Vanderbilt Business

Category: Bottom Line

  • Meeting Warren Buffett

     

    Vanderbilt students gained wisdom straight from the Oracle himself. Here the group gathers with Warren Buffett after lunch.
    Vanderbilt students gained wisdom straight from the Oracle himself. Here the group gathers with Warren Buffett after lunch.

    A few times a year, the second richest man in the U.S. invites students from business schools to meet and ask him anything. On February 22, Owen students traveled to Omaha, Neb., for a day with Warren Buffett. We enlisted second year MBA student Stephanie Dozier to give us a first-person account of the rare opportunity to meet the chair and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. She and her fellow students also filled social media and blogs with information about their visit.

     

    We almost didn’t make it. The week of our planned trip to meet with Warren Buffett, a major snowstorm went through the country. Omaha was expected to receive 12 inches of snow the evening we were to arrive, so everyone who could got excused from class on Thursday (the final day of Mod 3) and flew out early in the morning instead of late afternoon.

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    The group chosen for the trip consisted of 10 MBA students (five first years and five second years), three MAcc students, three MSF students, four EMBA students and our adviser, Phil Woodlief, adjunct professor of management. We each applied to be chosen, but the selection was random. I had applied because I knew it would be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to meet a brilliant man whom I tremendously respected. We had prepared for months in advance, reading The Essays of Warren Buffett (a compilation of letters to shareholders), discussing what we’d learned about him as an investor and a person, and carefully crafting and choosing questions for the Q&A session. Still, throughout all that, it seemed more like an exercise than preparation for something we would actually do.

    But there we were, on a Friday morning in snowy Omaha, rising early to visit the Nebraska Furniture Mart, a Berkshire Hathaway company. We toured the largest furniture store in the U.S. and listened to stories of how it was founded by Mrs. B, a Russian immigrant who could neither read nor write. And our tour guide? Mrs. B’s great-grandson, the head of real estate development for the company. This was an example of what we’d already learned—Buffett chooses great companies with great management, and continues to give that management free rein to succeed.

    After our tour, we headed to Berkshire Hathaway Headquarters for the meeting with Buffett. We were there with six other business schools, including University of Pennsylvania–Wharton and University of Wisconsin–Madison. NYU’s Stern School of Business was supposed to join us, but the weather had led to their cancellation.

    Buffett opened the room for questions, going alphabetically by school. The questions posed varied, with topics ranging from financial- and investment-related queries to advice for facing challenges, choosing good companies and prioritization, as well as his thoughts on social responsibility and emerging markets. One of our Owen group, MSF candidate Matthew Trautman, was excited to ask Buffett about his private jet—which Buffett has openly called both “indefensible and indispensable.” On that topic, Buffett said that “it’s about the only thing that costs money that makes my life better.”

    It was great to hear his financial perspective from him, but the real value from the experience came in listening to his philosophy on life and career. Some of the key takeaways from the two-hour session with Buffett include:

    • When dealing with a crisis or problem, “get it right, get it fast, get it out, get it over.”
    • Stay within your circle of competence. The most important thing is not how big that circle is, but that you know where the perimeter is. “How do you beat Bobby Fisher? Play something other than chess.”
    • Work for a company of people you admire. Write down the qualities of the people you admire most—these are habits, developed over time—and you can build them in yourself.
    • Since we sit in the shade of trees others have planted, we should plant some ourselves if we have the means.
    • Improving your ability to communicate makes you at least 50 percent more valuable.
    • Time is the precious asset. Buffett doesn’t believe in determining how to live his life based on how other people expect him to live.
    • Think through what you want in life. The main things are interesting activities and great friends. You can’t make a mistake doing something you enjoy with your life. You’ll be a better person.
    • Get out there and do it. Always move forward. Take some risks. “A lot of good things happen by accident.” If you do something you love, good things happen.
    • On the most important job any of us will have: parenting. As parents, we have to be teachers and we don’t get a chance to hit the reset button. We should know that it isn’t what we say, it’s what we do. And never forget about the power of unconditional love.

    After the Q&A, Buffett treated everyone to lunch at his favorite restaurant in Omaha, Piccolo Pete’s, where we finished off our meal with root beer floats. After lunch, Buffett took group photos with each of the schools, and we presented him with gifts we brought from Nashville—Goo Goo Clusters, an inscribed bottle of Jack Daniel’s, and an Owen Hatch Show print.

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    Our final stop in Omaha was Borsheim’s, a jewelry store and another of Berkshire Hathaway’s companies. Susan Jacques, president and CEO of Borsheim’s, met with us and discussed her history with the company and Buffett. Buffett has been open about his support of women in leadership, and even requires that all groups that visit him be at least 30 percent women. Knowing this, it was great to hear from one of the women managers that Buffett has supported. She had started with the company in the early 1980s, and told us about the shock she felt when Buffett told her he was promoting her to president in 1994. We had to leave directly from Borsheim’s to go to the airport and back to Nashville, but I was glad we’d had the time to fit in that tour as well.

    Phil Woodlief and students. A group of students from various programs at Owen (MBAs, first year and second year; EMBAs;
    Phil Woodlief and students. A group of students from various programs at Owen (MBAs, first year and second year; EMBAs;

    In the end, the experience was exactly what I had expected from the Omaha trip: a rare, never-to-be-forgotten opportunity that I experienced by being at Owen.

    Editor’s Note: Adjunct Professor of Management Phil Woodlief spent months applying for and orchestrating the visit, an offshoot of his Financial Statement Analysis Class. Woodclief says that 175 students applied for the 20 spots available on trip so attendees were chosen by lottery.

  • Fully Recognized

    Peter Veruki thanks the attendees at the 2012 Owen Circle dinner as Eric Noll and wife, Georgiana, look on.
    Peter Veruki thanks the attendees at the 2012 Owen Circle dinner as Eric Noll and wife, Georgiana, look on.

    Peter Veruki didn’t attend Owen or any other school at Vanderbilt. He doesn’t teach or conduct research at the university either. But ask many alumni which person had a big impact on their lives while at Owen, and odds are Veruki’s name is near the top of the list.

    Veruki came to Owen in 1988 at the behest of former Dean Marty Geisel. The two met when Veruki was working on Wall Street, recruiting and training MBAs. Geisel, then at the University of Rochester, was looking for Wall Street jobs for his MBA candidates.

    “I was impressed with his style, and when he went to work at Owen he called and asked me to come down,” Veruki says. “He told me that Owen was too good to be just the best school in the Southeast. He wanted someone to help market the school on Wall Street and in California and Chicago.”

    Initially Veruki wasn’t interested in leaving New York for Nashville, but eventually Geisel won him over. Veruki came on board to lead Owen’s career center, but running that office was only part of his job. He also was charged with working his Wall Street connections and strengthening relationships with alumni—relationships that could eventually mean internships and jobs for Owen students.

    “I’d get out on the road and take students with me,” Veruki says. “Traditionally career centers just sit back and wait for the companies to come to them. We changed all that—we took our students, or at least their resumes, to the companies.”

    “Peter was an inspiration to me and he always gave me good advice, even if it wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I owe a lot of my career to the start that he gave me, and I will always remember that.”

    —Paul Jacobson

    During this time Owen’s reputation went from being a regional school to a national one. The rankings improved, and applications from other parts of the country increased. Students received one-on-one coaching and were encouraged to set their sights high. Veruki realized that Owen had turned the corner in 1990, despite a bleak job market. Several students landed noteworthy positions, including Eric Noll, MBA’90, who is now Executive Vice President of NASDAQ OMX Group’s Transaction Services.

    “When I left Owen, I had an offer from the Chicago Board Options Exchange,” Noll says. “Before I started at Owen, I didn’t realize that such jobs existed. But Peter and Hans Stoll really opened my eyes. They educated us on what kinds of jobs were out there and how to get them.”

    Unfortunately Geisel died in 1999, just as the school was starting to make its mark. Veruki left soon thereafter to take a position at Rice University. Several years later, just as he was ready to retire, Veruki got another call from Owen. Jim Bradford, who was Acting Dean at the time, wanted Veruki back.

    “Jim told me that I didn’t necessarily need to return to Nashville. He said, ‘I need you in Seattle and New York, getting alumni reconnected,’” says Veruki, who currently lives in Houston. “He and I both realized that every alum out there is a potential employer, and they’re the ones hiring MBAs.”

    Over the course of his career at Owen, Veruki has made a real difference to the school’s alumni. Owen graduates can be found in boardrooms around the world, and many credit Veruki for their success. In fact, a group of them, led by Eric Noll and his wife, Georgiana, established a scholarship in Veruki’s honor—a rare recognition for a staff member. The scholarship was announced at the 2012 Owen Circle dinner.

    “I was the last to know. Even when I was seated at the dinner with five of my favorite alumni, I still didn’t suspect anything,” says Veruki, who now serves as the school’s Director of Corporate Relations. “But then they started calling them up to the podium, and I finally realized what was going on. I was so humbled.”

    For now, the scholarship is designated as the Wall Street Scholarship. When Veruki retires, it will be given his name.

    Paul Jacobson, MBA’97, Chief Financial Officer at Delta Airlines, was one of the first to contribute to the scholarship fund. “When I got the call about the scholarship, I just felt that it was the right time to make a sizeable gift,” he says. “Peter was an inspiration to me and he always gave me good advice, even if it wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I owe a lot of my career to the start that he gave me, and I will always remember that.”

    Veruki hopes that the type of student to receive the scholarship will be someone “who could go to Wharton or Harvard to study finance,” he says, “but instead chooses Owen because our finance faculty is second to none. We’re looking for a person who appreciates the culture we have here—the camaraderie and teamwork.”

    That Owen culture is something appreciated by today’s employers. “What we’ve found at Delta is that Owen alumni really fit our group dynamic,” Jacobson says. “There’s a level of humility that really helps them blend in with our culture. We’ve had a lot of success hiring Vanderbilt MBAs.”

    Noll further explains the reasoning behind honoring Veruki. “His longevity, his concern for students and their future and their careers, have been extremely influential,” he says. “There’s always lots of recognition for strong faculty—like endowed chairs—but it’s not always so easy to recognize staff members. That’s why I’m so happy to be a part of this scholarship.”

    If you would like more information about the Wall Street Scholarship, please contact the Owen Development and Alumni Relations office at (615) 322-0815.

  • Telling Our Story

    “All we have to do is tell our story!”

    This wasn’t the first time I’d heard that sentiment. In this case, Smoke Wallin, MBA’93, spoke up at a meeting of the Alumni Board in late 2010 as part of a discussion on how the school could move up in the rankings and attract the best applicants. But telling our story meant more than just having our faculty’s work cited in The Wall Street Journal or on Marketplace. To really break through the clutter and claims of other schools, we needed a bolder brand identity that would make the world sit up and take notice, proclaiming loud and clear that we are second to none.

    For years, Vanderbilt’s business school has been talked about as a “hidden gem,” a “best-kept secret,” a place that “you’ve got to experience to understand.” Those aren’t entirely bad qualities, and for a long time those attributes helped distinguish us from other top-ranked schools.

    However, with an aggressive new strategic plan in place, which includes pushing into the top-20 B-schools amid ever-greater competition for talent, we could no longer afford to be a hidden gem or best-kept secret. Telling our story had become—and remains—a competitive imperative. Below are just a few of the key steps in our yearlong journey.

    Step 1

    Find a creative partner

    In the same way consumer brands tap into renowned advertising agencies to sharpen their edges (and boost sales), we too set out in early 2011 to find a firm to help raise the school’s profile. With the support of an internal advisory board, we screened more than a dozen agencies from across the country, including ones that had worked with other top B-schools. We plowed through a mountain of amazing—and some not so amazing—work, finally narrowing the field to three firms. Each of these finalists presented their capabilities, including a broad array of creative approaches they’d used to help other clients achieve their goals. But in the end we selected an agency in Columbus, Ohio, called Ologie. A highly creative branding agency with about 50 employees, it has a client base that ranges from nonprofits and academic institutions, such as the Cleveland Clinic and Purdue University, to private companies like NetJets and the Food Network. Their creative team blended bold designs with smart, mission-driven content. It was a perfect match for our intimate, collaborative, and yet academically rigorous personality.

    Step 2

    Prioritize our audiences and objectives

    Everyone agreed that we needed to tell our story, and tell it boldly. But who needed to hear it? Obviously prospective students are a core audience. As is the wider Owen community, including faculty, current students and alumni. We also wanted to reach peer schools, which hold sway in the rankings and whose institutions serve as feeders for top student and research talent. But the one constituency that, with Ologie’s help, we learned could really spark a virtuous cycle was corporate recruiters—those who hire our students as interns and graduates. By broadening and deepening our relationships with employers, we’d see a short-term payoff in higher starting salaries and greater job placements. In addition, we hoped to leverage a growing alumni base within select companies to help boost our national profile for the long term and further strengthen the school’s network.

    Step 3

    Discover ourselves

    Now that we knew who should hear our story, the next question was just as important: What story do we want to tell? Each of us can rattle off five or six great things about Vanderbilt’s business school, but honing that message in a way that’s unique, credible and resonant with the people we’re trying to reach is a daunting task. So Ologie started by talking with dozens of stakeholders—faculty, staff, students of all programs and ages, as well as employers. Everyone agreed that “culture” was our single biggest strength. But here’s the rub: No two people described the culture in the same way. What’s more, employers don’t immediately see how our culture benefits their organizations. Ologie worked through this problem and identified a vocabulary for talking about our culture in a way that all audiences would find compelling and beneficial.

    Step 4

    Create … then listen, listen, listen

    Rather than go straight to designing a new series of ads, Ologie first drafted a manifesto—a galvanizing public declaration that explained in clear, energetic terms why this school is special. (Incidentally Apple’s “Think Different” campaign started with a manifesto.)

    The agency then brought these ideas to life with a series of mock-ups of advertisements, sample pages from an MBA viewbook, online ads and layouts of all the other materials we use on a day-to-day basis to promote the school. Our job was to take those items back to our audiences and understand what worked, what didn’t and why.

    As expected, there were elements that resonated with everyone, such as, “We’re the B-school built for the persistent. The genuine.” There were some that split opinions: Students rallied around “Rewrite the Rules,” for example, but alumni disliked it. And there were other things that were simply best left on the cutting room floor.

    Step 5

    A breakthrough!

    Using this feedback we spent much of the summer refining (and refining some more) the points that proved most salient among all the people we surveyed. Finally we began to see the outlines emerge of what we believe is a profound and truly unique brand narrative for the school.

    Step 6

    Tell the world

    The time had come to begin incorporating these new design and content elements into our marketing materials. The first step involved developing a positioning brochure that homed in on our manifesto in a creative manner. We also worked with Ologie to create an 83-page booklet using stats, facts, quotes, people and places to tell all that’s worth knowing about Vanderbilt’s MBA program. Over a six-week period, we sent these two items to more than 6,000 prospective students as well as 1,000 B-school deans, MBA and Executive MBA program directors. The results? It’s too early to tell, but, if it’s any indication, Jim Bradford got a call from another dean telling him that he liked the book so much that he was going to copy it.

    Starting in 2012, we began dialing back our involvement with Ologie. We’re now turning to an extended Nashville-based team of copywriters and designers to help translate Ologie’s new ideas and fresh look into our websites and future marketing materials. Next up is an ad for both print and larger displays, such as at airports.

    As you watch these materials take shape, I think you’ll find that they are truly different than anything we’ve done before. And yet, they capture our spirit perfectly—just as we had hoped.

  • Building on Expertise

    Brazil’s large size presented both an opportunity and a challenge for LP Corp.
    Brazil’s large size presented both an opportunity and a challenge for LP Corp.

    When building-products maker LP Corp. purchased a production facility in Brazil more than two years ago, it did so hoping to replicate the kind of success it was experiencing in neighboring Chile.

    For nearly a decade, LP had been working to introduce its plywood-like oriented strand board (OSB) into the Chilean market—no easy task since houses there have traditionally been built with brick. Nevertheless, the country was developing rapidly, and Chile’s pro-business government was eager to assist foreign companies in creating local jobs, and in LP’s case, introducing innovative new building methods and materials.

    All told, Nashville-based LP has seen its revenue attributable to Latin America grow from around $3 million a decade ago to more than $150 million in 2010, with a significant amount coming from Chile. Currently that figure represents more than a 10 percent slice of the company’s annual $1.3 billion in annual revenue.

    As those gains accumulated, company CEO Rick Frost turned his gaze to Brazil, a country 10 times larger than Chile, with a youthful population expected to spark demand for as many as 14 million new homes over the next decade. That works out to a rate of about 1.4 million new houses built every year, a figure on pace with the U.S. market. “The beauty of Brazil is that we don’t have to hit a home run—just a single or even a bunt—and we’d fill the capacity of that new mill,” Frost says.

    So with its Chilean playbook and new Brazilian factory in hand, the company worked for a year to understand the market and prepare alternative strategies in a country whose land mass rivals China and has some of the most populous cities in the world. But it didn’t seem appropriate simply to copy what had worked in Chile.

    “To think that we could take what we learned in Chile and just transfer it to Brazil would be very naive,” Frost says. “For starters, we ran up against the sheer size difference in the two countries. Chile is much smaller, so it was easier to get things done there.” Brazil also has what Frost calls an “impermeable bureaucratic wall” that makes it hard for a foreign company—even one that had acquired a local production facility—to work its way into the construction industry like LP had done in Chile.

    “We wanted to teach them—and the students—how to answer or think about the problem themselves. That’s what we do in academics.”

    —Bart Victor

    Around the time that Frost started to realize that LP wouldn’t be able to copy its Chilean strategy and apply it to Brazil, he happened to mention the company’s Brazil conundrum during a CEO luncheon on doing business in Latin America that was co-hosted by the Owen School’s Executive Programs and the university’s Center for Latin American Studies. The two groups quickly tapped Bart Victor, the Cal Turner Professor of Moral Leadership, who studies developing markets, as well as faculty at FIA Business School, a private offshoot of the University of Sao Paulo, with which Vanderbilt has maintained ties for more than 50 years.

    For Victor and Edward Fischer, who directs the Center for Latin American Studies, LP’s Brazil challenge offered a unique opportunity to work closely with a hometown company on an element of its global strategy, while giving MBA students at a partner school the chance to gain real-world learning experience. The pair co-authored a case study based on the problems LP faced in Brazil and presented it to a class of executive MBA students at FIA in Sao Paulo.

    “We made it very clear to LP that we weren’t acting as consultants who would come up with a set of precise strategy recommendations,” Victor says. “We wanted to teach them—and the students—how to answer or think about the problem themselves. That’s what we do in academics.”

    Victor says the key question involved thinking through what elements of LP’s Chile strategy didn’t apply in Brazil.

    “If they could answer that question, they could really start to build a stronger Brazil strategy,” he says. “Let’s think about this in a careful, thorough way. Let’s test the assumptions and unpack the logic. And yes, it mattered that we had this conversation with executive MBA students in Brazil because they know how business gets done there.”

    Broken into six teams, the 40 Brazilian students studied the LP case for several weeks before returning to a daylong session with LP executives and course instructors to discuss their findings. While the students came up with some nonstarters—like a suggestion to spend millions on local advertising—much of the advice coalesced around the idea that LP not try to do too much too quickly. “They said we needed to slow down, that we needed to find ways to create market acceptance,” Frost says.

    The students helped LP realize that where Chile had sought foreign investment in the country, Brazil tended to be more protective, not just of its markets, but also of its workers. Frost says those insights prompted the company, for starters, to team up with steel workers to show how its products could help save on their material costs. LP also began working more closely with the Brazilian government to help deliver on a need for subsidized housing. Frost says the country has called for 4.5 million homes to get built over three years. LP’s involvement with builders engaged in that effort allows those in the construction industry to experience the company’s products, encouraging local governments to adopt LP materials into their building codes, leading to wider acceptance in upper- and middle-tier markets.

    “I don’t know if the class gave us a panacea, but it certainly gave us enough to know that what we were doing wouldn’t work,” Frost says. “It’s also nice to know that we have this kind of expertise in our backyard at Vanderbilt.”

    Working through Vanderbilt’s Executive Development Institute on the Brazil project, Frost says there are no formal arrangements in place for more programs, but would welcome similar opportunities.

    Says Frost, “You know, I’ve been thinking a lot about Argentina and Colombia … .”

  • A Shot in the Arm

    Jeff Fisher (left) and Frank Moser, pictured here at the Aegis Sciences Corp. lab, have helped implement the recommendations made by the Executive MBA team.
    Jeff Fisher (left) and Frank Moser, pictured here at the Aegis Sciences Corp. lab, have helped implement the recommendations made by the Executive MBA team.

    No pain, no gain.

    That was the core message of a strategic plan developed by a team of Vanderbilt Executive MBA students in 2009 for Aegis Sciences Corp. The students’ plan, part of a yearlong class project, made several recommendations for the Nashville-based company, which specializes in toxicology analysis and consulting services for sports teams, medical examiners, crime labs and others.

    When senior management at Aegis put those recommendations into action, the outcomes more than exceeded expectations, says Frank Moser, Vice President of Business Development. In spite of the recent economic downturn, Aegis expanded from 150 to 400 employees in less than two years, and total revenue grew from $20 million in 2008 to $51 million in 2010. Meanwhile the plan continues to guide decision making at Aegis to this day.

    Dr. David Black, Associate Clinical Professor of Pathology, started Aegis after successfully setting up a drug-testing lab at Vanderbilt in the late 1980s—a response to an increased need for monitoring steroids and other drugs in athletics. Aegis soon moved into forensics toxicology, going private in 1990. The company was in the midst of revising its business plan when it was approached by the Owen students, who were searching for a client to work with in their Strategy Project course.

    While firmly committed to putting science first and sticking to its core philosophies, Aegis was also ready to expand. “The impetus was that we’d grown pretty well and were looking to continue that growth in current markets but also look at adjacent markets,” Moser says. “We had so many opportunities, and we really wanted a framework.”

    Jeff Fisher, BA’77, Vice President of Finance, had just joined the company when the Owen students got involved. He says the process brought Aegis’ executive team closer together. “It was good for all of us to share thoughts and ideas and begin to look outside the box,” he says.

    As part of the plan, the student group developed an acronym around “LABS,” focusing on logistics, adjacencies, building and sustaining. The recommendation to put more resources into pain management turned out to be recession-proof. “People in pain are still going to get treatment,” Fisher says.

    The team’s project took top honors in the strategy course that year. “By any measure, the report was outstanding,” says Adjunct Professor of Management David Furse, who taught the course. “They just really hit it out of the park.”

    According to project leader Josh Anthony, EMBA’09, the success of the partnership was the product of three key factors:

    (1) The Aegis management team remained completely open and engaged in the process.
    (2) The nimble advice from faculty advisers, including Furse and Michael Burcham, Clinical Professor of
    Entrepreneurship, was indispensable and constant.
    (3) The students on the team effectively leveraged their unique strengths.

    “Each of us was willing to step outside our comfort zone to learn something. When we didn’t agree, we talked about it,” says Anthony, Director of Research and Development for the Global Infant Category of Mead Johnson Nutrition.

    Other students on the team were Andres Visbal, Materials Supervisor at Newell Rubbermaid; Justin Calhoun, Financial Adviser at Merrill Lynch; Sarvant Singh, Program Manager at Cummins Inc.; and Steve Wingard, BE’85, Manager of the Wireless Solutions Group at Intergraph Corp.—all members of the Class of 2009. Anthony says that Wingard offered strong writing and artistic skills, Singh brought a talent for financials, and Visbal and Calhoun helped analyze business development opportunities. Meanwhile Anthony himself focused on developing the key presentation points.

    One of the distinctive features of the Vanderbilt Executive MBA is that students are carefully organized according to expertise into “C-teams,” which are designed to emulate an organizational executive team of C-level officers. Anthony says the experience provided him with the opportunity to learn sound business principles and apply them right away. “Managing challenges and growing with them is a much greater experience than just book learning,” he says.

    The process also proved to be invaluable for Aegis. Since graduation, the students and Aegis executives have stayed in contact, and many of the students’ long-term recommendations are still on the table and will be implemented as resources allow.

    “It would have cost tens of thousands of dollars to put together an analysis like this and to have the resources of five very bright individuals,” Fisher says.

  • Hell or High Water

    Gaylord Opryland

    “It’s heartbreaking. You walk through these buildings and feel like the soul has been taken out of them. There are no customers. … There’s no joy. There’s no music playing in the Grand Ole Opry.”

    These were among the only words I could summon standing in front of TV cameras and newspaper reporters the morning of Monday, May 3. I had just landed at the Nashville airport, rushed to the Gaylord Opryland Hotel and toured the property with the media. The day before I had been stranded in the Miami airport as a record-setting rain fell in Nashville—a rain so great it swept away cars, homes, buildings and lives. It also left up to 9 feet of water in 800,000 square feet of our hotel and 4 feet of water on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry.

    The enormity of it all was difficult to grasp and certainly difficult to put into words. All day Sunday, May 2, those of us on the leadership team were in constant contact with one another, monitoring and reporting on water levels in the Cumberland River, which snakes its way through Nashville and surrounds our properties in an oxbow known as Pennington Bend. The reports we were receiving from government agencies continued to indicate our levee would be high enough to hold back the rising river. However, visual inspections by our team told us the information we were receiving simply wasn’t accurate. The river was rising higher and faster than agencies had earlier projected.

    The May flood left nearly 9 feet of water in different parts of the Opryland Hotel.
    The May flood left nearly 9 feet of water in different parts of the Opryland Hotel.

    Eventually we decided to evacuate the hotel—1,500 guests and our employees, or STARS as we call them—to a nearby high school. There was no debate among the team on the phone that evening. Life safety was our first priority. Even if the river didn’t top the levee, we thought it would be better to inconvenience our guests and STARS rather than risk harm to anyone. A few hours later, with everyone safe at the high school, water began seeping into the lobby of the hotel.

    Back to Monday morning. The interviews and media tour were complete. Guests who had an uncomfortable night in the shelter were off to the airport, which was open again. The leadership team at the property had customer transition well in hand. It was time to begin answering the questions we’d posed during our hourly conference calls Sunday night: How long will our businesses be closed? How extensive is the damage? How quickly can we pump the water out? What do we tell our customers? What do we tell our STARS who cannot come to work? Where will the displaced leaders find office space? How did our country music archives and memorabilia fare? We needed to plan updates for the board of directors and our shareholders, but what would we tell them?

    The lobby of the Opryland Hotel before the flood.
    The lobby of the Opryland Hotel before the flood

    Although a difficult road lay ahead of us, we were extremely fortunate in one respect: During the crisis we were able to fall back on our emergency preparedness, business continuity and crisis communication plans. These three interconnected plans provided a template as we reacted to the increasing threat of the flood and evacuated a large number of guests to safety in a reasonably orderly fashion. The plans also served us well as we set about answering the questions facing us, making some tremendously difficult decisions in the process. At times the task of finding solutions to all these problems seemed never-ending, but we continued making progress day by day.

    Now that it has been several months since the flood, I can attest to just how far we have come. The rebuilding process is almost complete: The Opry House has recently reopened, and our hotel will soon follow in mid-November. I also now have some perspective and can look on the bright side of those dark days. As tragic as they were, the events of early May gave us an opportunity for a fresh start. The flood spurred us to make the hotel and Grand Ole Opry even better than they were before, and we now can take great pride in reintroducing these cherished businesses to our customers, our city and the world.

  • B-school Book Club

    A version of this article originally appeared in Forbes on Dec. 21, 2009.

    As a business-school dean—the hardest job I’ve ever had—I find that complex questions keep me up at night and rattle around my brain while I’m hanging in the sky on a long flight.

    I don’t mean the kinds of clear-cut matters that come up in finance or operations classes, but rather issues of working with and aligning groups whose motivations and needs differ dramatically and sometimes conflict. In business everyone in an organization theoretically works toward a clear, shared goal. In life, including my experience running a business school, we often face more difficult and nuanced challenges that require deeper consideration and understanding of the human condition.

    Bradford started the book club in an effort to deepen students’ understanding of history, world politics, religion and societal conflicts.
    Bradford started the book club in an effort to deepen students’ understanding of history, world politics, religion and societal conflicts.

    When I’m trying to sort out that kind of thorny issue, I’m glad I can draw on a world view that has been broadened by more than 30 years of corporate life, work and travel—and by my passionate avocations of music, art and reading. I hope that the perspective I’ve developed leads me to more thoughtful decision-making.

    That’s why, whenever I have the chance, I turn on the reading light and dive into books that challenge my intellectual understanding. It was during one of those plane-ride intellectual inquiries that another kind of light bulb came on: Shouldn’t business students do the same? How might we pull them back from their intense concentration on business to look at the larger world, and at themselves as part of the world community? Shouldn’t we, as their educators, encourage them to delve into books, including nonbusiness books, that open their minds? What if we gave Vanderbilt students a place to bounce around the ideas that would raise? Could we get them to read books not just for credit but for the pure joy of learning?

    Such were the humble beginnings of the Dean’s Book Club, a discussion of current books that’s open to all interested participants at Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School of Management.

    In my role as Dean, I get fabulous opportunities to meet with many of the world’s great business and nonprofit leaders, with executives and entrepreneurs of all kinds. When we discuss their particular industries or enterprises, the conversation often turns to the preparedness of America’s business-school graduates for work life. Employers rightly assume that excellent business programs attract candidates who have the intellectual DNA to study and really learn. The best, like Vanderbilt, provide deep understanding in finance, economics, accounting, marketing, operations management, strategy and other de rigueur business subjects. But the big question is how we prepare graduates for the complex, sometimes ambiguous environments they’ll encounter after their studies. It’s increasingly clear that graduates who have not only analytical ability but also perspective and wisdom will win the day.

    We work hard to help our students gain the perspective that leads to complex problem-solving skills. We offer classes on everything from teamwork and leadership to negotiations, decision theory and cross-border, cross-cultural business methodology. Is that enough? I don’t think so.

    Students read one book per mod and then meet to discuss their favorite passages.
    Students read one book per mod and then meet to discuss their favorite passages.

    I believe that people with a broad base of education and knowledge make the best employees and the strongest leaders. We need to help them find intellectual balance while focusing on a particular business discipline. B-school students, like busy professionals, can get too focused and specialized. In the Dean’s Book Club they get to supplement their studies with reading that may help them deepen their understanding of history, world politics, religion and societal conflicts.

    I don’t look just for business books or books that promote one main idea with hundreds of examples and anecdotes. We read works that challenge us to think of the world in different ways. We debate the issues they raise. If we get uncomfortable in the process, so much the better.

    A great example is River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze by Peter Hessler. A young Ivy League graduate goes to a coal mining town in China for a couple of years’ teaching experience. He ends up finding himself behaving as the quintessential ugly American, overreacting to an insult. I thought it was telling that the author would share such a less-than-flattering story about himself. My students have liked it, too, and I’ve found that each person’s experience with the book—with any book—is different. Sharing those differences adds richness to our discussions.

    We read one book in each mod, which is our half-semester academic unit. I have found the club to be very self-selective, attracting students who are motivated enough and organized enough to get all their work done and want to read books for pleasure on the side. During our discussions, we pick favorite passages. We criticize. We ask the ultimate marketing question: Would you recommend this book? Sometimes students tell me they didn’t like a book, but it changed their way of looking at something. Ultimately that’s our goal.

    From Hot, Flat & Crowded, A Post-American World and Black Swan, to Factory Girls, The Colossal Failure of Common Sense and River Town, it has been a highly successful experiment.

    I’ve been impressed at how in discussing the points of view and ideas propounded by various authors, the students have gained insight into complex social, business and life problems. You could argue that teaching perspective isn’t a business school’s responsibility, but I’d disagree. If gaining experience through extracurricular reading improves our students’ sense of understanding, their common sense and their judgment, then we’ve achieved our goal.

    We should all force ourselves into reading and seeing and doing things outside our common experience. That’s the message I want my students to take away from this experience. And here’s a little secret that I haven’t been able to hide from them: It is pure fun. Reading is a joy, and discussing a text with fellow seekers, no matter what the differences are within a group, is exhilarating.

  • Social Media 101

    Owen-related groups are growing rapidly on social media sites like Facebook and LinkedIn.
    Owen-related groups are growing rapidly on social media sites like Facebook and LinkedIn.

    In fall 2008 the economic crisis seemed to fuel a need for connection. At Owen we noticed a large spike in the number of people asking to join the school’s group on LinkedIn, a networking Web site for professionals. This got us thinking about Owen’s presence on other social media sites, like Facebook and Twitter, and how we might help alumni stay in touch with each other and the school.

    With help from the Marketing & Communications office at Owen, school-related groups are now growing rapidly and organically online. Alumni are reconnecting with classmates, discovering job opportunities and developing valuable business connections. They are also receiving the latest news from the school through Twitter feeds, a Facebook fan page, YouTube videos and iTunes lectures.

    If you haven’t done so already, we encourage you to explore the various social media sites out there. Signing up is easy and free. Here are a few ways to get started:

    facebookFacebook

    Facebook is a wildly popular and fun way to keep in touch or reconnect with classmates on a social basis. There are now more than 300 million people around the world who use the site. Facebook allows its users to customize their personal profiles by posting status updates, uploading photos, joining groups and becoming “fans” of just about anything under the sun, including the Owen School. Users receive updates regarding their friends, groups and fan pages through what is known as the News Feed, which appears on every user’s home page.

    The Owen Facebook alumni group has nearly tripled in size since October 2008. Here’s how to join:

    • Sign up for a Facebook account. Be sure to add Vanderbilt and the year you graduated when creating your profile. This will help you and other classmates find each other.
    • Visit the Newsroom page on Owen’s Web site and select “Social Media.”
    • Click “Owen on Facebook” and then “Become a Fan.” From time to time, you will receive valuable updates about Owen on your Facebook home page.
    • Click “Owen Alumni Group on Facebook” and then “Join Group.” By becoming a member, you can connect with other alumni.
    • Search for other Owen groups. Try typing “Vanderbilt Owen” in the search box. You will find several “Class of” groups, some of which are more active than others.
    • Search for your classmates. Try typing a name within quotes (“First Last”). If you get too many results, or don’t recognize your friend from the thumbnail photographs, select “My Networks” from the drop-down box. That may narrow the results enough to reveal a classmate.

    linkedinLinkedIn

    The LinkedIn networking site is to business what Facebook is to friendship. The site now boasts a membership of more than 43 million business professionals from more than 200 countries and territories. LinkedIn users create profiles summarizing their professional accomplishments and then invite “trusted contacts” to connect with them and their networks. These networks give users the opportunity to search for job openings, collaborate on projects, and gain business insights through discussions.

    The Owen LinkedIn group has more than doubled in size since October 2008: from 800 members to 1,900 members (as of early fall). Here’s how to join:

    • Visit LinkedIn and sign up for an account.
    • Visit the Social Media page on Owen’s site and click on “Owen on LinkedIn.”
    • Click the “Join this Group” button.
    • Start networking! LinkedIn can be invaluable for a job search. Try finding other Owen community members who work within your target industry or geographic location.
    • Do you have a business question? Post your problem to the discussion board and let other Owen members help you solve it.

    twitterTwitter

    Twitter is a way to stay in touch with the world through short messages limited to 140 characters. Users send messages (“tweets”) to others who have signed up to follow their updates. Owen uses Twitter to send out real-time information about alumni events, such as happy hours hosted by the school in various cities around the country. Alumni news, like promotions, career changes and new business ventures, are also posted to Twitter.

    Here’s how to follow Owen on Twitter:

    • Visit Twitter and sign up for an account.
    • Visit the Social Media page on Owen’s site and click on “Owen on Twitter.”
    • Click the “Follow” button.
    • Check your Twitter page regularly for updates from Owen. You can keep up with Twitter online or by using your mobile phone.
    • To find other people or organizations to follow on Twitter, click through Owen’s “Following” list.

    youtubeOther social media sites

    Owen also has a presence on YouTube and iTunes, with school-related videos and podcasts of lectures and campus speakers. To check out these sites, just visit Owen’s Social Media page.

    Dive in!

    These various social media sites may seem overwhelming, but don’t be afraid to give them a try. Keeping in touch with the Owen community has never been easier.

  • Hard Corps

    Hard Corps

    Robinson
    Robinson is expanding his horizons as a member of the MBA Enterprise Corps in Kenya.

    Nat Robinson, MBA’07, is a world away from where he thought he’d be after graduating from Owen. While many of his former classmates are spending their days in the corporate jungle, Robinson is getting used to an entirely different way of life. While his classmates avoid traffic on their way to work, he may very well be avoiding a herd of elephants. Or while they’re climbing the StairMaster at the gym, he may be climbing the 16,355-foot peak of Mt. Kenya.

    What truly sets him apart, though, is his job. Like many of his classmates, he is working in finance—only his responsibility is to help a Third World country succeed in the 21st century.

    Robinson is a member of the MBA Enterprise Corps, an organization dedicated to helping Third World countries develop and grow their economies. The corps was founded in 1990 by a consortium of leading U.S. business schools. Today the corps sends recent business-school graduates on 13–15 month assignments to countries around the world, including Angola, Uzbekistan, Guyana and Azerbaijan. Their projects include microfinance (providing financial services to impoverished clients), small business and private sector development, and microenterprise (starting businesses with little or no capital).

    Graduates accepted into the corps first spend a week in orientation and training in Washington, D.C. From there it is on to their assigned countries where they study the language and culture of their new homes for one to two months. After that they begin their actual jobs. In Robinson’s case, that means working for the K-Rep Group, a commercial bank focused on microfinance, in Nairobi, Kenya.

    “They match you up with your interests,” Robinson says. “At first I was going to Peru, but that fell through. Then I was going to Nigeria, and then Angola and then finally Kenya. You have to be open and flexible.”

    After graduating from Owen, Robinson was hired by Accenture. The company granted him a leave of absence to join the corps in fall 2008. On his blog, he describes some of his duties:

    “My immediate role at K-Rep is to assist the organization in building up their financial reports to qualify for some major financing from the Grassroots Business Fund. I sit with a small army of young accountants and try to decipher as much of the relevant financial and accounting statements as possible.”

    He’s also had a chance to see a bit of the country and has been warmly received everywhere.

    “I was out at one of our village banking branches in western Kenya, where the Obama family is from,” he says. “I had to give a speech talking about our investments. At the end I said something in Swahili about Obama and I got a standing ovation.”

    Karen Weist is the Associate Director of the Career Management Center at Owen and coordinates the school’s selection process for the corps.

    “Each year we have a few students who apply,” Weist says. “They have to submit a resume and an essay, and they have to appear before an interview panel. We assess the individuals to make sure that they’re doing this for the right reasons.”

    Because those who participate have, in effect, deferred their careers, Owen helps them get right back in the job market when they return.

    “The commitment that we have to the students is that when they return, we give them access to our career services beyond what is normally available to alumni,” Weist says.

    Weist points out that the program is not for everyone.

    “We have lots of students who are interested in giving back,” Weist says. “But this program is for those who are interested in giving back on a global level. It’s for someone who is really, truly altruistic—that’s one of the fundamental elements. They also need humility and an understanding that they’re a guest in someone else’s country.”

    Robinson’s involvement in Project Pyramid, the student-run organization dedicated to ending global poverty, played a big role in his decision to join the corps, as did his previous international work experience, which included an Owen internship in Shanghai.

    “I have a background in nonprofit and government work and really loved the international business aspect. This is a neat combination of all that—corporate and social responsibility,” he says. “My summer in Shanghai prepared me for the shocks and little challenges involved with working in another culture and being far away from home.”

    When he started business school, Robinson had no idea he would end up putting his degree toward something so rewarding.

    “My thought of business school was that it was just going to be all business,” he says. “I didn’t think anyone would care very much about making a difference or working with nonprofits. I was really surprised that I was able find an organization in the business world that focuses on poverty alleviation. It’s a great way to use some of those finance classes I took at Owen.”

  • From Broadway to Wall Street

    From Broadway to Wall Street

    Light With Signs
    The MASIF club can trace its Wall Street roots back to Broadway.

    The musical never opened on Broadway, or anywhere else for that matter, and it probably never will. But in a way, the curtains haven’t yet dropped on The Party Girl. Though forgotten by many, the musical continues to make its impact known at the Owen School—just not in a way that you might suspect.

    The year was 1977, and Max Adler, a prominent New York businessman, was sitting in his apartment on Fifth Avenue listening to another pitch. As one of the producers of the Tony Award-winning hit Annie, he was often being asked to finance other would-be Broadway musicals, like the one being described to him at that moment. This time, however, something held his attention. It wasn’t the script, which was about a U.S. senator and the mistress who runs his New York power base, or the fact that it was set to star veteran actor Robert Alda (Alan’s father) and an up-and-coming Dixie Carter. What interested him most was the person in front of him—the producer who had optioned the script. His name was Charles Doraine, MMgt’72, and it was his personal story that eventually convinced Max Adler to invest his money. Not in The Party Girl, that is, but in Vanderbilt.

    “He said, ‘I don’t like the script, but I’m interested in you because you’re an entrepreneur,’” recalls Doraine. “I explained to him that I had graduated from Vanderbilt’s Graduate School of Management and that we thought of ourselves as managers of change. I told him we stood out because we looked at the world differently. Other schools were interested in people who would stay in the box, but GSM was looking for people who were outside of it.”

    That “outside the box” line of thinking appealed to someone like Adler, whose path to success was anything but conventional. A bombardier in the U.S. Army Air Corps, he survived being shot down over the battlefields of Europe and imprisoned by the Nazis during World War II to return to civilian life in the late ’40s. Seeing an opportunity in America’s booming post-war economy, he started a mail-order business selling inexpensive gifts and gadgets. The catalogs were an immediate hit, and soon he expanded into other types of merchandise.

    “He always sold these weird kinds of things, but one year he decided he would go into selling animals. He brought little burros across from Mexico, and they sold like fury and actually made the cover of Life magazine. It was amazing,” says Mimi Adler, Max’s widow.

    While the burro-as-pet craze thankfully went away, Adler’s mail-order business did anything but. By the early ’60s the demand was so great for his merchandise that he decided to open his first retail store in New Jersey. Called Spencer Gifts, it caught on with customers and quickly drew the interest of Musical Corporation of America (MCA), a large music and television company based in California. Adler sold the business to MCA, which then took the brand nationwide. This windfall enabled Adler to dabble in other things that mattered to him, including Broadway shows like the one Charles Doraine had come to pitch.

    But Adler was just as passionate about philanthropy, and when the conversation turned from The Party Girl to Vanderbilt GSM, he was eager to learn more about the school. Doraine agreed to put him in touch with Dean Samuel Richmond, thanked him for his time and went on his way, not realizing the importance of what had just occurred. It was only when Doraine got a phone call several years later that it dawned on him. A representative of the newly renamed Owen School was calling to invite him to a celebration honoring a donation given by Adler.

    “Sometimes you can make a difference without even knowing it. I met Max just that one time, and look what happened,” Doraine says.

    As it turns out, Max Adler had struck up a friendship with Dean Richmond during those intervening years and had grown so fond of the Owen School that he’d promised a significant sum for the construction of Management Hall. But before he could make good on that promise, Adler died unexpectedly in 1979. The donation that Doraine received the call about was actually given by Mimi in her late husband’s honor.

    Mimi’s commitment to Owen, however, didn’t end there. In 1983 she donated an additional $25,000 to the school. The purpose of her gift was two-fold: First, she wanted the students to be able to learn how to manage money by making real-life investments, and second, she hoped the earnings from those investments would someday fund scholarships to the school. Mimi’s gift was named the Max Adler Student Investment Fund, or MASIF for short.

    The student club responsible for managing MASIF is today one of the most popular at Owen. In 2007-2008, there were over 50 members, all of whom played a hand in deciding which stocks the club picked. Modeled after an S&P mid-cap index, the fund is divided into different sectors, such as real estate, health care, energy, and technology. Second years serve as the heads of these sectors, while first years act as analysts. Getting the first years involved in this manner was one of the initiatives of former MASIF President Nicholas Zager, MBA’08. Having worked at OppenheimerFunds prior to enrolling at Owen, Zager wanted to expose the club members to something akin to the real-world experience he’d had.

    “When you set things up in a team-oriented and professional environment, you see certain people shine. Those of them who grab onto the idea of MASIF can really hit the ground running after graduation,” he says.

    Zager’s other initiative as MASIF President was to fulfill Mimi Adler’s original vision by paying the first scholarship. In the 25 years since her donation, the fund had grown to well over $400,000 thanks to the students’ stock picks. With Dean Jim Bradford’s support and Mimi’s blessing, the MASIF club decided to sell off approximately half of that amount and create an endowment for the Max Adler Scholarship. The club members also set about determining the criteria that would be used to award the scholarship. It was agreed that the recipient should demonstrate not only leadership abilities and academic excellence but also a commitment to the school and a career in finance. In the end, several candidates were presented to Dean Bradford, and Bill Lambert, MBA’08, was chosen as the first recipient.

    “I think MASIF offers a learning opportunity for people of all different backgrounds. It’s great to be able to pitch your thoughts on a specific stock to members, listen to their thought processes, and then measure those against your own. Not only does the fund create this atmosphere, but we then can act on these situations, and hopefully obtain market-beating returns for the fund in the process,” says Lambert.

    Today Lambert is realizing his dream of working in corporate finance at Deutsche Bank AG in New York. His story is similar to those of other MASIF club members who have embarked on Wall Street careers. They all gained valuable experience managing the money that Mimi Adler gave to the Owen School in her late husband’s name. And whether they know it or not, they all owe a debt of gratitude to Charles Doraine and the musical that no one saw.