorized for use only by Sherrye Marshall in MMSL-6000-1/WMBA-6000B-1/WMBA-6000-1/MGMT-6000-1-Dynamic Leadership2019 Spring Sem 01/7-04/28-PT2 at Laureate Education - Walden University, 2019. 107124 00 i-xiv r2 vs 9/19/11 8:11 PM Page iii Stories from the Best and Brightest Young Business Leaders PASSION PURPOSE JOHN COLEMAN DANIEL GULATI W. OLIVER SEGOVIA HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW PRESS Boston, Massachusetts This document is authorized for use only by Sherrye Marshall in MMSL-6000-1/WMBA-6000B-1/WMBA-6000-1/MGMT-6000-1-Dynamic Leadership2019 Spring Sem 01/7-04/28-PT2 at Laureate Education - Walden University, 2019. Find more digital content or join the discussion on www.hbr.org. The web addresses referenced and linked in this book were live and correct at the time of the book’s publication but may be subject to change. Copyright 2012 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Requests for permission should be directed to permissions@hbsp.harvard.edu, or mailed to Permissions, Harvard Business School Publishing, 60 Harvard Way, Boston, Massachusetts 02163. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Coleman, John, 1981Passion & purpose : stories from the best and brightest young business leaders / John Coleman, Daniel Gulati, W. Oliver Segovia. p. cm. ISBN 978-1-4221-6266-8 (alk. paper) 1. Leadership. 2. Executives. 3. Success in business. 4. Organizational effectiveness. I. Gulati, Daniel. II. Segovia, W. Oliver. III. Title. IV. Title: Passion and purpose. HD57.7.C644 2012 658'.049--dc23 2011025148 Contents Foreword, Bill George Introduction ix 1 1. Convergence 11 Creating Opportunities Across Sectors Floating Above the Boxes 17 Business, Nonprofit, and the Age of Falling Boundaries UMAIMAH MENDHRO Learning from Kibera 23 Nonprofit Lessons for Business from East Africa’s Largest Slum RYE BARCOTT Commerce and Culture 28 Combining Business and the Arts CHRISTINA WALLACE Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Business of Peace 34 JAKE CUSACK Business in the World 41 How Corporations Can Be Change Agents KELLI WOLF MOLES Interview with David Gergen, adviser to four presidents, 47 Director of Harvard’s Center for Public Leadership, and senior political analyst for CNN 2. Globalization 55 Embracing the Global Generation Bridging Two Worlds An India Story SANYOGITA AGGARWAL 61 vi Contents QatarDebate 67 Education, Civic Engagement, and Leadership in the Arabian Gulf ANDREW GOODMAN Emerging Social Enterprise 74 Learning the Business of Agriculture in Tanzania KATIE LAIDLAW Global Citizen Year 79 Learning from the World ABIGAIL FALIK The Business of Reconciliation 85 How Cows and Co-Ops Are Paving the Way for Genuine Reconciliation in Rwanda CHRIS MALONEY Interview with Dominic Barton, Global Managing Director 91 of McKinsey & Company 3. People 99 Leading in a Diverse World Nonconforming Culture 104 How to Feel Comfortable in Who You Are No Matter Where You Are KIMBERLY CARTER Diversity Day 110 Whole People, Whole Organizations, and a Whole New Approach to Diversity JOSH BRONSTEIN Women and the Workplace 118 TASNEEM DOHADWALA Joyful on the Job 124 A Generation Pursuing Happiness at Work BENJAMIN SCHUMACHER People Leadership from Baghdad to Boston 130 SETH MOULTON Interview with Deb Henretta, CEO, P&G Asia 134 Contents 4. Sustainability vii 139 Integrating Preservation and Profits A Sustainable Career 145 ANNIE FISHMAN From Safety Nets to Trampolines 151 VALERIE BOCKSTETTE The Value of Community Partnerships in 158 Addressing Climate Change CHARLEY CUMMINGS Interview with Carter Roberts, CEO, World Wildlife Fund 5. Technology 164 171 Competing by Connecting Building an Online Marketplace 175 JAMES REINHART Technology and Social Good 181 Loans, Relays and the Power of Community SHELBY CLARK Mobile Millennials 185 JASON GURWIN Interview with Joe Kennedy, 191 CEO and President of Pandora 6. Learning 197 Educating Tomorrow’s Leaders The Leadership Boot Camp 203 Training the Next Generation of Corporate Leaders KISHAN MADAMALA The MBA of Hard Knocks 210 Why Fast Failure Is the Best Thing for Business Education PATRICK CHUN The New Corporate Classrooms Training’s Tectonic Technological Shift MICHAEL B. HORN 216 viii Contents Tackling Financial Illiteracy 223 ALEXA LEIGH MARIE VON TOBEL The Education of a Millennial Leader 228 JONATHAN DOOCHIN Interview with Rich Lyons, Dean, Haas Business School, 235 University of California–Berkeley Moving Forward 243 Capstone Interview with HBS Dean, Nitin Nohria 246 Appendix: About the Passion and Purpose MBA Student Survey 255 Notes 263 Acknowledgments 273 Index 275 About the Contributors 289 About the Authors 295 107124 00 i-xiv r2 vs 9/19/11 8:11 PM Page ix Foreword Many baby boomers like to characterize the Facebook generation as entitled slackers. In reading the amazing stories of the leaders in Passion and Purpose, you quickly realize that nothing could be further from the truth. The reality is that this new generation of leaders is committed to making a difference and is ready to lead—not tomorrow, but now. The authors of this remarkable collection of twenty-six stories, all written by exceptional young leaders, were deeply impacted by the leadership failures of 2008 that led to the Great Recession. The three authors conclude, “We have faith in the young generations of leaders who have witnessed the lessons of the crisis and are now seeking to learn from the mistakes that were made and offer a new vision for the future.” Georgian John Coleman believes that “business offers solutions to some of the most pressing problems we face.” Filipino Oliver Segovia quotes the local saying, “He who doesn’t appreciate his roots shall never succeed.” Australian Daniel Gulati saw firsthand examples of how organizations can meet their financial goals and simultaneously make positive contributions to society. Unwilling to wait their turn in line, these leaders are already having enormous impact. Look at the global citizens being developed by Abby Falik, the transformation of leadership that Jon Doochin is leading at Harvard College, Marine Captain Rye Barcott’s initiative to help the slums of Kenya’s Kibera become a safe community that works for This document is authorized for use only by Sherrye Marshall in MMSL-6000-1/WMBA-6000B-1/WMBA-6000-1/MGMT-6000-1-Dynamic Leadership2019 Spring Sem 01/7-04/28-PT2 at Laureate Education - Walden University, 2019. 107124 00 i-xiv r2 vs x 9/19/11 8:11 PM Page x PASSION AND PURPOSE everyone, and Katie Laidlaw’s efforts to make agriculture in Tanzania profitable for all. Theirs are just a few of the initiatives that vividly illustrate how this generation of leaders really is different from mine. Anthropologist Margaret Mead once said, “Never doubt the power of a small group of people to change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” Through their initiatives, young leaders are confirming Mead’s wisdom. My generation started out just as idealistically as these young leaders. We were kids of the Kennedy era who flocked to Washington, D.C., Selma, and Watts to try to change the world. Somewhere along the way we lost sight of that idealism. Was it the futility of the Vietnam war and the assassinations of the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King, Jr., or were we seduced by flawed economic theories into believing that selfinterest should take precedence over the common good? Whatever the answers, the leadership failures of the last decade—from the fall of Enron through the economic meltdown of 2008—have vividly demonstrated the flaws in twentieth-century leadership and the need for a new generation of leaders to take charge. The response of this new generation, as these stories vividly illustrate, is to use their talents now to make a positive impact in helping others. As a professor of management practice at Harvard Business School the past eight years, I have had the privilege of working closely with several of these leaders and many more like them. After completing my tenure as CEO of Medtronic in 2001 and board chair in 2002, I took a working sabbatical in Switzerland to teach at two leading Swiss institutions. It was there that I decided to devote myself for the next decade to helping develop the next generation of leaders, from MBA students to the new generation of corporate CEOs. In early 2004 I returned to my alma mater, Harvard Business School, to help launch a new course, Leadership and Corporate Accountability, and later created Authentic Leadership Development, a course based on leading from within and built around six-person Leadership Development Groups. During these years I have spent hundreds of hours in the classroom and many more in private discussions with students in my office. This document is authorized for use only by Sherrye Marshall in MMSL-6000-1/WMBA-6000B-1/WMBA-6000-1/MGMT-6000-1-Dynamic Leadership2019 Spring Sem 01/7-04/28-PT2 at Laureate Education - Walden University, 2019. 107124 00 i-xiv r2 vs 9/19/11 8:11 PM Page xi Foreword xi Through these open, thoughtful, often poignant talks, I have learned just how committed these young leaders are about using their talents to have an impact. They are willing to work countless hours to realize their dreams, yet they also want to lead integrated lives. I have seen them follow their hearts to unite people around common causes, and the impact has often been stunning. Their approach to leadership differs sharply from that of the baby boomer generation. Command-and-control is out. So is exerting power over others. They eschew bureaucracy, hierarchical organizations, and internal politics. That’s why many are opting to start their own organizations rather than joining established institutions. The focus of their leadership is to build on their roots and align people around a common purpose and shared values. They recognize that they cannot accomplish their goals by using power to control others, as so many in my generation did. Instead, they amplify their limited power by empowering others to take on shared challenges. Their leadership style is collaborative, not autocratic. Nor are they competitive with their peers. They seek to surround themselves with the most talented people representing a wide range of skills that can be helpful in achieving their aims. They care little who gets the credit, so long as their mutual goals are achieved. Most of all, these young leaders seek to serve, using their gifts and their leadership abilities. One of the characteristics of this new generation of leaders is their ability to move easily between the for-profit, nonprofit, and government sectors. In fact, that’s because many of them have worked in all three sectors. They have firsthand knowledge of how people in each of these sectors think, how they measure success, and how they get things done. A number of the contributors to this book have joint master’s degrees in government and business, with a substantial dose of social enterprise courses and projects. This broad perspective is increasingly important because developing workable solutions to the world’s intractable problems—global health, energy and the environment, education, poverty and jobs, and global peace—requires multisector approaches. For example, take the challenges This document is authorized for use only by Sherrye Marshall in MMSL-6000-1/WMBA-6000B-1/WMBA-6000-1/MGMT-6000-1-Dynamic Leadership2019 Spring Sem 01/7-04/28-PT2 at Laureate Education - Walden University, 2019. 107124 00 i-xiv r2 vs xii 9/19/11 8:11 PM Page xii PASSION AND PURPOSE of AIDS in Africa. It isn’t sufficient for pharmaceutical makers like GlaxoSmithKline to give their AIDS drugs away. It takes support from local governments to get the drugs to the people who need them most, NGOs like Doctors Without Borders to administer the drugs to HIV patients, and funds from global organizations like the World Health Organization and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. These emerging leaders, with the diversity of experiences they have accumulated before the age of thirty, understand how to bring people together from these organizations and get them to collaborate to solve major problems. That’s what former Marine Captain Rye Barcott is doing to address the problem of poverty in Kibera, Nairobi’s largest slum. While still a student at the University of North Carolina, Barcott formed Carolina for Kibera, investing $26 and combining it with the sweat equity of nurse Tabitha Festo and a local youth named Salim Mohamed. Incredibly, he was able to build this new organization while serving for five years as a counterintelligence officer in Bosnia, Iraq, and the Horn of Africa. Barcott sees similarities between the tactics he used in building the Kibera community and the Marines’ task in community building in wartorn towns like Fallujah, Iraq. He writes, “I feel fortunate to have been able to work across the public, private, and nonprofit sectors at a young age, and I aspire to continue to incorporate such a balance throughout my life. The solutions to our world’s toughest problems, such as the growth of megaslums, require full engagement and collaboration from each sector, and we have no time to waste.” These leaders of the future are global in their outlook and comfortable working across diverse cultures. By the time they reach graduate school, they have lived and worked all over the world. In sharp contrast, I never traveled outside North America until my honeymoon at twenty-six, and first moved overseas at age thirty-seven. Abigail Falik is typical of this new generation. Completing her MBA in 2008, Falik didn’t follow her classmates into financial services or consulting. Instead, she took a big risk and founded Global Citizen Year. Its purpose is to enable talented high school graduates to do a gap year of service before entering college by immersing themselves in a developing country. This document is authorized for use only by Sherrye Marshall in MMSL-6000-1/WMBA-6000B-1/WMBA-6000-1/MGMT-6000-1-Dynamic Leadership2019 Spring Sem 01/7-04/28-PT2 at Laureate Education - Walden University, 2019. 107124 00 i-xiv r2 vs 9/19/11 8:11 PM Page xiii Foreword xiii In a sense, Falik is trying to replicate for others the experience she had as a sixteen-year-old in a rural village in Nicaragua. She believes these formative experiences will enable young people to learn the empathy and gain the insights they need to address twenty-first-century challenges. Falik concludes, “Not until we walk in another’s shoes can we truly feel others’ hopes and fears, and have the wisdom to know what it would mean to work together toward a common cause.” Katie Laidlaw had a similar experience in Tanzania during a summer internship with TechnoServe, studying how to make fruit and vegetable markets run profitably. She concludes, “This experience confirmed my own hypothesis that future leaders will be better equipped to tackle the problems of tomorrow by being successful in operating across geographies and sectors today.” The Facebook generation may be the first that is genuinely color-blind, gender-blind, and sexual preference–blind. Writes former HBS LGBT president Josh Bronstein, “My call to action for our generation is simple: be authentic. That means bringing your whole self to work, not just those characteristics that you think your employer wants to see . . . A defining characteristic of our generation is that we want to be recognized as individuals—not anonymous cogs forced to think, act, and dress in the same way.” These new leaders are changing the way leaders are educated as well. Jonathan Doochin, who struggled with dyslexia throughout his school years, couldn’t wait to graduate from Harvard College to transform the school’s education of future leaders. During his senior year Doochin founded the Leadership Institute on the premise that developing leaders requires practical experiences that cause individuals to reexamine their perspective of the world, learn to empathize with others, and develop their unique leadership style. Doochin organizes students into Leadership Development Groups that enable them to understand their authentic selves by sharing their life stories, how they have coped with their failures, and what brings them genuine happiness. Doochin writes, “Each of us has the capacity to lead . . . all of the mysterious qualities that once defined ‘leadership’ are not inherent, This document is authorized for use only by Sherrye Marshall in MMSL-6000-1/WMBA-6000B-1/WMBA-6000-1/MGMT-6000-1-Dynamic Leadership2019 Spring Sem 01/7-04/28-PT2 at Laureate Education - Walden University, 2019. 107124 00 i-xiv r2 vs xiv 9/19/11 8:11 PM Page xiv PASSION AND PURPOSE but eminently teachable . . . The model for leadership is not one-size-fitsall, but should be individualized as we play to our own strengths and personalities.” In 1966 Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., said prophetically, “Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped.” The acts of these young leaders will write the history of this generation as they focus their talents on making the world a better place for everyone. If these emerging leaders stay on course through the inevitable pitfalls, setbacks, and disappointments, I have confidence their accomplishments will exceed their greatest expectations. The time is ripe for the baby boomers to provide emerging leaders the opportunities to take charge. Their passion and dedication to their purpose gives all of us hope that our future is very bright indeed. —Bill George Bill George is professor of management practice at Harvard Business School and former chair and CEO of Medtronic, Inc. He is the author of four national best-sellers: Authentic Leadership (2003), True North (2007), Finding Your True North: A Personal Guide (2008), and 7 Lessons for Leading in Crisis (2009). His newest book, True North Groups (2011), was released in September 2011. This document is authorized for use only by Sherrye Marshall in MMSL-6000-1/WMBA-6000B-1/WMBA-6000-1/MGMT-6000-1-Dynamic Leadership2019 Spring Sem 01/7-04/28-PT2 at Laureate Education - Walden University, 2019. 107124 00 001-010 INT r2 vs copy 9/19/11 8:09 PM Page 1 Introduction I t’s been an interesting time to come of age in business. Arguably, the past decade has been one of the most intriguing and terrifying in history. Technological innovation has led us from the infancy of the Internet to the nearly ubiquitous online connectedness, social networking, and location-based technology we enjoy today. The world order has shifted dramatically—billions of people in developing economies have joined the ranks of the middle class, and business has become ever more global, with goods and services moving more freely over national boundaries and corporations seeking greater growth in transnational commerce. And, of course, the global economy crashed, falling from a period of unmatched prosperity into one of frightening destruction and uncertainty. It’s an era that cries out for new leadership and new thinking. And it’s an era that has left a generation of young leaders wondering how they can contribute even as they seek a life of meaning, passion, and purpose in the private sector. Whether in the world’s biggest corporations, local small and medium business, or nimble start-ups, they aren’t entering business solely for financial gain, but as a way to find meaningful work and make a positive difference in the world. Yet few forums have provided these young leaders an outlet to voice their visions for the future, to highlight the trends they’ve seen emerge from the chaos of the last decade, or to offer both practical advice and hopeful inspiration to their friends and colleagues as they embark on their careers. We hope this book helps fill that void. Our purpose? To share the stories of young business leaders and thereby give a glimpse into the future This document is authorized for use only by Sherrye Marshall in MMSL-6000-1/WMBA-6000B-1/WMBA-6000-1/MGMT-6000-1-Dynamic Leadership2019 Spring Sem 01/7-04/28-PT2 at Laureate Education - Walden University, 2019. 107124 00 001-010 INT r2 vs copy 2 9/19/11 8:09 PM Page 2 PASSION AND PURPOSE of business and leadership—offering both practical learning and inspiration. To do this, we “crowd-sourced” much of the content—asking more than twenty young business leaders to tell their stories, conducting an exclusive MBA Student Survey of more than five hundred current and recent MBAs from top U.S. business schools, and interviewing seven business luminaries who offer a seasoned perspective on the themes analyzed. We “crowd-sourced” in this way because we wanted to present a broader set of views than the three of us could provide alone; we’ve been constantly impressed with and encouraged by the vision, entrepreneurship, and passion of our classmates and colleagues, and we wanted to give readers a better sense of that diversity. We also wanted to capture their views on several key themes we saw among the young leaders in our cohort. We organized those themes into six chapters and put out a call for submissions, from which the book’s stories were drawn. We derived these six chapter themes from our own experiences in school and in the workplace; from conversations with friends, professors, and colleagues; and from the input we got from more than a hundred initial essay proposals. We read through these proposals in depth, looking for the most interesting, compelling, and inspirational stories, then worked over the course of three years to refine them—evolving our six themes in the process. For young leaders today we believe these are the core issues—sector convergence, globalization, people leadership and diversity, educational evolution, technology, and sustainability. The chapters built around them illuminate the topics from the point of view of young leaders who are finding passion and purpose in their profession and reimagining the future of business leadership. The stories that follow, however, aren’t frameworks, nor do they follow a single narrative with one point of view. Rather, they are powerful, candid accounts of successes and setbacks, personal dilemmas, and reflections on the future. From launching start-ups in Boston to taking on the family business in India; from teaching debate in the Arabian Gulf to helping rebuild war-torn Rwanda; from striving for This document is authorized for use only by Sherrye Marshall in MMSL-6000-1/WMBA-6000B-1/WMBA-6000-1/MGMT-6000-1-Dynamic Leadership2019 Spring Sem 01/7-04/28-PT2 at Laureate Education - Walden University, 2019. 107124 00 001-010 INT r2 vs copy 9/19/11 8:09 PM Introduction Page 3 3 gender equality in the workplace to helping people bring their “whole selves” to work, these stories reveal that leadership is a deeply personal journey unique to every individual. The structure of the book is simple. First, each chapter begins with a short introduction that frames the context of the chapter. Second, the chapter illustrates and elaborates on these trends through several stories from current and recent MBAs who are trying to make a difference in a fast-changing world. Third, these stories are supported by outside research and our own MBA Student Survey. Between September and October of 2010, we conducted a survey of more than five hundred current and recent MBA students from Harvard Business School (HBS), Stanford, Darden, Tuck, Wharton, MIT Sloan, and other business schools. We’ve collected and analyzed those results here. Finally, each section is capped by an interview with a senior leader— distinguished men and women such as Dominic Barton (global managing director of McKinsey & Company), David Gergen (adviser to four presidents, Director of Harvard’s Center for Public Leadership, and senior political analyst for CNN), Rich Lyons (dean of Haas Business School, former chief learning officer of Goldman Sachs), Deborah Henretta (president of P&G Asia), Joe Kennedy (president and CEO of Pandora), and Carter Roberts (CEO of World Wildlife Fund). These leaders possess a rich array of experiences that make them uniquely positioned to comment on the generational changes taking place in business. HBS professor and former Medtronic CEO Bill George introduces the book with a foreword on his views of the challenges and opportunities that will confront young leaders, and HBS Dean Nitin Nohria ties these themes together with a concluding interview. We then cap the discussion with a detailed appendix of the results of our MBA Student Survey. The result is a holistic picture—quantitative and qualitative, empirical and anecdotal—about the trends we see shaping the passions of young leaders and the future of business. This document is authorized for use only by Sherrye Marshall in MMSL-6000-1/WMBA-6000B-1/WMBA-6000-1/MGMT-6000-1-Dynamic Leadership2019 Spring Sem 01/7-04/28-PT2 at Laureate Education - Walden University, 2019. 107124 00 001-010 INT r2 vs copy 4 9/19/11 8:09 PM Page 4 PASSION AND PURPOSE Why Passion and Purpose So who are we, and why is finding passion, purpose, and a new vision for the future important to us? For John, business has been an experiment. A product of Georgia and Florida, he grew up with an appreciation for the power of private enterprise. His dad, a former rodeo cowboy turned financial advisor, had used business to build opportunities for his family; but for most of high school and college, John thought he’d more likely be a journalist or professor than a marketer or investment banker. Then, after an itinerant year following his college graduation, John found an organization in business that still allowed him to think about hard problems, write a little on the side, and take his ideas from the printed page to organizations where he could put them into action. He met colleagues he genuinely enjoyed and found mentors willing to take chances on him and invest in his future. And the more businesspeople he met, the more he realized his private sector colleagues were some of the most passionate people he’d encountered— many pursuing their careers not out of necessity but because it was through those careers they’d found purpose, a way to channel their talent and creative energy. He saw businesses creating opportunities for millions of people, and while he’s never abandoned his other passions, he truly believes that business offers solutions to some of the most pressing problems we face. Passion and Purpose was a way for him to think more deeply about those solutions and meet some of the young people creating them. Every day of his first year at HBS, meanwhile, Oliver would see the Philippine flag displayed across his section’s classroom. In HBS, first-year classrooms are adorned by the flags of each student’s country of origin. For Oliver, this was a powerful reminder of the importance of the past, and how the past helps leaders form their self-identity through their personal stories. In Filipino, there’s a saying: “Ang hindi marunong lumingon sa pinanggalingan ay hindi makakarating sa paruruonan” (“He who doesn’t appreciate his roots shall never succeed”). The Philippines has a turbulent past. One of the most prosperous Asian economies after World War II, decades of institutional corruption and This document is authorized for use only by Sherrye Marshall in MMSL-6000-1/WMBA-6000B-1/WMBA-6000-1/MGMT-6000-1-Dynamic Leadership2019 Spring Sem 01/7-04/28-PT2 at Laureate Education - Walden University, 2019. 107124 00 001-010 INT r2 vs copy 9/19/11 8:09 PM Introduction Page 5 5 political upheaval since the Marcos era in the 1970s have stagnated growth. It’s the resiliency of private businesses and overseas remittances that have kept the country afloat. Oliver’s story reflects those of millions of Filipinos living around the world. In his twenties, he too worked abroad and also became part of the Filipino diaspora. His interest in business and leadership was sparked by growing up with entrepreneurial parents. Witnessing everyday the immense poverty and inequality that persists in his homeland and in other parts of Asia, he came to believe in the power business can have to make a difference in the world. Oliver believes that the stories of young leaders featured in Passion and Purpose can help catalyze similar reflections in young people throughout the developing world. Daniel came to HBS with a sense of optimism about the role of business in the world. Like Oliver, Daniel spent his childhood outside the United States—in Wollongong, a seaside Australian city. Over the course of his young adult life, Daniel witnessed firsthand the power of business to change lives. Whether observing a start-up, a large investment bank, a management consulting firm, or a mature industrial company, Daniel saw examples of how organizations could simultaneously meet their financial objectives and contribute enormously to modern society. It is this raw conviction that motivated Daniel to write Passion and Purpose. At the time of the financial crisis, journalists accused “businesspeople”—particularly alumni of top business schools who had reached executive-level positions—of arrogance and greed. At a time when the world desperately needed glimmers of hope, this negative stereotyping hid from public view the individual stories of young people using business as a lever to positively impact their communities. The stories of these young business leaders—the best and brightest—had to be told. In the spring of 2009, Oliver ran an article in the HBS campus newspaper looking for someone to help coauthor a book on our generation’s ability to “reimagine leadership” in the midst of crisis. John responded almost right away. Then he and Oliver spent the next few months working with former Random House CEO and HBS senior lecturer Peter Olson to think through a book manuscript that could help voice the aspirations of the friends and colleagues with whom they interacted every day while This document is authorized for use only by Sherrye Marshall in MMSL-6000-1/WMBA-6000B-1/WMBA-6000-1/MGMT-6000-1-Dynamic Leadership2019 Spring Sem 01/7-04/28-PT2 at Laureate Education - Walden University, 2019. 107124 00 001-010 INT r2 vs copy 6 9/19/11 8:09 PM Page 6 PASSION AND PURPOSE offering a fresh and compelling view of the future. In the fall of 2009, Dan joined the team, and gradually we came up with an idea—a crowdsourced book on leadership, targeted toward the younger generation, that could help give voice to new visions of leadership. Today’s Young Leaders: Passionate and Purposeful Young businesspeople want to find purpose in their profession and have a passion for what they do. As they come of age, they are growing up with the belief that business can provide us with a way of translating a meaningful, personal purpose into work that impacts the world in a positive way. In our own 2010 survey of more than five hundred current or recent MBAs, “intellectual challenge” came up as the most important reason for choosing one’s work, significantly more important than compensation or a firm’s prestige. We hear a lot about generations—millennials, Gen-X’ers, boomers— but whatever you call them, today’s young leaders have a fresh perspective about what it will take to lead moving forward. They’re twenty-somethings in the early years of their careers, but they’re in jobs that require tremendous amounts of responsibility, whether it’s managing a brand, starting a new venture, or transitioning in the family business. Most have a few years of work experience and are readying themselves for the next step in their careers, such as getting promoted, moving abroad, or joining another company. They are current MBA students and recent graduates embarking on new paths after business school. Regardless of what stage they’re in, these young leaders share several characteristics. According to the Pew Center, they are the most educated generation in history—in the United States, 54 percent of millennials have college degrees, compared to 36 percent of boomers.1 In our own survey, fully 80 percent agreed or strongly agreed with the statement, “My generation views business leadership differently than previous generations.” Moreover, they see the world differently compared to previous generations. According to the IBM Future Leaders Survey, 77 percent of current MBAs see rising complexity in the current environment, compared to 60 percent of current This document is authorized for use only by Sherrye Marshall in MMSL-6000-1/WMBA-6000B-1/WMBA-6000-1/MGMT-6000-1-Dynamic Leadership2019 Spring Sem 01/7-04/28-PT2 at Laureate Education - Walden University, 2019. 107124 00 001-010 INT r2 vs copy 9/19/11 8:09 PM Introduction Page 7 7 CEOs.2 And 65 percent of students believe that the scarcity of resources— water, food, land, and talent—will significantly impact businesses in the next few decades, compared to 29 percent of CEOs. These emerging business leaders represent a shift in thinking. They have exciting visions for the future. They are the first generation raised in a truly global and networked world. They’re thinking about careers that integrate the public, private, and nonprofit sectors; and they’re learning from the current crisis in ways that we hope will lay the foundation for an ethical and economic recovery and long-term innovation. As previously mentioned, our chapters are organized around six core themes we see as prominent in the lives of rising young business leaders: • Convergence: Creating Opportunities Across Sectors. More than anything else, we hear from our colleagues about the convergence of the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. In the nonprofit world, the term social enterprise has recently gained prominence to describe organizations with a social purpose but a self-sustaining business model. More students, even early in their careers, are switching between the sectors almost frenetically—cross-applying lessons from government and nonprofit to business and vice versa. In this chapter, contributors reflect on their cross-sector experiences, and CNN analyst and presidential advisor David Gergen talks about generational changes in cross-sector careers. • Globalization: Embracing the Global Generation. As globalization has leveled the walls between countries, the first decade of the twentyfirst century has led to an unprecedented opportunity for collaboration, cooperation, and learning. Young leaders are gaining international experience earlier in their careers, shaping the first truly global generation of young leaders. Here, several young businesspeople talk about learning to lead in a global world, and McKinsey & Company global managing director Dominic Barton talks about his own global career and what it will take to survive in an environment in which national boundaries are lower than ever. This document is authorized for use only by Sherrye Marshall in MMSL-6000-1/WMBA-6000B-1/WMBA-6000-1/MGMT-6000-1-Dynamic Leadership2019 Spring Sem 01/7-04/28-PT2 at Laureate Education - Walden University, 2019. 107124 00 001-010 INT r2 vs copy 8 9/19/11 8:09 PM Page 8 PASSION AND PURPOSE • People: Leading in a Diverse World. As labor force participation increases and old racial, class-based, religious, and gender barriers are gradually lowered, the workplace will benefit from the multiplicity of perspectives that these newly integrated groups can bring. Our contributors look at ways that unprecedented diversity is impacting the workplace and how rising business leaders can embrace that diversity as a way to generate greater happiness and more “wholeness” at work. They also look at how leading diverse people requires diverse leadership experience. P&G Asia president Deborah Henretta talks about P&G’s efforts to use diversity to create greater people leadership and how the next generation can shape these trends. • Sustainability: Integrating Preservation and Profits. One of the biggest trends in global business has been the push for sustainability. Many businesses are attempting to become more environmentally friendly and, in the process, more cost effective and energy efficient. The young people in these firms are now focused clearly on “green” business and alternative energy—and think of sustainability as a way to build a career. They’re also emphasizing a culture of environmental intelligence that emphasizes eliminating the trade-offs that have made sustainability movements so unsustainable in the past. Contributors discuss their own passion for sustainability, and World Wildlife Fund CEO Carter Roberts talks about building a sustainable world through sustainability-focused careers. • Technology: Competing by Connecting. No discussion of the future of business would be complete without thoughtfulness about the way technology—social media, mobile connectivity, and transportation—is revolutionizing business. Today’s young leaders are the first to have truly come of age in a connected society, and our contributors—including founders of innovative new technology companies like thredUP and RelayRides—talk about the ways in which technology has influenced their lives and will change the way organizations do business. Pandora president and CEO Joe This document is authorized for use only by Sherrye Marshall in MMSL-6000-1/WMBA-6000B-1/WMBA-6000-1/MGMT-6000-1-Dynamic Leadership2019 Spring Sem 01/7-04/28-PT2 at Laureate Education - Walden University, 2019. Introduction 9 Kennedy talks about life, career, and innovation in the fastchanging world of online technology. • Learning: Educating Tomorrow’s Leaders. By many conventional measures, the next generation is one of the most educated in history, and young businesspeople are looking increasingly to educational experiences, within or beyond their everyday jobs, to make them better managers and leaders. Yet there’s a growing feeling among young business leaders that current learning models are not enough. Amid increasing complexity and uncertainty, how are young people learning to lead? Our contributors discuss learning in business school, through entrepreneurship, and in corporations; Haas Business School Dean and former Goldman Sachs chief learning officer Rich Lyons talks about what business learning has looked like and what it will look like in the years ahead. Within each of these topics, we seek to explore the subtrends that make them meaningful, and we support these trends in a few distinct ways. We should note that we don’t consider ours the only perspective on these issues. We developed our views based on conversations with professors and colleagues, independent and external research, and reflections on our own experiences. But our writers come from one school (HBS) among many. More than anything, this focus resulted from our own understanding of how difficult it would be to capture the impossible diversity of all young leaders in fewer than thirty stories. And so, we focused on a subsegment of classmates and friends we know well, hoping that this effort becomes part of a wider discussion. We want this to be an invitation to other schools, businesses, and institutions to join the conversation about how passion and purpose shape one’s path to leadership. To that end, you can find more material—from blog posts, new stories, videos, and more—at www.hbr.org/passion-purpose, where we’ll continue to post stories from young leaders at HBS and around the world. These are trying times—but with every challenge, there is also opportunity. We—the authors of this book—have faith in the rising generation of leaders who have witnessed the lessons of the crisis and are now seeking 107124 00 001-010 INT r2 vs copy 10 9/19/11 8:09 PM Page 10 PASSION AND PURPOSE to learn from the mistakes that were made and offer a new vision for the future. As a global community, our goal should be to come out of these most recent challenges stronger, more united, and more dedicated than before to gaining purpose from our work and living with a passion for the future. —John, Daniel, and Oliver This document is authorized for use only by Sherrye Marshall in MMSL-6000-1/WMBA-6000B-1/WMBA-6000-1/MGMT-6000-1-Dynamic Leadership2019 Spring Sem 01/7-04/28-PT2 at Laureate Education - Walden University, 2019. 107124 01 011-054 r2 vs 9/19/11 8:17 PM Page 11 CHAPTER 1 Convergence Creating Opportunities Across Sectors I believe that in the years ahead, the organization and expansion of public-goods markets will become one of the most important areas of philanthropy, and will be an area where philanthropy sometimes blurs into strict private enterprise. —Bill Clinton, 20071 W hat do a Pakistani dreamer, a Swahili-speaking ex-marine, and an investment banker have in common? In many ways, not much. Their careers have been as messy and, at times, unfocused. But they share a common desire prevalent among many of today’s young businesspeople to work across sectors—managing careers in the for-profit, nonprofit, and government arenas—often building both financial well-being and a legacy of social good. Fortunately for them, the world seems to be moving in the same direction. In the United States, GDP grew 36.6 percent between 1994 and 2004, but, according to the Urban Institute, nonprofit revenues grew an astounding 61.5 percent over the same period; and in 2005, more than 61 million Americans volunteered.2 While private sector employment collapsed in the most recent economic crisis, public employment in the United States remained relatively stable—with high-profile public sector agencies like the U.S. Treasury attracting top talent from private industry, This document is authorized for use only by Sherrye Marshall in MMSL-6000-1/WMBA-6000B-1/WMBA-6000-1/MGMT-6000-1-Dynamic Leadership2019 Spring Sem 01/7-04/28-PT2 at Laureate Education - Walden University, 2019. 107124 01 011-054 r2 vs 12 9/19/11 8:17 PM Page 12 PASSION AND PURPOSE and public sector salaries surpassing those of employees in the private sector.3 Simultaneously, the past several decades have seen the privatization of many previously government-operated activities—in transportation, utilities, and warfare—even as sovereign wealth funds, public-private partnerships, and other hybrid organizations have begun to gain prominence on the international stage. The approaching reality is that, in many cases, meaningful distinctions between these sectors and their activities are disappearing even as talented young professionals seek to chart careers that cross traditional boundaries. This is certainly not a novel concept. Business schools have produced a number of notable participants in the public and nonprofit spheres, including Hank Paulson, Robert McNamara, Mitt Romney, Michael Bloomberg, George W. Bush, Elaine Chao, P. Chidambaram, and Antony Leung, to name a few. But the prevalence with which graduates actively seek cross-sector careers seems to be growing. HBS’s Social Enterprise Initiative, founded in 1993, now has nearly a hundred involved faculty and more than four hundred cases and notes for use in classroom environments; the student-run Social Enterprise Club is one of the school’s largest, with more than four hundred members.4 The mission of the Yale School of Management—“to educate leaders for business and society”—explicitly outlines this cross-sector focus. And many of today’s top social entrepreneurs are business school grads, like Stanford’s Jessica Jackley, cofounder of Kiva.5 HBS saw a 106 percent increase in the number of students finding employment in the government and nonprofit sectors between 2008 and 2009.6 And many business and law schools support this transition with various loan forgiveness and fellowship programs that encourage work in the government and social enterprise sectors. In our own survey, we found an astonishing amount of interest and experience in cross-sector careers (see figure 1-1). Despite the fact that all of our respondents were students of self-described business schools, 30 percent had worked in the public sector prior to school and 30 percent in the nonprofit sector. Thirty-nine percent believe they will have worked in the nonprofit sector within ten years of graduation, with 33 percent predicting work in the public sector. This document is authorized for use only by Sherrye Marshall in MMSL-6000-1/WMBA-6000B-1/WMBA-6000-1/MGMT-6000-1-Dynamic Leadership2019 Spring Sem 01/7-04/28-PT2 at Laureate Education - Walden University, 2019. 107124 01 011-054 r2 vs 9/19/11 8:17 PM Page 13 Convergence 13 FIGURE 1-1 Employment experiences and expectations 92 Private 95 30 Nonprofit I have worked in the following sectors. Within ten years I will have worked in the following sectors. 39 30 Public 33 Further, 11 percent of those surveyed had worked in all three sectors, and of those who worked in the private sector prior to school, 24 percent had also worked in the public sector and 30 percent in the nonprofit sector. When asked about the nature of this overlap, the response was even more astonishing (see figure 1-2). Fully 88 percent of respondents answered “agree” or “strongly agree” when prompted with the statement, “Most business principles can be transferred to the public or nonprofit sectors,” with rates not differing appreciably depending on whether the respondent had worked in the public, private, or nonprofit sector. And 84 percent answered FIGURE 1-2 MBA views on cross-sector interaction Percent who agree or strongly agree with the following statements 100% 88% 84% 84% It is essential for business leaders to understand the public and/or nonprofit sectors. There is increasing overlap between business, nonprofit, and the public sector. 80% 60% 40% 20% 0% Most business principles can be transferred to the public or nonprofit sectors. This document is authorized for use only by Sherrye Marshall in MMSL-6000-1/WMBA-6000B-1/WMBA-6000-1/MGMT-6000-1-Dynamic Leadership2019 Spring Sem 01/7-04/28-PT2 at Laureate Education - Walden University, 2019. 107124 01 011-054 r2 vs 14 9/19/11 8:17 PM Page 14 PASSION AND PURPOSE “agree” or “strongly agree” to the statement, “It is essential for business leaders to understand the public and/or nonprofit sectors.” Further, 84 percent of respondents saw “increasing overlap between business, nonprofit, and the public sector.” This shouldn’t surprise us. Our generation has been raised in an era of global privatization of public utilities and in an America where banks and even automakers have been “bailed out” by the federal government. We’ve seen arguably the greatest businessperson of recent decades, Bill Gates, become the world’s most prominent philanthropist; and we’ve seen nextgeneration businesses, like Google, frame their mission statement in social terms: “Don’t be evil.” Democratic revolutions are now facilitated by social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. And while not all of this convergence is necessarily good, it’s happening. What should you do about it? Managing the Next-Generation Career for Convergence For young professionals, this convergence alters the landscape of career opportunities and changes the ways in which we seek training, education, and mentorship. First, successful young businesspeople will need knowledge of how the nonprofit and public sectors work, and employees in those sectors will need a better understanding of business. Some graduate school programs, like Harvard’s, offer joint master’s degree programs from their business and public policy schools. Stanford offers a similar joint program with its school of education, and many young professionals are seeking such cross-sector work early in their careers to cement their credibility across sectors.7 Young professionals can scarcely hope to operate effectively in private sector enterprises like finance, health care, or even agriculture without an extensive knowledge of the public sector, and the increasing relevance of models like microfinance make nonprofits relevant to those businesses as well. For the next generation, crosssector training and understanding will be essential to effective This document is authorized for use only by Sherrye Marshall in MMSL-6000-1/WMBA-6000B-1/WMBA-6000-1/MGMT-6000-1-Dynamic Leadership2019 Spring Sem 01/7-04/28-PT2 at Laureate Education - Walden University, 2019. 107124 01 011-054 r2 vs 9/19/11 8:17 PM Page 15 Convergence 15 leadership—particularly because best practices can and should be shared between sectors. Second, the “boxes” into which professionals once conveniently confined their careers are not as relevant or constraining as they may have been for previous generations. Businesspeople don’t have to either relegate their nonprofit and public sector work to nights and weekends or to later in their careers. Private sector organizations themselves increasingly incorporate positions that intersect closely with social and public sector work—in government relations, social initiatives, sustainability, and other areas. For instance, TOMS shoes promises that for every pair of shoes bought by a consumer, it will give away one pair to a needy child.8 The structure of the firm allows it to increase its brand recognition through its social initiatives and free media, while doing good and attracting employees who are looking for purposedriven careers. Many professionals are also finding value transitioning between public and private organizations early in their careers. For those seeking to chart careers, these options should gain increasing consideration. Managing the Modern Organization for Convergence Similarly, managers will have to acknowledge these trends and work to position their organizations for an environment that reflects them and a labor force that desires them. From the perspective of current executives, those tasked with managing the next generation should seek to use these young professionals’ interest and experience in cross-sector initiatives to their advantage. For generations, business has recognized the valuable leadership experience provided by the U.S. military, but understanding more broadly the role that those who have worked in emerging markets, public organizations, FOPSEs (forprofit social enterprises), political campaigns, think tanks, and academic organizations can have in private sector organizations will be essential to managers who wish to navigate a new environment where the sectors are more closely intertwined. Similarly, managers in nonprofit and government should continue awakening to the increasing usefulness of private sector This document is authorized for use only by Sherrye Marshall in MMSL-6000-1/WMBA-6000B-1/WMBA-6000-1/MGMT-6000-1-Dynamic Leadership2019 Spring Sem 01/7-04/28-PT2 at Laureate Education - Walden University, 2019. 107124 01 011-054 r2 vs 16 9/19/11 8:17 PM Page 16 PASSION AND PURPOSE experience, models, and best practices in their organizations. In a 2007 Atlantic Monthly article, journalist Jonathan Rauch noted the ways in which Bill Clinton was incorporating private sector practices, employees, and models into his own nonprofits; and organizations like the Gates Foundation and governments like Singapore have followed similar paths. Multinational organizations in particular—which must often interact with hybrid government/private sector industries in a multiplicity of countries, from China to Great Britain—must be keenly sensitive to this transition. These managers should also seek not only to hire talent that understands the cross-sector perspective, but also to train their workforce to value these experiences and offer opportunities to young professionals to pursue jobs—temporarily or permanently—that suit their passions. The consulting firm McKinsey & Company, for example, offers professionals an opportunity to do private, public, and nonprofit work simultaneously (as law firms have done for many years); and organizations like Bain & Company offer opportunities through partner or sister organizations that allow professionals to work on social problems about which they are passionate while gaining valuable experience they can later transmit back to the firms for which they work. Public organizations and political bodies— in Singapore, Brazil, and even the United States—seem to be placing a higher premium on business experience, with many policy makers moonlighting in the private sector between appointments and administrations. The result is a different way of thinking about value creation in businesses. Senior managers create value not simply by defining an opportunity, crafting a strategy, and allocating economic and human capital. More and more, the real challenge of leadership lies in creating roles, organizations, structures, and belief systems that allow disparate individuals to work together in pursuit of a common vision. Organizations in every sector would be better served by acclimating to a new environment in which all three sectors are gradually and in certain ways, converging—and organizations can use the talents and passions of a new generation of cross-sector professionals to help them chart their courses. And young leaders should feel empowered to find their passion and purpose in cross-sector careers. This document is authorized for use only by Sherrye Marshall in MMSL-6000-1/WMBA-6000B-1/WMBA-6000-1/MGMT-6000-1-Dynamic Leadership2019 Spring Sem 01/7-04/28-PT2 at Laureate Education - Walden University, 2019. Convergence 17 Floating Above the Boxes Business, Nonprofit, and the Age of Falling Boundaries Born in Pakistan and raised in Saudi Arabia, UMAIMAH MENDHRO was the first woman in her family to leave the country for higher education. She studied human development at Cornell University and completed her MBA from Harvard Business School as a Baker Scholar. Umaimah is currently a senior manager at Microsoft Corporation, where she leads corporate entrepreneurship and incubation efforts. She is also the cofounder of thedreamfly.org, a global initiative that strives to create human connections across communities in conflict around common causes. Nothing but the bleak darkness of a starless night. Deafening thumps of what felt like a thousand elephants marching into our living room. Shrieks of panic. My first reconstructed memory of life. “What did my father do? Why are all the soldiers after him?” In 1980, when Zia Ul Haq proclaimed a military coup, my parents, young aspiring revolutionaries-cum-physicians, escaped Pakistan with their two toddlers in the middle of the night to buy survival in return for a life in exile in Saudi Arabia. “It must’ve been something all the big, powerful people despised,” my five-year-old self thought. “Interesting . . . we’re all somehow alive and doing fine.” My ten-year-old self, covered from head to toe in an ultraconservative Arabic garb, holding tight to my mother’s hand, walking and dodging strange men’s nasty stares. Sitting cross-legged on princely rugs in the vast, serene, open spaces of Haram-al-Sharif, observing rows of women in black and men in white, now heads on the ground, now standing upright, now hands on the knees, connecting with their creator on command. Makkah looked to me like an exotic and spectacular world 107124 01 011-054 r2 vs 18 9/19/11 8:17 PM Page 18 PASSION AND PURPOSE of contradictions, a place where I clung to any opportunity to form, rather than find, an independent identity. With manufactured dreams and opinions, which the big people might honor or despise, I began to love the feeling of freely floating in thin air, right above the borders of right and wrong as defined by a people, charting out my own rules of good and evil. We returned to Pakistan after eleven years, when democracy was finally restored. “Duck, now!” my father exclaimed to all of us in the backseat. I peered out the window, terrified. A growing crowd of angry young men, with clubs and arms. The driver hit the gas pedal. None of us said much. We didn’t play our favorite tunes. Just waited for the shrill silence to dissolve. Once we left the outskirts of the city, Karachi, we left the home we had built with half a decade of savings, yet the air felt more breathable again. Ethnic violence between the Sindhi-speaking and Urdu-speaking populations had reached a crescendo. Families were stopped, commanded to say words only Sindhis knew how to pronounce, and depending on which side the other side was on, were harassed, mugged, and often enough, shot on the spot. That year, the year I turned thirteen, we ended up making a life for ourselves by my father’s village, Akri, in a town named Badin. Some five hours away from the civilization I knew, Badin allowed our parents a life they had been wanting to come back to—one where, through their chosen profession, they could care for the sick and helpless who have no place else to go. We children were home-schooled and determined to prove to the world that we could and would go places. I always liked intellectual exploration, but it was in the solitude of a life with virtually no visitors to host or places to visit, no cliques to try to fit into, and no norms to sport, that I fell in love with education for the sake of exploration and illumination of the mind. With squealing chirps of rodents as my backdrop and a gentle feeling of suffocation on warm summer nights, I’d sit on my bed and imagine my fifty-year-old self giving interviews, reflecting on a lifetime of achievements, a Nobel Peace Prize winner one night, CEO of a conglomerate that brought the country to prosperity another, while carefully name-dropping some of the world’s best universities, usually Harvard, that I was supposed to have attended. This document is authorized for use only by Sherrye Marshall in MMSL-6000-1/WMBA-6000B-1/WMBA-6000-1/MGMT-6000-1-Dynamic Leadership2019 Spring Sem 01/7-04/28-PT2 at Laureate Education - Walden University, 2019. 107124 01 011-054 r2 vs 9/19/11 8:17 PM Page 19 Convergence 19 I graduated from Cornell with a major in human development; married a wonderful, wise person who speaks Urdu and cannot pronounce those words only Sindhis are supposed to say; took a job in consulting and, in the wake of the dot-com bust, got laid off within nine months; and then fast-tracked my career with a company I fell in love with, Microsoft Corporation. Microsoft allowed me the freedoms to chart my destiny and be rebellious with reason. Outside of my job as a product manager, with strategic business management and P&L responsibilities at age twenty-six, I headed up Microsoft’s women’s employee group, representing over five thousand members and twelve thousand female employees around the world—and in the process fought for simple rights that questioned age-old company policies that did us no good. I felt I made a difference. That it mattered that I was there. I traveled to the pits of Sindh and the brinks of Pakistan and Kashmir, working for an education not-for-profit and a microfinance organization. This was not part of my strategic life plan. No form of nonprofit was. During my third week of Harvard Business School, I was forced to take a medical leave of absence and rejoin the program almost ten months later. Unemployed in the United States, between a work and student visa, and eager to make something of the days handed to me, I took the first flight to Pakistan so I could force myself into a corner to do something I would never otherwise have done in my now interesting-on-paper life. I found myself among half-naked children running on the streets, with glimmers of rebellion in their eyes and dreams of doing something they will one day be truly proud of. I visited my cousins in our village, whose eyes and smiles reminded me of my four-year-old self, and that the life I was living now was alien to me as a child. I saw my aunts and uncles, who didn’t know what or who Harvard is or even how to spell that word, who had likely never owned an independent thought or harbored any reason to reason. Crack of dawn. I was driving Mona, a dear friend, to Akri. No one outside my family—none of my friends, nor my husband—had ever visited my family in Akri. She had flown in from the United Kingdom after a brief conversation about whether she would join me in founding an This document is authorized for use only by Sherrye Marshall in MMSL-6000-1/WMBA-6000B-1/WMBA-6000-1/MGMT-6000-1-Dynamic Leadership2019 Spring Sem 01/7-04/28-PT2 at Laureate Education - Walden University, 2019. 20 PASSION AND PURPOSE organization that would plug into communities around the world, give them the option and ability to think for themselves, and create better alternative realities. We stood in the heart of my village—in front of children young and old. With glazed eyes in an inaccessible world, the older ones looked through us. We met with the village elders. They complained about lack of education. About the government. About the state of the country and how we’re all heading toward disaster. They complained, and my heart sank in my chest. I felt privately and acutely embarrassed. And then we met the little ones. Girls and boys five, six years old, in their orange shalwar qameez and big, wide-open eyes. Some with their hands on their mouths covering their giggling teeth. Others elbowing their neighbors, pointing at us. I stood in front of them all, taking in the distinct energy in the room. Mona threw a question to the room, “So, can anyone tell me what you want to be when you grow up?” A little voice at the back said out loud, “A heart surgeon.” Mona and I stared at each other. Other voices joined. “A teacher—for the little children,” said a little girl, fixing her head scarf. “A lawyer, like in the movies, to arbitrate justice.” We found that for the little children, the realities of Akri and of their destined life in this village had not yet set in enough to convince them how unreasonable their dreams sounded. Images of young Bill Gates flashed before my eyes—with big, round eyes, and too much energy for his slender little body to hold in, saying, “We will have a computer on every desk!” Gates morphed into Sam Walton, who faded in and out with Warren Buffett. “We will make a school for you here,” I blurted out to little Atta, “so you become all that you said.” “Really?! Here? When?!” he exclaimed back. And we never looked back. Thedreamfly.org, the organization we founded that day, exists to bring together communities in conflict to coinvest in each other’s success for a better common future, one where drive for personal distinction, appreciation of differences, and thoughtful, independent reasoning prevails. It exists to create a human connection that’s inviolable by culture, religion, and politics. We chose business and education, not charity or literacy, as the means to achieve this goal. 107124 01 011-054 r2 vs 9/19/11 8:17 PM Page 21 Convergence 21 I was on one knee, looking at young Nazeem through the eye of my SLR camera. We had gone for a stroll in the village and I wanted to capture the moment. “Remind me what you want to be when you grow up?” He smiled at the camera, looking calm and confident; he must’ve grown several inches since the last time I had seen him with Mona several months ago. “Last time I wanted to be a pilot but I now want to be a scientist.” I was moved. You, Nazeem, are why we’re doing what we’re doing, I thought to myself, and looked to find my voice. “That’s fantastic! Do you know what kind of a scientist?” Looking straight in my lens with his beautiful smile that belied his words, Nazeem said, “Ones that know how to make bombs. So I can bomb India.” And you are why we’re doing this. August 2008. I had returned to HBS, completed my first year and I was now standing on the ground inside the dreamfly school in Akri. I could hear uncontrollable excitement and energy everywhere. Kids were laughing, signing, playing, learning. My throat kept lumping up with overwhelming emotions of excitement, astonishment, and gratitude. I stepped into Class One, Section Blue. The class seemed to be having a discussion about whether kids should ask the teacher for permission before they have to step out of the class. “If anyone can go at any time, there will be no rules,” one said. “That’s a good point, but why do we need rules?” asked the teacher. The class paused for a moment. And my eyes immediately teared up. They weren’t just learning A-B-C’s and 1-2-3’s. They were . . . thinking. “Maybe to avoid chaos?” said another student, “because sometimes when there are no rules, every man thinks he’s the boss.” The class fell into a fit of laughter and applauded. I was seeing the HBS case study method in action in Akri in Class One. We weren’t imparting knowledge to our children, we were merely inviting them to learn for themselves. As the class settled down for a bit, a hand went up in the air: “Teacher, why did we all clap this time, when we didn’t clap when Syed had the right answer earlier to your question?” We are now looking to take dreamfly to Afghanistan. Adopting a forprofit business model that can help us ensure that our efforts can be selfsustainable and self-propelling, we want to establish an organization that outlives its founders. We are using technology and social networking to This document is authorized for use only by Sherrye Marshall in MMSL-6000-1/WMBA-6000B-1/WMBA-6000-1/MGMT-6000-1-Dynamic Leadership2019 Spring Sem 01/7-04/28-PT2 at Laureate Education - Walden University, 2019. 107124 01 011-054 r2 vs 22 9/19/11 8:17 PM Page 22 PASSION AND PURPOSE sew the seams between communities at war, giving each exposure to the world outside the one they most comfortably fit in—connecting Pakistan with Afghanistan with the United States, humans with humans, really, regardless of where they live or stand. Graduating from HBS, I didn’t explicitly consider going into the notfor-profit sector. Neither was I thinking I was going into the for-profit sector. The incredible freedoms that come with floating across and above boxes—the boxes of business and social good, of cultures we must fit in, of beliefs we must abide by—and the courage and power to look through sacred norms, that’s what I care to build into myself and the world around me. I decided to come back to Microsoft Corporation, to a rebel organization within the company that runs internal groups like external start-ups unhindered by the large-company mentality and practices. We’re looking to break a few rules, fall on our faces, pick ourselves up, learn, reason, and march ahead. I take my dreamfly spirit to work and my work ambitions to dreamfly. I take my ability to manage with near-zero resources to my Microsoft start-ups and my business savvy to Afghanistan. And my anxious energy to do more, my fervent desire to make an impact, my unsystematic at-the-edge-on-the-border-of- boxes thinking to everything I do. More and more, I feel, we must define ourselves by who we are, our deeply personal naked self, and what we want to do, rather than by which professional hole the peg fits best. And we must find our way to our vision through our own crooked path, exposing possibilities we never imagined might exist. I don’t know where the fullness of my life will take me. If I will become that CEO. If I will win any accolades. If I will die when I’m forty. But I know I want to live a life that gives people reason to reason; to pause and question the comfortable assumptions, to form and inform beliefs, and never give up common sense for common opinion. This document is authorized for use only by Sherrye Marshall in MMSL-6000-1/WMBA-6000B-1/WMBA-6000-1/MGMT-6000-1-Dynamic Leadership2019 Spring Sem 01/7-04/28-PT2 at Laureate Education - Walden University, 2019. 107124 01 011-054 r2 vs 9/19/11 8:17 PM Page 23 Convergence 23 Learning from Kibera Nonprofit Lessons for Business from East Africa’s Largest Slum RYE BARCOTT cofounded Carolina for Kibera in 2001. He graduated from Harvard with an MBA and MPA, is a TED Fellow and a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, and works at Duke Energy. His first book, It Happened on the Way to War: A Marine’s Path to Peace, was published by Bloomsbury in April 2011. He is passionate about participatory development. “Vipi beshte?” I asked over Skype. Something was wrong. Cantar’s voice was tense. “What’s up?” “Si poa hapa. Hakuna panga iko Uchumi,” he replied from Kibera in Swahili, referring to Kenya’s largest grocery store. “It’s not cool here. There are no machetes left at Uchumi.” It was January 2008, and Kenya had just held a disputed presidential election.9 Kibera was an ethnic fault line, a slum in Nairobi, Kenya, where more than three hundred thousand people resided in an area the size of Central Park. In the next thirty days, more than ten thousand residents would be displaced, and the medical clinic a widowed nurse named Tabitha Atieno Festo had founded with a $26 grant would treat more than a thousand patients wounded by gunfire and pangas. I was in my first year at Harvard Business School. It was Christmas break, and I was preparing to return to Kibera to welcome a delegation from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to Carolina for Kibera (CFK), the organization I founded in 2001 with Tabitha Festo and the community organizer Salim Mohamed to build a better generation of African leaders. “It might not be good to bring the Gates people,” Cantar, our sports program officer, warned. This document is authorized for use only by Sherrye Marshall in MMSL-6000-1/WMBA-6000B-1/WMBA-6000-1/MGMT-6000-1-Dynamic Leadership2019 Spring Sem 01/7-04/28-PT2 at Laureate Education - Walden University, 2019. 107124 01 011-054 r2 vs 24 9/19/11 8:17 PM Page 24 PASSION AND PURPOSE I did not want to cancel the trip. We had courted the Gates Foundation for two years, and they were interested in how our model of participatory development could be used to prevent violence and empower youth living in abject poverty worldwide. However, Cantar and I had worked together for over eight years. I trusted him. I had learned from him, and he had learned from me. That was the key to participatory development, an approach that is rooted in the conviction that solutions to social problems must be driven by the affected communities, not outsiders. I cancelled the Gates Foundation visit. The following day Kibera’s largest church was looted and set on fire, igniting weeks of vicious bloodletting and ethnic cleansing. I had decided to attend HBS to better understand business management after having founded and helped lead CFK as a volunteer while serving on active duty in the U.S. Marine Corps. CFK needed better management practices, having grown from a start-up reaching two hundred children in its inter-ethnic sports program to a fully integrated leadership development program involving more than thirty-five thousand residents. I arrived at Harvard thinking nonprofits had more to learn from business than vice versa. My business education has since suggested to me the learning can go both ways. I think there are three broad areas where business best practices can greatly assist nonprofit organizations like CFK: cost-benefit analysis, strategic planning, and accounting. Nonprofit managers typically need to take into consideration factors that cannot be easily quantified, such as community support. Nevertheless, cost-benefit analysis is a powerful way to think through trade-offs systematically. Over the past year CFK has implemented basic cost-benefit analysis at a programmatic level. The results have been encouraging. Our program officers have found that cost-benefit analysis is a tool that helps surface healthy debates and keeps us grounded and focused on our core mission, which is to help create a better, more ethically guided generation of African leaders from an unlikely place—East Africa’s largest slum. An excellent business education can also equip nonprofit managers with useful tools for strategic planning. Many of my nonprofit colleagues This document is authorized for use only by Sherrye Marshall in MMSL-6000-1/WMBA-6000B-1/WMBA-6000-1/MGMT-6000-1-Dynamic Leadership2019 Spring Sem 01/7-04/28-PT2 at Laureate Education - Walden University, 2019. 107124 01 011-054 r2 vs 9/19/11 8:17 PM Page 25 Convergence 25 think they need to hire expensive outside consulting firms to manage the strategic planning process, and they fear that their organization will lose operational flexibility and initiative once a plan is complete. I held similar viewpoints before I attended business school. I now see strategic planning as a vital and dynamic process that should be prioritized in an organization’s growth. Too often nonprofits such as CFK simply fall back on the “founders’ stories” for guidance. Founders’ stories are important. They are part of the culture of an organization, but they are not a strategic plan. When effectively conducted and used, strategic plans help organizations maximize their impact. Finally, many nonprofit managers with whom I’ve worked have never been formally educated in accounting and thus cannot properly supervise their finance departments. Most of my classmates at HBS took only one accounting course during their two years, a first-year course called Financial Reporting and Control. That class taught the basics, and although it was not a favorite class among my peers, it was among the most important courses that I took. I entered business school without the knowledge of how to prepare and read financial statements, and these are skills that most, if not all, managers need. Shortly after the postelection violence in Kenya threw the nation into turmoil, the real estate bubble burst and the U.S. economy imploded. It was a unique time to be at business school, especially a school like Harvard, which had educated many of the CEOs whose firms destroyed staggering amounts of value, and who came under the fiercest public criticism for their failed leadership. It was in this context that I revised my initial presumption that nonprofits had more to learn from business than vice versa. Nonprofit best practices can greatly assist business, and they merit more examination at business schools. Specifically, there are at least two broad areas where nonprofits may offer substantial insight for corporate executives and entrepreneurs: values and stakeholder outreach. The financial crisis occurred in part because American firms were guided by poor values. CEOs sent the wrong messages when they incentivized productivity primarily though financial bonuses. In any industry, This document is authorized for use only by Sherrye Marshall in MMSL-6000-1/WMBA-6000B-1/WMBA-6000-1/MGMT-6000-1-Dynamic Leadership2019 Spring Sem 01/7-04/28-PT2 at Laureate Education - Walden University, 2019. 107124 01 011-054 r2 vs 26 9/19/11 8:17 PM Page 26 PASSION AND PURPOSE nonfinancial factors should be more powerful motivators for employee retention. This is true even for employees who were primarily motivated by financial gain when they first joined the business. Nonfinancial factors are cultural, and they include pride in the product delivered, the strength of firm identity, unit cohesion, and the integrity of the organization. Exceptional nonprofits have their values aligned with their missions and rely on nonfinancial incentives to keep their employees and volunteers motivated. At CFK, for example, our teenage members must participate in community clean-ups in order to compete in inter-ethnic soccer tournaments, and winning teams receive soccer balls and uniforms, not financial rewards. Second, business should learn not to overemphasize shareholder value at the expense of broader stakeholder outreach. Donors are the nonprofit corollary of shareholders to business. Exceptional nonprofits ensure that their donors are not prioritized over their other stakeholders. This can be challenging, because many donors exert pressure on nonprofits to alter their service delivery. For example, CFK once received an offer from a foundation to build a vocational school for older women. The initiative would have detracted from our mission and core competency of youth empowerment. We turned it down. It was a difficult decision, because the grant was large and would have provided a substantial contribution to our overhead. Business executives also must make difficult decisions to balance shareholder demands for profit maximization with their duties to serve a broad base of stakeholders. Best practices in nonprofit management can assist businesses in better measuring and evaluating their impact and contributions to all of their stakeholders. I finally had a chance to return to Kibera during spring break in 2008. Although I continued to volunteer much of my life to CFK, the violence made me question what we were actually achieving. The most ravaged parts of Kibera reminded me of Fallujah, Iraq, where I had served with the Marines in 2005 and 2006. The buildings around our youth center had been reduced to charred rubble. I became depressed looking at the damage, and after a day I confided my feelings to my cofounder Salim Mohamed, who was CFK’s executive director. This document is authorized for use only by Sherrye Marshall in MMSL-6000-1/WMBA-6000B-1/WMBA-6000-1/MGMT-6000-1-Dynamic Leadership2019 Spring Sem 01/7-04/28-PT2 at Laureate Education - Walden University, 2019. 107124 01 011-054 r2 vs 9/19/11 8:17 PM Page 27 Convergence 27 “What are we really doing, man?” I asked Salim. “Bro, even me, I have to ask myself the very same question,” Salim replied. “But it’s the tough times when we have to push, and let me tell you something that gives me hope. When things were really bad, the community united.” “What do you mean?” “You know, thugs, they came here. They wanted to take our stuff and burn our buildings. The community though, it stopped them. They protected this place. A group of mamas and youths faced those men with their pangas. They risked their lives for this place.” Salim’s words gave me peace of mind. We will never be able to measure the depth of community support for CFK displayed through the actions of an anonymous group of residents. Their actions were profound, and I interpreted them as an indicator that we were doing the right things for our most important stakeholder, our reason for existing—the community. As much as Harvard Business School made me a more effective nonprofit manager, my experiences in Kibera did much more to equip me with the core values and skills that will keep me grounded as a leader as I pursue a new stage of my career, building and growing companies in North Carolina that exist to serve American communities. I feel fortunate to have been able to work across the public, private, and nonprofit sectors at a young age, and I aspire to continue to incorporate such a balance throughout my life. The solutions to our world’s toughest problems, such as the growth of megaslums, require full engagement and collaboration from each sector, and we have no time to waste. This document is authorized for use only by Sherrye Marshall in MMSL-6000-1/WMBA-6000B-1/WMBA-6000-1/MGMT-6000-1-Dynamic Leadership2019 Spring Sem 01/7-04/28-PT2 at Laureate Education - Walden University, 2019. 28 PASSION AND PURPOSE Commerce and Culture Combining Business and the Arts Originally from Lansing, Michigan, CHRISTINA WALLACE now lives in New York City where she is the cofounder of Quincy, an early-stage online women’s professional apparel company. She holds a BA in mathematics and theater studies from Emory University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. She has worked as a professional musician, actress, theater director, and arts administrator at organizations including Theater Emory, Georgia Shakespeare, Actors Express, the Schwartz Center for Performing Arts, and the Metropolitan Opera. Contact her through www.christinamwallace.com. I arrived at the T stop in Central Square on a stiflingly hot day in August 2008 carrying a rucksack overflowing with dirty clothes and smelling like a Latin American hostel. Although I had just endured the heat and humidity of Nicaragua, there was something about the air in Boston that day that felt heavy as I walked the mile from the station to the Harvard Business School campus, white sand leaking through the seams of my pack and dusting the pavement with each step. In just three days I would start the Analytics Program at HBS, which would prepare us “nontraditional” students to begin our MBAs in September. I was certain I was about as “nontraditional” as they come. I had studied first as a classical pianist and cellist, then as a mathematician and actress, and I had a tattoo of a Fibonacci spiral on my right shoulder blade. I was sure I wouldn’t fit in. But that didn’t matter. I was on a mission to figure out what business had to offer the arts. My life in the arts began early, when, at the age of five, I insisted I begin piano lessons so I could be just like my big sister Stephanie. Music 107124 01 011-054 r2 vs 9/19/11 8:17 PM Page 29 Convergence 29 quickly gained a prominent place in my life. After a decade of lessons, master classes, competitions, and recitals, I decided to spend my last two years of high school at Interlochen Arts Academy, a preconservatory arts boarding school in northern Michigan. It was there that I realized I did not want to make my career as a professional pianist. I loved music, and it would always be a part of my life, but I longed for something different. So I went to college instead of conservatory and spent four years diving into number theory and discovering theater. I fell in love with Paul Erdos, Richard Feynman, Richard Greenberg, and William Shakespeare; with cryptography, directing, dramaturgy, and Mersenne prime numbers. I toyed with a career in theater or a PhD in math, but knew neither was a great fit. With experience in music and theater and a brain that delighted in quantitative problems, the true match for me was arts management. It combined my artistic passion with a love of planning, producing, strategizing, and communicating. After internships with two theaters in Atlanta and a one-year fellowship with the Schwartz Center for Performing Arts at Emory University, I was hooked. I moved to New York to see what it was like in the “big leagues.” On a whim I applied to a job at the Metropolitan Opera and, unbelievably, I got an interview. I was speechless. The Met isn’t in the big leagues; it’s in a league all its own. In my interview for a rehearsal associate position with the Met, my potential supervisor and her boss made me promise that I would not try to change a thing in my first year. The fact that this request did not trigger a flashing neon warning sign is a testament to how ingrained and pervasive that attitude is in many of our cultural organizations—and how anxious I was to simply be part of such a legendary institution. Peter Gelb, who had served for a decade as president of Sony Classical, had just been named the new general manager of the Met. It seemed like the dusty institution was poised for a renaissance. Surely 2006 would be an exciting year for a young person to help revitalize one of the country’s most important arts institutions. The HR manager thought otherwise and did his best to scare me off. He said the days would be long, the pay terrible, and the pressure unyielding. He said I would not be promoted until someone died or retired, This document is authorized for use only by Sherrye Marshall in MMSL-6000-1/WMBA-6000B-1/WMBA-6000-1/MGMT-6000-1-Dynamic Leadership2019 Spring Sem 01/7-04/28-PT2 at Laureate Education - Walden University, 2019. 107124 01 011-054 r2 vs 30 9/19/11 8:17 PM Page 30 PASSION AND PURPOSE since people rarely left the company for any other reason and openings were scarce given that the Met was long past its growth phase. I would have the worst job in the house, he insisted, and be stuck there for a while. I took it anyway. I was certain I could make a difference. Yet on my first anniversary with the opera, leaving work frustrated by my ineffectiveness for the fifth time that week, I wondered if this was what a career in arts management really meant. I had completed my oneyear trial period and was excited to share my ideas to innovate and transform the stodgy Rehearsal Department. There were processes that could be streamlined and structures that could be created to systemize much of the repetitive and error-riddled work streams. The department had one central database with 90 percent of the information we needed to access over the course of the day, yet we repopulated that data into schedules by hand, increasing the likelihood of human error along the way. We ran the same handful of reports every week by marking up documents with a highlighter and adding figures with pencil and paper, burning through hours behind a desk that could be better invested in face time with the artists. We spent the bulk of our day in our “command center” buried in a corner of the administrative wing while most of the rehearsals were going on three floors below. Yet when I approached my manager and the head of our department with ideas to improve our processes, my proposals were deflected one by one: there was a certain way that things were done here. I just didn’t understand the customs yet. Making suggestions, it was pointed out, was not in my job description. This culture seemed at odds with the strides Gelb was making at the helm of the Met. In his first year as general manager he had focused on reinvigorating the repertoire with new theatrical productions, reconnecting with the public through a provocative outreach plan, and establishing an innovative new-media strategy that ultimately set the bar for all other arts organizations. His sharp business acumen was unquestionably foreign to the velvet-cloaked halls of the Metropolitan Opera. The speed with which he enacted his ideas felt like Mach 5 in a company that was still using typewriters in many departments through the end of the twentieth century. This document is authorized for use only by Sherrye Marshall in MMSL-6000-1/WMBA-6000B-1/WMBA-6000-1/MGMT-6000-1-Dynamic Leadership2019 Spring Sem 01/7-04/28-PT2 at Laureate Education - Walden University, 2019. 107124 01 011-054 r2 vs 9/19/11 8:17 PM Page 31 Convergence 31 Just two months after officially taking the reins in 2006, he opened the theater to the public in an unprecedented event by holding a free open house for the dress rehearsal of Anthony Minghella’s production of Madama Butterfly. Partnering with a longtime board member, he launched a rush ticket program with $20 orchestra seats available two hours before curtain for most performances. To celebrate the season’s opening night in September, Gelb simulcast the performance both on the Web and on the big screens in Times Square. Days later he announced a dedicated Met channel on Sirius satellite radio, and by Christmas the Met was broadcasting a live performance of Julie Taymor’s The Magic Flute in high-definition video to movie theaters around the world. It seemed so easy for innovation to blossom at the top of this prominent institution, but from where I sat, I felt like I didn’t have a voice to contribute to the momentum. Gelb’s passion from atop was translating into an external revitalization, but it wasn’t affecting the internal culture one whit. And I wasn’t the only one whose passion was dwindling. The few Met employees under the age of forty were growing frustrated and leaving in rapid succession. Moreover, this wasn’t just affecting the Met; my colleagues in comparable roles at other cultural institutions were feeling similarly disillusioned. An entire generation of passionate nonprofit kids was transitioning out because they felt they had so much to offer, yet no one was willing or able to harness their zeal. Surely there was something I could do about it. There had to be. I briefly considered master’s programs in arts management but quickly realized it wasn’t the “arts” I needed to learn—it was the “management.” I wanted to learn the best practices of companies that are ultimately responsible for a bottom line. So I applied to business school. My subsequent experiences in business have confirmed my belief that private sector frameworks, tools, and best practices can fundamentally contribute to the social sector, even the performing arts. In my HBS class on managing high-performing nonprofits, we read a case study on the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation. This innovative foundation offers This document is authorized for use only by Sherrye Marshall in MMSL-6000-1/WMBA-6000B-1/WMBA-6000-1/MGMT-6000-1-Dynamic Leadership2019 Spring Sem 01/7-04/28-PT2 at Laureate Education - Walden University, 2019. 107124 01 011-054 r2 vs 32 9/19/11 8:17 PM Page 32 PASSION AND PURPOSE grants to support organizational development, insisting that nonprofits prioritize structural health alongside program expansion. In general the philanthropic capital markets still penalize nonprofits for significant overhead costs, but it is heartening to see one leading foundation acknowledge that overhead is essential to the development of controls, processes, and human capital. Overhead like employee training and mentoring is what allows nonprofits to create a pipeline of leadership and establish succession plans. Clearly defined processes and well-developed controls strengthen organizations, providing employees with necessary resources and setting them up for success in achieving their mission. I’ve also been inspired to learn about the significant growth in the forprofit social enterprise space. Cochairing the 2010 Harvard Social Enterprise Conference exposed me to companies that are eradicating diseases, increasing access to financial services, and supporting at-risk youth with more success than their nonprofit counterparts. In many cases the profit motive can support a social agenda by encouraging innovative business models wherein the people controlling the cash flow (usually by buying a good or service) are the same constituents receiving the benefits of that enterprise. This stakeholder alignment translates into a more sustainable funding model than exclusive reliance on government or foundation support, replacing a charitable relationship with a customer relationship. To be clear: social enterprise is not about balancing the double bottom lines of social impact and profit as though they are equally important. Profit, in these sectors, is ultimately a means to achieve social impact, not the end itself. But it is a mechanism to encourage growth, innovation, and evolution. On an even more basic level, however, I learned that businesses really do aim to create value. In the traditional sense, they create value for their owners or shareholders. But they can do so only by encouraging the types of ingenuity and entrepreneurship that impact the broader world. Translating and adapting business frameworks and best practices for the social sector means leveraging these resources to create value for society. From this perspective it becomes absolutely necessary for leaders in the social sector to utilize business tools, not only This document is authorized for use only by Sherrye Marshall in MMSL-6000-1/WMBA-6000B-1/WMBA-6000-1/MGMT-6000-1-Dynamic Leadership2019 Spring Sem 01/7-04/28-PT2 at Laureate Education - Walden University, 2019. 107124 01 011-054 r2 vs 9/19/11 8:17 PM Page 33 Convergence 33 to create innovative enterprises but also to scale high-potential organizations to maximize social impact. Over my two years at HBS I learned that there isn’t simply a place for businesspeople in our cultural institutions; there is a desperate need for them. The integration may be diffi...
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Tasneem Dohadwala's account of her conversation with a male colleague regarding the
reaction of a male colleague after a meeting is the anecdote that resonated with me most from
this chapter of the course text. Although the chapter's title was women and the workplace, the
expression of the male colleague regarding his expectation of female leaders reflected the
misogynic perspectives that are limiting the advancement of women in the workplace. The
statement that "I like my women as I like my coffee – with milk and...


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