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...
Purchase answer to see full
attachment