Potential. · 2020. 1. 28. · 10 briefings on talent + leaD e RSHIP 2013 : Q3 korn/ferry inT ernAT ionAL 11 The Latest Q3 Wearing Your Computer B y the end of 2013, the next product

FPublication: Korn/Ferry Brie� ngs Date: 2013 / Q3

Attention: [email protected] (310) 556-8502

Color / Size: CMYK / 8.25 in x 10.75 in + .125 in bleed

Advertiser: Korn/Ferry International

Product: Corporate

File Name: F.Brie� ngsQ3_KFADChicago_spread_2013.pdf

Creative designed and serviced by For questions, concerns or inquiries: Studio +1.818.932.0499 / [email protected] 6732 Eton Ave., Woodland Hills CA 91364 USA

Copyright © 2013 Korn/Ferry International. All Rights Reserved.

Potential.

We know that when talent shines, business grows. That’s why Korn/Ferry helps our clients design,

Realized.

DESIGN:

ORGANIZATIONAL DESIGN

STRATEGIC ALIGNMENT

INTEGRATED TALENT MANAGEMENT

LEADERSHIP STRATEGY

BUILD:

BOARD EFFECTIVENESS

SUCCESSION PLANNING

CEO & TOP TEAM EFFECTIVENESS

ASSESSMENT

LEADERSHIP & EMPLOYEE DEVELOPMENT

DIVERSITY & INCLUSION

ONLINE & BLENDED LEARNING

ATTRACT:

BOARD, EXECUTIVE, PROFESSIONAL,& PROJECT RECRUITMENT

RECRUITMENT PROCESS OUTSOURCING

ONBOARDING

TALENT COMMUNICATIONS& EMPLOYER BRANDING

build and attract the talent they need to achieve their business goals. www.kornferry.com

FPublication: Korn/Ferry Brie� ngs Date: 2013 / Q3

Attention: [email protected] (310) 556-8502

Color / Size: CMYK / 8.25 in x 10.75 in + .125 in bleed

Advertiser: Korn/Ferry International

Product: Corporate

File Name: F.Brie� ngsQ3_KFADChicago_spread_2013.pdf

Creative designed and serviced by For questions, concerns or inquiries: Studio +1.818.932.0499 / [email protected] 6732 Eton Ave., Woodland Hills CA 91364 USA

Copyright © 2013 Korn/Ferry International. All Rights Reserved.

Potential.

We know that when talent shines, business grows. That’s why Korn/Ferry helps our clients design,

Realized.

DESIGN:

ORGANIZATIONAL DESIGN

STRATEGIC ALIGNMENT

INTEGRATED TALENT MANAGEMENT

LEADERSHIP STRATEGY

BUILD:

BOARD EFFECTIVENESS

SUCCESSION PLANNING

CEO & TOP TEAM EFFECTIVENESS

ASSESSMENT

LEADERSHIP & EMPLOYEE DEVELOPMENT

DIVERSITY & INCLUSION

ONLINE & BLENDED LEARNING

ATTRACT:

BOARD, EXECUTIVE, PROFESSIONAL,& PROJECT RECRUITMENT

RECRUITMENT PROCESS OUTSOURCING

ONBOARDING

TALENT COMMUNICATIONS& EMPLOYER BRANDING

build and attract the talent they need to achieve their business goals. www.kornferry.com

2 B r i e f i n g s o n t a l e n t + l e a D e R S H I P

VOLUME 4 • No. 15 • 2013

pag E : 8 frOM thE cEO

pag E : 69

cOrpOr atEgOVErNaNcE

pag E : 6 4 Q&a

pag E : 78 iN rEViEw

pag E : 8 0

partiNg thOUghts

ENtEriNg asia:Fabrice Weber (President Asia Pacific, Estée Lauder Companies) on running a marathon at sprint speed.

hOw tO fiLL thE gaps: Creating a winning board means more than filling the vacancy.

pag E : 74 Q&a

DigitaL trENDs: “it’s abOUt ENgagEMENt”A conversation with Korn/Ferry International’s Becky Stein and Andrew Lipsher about our digital future.

“

TheLatest

pag E : 1 4

Management by Talking Around

pag E : 1 6

The New European Executive

pag E : 1 0

Wearing Your Computer

pag E : 1 3

Device-Free Management

Have you heard about the man who nearly ran into a bear?...Change begins

in the mirror.To lead others you must first lead yourself.”

B R I L L I A N T L Y I M A G I N E D • B R I L L I A N T L Y V A L U E D B R I L L I A N T L Y V A L U E D M A R T I N K A T Z . C O M 3 1 0 . 2 7 6 . 7 2 0 0

C E L E B R A T I N G Y E A R S O F A R T I S T R Y B E V E R L Y H I L L S • N E W Y O R K • B E R G D O R F G O O D M A N Y E A R S O F A R T I S T R Y B E V E R L Y H I L L S • N E W Y O R K • B E R G D O R F G O O D M A N

NEVER LOOK DIRECTLY INTO

THE SUN.

4

44

20 28 36

56

ThE hisToriAN Who ChANgED hisTorYHarvard University President Drew gilpin faust on leadership

lessons taken from history and introducing change to America’s oldest institution of higher learning.

by MichaEL DistEfaNO & jOEL kUrtzMaN

“b” schOOL? pLatO’s thE DUDE

What’s the A+ course to becoming a leader:

getting an M.B.A. or reading Aristotle?

by g LE N N r i f k i N

thE gaMificatiON Of EVErythiNg.Companies and governments are working with game designers to make you their next player.

by DaV i D b E r r E by

thE gr aDUatEsQ: How do you fill

3 million jobs? A: Science, Technology, Engineering and Math.

by c h r i s tO p h E r r . O ’ D E a

iNspiriNg stUDENts

tO LEaDThe Jepson School of

Leadership Studies at the University of Richmond.

by g LE N N r i f k i N

COVER ARTWORK BY L AR A TOMLIN

“I’ve learned from history that so much of leadership is helping people deal with change and understand how change happens. History is about the nature of change.”

B r i e f i n g s o n t a l e n t + l e a D e R S H I P

B r i e f i n g s o n t a l e n t + l e a D e R S H I P6

The aim for Briefings is audacious: To provide great insights to help leaders lead.

Not by telling them what to think ... but what to think about.

Gary BurnisonChie f e xeCut i ve o ff i Ce r

Michael Distefano

Chief mark e t i ng o ff i Ce r

Joel Kurtzman e d i to r- i n-Chi e f

market ing manage rStacy Levyn

C re at i ve d i reCto rsRobert Ross and Roland K Madrid

P ro JeCt manage r Tiffany Sledzianowski

CirCulat ion d ir eCto rJaye Cullen

w e B Co mmuni Cat i o ns s PeC i al i s tEdward McLaurin

Board o f ad v i s o rsSergio Averbach

Stephen Bruyant-Langer Cheryl BuxtonDennis Carey

Bob DamonAna Dutra

Joe GriesedieckRobert Hallagan

Katie Lahey

Robert McNabbByrne Mulrooney

Indranil RoyJane Stevenson

Cont ri But i ng e d i to rsChris BergonziDavid Berreby

Lawrence M. FisherVictoria Griffith

Dana LandisStephanie Mitchell

Christopher R. O’DeaP.J. O’Rourke

Glenn RifkinStephen J. Trachtenberg

Adrian Wooldridge

issN 1949-8365 Copyright 2013, Korn/Ferry international

Produced with solar power, FSC®-certified paper and soy-based inks in a fully sustainable and environmentally responsible manner.

send requests for additional copies to: Briefings Magazine

1900 Avenue of the Stars, Suite 2600 Los Angeles, CA 90067

[email protected]

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Visit www.kornferrybriefings.com

b r i e f i n g s o n t a l e n t + l e a D e R S H I P 2 0 1 3 : Q 3 k o r n / f e r r y i n T e r n A T i o n A L8 9

f r o m t h e c e o

G A R Y B U R N I S O N

Therein is the heart of leadership: Change begins in the mirror.To lead others you must first lead yourself.

Leaders must be willing to look, unblinking, into a mirror of self-awareness and ask themselves, “What can I do to make – and be – the change I want to see in the world?”

To lead others – to motivate and inspire, creat-ing alignment behind a bigger, broader purpose that makes a difference – the leader must be willing to make an honest self-assessment:

A leader is only as good as the last promise kept.

Effective, self-aware leaders acknowledge what they don’t know. Ineffective leaders, on the other hand, don’t know anything about every-

thing (but woe to those who think they do). As our research at Korn/Ferry demonstrates, lead-

ership demands an insatiable appetite to expand one’s knowledge and experience. Successful leaders con-tinue to learn, bend and flex as their world changes. In other words, they are learning agile.

At Korn/Ferry, we believe that learning agility (the ability to learn from experiences and to apply that learning to new or first-time situations) is the No. 1 predictor of leadership success – more accurate than IQ and EQ (emotional intelligence), education level or even leadership competencies. As a leader expands her knowledge and capabilities, she is better equipped to deliver change by linking an organization’s purpose, its reason for being, with her followers’ desire to be part of something bigger than themselves.

Other things being equal, self-aware leaders bal-ance self-confidence and humility. They are realistic not only about their own strengths and weaknesses, but about the organization’s flaws as well. These lead-ers understand that the difference between being No. 1

m o t h e r b r o u g h t h e r s o n to a well-respected leader, asking him to cure

the boy of his obsession with sugar. The man listened and said, “Bring your son back in a

week, and I will speak to him.”A week later, the mother returned with her son.

The leader, Mahatma Gandhi, told the boy, “Stop eat-ing sweets. They are not good for you.” Realizing that was it – this great leader was not going to say any more – the mother was understandably confused. “You could have told him that last week. Why did you have us come back?” she asked.

“Last week,” Gandhi admitted, “I, too, was eating a great deal of sugar.”

and No. 2 is not constant; therefore, the way to improve the organization is by improving themselves.

Knowledge is what you know, wisdom is acknowledging what you don’t know.

The “Peter Principle,” introduced by Laurence Peter and Raymond Hull in their book of the same name, asserts that workers rise to their level of incom-petence – meaning they get promotions until they are beyond their capabilities and become ineffective. Kenneth P. De Meuse, a former colleague of mine at Korn/Ferry, asserts that today’s workplace has cre-ated a new principle, one that is even more insidious. He calls it:

The “Paul Principle”: Employees do not need to get promoted to become incompetent; that can happen in their current jobs.

How? Because they do not grow, adapt and evolve as their jobs become more complex, more ambiguous and more technologically demanding. The same holds true for organizational leaders. Unless they learn new competencies and behaviors, they risk going the way of inkwells, eight-tracks and typewriters.

Just as Gandhi had to look inward before enact-ing outward change, leaders set the tone and the ex-pectation, particularly around self-awareness and self-improvement.

Self-awareness and honesty go hand in hand.Leadership is not defined only by what one says

and does, but – equally important – by what is not said and not done. True leaders are like the first re-sponders and good Samaritans who stop at a highway accident to help, versus those who only turn away, grateful that they’re not the ones involved. Leaders are instruments of change.

The account ability you want to see in others starts with you. Even today, why is change so elusive? It cer-tainly can’t be blamed on a lack of connectivity, the ability to communicate change broadly and instanta-neously. Technological wizardry allows us to connect with most of the planet, anytime; to send pictures via Snapchat that self-destruct in 10 seconds (isn’t the purpose of a picture to capture a moment, not de-stroy it?); or, soon, to sport wearable computers, Dick Tracy-style.

Maybe the problem is a lack of attention by an audi-

G A R Y B U R N I S O Nis CEO of Korn/Ferry International

and author of the new book “LEAD”Learn more at www.LEADthebook.com

ence bewildered by the Great Recession’s opening act, which shockingly revealed two decades of excess in the West and, now, the paralysis of nations that were once global leaders. Or maybe, in the newer, flatter world order, the audience is simply fatigued, having ridden a stationary bike for the past four years – pedaling faster and faster, but not advancing. Maybe we are waiting for someone else to be the instrument of change.

If you are waiting for others, you will be waiting a long time.

Change you believe in may cascade down, but change achieved must bubble up – starting inside-out.

In this issue of Briefings…At Korn/Ferry, we say to lead is to know what to do

when you don’t know what to do. In those instances, there is only one thing to do: Look in the mirror be-fore you gaze out the window. If my dad told me once, he told me a thousand times: Let the record speak for itself. Actions truly do speak louder than words. That’s been accurate throughout history and is truer today than ever. Change begins within, with the lead-er’s “do/say” ratio, which can never drop below one. (Do what you say, say what you mean.)

After all, a leader is only as good as the last promise kept – in which case, one’s actions will truly inspire.

So what are the promises in this issue of Briefings on Talent & Leadership? We call it the Big Think issue and the promise is new ideas. In this issue, David Ber-reby writes about “gamification,” which means using games, electronic and otherwise, to achieve organi-zational goals such as education or health-related be-havior modification. Glenn Rifkin has two articles on what the humanities can teach us about leadership – with some interesting examples. A.G. Lafley, one of Procter & Gamble’s most successful CEOs, studied philosophy in college. Gen. Martin Dempsey, chair-man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, went back to gradu-ate school to study Irish poetry. The point is, broad-ening the mind is a prerequisite to lead. And, Chris O’Dea writes in this issue how the economic down-turn has led to an upturn in enrollment for science-related classes. Also in this issue, wearable computers. But watch out! Pedestrians distracted by their smart-phones have been known to step into trouble. K/F/B

As Good as the Last Promise Kept

When there is trust in what you say, there will be belief in what you do.

“What can I do to make – and be – the change I want to see in the world?”


f r o m t h e c e o

G A R Y B U R N I S O N

Therein is the heart of leadership: Change begins in the mirror.To lead others you must first lead yourself.

Leaders must be willing to look, unblinking, into a mirror of self-awareness and ask themselves, “What can I do to make – and be – the change I want to see in the world?”

To lead others – to motivate and inspire, creat-ing alignment behind a bigger, broader purpose that makes a difference – the leader must be willing to make an honest self-assessment:

A leader is only as good as the last promise kept.

Effective, self-aware leaders acknowledge what they don’t know. Ineffective leaders, on the other hand, don’t know anything about every-

thing (but woe to those who think they do). As our research at Korn/Ferry demonstrates, lead-

ership demands an insatiable appetite to expand one’s knowledge and experience. Successful leaders con-tinue to learn, bend and flex as their world changes. In other words, they are learning agile.

At Korn/Ferry, we believe that learning agility (the ability to learn from experiences and to apply that learning to new or first-time situations) is the No. 1 predictor of leadership success – more accurate than IQ and EQ (emotional intelligence), education level or even leadership competencies. As a leader expands her knowledge and capabilities, she is better equipped to deliver change by linking an organization’s purpose, its reason for being, with her followers’ desire to be part of something bigger than themselves.

Other things being equal, self-aware leaders bal-ance self-confidence and humility. They are realistic not only about their own strengths and weaknesses, but about the organization’s flaws as well. These lead-ers understand that the difference between being No. 1

m o t h e r b r o u g h t h e r s o n to a well-respected leader, asking him to cure

the boy of his obsession with sugar. The man listened and said, “Bring your son back in a

week, and I will speak to him.”A week later, the mother returned with her son.

The leader, Mahatma Gandhi, told the boy, “Stop eat-ing sweets. They are not good for you.” Realizing that was it – this great leader was not going to say any more – the mother was understandably confused. “You could have told him that last week. Why did you have us come back?” she asked.

“Last week,” Gandhi admitted, “I, too, was eating a great deal of sugar.”

and No. 2 is not constant; therefore, the way to improve the organization is by improving themselves.

Knowledge is what you know, wisdom is acknowledging what you don’t know.

The “Peter Principle,” introduced by Laurence Peter and Raymond Hull in their book of the same name, asserts that workers rise to their level of incom-petence – meaning they get promotions until they are beyond their capabilities and become ineffective. Kenneth P. De Meuse, a former colleague of mine at Korn/Ferry, asserts that today’s workplace has cre-ated a new principle, one that is even more insidious. He calls it:

The “Paul Principle”: Employees do not need to get promoted to become incompetent; that can happen in their current jobs.

How? Because they do not grow, adapt and evolve as their jobs become more complex, more ambiguous and more technologically demanding. The same holds true for organizational leaders. Unless they learn new competencies and behaviors, they risk going the way of inkwells, eight-tracks and typewriters.

Just as Gandhi had to look inward before enact-ing outward change, leaders set the tone and the ex-pectation, particularly around self-awareness and self-improvement.

Self-awareness and honesty go hand in hand.Leadership is not defined only by what one says

and does, but – equally important – by what is not said and not done. True leaders are like the first re-sponders and good Samaritans who stop at a highway accident to help, versus those who only turn away, grateful that they’re not the ones involved. Leaders are instruments of change.

The account ability you want to see in others starts with you. Even today, why is change so elusive? It cer-tainly can’t be blamed on a lack of connectivity, the ability to communicate change broadly and instanta-neously. Technological wizardry allows us to connect with most of the planet, anytime; to send pictures via Snapchat that self-destruct in 10 seconds (isn’t the purpose of a picture to capture a moment, not de-stroy it?); or, soon, to sport wearable computers, Dick Tracy-style.

Maybe the problem is a lack of attention by an audi-

G A R Y B U R N I S O Nis CEO of Korn/Ferry International

and author of the new book “LEAD”Learn more at www.LEADthebook.com

ence bewildered by the Great Recession’s opening act, which shockingly revealed two decades of excess in the West and, now, the paralysis of nations that were once global leaders. Or maybe, in the newer, flatter world order, the audience is simply fatigued, having ridden a stationary bike for the past four years – pedaling faster and faster, but not advancing. Maybe we are waiting for someone else to be the instrument of change.

If you are waiting for others, you will be waiting a long time.

Change you believe in may cascade down, but change achieved must bubble up – starting inside-out.

In this issue of Briefings…At Korn/Ferry, we say to lead is to know what to do

when you don’t know what to do. In those instances, there is only one thing to do: Look in the mirror be-fore you gaze out the window. If my dad told me once, he told me a thousand times: Let the record speak for itself. Actions truly do speak louder than words. That’s been accurate throughout history and is truer today than ever. Change begins within, with the lead-er’s “do/say” ratio, which can never drop below one. (Do what you say, say what you mean.)

After all, a leader is only as good as the last promise kept – in which case, one’s actions will truly inspire.

So what are the promises in this issue of Briefings on Talent & Leadership? We call it the Big Think issue and the promise is new ideas. In this issue, David Ber-reby writes about “gamification,” which means using games, electronic and otherwise, to achieve organi-zational goals such as education or health-related be-havior modification. Glenn Rifkin has two articles on what the humanities can teach us about leadership – with some interesting examples. A.G. Lafley, one of Procter & Gamble’s most successful CEOs, studied philosophy in college. Gen. Martin Dempsey, chair-man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, went back to gradu-ate school to study Irish poetry. The point is, broad-ening the mind is a prerequisite to lead. And, Chris O’Dea writes in this issue how the economic down-turn has led to an upturn in enrollment for science-related classes. Also in this issue, wearable computers. But watch out! Pedestrians distracted by their smart-phones have been known to step into trouble. K/F/B

As Good as the Last Promise Kept

When there is trust in what you say, there will be belief in what you do.

“What can I do to make – and be – the change I want to see in the world?”


TheLatest

Q3


By t h e e n d o f 2 0 1 3 , the next product to shake up the technology world will hit the market. Google

Glass, a lightweight, durable pair of stylish eyeglasses with a tiny imbed-ded computer, is set to go on sale. It is already setting off the kind of industry buzz that preceded the iPhone and iPad. Completely voice-activated, Google Glass is the latest and sexiest example of wearable computers, a potentially life-changing category that is quickly gaining momentum. Using Google Glass, a consumer is able to search the

Web, take photographs or video, ask for directions, send and receive e-mails, voicemails, texts and other Web-based data. The display appears in the up-per right corner of the wearer’s field of view, thus allowing the user to remain digitally connected without staring at a smartphone or tablet. While some are aghast at this intimate level of com-puter engagement, pundits who have experienced Google Glass call it revo-lutionary, with the potential to be as transformative as the smartphone.

Like it or not, the future just keeps arriving, laden with technology that used to be little more than special ef-fects in movies like “The Terminator” or “Minority Report.” Wearable computers come in eyeglasses, ski goggles, wrist-watches, wristbands, smart badges, clothing with imbedded microchips, and clip-on cameras. The implication is clear: These sensor-laden devices (SLDs) are set to drive the next phase of growth

in computing and will likely transform how consumers live and work, not un-like the smartphone and the tablet have done over the past decade.

Sarah Rotman Epps, who tracks wearable computing for Forrester Re-search, said the inquiries about wear-ables from Forrester’s client corpo-rations – which include large banks, credit card companies and retailers – had “accelerated significantly” in re-cent months. “This is definitely top of mind,” Rotman Epps said. “Executives in every industry have seen the pattern before. A new type of technology comes out and totally disrupts their business. They want to stay ahead of where the technology is going. And this has the potential to disrupt media, retail, fi-nance, everything. So it’s not too early for executives from every industry to start paying attention to this.”

Attention is indeed being paid, and when Google Glass hits the market,

reportedly for $1,500, the response is ex-pected to be dramatic.

“I think Google Glass is the next great platform for app developers,” Rot-man Epps said. “Every type of enterprise that has invested in apps for the iPad and iPhone will go to Glass next.”

But Google Glass is hardly the only wearable product that will generate wide

attention. At this stage, wearables tend to come in two categories: augmented reality and virtual reality. Products that augment reality, like Google Glass, have been trickling into the market. Dick Tracy-type wristwatches, such as the Meta Watch, Cookoo, Casio G-Shock, Martian and I’m Watch, are available for $180 to $400. Apple reportedly has 100

designers at work on an iWatch. These devices work in concert with a user’s smartphone, and the designs have in-cluded touchscreens, traditional watch faces with integrated displays, and other innovative interfaces.

In the virtual reality arena, prod-ucts like the Oculus Rift, an affordable video headset, have gamers excited be-

CL

OC

KW

ISE

: CO

RB

IS; JE

nn

IfE

R D

aR

mO

uR

Google Glass (opposite) lets the wearer search the

Web, take photographs, view e-mails and ask for

directions; Pulse, developed by Artefact’s Jennifer

Darmour, helps gauge the wearer’s heart rate.

The New European Executive : 15

A new study delineates what leadership must look like today.

Management by Talking Around : 14

Organizations are rediscovering the importance of face-to-face interaction.

Device-Free Management : 13

Google Glass sold out even before the first pair was shipped.

used to be little more than special effects in movies like “The Terminator” or “Minority Report.” Wearable computers come in eyeglasses, ski goggles, wristwatches, wristbands, smart badges, clothing with imbedded microchips, and clip-on cameras. The implication is clear: These sensor-laden devices (SLDs) are set to drive the next phase of growth


TheLatest

Q3


By t h e e n d o f 2 0 1 3 , the next product to shake up the technology world will hit the market. Google

Glass, a lightweight, durable pair of stylish eyeglasses with a tiny imbed-ded computer, is set to go on sale. It is already setting off the kind of industry buzz that preceded the iPhone and iPad. Completely voice-activated, Google Glass is the latest and sexiest example of wearable computers, a potentially life-changing category that is quickly gaining momentum. Using Google Glass, a consumer is able to search the

Web, take photographs or video, ask for directions, send and receive e-mails, voicemails, texts and other Web-based data. The display appears in the up-per right corner of the wearer’s field of view, thus allowing the user to remain digitally connected without staring at a smartphone or tablet. While some are aghast at this intimate level of com-puter engagement, pundits who have experienced Google Glass call it revo-lutionary, with the potential to be as transformative as the smartphone.

Like it or not, the future just keeps arriving, laden with technology that used to be little more than special ef-fects in movies like “The Terminator” or “Minority Report.” Wearable computers come in eyeglasses, ski goggles, wrist-watches, wristbands, smart badges, clothing with imbedded microchips, and clip-on cameras. The implication is clear: These sensor-laden devices (SLDs) are set to drive the next phase of growth

in computing and will likely transform how consumers live and work, not un-like the smartphone and the tablet have done over the past decade.

Sarah Rotman Epps, who tracks wearable computing for Forrester Re-search, said the inquiries about wear-ables from Forrester’s client corpo-rations – which include large banks, credit card companies and retailers – had “accelerated significantly” in re-cent months. “This is definitely top of mind,” Rotman Epps said. “Executives in every industry have seen the pattern before. A new type of technology comes out and totally disrupts their business. They want to stay ahead of where the technology is going. And this has the potential to disrupt media, retail, fi-nance, everything. So it’s not too early for executives from every industry to start paying attention to this.”

Attention is indeed being paid, and when Google Glass hits the market,

reportedly for $1,500, the response is ex-pected to be dramatic.

“I think Google Glass is the next great platform for app developers,” Rot-man Epps said. “Every type of enterprise that has invested in apps for the iPad and iPhone will go to Glass next.”

But Google Glass is hardly the only wearable product that will generate wide

attention. At this stage, wearables tend to come in two categories: augmented reality and virtual reality. Products that augment reality, like Google Glass, have been trickling into the market. Dick Tracy-type wristwatches, such as the Meta Watch, Cookoo, Casio G-Shock, Martian and I’m Watch, are available for $180 to $400. Apple reportedly has 100

designers at work on an iWatch. These devices work in concert with a user’s smartphone, and the designs have in-cluded touchscreens, traditional watch faces with integrated displays, and other innovative interfaces.

In the virtual reality arena, prod-ucts like the Oculus Rift, an affordable video headset, have gamers excited be-

CL

OC

KW

ISE

: CO

RB

IS; JE

nn

IfE

R D

aR

mO

uR

Google Glass (opposite) lets the wearer search the

Web, take photographs, view e-mails and ask for

directions; Pulse, developed by Artefact’s Jennifer

Darmour, helps gauge the wearer’s heart rate.

The New European Executive : 15

A new study delineates what leadership must look like today.

Management by Talking Around : 14


Device-Free Management : 13

Google Glass sold out even before the first pair was shipped.


cause they incorporate what feels like a 360-degree immersion experience for the user. (In fact, the viewing area is 110 degrees, but that is more than double the viewing area of its competitors.) And pundits see innumerable business appli-cations for such devices, especially when augmented reality and virtual reality technologies are inevitably combined.

“I think it’s quite possible that when these two technologies catch on, they will easily be as revolutionary as the powerful mobile smartphones that have changed our world forever,” wrote Keith Hanson, CEO of Twin Engine Labs, in a Huffington Post blog. “The world around us will literally be a software de-veloper’s playground, and I’m certain savvy businesses will quickly take ad-vantage of it.”

Up to now, wearables have occupied the health and fitness space, most no-tably the Nike+ FuelBand, which cap-tures data generated by the body during a workout and keeps the user informed of physiological functions. These niche devices are popular, but only among

a small audience, and they don’t ap-pear capable of grabbing massive mar-ket share. According to Rotman Epps, the products tend to be “overhyped” and lack data quality and robust features. However, such imbedded technology is ripe with potential to extend into navi-gation, shopping, social networking and productivity if users drive applications as they have done with many successful technologies.

For example, Jennifer Darmour, a user experience design director for Se-attle-based design firm Artefact, has de-veloped a wearable, sensor-laden Pilates shirt that monitors muscle movement and provides the wearer with useful self-correcting capabilities while work-ing out. The clothing provides feedback on posture, technique for sit-ups and other exercises, and is “like having the teacher’s touch without the teacher,” Rotman Epps said.

Smart badges, replacing the standard employee ID card, have also entered the marketplace. A Watertown, Mass.-based company, Sociometric Solutions, is sell-ing a sensor-laden badge that monitors employee activity and conversations. The device, developed at the MIT Media Lab, is not designed to spy on employees but rather to monitor how staffers inter-act over long periods at work. Ben Wa-ber, the company’s CEO, told The Boston Globe the device is “especially useful for tracking informal communications, like a conversation in a cafeteria line, that people might not report in an interview [with an outside consultant]. Surveys and interviews are just bad at getting in-formation about sporadic interactions. And human interaction is a big factor in all sorts of organizational change initia-tives, new product development endeav-ors and mergers.”

Rotman Epps is especially interested in the iWatch, which she and other ana-lysts believe has the potential to be Ap-ple’s next megahit. An iWatch can pig-gyback on the iPhone’s access to the

Internet and become a popular adjunct technology. Given that 41 percent of mo-bile phone users had smartphones as of 2012, according to Forrester Research, that penetration bodes well for a prod-uct like the iWatch. More important, she points out, is Apple’s widespread pop-ularity among application developers. New devices live or die by the number of apps aimed at their platforms.

“As of January 2013, the Apple app store had 40 billion downloads, 775,000 apps available and 500 million active ac-counts,” Rotman Epps said. “Creating new experiences for an iWatch is a no-brainer for developers.”

Over the next 12 to 18 months, she projects, wearables “will go more multi-functional and the market will see more form factor diversity, not just glasses or watches, but sensors imbedded in textiles, including more clothing and accessories.”

Of course, this tsunami of new tech-nologies comes at a time when society is grappling with the impact of such de-vices on the quality and scope of hu-man interaction. Users portend a trau-matic shift as they stare for hours into the screens of their smartphones, tab-lets and laptops. Consumers have em-braced these devices enthusiastically, but at what cost?

Kelly McGonigal, a Stanford Univer-sity professor who focuses on issues of technology and self-control, has been monitoring the impact of smart devices. Speaking to The New York Times, McGo-nigal said the managers running tech-nology companies “deeply want their technology and devices to enhance lives. But they’re becoming aware of people’s inability to disengage.” She worried that such interactive gadgets set off stress re-sponses in the brain, creating a “persis-tent sense of emergency.”

“It’s this basic cultural recognition that people have a pathological relation-ship with their devices,” McGonigal told The Times. “People feel not just addicted but trapped.” K/F/B

This whole smartphone thing is out of control – there is just no place these tiny instruments of technology won’t go. Lavatory stalls and confessionals are just too much. Walk into an elevator – all heads down, surfing. Gone forever are those awkward moments filled with meaningless chatter – “Can you believe the weather we’re having?” Going through airport se-curity, as pockets and briefcases are emptied into those ri-diculous bins on the conveyor belt, it reminds me of a Black Friday sale at Best Buy. It’s now not even cool to leave a voice-mail. My daughter tells me, “Just text me. You’re so 90’s, Dad.”

With five kids, my own house sounds like some 80’s techno-mixer of submarine sonar pings and pinball machines with the occasional “old phone ring” as bass. You have to love those per-sonalized ringtones. My friend’s ex has the ominous “da-dum, da-dum” tune from “Jaws” set when he calls – I guess he won’t be in the family Christmas card picture again this year.

All of these digital bursts of information – the tweets,

A California fel-low not long ago was in the midst

of that ubiquitous head-down dance we now call walking – attention riveted to the device in the palm of his hand, eyes darting up

every so often to avoid bumping into a lamp post or, in this fellow’s case, a 400-pound black bear.

Vaz Terdandenyan was walking down the street, absorbed in his little screen, when he nearly collided with a black bear that was on the loose in the neighborhood. He looked up from all his LOLs and smiley emoticons just in time to OMG and run!

True story, caught on video. A story that makes you think that maybe all these smart machines are making us dumb.

Still, there’s no going back. When I asked my daughter re-cently if she was going to take part in the “National Day of Unplugging” on March 1, a day when we were urged to un-tether ourselves for 24 hours from our smartphones, laptops and other gadgets, she rolled her eyes and asked, “What’s next, Dad, no cellphones at the dinner table?”

Have you heard about the man who nearly ran

into a bear?

texts, alerts, ad infinitum – activate primitive impulses within us to respond to each ping of our inbox as potential opportu-nities and threats. Our brain rewards all that stimulation with little squirts of dopamine that researchers say can be addic-tive. Truly amazing! Are we really that important?

Coincidence that Pope Benedict XVI joins Twitter and a few months later loses interest in work?

Joking aside, there was no surprise when the new pope was announced as pontiffs always have been, with a smoke signal sent out to thousands of joyous pilgrims waiting, together, in St. Peter’s Square. The fact is, there are moments in life that are too important and too complex to be mediated by – or as is frequently the case, interrupted by – technology.

Such events, like human relationships, can be rich, messy, irrational and demanding. And while texting, e-mailing, post-ing or the like can clean and clarify the message, make more efficient and expedient the exchange of information, there is a magic that’s only possible when interacting with real humans, in real time, and in the real, tactile physical world we inhabit.

That’s why I wasn’t surprised when Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo, decreed seven months into her job that she wants em-ployees to show up at work instead of telecommuting. This

wasn’t, I’d bet, an off-the-cuff commandment; it was a data-supported decision reflecting a reality that the most value was being created by workers collaborating – in the hallways, offices and kitchens, face-to-face, one conversation at a time.

We humans need to look into other people’s eyes and hear their voices; to share a silence without using it to check our smartphones. Walk across the office or send an e-mail? The question will inevitably arise in the course of one’s workday. And when it does, maybe once in a while we ought to go device-free, taking that walk.

Oh, who am I kidding? Wearable computers, Google glasses, ubiquitous computing, anywhere, anytime, anyplace – and, “look Mom, no hands.” At least with this next wave our heads will be in an upright position. Next up – synthetic telepathy. You wouldn’t even have had to read this. We will communicate through thought transmission, “Twilight Zone” style. #GTG#@oldceo#iGiveup! K/F/B

CL

OC

KW

ISE

: KE

VIn

WO

nG

; Ka

th

Ry

n R

at

hK

E

TheLatest

MODWELLS, modular sensors for posture

and health tracking, designed by Artefact.

device-free management 101b y g A r y b u r n i s o n


cause they incorporate what feels like a 360-degree immersion experience for the user. (In fact, the viewing area is 110 degrees, but that is more than double the viewing area of its competitors.) And pundits see innumerable business appli-cations for such devices, especially when augmented reality and virtual reality technologies are inevitably combined.

“I think it’s quite possible that when these two technologies catch on, they will easily be as revolutionary as the powerful mobile smartphones that have changed our world forever,” wrote Keith Hanson, CEO of Twin Engine Labs, in a Huffington Post blog. “The world around us will literally be a software de-veloper’s playground, and I’m certain savvy businesses will quickly take ad-vantage of it.”

Up to now, wearables have occupied the health and fitness space, most no-tably the Nike+ FuelBand, which cap-tures data generated by the body during a workout and keeps the user informed of physiological functions. These niche devices are popular, but only among

a small audience, and they don’t ap-pear capable of grabbing massive mar-ket share. According to Rotman Epps, the products tend to be “overhyped” and lack data quality and robust features. However, such imbedded technology is ripe with potential to extend into navi-gation, shopping, social networking and productivity if users drive applications as they have done with many successful technologies.

For example, Jennifer Darmour, a user experience design director for Se-attle-based design firm Artefact, has de-veloped a wearable, sensor-laden Pilates shirt that monitors muscle movement and provides the wearer with useful self-correcting capabilities while work-ing out. The clothing provides feedback on posture, technique for sit-ups and other exercises, and is “like having the teacher’s touch without the teacher,” Rotman Epps said.

Smart badges, replacing the standard employee ID card, have also entered the marketplace. A Watertown, Mass.-based company, Sociometric Solutions, is sell-ing a sensor-laden badge that monitors employee activity and conversations. The device, developed at the MIT Media Lab, is not designed to spy on employees but rather to monitor how staffers inter-act over long periods at work. Ben Wa-ber, the company’s CEO, told The Boston Globe the device is “especially useful for tracking informal communications, like a conversation in a cafeteria line, that people might not report in an interview [with an outside consultant]. Surveys and interviews are just bad at getting in-formation about sporadic interactions. And human interaction is a big factor in all sorts of organizational change initia-tives, new product development endeav-ors and mergers.”

Rotman Epps is especially interested in the iWatch, which she and other ana-lysts believe has the potential to be Ap-ple’s next megahit. An iWatch can pig-gyback on the iPhone’s access to the

Internet and become a popular adjunct technology. Given that 41 percent of mo-bile phone users had smartphones as of 2012, according to Forrester Research, that penetration bodes well for a prod-uct like the iWatch. More important, she points out, is Apple’s widespread pop-ularity among application developers. New devices live or die by the number of apps aimed at their platforms.

“As of January 2013, the Apple app store had 40 billion downloads, 775,000 apps available and 500 million active ac-counts,” Rotman Epps said. “Creating new experiences for an iWatch is a no-brainer for developers.”

Over the next 12 to 18 months, she projects, wearables “will go more multi-functional and the market will see more form factor diversity, not just glasses or watches, but sensors imbedded in textiles, including more clothing and accessories.”

Of course, this tsunami of new tech-nologies comes at a time when society is grappling with the impact of such de-vices on the quality and scope of hu-man interaction. Users portend a trau-matic shift as they stare for hours into the screens of their smartphones, tab-lets and laptops. Consumers have em-braced these devices enthusiastically, but at what cost?

Kelly McGonigal, a Stanford Univer-sity professor who focuses on issues of technology and self-control, has been monitoring the impact of smart devices. Speaking to The New York Times, McGo-nigal said the managers running tech-nology companies “deeply want their technology and devices to enhance lives. But they’re becoming aware of people’s inability to disengage.” She worried that such interactive gadgets set off stress re-sponses in the brain, creating a “persis-tent sense of emergency.”

“It’s this basic cultural recognition that people have a pathological relation-ship with their devices,” McGonigal told The Times. “People feel not just addicted but trapped.” K/F/B

This whole smartphone thing is out of control – there is just no place these tiny instruments of technology won’t go. Lavatory stalls and confessionals are just too much. Walk into an elevator – all heads down, surfing. Gone forever are those awkward moments filled with meaningless chatter – “Can you believe the weather we’re having?” Going through airport se-curity, as pockets and briefcases are emptied into those ri-diculous bins on the conveyor belt, it reminds me of a Black Friday sale at Best Buy. It’s now not even cool to leave a voice-mail. My daughter tells me, “Just text me. You’re so 90’s, Dad.”

With five kids, my own house sounds like some 80’s techno-mixer of submarine sonar pings and pinball machines with the occasional “old phone ring” as bass. You have to love those per-sonalized ringtones. My friend’s ex has the ominous “da-dum, da-dum” tune from “Jaws” set when he calls – I guess he won’t be in the family Christmas card picture again this year.

All of these digital bursts of information – the tweets,

A California fel-low not long ago was in the midst

of that ubiquitous head-down dance we now call walking – attention riveted to the device in the palm of his hand, eyes darting up

every so often to avoid bumping into a lamp post or, in this fellow’s case, a 400-pound black bear.

Vaz Terdandenyan was walking down the street, absorbed in his little screen, when he nearly collided with a black bear that was on the loose in the neighborhood. He looked up from all his LOLs and smiley emoticons just in time to OMG and run!

True story, caught on video. A story that makes you think that maybe all these smart machines are making us dumb.

Still, there’s no going back. When I asked my daughter re-cently if she was going to take part in the “National Day of Unplugging” on March 1, a day when we were urged to un-tether ourselves for 24 hours from our smartphones, laptops and other gadgets, she rolled her eyes and asked, “What’s next, Dad, no cellphones at the dinner table?”

Have you heard about the man who nearly ran

into a bear?

texts, alerts, ad infinitum – activate primitive impulses within us to respond to each ping of our inbox as potential opportu-nities and threats. Our brain rewards all that stimulation with little squirts of dopamine that researchers say can be addic-tive. Truly amazing! Are we really that important?

Coincidence that Pope Benedict XVI joins Twitter and a few months later loses interest in work?

Joking aside, there was no surprise when the new pope was announced as pontiffs always have been, with a smoke signal sent out to thousands of joyous pilgrims waiting, together, in St. Peter’s Square. The fact is, there are moments in life that are too important and too complex to be mediated by – or as is frequently the case, interrupted by – technology.

Such events, like human relationships, can be rich, messy, irrational and demanding. And while texting, e-mailing, post-ing or the like can clean and clarify the message, make more efficient and expedient the exchange of information, there is a magic that’s only possible when interacting with real humans, in real time, and in the real, tactile physical world we inhabit.

That’s why I wasn’t surprised when Marissa Mayer, CEO of Yahoo, decreed seven months into her job that she wants em-ployees to show up at work instead of telecommuting. This

wasn’t, I’d bet, an off-the-cuff commandment; it was a data-supported decision reflecting a reality that the most value was being created by workers collaborating – in the hallways, offices and kitchens, face-to-face, one conversation at a time.

We humans need to look into other people’s eyes and hear their voices; to share a silence without using it to check our smartphones. Walk across the office or send an e-mail? The question will inevitably arise in the course of one’s workday. And when it does, maybe once in a while we ought to go device-free, taking that walk.

Oh, who am I kidding? Wearable computers, Google glasses, ubiquitous computing, anywhere, anytime, anyplace – and, “look Mom, no hands.” At least with this next wave our heads will be in an upright position. Next up – synthetic telepathy. You wouldn’t even have had to read this. We will communicate through thought transmission, “Twilight Zone” style. #GTG#@oldceo#iGiveup! K/F/B

CL

OC

KW

ISE

: KE

VIn

WO

nG

; Ka

th

Ry

n R

at

hK

E

TheLatest

MODWELLS, modular sensors for posture

and health tracking, designed by Artefact.

device-free management 101b y g A r y b u r n i s o n

2 0 1 3 : Q 3 k o r n / f e r r y i n T e r n A T i o n A L 15


The outrage from inside Yahoo and from a good portion of the business and academic communities was imme-diate. Mayer’s notion was derided and chided as simplistic, regressive, base-less and dangerous by many who regard “workplace flexibility” and “work-life balance” to be inviolable tenets of the modern organization. The new policy, they variously charged, was anti-fem-inist, anti-family, anti-productivity and anti-progress – and it was all about suspicion, control and lack of trust in employees.

When the first volley of vitriol died down, however, a measure of support for the move began to emerge. Yahoo employees seemed to be reassured when it was learned that the new policy was not an across-the-board ban on telecommuting, but rather was specifically targeted at only 200 employees who worked from home full-time. And many business leaders, who had experi-

enced workplace flexibility to be a mixed bag, at best, were not upset to see its portrayal as an unqualified productivity boon questioned. In fact, Best Buy CEO Hubert Joly soon thereafter ended his own company’s work-from-anywhere program, saying it was “fundamentally

flawed from a leadership perspective.”Although there are valid points on

both sides of the flexibility debate, it is likely that Mayer’s decision had less to do with changing a specific policy than with beginning to change a cul-ture – one that former and current Yahoo employees had depicted as aim-less, demoralizing, bloated and less and less competitive. Very simply, Mayer had concluded that restoring Yahoo would be difficult if employees were not there, that success was going to depend first and foremost on having the critical mass necessary to turn the ship around. The route back, she was betting, would be guided primarily by face-to-face interactions.

She’s not alone. According to Har-vard Business School professor Boris Groysberg and communication pro-

fessional Michael Slind, authors of “Talk, Inc.,” companies seeking to regain or retain their competitive

footing are increasingly return-ing to a culture of conversa-tion to replace more distant

modes of corporate communica-tion. “Consider that one hallmark

of a high-performing small company is the eminently conversational mode in which its people operate,” they wrote. “Physical proximity and open culture allow people to share key insights and data, and information moves freely and efficiently in multiple directions.”


Groysberg and Slind’s research con-sisted of interviews with more than 150 senior executives at more than 100 organizations of all types. “We were struck by how often that word ‘con-versation’ kept popping up,” said Slind. “CEOs, especially, talked about creat-ing a culture in which the communi-cation resembles the way two friends would talk.”

The authors call that “organiza-tional conversation” – cascading infor-mation and ideas throughout an orga-nization by emphasizing the hallmarks of face-to-face interaction: intimacy, interactivity, inclusiveness and intent. They offer numerous examples of com-panies – such as Cisco Systems, EMC and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd. – that have adopted such an ap-proach to recapture the nimbleness and cohesiveness of a small company. “Con-versation-like practices enable a com-pany to achieve higher degrees of trust, improved operational efficiency, greater motivation and commitment among employees, and better coordination be-tween top-level strategy and frontline execution,” said Groysberg.

In Groysberg and Slind’s view, “con-versation-like practices” include, of ne-cessity, the various forms of technologi-cally enabled communication that have become an inextricable part of the cor-porate landscape – blogs, wikis, Face-book, Twitter, Web-enabled video chat and so on – but the authors are quick to point out that those tools merely mimic conversation.

In truth, the use of communication technologies is no substitute for face-to-face human interaction. No matter how sophisticated the technology, it cannot match conversation’s immedi-acy, focus and rich array of non-verbal dynamics – gestures, body language, facial expression, eye contact, voice rhythm, timbre and intonation, and even touch. The verbal and non-ver-bal elements of conversation inform

one another. To remove any, even in part, is to delete information from the exchange.

There is a pas de deux quality to a real conversation. It is co-created and syncopated, requiring instantaneous processing and microadaptations. In a 2010 study, Princeton University re-searchers using functional magnetic resonance imaging found that ver-bal communication is a kind of mind-

melding process that facilitates un-derstanding. The scans showed “joint, temporally coupled, response patterns,” meaning that similar areas of the brains of both speakers and listeners fired nearly simultaneously during conversa-tion, usually with a slight lag for the lis-tener. Some listeners’ brain cells even fired slightly ahead of the speakers’, in-dicating they were actively anticipating and adjusting to where the conversation was headed.

According to physicist Greg J. Ste-phens, the lead author of the study, that kind of neural coupling emerges only in a shared conversation. And the stron-ger the coupling, the better the commu-nication. “That feeling of ‘clicking’ that we all have had when interacting with people might actually have real neu-ral basis,” said Stephens. The findings

added weight to the theory that our “mirror” neurons, which activate vicari-ously when we watch someone else per-form an action, are the foundation of the human capacity for empathy, rap-port and social organization. Mirroring is believed to be the way in which the brain automatically interprets the ac-tions, intentions and emotions of other people – what scientists call construct-ing a “theory of mind.”

Face-to-face conversation also tends to be more narrative, more like storytell-ing, than other modes of communica-tion, and that offers further opportunity to engage and understand other points of view. In a 2011 study by Raymond Mar, a psychologist at York University, brain scan analysis showed a substan-tial overlap between the brain networks used to understand stories and those used to construct a theory of mind.

All of this, it would seem, points to the elemental importance of being there when engaging in a collaborative endeavor. In their 2009 paper, “Brain Basis of Human Social Interaction,” Riitta Hari and Miiamaaria Kujala, pro-fessors at Helsinki University of Tech-nology’s Brain Research Unit, wrote: “We live in a world where most of our daily environment is made or affected by other humans. Other human beings differ from all other ‘stimuli’ by their great similarity to the perceivers them-selves. Actions, as such, create an in-ter-subjective reality comprising bond-ing, intentions, attitudes and meanings. Language further expands the shared world. Verbalizations, including stories and narratives, work as advanced cogni-tive tools that guide thinking.”

Viewed in that light, Marissa Mayer’s “come back to work” edict does not ap-pear to be a regressive attempt to pun-ish or control Yahoo employees, but rather a reasonable requirement that they take a more active part in shaping the company’s – and one another’s – future. K/F/B

In one of her first official acts, newly minted Yahoo CEO Marissa

Mayer had the temerity to suggest that organizations work better

when employees come to work. “To become the absolute best place

to work, communication and collaboration will be important, so we

need to be working side-by-side,” read an internal memo leaked in late

February. “Being a Yahoo isn’t just about your day-to-day job, it is about

the interactions and experiences that are only possible in our offices.”

TheLatest

“That feeling of ‘clicking’ that we all have had when interacting with

people might actually have real

neural basis.”G r E G J . S T E p h E N S

Ka

th

Ry

n R

at

hK

E

b r i e f i n g s o n t a l e n t + l e a D e R S H I P14



The outrage from inside Yahoo and from a good portion of the business and academic communities was imme-diate. Mayer’s notion was derided and chided as simplistic, regressive, base-less and dangerous by many who regard “workplace flexibility” and “work-life balance” to be inviolable tenets of the modern organization. The new policy, they variously charged, was anti-fem-inist, anti-family, anti-productivity and anti-progress – and it was all about suspicion, control and lack of trust in employees.

When the first volley of vitriol died down, however, a measure of support for the move began to emerge. Yahoo employees seemed to be reassured when it was learned that the new policy was not an across-the-board ban on telecommuting, but rather was specifically targeted at only 200 employees who worked from home full-time. And many business leaders, who had experi-

enced workplace flexibility to be a mixed bag, at best, were not upset to see its portrayal as an unqualified productivity boon questioned. In fact, Best Buy CEO Hubert Joly soon thereafter ended his own company’s work-from-anywhere program, saying it was “fundamentally

flawed from a leadership perspective.”Although there are valid points on

both sides of the flexibility debate, it is likely that Mayer’s decision had less to do with changing a specific policy than with beginning to change a cul-ture – one that former and current Yahoo employees had depicted as aim-less, demoralizing, bloated and less and less competitive. Very simply, Mayer had concluded that restoring Yahoo would be difficult if employees were not there, that success was going to depend first and foremost on having the critical mass necessary to turn the ship around. The route back, she was betting, would be guided primarily by face-to-face interactions.

She’s not alone. According to Har-vard Business School professor Boris Groysberg and communication pro-

fessional Michael Slind, authors of “Talk, Inc.,” companies seeking to regain or retain their competitive

footing are increasingly return-ing to a culture of conversa-tion to replace more distant

modes of corporate communica-tion. “Consider that one hallmark

of a high-performing small company is the eminently conversational mode in which its people operate,” they wrote. “Physical proximity and open culture allow people to share key insights and data, and information moves freely and efficiently in multiple directions.”


Groysberg and Slind’s research con-sisted of interviews with more than 150 senior executives at more than 100 organizations of all types. “We were struck by how often that word ‘con-versation’ kept popping up,” said Slind. “CEOs, especially, talked about creat-ing a culture in which the communi-cation resembles the way two friends would talk.”

The authors call that “organiza-tional conversation” – cascading infor-mation and ideas throughout an orga-nization by emphasizing the hallmarks of face-to-face interaction: intimacy, interactivity, inclusiveness and intent. They offer numerous examples of com-panies – such as Cisco Systems, EMC and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd. – that have adopted such an ap-proach to recapture the nimbleness and cohesiveness of a small company. “Con-versation-like practices enable a com-pany to achieve higher degrees of trust, improved operational efficiency, greater motivation and commitment among employees, and better coordination be-tween top-level strategy and frontline execution,” said Groysberg.

In Groysberg and Slind’s view, “con-versation-like practices” include, of ne-cessity, the various forms of technologi-cally enabled communication that have become an inextricable part of the cor-porate landscape – blogs, wikis, Face-book, Twitter, Web-enabled video chat and so on – but the authors are quick to point out that those tools merely mimic conversation.

In truth, the use of communication technologies is no substitute for face-to-face human interaction. No matter how sophisticated the technology, it cannot match conversation’s immedi-acy, focus and rich array of non-verbal dynamics – gestures, body language, facial expression, eye contact, voice rhythm, timbre and intonation, and even touch. The verbal and non-ver-bal elements of conversation inform

one another. To remove any, even in part, is to delete information from the exchange.

There is a pas de deux quality to a real conversation. It is co-created and syncopated, requiring instantaneous processing and microadaptations. In a 2010 study, Princeton University re-searchers using functional magnetic resonance imaging found that ver-bal communication is a kind of mind-

melding process that facilitates un-derstanding. The scans showed “joint, temporally coupled, response patterns,” meaning that similar areas of the brains of both speakers and listeners fired nearly simultaneously during conversa-tion, usually with a slight lag for the lis-tener. Some listeners’ brain cells even fired slightly ahead of the speakers’, in-dicating they were actively anticipating and adjusting to where the conversation was headed.

According to physicist Greg J. Ste-phens, the lead author of the study, that kind of neural coupling emerges only in a shared conversation. And the stron-ger the coupling, the better the commu-nication. “That feeling of ‘clicking’ that we all have had when interacting with people might actually have real neu-ral basis,” said Stephens. The findings

added weight to the theory that our “mirror” neurons, which activate vicari-ously when we watch someone else per-form an action, are the foundation of the human capacity for empathy, rap-port and social organization. Mirroring is believed to be the way in which the brain automatically interprets the ac-tions, intentions and emotions of other people – what scientists call construct-ing a “theory of mind.”

Face-to-face conversation also tends to be more narrative, more like storytell-ing, than other modes of communica-tion, and that offers further opportunity to engage and understand other points of view. In a 2011 study by Raymond Mar, a psychologist at York University, brain scan analysis showed a substan-tial overlap between the brain networks used to understand stories and those used to construct a theory of mind.

All of this, it would seem, points to the elemental importance of being there when engaging in a collaborative endeavor. In their 2009 paper, “Brain Basis of Human Social Interaction,” Riitta Hari and Miiamaaria Kujala, pro-fessors at Helsinki University of Tech-nology’s Brain Research Unit, wrote: “We live in a world where most of our daily environment is made or affected by other humans. Other human beings differ from all other ‘stimuli’ by their great similarity to the perceivers them-selves. Actions, as such, create an in-ter-subjective reality comprising bond-ing, intentions, attitudes and meanings. Language further expands the shared world. Verbalizations, including stories and narratives, work as advanced cogni-tive tools that guide thinking.”

Viewed in that light, Marissa Mayer’s “come back to work” edict does not ap-pear to be a regressive attempt to pun-ish or control Yahoo employees, but rather a reasonable requirement that they take a more active part in shaping the company’s – and one another’s – future. K/F/B

In one of her first official acts, newly minted Yahoo CEO Marissa

Mayer had the temerity to suggest that organizations work better

when employees come to work. “To become the absolute best place

to work, communication and collaboration will be important, so we

need to be working side-by-side,” read an internal memo leaked in late

February. “Being a Yahoo isn’t just about your day-to-day job, it is about

the interactions and experiences that are only possible in our offices.”

TheLatest

“That feeling of ‘clicking’ that we all have had when interacting with

people might actually have real

neural basis.”G r E G J . S T E p h E N S

Ka

th

Ry

n R

at

hK

E



growth of 1 percent in the second half of 2013, uncertainty reigns … rifts con-tinue to widen between the Euro Zone’s stronger economies and the weaker ones. Fears about the viability of the common currency resurface with each new political flashpoint.”

According to the report, this daunt-ing roster of challenges means that Eu-ropean executives can no longer merely manage growth by building on continu-ity and making incremental progress. Consequently, as the research showed, execution-oriented competencies such as organizing, problem solving and command skills, which were deemed crucial in the relatively stable pre-crisis environment, have fallen out of the top 10 leadership requirements. They have been replaced by skills that can address more fluid, emergent challenges: deal-ing with ambiguity, managing the vi-sion and purpose of the organization as a guiding force in a flat economy, and displaying managerial courage – none of which were in the top 10 just five years ago.

Similarly, the study’s examination of changing leadership styles paints the portrait of a pre-crisis leader “equipped to extract the most from the opportuni-ties of a prosperous economy,” one who is confident, competitive, analytical and adept at facilitating his agenda by build-ing relationships. Since the crisis, how-ever, the ideal leader is thought to be one whose mode of analysis is geared to much tighter time frames. She makes decisions quickly and efficiently, with an innate awareness of potential impli-cations, tradeoffs and, above all, cus-tomer needs. Her style is founded upon functional competence and expertise, the ability to persuade with data and in-tellectual argument, and the humility to adapt quickly to changing circum-stances and information.

As an example, the report recounts the story of one manager whose com-pany had traditionally placed a high pri-

ority on saving labor costs and so had moved its manufacturing to Asia. The manager believed his plants needed to be closer to the customer, so he chal-lenged the conventional wisdom, made his case and brought them back to Western Europe. The result was faster response times and quicker delivery that more than compensated for the in-

creased payroll. Profitability doubled. “To me,” said Tapper, “that was a perfect example of the way a new European ex-ecutive would operate. He or she would know the business well and be able to make a case through intellectual argu-ment to take a quick strategic decision that is very customer-focused.”

“We don’t see recovery (in Europe) progressing at the pace that anyone would like, [so] this new leadership pro-file will likely be required for some time to come,” Tapper added. But, he said, it will be a challenge for companies to de-velop because the requisite emotional intelligence, maturity and personal re-silience only come with the “develop-mental heat” of challenging, often emo-tionally charged, experience. “From our competency modeling, we know the dif-ficulties of developing these characteris-tics,” he said. “Some things you can cer-tainly teach, but others take much more time to develop. The big question is the executive’s learning agility. That’s what defines whether or not you can learn from those experiences and apply them in first-time situations, which is what post-crisis leadership is all about.”

So, what should companies do? The report outlined a four-part approach: First, they should audit their talent to determine whether they have post-crisis skills in-house and the degree to which they may need to build them or buy them. Second, they must cast a wider recruiting net than they may have in the past. Post-crisis talent is global and scarce. Third, they have to place greater emphasis on measuring and valuing an executive’s demonstrated learning agil-ity, along with his or her experience, when assessing potential. Fourth, they must continually rethink, adapt and ad-just their talent strategy.

“Delivering an agile business strat-egy is predicated on an agile talent strategy,” said Tapper. “That linkage is one that a lot of companies are not nec-essarily carrying through.” K/F/B


“Pre-crisis it was much more about execution, command skills, priority set-ting and driving for results,” said Jim Tapper, Korn/Ferry’s managing partner, leadership and talent consulting, for the United Kingdom, Nordic countries and the Middle East. “Today, you still have to be driven for results, that’s a given, but the way you get there is different.”

Tapper is principal author of “The New European Executive,” a recently published report that identifies the leadership skills and styles required in the current environment. According to the report, today’s company leaders must shift strategy more rapidly, more frequently and often with much less in-formation than in the past – what one executive in the study referred to as “driving in fog.” For that reason, “ex-ecutives who once could steer growth with a confident, steady hand must now have the fluidity to manage disruption and maximize the opportunities that emerge from constraint.”

“These days our clients are looking for people who are tougher, more re-silient and can deal with things that you’ve got to do in a downturn, rather than just creating growth,” said the report’s co-author Iain Manson, Korn/Ferry’s head of energy practice in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

The research for the study was rigor-ous, drawing upon a variety of sources. To gather post-crisis data, Korn/Ferry surveyed and interviewed 109 C-suite and board-level business leaders at companies on the European continent or Britain in mid-2012. Those inter-views were supplemented with post-cri-sis data from Korn/Ferry’s database of senior European executive assessments. The surveys asked respondents to list their top-priority business challenges today and, in that context, to rank the importance of 26 leadership skills and 18 personal leadership-style charac-teristics. Those results were compared to pre-crisis norms for Europe, which were derived from the 360-degree job performance appraisals of 344 executives in Korn/Ferry’s database, all done between February 2007 and March 2008.

The executives surveyed post-crisis ranked the stability of the euro first among their business challenges, followed by unsteady con-sumer confidence and tightening access to capital. They also noted sev-

eral work-force-related concerns in their top 10, including rigid labor mar-kets, a need to boost talent develop-ment and the challenge of keeping the talent pool engaged during difficult times. For many, the wounds of 2008-2009 are still fresh – threats of severe financial dislocation, precipitous drops in revenue, drastic labor force reduc-tions and across-the-board pay cuts – and their current concerns reflect that perspective.

Indeed, as the report notes, the In-ternational Monetary Fund’s October 2012 Global Stability Forecast for Eu-rope “offered a snapshot of interlocked economies facing sputtering growth or stagnation, twinned with politi-cal peril. … In the Euro Zone, where the IMF predicts tepid GDP

A new study delineates what leadershipmust look like today.

T he aftershocks of the 2008 financial crisis still reverberate

throughout the global business landscape. The crisis set in

motion previously unknown levels of economic volatility,

political instability and rapid, unpredictable change that continue

today, and in many ways have become the norm. In Europe, accord-

ing to a new Korn/Ferry report, that has effectively “wiped out the

model of leadership that had dominated for decades.”

TheLatest

Audit talent to determine whether

there are post-crisis skills in-house and the degree to which they may need

to be developed.

01

Continually rethink, adapt &

adjust talent strategy.

04

Cast a wider recruiting

net than in the past.

02

Emphasize measuring & valuing

an executive’s learning agility, along with his or her experience, when assessing potential.

03sis data from Korn/Ferry’s database of senior European executive assessments. The surveys asked respondents to list their top-priority business challenges today and, in that context, to rank the importance of 26 leadership skills and 18 personal leadership-style charac-teristics. Those results were compared to pre-crisis norms for Europe, which were derived from the 360-degree job performance appraisals of 344 executives in Korn/Ferry’s database, all done between February 2007 and March 2008.


cal peril. … In the Euro Zone, where the IMF predicts tepid GDP


growth of 1 percent in the second half of 2013, uncertainty reigns … rifts con-tinue to widen between the Euro Zone’s stronger economies and the weaker ones. Fears about the viability of the common currency resurface with each new political flashpoint.”

According to the report, this daunt-ing roster of challenges means that Eu-ropean executives can no longer merely manage growth by building on continu-ity and making incremental progress. Consequently, as the research showed, execution-oriented competencies such as organizing, problem solving and command skills, which were deemed crucial in the relatively stable pre-crisis environment, have fallen out of the top 10 leadership requirements. They have been replaced by skills that can address more fluid, emergent challenges: deal-ing with ambiguity, managing the vi-sion and purpose of the organization as a guiding force in a flat economy, and displaying managerial courage – none of which were in the top 10 just five years ago.

Similarly, the study’s examination of changing leadership styles paints the portrait of a pre-crisis leader “equipped to extract the most from the opportuni-ties of a prosperous economy,” one who is confident, competitive, analytical and adept at facilitating his agenda by build-ing relationships. Since the crisis, how-ever, the ideal leader is thought to be one whose mode of analysis is geared to much tighter time frames. She makes decisions quickly and efficiently, with an innate awareness of potential impli-cations, tradeoffs and, above all, cus-tomer needs. Her style is founded upon functional competence and expertise, the ability to persuade with data and in-tellectual argument, and the humility to adapt quickly to changing circum-stances and information.

As an example, the report recounts the story of one manager whose com-pany had traditionally placed a high pri-

ority on saving labor costs and so had moved its manufacturing to Asia. The manager believed his plants needed to be closer to the customer, so he chal-lenged the conventional wisdom, made his case and brought them back to Western Europe. The result was faster response times and quicker delivery that more than compensated for the in-

creased payroll. Profitability doubled. “To me,” said Tapper, “that was a perfect example of the way a new European ex-ecutive would operate. He or she would know the business well and be able to make a case through intellectual argu-ment to take a quick strategic decision that is very customer-focused.”

“We don’t see recovery (in Europe) progressing at the pace that anyone would like, [so] this new leadership pro-file will likely be required for some time to come,” Tapper added. But, he said, it will be a challenge for companies to de-velop because the requisite emotional intelligence, maturity and personal re-silience only come with the “develop-mental heat” of challenging, often emo-tionally charged, experience. “From our competency modeling, we know the dif-ficulties of developing these characteris-tics,” he said. “Some things you can cer-tainly teach, but others take much more time to develop. The big question is the executive’s learning agility. That’s what defines whether or not you can learn from those experiences and apply them in first-time situations, which is what post-crisis leadership is all about.”

So, what should companies do? The report outlined a four-part approach: First, they should audit their talent to determine whether they have post-crisis skills in-house and the degree to which they may need to build them or buy them. Second, they must cast a wider recruiting net than they may have in the past. Post-crisis talent is global and scarce. Third, they have to place greater emphasis on measuring and valuing an executive’s demonstrated learning agil-ity, along with his or her experience, when assessing potential. Fourth, they must continually rethink, adapt and ad-just their talent strategy.

“Delivering an agile business strat-egy is predicated on an agile talent strategy,” said Tapper. “That linkage is one that a lot of companies are not nec-essarily carrying through.” K/F/B


“Pre-crisis it was much more about execution, command skills, priority set-ting and driving for results,” said Jim Tapper, Korn/Ferry’s managing partner, leadership and talent consulting, for the United Kingdom, Nordic countries and the Middle East. “Today, you still have to be driven for results, that’s a given, but the way you get there is different.”

Tapper is principal author of “The New European Executive,” a recently published report that identifies the leadership skills and styles required in the current environment. According to the report, today’s company leaders must shift strategy more rapidly, more frequently and often with much less in-formation than in the past – what one executive in the study referred to as “driving in fog.” For that reason, “ex-ecutives who once could steer growth with a confident, steady hand must now have the fluidity to manage disruption and maximize the opportunities that emerge from constraint.”

“These days our clients are looking for people who are tougher, more re-silient and can deal with things that you’ve got to do in a downturn, rather than just creating growth,” said the report’s co-author Iain Manson, Korn/Ferry’s head of energy practice in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

The research for the study was rigor-ous, drawing upon a variety of sources. To gather post-crisis data, Korn/Ferry surveyed and interviewed 109 C-suite and board-level business leaders at companies on the European continent or Britain in mid-2012. Those inter-views were supplemented with post-cri-sis data from Korn/Ferry’s database of senior European executive assessments. The surveys asked respondents to list their top-priority business challenges today and, in that context, to rank the importance of 26 leadership skills and 18 personal leadership-style charac-teristics. Those results were compared to pre-crisis norms for Europe, which were derived from the 360-degree job performance appraisals of 344 executives in Korn/Ferry’s database, all done between February 2007 and March 2008.


eral work-force-related concerns in their top 10, including rigid labor mar-kets, a need to boost talent develop-ment and the challenge of keeping the talent pool engaged during difficult times. For many, the wounds of 2008-2009 are still fresh – threats of severe financial dislocation, precipitous drops in revenue, drastic labor force reduc-tions and across-the-board pay cuts – and their current concerns reflect that perspective.

Indeed, as the report notes, the In-ternational Monetary Fund’s October 2012 Global Stability Forecast for Eu-rope “offered a snapshot of interlocked economies facing sputtering growth or stagnation, twinned with politi-cal peril. … In the Euro Zone, where the IMF predicts tepid GDP

A new study delineates what leadershipmust look like today.

T he aftershocks of the 2008 financial crisis still reverberate

throughout the global business landscape. The crisis set in

motion previously unknown levels of economic volatility,

political instability and rapid, unpredictable change that continue

today, and in many ways have become the norm. In Europe, accord-

ing to a new Korn/Ferry report, that has effectively “wiped out the

model of leadership that had dominated for decades.”

TheLatest

Audit talent to determine whether

there are post-crisis skills in-house and the degree to which they may need

to be developed.

01

Continually rethink, adapt &

adjust talent strategy.

04

Cast a wider recruiting

net than in the past.

02

Emphasize measuring & valuing

an executive’s learning agility, along with his or her experience, when assessing potential.

03

EXPLORE THE BOOK, VISIT www.LEADthebook.com

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A.G. Laf ley spent 33 years at Procter & Gamble and became its game-changing CEO for his last decade at the consumer products giant, he was headed toward a career as a professor of the humanities. If not for a low number in the initial draft lottery in 1969 that led to a five-year stint in the Navy, Laf ley was ready to commence work on a doctorate in medieval history at the University of Virginia and “probably would have ended up teaching and writing.” Though the Vietnam War interrupted his plans and he subsequently turned to a business career, Laf ley never abandoned the critical thinking and cross-disciplinary mindset that his humanities background ingrained in him.

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A C A D E MI E

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“ B ” S C H O O L ?

P L a t O ’ S

D u D et H e

A.G. Laf ley spent 33 years at Procter & Gamble and became its game-changing CEO for his last decade at the consumer products giant, he was headed toward a career as a professor of the humanities. If not for a low number in the initial draft lottery in 1969 that led to a five-year stint in the Navy, Laf ley was ready to commence work on a doctorate in medieval history at the University of Virginia and “probably would have ended up teaching and writing.” Though the Vietnam War interrupted his plans and he subsequently turned to a business career, Laf ley never abandoned the critical thinking and cross-disciplinary mindset that his humanities background ingrained in him.

b y g l e n n r i f k i n

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is

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“The liberal arts logically leads to thinking and leader-ship,” Lafley said. “And all management jobs, in a for-profit, not-for-profit, small, medium or Fortune 50 company, if you are going to be a good manager, you’re going to have to learn how to think and how to lead. It’s called strategy.”

Under Lafley’s leadership, P&G emerged from a stagnant period of underperformance to reclaim its flagship role in the consumer products space, specifically due to Lafley’s cre-ative thinking on the art of innovation. During his tenure, P&G’s profits quadrupled, its roster of billion-dollar brands grew from 10 to 24, P&G acquired shaving giant Gillette, and the company’s market capitalization grew by more than $100 billion. Lafley was lauded as a visionary and reaped leadership awards for spearheading the turnaround. Lafley believes his humanities training played an important role.

“Clearly, my background meant that I had a very open mind, was very curious, and I was always looking for new ways to do things,” he said.

Having gone to Hamilton College in upstate New York expressly for its notable liberal arts curriculum, Lafley re-alized that “when you are taking courses across disciplines, you learn deductive reasoning, inductive reasoning and ab-ductive reasoning. How would an economist or an historian or a behavioral psychologist look at the problem? So you tend to look at challenges and opportunities through differ-ent lenses rather than just one lens.

“When I became CEO in 2000, we employed 100,000 people and about 10,000 of our managers were chemists, biologists, biochemists and chemical engineers,” he said. “I think I was a very credible collaborator with R&D and the innovation community because of my curiosity, and my ability to help them think through how their inventions could turn into innovative branded products and services for our customers.”

And Lafley is not alone in believing in the potent impact a humanities background has on leadership ability. A look at the resumes of successful leaders in business, the mili-tary, government and the private sector reveals an unex-pectedly high number of overachievers with a liberal arts or humanities background.

For example, Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, entered a graduate program at Duke University at age 30 with the express purpose of teaching English at West Point. With a concentration in Irish liter-ature, specifically the poet William Butler Yeats, Dempsey

(see page 26) acquired a deep appreciation of the humanities. The humanities, he said, put challenges into context, which is a crucial element for successful leadership. “When I speak at military academies or universities, I often get asked, ‘How do I get ready for the future?’ ” Dempsey said. “I say, ‘Don’t worry, the future is going to find you, just like the baseball always finds the weak infielder.’ It’s about that passionate curiosity, a commitment to lifelong learning and to under-standing context, so that when the future does find you, you are better armed for it.”

Israeli entrepreneur Amos Shapira is the former CEO of Cellcom, Israel’s largest cellphone provider. Speaking to a human resources conference at Tel Aviv University, Shapira said, “All the practical learning that serves me as CEO, a rea-sonable person could learn in about two weeks. The main thing a student needs to be taught is how to study and pri-oritize and analyze things, including history and philos-ophy.” Now president of the University of Haifa, Shapira added, “I have a problem with business administration be-ing taught at the B.A. level at the expense of academic stud-ies that develop the ability to learn.”

g e t t i n g p e r s p e c t i v e

A S O L I D g R O u n D I n g I n t H E H u M A n I t I E S has produced a raft of effective leaders, regardless of their purview. In a recent survey of business leaders in the United Kingdom, for example, 60 percent reported that they had de-grees in the humanities, arts or social sciences, while degrees in the STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, math) accounted for just 15 percent. Among the FTSE 100 companies, 34 CEOs had humanities degrees versus 31 with STEM degrees. Such data, along with a steady supply of an-ecdotal evidence, illustrates that a humanities or liberal arts background, recently considered a dead-end degree, actually produces more successful leaders, particularly in business.

“The humanities give you perspective,” said Joanne Ciulla, a professor of leadership ethics and a founding member of the Jepson School of Leadership Studies at the University of Richmond in Virginia. “And when we think about developing

leadership, one of the things leaders really need is per-spective. Chester Barnard, who was a business leader and management theorist, once said, ‘Leadership is the art of sensing the whole.’ And the difference between thinking like a leader ver-sus thinking like a manager is that when you think like a leader, you are looking at the whole picture, and the hu-manities – history, litera-ture, religion and philos-ophy – give you the whole picture.”

It is not a surprise that Plato and Aristotle started schools, Ciulla points out, because they believed in the value of educating young people to reason and see the world through various lenses by exposing them to many different subjects. But as business schools have pro-liferated over the past half-century and began turning out prospective leaders, the curriculum tended to focus on psy-chology, management and finance. The humanities became little more than an afterthought.

One of the core courses at the Jepson School, which was founded in 1992, is Leadership and the Humanities, which proposes that the very breadth and depth of the humanities is more essential than ever for effective leadership. For Ciulla, the school represents a refutation of the notion that univer-sities should act as trade schools focused on specialized areas of study to prepare students for the job market. By making universities more like trade schools, she points out, we may be “educating students to be workers, but not leaders.”

“The humanities help us understand the context and val-ues that shape the relationship of leaders and followers and the phenomenon of leadership itself,” wrote Ciulla in an in-troduction to the school, “Without the humanities, leadership studies is a little like watching a movie without the sound.”

It comes as no surprise, therefore, that the seminal management thinkers un-derstood the power of a hu-manities education. Ac-cording to Rick Wartzman, director of the Drucker In-stitute, in a 2009 column for Bloomberg-Businessweek, management icon Peter Drucker “often turned to the humanities for lessons about management.”

While suggesting that management might rightly be viewed as a technology, Drucker, writing in his 1989 book “The New Realities,” said, “But management also deals with people, their val-ues, their growth and devel-opment – and this makes it a humanity. Management is thus what tradition used to call a ‘liberal art’: ‘lib-eral’ because it deals with the fundamentals of knowl-

edge, self-knowledge, wisdom and leadership; ‘art’ because it is practice and application.

“Managers,” Drucker continued, “draw on all the knowl-edge and insights of the humanities and social sciences – on psychology and philosophy, on economics and on history, on the physical sciences and on ethics.”

Leadership guru Warren Bennis confronted the learn-ing issue in his 1989 book “On Becoming a Leader” when he wrote about “knowing the world.” He railed against univer-sities becoming “high-class vocational schools ... producing throngs of narrow-minded specialists who may be wizards at making money, but who are unfinished as people. These specialists are taught how to do but they have not learned how to be. Instead of studying philosophy, history and lit-erature – which are the experiences of all humankind – they study computer programming. What can they program their computers to solve, unless they have first grappled with the primary questions?”

T H E R E W I L L B E n o e n d t o t h e troubles of states, or of humanity itselft i l l p h i l o s o p h e r s b e c o m e k i n g s i n t h i s w o r l d . . . – p l a t o

co

rb

is


“The liberal arts logically leads to thinking and leader-ship,” Lafley said. “And all management jobs, in a for-profit, not-for-profit, small, medium or Fortune 50 company, if you are going to be a good manager, you’re going to have to learn how to think and how to lead. It’s called strategy.”

Under Lafley’s leadership, P&G emerged from a stagnant period of underperformance to reclaim its flagship role in the consumer products space, specifically due to Lafley’s cre-ative thinking on the art of innovation. During his tenure, P&G’s profits quadrupled, its roster of billion-dollar brands grew from 10 to 24, P&G acquired shaving giant Gillette, and the company’s market capitalization grew by more than $100 billion. Lafley was lauded as a visionary and reaped leadership awards for spearheading the turnaround. Lafley believes his humanities training played an important role.

“Clearly, my background meant that I had a very open mind, was very curious, and I was always looking for new ways to do things,” he said.

Having gone to Hamilton College in upstate New York expressly for its notable liberal arts curriculum, Lafley re-alized that “when you are taking courses across disciplines, you learn deductive reasoning, inductive reasoning and ab-ductive reasoning. How would an economist or an historian or a behavioral psychologist look at the problem? So you tend to look at challenges and opportunities through differ-ent lenses rather than just one lens.

“When I became CEO in 2000, we employed 100,000 people and about 10,000 of our managers were chemists, biologists, biochemists and chemical engineers,” he said. “I think I was a very credible collaborator with R&D and the innovation community because of my curiosity, and my ability to help them think through how their inventions could turn into innovative branded products and services for our customers.”

And Lafley is not alone in believing in the potent impact a humanities background has on leadership ability. A look at the resumes of successful leaders in business, the mili-tary, government and the private sector reveals an unex-pectedly high number of overachievers with a liberal arts or humanities background.

For example, Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, entered a graduate program at Duke University at age 30 with the express purpose of teaching English at West Point. With a concentration in Irish liter-ature, specifically the poet William Butler Yeats, Dempsey

(see page 26) acquired a deep appreciation of the humanities. The humanities, he said, put challenges into context, which is a crucial element for successful leadership. “When I speak at military academies or universities, I often get asked, ‘How do I get ready for the future?’ ” Dempsey said. “I say, ‘Don’t worry, the future is going to find you, just like the baseball always finds the weak infielder.’ It’s about that passionate curiosity, a commitment to lifelong learning and to under-standing context, so that when the future does find you, you are better armed for it.”

Israeli entrepreneur Amos Shapira is the former CEO of Cellcom, Israel’s largest cellphone provider. Speaking to a human resources conference at Tel Aviv University, Shapira said, “All the practical learning that serves me as CEO, a rea-sonable person could learn in about two weeks. The main thing a student needs to be taught is how to study and pri-oritize and analyze things, including history and philos-ophy.” Now president of the University of Haifa, Shapira added, “I have a problem with business administration be-ing taught at the B.A. level at the expense of academic stud-ies that develop the ability to learn.”

g e t t i n g p e r s p e c t i v e

A S O L I D g R O u n D I n g I n t H E H u M A n I t I E S has produced a raft of effective leaders, regardless of their purview. In a recent survey of business leaders in the United Kingdom, for example, 60 percent reported that they had de-grees in the humanities, arts or social sciences, while degrees in the STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, math) accounted for just 15 percent. Among the FTSE 100 companies, 34 CEOs had humanities degrees versus 31 with STEM degrees. Such data, along with a steady supply of an-ecdotal evidence, illustrates that a humanities or liberal arts background, recently considered a dead-end degree, actually produces more successful leaders, particularly in business.

“The humanities give you perspective,” said Joanne Ciulla, a professor of leadership ethics and a founding member of the Jepson School of Leadership Studies at the University of Richmond in Virginia. “And when we think about developing

leadership, one of the things leaders really need is per-spective. Chester Barnard, who was a business leader and management theorist, once said, ‘Leadership is the art of sensing the whole.’ And the difference between thinking like a leader ver-sus thinking like a manager is that when you think like a leader, you are looking at the whole picture, and the hu-manities – history, litera-ture, religion and philos-ophy – give you the whole picture.”

It is not a surprise that Plato and Aristotle started schools, Ciulla points out, because they believed in the value of educating young people to reason and see the world through various lenses by exposing them to many different subjects. But as business schools have pro-liferated over the past half-century and began turning out prospective leaders, the curriculum tended to focus on psy-chology, management and finance. The humanities became little more than an afterthought.

One of the core courses at the Jepson School, which was founded in 1992, is Leadership and the Humanities, which proposes that the very breadth and depth of the humanities is more essential than ever for effective leadership. For Ciulla, the school represents a refutation of the notion that univer-sities should act as trade schools focused on specialized areas of study to prepare students for the job market. By making universities more like trade schools, she points out, we may be “educating students to be workers, but not leaders.”

“The humanities help us understand the context and val-ues that shape the relationship of leaders and followers and the phenomenon of leadership itself,” wrote Ciulla in an in-troduction to the school, “Without the humanities, leadership studies is a little like watching a movie without the sound.”

It comes as no surprise, therefore, that the seminal management thinkers un-derstood the power of a hu-manities education. Ac-cording to Rick Wartzman, director of the Drucker In-stitute, in a 2009 column for Bloomberg-Businessweek, management icon Peter Drucker “often turned to the humanities for lessons about management.”

While suggesting that management might rightly be viewed as a technology, Drucker, writing in his 1989 book “The New Realities,” said, “But management also deals with people, their val-ues, their growth and devel-opment – and this makes it a humanity. Management is thus what tradition used to call a ‘liberal art’: ‘lib-eral’ because it deals with the fundamentals of knowl-

edge, self-knowledge, wisdom and leadership; ‘art’ because it is practice and application.

“Managers,” Drucker continued, “draw on all the knowl-edge and insights of the humanities and social sciences – on psychology and philosophy, on economics and on history, on the physical sciences and on ethics.”

Leadership guru Warren Bennis confronted the learn-ing issue in his 1989 book “On Becoming a Leader” when he wrote about “knowing the world.” He railed against univer-sities becoming “high-class vocational schools ... producing throngs of narrow-minded specialists who may be wizards at making money, but who are unfinished as people. These specialists are taught how to do but they have not learned how to be. Instead of studying philosophy, history and lit-erature – which are the experiences of all humankind – they study computer programming. What can they program their computers to solve, unless they have first grappled with the primary questions?”

T H E R E W I L L B E n o e n d t o t h e troubles of states, or of humanity itselft i l l p h i l o s o p h e r s b e c o m e k i n g s i n t h i s w o r l d . . . – p l a t o

co

rb

is

24 b r i e f i n g s o n t a l e n t + l e a D e R S H I P 252 0 1 3 : Q 3 k o r n / f e r r y i n T e r n A T i o n A L

s o l v i n g w i c k e d p r o b l e m s

H A R D t O I M A g I n E t H At S O L I t t L E H A S changed since Bennis penned his words. In a global mar-ketplace where crushing new competitive realities have obliterated most conventional wisdom, organizations are still struggling to find the innovative thinkers who can adapt and provide new strategic vision. Tony Golsby-Smith, founder and CEO of Second Road, a business design and transformation firm in Sydney, Australia, suggests hiring from the humanities. In a 2011 Harvard Business Review blog post, Golsby-Smith, after speaking to countless business ex-ecutives, reports on the “despair of finding people who can help them solve wicked problems.”

“There are plenty of M.B.A.’s and even Ph.D.’s in eco-nomics, chemistry or computer science in the corporate ranks. Intellectual wattage is not lacking,” Golsby-Smith wrote. “It’s the right intellectual wattage that’s hard to find.”

Lamenting the educational system’s focus on teaching science and business students to “control, predict, verify, guarantee and test data,” he says the system fails to navigate “what if” questions or unknown futures.

“People trained in the humanities who study Shake-speare’s poetry, or Cezanne’s paintings, say, have learned to play with big concepts,” he writes, “and to apply new ways of thinking to difficult problems that can’t be analyzed in con-ventional ways.”

According to Golsby-Smith, a humanities education can better prepare a leader in a variety of crucial ways:

Dealing with complexity and ambiguity. Had the lead-ers of companies like BP had the scope of understanding to recognize potential crises before they happened, they might avoid disasters from ambiguous threats. “Any great work of art – whether literary, philosophical, psychological or visual – challenges a humanist to be curious, to ask open-ended questions, see the big picture,” Golsby-Smith wrote. “This kind of thinking is just what you need if you are facing a murky future or dealing with tricky, incipient problems.”

Innovation. “Humanists are trained to be creative and are uniquely adapted to leading creative teams.”

Communication and presentation. A focus on writing and expressing oneself is table stakes to the game for today’s effective leaders. Rhetoric and performance art such as the-ater or music provide a path to strong presentation skills.

Customer and employee satisfaction. Knowing the real needs and concerns of customers and employees is too im-portant to be left to surveys and outside consultants. A good leader needs “keen powers of observation and psychology – the stuff of poets and novelists,” he wrote.

Humanists also tend to maintain a lifelong relationship with learning, remaining as curious about the human con-dition as they were as undergrads. Consider Robert Weber, chief counsel for IBM. As a Yale English major, Weber read Dante, Shakespeare, Faulkner and “a lot about the condition we call humanity.” Today, Weber oversees a 1,500-employee organization, including 500 lawyers, and credits his liberal arts background for helping to build his successful 29-year career as a trial lawyer before joining IBM in 2006.

“That education brought this notion of being a criti-cal reader and writer and understanding analyst,” Weber said. “It is what animated and informed all that I’ve done all these years. I continually draw upon that education from many years ago to help me communicate and deal with dif-ferent people in stressful situations, to enable a team to do things more efficiently, more accurately and with better problem-solving than they had before.”

The liberal arts, Weber said, was helpful in providing a broader understanding and insight in human behavior, a critical skill for a trial lawyer as well as a business leader. “I learned about different personality types, how to react under pressure, what to emulate and what to avoid,” he ex-plained. “It means being more interested in the witness and the jury than yourself, which is crucial for a trial lawyer.”

Overseeing such a large internal department, Weber con-stantly draws on lessons from literature. “I like to share the Chaucer quote from the Clerk (in the prologue to “The Can-terbury Tales”), ‘And gladly would he learn and gladly teach,’ which is the mindset you want your team to have, that we have to learn from people every single day, everybody we deal with. It’s part of our job and professional development.”

In addition, the humanities taught him that it literally is “all about the people,” whether engaging the 12 citizens in the jury box or dealing with a corporate board, management or work team. “What are they interested in? What questions do they have? How do they want those questions answered?” Weber asked. “It is a thousand times more about listen-ing and thinking, or what Clarence Darrow once said about ‘knowing the heart of every man.’ ”

Weber continues to read the Western literature and re-ligious history that he enjoyed as an undergraduate at Yale. He also re-reads Machiavelli’s “The Prince” every few years, which is “as good a foray into psychology” as one can find. “I’m not sitting at home reading the Harvard Business Review,” he admitted. “I’m still reading the stuff I read as an undergrad, and my defense is, I like it.”

For Angel Martinez, CEO of Deckers Outdoor Inc., an undergraduate degree in rhetoric became a foundational element in his successful career as a marketing executive

“It is not a surprise that Plato and

aristotle started schools ... because

they believed in the value of educating

young people to reason and see

the world through various lenses by exposing them to

many different subjects.”

co

rb

is


s o l v i n g w i c k e d p r o b l e m s

H A R D t O I M A g I n E t H At S O L I t t L E H A S changed since Bennis penned his words. In a global mar-ketplace where crushing new competitive realities have obliterated most conventional wisdom, organizations are still struggling to find the innovative thinkers who can adapt and provide new strategic vision. Tony Golsby-Smith, founder and CEO of Second Road, a business design and transformation firm in Sydney, Australia, suggests hiring from the humanities. In a 2011 Harvard Business Review blog post, Golsby-Smith, after speaking to countless business ex-ecutives, reports on the “despair of finding people who can help them solve wicked problems.”

“There are plenty of M.B.A.’s and even Ph.D.’s in eco-nomics, chemistry or computer science in the corporate ranks. Intellectual wattage is not lacking,” Golsby-Smith wrote. “It’s the right intellectual wattage that’s hard to find.”

Lamenting the educational system’s focus on teaching science and business students to “control, predict, verify, guarantee and test data,” he says the system fails to navigate “what if” questions or unknown futures.

“People trained in the humanities who study Shake-speare’s poetry, or Cezanne’s paintings, say, have learned to play with big concepts,” he writes, “and to apply new ways of thinking to difficult problems that can’t be analyzed in con-ventional ways.”

According to Golsby-Smith, a humanities education can better prepare a leader in a variety of crucial ways:

Dealing with complexity and ambiguity. Had the lead-ers of companies like BP had the scope of understanding to recognize potential crises before they happened, they might avoid disasters from ambiguous threats. “Any great work of art – whether literary, philosophical, psychological or visual – challenges a humanist to be curious, to ask open-ended questions, see the big picture,” Golsby-Smith wrote. “This kind of thinking is just what you need if you are facing a murky future or dealing with tricky, incipient problems.”

Innovation. “Humanists are trained to be creative and are uniquely adapted to leading creative teams.”

Communication and presentation. A focus on writing and expressing oneself is table stakes to the game for today’s effective leaders. Rhetoric and performance art such as the-ater or music provide a path to strong presentation skills.

Customer and employee satisfaction. Knowing the real needs and concerns of customers and employees is too im-portant to be left to surveys and outside consultants. A good leader needs “keen powers of observation and psychology – the stuff of poets and novelists,” he wrote.

Humanists also tend to maintain a lifelong relationship with learning, remaining as curious about the human con-dition as they were as undergrads. Consider Robert Weber, chief counsel for IBM. As a Yale English major, Weber read Dante, Shakespeare, Faulkner and “a lot about the condition we call humanity.” Today, Weber oversees a 1,500-employee organization, including 500 lawyers, and credits his liberal arts background for helping to build his successful 29-year career as a trial lawyer before joining IBM in 2006.

“That education brought this notion of being a criti-cal reader and writer and understanding analyst,” Weber said. “It is what animated and informed all that I’ve done all these years. I continually draw upon that education from many years ago to help me communicate and deal with dif-ferent people in stressful situations, to enable a team to do things more efficiently, more accurately and with better problem-solving than they had before.”

The liberal arts, Weber said, was helpful in providing a broader understanding and insight in human behavior, a critical skill for a trial lawyer as well as a business leader. “I learned about different personality types, how to react under pressure, what to emulate and what to avoid,” he ex-plained. “It means being more interested in the witness and the jury than yourself, which is crucial for a trial lawyer.”

Overseeing such a large internal department, Weber con-stantly draws on lessons from literature. “I like to share the Chaucer quote from the Clerk (in the prologue to “The Can-terbury Tales”), ‘And gladly would he learn and gladly teach,’ which is the mindset you want your team to have, that we have to learn from people every single day, everybody we deal with. It’s part of our job and professional development.”

In addition, the humanities taught him that it literally is “all about the people,” whether engaging the 12 citizens in the jury box or dealing with a corporate board, management or work team. “What are they interested in? What questions do they have? How do they want those questions answered?” Weber asked. “It is a thousand times more about listen-ing and thinking, or what Clarence Darrow once said about ‘knowing the heart of every man.’ ”

Weber continues to read the Western literature and re-ligious history that he enjoyed as an undergraduate at Yale. He also re-reads Machiavelli’s “The Prince” every few years, which is “as good a foray into psychology” as one can find. “I’m not sitting at home reading the Harvard Business Review,” he admitted. “I’m still reading the stuff I read as an undergrad, and my defense is, I like it.”

For Angel Martinez, CEO of Deckers Outdoor Inc., an undergraduate degree in rhetoric became a foundational element in his successful career as a marketing executive

“It is not a surprise that Plato and

aristotle started schools ... because

they believed in the value of educating

young people to reason and see

the world through various lenses by exposing them to

many different subjects.”

co

rb

is

and business leader. He had his first leadership experience as a championship-level distance runner in high school and college, when he was the captain of his track team. And when he went off to college, he knew that he wanted a grounding in the humanities.

“I didn’t go to college to get a job. I went to have an ex-perience, to learn how to think. That was my motivation,” Martinez said. “It’s really difficult to study something like rhetoric and not have an expansive world view because it focuses on human truth. It occurred to me then that mar-keting is the rhetoric of business.”

Martinez said he has always been introspective and had the ability to see things in a different and broader perspec-tive than most observers. A liberal arts background allowed him to “connect the dots” and understand the relationships

between time, place, situations and people. “The human condition is unchanged from 5,000 years ago,” he said. “We have more technology and information, but the hu-man brain doesn’t evolve in 5,000 years, so we are not the first to experience anything.”

The tendency to overspecialize, particularly in the busi-ness world, has pushed far too many young people away from the humanities, which is to the detriment of compa-nies struggling to find a profitable future. “Often, a student will stumble into the humanities with a passion for a par-ticular area, but then they almost immediately edit their potential,” Martinez said. “ ‘I’m a copywriter now or a line builder.’ In the end, they don’t say, ‘I wonder what it will take for me to run this company.’ That’s too bad because we lose out.”

Ultimately, as A.G. Lafley realized, a foundation in the humanities provides a leader with something more than power: the bedrock of lifelong learning and a core tenet of being human. CEO’s are portrayed in the media as power brokers who make or break the company. But in fact, “the CEO role in reality in most companies, especially large, multinational corporations, is influential but the power of running the business is in the business units,” Lafley said. “The CEO helps sharpen strategies, tells the story of the company to a wide variety of stakeholders and represents the company to the world. The buck stops with you and, in terms of performance, the results are yours. In fact, I had no idea at the time that what I was prepared for at Hamilton College would be the building blocks of what I ended up do-ing in a top leadership role.”

As universities struggle to make the case for the rele-vance of a humanities education, leaders, particularly in the corporate sector, ought to pay heed to the words of Richard H. Brodhead, president of Duke University, in a keynote ad-dress to the National Humanities Alliance in 2012.

“For the health of our society, we need to train minds that have learned plural disciplines and can move freely among them,” Brodhead said. “Our colleagues in China and Singapore are trying to figure out the mysterious secret of liberal arts education, the broad-based integrative training spanning the arts and sciences which they see as produc-ing America’s adaptive, inventive kind of leader. (Steve Jobs knew the advantage of hanging out in that neighborhood.) It will be ironic if we fail to nourish and protect this asset just when others are recognizing its value.” K/F/B

Hand four-star Gen. Martin Dempsey a microphone and he is likely to break into a

more than passable rendition of Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York.” One gets the feeling that if the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff wasn’t the highest-ranking officer in the U.S. armed forces and principal military adviser to President Obama, he’d be auditioning for a spot on “The Voice.”

Dempsey, born in 1952 into a robust Irish-American family, credits his grandmother for instilling his charismatic personality and infectious sense of humor. “I grew up Irish,” he said, “and the Irish are never without a song.”

Dempsey’s peers call him “a pentathelete, the kind of post-Sept.11 commander who not only knows the art of combat but who is also adept at marshaling the power of diplomacy, money, allied cooperation and information,” according to The New York Times. An avowed modernist, Dempsey reads voraciously, both novels about the human condition and management books, and he is an active user of social media such as Twitter and Facebook, where he seeks dialogue and feedback from his troops.

And when this decorated combat veteran, who served as commander of the 1st Armored Division in Baghdad in 2003 and later as the Army Chief of Staff, reflects on his unusual style and outlook, his thoughts often turn to his background in the humanities. Dempsey brings a cerebral, humanistic perspective to his role that is unusual but lauded. He has earned strong praise in his short tenure – he was named to his current post

by the president in May 2011 – for his military insights as well as his outgoing personality. He is extroverted without being self-aggrandizing, clearly comfortable in his own skin and intellect.

Having graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1974 with a degree in engineering, Dempsey was a young captain, deeply entrenched in his career, with two young children at home. In 1983, he was trying to “find some balance in my family life” and he knew that West Point was looking for instructors in history and English. A solid if not stellar academic career made him a candidate to get a master’s degree in history or English and then return to teach at West Point. The academy offered a list of approved universities where a young officer could earn the degree, and Dempsey chose Duke University.

“It was south of the Mason-Dixon line, they had a good basketball team and a great English department,” Dempsey said. When he arrived, he was required to propose a thesis, and as the grandson of Irish immigrants, he chose the Irish renaissance, the period from 1890 to 1922, as his subject. He was further required to embrace a particular author, and he chose the poet William Butler Yeats. “He was prolific,” Dempsey said. “He wrote during that entire period and so there was no shortage of material. And I was also fascinated at the way that he changed through his life. He was what I would describe as an adaptable poet.

His poetry at the beginning was very traditional, historic, and by the end of his life, it was post-modern.”

Always curious and perceptive, Dempsey believes his humanities

background served him in becoming a leader in three specific ways:

“It gave me more confidence, which may strike some as odd since I had come through West Point and West Point certainly gives you a certain amount of confidence in yourself,” he said. “But by placing myself into that environment at Duke at 30 years old, to study humanities, when I was able to come through that experience successfully, it gave me a lot of confidence.

“Second, and I still feel this way today, it not only opened my mind but created a certain passion for seeking out different ways to think about things,” he said. “Especially in this job, it makes me include and seek out things that are written by people who disagree with me, so that I can make sure I understand both sides of these very complex issues that I deal with.

“And third, it made me a better communicator in a sense that you master your vocabulary in a way that some people will never take the time to master. And in my current job, I am effective if I am persuasive, and part of being persuasive is being able to place things in context, being able to find the right phrase to help people form an image about what I am trying to communicate.”

The ability to put things into context is at the heart of Dempsey’s philosophy about leadership. In today’s military, he sees a demand on junior leaders that he did not experience in his early

days in the Army. “Until I became a colonel, I expected I would get what I needed from the top down,” he said. “The best ideas about how to execute battlefield intelligence would come from the top down.”

That, he says, is no longer the case. “What we’ve seen in the world today, the way these security threats, decentralized networks, syndicated groups operate, there are very few mass-on-mass formations out there right now. So what happens now is that the best information about the context of what we are trying to achieve comes from the bottom up. So during my career, my commitment to understand context has actually matched the world in which I find myself.”

For example, when he arrived in Baghdad, Gen. John Abizaid, the Centcom commander at the time, ordered Dempsey to establish a “safe and secure environment” in the city. “I thought to myself, ‘There is nothing in my background that has prepared me to take this city of 7 mil-lion people and organize it and distribute my force within it, and to try to even define what we mean by safe and secure, in a city like this,’ ” Dempsey said.

Dempsey grew frustrated with conventional methods and thought, “I have to gain some context here. I can’t just look at the map and put my forces out on either side of the Tigris River.” Instead, he drove around the city and sought out young, non-commissioned officers, staff sergeants and also some young captains, and asked them “to tell me what it means if I was to ask you to make this neighborhood

stable and secure. With that feedback and that context, I was able to go back to headquarters and sit down, think about what I heard and start designing a plan.”

Several years later, arriving in Afghanistan as commander of the Central Command, he asked to be taken to the most remote combat outpost, “because I’ve got to be able to visualize this stuff when I am back here dealing with it at a national level.” He was flown by helicopter to a small outpost on the Pakistan border and met by a young captain. “I asked him, ‘What does it mean that you are here?’ ” Dempsey recalled. “ ‘I need to know what you know. I know what it’s like

from 6,000 miles away, but I have no idea what it looks like from where you are sitting.’ And he talked me through in the most coherent way the context of what we were trying to accomplish there. And again, it is those youngsters who are out there gaining context from the bottom up, and it is that context that matters the most.”

Again, it was insight borne from his humanities background. “It was back to literature and the humanities,” Dempsey said. “That’s what you get hammered into your head by your professors. ‘Don’t give me the definition of words. I want to know what they mean.’ ”

– Glenn Rifkin

“i didn’t go to college to get a job. i went to have an experience, to learn how to think.” – angel martinez

G e n e r a l M a r t i n D e M p s e y :

e n G l i s h M a j o r

ge

tt

y im

ag

es

272 0 1 3 : Q 3 k o r n / f e r r y i n T e r n A T i o n A L26 b r i e f i n g s o n t a l e n t + l e a D e R S H I P

and business leader. He had his first leadership experience as a championship-level distance runner in high school and college, when he was the captain of his track team. And when he went off to college, he knew that he wanted a grounding in the humanities.

“I didn’t go to college to get a job. I went to have an ex-perience, to learn how to think. That was my motivation,” Martinez said. “It’s really difficult to study something like rhetoric and not have an expansive world view because it focuses on human truth. It occurred to me then that mar-keting is the rhetoric of business.”

Martinez said he has always been introspective and had the ability to see things in a different and broader perspec-tive than most observers. A liberal arts background allowed him to “connect the dots” and understand the relationships

between time, place, situations and people. “The human condition is unchanged from 5,000 years ago,” he said. “We have more technology and information, but the hu-man brain doesn’t evolve in 5,000 years, so we are not the first to experience anything.”

The tendency to overspecialize, particularly in the busi-ness world, has pushed far too many young people away from the humanities, which is to the detriment of compa-nies struggling to find a profitable future. “Often, a student will stumble into the humanities with a passion for a par-ticular area, but then they almost immediately edit their potential,” Martinez said. “ ‘I’m a copywriter now or a line builder.’ In the end, they don’t say, ‘I wonder what it will take for me to run this company.’ That’s too bad because we lose out.”

Ultimately, as A.G. Lafley realized, a foundation in the humanities provides a leader with something more than power: the bedrock of lifelong learning and a core tenet of being human. CEO’s are portrayed in the media as power brokers who make or break the company. But in fact, “the CEO role in reality in most companies, especially large, multinational corporations, is influential but the power of running the business is in the business units,” Lafley said. “The CEO helps sharpen strategies, tells the story of the company to a wide variety of stakeholders and represents the company to the world. The buck stops with you and, in terms of performance, the results are yours. In fact, I had no idea at the time that what I was prepared for at Hamilton College would be the building blocks of what I ended up do-ing in a top leadership role.”

As universities struggle to make the case for the rele-vance of a humanities education, leaders, particularly in the corporate sector, ought to pay heed to the words of Richard H. Brodhead, president of Duke University, in a keynote ad-dress to the National Humanities Alliance in 2012.

“For the health of our society, we need to train minds that have learned plural disciplines and can move freely among them,” Brodhead said. “Our colleagues in China and Singapore are trying to figure out the mysterious secret of liberal arts education, the broad-based integrative training spanning the arts and sciences which they see as produc-ing America’s adaptive, inventive kind of leader. (Steve Jobs knew the advantage of hanging out in that neighborhood.) It will be ironic if we fail to nourish and protect this asset just when others are recognizing its value.” K/F/B

Hand four-star Gen. Martin Dempsey a microphone and he is likely to break into a

more than passable rendition of Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York.” One gets the feeling that if the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff wasn’t the highest-ranking officer in the U.S. armed forces and principal military adviser to President Obama, he’d be auditioning for a spot on “The Voice.”

Dempsey, born in 1952 into a robust Irish-American family, credits his grandmother for instilling his charismatic personality and infectious sense of humor. “I grew up Irish,” he said, “and the Irish are never without a song.”

Dempsey’s peers call him “a pentathelete, the kind of post-Sept.11 commander who not only knows the art of combat but who is also adept at marshaling the power of diplomacy, money, allied cooperation and information,” according to The New York Times. An avowed modernist, Dempsey reads voraciously, both novels about the human condition and management books, and he is an active user of social media such as Twitter and Facebook, where he seeks dialogue and feedback from his troops.

And when this decorated combat veteran, who served as commander of the 1st Armored Division in Baghdad in 2003 and later as the Army Chief of Staff, reflects on his unusual style and outlook, his thoughts often turn to his background in the humanities. Dempsey brings a cerebral, humanistic perspective to his role that is unusual but lauded. He has earned strong praise in his short tenure – he was named to his current post

by the president in May 2011 – for his military insights as well as his outgoing personality. He is extroverted without being self-aggrandizing, clearly comfortable in his own skin and intellect.

Having graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1974 with a degree in engineering, Dempsey was a young captain, deeply entrenched in his career, with two young children at home. In 1983, he was trying to “find some balance in my family life” and he knew that West Point was looking for instructors in history and English. A solid if not stellar academic career made him a candidate to get a master’s degree in history or English and then return to teach at West Point. The academy offered a list of approved universities where a young officer could earn the degree, and Dempsey chose Duke University.

“It was south of the Mason-Dixon line, they had a good basketball team and a great English department,” Dempsey said. When he arrived, he was required to propose a thesis, and as the grandson of Irish immigrants, he chose the Irish renaissance, the period from 1890 to 1922, as his subject. He was further required to embrace a particular author, and he chose the poet William Butler Yeats. “He was prolific,” Dempsey said. “He wrote during that entire period and so there was no shortage of material. And I was also fascinated at the way that he changed through his life. He was what I would describe as an adaptable poet.

His poetry at the beginning was very traditional, historic, and by the end of his life, it was post-modern.”

Always curious and perceptive, Dempsey believes his humanities

background served him in becoming a leader in three specific ways:

“It gave me more confidence, which may strike some as odd since I had come through West Point and West Point certainly gives you a certain amount of confidence in yourself,” he said. “But by placing myself into that environment at Duke at 30 years old, to study humanities, when I was able to come through that experience successfully, it gave me a lot of confidence.

“Second, and I still feel this way today, it not only opened my mind but created a certain passion for seeking out different ways to think about things,” he said. “Especially in this job, it makes me include and seek out things that are written by people who disagree with me, so that I can make sure I understand both sides of these very complex issues that I deal with.

“And third, it made me a better communicator in a sense that you master your vocabulary in a way that some people will never take the time to master. And in my current job, I am effective if I am persuasive, and part of being persuasive is being able to place things in context, being able to find the right phrase to help people form an image about what I am trying to communicate.”

The ability to put things into context is at the heart of Dempsey’s philosophy about leadership. In today’s military, he sees a demand on junior leaders that he did not experience in his early

days in the Army. “Until I became a colonel, I expected I would get what I needed from the top down,” he said. “The best ideas about how to execute battlefield intelligence would come from the top down.”

That, he says, is no longer the case. “What we’ve seen in the world today, the way these security threats, decentralized networks, syndicated groups operate, there are very few mass-on-mass formations out there right now. So what happens now is that the best information about the context of what we are trying to achieve comes from the bottom up. So during my career, my commitment to understand context has actually matched the world in which I find myself.”

For example, when he arrived in Baghdad, Gen. John Abizaid, the Centcom commander at the time, ordered Dempsey to establish a “safe and secure environment” in the city. “I thought to myself, ‘There is nothing in my background that has prepared me to take this city of 7 mil-lion people and organize it and distribute my force within it, and to try to even define what we mean by safe and secure, in a city like this,’ ” Dempsey said.

Dempsey grew frustrated with conventional methods and thought, “I have to gain some context here. I can’t just look at the map and put my forces out on either side of the Tigris River.” Instead, he drove around the city and sought out young, non-commissioned officers, staff sergeants and also some young captains, and asked them “to tell me what it means if I was to ask you to make this neighborhood

stable and secure. With that feedback and that context, I was able to go back to headquarters and sit down, think about what I heard and start designing a plan.”

Several years later, arriving in Afghanistan as commander of the Central Command, he asked to be taken to the most remote combat outpost, “because I’ve got to be able to visualize this stuff when I am back here dealing with it at a national level.” He was flown by helicopter to a small outpost on the Pakistan border and met by a young captain. “I asked him, ‘What does it mean that you are here?’ ” Dempsey recalled. “ ‘I need to know what you know. I know what it’s like

from 6,000 miles away, but I have no idea what it looks like from where you are sitting.’ And he talked me through in the most coherent way the context of what we were trying to accomplish there. And again, it is those youngsters who are out there gaining context from the bottom up, and it is that context that matters the most.”

Again, it was insight borne from his humanities background. “It was back to literature and the humanities,” Dempsey said. “That’s what you get hammered into your head by your professors. ‘Don’t give me the definition of words. I want to know what they mean.’ ”

– Glenn Rifkin

“i didn’t go to college to get a job. i went to have an experience, to learn how to think.” – angel martinez

G e n e r a l M a r t i n D e M p s e y :

e n G l i s h M a j o r

ge

tt

y im

ag

es



“Plastics.”Mr. McGuire’s pithy career advice to “The Graduate”

couldn’t have been more timely in 1967. The space race was on, and Americans were soon flipping pancakes on Teflon griddles while NASA fashioned astronaut helmets out of Lexan.

Today’s graduates could do worse than heed Mr. McGuire’s advice. Because one thing is as clear as the sightline through a Lexan visor: Science is in vogue and today’s STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) graduates enjoy prospects that movie character Benjamin Braddock, played by Dustin Hoffman, could only have dreamed of.

Trends in energy, health care and digital creativity are changing the U.S. economy – and many aspects of daily life – more profoundly than the spread of plastics in the second half of the 20th century did. The revolution will require foot soldiers; the National Science Foundation projects STEM-based employment will increase 1.6 percent annually through the end of the decade, compared to 1 percent for overall employment. The health care sector alone could create more than 5 million new jobs by the end of the decade, more than one-quarter of the total needed to bring the U.S. unemployment rate back down to 5 percent by 2020, according to business consultancy McKinsey & Company.

B R A I N P O WE R

RE

VO

LU

TIO

N

Written By Christopher R. O’Dea

GRADUATESTHESTARRING SCIENCE / TECHNOLOGY / ENGINEERING ANd MATHEMATICS

HOW TO FILL THREE MILLION JOBS.


“Plastics.”Mr. McGuire’s pithy career advice to “The Graduate”

couldn’t have been more timely in 1967. The space race was on, and Americans were soon flipping pancakes on Teflon griddles while NASA fashioned astronaut helmets out of Lexan.

Today’s graduates could do worse than heed Mr. McGuire’s advice. Because one thing is as clear as the sightline through a Lexan visor: Science is in vogue and today’s STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) graduates enjoy prospects that movie character Benjamin Braddock, played by Dustin Hoffman, could only have dreamed of.

Trends in energy, health care and digital creativity are changing the U.S. economy – and many aspects of daily life – more profoundly than the spread of plastics in the second half of the 20th century did. The revolution will require foot soldiers; the National Science Foundation projects STEM-based employment will increase 1.6 percent annually through the end of the decade, compared to 1 percent for overall employment. The health care sector alone could create more than 5 million new jobs by the end of the decade, more than one-quarter of the total needed to bring the U.S. unemployment rate back down to 5 percent by 2020, according to business consultancy McKinsey & Company.

B R A I N P O W

E R R

EV

OL

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ION

Written By Christopher R. O’Dea

GRADUATESTHEHOW TO FILL THREE MILLION JOBS.

Today’s WorkplacePresentsToday’s WorkplacePresentsToday’s Workplace


Amid the Great Recession, college-bound students heard the Sound of Science and its promises of job security and higher pay. Undergraduate enrollment in engineering schools rose 15 percent between 2007 and 2009, the last year for which the National Science Foundation (NSF) reported data in the 2012 edition of its biennial Science & Engineering Indicators. Engineering school enrollment provides a stable indicator of student interest in hard-to-define STEM fields because students are required to declare as engineering ma-jors in their freshman year, while other majors are typi-cally not declared until sophomore year. The NSF said engi-neering enrollment registered “particularly steep increases in 2007 (7 percent) and 2009 (6 percent),” and by 2009 full-time freshman engineering enrollment in the U.S. was the highest since 1982.

The trend continues to gather steam even as the econ-omy recovers. “Demand for engineering education at Texas A&M has never been higher,” said A&M President R. Bowen Loftin. One of the largest such schools in the country, A&M’s Dwight Look College of Engineering already enrolls more than 11,000 undergraduate and graduate students. In January, Loftin unveiled an initiative to increase enrollment to 25,000 students by 2025. And that’s not Texas bluster: more than 10,000 hopefuls apply for just 1,600 seats in each undergraduate class.

Engineering schools are now running full tilt to accom-modate what’s turning out to be a secular increase in de-mand for their services, steadily rolling out major innova-tions in policy, physical plant and pedagogy. Reflecting the run-up in enrollments since 2007, the NSF said science and engineering research space at universities nationwide in-creased 3.5 percent between 2009 and 2011, with biologi-cal and biomedical assets accounting for the bulk of the growth. Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy this year launched one of the highest-profile STEM initiatives yet – a $1.5 bil-lion program to turbocharge STEM education at the Uni-versity of Connecticut. The ambitious plan, which requires legislative approval, aims to increase enrollment at UConn’s engineering school by 70 percent, add 50 STEM doctoral fel-lowships and create the premier STEM honors program in the U.S. It also calls for $1.5 billion in new bonding authority to build STEM teaching facilities and labs.

Demand for STEM graduates is expanding in many sectors of the economy, particularly energy. The abil-ity to tap vast reserves of natural gas and oil inside the U.S. is literally fueling growth and hiring across the economy, in chemical manufacturing, transpor-tation, utilities, mining and information technol-ogy. These sectors together account for over half of

all capital investment, according to the New America Foun-dation, which projects that capital expenditure in shale gas will increase from $33 billion in 2010 to $1.9 trillion by 2035, when the industry will support more than 1.6 million jobs. That will add nearly $1.5 trillion in federal, state and local

taxes and royalties to cash-strapped governments over the same 25-year period. Lower energy costs have already swung the U.S. chemical manufacturing trade balance from a $4 bil-lion deficit in 2006 to a $12 billion surplus in 2010 and re-duced energy costs for steelmakers. The gas bonanza also offers the potential to create new industries, including gas-powered long-haul transportation, a liquefied natural gas export industry and more reliable energy for information technology centers running cloud and big data services.

Energy is not the only sector shifting its focus toward the sciences. Digital entrepreneurs are creating health care prod-ucts and services that can improve living conditions, increase the efficiency of health care delivery and reduce testing and treatment costs for an aging population. Peter Orszag, vice chairman of Citibank and former director of the Office of Management and Budget, estimates health care savings could add as much as $750 billion to consumers’ budgets.

The changes afoot in health care are transformative, not only opening new vistas in digital medicine, mobile de-vices and organ replacement, but also subjecting the most highly trained doctors to benchmarking practices once found mostly on factory floors. Orszag cites clinical decision software that confronts radiologists with immediate chal-lenges to their judgment, a real-time peer review that marks a significant change in the way they practice. Where the software has worked, doctors’ groups report lower costs of treatment and better health outcomes.

At the leading edge of health care research, the use of mobile phones to connect a wide array of monitoring and imaging devices has spawned a race to create “Star Trek”-style “tricorders,” while cell scientists are using additive manufacturing techniques to digitally print human tissue structures like heart valves and arteries. The new pioneers have support – Rock Health, a San Francisco nonprofit that invests in digital health startups, said more than $1.1 billion flowed into the sector in the first nine months of 2012, up more than 70 percent from 2011. And in 2012, Rock Health itself struck a deal with venture-capital firm Kleiner Per-kins Caufield & Byers, expanding a sponsor list that includes General Electric and the Mayo Clinic.

TITANIC OPPORTUNITIES

FOR STUDENTS IN THE NEW MILLENNIUM, THE SHIFT TOWARD THE SCIENCES–AND AWAy FROM WALL STREET–HAPPENED IN THE AFTERMATH OF THE FINANCIAL AND ECONOMIC CRISES.

15% Undergraduateenrollment at

engineering schoolsbetween 2007 & 2009

HOW TO FILL THREE

MILLION JOBS


Amid the Great Recession, college-bound students heard the Sound of Science and its promises of job security and higher pay. Undergraduate enrollment in engineering schools rose 15 percent between 2007 and 2009, the last year for which the National Science Foundation (NSF) reported data in the 2012 edition of its biennial Science & Engineering Indicators. Engineering school enrollment provides a stable indicator of student interest in hard-to-define STEM fields because students are required to declare as engineering ma-jors in their freshman year, while other majors are typi-cally not declared until sophomore year. The NSF said engi-neering enrollment registered “particularly steep increases in 2007 (7 percent) and 2009 (6 percent),” and by 2009 full-time freshman engineering enrollment in the U.S. was the highest since 1982.

The trend continues to gather steam even as the econ-omy recovers. “Demand for engineering education at Texas A&M has never been higher,” said A&M President R. Bowen Loftin. One of the largest such schools in the country, A&M’s Dwight Look College of Engineering already enrolls more than 11,000 undergraduate and graduate students. In January, Loftin unveiled an initiative to increase enrollment to 25,000 students by 2025. And that’s not Texas bluster: more than 10,000 hopefuls apply for just 1,600 seats in each undergraduate class.

Engineering schools are now running full tilt to accom-modate what’s turning out to be a secular increase in de-mand for their services, steadily rolling out major innova-tions in policy, physical plant and pedagogy. Reflecting the run-up in enrollments since 2007, the NSF said science and engineering research space at universities nationwide in-creased 3.5 percent between 2009 and 2011, with biologi-cal and biomedical assets accounting for the bulk of the growth. Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy this year launched one of the highest-profile STEM initiatives yet – a $1.5 bil-lion program to turbocharge STEM education at the Uni-versity of Connecticut. The ambitious plan, which requires legislative approval, aims to increase enrollment at UConn’s engineering school by 70 percent, add 50 STEM doctoral fel-lowships and create the premier STEM honors program in the U.S. It also calls for $1.5 billion in new bonding authority to build STEM teaching facilities and labs.

Demand for STEM graduates is expanding in many sectors of the economy, particularly energy. The abil-ity to tap vast reserves of natural gas and oil inside the U.S. is literally fueling growth and hiring across the economy, in chemical manufacturing, transpor-tation, utilities, mining and information technol-ogy. These sectors together account for over half of

all capital investment, according to the New America Foun-dation, which projects that capital expenditure in shale gas will increase from $33 billion in 2010 to $1.9 trillion by 2035, when the industry will support more than 1.6 million jobs. That will add nearly $1.5 trillion in federal, state and local

taxes and royalties to cash-strapped governments over the same 25-year period. Lower energy costs have already swung the U.S. chemical manufacturing trade balance from a $4 bil-lion deficit in 2006 to a $12 billion surplus in 2010 and re-duced energy costs for steelmakers. The gas bonanza also offers the potential to create new industries, including gas-powered long-haul transportation, a liquefied natural gas export industry and more reliable energy for information technology centers running cloud and big data services.

Energy is not the only sector shifting its focus toward the sciences. Digital entrepreneurs are creating health care prod-ucts and services that can improve living conditions, increase the efficiency of health care delivery and reduce testing and treatment costs for an aging population. Peter Orszag, vice chairman of Citibank and former director of the Office of Management and Budget, estimates health care savings could add as much as $750 billion to consumers’ budgets.

The changes afoot in health care are transformative, not only opening new vistas in digital medicine, mobile de-vices and organ replacement, but also subjecting the most highly trained doctors to benchmarking practices once found mostly on factory floors. Orszag cites clinical decision software that confronts radiologists with immediate chal-lenges to their judgment, a real-time peer review that marks a significant change in the way they practice. Where the software has worked, doctors’ groups report lower costs of treatment and better health outcomes.

At the leading edge of health care research, the use of mobile phones to connect a wide array of monitoring and imaging devices has spawned a race to create “Star Trek”-style “tricorders,” while cell scientists are using additive manufacturing techniques to digitally print human tissue structures like heart valves and arteries. The new pioneers have support – Rock Health, a San Francisco nonprofit that invests in digital health startups, said more than $1.1 billion flowed into the sector in the first nine months of 2012, up more than 70 percent from 2011. And in 2012, Rock Health itself struck a deal with venture-capital firm Kleiner Per-kins Caufield & Byers, expanding a sponsor list that includes General Electric and the Mayo Clinic.

TITANIC OPPORTUNITIES

FOR STUDENTS IN THE NEW MILLENNIUM, THE SHIFT TOWARD THE SCIENCES–AND AWAy FROM WALL STREET–HAPPENED IN THE AFTERMATH OF THE FINANCIAL AND ECONOMIC CRISES.

15% Undergraduateenrollment at

engineering schoolsbetween 2007 & 2009

HOW TO FILL THREE

MILLION JOBS

HOW TO FILL THREE

MILLION JOBS

b r i e f i n g s o n t a l e n t + l e a D e R S H I P32 332 0 1 3 : Q 3 k o r n / f e r r y i n T e r n A T i o n A L

The primary threat to realizing the economic opportu-nity the U.S. enjoys today is the potential shortage of STEM-trained graduates to do the work that’s on the horizon. Despite the anemic pace of overall job cre-ation during the recovery, the McKinsey Global Insti-tute, McKinsey’s research arm, found strong demand for talent in jobs requiring degrees and training in sci-

ence, engineering, computer programming and information technology. These jobs are the most difficult to fill, and hir-ing managers’ woes aren’t going to ease soon. Despite the surge in engineering enrollment, U.S. schools today grant STEM degrees to 14 percent to 19 percent of graduates, but to fill the growing need for technical workers, McKinsey es-timated 30 percent of each graduating class would need to earn a STEM degree.

tive on the STEM recruitment challenge. With $22 billion in sales and more than 130 manufacturing sites, the U.S. is Siemens’ largest market and a platform for $6 billion in ex-ports. Employing more than 60,000 people in its range of tech-based businesses here, Siemens needs a reliable sup-ply of employees well-trained in technical disciplines, team-work and problem resolution.

One way Siemens meets its U.S. personnel needs is by working with vocational schools to link education and job training. It’s a major participant in Apprenticeship 2000, a four-year program in Charlotte, N.C., that trains high school juniors and seniors for careers with eight part-ner companies, five of which are German or Swiss. Central Piedmont Community College acts as academic partner, designing customized curriculums. To launch the program that trains mechatronics systems specialists for its wind turbine business, Siemens conducted exchange programs between Central Piedmont educators and Siemens execu-tives in Germany, where the company hires 2,500 people annually from the 10,000 working in Siemens’ German ap-prenticeship programs.

The price tag illustrates the importance of STEM skills to the modern economy. Spiegel estimated Siemens invests about $150,000 in each apprentice’s three-year program of study and job training. That’s on par with all but the most elite U.S. universities, but apprentices transition to employ-ment with important advantages over typical university graduates: They’ve been paid while learning and working for three years and have no loans to repay. And the company has a loyal employee. “In Germany, we’ve seen this work for decades,” Spiegel said.

Here in the U.S., the stakes are high. Spiegel said there are 3 million unfilled STEM jobs in the nation today, vacancies that cut GDP by about 0.5 percent annually. “We’re trend-ing down until we find a way to scale this up,” he said. Late in 2012, Siemens and Penn State took a big step toward scaling up the STEM pipeline, forming an innovative strategic alli-ance in research and recruiting that will encompass health care, infrastructure, energy and sustainability – the first of its kind between Siemens and an American university.

Such market-driven solutions are most likely to close the gap between qualified workers and available jobs, said Ed-ward Lazear, Stanford University economics professor and former chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisors. Echoing the trademark optimism of Milton Fried-man, namesake of the Becker Friedman Institute, which he now chairs, Lazear predicts a just-in-time shift toward STEM disciplines. “The market is pretty good at solving this problem,” said Lazear. “When rewards in engineering be-come more attractive, people move quickly to engineering.”

The explosion of interest in STEM majors has colleges scrambling to build the labs needed to teach a generation of engineering students who are already more tech-savvy than their professors.

Demand for digital engineers is clear in health care, where Qualcomm’s deci-sion to stake its future on smartphones is looking like a good call. As toll col-lector for the wireless superhighway, Qualcomm receives a patent royalty on nearly every smartphone or device that uses third-generation or later cell technology. As mobile activity mush-roomed – up 45 percent in the first half of 2012 over 2011 – Qualcomm stock-piled nearly $27 billion in cash, and sur-passed PC-chip leader Intel to become the largest semiconductor maker by market capitalization.

Mobile health is a big part of the traff ic. Deloitte projects the mobile health apps industry will grow 23 per-cent annually for the next five years. In collaboration with WebMD, Qualcomm Life operates an open ecosystem of dig-ital health apps and third-party devices that enable consumers and physicians to wirelessly manage, interpret and ap-ply health data collected from a vari-ety of health and medical devices. The unit claims more than 220 technology partners, including Happtique, which certif ies mobile health apps, Healthy Citizen, which helps patients moni-tor chronic conditions, and Santech, a suite of behavioral-intervention tools for patients undergoing weight-loss, hypertension and other treatments.

Qualcomm’s Web site reflects the need for STEM talent: In late 2012 the company had openings for nearly 950 people in f ive engineering disci-plines – with two-thirds of those jobs in the United States. By spring 2013, the company needed 878 engineers, includ-ing new spots in apps processes, optics, graphics and security.

RACING TO CATCH UP Mobility Revolutionary

There are 3 million unfilled STEM jobs in the U.S. today.

To accelerate the flow of talent, schools such as Texas A&M, Penn State and UConn are taking steps to increase the effectiveness of STEM teaching, apply digital methods to foster learning and retention in these demanding disci-plines, and to “prime the pump” by helping high school and community college teachers better prepare students to suc-ceed in the nation’s most rigorous engineering and scien-tific colleges. The NSF, for example, awarded Penn State two grants to improve engineering teaching by exploring how engineers bring ideas from conception to implementation, and how students generate ideas. The Penn State studies will include engineering schools at Purdue, the University of Michigan and Iowa State. Texas A&M has partnered with local community colleges and high schools to help develop a pipeline of qualified, enthusiastic engineering students.

While universities are working to turn out more technol-ogy grads, companies that employ STEM-skilled work forces are feeling the pinch. Eric A. Spiegel, president and CEO of Siemens Corporation in the U.S., has a frontline perspec-

HOW TO FILL THREE

MILLION JOBS


The primary threat to realizing the economic opportu-nity the U.S. enjoys today is the potential shortage of STEM-trained graduates to do the work that’s on the horizon. Despite the anemic pace of overall job cre-ation during the recovery, the McKinsey Global Insti-tute, McKinsey’s research arm, found strong demand for talent in jobs requiring degrees and training in sci-

ence, engineering, computer programming and information technology. These jobs are the most difficult to fill, and hir-ing managers’ woes aren’t going to ease soon. Despite the surge in engineering enrollment, U.S. schools today grant STEM degrees to 14 percent to 19 percent of graduates, but to fill the growing need for technical workers, McKinsey es-timated 30 percent of each graduating class would need to earn a STEM degree.

tive on the STEM recruitment challenge. With $22 billion in sales and more than 130 manufacturing sites, the U.S. is Siemens’ largest market and a platform for $6 billion in ex-ports. Employing more than 60,000 people in its range of tech-based businesses here, Siemens needs a reliable sup-ply of employees well-trained in technical disciplines, team-work and problem resolution.

One way Siemens meets its U.S. personnel needs is by working with vocational schools to link education and job training. It’s a major participant in Apprenticeship 2000, a four-year program in Charlotte, N.C., that trains high school juniors and seniors for careers with eight part-ner companies, five of which are German or Swiss. Central Piedmont Community College acts as academic partner, designing customized curriculums. To launch the program that trains mechatronics systems specialists for its wind turbine business, Siemens conducted exchange programs between Central Piedmont educators and Siemens execu-tives in Germany, where the company hires 2,500 people annually from the 10,000 working in Siemens’ German ap-prenticeship programs.

The price tag illustrates the importance of STEM skills to the modern economy. Spiegel estimated Siemens invests about $150,000 in each apprentice’s three-year program of study and job training. That’s on par with all but the most elite U.S. universities, but apprentices transition to employ-ment with important advantages over typical university graduates: They’ve been paid while learning and working for three years and have no loans to repay. And the company has a loyal employee. “In Germany, we’ve seen this work for decades,” Spiegel said.

Here in the U.S., the stakes are high. Spiegel said there are 3 million unfilled STEM jobs in the nation today, vacancies that cut GDP by about 0.5 percent annually. “We’re trend-ing down until we find a way to scale this up,” he said. Late in 2012, Siemens and Penn State took a big step toward scaling up the STEM pipeline, forming an innovative strategic alli-ance in research and recruiting that will encompass health care, infrastructure, energy and sustainability – the first of its kind between Siemens and an American university.

Such market-driven solutions are most likely to close the gap between qualified workers and available jobs, said Ed-ward Lazear, Stanford University economics professor and former chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisors. Echoing the trademark optimism of Milton Fried-man, namesake of the Becker Friedman Institute, which he now chairs, Lazear predicts a just-in-time shift toward STEM disciplines. “The market is pretty good at solving this problem,” said Lazear. “When rewards in engineering be-come more attractive, people move quickly to engineering.”

The explosion of interest in STEM majors has colleges scrambling to build the labs needed to teach a generation of engineering students who are already more tech-savvy than their professors.

Demand for digital engineers is clear in health care, where Qualcomm’s deci-sion to stake its future on smartphones is looking like a good call. As toll col-lector for the wireless superhighway, Qualcomm receives a patent royalty on nearly every smartphone or device that uses third-generation or later cell technology. As mobile activity mush-roomed – up 45 percent in the first half of 2012 over 2011 – Qualcomm stock-piled nearly $27 billion in cash, and sur-passed PC-chip leader Intel to become the largest semiconductor maker by market capitalization.

Mobile health is a big part of the traff ic. Deloitte projects the mobile health apps industry will grow 23 per-cent annually for the next five years. In collaboration with WebMD, Qualcomm Life operates an open ecosystem of dig-ital health apps and third-party devices that enable consumers and physicians to wirelessly manage, interpret and ap-ply health data collected from a vari-ety of health and medical devices. The unit claims more than 220 technology partners, including Happtique, which certif ies mobile health apps, Healthy Citizen, which helps patients moni-tor chronic conditions, and Santech, a suite of behavioral-intervention tools for patients undergoing weight-loss, hypertension and other treatments.

Qualcomm’s Web site reflects the need for STEM talent: In late 2012 the company had openings for nearly 950 people in f ive engineering disci-plines – with two-thirds of those jobs in the United States. By spring 2013, the company needed 878 engineers, includ-ing new spots in apps processes, optics, graphics and security.

RACING TO CATCH UP Mobility Revolutionary

There are 3 million unfilled STEM jobs in the U.S. today.

To accelerate the flow of talent, schools such as Texas A&M, Penn State and UConn are taking steps to increase the effectiveness of STEM teaching, apply digital methods to foster learning and retention in these demanding disci-plines, and to “prime the pump” by helping high school and community college teachers better prepare students to suc-ceed in the nation’s most rigorous engineering and scien-tific colleges. The NSF, for example, awarded Penn State two grants to improve engineering teaching by exploring how engineers bring ideas from conception to implementation, and how students generate ideas. The Penn State studies will include engineering schools at Purdue, the University of Michigan and Iowa State. Texas A&M has partnered with local community colleges and high schools to help develop a pipeline of qualified, enthusiastic engineering students.

While universities are working to turn out more technol-ogy grads, companies that employ STEM-skilled work forces are feeling the pinch. Eric A. Spiegel, president and CEO of Siemens Corporation in the U.S., has a frontline perspec-

HOW TO FILL THREE

MILLION JOBS


The migration is proceeding fast in the energy indus-try. Oil and gas employment is up 39 percent since 2007 while overall employment is down 3 percent, and the impact of lower-cost shale gas is widespread. Pro-duction alone is expected to contribute $154 billion to GDP by 2020, more than double the amount in 2010. Steel and drilling pipe manufacturers that supply the

new technology are among the earliest beneficiaries, and the ripple effects are widespread: Cheaper energy has made the U.S. the location of choice for global steel and chemical pro-duction, and could add an average of $926 annually to U.S. disposable household income between now and 2015.

Drilling for gas in the Bakken shale field of North Da-kota is driving growth in unexpected places. A. Finkl & Sons Company is the largest producer of hydraulic fracturing pump blocks – and its new plant sits amid the urban grit on the South Side of Chicago. Already a leading maker of pre-mium forging die steels, Finkl last year began manufactur-

ing parts that fuel the natural gas boom; made from steels engineered to withstand extreme pressures encountered miles beneath the earth’s surface, these mammoths now weigh between 250 and 300 tons each.

Like Siemens, Finkl needs a steady supply of top-notch talent. Finkl’s model is geared to the STEM workplace. It relies on positive labor relations to enable production rather than confrontation, and shows how smaller companies can identify, attract and retain STEM talent without having the resources of a multinational like Siemens. Thanks to long-standing collaborative relations with its three unions – machinists, blacksmiths and electricians – Finkl hasn’t fired an employee in more than 100 years, said Chairman and CEO Bruce C. Liimatainen. The company has increased em-ployment during the past two years by 100 workers, to just over 400. Virtually all of the new positions are what Liima-tainen calls “head-of-household jobs,” with full benefits.

Finkl develops talent early, and with good labor rela-tions, the company’s union contracts allow it to hire non-union young people for summer jobs. Finkl hires 30 to 35 people – about 10 percent of its work force – from area high schools and colleges such as the Illinois Institute of Technology. In a world where petroleum engineers com-mand starting salaries of $85,000, rulers, measurements and math are the stuff of daily life, and candidate screening starts with tests – STEM tests. Liimatainen said the system works: Finkl pays summer workers the starting union wage – a high rate for a summer job; the unions get a new mem-ber each time Finkl hires a summer worker; and the com-pany gets robust talent. The CEO, who holds a number of patents himself, said Finkl’s best new engineer in 2012 was a woman from IIT.

STEM entrepreneurs are hoping U.S. Big Science can help them revolutionize health care, too. At NASA’s Ames Research Center outside San Francisco, digital health start-up Scanadu is working on Scout, a hand-held sensor that reports vital signs such as tempera-ture, heart rate and blood oxygenation, and reports to a user’s smartphone. Scanadu, launched after its

founder had a family health crisis, wants Scout in the market during 2013, and it’s aiming high – the company hopes the de-vice becomes as common as the conventional thermometer.

While commercializing Scout would create manufactur-ing jobs, device production is just the tip of the iceberg in digital health care. Already, technology is driving reforms in medical exams and testing that put money in consumers’ pockets. Data gathered through digital health systems also help improve outcomes by better tracking the effectiveness of treatments and rapidly communicating best practices and new research to doctors, nurses and technicians. HIGH-TECH

PLANS, BIG TECH CITy

TO BOLDLy GO

Orszag estimates the savings from these changes could reach $750 billion. A big target is imaging, where Medicare spending doubled between 2001 and 2009. Orszag said Part-ners HealthCare System Inc. in Boston shows how decision-support software can reduce imaging costs. Doctors there order imaging tests through software that provides an appro-priateness score based on evidence-based protocols for the prescribed tests, sometimes suggesting alternatives. Between 2006 and 2009, Partners HealthCare increased use of clini-cal decision software from two-thirds of its doctors to all of them; outpatient images per patient dropped, and the doc-tors who most frequently requested imaging scans reduced their use by about 30 percent as the software called atten-tion to their relatively high usage rates. The most likely can-didates for significant savings are integrated health systems, such as Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital, where Partners HealthCare operates, and KaiserPermanente, which expanded its exploration of digital health through a sponsorship of Rock Health last year.

Digital tools will soon bring innovation to the exam room. Life Technologies last year unveiled the Ion Proton, the high-speed version of its breakthrough gene sequencer, a device that uses a digital sensor to track voltage spikes that occur as DNA replicates. The technology could turn

gene sequencing into a routine health care procedure. And now that the process is digitized, Moore’s Law projects it should get faster, and cheaper, every year.

In San Diego, Organovo Inc. integrates several technol-ogies into three-dimensional printers that create objects made of human tissue. The company’s work is based on re-search by its chief scientific advisor, Gabor Forgacs, biology professor at the University of Missouri, Columbia. In a 2004 paper titled “Organ printing: Fiction or science,” Forgacs’ team demonstrated that 3D printing could be applied to cell science. Organovo’s devices are based on the same princi-ples as other additive manufacturing processes – depositing layers of microscopic droplets, each containing thousands of human cells – to build arteries and organ structures for drug discovery and regenerative medicine products. Re-searchers at several universities are working to surmount the obstacles to creating replacement tissues and organs, such as the need for capillaries to supply oxygen.

While patients may have to wait a few years to receive insty-printed aortas, health care workers in remote loca-tions can already seek advice and treatment recommenda-tions from specialists in distant hospitals or medical cen-ters. The MobiUS SP1 is the first mobile ultrasound device that can e-mail images through a smartphone, encrypting images for confidentiality.

While return-oriented venture capitalists are betting that something like Dr. McCoy’s tricorder will be the next big thing in digital health, maybe they should be thinking bigger. Starfleet’s edge, for example, was teleportation. Will it be long before some grad student connects a digital bio-printer to a gene sequencer – and plugs that rig into a mo-bile phone just in time to beam into a booth at Buck’s to pitch for another round of financing?

With that in mind, Benjamin and Brittany Braddocks who are launching careers today might not want to tarry at the corner of Broad and Wall. They’ll find better prospects in steel plants, shale fields and digitally enabled hospitals. And they’d best run, not walk, to the land of opportunity, because technological revolutions start without advance no-tice. The U.S. economy tends to develop in a “punctuated equilibrium,” said Lazear. “Things change – fast,” he said. “And you can’t say when.” K/F/B

Best run, not walk, to the land of opportunity, because technological revolutions start without advance notice.

In a world where petroleum engineers command starting salaries of $85,000,

rulers, measurements and math are the stuff of daily life...

HOW TO FILL THREE

MILLION JOBS


The migration is proceeding fast in the energy indus-try. Oil and gas employment is up 39 percent since 2007 while overall employment is down 3 percent, and the impact of lower-cost shale gas is widespread. Pro-duction alone is expected to contribute $154 billion to GDP by 2020, more than double the amount in 2010. Steel and drilling pipe manufacturers that supply the

new technology are among the earliest beneficiaries, and the ripple effects are widespread: Cheaper energy has made the U.S. the location of choice for global steel and chemical pro-duction, and could add an average of $926 annually to U.S. disposable household income between now and 2015.

Drilling for gas in the Bakken shale field of North Da-kota is driving growth in unexpected places. A. Finkl & Sons Company is the largest producer of hydraulic fracturing pump blocks – and its new plant sits amid the urban grit on the South Side of Chicago. Already a leading maker of pre-mium forging die steels, Finkl last year began manufactur-

ing parts that fuel the natural gas boom; made from steels engineered to withstand extreme pressures encountered miles beneath the earth’s surface, these mammoths now weigh between 250 and 300 tons each.

Like Siemens, Finkl needs a steady supply of top-notch talent. Finkl’s model is geared to the STEM workplace. It relies on positive labor relations to enable production rather than confrontation, and shows how smaller companies can identify, attract and retain STEM talent without having the resources of a multinational like Siemens. Thanks to long-standing collaborative relations with its three unions – machinists, blacksmiths and electricians – Finkl hasn’t fired an employee in more than 100 years, said Chairman and CEO Bruce C. Liimatainen. The company has increased em-ployment during the past two years by 100 workers, to just over 400. Virtually all of the new positions are what Liima-tainen calls “head-of-household jobs,” with full benefits.

Finkl develops talent early, and with good labor rela-tions, the company’s union contracts allow it to hire non-union young people for summer jobs. Finkl hires 30 to 35 people – about 10 percent of its work force – from area high schools and colleges such as the Illinois Institute of Technology. In a world where petroleum engineers com-mand starting salaries of $85,000, rulers, measurements and math are the stuff of daily life, and candidate screening starts with tests – STEM tests. Liimatainen said the system works: Finkl pays summer workers the starting union wage – a high rate for a summer job; the unions get a new mem-ber each time Finkl hires a summer worker; and the com-pany gets robust talent. The CEO, who holds a number of patents himself, said Finkl’s best new engineer in 2012 was a woman from IIT.

STEM entrepreneurs are hoping U.S. Big Science can help them revolutionize health care, too. At NASA’s Ames Research Center outside San Francisco, digital health start-up Scanadu is working on Scout, a hand-held sensor that reports vital signs such as tempera-ture, heart rate and blood oxygenation, and reports to a user’s smartphone. Scanadu, launched after its

founder had a family health crisis, wants Scout in the market during 2013, and it’s aiming high – the company hopes the de-vice becomes as common as the conventional thermometer.

While commercializing Scout would create manufactur-ing jobs, device production is just the tip of the iceberg in digital health care. Already, technology is driving reforms in medical exams and testing that put money in consumers’ pockets. Data gathered through digital health systems also help improve outcomes by better tracking the effectiveness of treatments and rapidly communicating best practices and new research to doctors, nurses and technicians. HIGH-TECH

PLANS, BIG TECH CITy

TO BOLDLy GO

Orszag estimates the savings from these changes could reach $750 billion. A big target is imaging, where Medicare spending doubled between 2001 and 2009. Orszag said Part-ners HealthCare System Inc. in Boston shows how decision-support software can reduce imaging costs. Doctors there order imaging tests through software that provides an appro-priateness score based on evidence-based protocols for the prescribed tests, sometimes suggesting alternatives. Between 2006 and 2009, Partners HealthCare increased use of clini-cal decision software from two-thirds of its doctors to all of them; outpatient images per patient dropped, and the doc-tors who most frequently requested imaging scans reduced their use by about 30 percent as the software called atten-tion to their relatively high usage rates. The most likely can-didates for significant savings are integrated health systems, such as Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital, where Partners HealthCare operates, and KaiserPermanente, which expanded its exploration of digital health through a sponsorship of Rock Health last year.

Digital tools will soon bring innovation to the exam room. Life Technologies last year unveiled the Ion Proton, the high-speed version of its breakthrough gene sequencer, a device that uses a digital sensor to track voltage spikes that occur as DNA replicates. The technology could turn

gene sequencing into a routine health care procedure. And now that the process is digitized, Moore’s Law projects it should get faster, and cheaper, every year.

In San Diego, Organovo Inc. integrates several technol-ogies into three-dimensional printers that create objects made of human tissue. The company’s work is based on re-search by its chief scientific advisor, Gabor Forgacs, biology professor at the University of Missouri, Columbia. In a 2004 paper titled “Organ printing: Fiction or science,” Forgacs’ team demonstrated that 3D printing could be applied to cell science. Organovo’s devices are based on the same princi-ples as other additive manufacturing processes – depositing layers of microscopic droplets, each containing thousands of human cells – to build arteries and organ structures for drug discovery and regenerative medicine products. Re-searchers at several universities are working to surmount the obstacles to creating replacement tissues and organs, such as the need for capillaries to supply oxygen.

While patients may have to wait a few years to receive insty-printed aortas, health care workers in remote loca-tions can already seek advice and treatment recommenda-tions from specialists in distant hospitals or medical cen-ters. The MobiUS SP1 is the first mobile ultrasound device that can e-mail images through a smartphone, encrypting images for confidentiality.

While return-oriented venture capitalists are betting that something like Dr. McCoy’s tricorder will be the next big thing in digital health, maybe they should be thinking bigger. Starfleet’s edge, for example, was teleportation. Will it be long before some grad student connects a digital bio-printer to a gene sequencer – and plugs that rig into a mo-bile phone just in time to beam into a booth at Buck’s to pitch for another round of financing?

With that in mind, Benjamin and Brittany Braddocks who are launching careers today might not want to tarry at the corner of Broad and Wall. They’ll find better prospects in steel plants, shale fields and digitally enabled hospitals. And they’d best run, not walk, to the land of opportunity, because technological revolutions start without advance no-tice. The U.S. economy tends to develop in a “punctuated equilibrium,” said Lazear. “Things change – fast,” he said. “And you can’t say when.” K/F/B

Best run, not walk, to the land of opportunity, because technological revolutions start without advance notice.

In a world where petroleum engineers command starting salaries of $85,000,

rulers, measurements and math are the stuff of daily life...

L E A DI N S P I R I N GS T U D E N T S

E S T . 1 9 9 2

U N I V E R S I T Y O F R I C H M O N D

O F L E A D E R S H I P S T U D I E S

T O

T H E

J E PS ON S C HO OL

s one of the founders of

the Jepson School for Leadership Studies at the University of Richmond in Virginia,

Professor Joanne Ciulla was seeking an element blatantly missing from the traditional

management programs at business schools and undergraduate colleges around the world.


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D R . J O A N N E C I U L L A

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L E A DI N S P I R I N GS T U D E N T S

E S T . 1 9 9 2

U N I V E R S I T Y O F R I C H M O N D

O F L E A D E R S H I P S T U D I E S

T O

T H E

J E PS ON S C HO OL

s one of the founders of

the Jepson School for Leadership Studies at the University of Richmond in Virginia,

Professor Joanne Ciulla was seeking an element blatantly missing from the traditional

management programs at business schools and undergraduate colleges around the world.


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D R . J O A N N E C I U L L A

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In one of her early books, “Leadership Ethics: Mapping the Territory,” Ciulla critiqued leadership studies as a disci-pline and asked, “What’s missing?” And what seemed to be missing was context, the type of context provided by histo-rians, philosophers, theologians and literary types. In other words, the humanities.

Quoting novelist C.P. Snow, Ciulla said social science “gives you an explanation for things, but the humanities give you an understanding of things.”

Twenty years ago, the immense popularity of graduate business schools and the flood of M.B.A.’s into investment banking and Wall Street left a void in the pedagogy of lead-ership. Having slowly rid themselves of historians, business

schools began to turn out armies of graduates who believed that “reality started five years ago because everything has to be new,” Ciulla said. Historians became integral at Jepson, as did philosophers, ethicists and professors of literature.

“How do you not understand what Shakespeare has to do with leadership?” Ciulla asked. So Jepson added a Shake-speare scholar to its initial faculty.

The program was founded with a $20 million grant from Robert S. Jepson Jr., a Richmond alumnus who made his for-tune in investment banking. The idea was “to create some-thing different in the academy,” Jepson said. Coupling lead-ership with the humanities was clearly a different path. “The humanities are where we live in our everyday life,”

Jepson added. “If we want to teach leadership, we want to teach it where we will encounter it every day.”

Leadership studies has grown into a widespread aca-demic field – nearly 100 undergraduate offerings at col-leges and universities – and Jepson now has competitors on a raft of campuses including the Kravis Leadership Institute at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, Calif.; the Leadership Institute, founded by management guru Warren Bennis at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business; and the University of San Diego’s Lead-ership Education Institute, founded in 2001.

Like any longstanding program, the Jepson model evolved and reshaped itself over the course of two de-

“What is most distinctive about the Jepson School, and what we brought to the study of leadership, is the humanities,” Ciulla said. “Because it just wasn’t there before.”

Ciulla, an expert on leadership and

ethics, noted that most leadership

studies programs emerged from

industrial psychology, social psychology

and management. And in 1992, when

the Jepson School opened as one of the

nation’s first leadership schools apart

from the military, “the big problem

in leadership studies was that all

the scholars who were the top social

scientists were lamenting that they

didn’t seem to be getting anywhere,”

Ciulla recalled. After countless studies of

the impact of leadership programs, the

net result was a lack of understanding

about the field. The Jepson School might

not have had all the answers, but it was

determined to reframe the questions.

THE JEPSON SCHOOL OF LE A DER SHIP

ST UDIES

Th

e Je

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SC

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In one of her early books, “Leadership Ethics: Mapping the Territory,” Ciulla critiqued leadership studies as a disci-pline and asked, “What’s missing?” And what seemed to be missing was context, the type of context provided by histo-rians, philosophers, theologians and literary types. In other words, the humanities.

Quoting novelist C.P. Snow, Ciulla said social science “gives you an explanation for things, but the humanities give you an understanding of things.”

Twenty years ago, the immense popularity of graduate business schools and the flood of M.B.A.’s into investment banking and Wall Street left a void in the pedagogy of lead-ership. Having slowly rid themselves of historians, business

schools began to turn out armies of graduates who believed that “reality started five years ago because everything has to be new,” Ciulla said. Historians became integral at Jepson, as did philosophers, ethicists and professors of literature.

“How do you not understand what Shakespeare has to do with leadership?” Ciulla asked. So Jepson added a Shake-speare scholar to its initial faculty.

The program was founded with a $20 million grant from Robert S. Jepson Jr., a Richmond alumnus who made his for-tune in investment banking. The idea was “to create some-thing different in the academy,” Jepson said. Coupling lead-ership with the humanities was clearly a different path. “The humanities are where we live in our everyday life,”

Jepson added. “If we want to teach leadership, we want to teach it where we will encounter it every day.”

Leadership studies has grown into a widespread aca-demic field – nearly 100 undergraduate offerings at col-leges and universities – and Jepson now has competitors on a raft of campuses including the Kravis Leadership Institute at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, Calif.; the Leadership Institute, founded by management guru Warren Bennis at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business; and the University of San Diego’s Lead-ership Education Institute, founded in 2001.

Like any longstanding program, the Jepson model evolved and reshaped itself over the course of two de-

“What is most distinctive about the Jepson School, and what we brought to the study of leadership, is the humanities,” Ciulla said. “Because it just wasn’t there before.”

Ciulla, an expert on leadership and

ethics, noted that most leadership

studies programs emerged from

industrial psychology, social psychology

and management. And in 1992, when

the Jepson School opened as one of the

nation’s first leadership schools apart

from the military, “the big problem

in leadership studies was that all

the scholars who were the top social

scientists were lamenting that they

didn’t seem to be getting anywhere,”

Ciulla recalled. After countless studies of

the impact of leadership programs, the

net result was a lack of understanding

about the field. The Jepson School might

not have had all the answers, but it was

determined to reframe the questions.


ST UDIE S

Th

e Je

pS

oN

SC

ho

oL


cades, incorporating new faculty, innovative concepts and a broader view of the discipline. But the core mission hasn’t wavered, and while it would be difficult for any one school to claim uniqueness in the field, Jepson is set apart by its heavy focus on teaching about leadership as opposed to of-fering professional management training.

The original mission statement holds as true today as when it was penned in the fall of 1991. Jepson would view leadership as stewardship and “would inspire its students to use their abilities to serve society in a variety of ways.” The focus would be on sharp critical and analytical skills, a strong interdisciplinary approach and learning by experience.

And building on its iconoclastic narrative, Jepson has thrived despite its relative obscurity in Richmond and a dearth of big name faculty. The program has grown to its current size of about 200 students by mining both an intel-lectual and practical approach to leadership and the human-ities. James MacGregor Burns, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and presidential biographer who is considered the father of leadership studies, was a founding faculty member at Jepson and served as an adviser and teacher for the first five years. “I had the most intellectually exciting years of my life there,” Burns said in a 2012 interview. He sought to bring more intellectual weight to a field that he said had “become quite fragmented and some would say even trivialized.”

To that end, Jepson has embraced “the road less traveled.”“We spend a lot of time talking about leadership as a

process imbedded into an institutional framework,” said Je-pson Dean Sandra Peart. “In fact, this is why I became inter-ested in leadership as a field of study. I’m the only economist


ST UDIES

“Once you start talking about the context within which leadership is exercised or the rules that govern a leader and his or her followers, then you get into some really interesting social research questions.”D E A N S A N D R A P E A R T(pictured at right , with Joanne Ciulla)

in the building, but once you start talking about the con-text within which leadership is exercised or the rules that govern a leader and his or her followers, then you get into some really interesting social research questions. These are things our faculty research and write about, but also bring to the classroom.”

Graduates speak of the diversity of offerings across a wide spectrum of disciplines that encourages Jepson’s stu-dents to draw their own academic blueprint. One student might major in leadership and classical civilization with a minor in Greek; another might focus on ethics or religion, still others on history or philosophy. The classes are open

to all University of Richmond students, but to earn a Jepson degree, students must apply and be accepted to Jepson. Stu-dents enter the program in the spring of their sophomore year and spend the next two and half years experiencing an array of humanities-based leadership courses. They are also required to do internships in a venue of their own choosing.

For example, Camille Hammond, a 1997 Jepson gradu-ate, recalled her internship working on a leadership devel-opment program for girls in a Richmond elementary school. Jepson gave her the opportunity “to learn how to think criti-cally with a focus on the individual who would benefit from whatever intervention I was working on,” Hammond said. “It’s one thing to think about a problem from a 50,000-mile-high view, reviewing data, considering theories. But it’s quite another to look into a little girl’s eyes knowing that she is struggling and, for whatever reason, she doesn’t feel adequate. The challenge was to work with real people and address real problems. The school gave me the confidence

40 b r i e f i n g s o n t a l e n t + l e a D e R S H I P

A syllabus page from the Spring 2013 course “Leadership and the Humanities” with Dr. Peter I. Kaufman.


cades, incorporating new faculty, innovative concepts and a broader view of the discipline. But the core mission hasn’t wavered, and while it would be difficult for any one school to claim uniqueness in the field, Jepson is set apart by its heavy focus on teaching about leadership as opposed to of-fering professional management training.

The original mission statement holds as true today as when it was penned in the fall of 1991. Jepson would view leadership as stewardship and “would inspire its students to use their abilities to serve society in a variety of ways.” The focus would be on sharp critical and analytical skills, a strong interdisciplinary approach and learning by experience.

And building on its iconoclastic narrative, Jepson has thrived despite its relative obscurity in Richmond and a dearth of big name faculty. The program has grown to its current size of about 200 students by mining both an intel-lectual and practical approach to leadership and the human-ities. James MacGregor Burns, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and presidential biographer who is considered the father of leadership studies, was a founding faculty member at Jepson and served as an adviser and teacher for the first five years. “I had the most intellectually exciting years of my life there,” Burns said in a 2012 interview. He sought to bring more intellectual weight to a field that he said had “become quite fragmented and some would say even trivialized.”

To that end, Jepson has embraced “the road less traveled.”“We spend a lot of time talking about leadership as a

process imbedded into an institutional framework,” said Je-pson Dean Sandra Peart. “In fact, this is why I became inter-ested in leadership as a field of study. I’m the only economist


ST UDIE S

“Once you start talking about the context within which leadership is exercised or the rules that govern a leader and his or her followers, then you get into some really interesting social research questions.”D E A N S A N D R A P E A R T(pictured at right , with Joanne Ciulla)

in the building, but once you start talking about the con-text within which leadership is exercised or the rules that govern a leader and his or her followers, then you get into some really interesting social research questions. These are things our faculty research and write about, but also bring to the classroom.”

Graduates speak of the diversity of offerings across a wide spectrum of disciplines that encourages Jepson’s stu-dents to draw their own academic blueprint. One student might major in leadership and classical civilization with a minor in Greek; another might focus on ethics or religion, still others on history or philosophy. The classes are open

to all University of Richmond students, but to earn a Jepson degree, students must apply and be accepted to Jepson. Stu-dents enter the program in the spring of their sophomore year and spend the next two and half years experiencing an array of humanities-based leadership courses. They are also required to do internships in a venue of their own choosing.

For example, Camille Hammond, a 1997 Jepson gradu-ate, recalled her internship working on a leadership devel-opment program for girls in a Richmond elementary school. Jepson gave her the opportunity “to learn how to think criti-cally with a focus on the individual who would benefit from whatever intervention I was working on,” Hammond said. “It’s one thing to think about a problem from a 50,000-mile-high view, reviewing data, considering theories. But it’s quite another to look into a little girl’s eyes knowing that she is struggling and, for whatever reason, she doesn’t feel adequate. The challenge was to work with real people and address real problems. The school gave me the confidence


A syllabus page from the Spring 2013 course “Leadership and the Humanities” with Dr. Peter I. Kaufman.



ST UDIES

that I could do something that could make a difference and that a lot of these problems are solvable for people willing to invest and work with the community.”

Michael Stinziano is a 2002 Jepson graduate and the Democratic state representative for the 18th District in the Ohio General Assembly. While enrolled in the school, he spent a summer in Britain’s House of Lords, where he was thrust into the frenzy of an election. Three weeks before Stinziano got on the plane, Prime Minister Tony Blair dis-solved Parliament and called for elections. Stinziano found himself knocking on doors and working on a national cam-paign for Barry Gardiner, a candidate for Parliament. After graduating from Jepson, earning a master’s degree in public administration at George Washington University and a law degree at Ohio State University, Stinziano entered the polit-ical arena and won two terms in the Ohio House.

“Jepson did a wonderful job of giving us that survey ex-perience of what is out there, for us to evaluate where we fit in, what my preferences were and where I thought I could be successful,” Stinziano said. “My big ‘aha’ moment was that summer in London. I had grown up around politics in Ohio, but getting to do a national election in the British system, I thought, ‘I can do this. I can make this work.’ Had I not gone to Jepson, I probably would never have come back to pursue public service.”

The art of servant leadershipAt age 38, Camille Hammond has had an abundance of ex-perience with leadership and the humanities. After leaving Jepson and graduating from the University of Maryland medical school, Hammond assumed she would become a clinician. Instead she became the co-founder and CEO of the nonprofit Tinina Q. Cade Foundation in Owings Mills, Md. The foundation provides support and information

about infertility, adoption and foster care. From the Jepson School, Hammond learned the importance of a grounding in the humanities.

“My exposure as an undergrad helped me think about in-fertility from a variety of vantage points,” Hammond said. “My experience at Jepson definitely made me more of a global thinker with the ability to consider not just my own perspective but the perspective of others.”

But it was a life experience that cemented Hammond’s career path.

After five years of trying to conceive, Hammond and her husband decided to give up. But Hammond’s mother, Tinina Cade, associate vice president at the University of Rich-mond’s office of student development, had another idea. Even though she was 55 years old and post-menopausal, Cade offered to become a surrogate mother for her daughter and carry the baby, conceived from an egg and sperm from her daughter and son-in-law. Hammond was stunned by her mother’s offer. After much soul-searching, she and her hus-band agreed. The pregnancy went surprisingly smoothly for a woman of Cade’s age. Another surprise: Cade birthed trip-lets, and the family’s experience became a story in the na-tional media with appearances on “The Today Show” and “The View.”

As a medical student, Hammond assumed she would work as an obstetrician-gynecologist. Instead, her moth-er’s selfless act, along with Hammond’s leadership training, sent her in another direction. In 2005, Hammond and her husband founded the Cade Foundation, and in 2007, Ham-mond became the organization’s full-time CEO.

At Jepson, Hammond was exposed to the concept of “ser-vant leadership” as taught by Gill Robinson Hickman, who demonstrated how to lead by serving and giving, “instead of standing up front and proclaiming yourself the leader,” Hammond recalled. “At Jepson we had to come up with a project and address an issue. We weren’t given a template, just some tools and encouragement and a goal to identify a problem and come up with an intervention.” Hammond didn’t hesitate in setting up the Cade Foundation. “Having done something similar on a smaller level at Jepson, I knew I could do it,” she said.

In an era when a liberal arts background has become anathema and parents sending their children to $55,000-a-year colleges are demanding job-favorable majors, Jepson hasn’t blinked in its devotion to the humanities. The pen-dulum is starting to swing back toward the advantages of an education on the broad scope of what it means to be human.

Leadership, as taught in this context, “is one of those rare disciplines that is under-studied but at the same time prized by employers in every field,” said Greg Efthimiou, a 1999 Jepson graduate who is director of communications at Duke Energy in Charlotte, N.C.

Efthimiou’s job is to lead the organization that supports, informs and unifies Duke Energy’s 29,000 employees. Hav-ing an interdisciplinary foundation strengthened Efthi-miou’s self-confidence. Before joining Duke Energy, he had been a consultant at Accenture, and the Jepson training put him in a stronger position to assess and manage the interper-sonal relationships on teams to which he had been assigned.

“It was almost like I was the leadership equivalent of a clinical psychiatrist,” he said. “I was able to help them better understand their own agendas and expected outcomes from major projects they had accountability for.”

Jepson professors devote a great deal of discussion to the question of nature versus nurture in leadership develop-ment. In a hero-focused society, trailblazers such as Lincoln, Mandela, Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. are considered role models. But the recognition that opportunity and char-acter, coupled with excellent preparation, are the seeds of leadership success, opens Jepson students to more realistic expectations.

“In the business world, you’ll find people with natural leadership abilities who may or may not rise to leadership positions,” Efthimiou said. “What seems to draw more at-tention these days are the people with no ability or desire who rise and fail to meet measurable success. Leadership failures are widely documented, but we often fail to high-light victories that leaders at the lowest levels achieve.”

Jepson mirrors Aristotle’s belief that the “real work in life is the work of being human.” As Joanne Ciulla said, “By taking a liberal arts approach to leadership studies, the Jepson School is not doing anything new, but rather re-applying the original intent of liberal arts education, which was not to learn a craft or useful skill, but to acquire knowl-edge that is good in itself and to educate citizens to live and make choices in a free society.”

A leadership school should not mimic a management-training program. “While leadership requires certain skills, I am not so sure that leadership itself is a skill,” Ciulla said. “If anything, leadership is more about initiative, perspective, imagination, morality and the ability to think well and un-derstand people and the world around us.” K/F/B

“I thought, ‘I can do this. I can make this work.’ Had I not gone to Jepson, I probably would never have come back to pursue

public service.”M I C H A E L S T I N Z I A N O

Representative Ohio District 18, 2002 Jepson graduate

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ST UDIE S

that I could do something that could make a difference and that a lot of these problems are solvable for people willing to invest and work with the community.”

Michael Stinziano is a 2002 Jepson graduate and the Democratic state representative for the 18th District in the Ohio General Assembly. While enrolled in the school, he spent a summer in Britain’s House of Lords, where he was thrust into the frenzy of an election. Three weeks before Stinziano got on the plane, Prime Minister Tony Blair dis-solved Parliament and called for elections. Stinziano found himself knocking on doors and working on a national cam-paign for Barry Gardiner, a candidate for Parliament. After graduating from Jepson, earning a master’s degree in public administration at George Washington University and a law degree at Ohio State University, Stinziano entered the polit-ical arena and won two terms in the Ohio House.

“Jepson did a wonderful job of giving us that survey ex-perience of what is out there, for us to evaluate where we fit in, what my preferences were and where I thought I could be successful,” Stinziano said. “My big ‘aha’ moment was that summer in London. I had grown up around politics in Ohio, but getting to do a national election in the British system, I thought, ‘I can do this. I can make this work.’ Had I not gone to Jepson, I probably would never have come back to pursue public service.”

The art of servant leadershipAt age 38, Camille Hammond has had an abundance of ex-perience with leadership and the humanities. After leaving Jepson and graduating from the University of Maryland medical school, Hammond assumed she would become a clinician. Instead she became the co-founder and CEO of the nonprofit Tinina Q. Cade Foundation in Owings Mills, Md. The foundation provides support and information

about infertility, adoption and foster care. From the Jepson School, Hammond learned the importance of a grounding in the humanities.

“My exposure as an undergrad helped me think about in-fertility from a variety of vantage points,” Hammond said. “My experience at Jepson definitely made me more of a global thinker with the ability to consider not just my own perspective but the perspective of others.”

But it was a life experience that cemented Hammond’s career path.

After five years of trying to conceive, Hammond and her husband decided to give up. But Hammond’s mother, Tinina Cade, associate vice president at the University of Rich-mond’s office of student development, had another idea. Even though she was 55 years old and post-menopausal, Cade offered to become a surrogate mother for her daughter and carry the baby, conceived from an egg and sperm from her daughter and son-in-law. Hammond was stunned by her mother’s offer. After much soul-searching, she and her hus-band agreed. The pregnancy went surprisingly smoothly for a woman of Cade’s age. Another surprise: Cade birthed trip-lets, and the family’s experience became a story in the na-tional media with appearances on “The Today Show” and “The View.”

As a medical student, Hammond assumed she would work as an obstetrician-gynecologist. Instead, her moth-er’s selfless act, along with Hammond’s leadership training, sent her in another direction. In 2005, Hammond and her husband founded the Cade Foundation, and in 2007, Ham-mond became the organization’s full-time CEO.

At Jepson, Hammond was exposed to the concept of “ser-vant leadership” as taught by Gill Robinson Hickman, who demonstrated how to lead by serving and giving, “instead of standing up front and proclaiming yourself the leader,” Hammond recalled. “At Jepson we had to come up with a project and address an issue. We weren’t given a template, just some tools and encouragement and a goal to identify a problem and come up with an intervention.” Hammond didn’t hesitate in setting up the Cade Foundation. “Having done something similar on a smaller level at Jepson, I knew I could do it,” she said.

In an era when a liberal arts background has become anathema and parents sending their children to $55,000-a-year colleges are demanding job-favorable majors, Jepson hasn’t blinked in its devotion to the humanities. The pen-dulum is starting to swing back toward the advantages of an education on the broad scope of what it means to be human.

Leadership, as taught in this context, “is one of those rare disciplines that is under-studied but at the same time prized by employers in every field,” said Greg Efthimiou, a 1999 Jepson graduate who is director of communications at Duke Energy in Charlotte, N.C.

Efthimiou’s job is to lead the organization that supports, informs and unifies Duke Energy’s 29,000 employees. Hav-ing an interdisciplinary foundation strengthened Efthi-miou’s self-confidence. Before joining Duke Energy, he had been a consultant at Accenture, and the Jepson training put him in a stronger position to assess and manage the interper-sonal relationships on teams to which he had been assigned.

“It was almost like I was the leadership equivalent of a clinical psychiatrist,” he said. “I was able to help them better understand their own agendas and expected outcomes from major projects they had accountability for.”

Jepson professors devote a great deal of discussion to the question of nature versus nurture in leadership develop-ment. In a hero-focused society, trailblazers such as Lincoln, Mandela, Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. are considered role models. But the recognition that opportunity and char-acter, coupled with excellent preparation, are the seeds of leadership success, opens Jepson students to more realistic expectations.

“In the business world, you’ll find people with natural leadership abilities who may or may not rise to leadership positions,” Efthimiou said. “What seems to draw more at-tention these days are the people with no ability or desire who rise and fail to meet measurable success. Leadership failures are widely documented, but we often fail to high-light victories that leaders at the lowest levels achieve.”

Jepson mirrors Aristotle’s belief that the “real work in life is the work of being human.” As Joanne Ciulla said, “By taking a liberal arts approach to leadership studies, the Jepson School is not doing anything new, but rather re-applying the original intent of liberal arts education, which was not to learn a craft or useful skill, but to acquire knowl-edge that is good in itself and to educate citizens to live and make choices in a free society.”

A leadership school should not mimic a management-training program. “While leadership requires certain skills, I am not so sure that leadership itself is a skill,” Ciulla said. “If anything, leadership is more about initiative, perspective, imagination, morality and the ability to think well and un-derstand people and the world around us.” K/F/B

“I thought, ‘I can do this. I can make this work.’ Had I not gone to Jepson, I probably would never have come back to pursue

public service.”M I C H A E L S T I N Z I A N O

Representative Ohio District 18, 2002 Jepson graduate

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i’ve learned from history that so much of leadership is helping people deal with change —And— understand how change happens. history is about the nature of change.

DREw GILPIN FAuSt, scholar, historian and president of Harvard university

s t h e 2 8 t h pr e s i d e n t o f h a rva r d, Drew Gilpin Faust made history in 2007 when she became the

first woman to lead this Ivy League university, the oldest in-stitution of higher learning in the United States. A noted

scholar, history professor and author of six books on the American Civil War and the South, Faust had come to

Harvard six years earlier to be the first dean of its Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. At the time, ascending to the presidency of Harvard was the furthest thing from her mind.

“No way!” she said. When she arrived, Lawrence Summers was president. Faust assumed he would hold that position for most of her career. When Summers resigned in 2006 (he later became one of President Obama’s economic advisers), Harvard installed an interim leader while searching for a permanent replacement. In February 2007, Faust was chosen.

At the time of the interview, Faust was three years into her presidency and had become known as a catalyst of organizational change: breaking down barriers and silos between aca-demic disciplines and increasing collaboration among the schools at Harvard. These changes have been in response, at least in part, to the effect of the global financial crisis, which deliv-ered a major blow to the Harvard Endowment, reducing it by 27 percent.

In business, government or academics, times of crisis are what ultimately define one’s lead-ership. Although Faust is a scholar by trade, she clearly learned lessons of leadership from his-tory and rose to the challenges. She pulled together a team of the great minds in business and finance at Harvard, to whom she gives much credit for contributing expertise and sup-port during the recession. Faust also decided to consider the deeper, more fundamental is-sues regarding how Harvard operates. “The crisis has given us some opportunities to confront the needed changes and ask the big questions that maybe wouldn’t have been on the agenda. Those questions range from how do we do things at Harvard, how are we organized and how do we operate the university to what is the role of higher education in the world at large.”

Faust acknowledged the effect that outside forces and unforeseen events have had on her leadership. Responding to an unprecedented financial crisis was certainly not what anyone envisioned when Faust was selected as president of the university. Yet she drew inspiration and perspective from the words of Abraham Lincoln, who said, “Events have made me.” Although some scholars interpret that quote as a di-minishment of Lincoln, that he believed he was a passive recipient of circumstances rather than a great leader, she interpreted his words differently. “Any life is an inter-section of events and character and capacity, and of course events make all of us,” she said. “But you also make events. And there is this intersection between who you are and what the world offers you.”

Faust also found lessons from the Civil War, which she described as a compressed period of change that brought about dramatic shifts in several dimensions in Ameri-

can life, such as the role of women and attitudes toward death. Likewise, the financial crisis has been a period of upheaval that sparked fundamental change, prompting organizations and companies alike to consider how to do more with fewer resources.

“When you have a period of urgency, there are inherent in that period pressures for change and opportunities for change. One of the lessons for me about this time of great urgency that we’ve been through is what kind of opportunities for impor-tant change do we get delivered by that time? How do we take advantage of those opportunities?” she said.

Faust’s thirst for learning and her background as a historian have contributed to her ability to tackle the most pressing issues at the university. “I think history can give you a tremendous amount of perspective,” she said. “I’ve learned from history that so much of leadership is helping people deal with change and understand how change happens. History is about the nature of change.”


i’ve learned from history that so much of leadership is helping people deal with change —And— understand how change happens. history is about the nature of change.

DREw GILPIN FAuSt, scholar, historian and president of Harvard university

s t h e 2 8 t h pr e s i d e n t o f h a rva r d, Drew Gilpin Faust made history in 2007 when she became the

first woman to lead this Ivy League university, the oldest in-stitution of higher learning in the United States. A noted

scholar, history professor and author of six books on the American Civil War and the South, Faust had come to

Harvard six years earlier to be the first dean of its Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. At the time, ascending to the presidency of Harvard was the furthest thing from her mind.

“No way!” she said. When she arrived, Lawrence Summers was president. Faust assumed he would hold that position for most of her career. When Summers resigned in 2006 (he later became one of President Obama’s economic advisers), Harvard installed an interim leader while searching for a permanent replacement. In February 2007, Faust was chosen.

At the time of the interview, Faust was three years into her presidency and had become known as a catalyst of organizational change: breaking down barriers and silos between aca-demic disciplines and increasing collaboration among the schools at Harvard. These changes have been in response, at least in part, to the effect of the global financial crisis, which deliv-ered a major blow to the Harvard Endowment, reducing it by 27 percent.

In business, government or academics, times of crisis are what ultimately define one’s lead-ership. Although Faust is a scholar by trade, she clearly learned lessons of leadership from his-tory and rose to the challenges. She pulled together a team of the great minds in business and finance at Harvard, to whom she gives much credit for contributing expertise and sup-port during the recession. Faust also decided to consider the deeper, more fundamental is-sues regarding how Harvard operates. “The crisis has given us some opportunities to confront the needed changes and ask the big questions that maybe wouldn’t have been on the agenda. Those questions range from how do we do things at Harvard, how are we organized and how do we operate the university to what is the role of higher education in the world at large.”

Faust acknowledged the effect that outside forces and unforeseen events have had on her leadership. Responding to an unprecedented financial crisis was certainly not what anyone envisioned when Faust was selected as president of the university. Yet she drew inspiration and perspective from the words of Abraham Lincoln, who said, “Events have made me.” Although some scholars interpret that quote as a di-minishment of Lincoln, that he believed he was a passive recipient of circumstances rather than a great leader, she interpreted his words differently. “Any life is an inter-section of events and character and capacity, and of course events make all of us,” she said. “But you also make events. And there is this intersection between who you are and what the world offers you.”

Faust also found lessons from the Civil War, which she described as a compressed period of change that brought about dramatic shifts in several dimensions in Ameri-

can life, such as the role of women and attitudes toward death. Likewise, the financial crisis has been a period of upheaval that sparked fundamental change, prompting organizations and companies alike to consider how to do more with fewer resources.

“When you have a period of urgency, there are inherent in that period pressures for change and opportunities for change. One of the lessons for me about this time of great urgency that we’ve been through is what kind of opportunities for impor-tant change do we get delivered by that time? How do we take advantage of those opportunities?” she said.

Faust’s thirst for learning and her background as a historian have contributed to her ability to tackle the most pressing issues at the university. “I think history can give you a tremendous amount of perspective,” she said. “I’ve learned from history that so much of leadership is helping people deal with change and understand how change happens. History is about the nature of change.”


riding a wave of change

Faust is no stranger to challenging the status quo. As a child in Virginia in the early 1950s, attending an all-white school and belonging to an all-white church congregation, Faust was troubled by segre-

gation. She wrote a letter to a man she thought could make things right: President Dwight Eisenhower. “I am 9 years old and I am white but I have many feelings about segregation,” she told him.

In an essay published in 2003 in Harvard Magazine, Faust reflected on what could have triggered her determination to let the president know how deeply she felt about the injus-tice of segregation. “What I remember,” she wrote, “is that I heard something on the radio as I was being driven home from school by Raphael Johnson – a black man who worked for my family doing everything from mowing the lawn, shining shoes and washing floors and windows to trans-porting my brothers and me around the county, entertain-ing us all the while with quizzes on state and world capitals or the order of the presidents. I was in the car with Raphael when I heard something that made me realize that black children did not go to my school because they were not al-lowed to, because I was white and they were not.”

What is perhaps most extraordinary about the letter is not just the fact that Faust wrote it without her parents’ knowl-edge (they probably would not have encouraged her): She fully expected a reply from President Eisenhower himself. The perfunctory acknowledgment from the White House was hardly satisfying for a young girl who wanted change.

“Something hit me as a child that the society I lived in was unjust. I was just 9 years old, but I needed to do some-thing about it,” Faust said. “I had been taught that Ameri-can history was a parade of unfolding justice, and I thought that was true. I was sent to Sunday school and I am sure I learned values there.”

Some five decades later, Faust learned that her letter was among the documents in the Eisenhower Library in Kansas. Having often relied on letters, journals and other primary sources for research, Faust appreciated being part of history. Outside of its historic context, Faust’s letter also revealed something deeper: her conviction to question the status quo.

The only daughter in a household with three brothers, Faust rejected her mother’s traditional view of the role of

women in society. For Faust, who was always called by her middle name of Drew instead of her first name of Catha-rine, that view was unacceptable. She became compelled to understand the world around her by exploring its historic roots. In the process, she would achieve more than she ever thought possible.

“It would have been unimaginable for me as a child to think I would end up here, especially when [women at the time] would not have been allowed in the undergraduate library at Harvard,” Faust said. “I was supposed to get married, have children and probably not even work.” (She is married to Charles Rosenberg, a leading historian of medicine and sci-ence and a professor at Harvard; they have two daughters.)

Faust acknowledged that she benefited from societal change that began to open doors to women of her genera-tion – another example of the events that have made her. “I have been on a crest of a wave of change in American soci-ety that has opened up possibilities that I could not have expected or envisioned as a child or a young person. And that has been a source of wonder and satisfaction and ful-fillment and amazement to me.”

Faust contrasted her experience as a young woman with the array of possibilities for the Harvard students in 2010, male and female, for whom there is also pressure to per-form, excel and succeed. “Students now have so many clear ideas about, ‘I must win this prize. I must get this job. I must get into this school. I must have these things.’ On the one hand, it probably drives them toward achievement, but it also gives them measures for failure that I never had for my-self,” she said. “Yes, I have failed in many things, but I never said I failed because I am not the president of the United States or I don’t make X amount of money.”

She shared the story of a freshman who wanted to be-come president of Harvard one day. He asked if he could speak with her about how to pursue that goal. Faust told the student she would be happy to meet with him but her advice was not to pin himself down so specifically. “Maybe he will become president of Harvard and maybe he won’t. Probably there will be paths that will open for him that will be very fulfilling, and yet he will have it in his mind [that he’s going to be Harvard president]. The great statistical likelihood is he will not reach that goal.”

“something hit me as a child that the society i lived in was unjust. i was just 9 years old, but i needed to do something about it.”

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riding a wave of change

Faust is no stranger to challenging the status quo. As a child in Virginia in the early 1950s, attending an all-white school and belonging to an all-white church congregation, Faust was troubled by segre-

gation. She wrote a letter to a man she thought could make things right: President Dwight Eisenhower. “I am 9 years old and I am white but I have many feelings about segregation,” she told him.

In an essay published in 2003 in Harvard Magazine, Faust reflected on what could have triggered her determination to let the president know how deeply she felt about the injus-tice of segregation. “What I remember,” she wrote, “is that I heard something on the radio as I was being driven home from school by Raphael Johnson – a black man who worked for my family doing everything from mowing the lawn, shining shoes and washing floors and windows to trans-porting my brothers and me around the county, entertain-ing us all the while with quizzes on state and world capitals or the order of the presidents. I was in the car with Raphael when I heard something that made me realize that black children did not go to my school because they were not al-lowed to, because I was white and they were not.”

What is perhaps most extraordinary about the letter is not just the fact that Faust wrote it without her parents’ knowl-edge (they probably would not have encouraged her): She fully expected a reply from President Eisenhower himself. The perfunctory acknowledgment from the White House was hardly satisfying for a young girl who wanted change.

“Something hit me as a child that the society I lived in was unjust. I was just 9 years old, but I needed to do some-thing about it,” Faust said. “I had been taught that Ameri-can history was a parade of unfolding justice, and I thought that was true. I was sent to Sunday school and I am sure I learned values there.”

Some five decades later, Faust learned that her letter was among the documents in the Eisenhower Library in Kansas. Having often relied on letters, journals and other primary sources for research, Faust appreciated being part of history. Outside of its historic context, Faust’s letter also revealed something deeper: her conviction to question the status quo.

The only daughter in a household with three brothers, Faust rejected her mother’s traditional view of the role of

women in society. For Faust, who was always called by her middle name of Drew instead of her first name of Catha-rine, that view was unacceptable. She became compelled to understand the world around her by exploring its historic roots. In the process, she would achieve more than she ever thought possible.

“It would have been unimaginable for me as a child to think I would end up here, especially when [women at the time] would not have been allowed in the undergraduate library at Harvard,” Faust said. “I was supposed to get married, have children and probably not even work.” (She is married to Charles Rosenberg, a leading historian of medicine and sci-ence and a professor at Harvard; they have two daughters.)

Faust acknowledged that she benefited from societal change that began to open doors to women of her genera-tion – another example of the events that have made her. “I have been on a crest of a wave of change in American soci-ety that has opened up possibilities that I could not have expected or envisioned as a child or a young person. And that has been a source of wonder and satisfaction and ful-fillment and amazement to me.”

Faust contrasted her experience as a young woman with the array of possibilities for the Harvard students in 2010, male and female, for whom there is also pressure to per-form, excel and succeed. “Students now have so many clear ideas about, ‘I must win this prize. I must get this job. I must get into this school. I must have these things.’ On the one hand, it probably drives them toward achievement, but it also gives them measures for failure that I never had for my-self,” she said. “Yes, I have failed in many things, but I never said I failed because I am not the president of the United States or I don’t make X amount of money.”

She shared the story of a freshman who wanted to be-come president of Harvard one day. He asked if he could speak with her about how to pursue that goal. Faust told the student she would be happy to meet with him but her advice was not to pin himself down so specifically. “Maybe he will become president of Harvard and maybe he won’t. Probably there will be paths that will open for him that will be very fulfilling, and yet he will have it in his mind [that he’s going to be Harvard president]. The great statistical likelihood is he will not reach that goal.”

“something hit me as a child that the society i lived in was unjust. i was just 9 years old, but i needed to do something about it.”

CO

ur

te

sy

ha

rv

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D u

niv

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B r I e f I n g s o n t a l e n t + l e a D e R S H I P50 512 0 1 3 : Q 3 k o r n / f e r r y I n T e r n A T I o n A L

Given her own experiences of capitalizing on opportu-nity and creating change, Faust takes seriously being a role model for the students at Harvard, thus extending the reach of her leadership. Whenever possible, she seizes a moment to tell them that, plans and long-term goals aside, to some degree one’s life must unfold. As she observed in her bacca-laureate address to the class of 2008, the key to success and happiness is to pursue what one is most passionate about, take some risks and see how life turns out. “The answer is you don’t know until you try,” Faust said her in speech. “But if you don’t try to do what you love – whether it is painting or biology or finance – if you don’t pursue what you think will be most meaningful, you will regret it. Life is long. There is always time for Plan B. But don’t begin with it.”

Coming from a history professor who never intended to become a college president, let alone to run Harvard, it is excellent advice. Leaders, too, must find a balance between the long-term plan and handling the opportunities and ob-stacles that arise in the short term.

listen, learn and lead

Seated in her office with its imposing fireplace and plank floors, Faust was surrounded by the mystique and tradition that is Harvard, which dates back to the days when Massachusetts was a Puritan colony.

Although she has a deep respect for the traditions at Har-vard, she has been willing to question everything, particu-larly how the university operates. The time has come, she said, “to change in order to sustain what matters most.”

Before becoming president, Faust was an insider at Har-vard, which she joined in 2001 as the first dean of the Rad-cliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She had come to Har-vard after 25 years at the University of Pennsylvania, where she taught history and directed the women’s studies pro-grams. Because the Radcliffe Institute did not have any fac-ulty of its own, as the dean Faust had to recruit professors from other departments. That enabled her to get to know

colleagues outside the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences, of which she was part as a professor of history. Her ability to seek out others, listen to diverse opinions and build consen-sus became leadership strengths and tools for dealing with crisis and change.

Faust extended her outreach beyond those who knew her as the dean of Radcliffe to every school and department at the university. “My approach to the situation when I took over was just to try to hear from people what was on their minds and to assure constituencies who didn’t know me in the university that I cared about what they were doing and that I wanted to know more about it,” Faust said.

Faust’s approach was first to listen and learn and then lead. Listening and learning are not only essential to build-ing a leader’s knowledge, but also to forging bonds and cre-ating unity around common goals and purpose. For Faust, this meant getting to know every part of the university. Her outreach efforts attracted a stream of colleagues to her office. Faculty stopped by and sent long letters to discuss what they saw as critical to the future of the university. “People had their eyes on the future and not the past and wanted to discuss how I could help them move to that fu-ture in the most effective and collaborative way. That was very helpful,” Faust said.

Deep alliances between Faust and the faculty were cre-ated through three dean searches undertaken between Feb-ruary and July 2007 in the schools of medicine, arts and

sciences, and design. Unlike other institutions where the president essentially approves the recommendations of a search panel, at Harvard the president runs the dean search, working closely with an advisory committee. For Faust, the searches became “forums of outreach” within the university and to alumni and leaders in the field. “These searches were really key for me in defining relationships within three ma-jor schools at Harvard and enabling me to speak with a lot of faculty and hear what was on people’s minds,” she said.

leadership and communication

How a leader communicates during a crisis di-rectly affects perceptions of the severity of the problem, confidence in the leader’s ability to find the way forward and assessments of how

the organization is equipped to respond. For Faust, respond-ing to the financial downturn and the losses of the Harvard Endowment meant getting a handle on its effect on the uni-versity portfolio and communicating quickly to the Harvard community. In a departure from past practice, Harvard is-sued a public statement about its anticipated losses even be-fore the fiscal year had ended. “I needed the community to understand how serious this was,” Faust said. “People had always thought, ‘Oh, our endowment is so well managed, nothing will ever happen to it.’ This was a different mo-ment. We had to get ready and adjust.”

Because Faust did not have financial expertise, she sought out the advice of some of the best Harvard minds in the field. “Harvard is filled with talented people,” she said. As a member of the Harvard Management Company board, she received a crash course in the university’s invest-ments, which helped her speak credibly of the challenges. “I wouldn’t say that you would want to use me as your finan-cial adviser, it hasn’t gotten to that,” she said. “But I did get a pretty good sense of what needed to be done and how to think about the problems we faced.”

Faust went to deans and faculty to explain the severity of the problem. “I thought it was very important that I talk about the finances and not just bring in a financial person. They needed to know that I understood the problem ... that I got it and I was dealing with it,” she said.

“my approach to the situation when i took over was just to try to hear from people what was on their minds and to assure constituencies ... that i cared about what they were doing and that i wanted to know more about it.”

CO

rB

is


Given her own experiences of capitalizing on opportu-nity and creating change, Faust takes seriously being a role model for the students at Harvard, thus extending the reach of her leadership. Whenever possible, she seizes a moment to tell them that, plans and long-term goals aside, to some degree one’s life must unfold. As she observed in her bacca-laureate address to the class of 2008, the key to success and happiness is to pursue what one is most passionate about, take some risks and see how life turns out. “The answer is you don’t know until you try,” Faust said her in speech. “But if you don’t try to do what you love – whether it is painting or biology or finance – if you don’t pursue what you think will be most meaningful, you will regret it. Life is long. There is always time for Plan B. But don’t begin with it.”

Coming from a history professor who never intended to become a college president, let alone to run Harvard, it is excellent advice. Leaders, too, must find a balance between the long-term plan and handling the opportunities and ob-stacles that arise in the short term.

listen, learn and lead

Seated in her office with its imposing fireplace and plank floors, Faust was surrounded by the mystique and tradition that is Harvard, which dates back to the days when Massachusetts was a Puritan colony.

Although she has a deep respect for the traditions at Har-vard, she has been willing to question everything, particu-larly how the university operates. The time has come, she said, “to change in order to sustain what matters most.”

Before becoming president, Faust was an insider at Har-vard, which she joined in 2001 as the first dean of the Rad-cliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She had come to Har-vard after 25 years at the University of Pennsylvania, where she taught history and directed the women’s studies pro-grams. Because the Radcliffe Institute did not have any fac-ulty of its own, as the dean Faust had to recruit professors from other departments. That enabled her to get to know

colleagues outside the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences, of which she was part as a professor of history. Her ability to seek out others, listen to diverse opinions and build consen-sus became leadership strengths and tools for dealing with crisis and change.

Faust extended her outreach beyond those who knew her as the dean of Radcliffe to every school and department at the university. “My approach to the situation when I took over was just to try to hear from people what was on their minds and to assure constituencies who didn’t know me in the university that I cared about what they were doing and that I wanted to know more about it,” Faust said.

Faust’s approach was first to listen and learn and then lead. Listening and learning are not only essential to build-ing a leader’s knowledge, but also to forging bonds and cre-ating unity around common goals and purpose. For Faust, this meant getting to know every part of the university. Her outreach efforts attracted a stream of colleagues to her office. Faculty stopped by and sent long letters to discuss what they saw as critical to the future of the university. “People had their eyes on the future and not the past and wanted to discuss how I could help them move to that fu-ture in the most effective and collaborative way. That was very helpful,” Faust said.

Deep alliances between Faust and the faculty were cre-ated through three dean searches undertaken between Feb-ruary and July 2007 in the schools of medicine, arts and

sciences, and design. Unlike other institutions where the president essentially approves the recommendations of a search panel, at Harvard the president runs the dean search, working closely with an advisory committee. For Faust, the searches became “forums of outreach” within the university and to alumni and leaders in the field. “These searches were really key for me in defining relationships within three ma-jor schools at Harvard and enabling me to speak with a lot of faculty and hear what was on people’s minds,” she said.

leadership and communication

How a leader communicates during a crisis di-rectly affects perceptions of the severity of the problem, confidence in the leader’s ability to find the way forward and assessments of how

the organization is equipped to respond. For Faust, respond-ing to the financial downturn and the losses of the Harvard Endowment meant getting a handle on its effect on the uni-versity portfolio and communicating quickly to the Harvard community. In a departure from past practice, Harvard is-sued a public statement about its anticipated losses even be-fore the fiscal year had ended. “I needed the community to understand how serious this was,” Faust said. “People had always thought, ‘Oh, our endowment is so well managed, nothing will ever happen to it.’ This was a different mo-ment. We had to get ready and adjust.”

Because Faust did not have financial expertise, she sought out the advice of some of the best Harvard minds in the field. “Harvard is filled with talented people,” she said. As a member of the Harvard Management Company board, she received a crash course in the university’s invest-ments, which helped her speak credibly of the challenges. “I wouldn’t say that you would want to use me as your finan-cial adviser, it hasn’t gotten to that,” she said. “But I did get a pretty good sense of what needed to be done and how to think about the problems we faced.”

Faust went to deans and faculty to explain the severity of the problem. “I thought it was very important that I talk about the finances and not just bring in a financial person. They needed to know that I understood the problem ... that I got it and I was dealing with it,” she said.

“my approach to the situation when i took over was just to try to hear from people what was on their minds and to assure constituencies ... that i cared about what they were doing and that i wanted to know more about it.”

CO

rB

is


Her experience confirmed what Faust had always be-lieved: that leadership is closely tied to communication. “In a time of crisis, what people want from their leaders is to un-derstand what on earth is going on,” she said. “It’s the leader who has to help individuals understand by defining the situ-ation and the path through it. And that’s what I tried to do.”

Her response to the financial crisis revealed her leader-ship style: collaborative and with a preference for address-ing issues early on. “I like to be ahead of things,” she said. “I’m not a procrastinator because that just means I am go-ing to suffer through it longer: first, to worry it to death and then I’m going to have to deal with it anyway. I would much rather try to figure out what’s the right path and take it early on. I would prefer to have some [influence over] a problem rather than be a victim of the problem.”

Harvard’s response to the Great Recession encompassed the immediate steps of reducing expenses and budgets and longer-term strategies such as exploring how different dis-ciplines could collaborate in new ways. Faust recalled a visit to the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, where she was shown images of cells to which certain compounds had been added to test whether the cells were protected from amyotrophic

lateral sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig’s disease. Intrigued by the imaging, Faust asked a researcher whether the idea had originated from physics or biology. His reply was telling of the state of cutting-edge research. “He said all the fields are merging,” Faust said excitedly. “Life sciences and physical sciences are breaking down the distinctions.”

She sees the same merging of disciplines between social science and humanities as well as social science and natu-ral sciences. Interdependence allows multiple disciplines to tackle issues such as health care delivery in the United States, which involves Harvard’s schools of business, pub-lic health and medicine, as well as the sociology and eco-nomics faculty. These developments speak to the essence of Faust’s mission of determining “how we, as an institu-tion that has so many strengths, really take advantage of our knowledge.”

The answer to that question could result in increased collaboration at Harvard to further research and thought leadership at the university. As distinctions between aca-demic fields blur, there could be more opportunities for fac-ulty in one school to teach in another, thus making better use of resources while sharing valuable knowledge.

making of future leaders

The financial crisis has also allowed Faust to tackle issues that are more philosophic in na-ture, such as examining the link between higher education and economic growth, and that a bet-

ter-educated work force can help propel the economy for-ward. To focus on that point alone, Faust advised, would be to neglect a larger question about the value of humani-ties as well as what she called the more theoretical aspects of higher education. “Not just to train people but to educate them for a life,” she said. “Not just a vocational capacity but rather an ability to be someone who can ask the big, difficult questions. I think all of these issues have been put on the ta-ble by the financial crisis. We, as a leading institution in the field of higher education, need to pose those questions and come up with some answers.”

Faust ponders Harvard’s role in training future leaders who need to understand the intersection of leadership and responsibility. “It means your career is not just about en-hancing your own talents or your own resources and build-ing a good life for yourself,” she said. “Leadership means

“i hope i will be able to say that i took this moment when change was possible and i used it to improve harvard in a variety of dimensions.”

having a sense of responsibility and a sense of ethical com-mitment to society and to those you are leading.”

When we met, it was still too soon to comment on Faust’s legacy. Nonetheless, she did reflect on the difference she hopes to make. Top of her list is access, making sure that students, staff and faculty feel they are part of the Harvard community regardless of race, gender or economic circum-stances. She described her vision of Harvard as a “porous institution that really draws talent and enhances and wel-comes that talent – a vibrant intellectual community. That is how we serve both our own goals by getting the best tal-ent, and it’s also how we serve the world best, as we serve the people who can take advantage of what we have to offer.”

Second on her list was the hope that she can look back on these times and say she took advantage of the opportu-nity that events presented to institute important and lasting change. “I hope I will be able to say that I took this moment when change was possible and I used it to improve Harvard in a variety of dimensions, some of them organizational and administrative, but more important the kinds of intellectual connections that our interdependence [between schools and disciplines] can foster,” she said.

As Faust responds to external catalysts and creates some of her own, there is no doubt that she is leading Har-vard into and through a period of questioning and discern-ment. This prompted Faust to offer one last item on her legacy wish list: “that we really asked hard questions and made ourselves better, and that we decided that just be-cause we’ve done some things one way doesn’t mean that we wouldn’t change it.”

Faust faced a crisis without flinching and then chose to look for the opportunity in the midst of turmoil and uncer-tainty. She shares that attitude with many great leaders who view crisis as opportunity because change is inevitable. As a lifelong learner and a student of history, Faust has demon-strated the importance of drawing parallels between past and present and using the lessons learned to chart a course to a more solid future. K/F/B


Her experience confirmed what Faust had always be-lieved: that leadership is closely tied to communication. “In a time of crisis, what people want from their leaders is to un-derstand what on earth is going on,” she said. “It’s the leader who has to help individuals understand by defining the situ-ation and the path through it. And that’s what I tried to do.”

Her response to the financial crisis revealed her leader-ship style: collaborative and with a preference for address-ing issues early on. “I like to be ahead of things,” she said. “I’m not a procrastinator because that just means I am go-ing to suffer through it longer: first, to worry it to death and then I’m going to have to deal with it anyway. I would much rather try to figure out what’s the right path and take it early on. I would prefer to have some [influence over] a problem rather than be a victim of the problem.”

Harvard’s response to the Great Recession encompassed the immediate steps of reducing expenses and budgets and longer-term strategies such as exploring how different dis-ciplines could collaborate in new ways. Faust recalled a visit to the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, where she was shown images of cells to which certain compounds had been added to test whether the cells were protected from amyotrophic

lateral sclerosis (ALS), or Lou Gehrig’s disease. Intrigued by the imaging, Faust asked a researcher whether the idea had originated from physics or biology. His reply was telling of the state of cutting-edge research. “He said all the fields are merging,” Faust said excitedly. “Life sciences and physical sciences are breaking down the distinctions.”

She sees the same merging of disciplines between social science and humanities as well as social science and natu-ral sciences. Interdependence allows multiple disciplines to tackle issues such as health care delivery in the United States, which involves Harvard’s schools of business, pub-lic health and medicine, as well as the sociology and eco-nomics faculty. These developments speak to the essence of Faust’s mission of determining “how we, as an institu-tion that has so many strengths, really take advantage of our knowledge.”

The answer to that question could result in increased collaboration at Harvard to further research and thought leadership at the university. As distinctions between aca-demic fields blur, there could be more opportunities for fac-ulty in one school to teach in another, thus making better use of resources while sharing valuable knowledge.

making of future leaders

The financial crisis has also allowed Faust to tackle issues that are more philosophic in na-ture, such as examining the link between higher education and economic growth, and that a bet-

ter-educated work force can help propel the economy for-ward. To focus on that point alone, Faust advised, would be to neglect a larger question about the value of humani-ties as well as what she called the more theoretical aspects of higher education. “Not just to train people but to educate them for a life,” she said. “Not just a vocational capacity but rather an ability to be someone who can ask the big, difficult questions. I think all of these issues have been put on the ta-ble by the financial crisis. We, as a leading institution in the field of higher education, need to pose those questions and come up with some answers.”

Faust ponders Harvard’s role in training future leaders who need to understand the intersection of leadership and responsibility. “It means your career is not just about en-hancing your own talents or your own resources and build-ing a good life for yourself,” she said. “Leadership means

“i hope i will be able to say that i took this moment when change was possible and i used it to improve harvard in a variety of dimensions.”

having a sense of responsibility and a sense of ethical com-mitment to society and to those you are leading.”

When we met, it was still too soon to comment on Faust’s legacy. Nonetheless, she did reflect on the difference she hopes to make. Top of her list is access, making sure that students, staff and faculty feel they are part of the Harvard community regardless of race, gender or economic circum-stances. She described her vision of Harvard as a “porous institution that really draws talent and enhances and wel-comes that talent – a vibrant intellectual community. That is how we serve both our own goals by getting the best tal-ent, and it’s also how we serve the world best, as we serve the people who can take advantage of what we have to offer.”

Second on her list was the hope that she can look back on these times and say she took advantage of the opportu-nity that events presented to institute important and lasting change. “I hope I will be able to say that I took this moment when change was possible and I used it to improve Harvard in a variety of dimensions, some of them organizational and administrative, but more important the kinds of intellectual connections that our interdependence [between schools and disciplines] can foster,” she said.

As Faust responds to external catalysts and creates some of her own, there is no doubt that she is leading Har-vard into and through a period of questioning and discern-ment. This prompted Faust to offer one last item on her legacy wish list: “that we really asked hard questions and made ourselves better, and that we decided that just be-cause we’ve done some things one way doesn’t mean that we wouldn’t change it.”

Faust faced a crisis without flinching and then chose to look for the opportunity in the midst of turmoil and uncer-tainty. She shares that attitude with many great leaders who view crisis as opportunity because change is inevitable. As a lifelong learner and a student of history, Faust has demon-strated the importance of drawing parallels between past and present and using the lessons learned to chart a course to a more solid future. K/F/B





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G A M I F I C A T I

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I was leaving my local Citibank branch the other day,a customer service rep flagged me down. Smiling and eager,

she had what looked like a pamphlet in Citibank blue to

press on me. But it wasn’t an announcement of a new type

of account or a branch opening. It was an invitation to play

a game. If I returned in exactly a week, it explained, I could have the card’s Quick

Response code scanned – on that date and that date only – and if it proved a winner,

I would get a cash prize: $15 , $50 or, at most, $200.BerrebyDavidBy


Scan this QR code for answers to the quiz on page 54

G

G A M I F I C A T I

IN

RY

E

H

VET H

OO

N

I was leaving my local Citibank branch the other day,a customer service rep flagged me down. Smiling and eager,

she had what looked like a pamphlet in Citibank blue to

press on me. But it wasn’t an announcement of a new type

of account or a branch opening. It was an invitation to play

a game. If I returned in exactly a week, it explained, I could have the card’s Quick

Response code scanned – on that date and that date only – and if it proved a winner,

I would get a cash prize: $15 , $50 or, at most, $200.BerrebyDavidBy


Scan this QR code for answers to the quiz on page 54


ers or making a life worth living out of a 99-year prison sentence, gaming elements have been shown to make play-ers abler, happier and more committed to their goals. Gamification is here to stay, and insight into its workings can help you distinguish substance from hype.

Gamification has most clearly proven itself in situa-tions requiring a lot of brainpower on a well-defined but de-manding task. Since 2008, for example, thousands of peo-ple around the world have played a video game called Foldit, in which they fold and twist greenish balloon-like shapes into structures. The chains are models of amino acids – the building blocks of proteins – and as they play the gam-ers eventually find the best possible structure for the avail-able amino acids (the one that requires the least amount of energy to maintain). When they reach that end point for a specified collection of amino acids, the players have completed a job that used to be done exclusively by com-putational biologists with sophisticated software: They’ve worked out the structure of a protein. In fact, Foldit results have appeared in many high-impact journals. And accord-ing to a recent review in the magazine The Scientist, strate-gies that the competitive players have devised have proven to be better than the state-of-the-art algorithms that the

game’s inventors use in their own protein-folding research. The science projects seek to harness brainpower for

discovery, but gamification can also engage and motivate participants to learn new things and change their behav-ior. For example, last year, the Swedish National Society for Road Safety created a “speed camera lottery” in Stockholm. At select traffic spots, drivers would see a digital display of their speed, as measured by radar, and a camera would snap a picture of their license plate. If they were over the speed limit, they got a ticket in the mail. However, drivers who were at or under the limit were automatically entered into a lottery to win money at the end of each month. The amount of money depended on the speeders – their fines went into the prize fund. The results were impressive. Over three days (24,857 cars photographed), the average car’s drive-by speed went down from 32 kilometers an hour to 25 – a 22 percent reduction. (And the idea was itself a product of gamification: “speed camera lottery” was the winning entry in a contest sponsored by Volkswagen.)

Similarly, the Stockholm School of Business (which, oddly enough, is in Latvia) applied game principles to its alumni fundraising campaign. The school used digital media to create leaderboards. After contributing, a donor

No wonder, then, that there are some (for example, the experts at the Web site gamification.co, an indispensable hub of information and opinion on the

movement) who have proclaimed gamification the next big disrupter, bound to bring profound change to many aspects of business and society. No wonder, either, that this has led others (including Gartner), to warn about inflated expectations and hype. A year after it made that prediction about widespread gamification in the Global 2000, the research firm added another forecast: “By 2014, 80 percent of current gamified applications will fail to meet business objectives primarily because of poor design.”

Even though you’re going to be seeing and reading a lot about what gamification can do for your business, it’s clear that this new approach can’t solve all the problems compa-nies hope for it to address. Yet it’s equally certain that gam-ification is not just a buzzword. When the task is learning algebra, quitting smoking, military recruiting, mastering regulations, improving the way one interacts with custom-

Drivers who were at or under the limit were automatically entered into a lottery to win money at the end of each month.

I’d just been gamified. It was the first time a bank wanted to play with me, but it wasn’t my first experience. And given current trends, it certainly won’t be my last. ♣ “Gamification” – weaving games (or at least the compelling elements of games) into work, banking, market-ing, Internet security, school, health care, politics and many other serious pursuits – is suddenly pervasive. By 2014, the technology research firm Gartner predicts, more than 70 percent of Forbes Global 2000 organizations will offer at least one “gami-fied” experience. And in a recent poll of 1,021 Internet experts conducted by Pew and North Carolina’s Elon University, 53 percent expected gamification to be widely used in workplaces by 2020. ♦ Governments, too, are chasing gamification as a means to encourage healthy behavior, tax compliance, power conservation and highway safety. Pro-gamification arguments have won converts around the world at the top of the leadership pyramid. In the fall of 2011, for example, Constance Steinkuehler, a University of Wisconsin expert on video games in education, joined the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and was charged with exploring the poten-tial of gamification for a broad range of policy goals.

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ers or making a life worth living out of a 99-year prison sentence, gaming elements have been shown to make play-ers abler, happier and more committed to their goals. Gamification is here to stay, and insight into its workings can help you distinguish substance from hype.

Gamification has most clearly proven itself in situa-tions requiring a lot of brainpower on a well-defined but de-manding task. Since 2008, for example, thousands of peo-ple around the world have played a video game called Foldit, in which they fold and twist greenish balloon-like shapes into structures. The chains are models of amino acids – the building blocks of proteins – and as they play the gam-ers eventually find the best possible structure for the avail-able amino acids (the one that requires the least amount of energy to maintain). When they reach that end point for a specified collection of amino acids, the players have completed a job that used to be done exclusively by com-putational biologists with sophisticated software: They’ve worked out the structure of a protein. In fact, Foldit results have appeared in many high-impact journals. And accord-ing to a recent review in the magazine The Scientist, strate-gies that the competitive players have devised have proven to be better than the state-of-the-art algorithms that the

game’s inventors use in their own protein-folding research. The science projects seek to harness brainpower for

discovery, but gamification can also engage and motivate participants to learn new things and change their behav-ior. For example, last year, the Swedish National Society for Road Safety created a “speed camera lottery” in Stockholm. At select traffic spots, drivers would see a digital display of their speed, as measured by radar, and a camera would snap a picture of their license plate. If they were over the speed limit, they got a ticket in the mail. However, drivers who were at or under the limit were automatically entered into a lottery to win money at the end of each month. The amount of money depended on the speeders – their fines went into the prize fund. The results were impressive. Over three days (24,857 cars photographed), the average car’s drive-by speed went down from 32 kilometers an hour to 25 – a 22 percent reduction. (And the idea was itself a product of gamification: “speed camera lottery” was the winning entry in a contest sponsored by Volkswagen.)

Similarly, the Stockholm School of Business (which, oddly enough, is in Latvia) applied game principles to its alumni fundraising campaign. The school used digital media to create leaderboards. After contributing, a donor

No wonder, then, that there are some (for example, the experts at the Web site gamification.co, an indispensable hub of information and opinion on the

movement) who have proclaimed gamification the next big disrupter, bound to bring profound change to many aspects of business and society. No wonder, either, that this has led others (including Gartner), to warn about inflated expectations and hype. A year after it made that prediction about widespread gamification in the Global 2000, the research firm added another forecast: “By 2014, 80 percent of current gamified applications will fail to meet business objectives primarily because of poor design.”

Even though you’re going to be seeing and reading a lot about what gamification can do for your business, it’s clear that this new approach can’t solve all the problems compa-nies hope for it to address. Yet it’s equally certain that gam-ification is not just a buzzword. When the task is learning algebra, quitting smoking, military recruiting, mastering regulations, improving the way one interacts with custom-

Drivers who were at or under the limit were automatically entered into a lottery to win money at the end of each month.

I’d just been gamified. It was the first time a bank wanted to play with me, but it wasn’t my first experience. And given current trends, it certainly won’t be my last. ♣ “Gamification” – weaving games (or at least the compelling elements of games) into work, banking, market-ing, Internet security, school, health care, politics and many other serious pursuits – is suddenly pervasive. By 2014, the technology research firm Gartner predicts, more than 70 percent of Forbes Global 2000 organizations will offer at least one “gami-fied” experience. And in a recent poll of 1,021 Internet experts conducted by Pew and North Carolina’s Elon University, 53 percent expected gamification to be widely used in workplaces by 2020. ♦ Governments, too, are chasing gamification as a means to encourage healthy behavior, tax compliance, power conservation and highway safety. Pro-gamification arguments have won converts around the world at the top of the leadership pyramid. In the fall of 2011, for example, Constance Steinkuehler, a University of Wisconsin expert on video games in education, joined the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and was charged with exploring the poten-tial of gamification for a broad range of policy goals.

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immediately appeared on a dynamic infographic. Alumni were also constantly informed about how much designated groups of graduates – from different nations, graduating classes and companies – were giving compared to others. (The size of each country on a world map reflected its citi-zens’ generosity.) Compared to 2011, alumni participation in fundraising went up 300 percent.

Unsurprisingly, the power of games has drawn inter-est in fields where sometimes-unwilling participants have to be kept engaged in order to change their lives or mas-ter some body of knowledge. Last year, for instance, the education services company Pearson launched Alleyoop, a Web-based math and science tutor for junior high and high school students, which strongly resembles a Facebook game. Kids can even log in via the social network. Players go on “missions” and earn an in-game currency called yoops that can pay for tutoring and lessons. Most importantly, they get constant feedback on their performance and move through their missions at their own pace.

Similarly, the booming industry of wellness promotion and monitoring is keen on games. For instance, Keas, a San Francisco startup, offers its 30 corporate clients a Web-based game in which employees form teams to compete in a con-test to eat better, exercise and manage their stress. And in finance, True Office, another startup, offers a gamified ap-proach to training. For example, the company offers com-pliance training (an unpopular subject among bank person-nel, but an increasingly important one). True Office conveys required information about insider trading regulations or know-your-customer anti-laundering rules by immersing trainees in an interactive game with a long-playing storyline.

The most dramatic example of gamification’s power, though, predates the current trend.

Late this April, the town of An-gola in northwest Louisiana will host its rodeo, as it has for 40 years. Competitors will ride a bull for as long as they can, or sit at a poker table and vie to be the last player standing when a bull charges them, or try to grab a poker chip off an angry steer. The event is run by professionals in a 10,000-seat stadium, but none of the riders is an expert. Many have had zero experience with these sports before, in fact. The compet-itors are all inmates of the Louisiana State Penitentiary.

The prison lodges the state’s most-hardened criminals. Seven out of 10 prisoners are in for life; the average sen-tence for non-lifers is 91 years. And the money the rodeo earns goes straight back into the prison system. In other words, the contestants have nothing to gain in terms of

money or opportunity. Yet prisoners work hard to earn the privilege of competing in the twice-a-year rodeo. They must rise through a system of defined achievements that lead to concrete rewards: the right to have a job in the prison, own a pet or have some freedom of movement on the grounds. At the apex is the privilege of competing in the rodeo.

The system is not new. Angola’s current warden, Burl Cain, set it up after he took over in 1995. And the rodeo itself dates from the 1960s. But as the entrepreneur Seth Priebatsch noticed last year, the rodeo and the points-and-rewards system that selects prisoners to enter it are clearly examples of gamification. Indeed, writes Gary Henkle of gamification.co: “A game spanning 10 years (or more) with an emphasis on rewarding people by status is reminiscent of longstanding airline loyalty rewards. ... The rodeo gives prisoners a goal they can strive for, and the leveling up process gives them an opportunity to practice self-control and following rules.”

In Louisiana, prisoners work

hard to earn the privilege of

competing in the twice-a-year

rodeo ... with nothing to gain.

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immediately appeared on a dynamic infographic. Alumni were also constantly informed about how much designated groups of graduates – from different nations, graduating classes and companies – were giving compared to others. (The size of each country on a world map reflected its citi-zens’ generosity.) Compared to 2011, alumni participation in fundraising went up 300 percent.

Unsurprisingly, the power of games has drawn inter-est in fields where sometimes-unwilling participants have to be kept engaged in order to change their lives or mas-ter some body of knowledge. Last year, for instance, the education services company Pearson launched Alleyoop, a Web-based math and science tutor for junior high and high school students, which strongly resembles a Facebook game. Kids can even log in via the social network. Players go on “missions” and earn an in-game currency called yoops that can pay for tutoring and lessons. Most importantly, they get constant feedback on their performance and move through their missions at their own pace.

Similarly, the booming industry of wellness promotion and monitoring is keen on games. For instance, Keas, a San Francisco startup, offers its 30 corporate clients a Web-based game in which employees form teams to compete in a con-test to eat better, exercise and manage their stress. And in finance, True Office, another startup, offers a gamified ap-proach to training. For example, the company offers com-pliance training (an unpopular subject among bank person-nel, but an increasingly important one). True Office conveys required information about insider trading regulations or know-your-customer anti-laundering rules by immersing trainees in an interactive game with a long-playing storyline.

The most dramatic example of gamification’s power, though, predates the current trend.

Late this April, the town of An-gola in northwest Louisiana will host its rodeo, as it has for 40 years. Competitors will ride a bull for as long as they can, or sit at a poker table and vie to be the last player standing when a bull charges them, or try to grab a poker chip off an angry steer. The event is run by professionals in a 10,000-seat stadium, but none of the riders is an expert. Many have had zero experience with these sports before, in fact. The compet-itors are all inmates of the Louisiana State Penitentiary.

The prison lodges the state’s most-hardened criminals. Seven out of 10 prisoners are in for life; the average sen-tence for non-lifers is 91 years. And the money the rodeo earns goes straight back into the prison system. In other words, the contestants have nothing to gain in terms of

money or opportunity. Yet prisoners work hard to earn the privilege of competing in the twice-a-year rodeo. They must rise through a system of defined achievements that lead to concrete rewards: the right to have a job in the prison, own a pet or have some freedom of movement on the grounds. At the apex is the privilege of competing in the rodeo.

The system is not new. Angola’s current warden, Burl Cain, set it up after he took over in 1995. And the rodeo itself dates from the 1960s. But as the entrepreneur Seth Priebatsch noticed last year, the rodeo and the points-and-rewards system that selects prisoners to enter it are clearly examples of gamification. Indeed, writes Gary Henkle of gamification.co: “A game spanning 10 years (or more) with an emphasis on rewarding people by status is reminiscent of longstanding airline loyalty rewards. ... The rodeo gives prisoners a goal they can strive for, and the leveling up process gives them an opportunity to practice self-control and following rules.”

In Louisiana, prisoners work

hard to earn the privilege of

competing in the twice-a-year

rodeo ... with nothing to gain.

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RT

Y B

LA

KE


For skeptics who think gamification is overrated, the prison’s approach could serve as Exhibit A.

It seems obvious that chasing points and vying to ride cattle add up to an irrational approach to life, given the ephemeral goals and brief rewards that will make no difference to the “big picture”: life in prison and, quite likely, even burial on Angola’s grounds.

This frequently heard critique misses an important truth about human behavior, which has been well mapped by the past few decades of scientific research. It’s simply this: Most of the time in human decision making, there is no “big pic-ture.” Yes, we can see reason if we get a grip on ourselves and work hard at it. Most of the time, though, we don’t.

What comes far more easily is responding to the sug-gestion of the moment (one example: evaluators who have just had a break will judge candidates more leniently than will those who have been working for hours without pause; they’ll be harsher, too, in rainy weather than they are on sunny days) chasing a goal that is immediately attainable but sufficiently challenging to bring out the competitive spirit, hope for success and anxiety about failure going all out for bragging rights – or, as a social scientist might put it, for signals of high social status relative to others whom

we see or think about every day engaging and caring deeply about contests with fixed and arbitrary rules (for example, baseball, football, hockey and other sports).

These are drivers of many of the decisions made in organi-zations and families. And, of course, they all share an impor-tant trait: They are characteristic of games. These elements have always been compelling to the human mind. What’s new today is the technology that can deliver a game-like experi-ence anywhere, from the highway to the office to the Web.

Gamification, then, is a way to use interactive tech-nology to streamline the psychology of effort and change. Many serious activities are hard to manage because they involve complex shifts in motivations (you want to lose weight, but how can you offend Aunt Agatha when she went to the trouble to make your favorite pie?), dynamic pro-cesses in constant change (you thought you really wanted to get to the top in this company, but after this morning’s earnings report and yesterday’s sales meeting, you’re feel-ing maybe you should see what’s going on in other shops), and far too many interacting drivers (Aunt Agatha, your weight-loss plan, the look of that pie, the weather outside, how hungry you are, who else is in the room – all these things have been shown to affect motivation and prefer-ence). Gamification replaces life’s ambiguity and confu-sion with the game’s clarity and sureness of purpose. The

game elements strip away what discourages and distracts. The nature of gamification also hints at the reasons it

will never prove to be the answer to all the challenges of managing people, relationships and one’s own self.

First, not every complex motivational or performance challenge lends itself to the simplifications of game play. When the challenge doesn’t involve clear goals – for the or-ganization or the “player” – then a game element won’t help.

Second, since gamification distills a complex human ac-tivity into a clearer, simpler activity, gamification will make sense only if that distillation process makes sense, both to the “gamifier” and to the players. Gamification will fail, though, when the transfer from life to game isn’t convincing.

As an example, Michael Wu, chief scientist at the social customer-management firm Lithium Technologies, has cited “a large enterprise” (whose name he’s kept to himself) that created an iOS golf game for its sales executives. The balls represented leads, and the holes were individual salespeople. The game was designed to get the executives to speed up the work of forwarding leads to the sales staff. But Wu noticed that the transfer didn’t make sense.

“The task of assigning a lead to a rep normally takes only a few sec-onds, but it may take minutes now because sales execs need to roll the ball into the hole by tilt-ing the mobile device,” he wrote. Game play and the company’s goal didn’t align. Players found the game interesting and compel-ling, but it didn’t speed up their work. In fact, it slowed it down.

This kind of bad fit between game and life will be the source of much disillusionment about gamification in coming years. As Gartner’s Brian Burke put it recently, “Many companies have begun to believe that people will readily do their bidding by simply slapping some meaning-less badges, points and leaderboards onto their Web sites.” It’s not so. When the life-game connection is “off,” players don’t engage for long. They will see through what the gam-ification maven Kevin Shane calls “fake gamification,” in which game elements are presented without any connection to player or organization. Or players might engage with the game but not with the organization’s underlying goal, be-cause the two haven’t been aligned. This sort of “bad gami-fication,” Shane says, is even worse for an organization than the fake kind. This sort of alienation, though, is a serious danger for any gamification effort. After all, in their pure form, games are by definition impractical pastimes, which aren’t supposed to connect to real world stakes.

In “Homo Ludens,” his profound look at humanity’s playful nature, the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga identi-fied this as essential to the appeal of play. “Play,” he wrote, “is connected to no material interest, and no profit can be gained from it.” Play has to be distinct from ordinary life in order to be play. This feeling about the nature of games is why some expert designers feel that gamification is basically impossible, or that, in the words of the respected game designer and thinker Ian Bogost, “gamification is bogus.”

Was Citibank’s tactic a success? I’m guessing not. I mis-placed the game card and had no compelling reason to be at the bank that particular day, so I wasn’t motivated to play, and still have no idea why they wanted customers to come at that specific time. But I am sure about one thing when it comes to gamification: Whatever I might think of any one game experience that’s offered in the course of my day, for the next few years, there will always be more on the way. K/F/B

“Many companies have begun to believe that people will readily do their bidding

by simply slapping some meaningless badges,

points and leaderboards onto their Web sites.”

— B R I A N B U R k E

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A San Francisco startup offers a Web-based game in which employees

form teams to compete in a contest to eat better and exercise.


For skeptics who think gamification is overrated, the prison’s approach could serve as Exhibit A.

It seems obvious that chasing points and vying to ride cattle add up to an irrational approach to life, given the ephemeral goals and brief rewards that will make no difference to the “big picture”: life in prison and, quite likely, even burial on Angola’s grounds.

This frequently heard critique misses an important truth about human behavior, which has been well mapped by the past few decades of scientific research. It’s simply this: Most of the time in human decision making, there is no “big pic-ture.” Yes, we can see reason if we get a grip on ourselves and work hard at it. Most of the time, though, we don’t.

What comes far more easily is responding to the sug-gestion of the moment (one example: evaluators who have just had a break will judge candidates more leniently than will those who have been working for hours without pause; they’ll be harsher, too, in rainy weather than they are on sunny days) chasing a goal that is immediately attainable but sufficiently challenging to bring out the competitive spirit, hope for success and anxiety about failure going all out for bragging rights – or, as a social scientist might put it, for signals of high social status relative to others whom

we see or think about every day engaging and caring deeply about contests with fixed and arbitrary rules (for example, baseball, football, hockey and other sports).

These are drivers of many of the decisions made in organi-zations and families. And, of course, they all share an impor-tant trait: They are characteristic of games. These elements have always been compelling to the human mind. What’s new today is the technology that can deliver a game-like experi-ence anywhere, from the highway to the office to the Web.

Gamification, then, is a way to use interactive tech-nology to streamline the psychology of effort and change. Many serious activities are hard to manage because they involve complex shifts in motivations (you want to lose weight, but how can you offend Aunt Agatha when she went to the trouble to make your favorite pie?), dynamic pro-cesses in constant change (you thought you really wanted to get to the top in this company, but after this morning’s earnings report and yesterday’s sales meeting, you’re feel-ing maybe you should see what’s going on in other shops), and far too many interacting drivers (Aunt Agatha, your weight-loss plan, the look of that pie, the weather outside, how hungry you are, who else is in the room – all these things have been shown to affect motivation and prefer-ence). Gamification replaces life’s ambiguity and confu-sion with the game’s clarity and sureness of purpose. The

game elements strip away what discourages and distracts. The nature of gamification also hints at the reasons it

will never prove to be the answer to all the challenges of managing people, relationships and one’s own self.

First, not every complex motivational or performance challenge lends itself to the simplifications of game play. When the challenge doesn’t involve clear goals – for the or-ganization or the “player” – then a game element won’t help.

Second, since gamification distills a complex human ac-tivity into a clearer, simpler activity, gamification will make sense only if that distillation process makes sense, both to the “gamifier” and to the players. Gamification will fail, though, when the transfer from life to game isn’t convincing.

As an example, Michael Wu, chief scientist at the social customer-management firm Lithium Technologies, has cited “a large enterprise” (whose name he’s kept to himself) that created an iOS golf game for its sales executives. The balls represented leads, and the holes were individual salespeople. The game was designed to get the executives to speed up the work of forwarding leads to the sales staff. But Wu noticed that the transfer didn’t make sense.

“The task of assigning a lead to a rep normally takes only a few sec-onds, but it may take minutes now because sales execs need to roll the ball into the hole by tilt-ing the mobile device,” he wrote. Game play and the company’s goal didn’t align. Players found the game interesting and compel-ling, but it didn’t speed up their work. In fact, it slowed it down.

This kind of bad fit between game and life will be the source of much disillusionment about gamification in coming years. As Gartner’s Brian Burke put it recently, “Many companies have begun to believe that people will readily do their bidding by simply slapping some meaning-less badges, points and leaderboards onto their Web sites.” It’s not so. When the life-game connection is “off,” players don’t engage for long. They will see through what the gam-ification maven Kevin Shane calls “fake gamification,” in which game elements are presented without any connection to player or organization. Or players might engage with the game but not with the organization’s underlying goal, be-cause the two haven’t been aligned. This sort of “bad gami-fication,” Shane says, is even worse for an organization than the fake kind. This sort of alienation, though, is a serious danger for any gamification effort. After all, in their pure form, games are by definition impractical pastimes, which aren’t supposed to connect to real world stakes.

In “Homo Ludens,” his profound look at humanity’s playful nature, the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga identi-fied this as essential to the appeal of play. “Play,” he wrote, “is connected to no material interest, and no profit can be gained from it.” Play has to be distinct from ordinary life in order to be play. This feeling about the nature of games is why some expert designers feel that gamification is basically impossible, or that, in the words of the respected game designer and thinker Ian Bogost, “gamification is bogus.”

Was Citibank’s tactic a success? I’m guessing not. I mis-placed the game card and had no compelling reason to be at the bank that particular day, so I wasn’t motivated to play, and still have no idea why they wanted customers to come at that specific time. But I am sure about one thing when it comes to gamification: Whatever I might think of any one game experience that’s offered in the course of my day, for the next few years, there will always be more on the way. K/F/B

“Many companies have begun to believe that people will readily do their bidding

by simply slapping some meaningless badges,

points and leaderboards onto their Web sites.”

— B R I A N B U R k E

MA

RT

Y B

LA

KE

A San Francisco startup offers a Web-based game in which employees

form teams to compete in a contest to eat better and exercise.

A S I A

A M A R AT H O N AT S P R I N T S P E E D

T h e e S T é e L A u d e r C o m p A n I e S offices in Hong Kong, strategically towering over the iconic Victoria Harbor,

are the epitome of the skincare company’s push into the Asian market –

especially China. As the president for Asia Pacific for the past six years,

FAbRIcE WEbER has been in charge of developing the group and its more

than 25 brands in a market where having a radiant, healthy-looking and

youthful skin may be more important than anywhere else in the world.

Weber, a European of Franco-German ancestry, spent a nomadic child-

hood between Madrid and Brussels before graduating from HEC, one of

France’s top business schools. He started his career in Europe with L’Oréal

in 1986 and joined Chanel’s beauty and fragrance division in Southeast Asia

and then Japan a decade later. He joined Estée Lauder in 2001, first based in

the New York headquarters, then Hong Kong.

His upbringing, which Weber said helped him become adaptable and

quick to embrace foreign cultures, helped make him the most suitable man-

ager to lead Estée Lauder’s development in Asia, where women are ready and

willing to devote a huge part of their income to premium beauty products.

In 2011, China became the biggest market in Asia for Estée Lauder and

the third-biggest worldwide, with 5.4 percent of the group’s global busi-

ness in the 2012 fiscal year (excluding Asia’s significant travel retail busi-

ness). The group launched Osiao, a new brand that draws from the precepts

of traditional Chinese medicine, in November 2012. The idea grew out of

Estée Lauder’s recently enhanced Asia Innovation Center in Shanghai, and

the busy tourist hub that is Hong Kong is serving as a launching pad to test

whether the brand is ready for a wider regional rollout.

Fabrice Weber, along with Figin Seng, the skincare company’s regional

director for organizational and talent development in Asia Pacific, recently

sat with Pushp Deep Gupta, leadership and talent consultant at Korn/Ferry

International, and Hélène Franchineau, a contributor to Briefings on Talent

& Leadership. Weber shared his thoughts on the diversity and complexity

that define the Asian markets and on the challenge of developing talent and

retaining leaders loyal to the company.

B Y h é L è n e f r A n C h I n e A u


A S I A

A M A R AT H O N AT S P R I N T S P E E D

T h e e S T é e L A u d e r C o m p A n I e S offices in Hong Kong, strategically towering over the iconic Victoria Harbor,

are the epitome of the skincare company’s push into the Asian market –

especially China. As the president for Asia Pacific for the past six years,

FAbRIcE WEbER has been in charge of developing the group and its more

than 25 brands in a market where having a radiant, healthy-looking and

youthful skin may be more important than anywhere else in the world.

Weber, a European of Franco-German ancestry, spent a nomadic child-

hood between Madrid and Brussels before graduating from HEC, one of

France’s top business schools. He started his career in Europe with L’Oréal

in 1986 and joined Chanel’s beauty and fragrance division in Southeast Asia

and then Japan a decade later. He joined Estée Lauder in 2001, first based in

the New York headquarters, then Hong Kong.

His upbringing, which Weber said helped him become adaptable and

quick to embrace foreign cultures, helped make him the most suitable man-

ager to lead Estée Lauder’s development in Asia, where women are ready and

willing to devote a huge part of their income to premium beauty products.

In 2011, China became the biggest market in Asia for Estée Lauder and

the third-biggest worldwide, with 5.4 percent of the group’s global busi-

ness in the 2012 fiscal year (excluding Asia’s significant travel retail busi-

ness). The group launched Osiao, a new brand that draws from the precepts

of traditional Chinese medicine, in November 2012. The idea grew out of

Estée Lauder’s recently enhanced Asia Innovation Center in Shanghai, and

the busy tourist hub that is Hong Kong is serving as a launching pad to test

whether the brand is ready for a wider regional rollout.

Fabrice Weber, along with Figin Seng, the skincare company’s regional

director for organizational and talent development in Asia Pacific, recently

sat with Pushp Deep Gupta, leadership and talent consultant at Korn/Ferry

International, and Hélène Franchineau, a contributor to Briefings on Talent

& Leadership. Weber shared his thoughts on the diversity and complexity

that define the Asian markets and on the challenge of developing talent and

retaining leaders loyal to the company.

B Y h é L è n e f r A n C h I n e A u



QYou once said about Estée Lauder employees that you hoped “we make

them understand we are building them up and grooming them.” can you tell us more about how Estée Lauder develops staff loyalty in Asia?

WEbER: The biggest battle in Asia Pacific is not for consumers but for talent. Everybody knows that in certain markets, there is a gap between the talent the business requires and the pool of talent available. At Estée Lauder Companies, our key assets are the brand andthe people. We need substantially more peo-ple just to cope with our own internal, or-ganic growth; and then we have the issue that there is a lot of temptations for our best employees to move on because they are of-fered opportunities elsewhere.

China is probably the epitome of that prob-lem. There is a lot more demand for talent than you have talent available.

From our engagement surveys, we realize that what people want is not necessarily al-ways and only more money and title; what they want is more opportunities to learn. There is an enormous appetite for recogni-tion as well, because it reflects well on the high hard-work-ethics prevailing in Asia. We want people to say: I am going to join Es-tée Lauder Companies when I finish my stud-ies because I think I could learn best-in-class marketing, retail management, the business of luxury and high-end service and so on. We want them to think of us as a place where they can have a long and rewarding career.

FIgIN SENg (regional director, organizational and talent development in Asia Pacific): We have recently introduced a very structured in-ternship program where students work on

business cases, and we want to use this op-portunity to identify the best emerging tal-ent. At the same time we brand ourselves in business schools and top universities in key countries and hopefully, by word of mouth, people will start to recognize us and career centers will start to connect with us.

WEbER: We also have a Presidential Man-agement Associate program. We select Asian candidates who have at least five years of work experience and who graduated with an M.B.A. from a top-tier American business school such as Harvard or Wharton, and we put them through a process of a two-year job rotation (four assignments of six months each). We allow them to better hone what they want to do in this company, and it al-lows us to test them on different functions, different brands and different corporate po-sitions across continents, before they are as-signed to a core position within the company.

In September 2010 we also launched the Transformative Leadership Program, which is

the first program created specifically for the Asia Pacific region. Our goal was to raise the level of leadership for a group of people who are already seniors. In two years, 160 people already went through it and another 40 peo-ple are ongoing. Estée Lauder Companies along with Korn/Ferry designed the program.

People from different backgrounds work in multidisciplinary groups over a period of nine months. Through this journey, they have to learn to work together on things that they usually don’t master at all. They have a senior leader sponsor who helps them, and at the end, they have to present a project to a group of senior management, in competition with another group. And yes, some of the ideas are implemented by the brands in the region or even globally.

QYou have been based in Hong Kong since 2007, and you have seen how

Asian leaders operate. What are some of the gaps in Asian leadership that you wished could be filled?

A M A R AT H O N AT S P R I N T S P E E DE N T E R I N g A S I A

WEbER: We are a global business in a very fast-moving environment, and the age of dig-ital has amplified communication and multi-level interactions. All of that is happening at the speed of light, and I think successful lead-ers need to learn to navigate that increasingly complex jungle. That complexity and the am-biguity it carries along quite often is where I see Asian leaders struggle the most, but this is also the area where I have seen the most progress. To me, it stems from education and culture, nothing else.

The other thing is also understanding who you are as a leader rather than trying to fit in a template. People have strength that they should leverage, and we as a company want to make it clear that we don’t want you to be perfect, because it is not realistic, but there are certain things that you know or do better than others and we want to leverage that.

QWhat advice would you give to other high-performing organizations trying

to grow in this region?

WEbER: I don’t think there is a single model that you can copy and paste, but everybody should be aligned on the company’s direction, priorities and choices.

Then you need to celebrate success and find the time to do it because, in this region, we are actually running a marathon at the speed of a sprint! People and their family mean something to us, and therefore letting people have a family life and a balanced life should be an obsession. I don’t think we are always delivering on that. I would encourage any company that is too self-centered to take a moment to step back and reflect on what they are doing to create a leveled working en-vironment for their employees.

QDo you have a message to other cEO’s in the region?

WEbER: Never assume that the best prod-uct alone will make you the most success-ful player in town. You will need to invest in the relevant emerging areas and have the right talents for today and tomorrow because three years from now may come in 12 months. Investing in people is as important as invest-ing in consumers to buy your products.

My other piece of advice is about creating passion, because passion leads to energy. It is about challenging yourself every day. In this part of the world, you don’t take anything for granted for very long, because consum-ers and the environment are changing so fast. You need to be open to the assumption that nothing you know is applicable to certain ar-eas of emerging opportunities. You need to reinvent yourself constantly.

QEstée Lauder wants to make china its “second home.” How do you see

the business expanding within china in the coming years?

WEbER: China is the greatest opportunity for the beauty industry in general and for the prestige beauty industry in particular.

We have to learn quickly to adapt to what is probably the fastest-emerging but also the fastest-learning consumer in the world.

In many areas, the Chinese not only learned significantly faster but also leapfrogged other consumers around the world. They are also probably the most digitally minded consum-ers in the world.

One priority is the expansion of the distribu-tion: China is in its infancy in terms of distri-bution rollout. We are in 66 cities today, and when you compare to the United States or Japan, this is not a lot.

We sell to consumers in more than 350 cit-ies through the Internet, so we already know that there is a demand, as we estimate that 150 to 200 million consumers are potentially in the scope of luxury products.

QOsiao was launched last October in two locations in Hong Kong and will

be introduced in Mainland china in 2014. What was the logic behind creating an en-tirely new brand, and what is the initial feedback from consumers?

WEbER: We launched, with Osiao, a truly Asia-centric initiative. We thought we needed to come up with an answer to ad-dress the issue of being able, as a leading company in the beauty business, to appeal to many women whose perception is: “Not

made for my skin? Not made for me.” So we created Osiao in our Shanghai-based Innova-tion and Development center, and the con-cept is supposed to be premium and very high-touch in terms of service. From what we gathered in our two Hong Kong locations, there have been a lot of visitors from many Asian markets—including China, Japan, Ko-rea or Taiwan.

With Osiao, we wanted to create a brand that is claiming to help you treat your beauty concerns from the inside and from the out-side at the same time. It is not totally uncom-mon, but at the high end of the market we are probably the only one trying to do that.

So far the feedback is incredibly encourag-ing. We saw people who are willing to sit down for 45 minutes and go through what is unique to the brand – the skin constitution diagnostic tool, which gives you a diagnostic based on your lifestyle and your skin type at the same time. Our retention rate is also ex-tremely high for a brand that is still very new in the market.

I want to stress that Osiao is not a China brand. We were partially inspired by tradi-tional Chinese medicine culture, but it is not a “traditional Chinese medicine” brand. It is meant for Asia in the broader definition. One of the key strategies behind this product is that if it becomes big in Asia, we will be able to leverage it in Paris, London or New York because Asians travel a lot these days and shop abroad. We know that for every dollar Chinese consumers buy within China, we sell two dollars to them outside of China.

QHow difficult was it to push for some-thing homegrown in Asia, in an orga-

nization like the Estée Lauder group?

WEbER: Surprisingly enough it was quite easy because of one key reason: We started this project in 2008, a year before Fabrizio Freda, our current CEO and president, came on board. Six months after he joined, he was visiting China, and we took a shot at it and had the person who came up with the con-cept and her team articulate the vision behind this highly innovative new beauty brand. He said, “Let’s go for it.” He had the appetite for it, and he has been very supportive ever since.

FAbRIcE WEbER PrESIDENT ASIA PACIFIC, ESTéE LAUDEr COMPANIES

hé

lè

ne

fr

an

ch

ine

au


QYou once said about Estée Lauder employees that you hoped “we make

them understand we are building them up and grooming them.” can you tell us more about how Estée Lauder develops staff loyalty in Asia?

WEbER: The biggest battle in Asia Pacific is not for consumers but for talent. Everybody knows that in certain markets, there is a gap between the talent the business requires and the pool of talent available. At Estée Lauder Companies, our key assets are the brand andthe people. We need substantially more peo-ple just to cope with our own internal, or-ganic growth; and then we have the issue that there is a lot of temptations for our best employees to move on because they are of-fered opportunities elsewhere.

China is probably the epitome of that prob-lem. There is a lot more demand for talent than you have talent available.

From our engagement surveys, we realize that what people want is not necessarily al-ways and only more money and title; what they want is more opportunities to learn. There is an enormous appetite for recogni-tion as well, because it reflects well on the high hard-work-ethics prevailing in Asia. We want people to say: I am going to join Es-tée Lauder Companies when I finish my stud-ies because I think I could learn best-in-class marketing, retail management, the business of luxury and high-end service and so on. We want them to think of us as a place where they can have a long and rewarding career.

FIgIN SENg (regional director, organizational and talent development in Asia Pacific): We have recently introduced a very structured in-ternship program where students work on

business cases, and we want to use this op-portunity to identify the best emerging tal-ent. At the same time we brand ourselves in business schools and top universities in key countries and hopefully, by word of mouth, people will start to recognize us and career centers will start to connect with us.

WEbER: We also have a Presidential Man-agement Associate program. We select Asian candidates who have at least five years of work experience and who graduated with an M.B.A. from a top-tier American business school such as Harvard or Wharton, and we put them through a process of a two-year job rotation (four assignments of six months each). We allow them to better hone what they want to do in this company, and it al-lows us to test them on different functions, different brands and different corporate po-sitions across continents, before they are as-signed to a core position within the company.

In September 2010 we also launched the Transformative Leadership Program, which is

the first program created specifically for the Asia Pacific region. Our goal was to raise the level of leadership for a group of people who are already seniors. In two years, 160 people already went through it and another 40 peo-ple are ongoing. Estée Lauder Companies along with Korn/Ferry designed the program.

People from different backgrounds work in multidisciplinary groups over a period of nine months. Through this journey, they have to learn to work together on things that they usually don’t master at all. They have a senior leader sponsor who helps them, and at the end, they have to present a project to a group of senior management, in competition with another group. And yes, some of the ideas are implemented by the brands in the region or even globally.

QYou have been based in Hong Kong since 2007, and you have seen how

Asian leaders operate. What are some of the gaps in Asian leadership that you wished could be filled?


WEbER: We are a global business in a very fast-moving environment, and the age of dig-ital has amplified communication and multi-level interactions. All of that is happening at the speed of light, and I think successful lead-ers need to learn to navigate that increasingly complex jungle. That complexity and the am-biguity it carries along quite often is where I see Asian leaders struggle the most, but this is also the area where I have seen the most progress. To me, it stems from education and culture, nothing else.

The other thing is also understanding who you are as a leader rather than trying to fit in a template. People have strength that they should leverage, and we as a company want to make it clear that we don’t want you to be perfect, because it is not realistic, but there are certain things that you know or do better than others and we want to leverage that.

QWhat advice would you give to other high-performing organizations trying

to grow in this region?

WEbER: I don’t think there is a single model that you can copy and paste, but everybody should be aligned on the company’s direction, priorities and choices.

Then you need to celebrate success and find the time to do it because, in this region, we are actually running a marathon at the speed of a sprint! People and their family mean something to us, and therefore letting people have a family life and a balanced life should be an obsession. I don’t think we are always delivering on that. I would encourage any company that is too self-centered to take a moment to step back and reflect on what they are doing to create a leveled working en-vironment for their employees.

QDo you have a message to other cEO’s in the region?

WEbER: Never assume that the best prod-uct alone will make you the most success-ful player in town. You will need to invest in the relevant emerging areas and have the right talents for today and tomorrow because three years from now may come in 12 months. Investing in people is as important as invest-ing in consumers to buy your products.

My other piece of advice is about creating passion, because passion leads to energy. It is about challenging yourself every day. In this part of the world, you don’t take anything for granted for very long, because consum-ers and the environment are changing so fast. You need to be open to the assumption that nothing you know is applicable to certain ar-eas of emerging opportunities. You need to reinvent yourself constantly.

QEstée Lauder wants to make china its “second home.” How do you see

the business expanding within china in the coming years?

WEbER: China is the greatest opportunity for the beauty industry in general and for the prestige beauty industry in particular.

We have to learn quickly to adapt to what is probably the fastest-emerging but also the fastest-learning consumer in the world.

In many areas, the Chinese not only learned significantly faster but also leapfrogged other consumers around the world. They are also probably the most digitally minded consum-ers in the world.

One priority is the expansion of the distribu-tion: China is in its infancy in terms of distri-bution rollout. We are in 66 cities today, and when you compare to the United States or Japan, this is not a lot.

We sell to consumers in more than 350 cit-ies through the Internet, so we already know that there is a demand, as we estimate that 150 to 200 million consumers are potentially in the scope of luxury products.

QOsiao was launched last October in two locations in Hong Kong and will

be introduced in Mainland china in 2014. What was the logic behind creating an en-tirely new brand, and what is the initial feedback from consumers?

WEbER: We launched, with Osiao, a truly Asia-centric initiative. We thought we needed to come up with an answer to ad-dress the issue of being able, as a leading company in the beauty business, to appeal to many women whose perception is: “Not

made for my skin? Not made for me.” So we created Osiao in our Shanghai-based Innova-tion and Development center, and the con-cept is supposed to be premium and very high-touch in terms of service. From what we gathered in our two Hong Kong locations, there have been a lot of visitors from many Asian markets—including China, Japan, Ko-rea or Taiwan.

With Osiao, we wanted to create a brand that is claiming to help you treat your beauty concerns from the inside and from the out-side at the same time. It is not totally uncom-mon, but at the high end of the market we are probably the only one trying to do that.

So far the feedback is incredibly encourag-ing. We saw people who are willing to sit down for 45 minutes and go through what is unique to the brand – the skin constitution diagnostic tool, which gives you a diagnostic based on your lifestyle and your skin type at the same time. Our retention rate is also ex-tremely high for a brand that is still very new in the market.

I want to stress that Osiao is not a China brand. We were partially inspired by tradi-tional Chinese medicine culture, but it is not a “traditional Chinese medicine” brand. It is meant for Asia in the broader definition. One of the key strategies behind this product is that if it becomes big in Asia, we will be able to leverage it in Paris, London or New York because Asians travel a lot these days and shop abroad. We know that for every dollar Chinese consumers buy within China, we sell two dollars to them outside of China.

QHow difficult was it to push for some-thing homegrown in Asia, in an orga-

nization like the Estée Lauder group?

WEbER: Surprisingly enough it was quite easy because of one key reason: We started this project in 2008, a year before Fabrizio Freda, our current CEO and president, came on board. Six months after he joined, he was visiting China, and we took a shot at it and had the person who came up with the con-cept and her team articulate the vision behind this highly innovative new beauty brand. He said, “Let’s go for it.” He had the appetite for it, and he has been very supportive ever since.

FAbRIcE WEbER PrESIDENT ASIA PACIFIC, ESTéE LAUDEr COMPANIES

hé

lè

ne

fr

an

ch

ine

au



QThe Asian continent may be the most diverse market in the world. How

does Estée Lauder approach this, and how is the premium skincare market segmented?

WEbER: In the Oceania market (Australia and New Zealand), consumer behaviors are not far from those of the United Kingdom or the United States. Japan is as big as the whole of Western Europe in terms of prestige skincare and makeup. Korea is very meaningful be-cause over the last decade it has grown signif-icantly. In Korea, women have a daily beauty regime and apply between six to ten products on their skin daily. We are talking about peo-ple who have an obsession and a high level of education at the same time: They know what works, they want high performance, and they don’t mind paying for pricey products if they think that they are going to deliver.

The “greater China core” is at different stages of development. The consumer from Hong Kong or Taiwan is very knowledgeable. If you take Mainland Chinese people in tier one cities such as Beijing or Shanghai, the level of sophis-tication is similar to other developed markets. The real growth of this region comes from here. Fragrances and makeup are still relatively small because people are in the prestige cat-egory for skin treatment, not yet for makeup so much, but this is only a matter of time.

Southeast Asia is more complicated: Singa-pore, Malaysia and Thailand are more devel-oped; they get more tourism and have retail environments that make “high touch” gener-ally more understood. Indonesia, the Philip-pines and Vietnam are emerging very rapidly. The consumers there are moving from lower-middle class to middle-middle class, and this allows them to start shopping for affordable luxury products.

QHow do you balance this diversity from a management and resource-

allocation perspective?

WEbER: We have to be very clear about what we go after but also about what we don’t try to do. From an investment perspec-tive, you have to prioritize the areas with the greatest expansion rate, such as skincare and innovative product, packaging, service or retail formats. The digital realm, such as e-commerce or engagement on the social media platforms, is also where we think we need to be. But all those choices were made some time ago.

We also need to be clear on how we work to-gether, horizontally and vertically, and focus on the quality of communication. The trick is to make sure that the organization is aligned on the main key goals, market by market, re-gion by region, brand by brand and function by function.

I think this is starting to pay off. Is it perfect? No. I think we still have room for streamlining because we have engaged a huge amount of ini-tiatives in the region. Every year we try to revisit all of these and make sure to take out what we cannot digest or what is not working.

QIs there any innovation that was taken from the Asia Pacific market

and later implemented elsewhere?

WEbER: Yes, in many areas. In learning and talent development, we have come up with a fair number of initiatives that were not only supported by global resources in their conception, but also have de facto been adopted.

What sets Asia apart is the focus on execu-

tion, the sense of detail and the level of plan-ning. The region has exported a lot of that.

The era of the top-down organization, where things get crafted in the New York headquar-ters and then executed here, is over. Best practices can come from anywhere. We think that being closer to the consumer and closer to the local business stakeholders will gener-ate the best ideas and practices.

QWhat have you drawn from your past experiences in different parts of the

world that has helped you succeed in Asia?

WEbER: I am very adaptable because I moved many times during my childhood. I don’t think of new things as scary. I don’t have any apprehension with regard to other cultures, languages and behaviors. I was sent to Asia to lead our business priorities and create a set of regional capabilities, here in Hong Kong. I have worked in our headquar-ters in New York not long ago, and that was very helpful to understand the complex dy-namics of our organization. From this experi-ence, I developed a capacity to acknowledge that it is difficult to make everyone work to-gether with so much change and that my role is to facilitate that.

QDo you speak any Asian language?

WEbER: I speak Japanese like a 4-year-old! I don’t speak Chinese, but I would love to learn. It is ironic because my wife is from Sin-gapore and speaks Mandarin to our children. I hear Mandarin at home all the time, so I am actually able to grasp a conversation in Man-darin without necessarily understanding the specific details. I am able to grab the gist of what people are talking about.

QDid you have a mentor, somebody who had a strong influence on you?

WEbER: My grandfather was a great men-tor. He used to work for the Swedish com-pany Ericsson. He was a strong figure and a very successful one in his own right. He was very tough but also incredibly human. He could be very demanding on one side and very kind on the other. He was somebody I always looked up to. K/F/B

You will need to invest in the relevant emerging areas and have

the right talents for today and tomorrow because three years from

now may come in 12 months.”


How to Fill the GapsB y J o e G r i e s e d i e c k

A N d k A r e N k A N e

corpor ate governance

What do CEO’s need in their boards of directors?Today, board composition is considered a vital element of

company strategy, making the decision about who should be nominated to serve on the board much more deliberate in terms of add-ing relevant knowledge and experience.

When a vacancy occurs, most commonly after a director’s retirement, boards have a list of criteria for the new member. The list includes pre-cise experiences such as launching or managing a business in Asia, ex-plicit competencies in technology or digital media, and diversity, not only in gender and ethnicity but diversity of thinking.

Board composition becomes increasingly important when companies are undergoing fundamental change, such as a media company forced to reinvent itself as a digital business. In such a case, management is deal-ing with a business that is changing along with its customers, as well as a transformation in its method of delivering products and services.

Jolted by seismic shifts, management can often get caught up in a scramble, struggling to keep pace with change. This is a time when the board can play an important role, if it has the relevant expertise. In times of such turmoil, company leaders come to understand the value of a board member who has lived through the kind of change the company is experi-encing. And, even if it’s not the same industry, having access to a director

KA

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A


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PU

ST

A

who has experienced rapid change and transformation is enormously helpful.

At the same time, prodded by the changes that directors see in the com-pany’s business, boards are becoming more aware of gaps in their own ranks. What were useful or even ideal skills and experiences for a director a decade ago can quickly become less relevant.

Korn/Ferry International has ob-served these developments as it con-ducts board effectiveness assignments. The work begins with interviews with all board members, including a peer re-view of individual directors, and results in an objective analysis of skills and ex-perience. Not only are the board and the CEO able to see the gaps that exist, but the analysis also provides a road-map to acquiring the skills and compe-tencies that the company needs going forward. Getting the directors to com-mit to acquiring these competencies in their next board member nomination is critical. Through the process, the CEO often can focus less on managing the expectations of the board and more on valued input from his or her directors.

In the case of a major public utility, the new CEO arrived to find that his board lacked experience in working with reg-ulators, environmental groups and pub-lic policy organizations. With his board’s agreement, the CEO recruited two new directors with relevant experience, both of whom could be an asset to the leader-ship team and other board members, par-ticularly with increased regulatory over-sight and environmental challenges.

Board composition is also at the heart of shareholder activism. With more tools to achieve their agenda, in-stitutional shareholders are less likely to dump their shares in struggling com-panies. Activists seek board seats when they see an opportunity to improve the

company’s operations through directors who have industry knowledge or man-agement expertise.

“The great challenge for today’s boards in this new era of activism is ca-tering to all the diverse ‘shareholders,’ which includes those with a longer in-vestment horizon like pension funds and mutual funds, as well as those who are seeking quick profits,” wrote Ira Millstein in a recent posting on Deal-Book. He is the co-chairman of the Millstein Center for Global Markets and Corporate Ownership at Columbia Law School and a senior partner at the law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges.

Boards no longer operate behind closed doors or in a vacuum. The share-holder advisory vote on executive com-pensation or “say on pay” has provided a window into board oversight. Direc-tors are mindful that what shareholders view as extravagant compensation can convey a lack of board independence. Directors on the compensation com-mittee have learned that they them-selves can become targets for “no” votes in such a situation.

Activism has gone mainstream as say on pay has come to legitimize share-

holder scrutiny of directors’ compe-tency. But it doesn’t stop with pay packages. New disclosure rules al-low shareholders to examine what the board counts as the competencies of its individual members. Is it clear that the skills and experiences listed will help to advance the strategy of the company? And increasingly, shareholders are ask-ing to see a more diverse board, one that reflects the company’s customers.

Investor Bill Ackman set an example for other activists to follow in his proxy battle for control of Canadian Pacific, an underperforming company whose CEO delivered a negative 18 percent return over

a five-year period while topping the charts in compensation. Ackman bought 14 per-cent of CP’s shares in late 2011 and by May 2012, Chairman John Cleghorn, CEO Fred Green and four other board mem-bers were announcing that they would resign their positions and not stand for board re-election on the eve of the rail-road’s annual shareholder meeting.

By engaging with institutional in-vestors and proxy advisers, Ackman shared his vision for improving the rail-road’s long-term performance with a dynamic new CEO and a board of di-rectors with industry expertise. He won over key institutional investors – the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan with its $100 million investment and the Cana-dian Pension Plan Investment Board.

Proxy advisory services Glass Lewis and ISS supported Ackman, resulting in an overwhelming number of investors who were willing to upset the status quo of one of Canada’s largest and best-known businesses. Cleghorn and Canadian Pa-cific had been “Ackman-ed,” the new business term for the fate that befalls an unresponsive and ineffective board.

The Ackman lesson is not lost on CEO’s. They are looking at their own boards and the boards of their competi-tors as well. CEO’s who see competitors adding technological know-how and global experience to their boards are likely to be more vocal about recruiting directors with strategic capabilities.

At the same time, as legacy directors age, their skills may become less rele-

vant. Even in the face of greater scru-tiny, most directors like their jobs and believe that they should continue un-til retirement. Some have likened board service to a tenured faculty position. In 2012, the number of new director po-sitions in the S&P 500 fell to 291, a de-crease of 12 percent in five years and a 27 percent drop from a decade ago.

Meanwhile, shareholders are pay-ing closer attention to the diversity of boards as it relates to a company’s strat-egy, along with the relevance of each di-rector’s experience on the board. Diver-sity, technology and global involvement are the game changers.

Creating a winning board demands more than simply recruiting directors with the desired skills and backgrounds. Diversity in the boardroom is not simply the inclusion of women and racially or

ethnically different individuals. It is di-versity of thinking and experience.

Competencies are key. How could a board without digital and social me-dia business experience fully grasp the need for strategies that promote the product through direct engagement with the consumer, shareholders could ask. As Stephen Davis, associate direc-tor and senior fellow at Harvard Law School’s Programs on Corporate Gover-nance and Institutional Investors, says “If you’re not on social media, you can’t quite appreciate its power as both an as-set and a liability. I’m not saying every director should have that experience, but you need one or two or you won’t be asking the right questions.”

The business case for diversity at the

board level is compelling.A study by Wellesley Center for

Women some years ago documented that the number of women on a board makes a difference. While a lone woman can and often does make substantial contribu-tions, and two women are generally more powerful than one, increasing the num-ber of women to three or more enhances the likelihood that women’s voices and ideas are heard and that boardroom dynamics change substantially.

Additionally, studies by Catalyst have validated a performance-based ratio-nale for adding women to boards. Results have demonstrated that companies with women board members outperform com-panies with only male directors. Most boards have received the message from their shareholders that they need to in-crease the number of women directors.

Last year Jill Smith was elected to the board of Endo Health Solutions, a company that prides itself on delivering “solutions for 21st century health care.” Smith brings technology and interna-tional experience to the board. Hav-ing begun her career with technology companies in London before becoming chairman and CEO of DigitalGlobe, the satellite company, Smith oversaw Digi-talGlobe’s stellar growth and transition to a publicly held company. She also be-came the second female on the board, adding to the board’s diversity.

By recruiting Gina Bianchini, founder and CEO of Mighty Software and former CEO of Ning, Scripps Net-work Interactive expanded its board’s critical capabilities. A pioneer in social networking, she helps clients use social software in a way that connects them online and off. Bianchini brings critical expertise to the board while raising the number of women on the board to three.

A company that has long been focused on technology and diversity, Wal-Mart recruited another talented female vice president of Google to its board in 2012, increasing the number of female board members to four. Months later, Marissa Mayer was named CEO of Yahoo.

It’s fair to say that boards are look-ing around the table and realizing that they may not have the relevant exper-tise to help the company deliver on its strategy. The new generation of direc-tors will provide general management and industry expertise along with fi-nancial business knowledge. Boards are defining their specific needs in di-rector candidates who provide insights into new customers, technology lead-ership – particularly as it pertains to channels and transformation – as well as international market experience and diversity in gender, ethnicity and age.

As directors continue their board ser-vice in this increasingly transparent and demanding world, boards understand that they sometimes need additional help in overseeing CEO and board suc-

corporate governance

Creating a winning board demands more than simply recruiting directors with the

desired skills and backgrounds. ...It is diversity of thinking and experience.

Joe Griesedieck is vice chairman and managing director, board and CEO services. His focus at Korn/Ferry is primarily on engagements for CEO and board director searches across multiple industries, as well as working with boards of directors on CEO succession plan-ning and other related senior talent management practices. k aren k ane , former board secretary for the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, is the principal of Board Performance Strategists, a consultancy to help CEOs and boards win long-term shareholder support.


KA

PU

ST

A

who has experienced rapid change and transformation is enormously helpful.

At the same time, prodded by the changes that directors see in the com-pany’s business, boards are becoming more aware of gaps in their own ranks. What were useful or even ideal skills and experiences for a director a decade ago can quickly become less relevant.

Korn/Ferry International has ob-served these developments as it con-ducts board effectiveness assignments. The work begins with interviews with all board members, including a peer re-view of individual directors, and results in an objective analysis of skills and ex-perience. Not only are the board and the CEO able to see the gaps that exist, but the analysis also provides a road-map to acquiring the skills and compe-tencies that the company needs going forward. Getting the directors to com-mit to acquiring these competencies in their next board member nomination is critical. Through the process, the CEO often can focus less on managing the expectations of the board and more on valued input from his or her directors.

In the case of a major public utility, the new CEO arrived to find that his board lacked experience in working with reg-ulators, environmental groups and pub-lic policy organizations. With his board’s agreement, the CEO recruited two new directors with relevant experience, both of whom could be an asset to the leader-ship team and other board members, par-ticularly with increased regulatory over-sight and environmental challenges.

Board composition is also at the heart of shareholder activism. With more tools to achieve their agenda, in-stitutional shareholders are less likely to dump their shares in struggling com-panies. Activists seek board seats when they see an opportunity to improve the

company’s operations through directors who have industry knowledge or man-agement expertise.

“The great challenge for today’s boards in this new era of activism is ca-tering to all the diverse ‘shareholders,’ which includes those with a longer in-vestment horizon like pension funds and mutual funds, as well as those who are seeking quick profits,” wrote Ira Millstein in a recent posting on Deal-Book. He is the co-chairman of the Millstein Center for Global Markets and Corporate Ownership at Columbia Law School and a senior partner at the law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges.

Boards no longer operate behind closed doors or in a vacuum. The share-holder advisory vote on executive com-pensation or “say on pay” has provided a window into board oversight. Direc-tors are mindful that what shareholders view as extravagant compensation can convey a lack of board independence. Directors on the compensation com-mittee have learned that they them-selves can become targets for “no” votes in such a situation.

Activism has gone mainstream as say on pay has come to legitimize share-

holder scrutiny of directors’ compe-tency. But it doesn’t stop with pay packages. New disclosure rules al-low shareholders to examine what the board counts as the competencies of its individual members. Is it clear that the skills and experiences listed will help to advance the strategy of the company? And increasingly, shareholders are ask-ing to see a more diverse board, one that reflects the company’s customers.

Investor Bill Ackman set an example for other activists to follow in his proxy battle for control of Canadian Pacific, an underperforming company whose CEO delivered a negative 18 percent return over

a five-year period while topping the charts in compensation. Ackman bought 14 per-cent of CP’s shares in late 2011 and by May 2012, Chairman John Cleghorn, CEO Fred Green and four other board mem-bers were announcing that they would resign their positions and not stand for board re-election on the eve of the rail-road’s annual shareholder meeting.

By engaging with institutional in-vestors and proxy advisers, Ackman shared his vision for improving the rail-road’s long-term performance with a dynamic new CEO and a board of di-rectors with industry expertise. He won over key institutional investors – the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan with its $100 million investment and the Cana-dian Pension Plan Investment Board.

Proxy advisory services Glass Lewis and ISS supported Ackman, resulting in an overwhelming number of investors who were willing to upset the status quo of one of Canada’s largest and best-known businesses. Cleghorn and Canadian Pa-cific had been “Ackman-ed,” the new business term for the fate that befalls an unresponsive and ineffective board.

The Ackman lesson is not lost on CEO’s. They are looking at their own boards and the boards of their competi-tors as well. CEO’s who see competitors adding technological know-how and global experience to their boards are likely to be more vocal about recruiting directors with strategic capabilities.

At the same time, as legacy directors age, their skills may become less rele-

vant. Even in the face of greater scru-tiny, most directors like their jobs and believe that they should continue un-til retirement. Some have likened board service to a tenured faculty position. In 2012, the number of new director po-sitions in the S&P 500 fell to 291, a de-crease of 12 percent in five years and a 27 percent drop from a decade ago.

Meanwhile, shareholders are pay-ing closer attention to the diversity of boards as it relates to a company’s strat-egy, along with the relevance of each di-rector’s experience on the board. Diver-sity, technology and global involvement are the game changers.

Creating a winning board demands more than simply recruiting directors with the desired skills and backgrounds. Diversity in the boardroom is not simply the inclusion of women and racially or

ethnically different individuals. It is di-versity of thinking and experience.

Competencies are key. How could a board without digital and social me-dia business experience fully grasp the need for strategies that promote the product through direct engagement with the consumer, shareholders could ask. As Stephen Davis, associate direc-tor and senior fellow at Harvard Law School’s Programs on Corporate Gover-nance and Institutional Investors, says “If you’re not on social media, you can’t quite appreciate its power as both an as-set and a liability. I’m not saying every director should have that experience, but you need one or two or you won’t be asking the right questions.”

The business case for diversity at the

board level is compelling.A study by Wellesley Center for

Women some years ago documented that the number of women on a board makes a difference. While a lone woman can and often does make substantial contribu-tions, and two women are generally more powerful than one, increasing the num-ber of women to three or more enhances the likelihood that women’s voices and ideas are heard and that boardroom dynamics change substantially.

Additionally, studies by Catalyst have validated a performance-based ratio-nale for adding women to boards. Results have demonstrated that companies with women board members outperform com-panies with only male directors. Most boards have received the message from their shareholders that they need to in-crease the number of women directors.

Last year Jill Smith was elected to the board of Endo Health Solutions, a company that prides itself on delivering “solutions for 21st century health care.” Smith brings technology and interna-tional experience to the board. Hav-ing begun her career with technology companies in London before becoming chairman and CEO of DigitalGlobe, the satellite company, Smith oversaw Digi-talGlobe’s stellar growth and transition to a publicly held company. She also be-came the second female on the board, adding to the board’s diversity.

By recruiting Gina Bianchini, founder and CEO of Mighty Software and former CEO of Ning, Scripps Net-work Interactive expanded its board’s critical capabilities. A pioneer in social networking, she helps clients use social software in a way that connects them online and off. Bianchini brings critical expertise to the board while raising the number of women on the board to three.

A company that has long been focused on technology and diversity, Wal-Mart recruited another talented female vice president of Google to its board in 2012, increasing the number of female board members to four. Months later, Marissa Mayer was named CEO of Yahoo.

It’s fair to say that boards are look-ing around the table and realizing that they may not have the relevant exper-tise to help the company deliver on its strategy. The new generation of direc-tors will provide general management and industry expertise along with fi-nancial business knowledge. Boards are defining their specific needs in di-rector candidates who provide insights into new customers, technology lead-ership – particularly as it pertains to channels and transformation – as well as international market experience and diversity in gender, ethnicity and age.

As directors continue their board ser-vice in this increasingly transparent and demanding world, boards understand that they sometimes need additional help in overseeing CEO and board suc-


Creating a winning board demands more than simply recruiting directors with the

desired skills and backgrounds. ...It is diversity of thinking and experience.

Joe Griesedieck is vice chairman and managing director, board and CEO services. His focus at Korn/Ferry is primarily on engagements for CEO and board director searches across multiple industries, as well as working with boards of directors on CEO succession plan-ning and other related senior talent management practices. k aren k ane , former board secretary for the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, is the principal of Board Performance Strategists, a consultancy to help CEOs and boards win long-term shareholder support.

cession. They recognize how crucial it is to assess and attract leaders who can motivate the work force to deliver the shareholder returns that investors seek.

Korn/Ferry recently acquired Global Novations LLC, a widely respected global provider of diversity, inclusion and leadership development strate-gies, to deepen its capabilities in work-ing with boards and leadership teams. Global Novations has developed pro-cesses to help boards get to know tal-

Evidence abounds that a group of diverse in-dividuals is likely to

make better decisions, mak-ing boardroom diversity a key shareholder concern. The Securities and Exchange Commission affirmed this when it updated its proxy disclosure to require boards to include their consider-ation of diversity.

Increasingly, boards are looking critically at them-selves and developing strate-gies to expand the breadth of backgrounds, experiences and perspectives of their direc-tors. “Boards recognize that a shift towards more diversity and building an inclusive cul-ture are essential if they are to successfully navigate the economic, societal and demo-graphic changes shaping the global marketplace,” said Oris Stuart, CEO and managing partner of Global Novations, a global provider of diver-sity, inclusion and leadership development coaching. The firm was recently acquired by Korn/Ferry International.

“While this focus is not entirely new, the intensity and deliberate speed of the efforts has significantly in-creased,” said Stuart. “This is partly due to the rec-ognition that past strate-gies have yielded very lit-tle change in board makeup. The increased focus also re-flects the critical nature of this topic to the board’s and, in turn, the organization’s overall performance.”

Strategies for building di-verse and inclusive boards vary by organization. Sev-eral approaches, however, have been identified as best practices. “Our clients are pursuing several means to-wards increasing the diver-sity and inclusiveness of their boards. Some of these include establishing for-mal targets for nominating slates, expanding their reach for new candidates, building or reinforcing tenure limits, proactively pipelining, and creating rigorous onboard-ing processes for new direc-tors,” said Stuart.

Diversity in the board-room, defined simply as the inclusion of women and ra-cially or ethnically different individuals, is just one as-pect of board composition, which also involves having the right skills and experi-ences. Many boards now de-velop a matrix of skills that members bring to the board along with a gap analysis of what the board needs in its directors going forward.

“Pipelining,” or position-ing executives within the or-ganization for board ser-vice at other companies, is a growing practice. “There is no better proving ground for an executive leader than be-coming a director for another company,” said Stuart. Not only is the executive able to bring his or her skills and ex-periences to the board, but he or she learns firsthand about serving in a strategic rather than operational role and gains experience in gov-ernance in the process.

Another aspect of pipe-lining is identifying diverse

candidates proactively and making board introduc-tions before the position is open. This practice helps the board to better understand the value and availability of a broader range of talent in the marketplace.

“As diversity increases and boards become more complex, we also work with boards to build a culture of performance and collabora-tion,” said Stuart. “Over the past 20 years, we have be-come experts in onboard-ing executives to a new en-vironment. This experience allows us to help our clients form a more inclusive cul-ture and create the kinds of teaming relationships that enable directors to work to-gether more effectively.”

The rising importance of board diversity coincides with the increasing complexity and globalization of busi-ness. Global Novations is a natural extension of Korn/Ferry’s capabilities in guid-ing boards to higher levels of performance. K/F/B

ented and diverse individuals with spe-cific expertise as they ascend in their careers. This process, called “pipelining,” helps boards see the talent available in a level just below the CEO. Many CEO’s and chairs of nominating/governance committees have made this a priority.

Korn/Ferry and Global Novations work closely with CEO’s and boards in assisting them in their talent man-agement, enabling them to build the high-performing cultures that deliver

positive business outcomes to their cli-ents. It’s a way that Korn/Ferry is look-ing more holistically at its business, not simply recruiting talented leaders but helping companies to build enduring strength by harnessing their work force to do great things.

In the end, effective boards, willing to exert their authority by representing shareholders and holding management accountable, are a vital tool of modern capitalism. K/F/B

thinking differentlyB y k A r e n k A n e


72 B r I e f I n g s o n t a l e n t + l e a D e R S H I P

FOOTWEAR HANDBAGS ACCESSORIES UGG AUSTRAlIA STORES WORlDWIDE UGGAUSTRAlIA.COm

b r i e f i n g s o n t a l e n t + l e a D e R S H I P 2 0 1 3 : Q 3 k o r n / f e r r y i n T e r n A T i o n A L74 75b r i e f i n g s o n t a l e n t + l e a D e R S H I P74

ome companies are “born

digital” (just think of Facebook

or Twitter). But most are in

the process of “going digital”

by adding online commerce,

services or communication capabilities to an

established organization. Similarly, say Becky

Stein and Andrew Lipsher, senior client partners

at Korn/Ferry International, there are two types

of talent: digital natives – those accustomed to

technology enabling almost every aspect of their

lives and communities, and digital immigrants –

those who have learned this technology like a

second language. Where the recruitment process

gets interesting is the convergence between

these different organizations and executives,

when going-digital companies recruit digital

natives to senior positions, or when born-

digital companies seek talent from traditional

companies. That is when sophisticated

assessment practices and a sensitive onboarding

process become critical elements in the success

of the organization and the individual.

Becky Stein specializes in recruiting senior

executives in the consumer, retail and consumer

technology industries. Currently, she serves on

the Global Consumer Market’s senior leadership

team, heading the firm’s digital and multichannel

commerce efforts. Before joining Korn/Ferry,

Stein was managing director of a global executive

search firm in San Francisco, where she served

as head of the consumer sector for the Americas.

Before entering executive search, Stein was

general manager of F.A.O. Schwarz’s West Coast

flagship store in San Francisco.

Earlier in her career, Stein worked on the

OTC trading desk of an investment firm and

was director of investments for a privately held

investment fund in New York. She also served

as a legislative assistant for the dean of the

Pennsylvania delegation in the U.S. Congress.

Stein earned a master’s in business administration

from New York University and a bachelor’s degree

in international business and finance from

George Washington University. She also holds a

certificate in international management from the

Stockholm School of Economics.

Lipsher’s career has spanned nearly 20 years

of corporate development, strategy, mergers

and acquisitions, and investment in media,

entertainment and technology. Before joining

Korn/Ferry International, Lipsher was the

senior vice president of corporate development

at Clear Channel Media Holdings, where he

led the global M&A, strategy and corporate

development efforts in the radio and outdoor

businesses. Before Clear Channel, Lipsher was

a partner at Greycroft LLC, a venture capital

fund, where he focused on digital media and

consumer Internet investments.

Earlier in his career, Lipsher held senior

executive roles at Interscope Geffen A&M

Records (a division of Universal Music), News

Corporation, BMG Entertainment (a division

of Bertelsmann AG) and Warner Music Group

(then a division of Time Warner). After leaving

Warner Music, he joined Maroley Media Group,

the private equity firm founded by the former

chairman and CEO of Warner Music. Lipsher

holds a B.A. in history from Yale University and

an M.B.A. from Northwestern University’s J.L.

Kellogg Graduate School of Management.


digital future



digital future

“It’s About Engagement”B Y L a w r e n c e M . F i s h e r

Stein: The answer is both.

LipSher: As digital becomes more and more prevalent, the needs of talent and or-ganizations are becoming more and more closely aligned. If you look at the digital landscape, it can be boiled down to four buckets: two in talent or leadership, and two for organizations.

Q What differentiates them?

LipSher: At the end of the day, regardless of industry, there are today really only two kinds of companies, those that are born digi-tal, and those that are going digital. Born dig-ital are the companies like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, the pure plays, that have only ever existed in the digital context. The others are companies that are in one way or another going digital because they have realized that they have to. Maybe they’re being dis-inter-mediated by digital players, or they’ve found that the best way to communicate with their clients is via digital means.

Q And on the leadership side?

LipSher: It boils down to the same thing; there are those that are digital natives, who have never worked in any other kind of en-vironment, and there are those that have adapted to it, who have typically built their

careers in traditional organizations. Becky and I belong to that second group. We are digital immigrants; as conversant as we are in the language, we began our lives in an analog world.

Q What do these different categories mean from a recruitment perspective?

LipSher: The interesting trends center around digital natives joining born-analog companies, and digital immigrants joining native companies. At a macro level, that is how we’re beginning to frame the issue both in the marketplace and with talent. We are defining a set of attributes that regardless of industry or function define those categories.

Q Clearly companies that are going digi-tal are motivated to seek out native

digital talent. What kinds of challenges do they face?

Stein: If you do the math, digital natives tend to be younger, and they as of yet may not have had the management experience in leading other people. The second piece is if you hire them straight from the born-digital pure-play companies, they have a certain cadence to them that is different from the way decisions are made at the more tradi-tional companies that are going digital. Cul-tural fit is a much-overused term, but one aspect is that the path to decision making is not always as thoughtful for digital natives because it’s so rapid at pure-play companies, it tends to be “ready, fire, aim.”

Q When you talk about digital trends, are you talking about the marketplace or talent?

A conversation with Korn/Ferry International’s BeCky Stein and AndreW LipSher




































ome companies are “born

digital” (just think of Facebook

or Twitter). But most are in

the process of “going digital”

by adding online commerce,


established organization. Similarly, say Becky

Stein and Andrew Lipsher, senior client partners

at Korn/Ferry International, there are two types

of talent: digital natives – those accustomed to

technology enabling almost every aspect of their

lives and communities, and digital immigrants –

those who have learned this technology like a

second language. Where the recruitment process

gets interesting is the convergence between

these different organizations and executives,

when going-digital companies recruit digital

natives to senior positions, or when born-

digital companies seek talent from traditional

companies. That is when sophisticated

assessment practices and a sensitive onboarding

process become critical elements in the success

of the organization and the individual.

Becky Stein specializes in recruiting senior

executives in the consumer, retail and consumer

technology industries. Currently, she serves on

the Global Consumer Market’s senior leadership

team, heading the firm’s digital and multichannel

commerce efforts. Before joining Korn/Ferry,

Stein was managing director of a global executive

search firm in San Francisco, where she served

as head of the consumer sector for the Americas.

Before entering executive search, Stein was

general manager of F.A.O. Schwarz’s West Coast

flagship store in San Francisco.

Earlier in her career, Stein worked on the



investment fund in New York. She also served

as a legislative assistant for the dean of the

Pennsylvania delegation in the U.S. Congress.

Stein earned a master’s in business administration

from New York University and a bachelor’s degree

in international business and finance from

George Washington University. She also holds a

certificate in international management from the

Stockholm School of Economics.

Lipsher’s career has spanned nearly 20 years

of corporate development, strategy, mergers

and acquisitions, and investment in media,

entertainment and technology. Before joining

Korn/Ferry International, Lipsher was the

senior vice president of corporate development

at Clear Channel Media Holdings, where he



















digital future

“It’s About Engagement”B Y L a w r e n c e M . F i s h e r

Stein: The answer is both.

LipSher: As digital becomes more and more prevalent, the needs of talent and or-ganizations are becoming more and more closely aligned. If you look at the digital landscape, it can be boiled down to four buckets: two in talent or leadership, and two for organizations.

Q What differentiates them?

LipSher: At the end of the day, regardless of industry, there are today really only two kinds of companies, those that are born digi-tal, and those that are going digital. Born dig-ital are the companies like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, the pure plays, that have only ever existed in the digital context. The others are companies that are in one way or another going digital because they have realized that they have to. Maybe they’re being dis-inter-mediated by digital players, or they’ve found that the best way to communicate with their clients is via digital means.

Q And on the leadership side?

LipSher: It boils down to the same thing; there are those that are digital natives, who have never worked in any other kind of en-vironment, and there are those that have adapted to it, who have typically built their

careers in traditional organizations. Becky and I belong to that second group. We are digital immigrants; as conversant as we are in the language, we began our lives in an analog world.

Q What do these different categories mean from a recruitment perspective?

LipSher: The interesting trends center around digital natives joining born-analog companies, and digital immigrants joining native companies. At a macro level, that is how we’re beginning to frame the issue both in the marketplace and with talent. We are defining a set of attributes that regardless of industry or function define those categories.

Q Clearly companies that are going digi-tal are motivated to seek out native

digital talent. What kinds of challenges do they face?

Stein: If you do the math, digital natives tend to be younger, and they as of yet may not have had the management experience in leading other people. The second piece is if you hire them straight from the born-digital pure-play companies, they have a certain cadence to them that is different from the way decisions are made at the more tradi-tional companies that are going digital. Cul-tural fit is a much-overused term, but one aspect is that the path to decision making is not always as thoughtful for digital natives because it’s so rapid at pure-play companies, it tends to be “ready, fire, aim.”

Q When you talk about digital trends, are you talking about the marketplace or talent?


they have to. Maybe they’re being dis-intermediated by digital players, or they’ve found that the best way to communicate with their clients is via digital means.

Q LipSthere are those that are digital natives, who

they have to. Maybe they’re being dis-intermediated by digital players, or they’ve found that the best way to communicate with their clients is via digital means.

Q


American Express is at the forefront of going digital, so it’s very exciting to recruit people into American Express.

LipSher: Are you going to be able to attract all born-digital people? Of course not. But to those open to being wooed in that direction, these people are bulls in china shops; they see themselves as change agents. They can say, “Look what I’ve done in the born-digital world. Now see what I can do in the going-digital world.” It does in fact play to a kind of arrogance. One reason you’re willing to take low pay and work 24 hours a day is you be-lieve wholeheartedly that what you’re doing is so right and what everybody else is doing is so wrong.

Qdoesn’t it create a lot of tension for a new hire to come in with

that attitude?

Stein: There is an evangelizing and a teach-ing role that you’re going to have at the going-digital company that you didn’t need to spend your time on in the born-digital

LipSher: The other issue is that at pure-play companies the organizations tend to be much flatter than at more traditional companies. It’s not just decision making; it’s management style, execution and expectations. The other thing that is different is the scope of respon-sibility. Not to put a negative spin on it, but at digital companies it’s a land grab; seize the opportunity, roll up your sleeves and get it done, irrespective of your title or job descrip-tion. In traditional companies, roles are much more clearly but also more narrowly defined.

Q What are “going-digital” companies looking for in digital native talent?

Stein: What they want is somebody from a best-in-class organization, somebody that knows what “great” looks like. You know, if you’re in consumer packaged goods, you’re thinking of Pepsi or Procter & Gamble. In digital, you think of Amazon or eBay. But that creates another issue. Those companies have only been around 15 years or so, and people who got there early on mostly have made enough money to retire. After 10 years as an early hire at a great digital company you quite likely are wealthy; with 10 years at P&G you’re just joining the ranks of the VPs.

LipSher: There is also a whole set of com-pensation expectations and differences. People who join born-digital companies know they’re going to take a lower base, they’re go-ing to work 24/7 for a few years, but they’re hoping to get rich on the stock. People who join traditional companies are more the “gold watch after 25 years” people. They’re more likely to ask about the 401(k) program.

QSo how do you lure digital natives to traditional companies?

Stein: The answer is that brands matter. For every Amazon, eBay or Facebook, there are hundreds if not thousands of companies that were hot in their day but don’t exist any-more. There is an enormous attraction to a company that has been around for 50 years and matters in the mind of the consumer. People do find it incredibly exciting to be at the forefront of these companies that are go-ing to lead the change in their industry to a new level. For example, in financial services

company. At this point most companies want to be digital, but there is a fear of the unknown and they don’t even know the right questions to ask. That is a very uncomfort-able place for a CEO to be. You have to put your trust in someone else, someone you don’t know well yet.

Q What can companies do to make that relationship more comfortable?

Stein: In the past, a lot of emphasis was spent on the recruitment, and while that may still be true, there now is just as much emphasis spent on the onboarding. It is an educational process for the company as much as for the executive coming in. There is also more attention paid to career development and retention. There are so many jobs and so few qualified executives, you really need to ensure that they’re happy and successful in their new positions. That is equally true at both the born-digital and the going-digital companies. Some companies have latched on and done very well with the more sophisti-cated training tools. In the born-digital world, both Amazon and eBay have extremely so-phisticated senior HR people. But recruitment is also changing. A lot more attention is being spent on assessment. Learning agility, know-ing how to get to the right answer without knowing the right question, that is the most critical attribute in people who are going to run your digital efforts. You simply don’t know what’s going to come out tomorrow.

Q you mentioned learning agility. What are some other attributes

you’re looking for in these assessments?

Stein: Tolerance for ambiguity. Businesses and organizations, especially digital com-panies, change organically all the time, so somebody has to be adept at being effective when you don’t have a clear-cut job descrip-tion or clear-cut goals, because even the numbers that matter can change. For exam-

ple, people used to think the important sta-tistic was the number of Facebook “likes” you had; now it’s about the engagement you have there with your customers. Flexibility, adapt-ability, these are enormously important.

LipSher: I would add that patience, con-sensus building and listening skills are critical. Our assessment approach is a framework ap-proach, but every organization is unique and has a unique set of objectives, cultural issues and historic challenges.

Qhow do you ensure these newrecruits’ success?

LipSher: One important element is to be very thoughtful once they come onboard. They have to have the wholehearted sup-port of senior executives. There has to be the company understanding that they are going to shake things up, that they are definitely going to upset the immune system. The im-portant thing is it’s a shared responsibility to ensure somebody’s success. It’s the individu-al’s responsibility to accept the fact that the company is trying hard, but there’s going to be an education that’s required. The com-pany has to accept that it’s going to require different ways of thinking on their part as well. And it’s not just a different way of think-ing, it’s a different way of acting. They’re go-ing to have to support the person in different ways. This can involve re-imagining pro-cesses, how decisions get made, the alloca-tion of resources, how different departments work across each other and more team orga-nization as opposed to silo organizations.

Stein: It goes all the way up to the sup-port of the CEO. In the companies that truly care, the digital leaders are having brown bag lunches with the CEO once a month. The mentoring is going both ways. The CEO is mentoring the 25-year-old, but the 25-year-old is mentoring the CEO about this new way of connecting with customers.

QSo this really is a two-wayprocess.

LipSher: On a macro level, it’s a recognition on the part of the organization that by bring-ing in someone with a different set of skills, they have raised their hand and said, “We

would like to find a different way to succeed going down this path.” Offline businesses can add an e-commerce component and it’s not a major change, it’s just opening up a new reve-nue channel. But by deciding to bring in these kinds of people, the born-digital people, it’s a recognition that something is strategically lacking in the organization. My view is that organizations that bring in these people have to take more institutional responsibility for their success. At the same time, born-digital people who come into these organizations have to throttle back their expectations and develop patience. While these organizations may not be aircraft carriers, they are certainly battleships and they don’t turn rapidly. You can’t just come in and make pronouncements and expect them to change. Success depends on both sides of the equation coming more and more to the middle and understanding why they’re both there.


Q What about the opposite migration; what are the issues when born-digital

companies recruit digital immigrants from traditional companies?

Stein: E-commerce companies will often hire executives who will bring in the mer-chant skill set. Amazon hired a rock star from the Gap. When onboarding people from that direction, it is critical to make sure that they will be comfortable with faster decision mak-ing, without data or with imperfect data.

LipSher: What’s really interesting about this space is that when people talk about tal-ent or organizations they think about a hard set of skills. While the quantitative skills need to be there, a lot of this is about a qual-itative set of skills. Although the “culture” word gets thrown around, it is a big part of what is driving this. A lot of peoples’ success is not because they are the smartest people in the room; it’s that they have the cultural sensitivity to accept the differences while they’re trying to change things. This is why the assessment piece is so critical, because it gets to cultural fit and the ability to fit in a given organization.

QWhat kinds of companies need to concern themselves with the migra-

tion of digital talent?

Stein: This touches every single industry. It’s not just confined to consumer elec-tronics or technology or entertainment. It’s also health care, f inancial services, steel mills, educational institutions. Every single industry is changing to adapt to a digital world. This touches every industry and every function.

LipSher: Especially with digital, because it’s not simply “Our CFO just quit, find us another.” The search firm’s role is more about becoming a trusted adviser. It’s about understanding business strategies, help-ing you understand what resources you al-ready may have in-house versus those you may need to bring in. This is not a cookie-cutter approach; it’s not replicable across ev-ery opportunity. This is about building rela-tionships at the C level. It’s about what the implication of talent is, and how it can help them or hurt them. K/F/B

A lot more attention is being spent on assessment. Learning agility, knowing how to get to the right answer without knowing the right question.”

AndreW LipSherSENIOR CLIENT PARTNER,KORN/FERRY INTERNATIONAL

BeCky SteinSENIOR CLIENT PARTNER,KORN/FERRY INTERNATIONAL

“We are digital immigrants;

as conversant as we are in

the language, we began our lives in an analog world.”


American Express is at the forefront of going digital, so it’s very exciting to recruit people into American Express.

LipSher: Are you going to be able to attract all born-digital people? Of course not. But to those open to being wooed in that direction, these people are bulls in china shops; they see themselves as change agents. They can say, “Look what I’ve done in the born-digital world. Now see what I can do in the going-digital world.” It does in fact play to a kind of arrogance. One reason you’re willing to take low pay and work 24 hours a day is you be-lieve wholeheartedly that what you’re doing is so right and what everybody else is doing is so wrong.

Qdoesn’t it create a lot of tension for a new hire to come in with

that attitude?

Stein: There is an evangelizing and a teach-ing role that you’re going to have at the going-digital company that you didn’t need to spend your time on in the born-digital

LipSher: The other issue is that at pure-play companies the organizations tend to be much flatter than at more traditional companies. It’s not just decision making; it’s management style, execution and expectations. The other thing that is different is the scope of respon-sibility. Not to put a negative spin on it, but at digital companies it’s a land grab; seize the opportunity, roll up your sleeves and get it done, irrespective of your title or job descrip-tion. In traditional companies, roles are much more clearly but also more narrowly defined.

Q What are “going-digital” companies looking for in digital native talent?

Stein: What they want is somebody from a best-in-class organization, somebody that knows what “great” looks like. You know, if you’re in consumer packaged goods, you’re thinking of Pepsi or Procter & Gamble. In digital, you think of Amazon or eBay. But that creates another issue. Those companies have only been around 15 years or so, and people who got there early on mostly have made enough money to retire. After 10 years as an early hire at a great digital company you quite likely are wealthy; with 10 years at P&G you’re just joining the ranks of the VPs.

LipSher: There is also a whole set of com-pensation expectations and differences. People who join born-digital companies know they’re going to take a lower base, they’re go-ing to work 24/7 for a few years, but they’re hoping to get rich on the stock. People who join traditional companies are more the “gold watch after 25 years” people. They’re more likely to ask about the 401(k) program.

QSo how do you lure digital natives to traditional companies?

Stein: The answer is that brands matter. For every Amazon, eBay or Facebook, there are hundreds if not thousands of companies that were hot in their day but don’t exist any-more. There is an enormous attraction to a company that has been around for 50 years and matters in the mind of the consumer. People do find it incredibly exciting to be at the forefront of these companies that are go-ing to lead the change in their industry to a new level. For example, in financial services

company. At this point most companies want to be digital, but there is a fear of the unknown and they don’t even know the right questions to ask. That is a very uncomfort-able place for a CEO to be. You have to put your trust in someone else, someone you don’t know well yet.

Q What can companies do to make that relationship more comfortable?

Stein: In the past, a lot of emphasis was spent on the recruitment, and while that may still be true, there now is just as much emphasis spent on the onboarding. It is an educational process for the company as much as for the executive coming in. There is also more attention paid to career development and retention. There are so many jobs and so few qualified executives, you really need to ensure that they’re happy and successful in their new positions. That is equally true at both the born-digital and the going-digital companies. Some companies have latched on and done very well with the more sophisti-cated training tools. In the born-digital world, both Amazon and eBay have extremely so-phisticated senior HR people. But recruitment is also changing. A lot more attention is being spent on assessment. Learning agility, know-ing how to get to the right answer without knowing the right question, that is the most critical attribute in people who are going to run your digital efforts. You simply don’t know what’s going to come out tomorrow.

Q you mentioned learning agility. What are some other attributes

you’re looking for in these assessments?

Stein: Tolerance for ambiguity. Businesses and organizations, especially digital com-panies, change organically all the time, so somebody has to be adept at being effective when you don’t have a clear-cut job descrip-tion or clear-cut goals, because even the numbers that matter can change. For exam-

ple, people used to think the important sta-tistic was the number of Facebook “likes” you had; now it’s about the engagement you have there with your customers. Flexibility, adapt-ability, these are enormously important.

LipSher: I would add that patience, con-sensus building and listening skills are critical. Our assessment approach is a framework ap-proach, but every organization is unique and has a unique set of objectives, cultural issues and historic challenges.

Qhow do you ensure these newrecruits’ success?

LipSher: One important element is to be very thoughtful once they come onboard. They have to have the wholehearted sup-port of senior executives. There has to be the company understanding that they are going to shake things up, that they are definitely going to upset the immune system. The im-portant thing is it’s a shared responsibility to ensure somebody’s success. It’s the individu-al’s responsibility to accept the fact that the company is trying hard, but there’s going to be an education that’s required. The com-pany has to accept that it’s going to require different ways of thinking on their part as well. And it’s not just a different way of think-ing, it’s a different way of acting. They’re go-ing to have to support the person in different ways. This can involve re-imagining pro-cesses, how decisions get made, the alloca-tion of resources, how different departments work across each other and more team orga-nization as opposed to silo organizations.

Stein: It goes all the way up to the sup-port of the CEO. In the companies that truly care, the digital leaders are having brown bag lunches with the CEO once a month. The mentoring is going both ways. The CEO is mentoring the 25-year-old, but the 25-year-old is mentoring the CEO about this new way of connecting with customers.

QSo this really is a two-wayprocess.

LipSher: On a macro level, it’s a recognition on the part of the organization that by bring-ing in someone with a different set of skills, they have raised their hand and said, “We

would like to find a different way to succeed going down this path.” Offline businesses can add an e-commerce component and it’s not a major change, it’s just opening up a new reve-nue channel. But by deciding to bring in these kinds of people, the born-digital people, it’s a recognition that something is strategically lacking in the organization. My view is that organizations that bring in these people have to take more institutional responsibility for their success. At the same time, born-digital people who come into these organizations have to throttle back their expectations and develop patience. While these organizations may not be aircraft carriers, they are certainly battleships and they don’t turn rapidly. You can’t just come in and make pronouncements and expect them to change. Success depends on both sides of the equation coming more and more to the middle and understanding why they’re both there.


Q What about the opposite migration; what are the issues when born-digital

companies recruit digital immigrants from traditional companies?

Stein: E-commerce companies will often hire executives who will bring in the mer-chant skill set. Amazon hired a rock star from the Gap. When onboarding people from that direction, it is critical to make sure that they will be comfortable with faster decision mak-ing, without data or with imperfect data.

LipSher: What’s really interesting about this space is that when people talk about tal-ent or organizations they think about a hard set of skills. While the quantitative skills need to be there, a lot of this is about a qual-itative set of skills. Although the “culture” word gets thrown around, it is a big part of what is driving this. A lot of peoples’ success is not because they are the smartest people in the room; it’s that they have the cultural sensitivity to accept the differences while they’re trying to change things. This is why the assessment piece is so critical, because it gets to cultural fit and the ability to fit in a given organization.

QWhat kinds of companies need to concern themselves with the migra-

tion of digital talent?

Stein: This touches every single industry. It’s not just confined to consumer elec-tronics or technology or entertainment. It’s also health care, f inancial services, steel mills, educational institutions. Every single industry is changing to adapt to a digital world. This touches every industry and every function.

LipSher: Especially with digital, because it’s not simply “Our CFO just quit, find us another.” The search firm’s role is more about becoming a trusted adviser. It’s about understanding business strategies, help-ing you understand what resources you al-ready may have in-house versus those you may need to bring in. This is not a cookie-cutter approach; it’s not replicable across ev-ery opportunity. This is about building rela-tionships at the C level. It’s about what the implication of talent is, and how it can help them or hurt them. K/F/B

A lot more attention is being spent on assessment. Learning agility, knowing how to get to the right answer without knowing the right question.”

AndreW LipSherSENIOR CLIENT PARTNER,KORN/FERRY INTERNATIONAL

BeCky SteinSENIOR CLIENT PARTNER,KORN/FERRY INTERNATIONAL

“We are digital immigrants;

as conversant as we are in

the language, we began our lives in an analog world.”


In t h e i m m e d i at e wa k e of the publication of her book “Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead,” Sheryl Sand-berg set off a firestorm of de-

bate. Sandberg, the chief operating officer at Facebook and one of her generation’s most vocal and visible leaders, makes a stirring case that the world needs far more women lead-ers and it is up to women themselves to “lean in” and take a seat at the ta-ble. Acknowledging all the obvious factors that have kept the glass ceil-ing firmly in place, Sandberg argues that women are as much if not more to blame for allowing the status quo to hold.

“We hold ourselves back in ways both big and small, by lacking self-confidence, by not raising our hands, and by pulling back when we should be leaning in,” she writes. “We in-ternalize the negative messages we get throughout our lives – the mes-sages that say it’s wrong to be outspo-ken, aggressive, more powerful than men. We lower our expectations of what we can achieve. We continue to do the majority of the housework and child care. We compromise our career goals to make room for part-ners and children who may not even exist yet. Compared to our male col-leagues, fewer of us aspire to senior positions.”

On the face of it, Sandberg, 43, is merely echoing the message that emerged in the feminist and equal

rights movements of the 1970’s. It is, after all, remarkable that we must still discuss equal pay for women in 2013! Or that of the 195 independent countries in the world, only 17 are led by women. Or that despite the gains women have made at America’s uni-versities and workplaces, women at the top of Fortune 500 corporations number just 21. Or that women hold 14 percent of executive officer posi-tions, 17 percent of board seats and constitute just 18 percent of Congress.

Given that Sandberg is a poster child for successful young business leaders and will undoubtedly become a CEO sooner than later, one might expect her polemic to be embraced by vocal and passionate supporters. Yet

it seems the opposite has happened. Reaction to “Lean In” ranged from tepid applause to outright hostility. And that was from women.

It is not only easy but disingenu-ous, her critics say, for an executive with net worth listed at $1.6 billion to suggest that women struggling to earn a paycheck and find time to care for children, do housework and shop for groceries be put under pressure to seek leadership roles as well. Some-one with her resources – money, in-fluence, child care support, a rich and accomplished husband and partner – can certainly lean in and stretch the envelope. But for the vast majority of women, Sandberg’s challenge is out of touch with reality.

In fact, the negative blowback feels like yet another smokescreen for drawing attention away from this crucial issue. Sandberg acknowledges her good fortune throughout the book and makes it abundantly clear that most working women face a host of untenable challenges and choices. That said, does her argument lack merit? Hardly. And Sandberg is per-fectly positioned to sound this call. The obvious question ought to be: If not for women like Sandberg, who will take up the gauntlet in this diffi-cult fight?

“Lean In” shines a harsh light on a troubling trend. In comparison to their male counterparts, Sandberg points out, highly trained women are scaling back and dropping out of the

l e a D e R S H I P

both big and small, by lacking self-confidence, by not raising our hands, and by pulling back when we should be leaning in,” she writes. “We in-ternalize the negative messages we get throughout our lives – the mes-sages that say it’s wrong to be outspo-ken, aggressive, more powerful than men. We lower our expectations of what we can achieve. We continue to do the majority of the housework and child care. We compromise our career goals to make room for part-ners and children who may not even exist yet. Compared to our male col-leagues, fewer of us aspire to senior


In fact, the negative blowback feels like yet another smokescreen for drawing attention away from this crucial issue. Sandberg acknowledges her good fortune throughout the book and makes it abundantly clear that most working women face a host of untenable challenges and choices. That said, does her argument lack merit? Hardly. And Sandberg is perfectly positioned to sound this call. The obvious question ought to be: If not for women like Sandberg, who will take up the gauntlet in this difficult fight?


L e a n I n : W o m e n , W o r k a n d t h e W I L L t o L e a d — Sheryl Sandberg —

How to Have It All

i n r e v i e w

work force in high numbers. “In turn, these diverging percentages teach in-stitutions and mentors to invest more in men, who are statistically more likely to stay,” she writes.

Narrating anecdotes from her own career, Sandberg shares her feelings of inadequacy and despair. Growing up, while her talented younger brother oozed with self-con-fidence, Sandberg struggled with her own demons.

“For women, feeling like a fraud is a symptom of a greater problem,” she writes. “We consistently undermine ourselves. Multiple studies in multi-ple industries show that women of-ten judge their own performance as worse than it actually is, while men judge their own performance as bet-ter than it actually is.”

Within this short but economi-cal treatise are useful bits of advice for women seeking leadership positions:

✺ When negotiating for a higher post, don’t take the first offer. When Sandberg was be-ing recruited by Mark Zucker-berg, she was so thrilled at the chance to work at Facebook that she was ready to accept whatever Zuckerberg offered. Her husband and brother-in-law advised her strongly not to accept a first offer. A man wouldn’t, they told her. Need-less to say, her counter to Zuck-erberg resulted in a much sweeter deal.

✺ Careers are a jungle gym, not a ladder. Ladders are lim-iting. Corporate careers are rarely a strictly vertical climb. A jungle gym offers many ways to get to the top, and the model benefits everyone, but espe-cially women starting careers.

✺ The need to be liked by ev-eryone, a desire shared by so many women, has to be har-nessed and put away. As Zuck-erberg told Sandberg six months after she joined Face-book, “When you want to change things, you can’t please everyone. If you do please ev-eryone, you aren’t making enough progress.”

✺ Women need to take more career risks. “The cost of stabil-ity is often diminished oppor-tunities for growth,” she states.

✺ Due to the fear of innuendo and gossip, junior-level women tend to avoid one-on-one con-tact with senior-level men. Per-sonal connections, however, can lead to better assignments and promotions, so it needs to be O.K. for men and women to spend informal time together. “This evasiveness must end,” Sandberg writes.

✺ Don’t leave before you leave. “Women rarely make one big decision to leave the work force,” Sandberg says. “Instead they make a lot of small de-cisions along the way, mak-ing accommodations and sac-rifices that they believe will be required to have a family. Of all the ways women hold them-selves back, perhaps the most pervasive is that they leave be-fore they leave. What I am ar-guing is that the time to scale back is when a break is needed or when a child arrives—not before, and certainly not years in advance.”

Sandberg addresses much of her apprehension toward talented young

women on the way up. But she is not letting anyone off the hook. “If soci-ety truly valued the work of caring for children, companies and institu-tions would find ways to reduce these steep penalties and help parents com-bine career and family responsibili-ties,” she declares.

Of course, Sandberg can do lit-tle to forestall the critics who claim, “This is easy for you to say.” She doesn’t help her own cause by includ-ing an acknowledgments section that

identifies what appears to be a small army of writers, researchers, editors and advisers who helped create this book. Readers might come away with the impression that Sandberg did lit-tle more than provide the transcript of her 2010 TED Talk in which she laid out her opinions.

But hey, there is more than one way to mount a crusade. And regard-less of her means, the ends are jus-tified. As she says, “I made this my thing because we need to disrupt the status quo. Staying quiet and fitting in may have been all the first gener-ations of women who entered cor-porate America could do; in some cases it might still be the safest path. But this strategy is not paying off for women as a group. Instead, we need to speak out, identify the barri-ers that are holding women back and find solutions.” K/F/B

SAY WHAT?Seagull manager (n.)

An absent manager who swoops in occasionally to “make a lot of noise, dump on everyone, then fly out.”Source: Leadership and the One Minute Manager


In t h e i m m e d i at e wa k e of the publication of her book “Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead,” Sheryl Sand-berg set off a firestorm of de-

bate. Sandberg, the chief operating officer at Facebook and one of her generation’s most vocal and visible leaders, makes a stirring case that the world needs far more women lead-ers and it is up to women themselves to “lean in” and take a seat at the ta-ble. Acknowledging all the obvious factors that have kept the glass ceil-ing firmly in place, Sandberg argues that women are as much if not more to blame for allowing the status quo to hold.

“We hold ourselves back in ways both big and small, by lacking self-confidence, by not raising our hands, and by pulling back when we should be leaning in,” she writes. “We in-ternalize the negative messages we get throughout our lives – the mes-sages that say it’s wrong to be outspo-ken, aggressive, more powerful than men. We lower our expectations of what we can achieve. We continue to do the majority of the housework and child care. We compromise our career goals to make room for part-ners and children who may not even exist yet. Compared to our male col-leagues, fewer of us aspire to senior positions.”


rights movements of the 1970’s. It is, after all, remarkable that we must still discuss equal pay for women in 2013! Or that of the 195 independent countries in the world, only 17 are led by women. Or that despite the gains women have made at America’s uni-versities and workplaces, women at the top of Fortune 500 corporations number just 21. Or that women hold 14 percent of executive officer posi-tions, 17 percent of board seats and constitute just 18 percent of Congress.

Given that Sandberg is a poster child for successful young business leaders and will undoubtedly become a CEO sooner than later, one might expect her polemic to be embraced by vocal and passionate supporters. Yet

it seems the opposite has happened. Reaction to “Lean In” ranged from tepid applause to outright hostility. And that was from women.

It is not only easy but disingenu-ous, her critics say, for an executive with net worth listed at $1.6 billion to suggest that women struggling to earn a paycheck and find time to care for children, do housework and shop for groceries be put under pressure to seek leadership roles as well. Some-one with her resources – money, in-fluence, child care support, a rich and accomplished husband and partner – can certainly lean in and stretch the envelope. But for the vast majority of women, Sandberg’s challenge is out of touch with reality.

In fact, the negative blowback feels like yet another smokescreen for drawing attention away from this crucial issue. Sandberg acknowledges her good fortune throughout the book and makes it abundantly clear that most working women face a host of untenable challenges and choices. That said, does her argument lack merit? Hardly. And Sandberg is per-fectly positioned to sound this call. The obvious question ought to be: If not for women like Sandberg, who will take up the gauntlet in this diffi-cult fight?


L e a n I n : W o m e n , W o r k a n d t h e W I L L t o L e a d — Sheryl Sandberg —

How to Have It All

i n r e v i e w

work force in high numbers. “In turn, these diverging percentages teach in-stitutions and mentors to invest more in men, who are statistically more likely to stay,” she writes.

Narrating anecdotes from her own career, Sandberg shares her feelings of inadequacy and despair. Growing up, while her talented younger brother oozed with self-con-fidence, Sandberg struggled with her own demons.

“For women, feeling like a fraud is a symptom of a greater problem,” she writes. “We consistently undermine ourselves. Multiple studies in multi-ple industries show that women of-ten judge their own performance as worse than it actually is, while men judge their own performance as bet-ter than it actually is.”

Within this short but economi-cal treatise are useful bits of advice for women seeking leadership positions:

✺ When negotiating for a higher post, don’t take the first offer. When Sandberg was be-ing recruited by Mark Zucker-berg, she was so thrilled at the chance to work at Facebook that she was ready to accept whatever Zuckerberg offered. Her husband and brother-in-law advised her strongly not to accept a first offer. A man wouldn’t, they told her. Need-less to say, her counter to Zuck-erberg resulted in a much sweeter deal.

✺ Careers are a jungle gym, not a ladder. Ladders are lim-iting. Corporate careers are rarely a strictly vertical climb. A jungle gym offers many ways to get to the top, and the model benefits everyone, but espe-cially women starting careers.

✺ The need to be liked by ev-eryone, a desire shared by so many women, has to be har-nessed and put away. As Zuck-erberg told Sandberg six months after she joined Face-book, “When you want to change things, you can’t please everyone. If you do please ev-eryone, you aren’t making enough progress.”

✺ Women need to take more career risks. “The cost of stabil-ity is often diminished oppor-tunities for growth,” she states.

✺ Due to the fear of innuendo and gossip, junior-level women tend to avoid one-on-one con-tact with senior-level men. Per-sonal connections, however, can lead to better assignments and promotions, so it needs to be O.K. for men and women to spend informal time together. “This evasiveness must end,” Sandberg writes.

✺ Don’t leave before you leave. “Women rarely make one big decision to leave the work force,” Sandberg says. “Instead they make a lot of small de-cisions along the way, mak-ing accommodations and sac-rifices that they believe will be required to have a family. Of all the ways women hold them-selves back, perhaps the most pervasive is that they leave be-fore they leave. What I am ar-guing is that the time to scale back is when a break is needed or when a child arrives—not before, and certainly not years in advance.”

Sandberg addresses much of her apprehension toward talented young

women on the way up. But she is not letting anyone off the hook. “If soci-ety truly valued the work of caring for children, companies and institu-tions would find ways to reduce these steep penalties and help parents com-bine career and family responsibili-ties,” she declares.

Of course, Sandberg can do lit-tle to forestall the critics who claim, “This is easy for you to say.” She doesn’t help her own cause by includ-ing an acknowledgments section that

identifies what appears to be a small army of writers, researchers, editors and advisers who helped create this book. Readers might come away with the impression that Sandberg did lit-tle more than provide the transcript of her 2010 TED Talk in which she laid out her opinions.

But hey, there is more than one way to mount a crusade. And regard-less of her means, the ends are jus-tified. As she says, “I made this my thing because we need to disrupt the status quo. Staying quiet and fitting in may have been all the first gener-ations of women who entered cor-porate America could do; in some cases it might still be the safest path. But this strategy is not paying off for women as a group. Instead, we need to speak out, identify the barri-ers that are holding women back and find solutions.” K/F/B

SAY WHAT?Seagull manager (n.)

An absent manager who swoops in occasionally to “make a lot of noise, dump on everyone, then fly out.”Source: Leadership and the One Minute Manager


J O E L K U R T Z M A N

No t l o n g a g o , I bought some really old tools. They were made of stone and found in a field in France. (Don’t worry, all the permits

and licenses were in place.) These implements might be 40,000 years old. Though the humans who made these tools are long gone, when you hold one of their almond-shaped hand axes or salmon-colored spearpoints in your hand, they fit. Perfectly. I believe anyone alive today could immediately understand how these tools were used.

These people, our ancestors, were identical to us – same bodies, same hands, same brains. But we work in offices, take public transportation to work or hop in our cars to get there. Our forebears attached stone spearpoints to flimsy sticks and chased down 14-foot-tall wooly mammoths or six-ton rhinoceroses. Those were the days.

I put my collection of spearpoints, hand axes and cut-ting tools on my desk next to my smartphone. The ax, carefully chipped from a piece of flint, is about the same size as the phone. The phone is made of plastic, glass, aluminum, magnesium, rare earth metals and other ma-terials unknown to our prehistoric predecessors. And

yet, at one point in time, stone axes were the epitome of our technology and embodied everything we knew.

Looking at these two devices side by side, I couldn’t help but think hand axes, like the one on my desk, were used by humans, virtually unchanged, for at least 100,000 years, whereas my 1-year-old smart-phone is already out of date.

How did we go from using the same tools for most of our earthly existence, to the frenzied pace of change we deal with now?

The answer, of course, is we don’t really know. The hockey stick of change shows 100,000-plus years when toolmaking didn’t change, followed by a period of slow improvement, followed by a titanic explosion of change beginning, perhaps, 150 years ago.

The late astrophysicist Carl Sagan wrote a book about science, “Broca’s Brain.” In it, he made a pass-ing remark I still recall. He wrote that 600 years ago something happened. For the first time, more knowl-edge was contained outside of our brains, in librar-ies, than inside them. As more people gained access to those libraries, knowledge grew and change followed.

The hand ax on my desk only communicates the knowledge contained within it if you look at it, hold it in your palm, try to copy it, and talk to someone about it. You need to be near a person and an ax to really understand.

By contrast, the smartphone can communicate with almost anyone on the planet and access all but a few off-limits libraries of information. The stone ax may be the work of one genius; the cellphone is the work of thousands.

That means, when it comes to solving problems, it’s not so much what one person thinks, it’s what lots of people think together. That’s why we have phones stuck to our ears. That’s why we’re always talking, texting, accessing information, arguing, doing exper-iments, refuting them, proposing theories, demolish-ing them. You might even argue, the noisier things get, the faster things change. That’s what happens when you put down your spear. K/F/B

How Progress Happens

“I put my collection of spearpoints, hand axes and cutting tools on my desk next to my smartphone.”

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