When Connie Ritter, MBA’80, was trying to decide which job offer to accept in anticipation of her graduation from Owen, she got some career advice that she has never forgotten. In her typical analytical fashion, she had created a matrix with factors that she thought should enter into her consideration, but Professor of Management Germain Böer told her to throw it away.
“He said, ‘When you find the right company, you’ll know it in the pit of your stomach,’ ” she recalls. “And you know what? He was absolutely correct. I got an offer to talk with Exxon soon after that, and I knew then that it was the right place for me.”
The right place indeed. Almost 30 years later Ritter is still happily employed at ExxonMobil. Over that time she has held a variety of financial management positions within the company, including stints with the chemical and oil and gas operations in Houston and a copper mining venture in Chile. “I know it seems old-fashioned to young people today, but one of my goals coming out of school was to be able to do a lot of different things under one corporate umbrella, and ExxonMobil has given me that opportunity,”
she says.
Since 2006 Ritter has served in a senior leadership role as the Global Planning and Development Manager for the Controller’s Department in Dallas. In this role she is responsible for both personnel development and strategic planning. The two sides of the job have allowed her to exercise different skill sets: a hands-on, operational approach for personnel development and a more thoughtful, big-picture approach for strategic planning. The latter has been particularly gratifying for her because, in some sense, she has realized a lifelong dream in the process.
“When I came out of Owen, one of the objectives on my resume was to do strategic planning, but at that time I didn’t have a clue what that meant,” she says. “Now, when I sit in my office and stare out the window, I think, ‘I’m actually doing what I thought it was I wanted to do when I was 25.’ ”
If you shop for wine or spirits at your local supermarket or big box store, you very well may come across the handiwork of Dave Ficeli, MBA’99, in the near future. His Denver-based company, PL360 Beverage Partners, is focused on building both its own premium alcohol brands and premium, private-label brands owned by the top 60 retail chains in the country.
Ficeli, who serves as CEO and Vice President of Marketing, and business partner Robert Falvo have developed a distinctive reverse-sell model, which begins with retailer demand instead of pushing the products themselves. They first create a brand strategy with the retailer’s input and then work backwards, partnering with others to supply the alcohol and design the labels to fit that particular strategy. As reflected in the company’s name, the idea is to take a 360-degree approach to the marketplace.
“It’s not just about pretty labels. We look at every aspect of a consumer’s needs and wants—beyond the demographics and scan data,” Ficeli explains. “We try to connect with very specific consumer groups in a meaningful, emotive way.”
As much as he enjoys working in the wine and spirits industry, Ficeli is quick to dispel the romantic notions most people might associate with it. “The business I know is not a walk through the vineyard. It’s a street fight,” he says. “I’m attracted to it because it brings creativity, analytics and strategy together with execution and gut feeling. You’ve got to make a lot of decisions with limited information—stuff you learn in business school.”
As for his own B-school experience, Ficeli acknowledges that he would not be enjoying his current success were it not for the support he has received from former classmates and professors. “I can honestly tell you,” he says, “outside of getting married and having a child, enrolling at Owen is the best decision I’ve ever made.”
The Internet essentially has enabled instant marketing,” says Mike Janes, MBA’94, CEO and Co-founder of FanSnap, a Web-based business that provides an optimized search through hundreds of ticket-purchasing options for sports, concerts and theater events. “Historically marketers would learn about customers through research. Now you can make changes and see instantly how customers react.”
After stints with FedEx, Apple and StubHub, Janes helped launch FanSnap in Palo Alto, Calif., in 2007. The company came about, he says, “because we saw an opportunity to improve the ticket-finding experience.” Janes is a firm believer that nothing is a substitute for the marketing value of a great product.
“One of the recurring things in my career is an incredible focus on getting the product right,” he says. “The best customer acquisition model you can have is an amazing product because satisfied customers will repeat and tell all their friends. Conversely, unhappy customers, who would traditionally tell seven of their friends, now can tell a million people through the Internet.”
His understanding of the customer comes from the fact that he is an admitted event junkie. “My experience and my passions intersect totally, which is part of what has made this so much fun,” he says. “We are our own biggest supporters. There’s no better way to assure quality than to eat your own dog food.”
The importance of combining marketing basics and adaptability in a time of revolutions in technology and presentation is something he learned from his Owen experience. He points to an address that former Dean Sam Richmond gave to incoming students. “He said, ‘The first thing I want to tell you is everything we teach you is going to be obsolete five years from now. It’s not about the specifics. We are here to teach you how to be efficient absorbers of experience,’ ” Janes recalls. “I’ll never forget that, and he was absolutely correct.”
Contributors
Brian Bellinger, Jim Bradford, Nelson Bryan (BA’73), Pamela Coyle, Ann Davis, Daniel Dubois, Jill Gabbe, Steve Green, Randy Horick, Sharon Horowitz, Jennifer Johnston, Yuri Mamchur, Jenny Mandeville, Jennifer Robinson, John Russell, Rob Simbeck, Brooke Smith, Marshall Turnbull, Larry Van Horn, Amy Wolf
Designer
Michael T. Smeltzer
Art Director
Donna Pritchett
Web Edition Design and Development
Lacy Tite
Executive Director of Marketing and Communications
Yvonne Martin-Kidd
Associate Dean of Development and Alumni Relations
Patricia M. Carswell
Editorial Offices: Vanderbilt University, Office of Development and Alumni Relations Communications, PMB 407703, 2301 Vanderbilt Place, Nashville, TN 37240-7703, Telephone: (615) 322-0817, Fax: (615) 343-8547, owenmagazine@vanderbilt.edu
Please direct alumni inquiries to: Office of Development and Alumni Relations, Owen Graduate School of Management, PMB 407754, 2301 Vanderbilt Place, Nashville, TN 37240-7754, Telephone: (615) 322-0815, alum@owen.vanderbilt.edu
Vanderbilt University is committed to principles of equal opportunity and affirmative action. Opinions expressed in Vanderbilt Business are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Owen School or Vanderbilt University.
Vanderbilt Business magazine is published twice a year by the Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt University, 401 21st Avenue South, Nashville, TN 37203-9932, in cooperation with the Vanderbilt Office of Development and Alumni Relations Communications.
I love my job as Dean, but I love my downtime, too. That’s when I dive into reading or jump on my bike sans BlackBerry; it is a time when I can be alone and think. Photography is one of my downtime passions as well. The camera forces me to see things I sometimes wouldn’t see. It helps me focus.
Some time ago my wife, Susan, and I were trekking through Zion National Park in Utah. It’s a beautiful, hilly place with spectacular red rock formations. I had injured my ankle climbing the day before, so while my wife was able to walk down into a deep canyon—which I desperately wanted to photograph—I was stuck waiting on the side of the road in what seemed to me a very uninteresting place. I thought my morning would be wasted.
I wasn’t too happy about my circumstance that morning, but I was determined to make the most of what appeared to be a bad situation and began to look around me. What was there for me to see? What new opportunity might I find? As I refocused my efforts, I found a perfect but unusual geological formation—one I had studied years ago in college. A long line separated two strata of rock that had once been joined; seismic pressures had caused a fault and created a beautiful formation. I began to photograph it and lost myself in the moment.
The fault line in Zion National Park
Years later I still have a photo from that day in my office. It reminds me of one of my favorite moments—a moment when I forgot about my expectations and looked at the world around me in a new way. It sparked a moment of creativity in me that was unexpected. A bad day turned into a memorable experience.
Likewise, in these uncertain and sometimes maddening times, the students and business leaders who learn to see the world in a different way, to view and embrace challenging times as times of opportunity and new perspective, are the ones who will find ways to thrive. The ability to adapt and reorder our thinking is hard to teach, but it’s something we can encourage and nurture. It is a lesson for us all, and I keep the photograph before me to remind myself of what opportunities are in front of us if we refocus and look at life through a different lens.
David Ingram, who is profiled in this issue, is a great example of a business leader who found a way through a difficult environment by diversifying his entertainment company with the addition of beer distributorships. He’s been an integral part of our Board of Visitors team, serving as chair since its inception. The real-world perspective and involvement of a leader such as David are critically important as we continue to develop and expand into new growth areas.
Alumni like David have been an integral part of our efforts to support our graduates as they make their way into a difficult world. As any business veteran knows, an economic downturn is just one of the many challenges that will come up in a career. How we adapt to those challenges shows a lot about character.
The truly successful students and alumni of Owen will continue to shape the world in good times and bad by their versatility and willingness to see things in a different way. They will look for opportunities to shift their focus and question their viewpoints, even in difficult times. That’s not something we can teach but something we hope to inspire by what we do and the innovative culture that is Owen’s hallmark.
James W. Bradford
Dean, Vanderbilt Owen Graduate School of Management
Ralph Owen Professor of Management
As much as the Owen School is known for preparing its graduates for business careers around the globe, it may come as a surprise just how many of them work within walking distance of Management Hall. Vanderbilt University employs about 100 Owen alumni in various capacities—from finance to hospital administration to development and alumni relations—and their efforts have helped cement the university’s reputation not only as a leading academic institution, but as a highly regarded employer, too. In 2009 Vanderbilt earned a top 20 ranking among national universities from U.S. News & World Report and became the first university ever to be named among the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For. The Owen alumni who work at Vanderbilt all have their own reasons for being there, as illustrated in the profiles that follow, but a common sentiment links them together: Whether newcomers or longtime veterans, they all say their Owen education gave them a better appreciation for the university’s mission and the tools to bring that mission to life.
Consuela Knox, MBA’04
Consuela Knox entered Owen after four years as an industrial engineer at a Delphi auto parts plant in Alabama. She had expected to stay within operations management and perhaps shift to another industry, but instead she remained at Owen, where she’s now Senior Associate Director and Diversity Recruiting Manager of MBA Admissions. She also manages her department’s hiring process.
At Delphi, Knox worked on cycle-time improve-ments and other efficiency measures, which gave her a glimpse into human resources since her ideas often resulted in job losses. At Owen, she took HR electives and discovered a strong passion for the field. Strategic Alignment of Human Capital was among her favorite courses, though Advanced Spreadsheets provided training she still uses almost every day.
Creative use of spreadsheets has helped Knox streamline how data on each Owen applicant is entered, imported and updated. The school receives about 1,000 applications for 180 spots each year. “When you think about an admissions process, it’s an operation,” she says. “You want to be able to get decisions faster.”
From September to November each year, Knox spends 50 percent of her time on the road, interviewing applicants to help build the next MBA class. Diversity is defined broadly—industry, geography, ethnicity, public/private/nonprofit, etc.—to foster a culture in which students can stretch and thrive. “I like helping people, and there is a lot of fulfillment in the job,” she says. “I like working for a highly regarded university. There is always something new—new people, new discoveries. There is a never-ending search for knowledge. I am privileged to be in constant interaction with smart people who challenge me to excel.”
Walt Woods, MMHealthCare’09
When Walt Woods came to Nashville 30 years ago, he was the Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s eighth Staff Pharmacist. At the time, the two university pharmacies existed in a single building, which also housed the hospital, clinics, and research and administration offices. Today the medical center has 90 pharmacists working in 13 pharmacies that support patient care through the hospital and regional clinic network.
Medicine has changed in those three decades, too. Woods has a unique vantage point: As Director of Ambulatory Pharmacy Operations, he works in outpatient pharmacy services, which include three retail pharmacies and drug use at all Vanderbilt clinics. Although more than half of his career at the university had been in management, Woods decided it would be worthwhile to enroll in the inaugural class of Owen’s one-year Master of Management in Health Care program. He graduated this past September.
“I’ve learned a lot by doing but didn’t have the formal training,” he says. “There have been some really good mentors here, but I needed more exposure to the disciplines of business and management.”
The program confirmed areas Woods knows well, identified situations where outside expertise makes sense, and gave him added confidence. He has since helped revamp how Vanderbilt University handles pharmacy benefits for its employees. “We spend more than $150 million a year just to pay for our employees’ health care,” he says. “We have a huge opportunity to fulfill our mission.”
His MM Health Care class of 25 students included six doctors, five nurses and folks in informatics, lab science, marketing and finance—an instant network of friends and expertise he can tap for just such a mission.
Bonnie Parker, EMBA’06
A recession, with its slipping stock market and effects on university endowments, is not an easy time to be a financial voice of the Provost’s Office, but Bonnie Parker tapped into her new training immediately.
“I think what I learned at Owen is not to panic when faced with seemingly overwhelming situations. With so much being thrown at you, it can be intense. You have to go with the flow and manage things,” she says. “One of the things our office tries to do is stay calm and always remain focused on the long-term vision of the university.”
Vanderbilt is weathering the financial storm better than many other big universities, and Parker’s job is to lead by example and keep focused on the university’s mission. As Financial Manager for Academic Affairs, she has fiscal oversight of Vanderbilt University Law School, Divinity School and Owen. The Executive MBA program improved Parker’s ability to absorb information, quickly parse it and get to the points that matter—a crucial skill, whether in the corporate world or academia.
The Vanderbilt environment suits Parker well. She has been at the university since 2002, after almost a decade in the private sector, and is now working toward a master of liberal arts and science at Vanderbilt. “Business is all about the bottom line, but Vanderbilt is about so much more,” she says. “It has balance. … It feels more holistic, not dog-eat-dog corporate.”
Betty Price, EMBA’90
If Betty Price does her job effectively, few people inside or outside Vanderbilt take notice. She says that’s the way it should be. As Deputy Vice Chancellor for Finance and Controller, Price is a key strategic component in the massive enterprise that is Vanderbilt, but she and her team are backstage players. “You could say that we are some of Vanderbilt’s most enthusiastic and dedicated anonymous supporters,” she says.
Much transpires backstage, and a down economy only multiplies the challenges. Price is the go-to person for Vice Chancellor for Finance and Chief Financial Officer Brett Sweet; she oversees the Offices of Financial Affairs, Financial Information Systems, and Procurement and Disbursement Services. Management of Vanderbilt’s $1.2 billion debt portfolio and $600 million working capital portfolio is part of her job, too.
When Price arrived at Vanderbilt as Associate Controller in 1986, her strength was financial reporting. Earlier, at KPMG, she was an audit manager for Vanderbilt, stationed in Kirkland Hall’s then dark, moldy basement, where she recalls working “with calculators at card tables that wobbled.”
The Executive MBA program gave her the bigger picture she’d been missing. “I had a narrow focus in the world of public accounting, and I knew I needed to broaden my awareness of basic leadership principles, marketing and operations,” she says.
Returning to school renewed Price’s appreciation of stresses students face and the importance of faculty sabbaticals. She received world-class training in strategic planning, organizational effectiveness and working toward shared goals. “There is no doubt,” she says, “I became a better boss, a better leader after going through the Owen School.”
Picture this: A man, wearing aviator sunglasses and a pilot headset, is behind the controls of a single-engine prop plane flying just below the clouds in the East African country of Uganda. Only an occasional muddy river or dirt road punctuates the thickly wooded countryside unfurling beneath him. And in the passenger seat next to him are duffel bags full of money—thousands of dollars in Ugandan currency that an untold number of bandits would like to get their hands on.
While this may read like a scene out of a Hollywood script, the circumstances were, in fact, very real. The man in the cockpit was Dan Proctor, MBA’83, who was making a cash run for an air charter business he is in discussions with in Uganda. The money he was transporting was payroll for employees at isolated tea farms scattered throughout the country.
Despite the potential dangers involved with such a business, Proctor has embraced the adventure of it. He may not be a thrill seeker in the conventional sense, but he is an entrepreneur. And some might argue that takes just as much courage as any movie hero can muster—especially in the wilds of Africa.
Proctor earned his pilot’s license last year in anticipation of starting an air charter business in Uganda.
Technological Breakthrough
As a student at the Owen School in the early ’80s, Proctor probably wouldn’t have been mistaken for the person described above; at the time he was neither a pilot nor a seasoned traveler to Africa. Yet one trait had already taken root in his life: He had come to Vanderbilt with a taste for entrepreneurship.
When the first generation of microcomputers hit the market in the 1970s, Proctor became fascinated with their potential. He studied software engineering in college and soon found an opportunity to apply his newfound skills at his father’s medical practice. Like many physicians, his father struggled to keep up with the process of billing patients. To Proctor, software seemed like a natural solution.
“I wrote software to do the billing and then started selling it to other doctors,” he says. “Eventually I got interested in the communications side of health care and started handling claims over the phone. That’s when I got the itch to do a startup.”
But before taking that next step, Proctor decided to enroll at Owen and round out his education with an MBA. He admits having some ambivalence about the decision to return to school since he was already having success writing software. The experience at Vanderbilt, however, proved invaluable.
“Owen gave me the tools to look at problems differently,” he says. “The school took me beyond my perspective as an engineer and made me think about building sustainable business models. In other words, I learned to consider not only what people need, but also what they’re willing to pay for.”
Armed with that knowledge, Proctor continued selling his billing software to health care providers over the next few years, all the while looking for the next big opportunity. In the mid-’90s that opportunity came with the advent of the Internet. It was the technological breakthrough he’d been waiting for.
“The Internet removed all of the communication barriers in health care that I dealt with. Everybody could use the same medium. Now it’s taken for granted, but that was a big concept at the time,” he says.
Proctor leaned on his Vanderbilt degree to raise the funding for the startup he envisioned. Not only did Owen’s alumni network prove useful, but the reputation of the school itself opened doors that might have been closed otherwise. “Having the credibility of having been at Owen was very helpful to me in terms of approaching venture capitalists and angel investors,” he says. “They knew I’d been through a rigorous program, and that gave them confidence.”
With the backing of investors, Proctor founded Passport Health Communications Inc., a health care information technology and services company, in Franklin, Tenn., in 1996. The company, which originally built websites for health care providers, eventually found its niche selling administrative, clinical and financial tools to help those providers determine eligibility and get paid faster. As Chief Technology Officer, Proctor oversaw remarkable growth in the number of transactions Passport processed annually: from 92 in 1997 to approximately 130 million a decade later.
With this growth came interest from potential buyers. In 2008 Proctor and his partners agreed to sell Passport to a private equity firm for a nice sum. While many in his shoes would have taken the opportunity to retire to a quieter, more comfortable life, Proctor had no desire to slow down. And yet he didn’t want to continue working within the familiar confines of the health care industry either. He had bigger plans afoot—a second, altogether different career on the other side of the world.
Taking Flight
Africa has had a hold on Proctor ever since he first visited the continent in 1998. That initial trip was to Kenya, a place where his father had done missionary work. Uganda didn’t enter the picture until a few years later, when Proctor’s brother, a missionary himself, settled there. After traveling to visit him, Proctor was hooked.
“Uganda has a lot going for it. It’s a beautiful country,” he says. “And it’s fertile. It’s probably one of the most fertile countries in the world.”
While Proctor is talking about the land itself, he could just as easily be describing its people. He says a general spirit of entrepreneurship pervades the country. “The people are very resourceful there,” he explains. “Entrepreneurs identify unmet needs and then find a product or service to fill them. And if you look at Uganda, there are plenty of unmet needs.”
Many of those needs stem from the political turmoil that has afflicted the country in recent decades. Mention Uganda to most Americans, and the first thing that comes to mind is Idi Amin and his ruthless dictatorship of the 1970s. Yet, as Proctor points out, the country has rebuilt considerably since then, and the government is on much more stable footing now. Under current President Yoweri Museveni, there has been an effort to restore the rights that Amin revoked. Uganda is, in many ways, one of the true success stories of Africa.
Proctor is hard pressed to say anything negative about the country that he and his wife, Dee Anne, someday plan to call home for six months out of the year. Yes, he admits, there’s corruption in Uganda. And yes, there’s risk, too. However, he says, “When you get into areas where there’s some risk, that’s usually where the opportunities are.”
In fact the main thing that gave Proctor pause about moving to Uganda is the same thing that gave him a reason to stay: the poor roadway system. Most of the roads are unpaved, he says, and some are treacherous—not only because of the difficult terrain but also because of the likelihood of encountering bandits along isolated stretches. “It’s very unpleasant to drive on the roads,” he says. “I was concerned that, when I brought my wife over for the first time, she was going to like everything except the roads.”
While pondering different business ideas that might work in Uganda, it occurred to him that there was an unmet need for the safe transportation of goods, such as cash, which is by far the payment method of choice there. Why not bypass the roads altogether, he thought, and just fly over them instead? Starting an air charter business seemed like a simple enough solution. The only problem was he didn’t know how to fly a plane.
Not to be deterred, Proctor began taking flying lessons back in Nashville and earned his pilot’s license soon thereafter. The experience confirmed for him that he had chosen the right business concept. “I had no idea flying would be so much fun,” he says. “It’s beautiful being up there in the sky.” Meanwhile Proctor also began research into the aviation industry in Uganda and the requirements to live and work there. The business concept, as it has since taken shape, will provide safe transport for people, including tourists visiting the country, and cargo, like the payroll he delivered on that cash run.
In the case of the latter, the irony is not lost on Proctor that he’s now exploring, in some sense, what he used to specialize in at Passport: helping people get paid faster. Only this time around, the process is not nearly so technical, nor quite as fast. Unlike an instantaneous transaction over the Internet, each delivery by plane requires more effort and personal attention. And that’s perhaps why it’s all the more gratifying for him. As in his earlier days, Proctor is still stretching his entrepreneurial skills and filling unmet needs, but now he gets to see firsthand how he is making a difference.
“Time spent in Uganda is rewarding because I’m helping make people’s lives easier,” he says. “That’s what I enjoy about it the most.”
Durégo Lewis (second from right) with team members Lee Austin, Lyn Wilson, Robin English and Sara McKissick
Being part of a team is second nature to Durégo Lewis. Whether playing football for Vanderbilt in the mid-’90s or collaborating with classmates in the Executive MBA program a decade later, he has had plenty of opportunities to work with others toward a common goal. Yet nothing has crystallized the importance of those earlier experiences quite like his current endeavor: launching DURÉGO™, a business that is an events facility and a future showroom for exotic cars and other luxury goods.
“By myself there’s no way that I would be sitting here. This company is the result of being around smart people,” he says. “I’m only as good as the people on my team.”
That team includes a couple of names familiar to the Owen community—Associate Dean of Executive Education Tami Fassinger and Dr. Jim Jirjis, EMBA’06, Assistant Professor of Medicine at Vanderbilt. Both serve on the company’s advisory board. Lewis credits them and his other associates with helping him hone his business concept.
“This company looks nothing like what I thought it’d be, and I’m proud of that. They poked holes in that original business plan—pointing out all the things that could make it weak,” he says.
Earlier this year Lewis opened the doors to his 8,400-square-foot events facility in Brentwood, Tenn. Aside from hosting wedding receptions and corporate gatherings, the space will serve, he hopes, as a “mouthpiece for what’s coming two-doors down”—the yet-to-be-opened showroom specializing in exotic cars, including Ferraris, Lamborghinis and Bentleys, exquisite jewelry and hard-to-find luxury handbags.
Among the advantages of selling multiple brands, Lewis explains, is that his company can offer a more robust product selection. “Think of it like a hand,” he says. “Each finger—or brand—is fragile by itself, but when you put them together as a fist, they’re strong.”
While Lewis may be referring to a specific business model, perhaps there’s no better analogy for the team he’s assembled at DURÉGO. Together they’re stronger than he would have been had he decided to go it alone.
Health care is one of the few bright spots in an otherwise dismal job picture for B-school grads, and reform has the potential to make it brighter still. Part of the reason health care attracts MBAs is that it’s such a mess. The impetus for health care reform in the first place was high-cost, ineffective treatments, and millions of uninsured Americans. Jeff Freude, a second-year student in the Health Care MBA program at the Owen School, believes an aging population requiring more care, a financially challenged Medicare system, and ever-rising costs make health care one of the greatest challenges facing the American people.
BusinessWeek, Feb. 8, 2010
Corporate antagonism goes public
Companies facing difficult negotiations are now taking the backroom debates into the public eye, using advertising and other publicity to generate pressure. “Customarily these kinds of decisions are business decisions that we can make rationally,” says David Owens, Clinical Professor of Management. But the narrative businesses are using now “evokes an emotional response,” he says. “It makes business a drama.”
The New York Times, Jan. 25, 2010
Custom education bridges gaps
When Cisco Systems wanted to ramp up its health care sales, the company’s account managers needed a crash course in medicine to explain and answer questions about the new products. The company opted to train its managers through a customized education program from the Owen School. The focus on such customized programs has boosted revenue for Owen: Its custom programs earned the school 20 percent more in 2009 than in 2008. In addition to the sort of training Cisco asked for, clients are also attending the school to learn how to cope with competition or grab market share at a time when many of their competitors are facing challenges, says Dean Jim Bradford.
The Wall Street Journal, Jan. 21, 2010
Blemishes on the application
BusinessWeek’s “Getting In” blog reports that some mistakes and indiscretions do not necessarily ruin an applicant’s chances of getting into a top business school. While the background checks business schools implement usually verify only the accuracy of what you have shared with the school, corporate recruiters might delve deeper. Do a Google search of your name and be aware of any personal information that is on the Internet, suggests John Roeder, Director of MBA Admissions. It takes seconds to search someone’s name online, and anyone from a business school to a potential employer might do it.
BusinessWeek, Jan. 12, 2010
Doctors seek B-school aid
Physicians, nurses, private practice managers and hospital administrators are turning to business education for ways to analyze the slew of data now accessible to them, with the hope of improving the quality of care and lowering costs. The health care program at the Vanderbilt Owen Graduate School of Management is mentioned.
The Wall Street Journal, Dec. 17, 2009
Bolts from the blue
Social entrepreneurs have used the Internet to help artisans from remote regions earn a living wage selling their wares all over the world. Jim Schorr, Clinical Professor of Management, is involved with one such project, called Mekong Blue, which supports silk weavers in Cambodia. His students will help draw up a marketing plan for Mekong Blue next semester as a class project. Schorr says similar online stores like eBay’s World of Good have had success appealing to consumers.
Would you rather be drinking bourbon? And when you think of bourbon, does Kentucky come to mind? The Louisville Convention & Visitors Bureau hopes the answer to both of these questions is a resounding yes. But in case that association between bourbon whiskey and its hometown of Louisville, Ky., is not so immediate, the bureau aims to convince you with its branding effort, called Bourbon Country. The idea is to position the city in the hearts and minds of travelers and tourists the world over as the destination for food, fun and, of course, bourbon whiskey.
Brands are absolutely everywhere, populating the spaces all around us, even sometimes permeating our very being. From Apple to Samsung, Amazon to Yahoo, Titleist to TaylorMade, even Obama to Palin, brands are the bundle of constructs and promises that consumers expect to receive from a product or service. In Bourbon Country that happens to be a barrelful of smooth, mellow promises.
Branding is the fascinating art and science of creating and shaping associations and perceptions. When executed properly, it’s an incredibly powerful tool, and artfully wielding that tool is de rigueur for the new generation of marketers emerging from the Owen School.
Enter “BrandWeek Louisville 2009,” a weeklong immersion program held last October to provide Owen marketing and brand management students with rare access to three of America’s largest and most successful companies—Brown-Forman, General Electric and Humana Inc. Orchestrated by Owen’s Executive Director of Marketing and Communications Yvonne Martin-Kidd, along with Marketing Operations Manager Ann Davis and John Hamilton, Associate Director of the Career Management Center, BrandWeek offered us a practitioner’s perspective on the challenges facing marketers in three very different industries.
The adventure began in a very familiar setting: a classroom at Owen. Our facilitator for the week was Jack Kennard, Principal of WhiteOaks Consulting and former Senior Vice President of Global Marketing Services at Brown-Forman. He provided a thorough overview of Brown-Forman’s history and global growth, including the rise of its flagship brand, Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey. Kennard spent the better part of his 27 years at Brown-Forman growing Jack Daniel’s into one of the most recognized brands in the world. His unique insights into the spirits industry gave us a better understanding of what it takes to gain traction and maintain relevance in today’s crowded marketing landscape.
Branding is the fascinating art and science of creating and shaping associations and perceptions. When executed properly, it’s an incredibly powerful tool.
The next day we left Nashville and headed north on Interstate 65 to Brown-Forman’s headquarters, where we were treated to lunch in the posh Bourbon Street Café. (Perhaps you’re noticing a theme here?) Following a delicious meal, Chief Operating Officer Mark McCallum led a discussion about the company’s global branding efforts and the intricacies of managing the growth of their more than 30 wine and spirits brands, which include the aforementioned Jack Daniel’s, as well as Chambord Liqueur, Finlandia Vodka, Herradura Tequila and Sonoma-Cutrer Wine. This session afforded Owen students the opportunity to interact with an impressive group of marketing and human resources executives. They answered even our toughest questions with aplomb, leaving us with little doubt as to why Brown-Forman remains an industry leader after more than 139 years in business.
Our branding discussion gave way to a tour of the Brown-Forman design center, led by Eric Donninger, VP, Global Brand Director of Design, and then into a discussion about corporate social responsibility, a topic of particular concern for one of the world’s largest wine and spirits producers. Later that evening we broke into smaller groups and enjoyed some of Brown-Forman’s fine products with the brand managers themselves, talking shop over hors d’oeuvres and cocktails at some of Louisville’s hot spots.
Even our accommodations at the 21C Museum Hotel in downtown Louisville were an exercise in brand excellence. Recently named by Condé Nast Traveler magazine as the highest-ranking American property on its 2010 Gold List of the world’s best places to stay, the 21C is nothing if not unique—part boutique hotel and part contemporary art museum. It’s definitely the place to stay and play in Louisville.
Brian Bellinger
The next morning began with a coach ride to General Electric’s Monogram Experience Center, where the staff of in-house chefs prepared a wonderful spread of breakfast foods, all produced in the center’s demonstration kitchen. The Monogram Experience Center is a veritable kitchen stadium, albeit one designed for product demonstrations rather than Iron Chef competitions. The center plays host to GE’s training efforts to educate appliance sales professionals about the features, benefits and proper use of the company’s professional-grade Monogram kitchen appliances.
A team of marketers and engineers from GE’s Consumer and Industrial division then joined our group for a discussion centered on the marketing of innovative products. Specifically we talked about the challenges that accompany the introduction of an entirely new, and rather exciting, product in a category most consumers take for granted every day: water heaters. That’s right, I mentioned “exciting” and “water heaters” in the same sentence because the new product in question is GE’s industry-exclusive hybrid electric water heater. (Now you can have two hybrids in your garage!) The hybrid provides the same hot water to which we have grown so accustomed, but it uses a pump to draw heat from the ambient air and transfers it into the water. It, therefore, requires only about half the energy of a traditional water heater. Sounds like a win-win, right? So where’s the challenge? Although it’s certainly cleaner and greener than its competitors, the hybrid is a costlier alternative that requires a certain level of awareness and understanding—no small feat in a product category that hasn’t changed much in several decades. However, given the qualifications and experience of GE’s team, we were left convinced that hybrids are the future—at least for water heaters.
The next stop was the towering, marble-lined headquarters of Humana in downtown Louisville. Founded in 1961, Humana has grown to become one of the nation’s largest publicly traded health-benefits companies. Walking through the expansive halls from the cafeteria to the conference room, I couldn’t help but notice that pedometers nearly outnumbered BlackBerrys—a reassuring sign that Humana’s employees do indeed take their business seriously on a number of levels.
And as you might expect from a company in the business of health and well-being, Humana’s corporate cafeteria has a decidedly healthy-eating theme to it. But that’s not to say that pizza, burgers and fries are nowhere to be found. Instead, the cafeteria employs a pricing scheme to encourage healthier eating decisions, whereby, for instance, balsamic grilled salmon with steamed veggies and brown rice is actually priced lower than the aforementioned burger and fries combo. I found the application of the carrot-versus-stick paradigm to be fitting in the cafeteria context; schools, universities and other corporations would do well to emulate Humana’s system.
Humana’s Corporate Manager for Consumer Marketing William Hambleton facilitated the afternoon’s discussion, which featured presentations on no fewer than 10 different areas of the company’s marketing and branding efforts. It was a fascinating afternoon which explored nearly every possible facet of the marketing function, from messaging, social media and sponsorships, to B2B engagement, market research and sustainability. What I found most interesting, however, was Humana’s brand architecture plan for developing and sustaining their health care brand. The company faces the challenging task of aligning around two dozen differently branded initiatives—some grown from within and others acquired—with the Humana superbrand.
Before heading home to Nashville, we made one last stop at The Green Building in NuLu, Louisville’s arts district. Slated to become the first commercial building in Louisville to attain the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED Platinum certification, The Green Building hosted our group for a presentation on the branding of Louisville by Brett Jeffreys of Red7e, the firm responsible for implementing the Bourbon Country initiative. Later that morning a panel presentation on the art of client/agency relationships rounded out the week. Facilitated by Martin-Kidd, the panel featured Ann Stickler, Vice President and Group Director for Developing Brands at Brown-Forman; Paul Klein, General Manager of Brand and Advertising at GE; and Toni Clem, President of Louisville-based advertising and marketing firm Creative Alliance.
On the ride home, and in the intervening months, I’ve reflected quite frequently on my experiences from BrandWeek. I’ve set new goals and pushed myself to look at my coursework in different ways, always seeking a new angle of approach. BrandWeek served to reinforce the vital importance and value of creating meaningful—even profound—brand associations with consumers. The three companies we visited in Louisville offered excellent examples of how to build and maintain powerful brands while dealing with the unique challenges of their specific industries and customer targets.
So remember, the next time you find yourself with a lesser beverage in hand, you could be drinking bourbon. And when you think bourbon, think Kentucky.
Several years ago I had the privilege of working for David Ingram at Ingram Entertainment. During my time there I held different positions in a couple of departments, but one responsibility followed me wherever I went: Every fall I assisted David and his executive team in writing the company’s strategic plan. It’s fair to say that David took a chance when he hired me; I knew very little about business, much less strategic planning, at the time. Fortunately, though, David felt confident in my writing abilities because we’d both attended the same prep school in Nashville.
In fact, were it not for an English teacher whose class we’d both taken many years earlier, I probably wouldn’t have been hired—nor would I be where I am today.
If that sounds like an exaggeration, then you never knew June Bowen. For nearly 25 years she taught English at Montgomery Bell Academy and helped an untold number of students become better writers. David counts himself among those whose lives she transformed, and so do I. What set Mrs. Bowen apart was her exacting approach to the fundamentals of grammar. If memory serves, my first day in her classroom was devoted to learning, or should I say relearning, what a noun is, which my classmates and I dutifully copied down in our so-called “rule books.”
Over the ensuing weeks, those rule books filled up quickly as we put the basics into practice diagramming sentences. For those unfamiliar with diagramming, it involves breaking a sentence into its components—subject, predicate, clauses, etc.—and then drawing a representation of how they are connected to one another. For example, if I diagrammed this sentence, it would look like the illustration above. The point of the exercise is to get a better understanding of language by visualizing how the pieces fit together.
At Ingram Entertainment I got a similar lesson in fundamentals, only it was in business, not grammar. Working on the strategic plan gave me a bigger picture of the company and helped me see how its individual departments related to one another. In the process I came to realize that a well-run business is not all that different from a well-written sentence: Each is carefully structured and efficient, consisting of only what’s necessary to get the job done.
Of course my time at Ingram Entertainment was nothing compared to a formal B-school education. Yet, had I not had that experience, I wouldn’t be nearly as confident covering the Owen School in the pages of this magazine. I still lean on the knowledge I learned from working on the strategic plan, just as I still lean on the knowledge from my school days. And in some sense my approach as editor is a continuation of those previous lessons. When working on a story, I always take a step back, look for connections between the individual pieces, and fill in the blanks—much as I did all those years ago at Mrs. Bowen’s chalkboard.
What sets Owen’s Leadership Development Program apart from similar programs at other business schools?
Ours is different in that it mirrors best-in-class, high-potential programs at Fortune 100 companies. We’ve built a rigorous, highly individualized program that helps identify and grow each student’s unique leadership potential. Development planning is a key piece of the MBA experience at Owen, and we provide the resources to help students strengthen their areas of need or interest. For example, thanks to an exclusive partnership with Hogan Assessment Systems, each student completes the Leadership Forecast Series, an assessment tool used by 50 percent of Fortune 500 companies to help individuals fully understand their own unique performance capabilities, challenges and drivers. The result is that our students have the opportunity to get a head start with staying power. The development they’re receiving now is typically reserved for top-level executives in the later stages of their careers.
How has the recently announced partnership with Korn/Ferry International impacted the program?
The partnership, which is the first of its kind between a graduate business school and the top talent management firm, allows us to take advantage of Korn/Ferry’s 20-plus years of research regarding the competencies that make or break leaders. Based on this research, Owen has built a model that focuses on 15 competencies that give our students a competitive advantage. We are also able to leverage the Korn/Ferry relationship to provide students the tools they need. We believe that successful leaders must be able to do three things: create the new and different, figure out how to get it done, and engage others to help get it done. This requires that they have proficiency in three different skill areas: strategic, operating, and personal and interpersonal.
What opportunities exist for alumni who want to get involved with the program?
There are always opportunities for alumni to get involved with the program. Some alumni have already participated as guest speakers, industry experts, design partners and panelists. We are also happy to be a resource to our alumni. For example we have built a network of executive coaches who work with our students and corporate clients. If you are in the market for a coach yourself, or your business is exploring coaching as a development tool, we can help! Whether you want to learn more, be more involved, or take advantage of Owen as a resource, don’t hesitate to contact us. We’re passionate about what we do and are always happy to answer questions or talk more about leadership development at Owen.
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.
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.
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.
In this first in a series of conversations about leadership, Dean Jim Bradford chatted with Chad Holliday Jr., the newly appointed Chairman of Bank of America and Executive in Residence at the Owen School. Holliday is the former Chair of the Board of DuPont, the Chairman of the U.S. Council on Competitiveness and a founding member of the International Business Council. He is also the co-author of Walking the Talk, a book that details the business case for sustainable development and corporate responsibility.
Jim Bradford and Chad Holliday
JB: You have an engineering background and took an early job right out of school with DuPont.
Talk about that job. What was it?
CH: I started here in Nashville as an engineer in a plant. My job was to make that part of the plant more efficient and effective. We were making Dacron. I had no intent to stay with DuPont for a long time or any big company because I thought it would be constraining. My best friend and I had a deal. I was going to work for DuPont for five years, and he was going to work for GE for five years, and then we were going to come back and start this company that we had as a project. I failed on my end.
JB: Did he stay with GE?
CH: No, he started the company. It worked. He did really well.
JB: Talk about your initial aspirations. Did you have some idea of what you wanted to do at DuPont? Was there a specific reason that you went there?
CH: Not really. My aspirations were nothing close to what I was lucky enough to achieve. I saw the guy who was the head of my engineering group. He was this stately guy who had a nice office with a couch. I thought if I could get that before I retired, that would be great. I think it’s pretty hard to know what your aspirations are starting out. It’s just a matter of learning from every job.
JB: Do you remember your first promotion at DuPont?
CH: No, but I remember I’d been working there three months, and they brought us all into a conference room. There were probably 40 of us. They announced that they were going to shut down a big part of the plant and 100 exempt people were going to lose their jobs. I thought, “Hmm, I’m the shortest-service exempt person on this site, so this is probably not good news.” I remember I went to my supervisor and asked, “Does this mean I need to find a new job?” He said, “I don’t think so.” I said, “I can’t deal with ‘I don’t think so,’ ” but it all worked out.
JB: What was your first job managing people?
CH: After being an engineer for about two years, I became a front-line supervisor in a chemical plant running 24/7. I think that was probably the most valuable experience of my life. Even today I think back to the three years I was on shifts managing people and to the real-world experiences they were dealing with. I learned a lot from them.
People can do so much more than they’re challenged to do by their job description.
—Chad Holliday
JB: What are some of the things you learned?
CH: People can do so much more than they’re challenged to do by their job description. We often would promote from within, and as a front-line supervisor, I had three people who, I felt, were capable of being promoted. I actually assigned each one of them a book to read and let them report on it, which was a bit unusual. I also would give them different jobs. All three didn’t become supervisors, but they made major progressions. And I found it made a big difference using them to help me with the rest of the team. For example, we decided we would publish a newsletter every night for our employees. Our newsletters were pretty popular. All of those things were, I’m sure, nowhere in the DuPont playbook.
JB: Was there a DuPont playbook? Was there something that told you how to perform this job or manage people?
CH: There was a two-week training course for front-line supervisors that told us all the basic stuff. I’ll never forget that I took the course when professional unions were becoming popular on the West Coast. Afterward we were asked, “What questions do you have?” And I said, “What are you doing to make sure we don’t have a professional union here at DuPont?” It was just an honest question. Well, that was not a good question to ask. Throughout the rest of the day, I was talking to higher and higher levels of management about why I wanted to start a union for engineers. I learned you have to pick your questions carefully.
JB: What did you learn about your management style as you went through this early stage of your career?
CH: I think it’s important to rely on others and reinforce them. There’s no limit to what you can do if you don’t care who gets the credit. It really is a team environment. And then there’s the very simple act of telling people you appreciate what they did. So many times we forget to say thank you. Those are very simple things, but we tend to focus on the money instead.
JB: So how do you motivate people? If it’s not about the money, what are the carrots and sticks you use?
CH: I think people stay with an organization because they’re getting development and they like the people they work with. When DuPont moved into Singapore, we found we could not differentiate any of our benefit plans. The government wouldn’t let us do it. At first we thought it was terrible. Then we looked at it more closely and realized it just meant we had to provide a great place to work: Our supervisors had to be very good, and we had to provide better development than the next company. It’s critical that employees grow and develop and that they be treated as a professional part of the organization no matter what their job is. Another good example is when I was at a plant in Charleston, S.C. It was the first big manufacturing role I had—maybe 1,000 people. The plant manager said, “I’ll come see you once a week. I only want to talk about the development of the front-line people. We’ll talk about that for an hour, and that’s the only time I want to see you.” I heard that and thought, “Yeah, that’s until the first thing goes wrong.” Well, I was there for three years, and those were the only times I ever saw him one-on-one. We would meet every week. We would sit there with the front-line supervisor talking about how we’re going to motivate Joe or Mary. We’d ask, “Are they a good team player? What do they need to be a success?” It’s amazing when you focus on those details. When measured against all these performance parameters, we beat our competition. I really think there’s something to it.
JB: You mentioned Singapore. When did you first take an international assignment, and how did that come about?
CH: It was in the mid-’80s.
JB: You’d been with the company for how long?
CH: I’d been there 15 years. They started talking about the need for an international assignment. I thought it was going to be Geneva, Switzerland. I told my oldest son, “You need to take French because we’re going to Geneva.” When I came home and said, “We’re going to Japan,” the first thing he said was, “Can I drop this French class?” Going to Asia was a big shock, but taking an international assignment was something that my wife and I wanted to do. I think it was really good for the family.
JB: Did you volunteer for that, or did somebody pick you? Did you let it be known that you would take that kind of assignment?
CH: Yes, I let it be known, but I think people probably see those things as a lot more formal and organized than they really are. I was shocked at first when I learned it would be Japan, but I had this rationale as to why they picked me. I’d been to Japan several times, negotiated a couple of joint ventures and built a plant there. I thought, “Oh, that’s pretty logical now that I look at it.” But the people who interviewed me for the job didn’t even know that I’d done those things. It was not as organized as you might think. Sometimes you just have to take the opportunity that comes up.
JB: What was your role in Japan?
CH: I was President for DuPont Asia Pacific, so I was responsible for 14 countries.
JB: Did doing business in a different locale change your perspective in any way?
CH: I found out very quickly that people back at corporate headquarters couldn’t help very much because they really didn’t know the issues I was dealing with, and also they were 7,000 miles away in a different time zone. I had to make some tough decisions on my own, so I grew very fast. Also I found that when I couldn’t speak the language in any of the countries I was living in, including Australia—I couldn’t speak the language there either—I really had to rely on the people around me. The key to the whole thing is developing people and giving them confidence, as opposed to trying to make the call yourself.
Audience: I used to work for a large company. When I interviewed for the job, they assessed me to determine how far I would go in the company. What do you think of assessing the potential of employees so early in the process?
CH: I would never do something like that. I don’t see how you can make that assessment in the first meeting unless maybe by using stereotypes. We don’t do that at DuPont. As employees gain experience and their drive and desire starts to come out, we eventually offer them development and other programs that signal they can go higher if they keep working. I think labels, though, especially early on, can be detrimental. If you get a good label, you may think you can take it easy and get there, and you won’t. Or alternatively you may decide that you can’t reach that ambition.
Audience: As you move into a new position as a leader, how do you go about either informally or formally assessing the team that you’re given? How do you decide who is a good fit?
If you think that someone has a developmental need, sit down and tell that person—not in a formal way, but in an informal setting. You’re trying to help that person win.
CH: Go talk to the people who do the real work in the organization, be it financial or whatever, and they’ll know. They’ll tell you pretty quickly. Just go out in a very informal way and listen to them, and that will give you a great assessment. You can do it in about three or four weeks. And then the biggest thing is, if you think that someone has a developmental need, sit down and tell that person—not in a formal way, but in an informal setting. You’re trying to help that person win. I generally start with the assumption that everybody on the team is going to be a winner.
JB: You’ve talked about assessing others, but leaders have to make an assessment of themselves as well. What have you found that you’re good at and not so good at?
CH: I think we all have certain biases. For example, I’m a natural planner. If a crisis were to come up right now, my mind would want to find a solution that would keep us from sinking. Once I find that solution, I constantly want to improve it. I have to know when to back off my desire to make something better. Another example is that, in making decisions, I really don’t care whether it’s, say, 29.2 or 29.4. Most decisions I make are “yes or no” ones: Are we going to do it, or not? At DuPont I hired a chief operating officer who cared a lot about 29.2 or 29.4, and he would force me back in that direction. You should surround yourself with people who understand your biases because in that two-tenths of a percent there might be something pretty important that you miss.
In making decisions I don’t care whether it’s, say, 29.2 or 29.4. But I surround myself with people who understand my biases because in that two-tenths there might be something important that I miss.
JB: Are there others in your life who’ve helped you understand your biases? Maybe your wife? Has she been a good confidante?
CH: I think it’s important to keep your spouse or a close friend up to speed on what you’re doing. It’s also important to get feedback from them.
JB: Some people don’t share that information with their spouses or anyone else. Do leaders need someone close to them who can say what they really think?
CH: You don’t want to put too much of a load on your spouse because he or she might not have the tools to solve those problems. But I do think it’s important to have colleagues to turn to. I’ll often call colleagues at DuPont, who may or may not be direct reports, and say, “I’m dealing with this. What do you think?” I never make a critical decision without running it by people who know me well and who will tell me what they really think.
JB: One problem that many CEOs have is getting their direct reports to talk frankly with them. How have you overcome this problem?
CH: I think everybody has that problem. It has a lot to do with whether or not that person is bringing good news. When I was a plant manager in Delaware, I used to walk around the plant early in the morning. One time I came upon a machine that was on fire. It was blazing up about three feet. Fortunately it was handled safely, and the fire brigade put it out. Later at our morning meeting, the person responsible for that area said, “We had a puff of smoke last night.” I said, “In addition to the fire?” After that, word got around, and everybody told it straight. It turned out that the people reporting to him had not told him there was a blaze under that puff of smoke. In a situation like that you can’t tear somebody apart because they don’t know all the details. You have to allow the person enough time to solve the problem. You don’t want to jump in and take it away from them.
Audience: You mentioned teams and developing people. Are there two or three key differentiators—whether it’s personal characteristics or ways in which you approach your work—that have made you as successful as you are?
CH: One is don’t brag on yourself. You let other people do that if they want to. Also don’t care who gets the credit because, if you don’t care, you can get a lot of things done that way. And as I was saying earlier, you’ve got to say thank you for specific reasons: “This is exactly what you did that made a big difference.” I think public recognition is very important. It’s one thing to do it one-on-one, but if you do it in front of everybody else, that means that you’re going on the line and saying, “I really do think that’s good.” When I was in Japan, somebody came to me and said that the administrative assistant I’d been working with was really mad at me. I asked why, and he said that it was because she had a problem and was feeling bad and I hadn’t acknowledged it. I said that she hadn’t told me about the problem, but his response was that I should have been able to recognize it by her demeanor. It was a very serious point, and in retrospect, I should have seen it. She didn’t say a word, but I should have been able to see that change in behavior. I really learned from that. Every time I see a change of behavior in somebody, I always try to flag it to make sure that they’re OK, and people seem to appreciate that.
The key to the whole thing is developing people and giving them confidence, as opposed to trying to make the call yourself.
—Chad Holliday
JB: How have you found a personal balance in your life?
CH: Most jobs I’ve had are so demanding. You could work 18 hours a day, seven days a week. I think it’s important to have other things, be it family or other interests, to balance things out. The same goes for getting enough exercise and sleep. Those may sound silly, but I find that they’re critical.
Audience: In my five years of working, I’ve always tried to identify role models and learn from their management skills. What are your views on mentoring?
CH: Every time we’ve started a formal mentoring process at DuPont, it’s had minimal results. So it’s much better to create the environment where people are encouraged to seek out others and to help when sought out. In every role I’ve ever had I’ve always looked to people who were willing to help me. I think a lot is in your attitude. If you have the right attitude and it looks like you want help, people will give it to you. If you act like you’re smarter than the next guy, they may not be there for you. When I became CEO, I contacted three other CEOs from outside the company and asked for their advice. They all were happy to do it. I picked people who were very good but who had different styles from mine. I didn’t want to simply reinforce what I had, but to actually learn from them.
To watch the interview with Chad Holliday in its entirety, please click here.
From Peru to Turkey to India, Owen alumni around the world supported the Admissions team’s efforts at more than 80 B-school fairs this past fall. These alumni have played an important role in rallying support from other Owen graduates, relaying market-specific information that might improve recruiting strategy, hosting applicant gatherings, and, at times, representing the program at fairs without the presence of an admissions officer. The Admissions team would like to thank the following alumni for their participation and support.
Yasuhiro Arao (left), Shigeru Aono, Satoshi Watanabe and Tatsuya Otsubo
China
Xiyuan (Cici) Chen, MSF’09
Cong (Lincoln) Lin, MBA’09
Jin Wang, MSF’08
Yuhuan Wang, MSF’08
Haibo Zhang, MBA’08
Fan Zheng, MSF’08
Taking Flight
Prescription for job blues
Would you rather be drinking bourbon? And when you think of bourbon, does Kentucky come to mind? The Louisville Convention & Visitors Bureau hopes the answer to both of these questions is a resounding yes. But in case that association between bourbon whiskey and its hometown of Louisville, Ky., is not so immediate, the bureau aims to convince you with its branding effort, called Bourbon Country. The idea is to position the city in the hearts and minds of travelers and tourists the world over as the destination for food, fun and, of course, bourbon whiskey.
Several years ago I had the privilege of working for David Ingram at Ingram Entertainment. During my time there I held different positions in a couple of departments, but one responsibility followed me wherever I went: Every fall I assisted David and his executive team in writing the company’s strategic plan. It’s fair to say that David took a chance when he hired me; I knew very little about business, much less strategic planning, at the time. Fortunately, though, David felt confident in my writing abilities because we’d both attended the same prep school in Nashville.
What sets Owen’s Leadership Development Program apart from similar programs at other business schools?
Ours is different in that it mirrors best-in-class, high-potential programs at Fortune 100 companies. We’ve built a rigorous, highly individualized program that helps identify and grow each student’s unique leadership potential. Development planning is a key piece of the MBA experience at Owen, and we provide the resources to help students strengthen their areas of need or interest. For example, thanks to an exclusive partnership with Hogan Assessment Systems, each student completes the Leadership Forecast Series, an assessment tool used by 50 percent of Fortune 500 companies to help individuals fully understand their own unique performance capabilities, challenges and drivers. The result is that our students have the opportunity to get a head start with staying power. The development they’re receiving now is typically reserved for top-level executives in the later stages of their careers.
JB: Did you volunteer for that, or did somebody pick you? Did you let it be known that you would take that kind of assignment?