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[APPLAUSE] >> Speaker 1: Thank you.
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>> Speaker 1: [APPLAUSE] >> Okay, thank you, stop.
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[LAUGH] Well, thank you very much.
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Thank you, Brett, for that very nice and generous introduction.
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I've figured over the past ten years, I have introduced and listened to probably about 100 views from the top.
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But I've been very impressed that almost every speaker that's been here has viewed this forum as such a great privilege, and I think that's because of who you are and what you represent.
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You are among the most capable members of your generation, you're the best that our society has to offer, and you represent our hopes for the future of world leadership and the impact that can have on how our organizations perform and how they serve society.
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So a chance to offer my views on leadership on a view from the top is just a rare opportunity and a great privilege.
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I thought as a view from the top, it seemed logical to address these two questions, what is the top?
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>> Speaker 1: [LAUGH] >> Speaker 1: And what is the view like?
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>> Speaker 1: [LAUGH] >> Speaker 1: Here's my definition of the top, it's any position where you take responsibility for a group with a mission to fulfill.
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It's any job, any role, any position, you take responsibility, feel it, and own it, and it's a group that has an important mission to fulfill.
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And when you take that definition and you look at modern organizations and our society today, you realize there's many,many places within an organization that you, in fact, can take responsibility for a group.
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Most of us start our working lives working for ourselves and are responsible for our own work.
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But pretty soon you already have, or I know you will, be responsible for a group of people, a team of people and their work.
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And that group may change over time to become a group of other managers who in turn have their own teams.
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Or your group may be a group of a business function or corporate function like HR, or strategy, or finance.
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It may be a business where you've got a group of customers and employees and you got products and a geography to cover, in bigger organizations, it might even be a group of businesses, might even be an entire enterprise, there are lots of tops that are possible.
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I left the GSB a little over 40 years ago, and I worked for four big institutions, and during that time, I was fortunate to have ten chances at a top.
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And they ranged, as indicated in that earlier chart, from small groups to large groups, from line to staff, from businesses to corporate or business functions, sometimes groups of businesses, and in a couple of occasions, the entire enterprise.
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I'm never quite sure where to put the business school, because in addition to having faculty and staff of about 500, we have 900 students seeking degrees.
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We have 2,500 students coming for executive education that are a little different from staff and different from customers.
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And we have seven schools at the university, so I put it as a business.
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But all of these tops have the same thing in common, you're responsible for a group of people with a mission to fulfill, and trying to change that group for the better.
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What I should say at the outset is that just because your job sits at the top of an organization chart, there's a reality to how groups work that is often a surprise to people.
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For example, ten years ago, when the GSB dean search committee, invited me to be the dean, and I accepted that invitation, they presented me with a T-shirt that had the following diagram across the front.
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>> Speaker 1: [LAUGH] >> Speaker 1: Now, while this is not exactly how the GSB works, I knew at the time, and I know even more today as I've thought about and studied and tried to teach about leadership.
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That really in virtually all of these tops in all leadership roles, there's an informal dependence on other people that is in many ways much more important and more powerful than the power or the authority that is implied by an organization chart that puts your job at the top.
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Because here's the reason, it's all about responsibility, when you're at the top, it's not about power or fame or fortune, it's about responsibility you're responsible for the group.
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You're responsible for moving that group in the right direction over time so that it gets better.
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And the only one that has that total responsibility across all dimensions, all parts of the group, how the group acts, thinks, feels, performs, that's something you can't do alone, and that's something you really can't do with power.
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I always like what Margaret Thatcher had to say about power, she said, being powerful is like being a lady, if you have to say you are, you aren't.
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>> Speaker 1: [LAUGH] >> Speaker 1: I thought that would sink in a little bit.
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>> Speaker 1: [LAUGH] >> Speaker 1: But that's what the top is all about, it's about responsibility, 24/7 responsibility for the group with what Abraham Zaleznick called an impelling need to do better.
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So what about the view, what's it like?
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Well, let me say four things about the view.
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First of all, since you're at the top and you're responsible for the group, you better develop a view.
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That is to say, where is the group now and where would you like to see the group headed, in what direction and at what speed?
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Groups need direction, they need some kind of vision for what better looks like, if you're trying to change for the better, which you are.
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I always thought Michael Dell had a great way of expressing it, he said, you have to show that you know the way, even if you have no idea what to do.
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And it's true you have to know a general sense of direction about where the group ought to go it's not something you have to do alone, it has to get developed.
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It's not something you have to do in your first hundred days, but you have to see that the group does have a sense of direction and that it's there.
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And it's one of the two things when you're at a top that you just can't delegate, you have to make sure happens.
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A group needs a strategy, it needs a framework that guides the choices that determine its nature and direction, and as the person responsible at the top, you're in the best position to have the best view of where it ought to go.
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When I went to To Australia in 1993, as Brett mentioned, I saw a very troubled institution had suffered the biggest loss in Australian corporate history.
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And they had tried to be Australia's world bank, but it's a big world out there, lots of risks.
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Resources aren't there to really do that.
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I could see that if it really focused on being Australia's best bank, the best bank in Australia for Australians, the best bank in New Zealand for New Zealanders.
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That was its home turf, where it had been for nearly 200 years, that it could be a really successful institution.
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And I also could see, because I had spent 22 years at Wells Fargo trying to be the best bank in California, that it was possible.
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I knew how products and systems and groups could come together.
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But I didn't actually know how to do it in this different country, in this different culture, with different laws and people, but I had a general sense of direction.
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When I came to the Stanford business school in 1999, I knew it was a great school, but I also knew it could be better.
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I thought particularly we could be better along the dimensions of preparing people for global management and for leadership, but I didn't really know how or how we might do that.
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So you have to have a view, and you have to then help others see what it is that you see when you take that view.
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Because there's no sense having a vision or a view if you can't make it happen.
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You've got to turn that vision into reality.
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And there are a couple of ways that you can help yourself do that.
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You can push the group along through the implementation of really useful, really valuable, and important management systems.
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Planning, organizing, staffing, directing, controlling.
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These are all things I've found extraordinarily valuable, whether in a bank or in a school.
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They help you push the group in the right direction.
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They bring a discipline and a focus to the organization that's extremely valuable.
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And they have a lot to do with how the group acts, but they have very little to do with how it thinks or how it feels to do that.
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You've got to pull the group along, and that takes communication, a lot of communication.
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John Gardner had a wonderful phrase.
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Leaders find the words, and you have to find words that connect with people.
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You have to help others see what it is that you see, and you try different things until something clicks or connects or works.
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It's no good talking to people about being the best bank in Australia if nobody knows what that means.
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It's better to find a way to explain it in terms of developing or delivering better solutions for customers day in and day out, so they begin to see how their job fits with their role in the firm.
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It's no good talking about being a great school if it's too general and not giving people some sense of direction.
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It's better to talk about the three Cs of a new curriculum, new collaboration, or a new campus.
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You have to enlist followers when you're in a role at the top and you're very dependent on those followers.
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What you want are people who are inspired, who are committed, who are motivated, and it's your job to instill confidence in them. That's very hard to do.
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Change is hard and most people resist change, and yet the group needs change to get better.
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They need to know what's in it for them to make that change.
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And earning followers is earning their trust.
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You earn their trust by being trustworthy.
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Jack Welch always says, look, at the top, it's not about you, it's about them, which is so true.
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And in particular, it's about the relationship between you and them.
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And in developing that relationship, I'd say the third thing about the view is you have to figure out how it's going.
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There are management systems that are really helpful, but when you're at the top, people don't always tell you what you need to hear.
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Indeed, that's probably the single biggest blind spot or difficulty when you're in a role like that.
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And here's where the power of questions from the top is probably even more important than the view from the top.
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Ron Heifetz, who's a leadership scholar at the Kennedy School, has a wonderful phrase, that one can lead with no more than a question in hand.
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Sometimes it's as simple a question as, why do we do it that way?
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Or I can recall going into a very, very large group of managers in my early days at Westpac.
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It was entirely filled with middle-aged men, and I said, where are all the women?
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It wasn't really a question that needed an answer.
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It was a question that set in motion a whole change in behavior, not just in our company, but throughout corporate Australia.
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So the power of a question is pretty extraordinary.
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You have to invite open criticism and you have to be willing to invite open criticism.
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There are all kinds of ways to do this, and I've tried them all.
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Managing by walking around, town halls where you encourage people to speak up, confidential surveys of staff or employees or customers, hotlines.
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One of the things we did at Westpac in the early days was the first Friday of every month, any employee in the company could pick up the phone between 9 and 10 and call the CEO.
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And I found that if two or three people referred to a similar problem, you could pretty much be sure it was a problem. That's all it took.
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Out of 40,000 people, if there were 2 or 3 courageous souls who called and they were triangulating on the same issue, the chances were pretty good that there was a real problem there that was so valuable to know about and head off that you never knew from the management systems.
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You've got to invite the open criticism and you've got to listen and listen really well.
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When you're at the top, you need to understand the world of customers and staff.
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What's it like to be a customer in your organization?
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What's it like to be a staff member?
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How are they thinking and how are they feeling?
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And people need to know that you understand their world if they're going to trust you.
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You need their trust to make the changes that are so important for the good of the group.
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Because if the group doesn't change, it falls behind.
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And the last thing I'd say about the view is you have to be the view.
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And this is perhaps the most surprising thing to people.
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This is the second thing.
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You can't delegate because you're at the top.
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You are the group's representative.
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You're the symbol of the group.
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You stand for the group everywhere you go, in everything you do.
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Leaders cast long shadows.
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You hear the phrase the tone at the top, and indeed the tone at the top is more important perhaps than the view from the top.
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You need to earn the trust and respect of people so they'll follow and want to make the changes.
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People will trust and follow, not a perfect leader, they don't want a perfect.
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A genuine leader, somebody they can trust, somebody who demonstrates that they care more about the group and the group's welfare than about the welfare of the leader.
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This was really brought home to me by a very sad incident in Australia when one of our staff members in New Zealand, a member of our branch in a little branch outside of Wellington, was shot and killed during a bank hold up.
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It's the first time in my entire career I'd ever been involved with a fatality in a place I worked.
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And we were all extremely distraught and concerned.
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And my HR director came in and said, well, you're going to the funeral, aren't you?
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And I said, I don't think so, I think I'd be kind of awkward there.
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I mean, I don't know the people, this is a very sad situation for their family, I'm intruding on their privacy.
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No, he said, you have to go.
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It made me a little uncomfortable.
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But the more he pushed, the more I listened, and the more I decided maybe he's right and I better go.
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And I learned for myself just how important the symbol of the organization communicates to the family, who were so grateful and pleased, to 7,000 staff in New Zealand, who were so grateful and pleased in a way I couldn't possibly have imagined.
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I only really came to see it years later when after 911, I was reading Rudy Giuliani's book on leadership and I came to chapter 11.
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And the title of chapter 11 is Weddings Discretionary, Funerals Mandatory.
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And in that chapter, Giuliani talks about when things are going great, a leader doesn't have to show up.
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It's when people are hurting and things are not so good that they need leadership.
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In other words, you have to find ways to use all of yourself, your words, your deeds, your emotions, your energy to build that relationship.
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It's not about you, it's about them, it's about a relationship between you and them.
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And in building that relationship, you've got to use all of yourself.
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John Gardner used to remind me that leadership is not a science, it's an art and it's a performing art.
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And in this performing art, he said, you are the instrument, and you need to know how to play that instrument and play it well.
18:45
You have to be the change that you want to see in the organization.
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Just as Gandhi told us, be the change you want to see in the world when you're at the top and in that role, and you want to see the organization operate in a certain way.
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You have to be the change that you want to see in others, the role model that people copy.
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People want to have a sense of hope, they need that.
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They need a sense of optimism, and they need to see it in you when you're at the top.
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Well, that's my view from the top and what it's like.
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But what about you and yours to come?
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Because there's not a doubt in my mind that you will be at tops in your life.
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You will be involved in group effort, and at some point, you'll take responsibility for that group effort.
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I hope wherever you start in an organization, that you start right away thinking about the top, thinking about how should this group change for the better.
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What does group success look like?
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I hope you'll accept responsibility for how well the group performs, whether it's in your job description or not.
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And when it really becomes part of your job description, that you'll then acquire the expertise that can only come from experience, the experience of actually assuming that top or that leadership responsibility.
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The Chinese have a wonderful saying that I hear and I forget.
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I see, and I remember, but I do and I understand.
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The deepest form of learning is understanding.
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It's why in our leadership fellows, we actually have people do, we have them take responsibility for others.
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We have them coach, we have them give feedback so they know what it feels like, so they understand leadership in a way you can't possibly learn from a lecture or from reading a book.
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And then when you're at the top, I hope that you will be yourself.
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Be yourself, beacuse you got to be a genuine person of integrity to be effective.
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But you can be yourself with more skill, that's the great thing about life.
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You can continually learn by listening and practice, and learning from mistakes, and trying new behaviors.
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This is all made even more powerful if you're doing what matters most to you.
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If you're doing work that you think ought to be done, and it ought to be done by you, and for each of you, that's a separate calling and a separate voice.
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The key thing is that you care about a group achieving a better future for itself.
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There's nothing more satisfying than being a part of such an effort where you care about a group achieving a better future, and it indeed achieves a better future.
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I can tell you that, and I hope you have an opportunity to experience that.
22:09
After all, if not you, who else?
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And if not now or soon after you leave this place, when?
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One of the great joys of being dean is that I get to see over and over again in hundreds of ways the impact that this place has on the lives of people who go through this experience.
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For example, in September, when we broke ground over here on our new campus, Phil Knight talked at dinner and he said, without the GSB, there'd be no Nike.
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Pretty powerful, amazing.
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And a couple of months ago, I was in London at a big Stanford alumni event chatting with one of our younger alums from Germany.
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And as I usually do to make conversation, I said, well, how's business?
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Expecting it's not so good, the economy's in recession, things are tough in Europe.
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And he said, things are really going well.
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And he told me about how he and a couple of partners had bought a a few companies, small and medium-sized companies that had turned them around, revitalized them, were really creating value and productivity was appearing.
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And he was so excited, and he stopped in mid-sentence, looked at me and said, without the Stanford GSB, I never would have had the confidence to do this.
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I thought, that's pretty great.
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We don't have a course in confidence here.
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>> [LAUGH] >> We teach strategy, marketing, HR, operations, accounting, and finance.
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But there's a confidence that comes when you acquire a way of thinking, and approaching situations, and have tested it with other.
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Extremely bright people that lets you know that things are possible and that you can indeed play that kind of role.
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After all, it's your life that's the one changed by coming here.
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That's what we're talking about in this slogan.
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You're a different person when you leave here than when you entered.
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I've seen it now over and over again, ten years in succession, and your work will involve working in groups.
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And those groups will be trying to fulfill missions, and those are missions, if done well, can change the world.
24:39
Margaret Mead reminds us, never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world, indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.
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Now, I can give you my view from the top.
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You hear me, you might forget, you see me, you might remember.
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But remember, I do, and I understand.
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You will only really understand if you do it.
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If you get involved in the doing, not talking, analyzing, thinking about consulting, about investing, but doing.
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>> [LAUGH] >> Speaker 2: Take on a leadership role, be responsible for a group, helping that group to change for the better, to fulfill an important mission.
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That's where that confidence comes from that those guys were talking about, that's how you learn leadership.
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The only real learning for leadership is leadership taking on a leadership role, it's all about the doing.
25:55
So, in the words of our great friend and alum Phil Knight, please do it.
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Please do it, and I hope you'll do it with the intensity and the focus and putting all of yourself into it that I think you see in this young pitcher.
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I can tell you, because I know him well and I watch him often, that he's not just putting his mind and body into this, he's putting his heart and soul into this.
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This is work that ought to be done, and he believes he ought to do it, and it's what matters most to him at that moment in time.
26:35
I enjoy watching him, but I look forward just as much to watching you as you assume your tops and you develop your views, and you come back and share them with us.
26:48
Thank you very much for the honor of presenting my view from the top.
26:52
>> [APPLAUSE] >> Speaker 2: So I'd be happy if you have any questions in the time we have about 15 minutes, I'd be delighted to take any questions inside stuff about the GSB.
27:41
>> [LAUGH] >> Speaker 3: Now that you're no longer to be the Dean, what are your plans for next year?
27:48
>> Speaker 2: Well, my plans are to figure out what I'm going to do for the next year.
27:53
For, as I said, in the last 40 years, I've had a job where I was responsible for a group 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
28:01
And I'm looking forward to doing a variety of things where others are responsible, and I'm more the coach, the consultant, the advisor.
28:11
I'm involved with several boards, I'm going to teach my seminar in the fall that I've been teaching in the second-year seminar series, and I love doing that.
28:19
And I'll see, I'm going to take a little bit of time off and then a lot of things I'm looking at, no one full time thing, a number of part time things, and particularly around leadership. Yeah, Carol.
28:35
>> So, I'm just wondering, over the years you've had lots of different leadership positions, is there a theme to what most kept you up at night as a leader?
28:47
>> Speaker 1: Well, sure, I think the theme is the people.
28:52
I mean, it's about a group of people and are we doing well?
28:55
Are we doing right by them?
28:56
Are we moving in the right direction?
28:59
Do we have the right people in the right places? And what if we don't?
29:03
And I'm responsible for that difficult choice of making some changes.
29:08
And I think the most difficult things are the ones that are so emotional, where you have to gather and develop that emotional strength to make a change, to make a call as you see it, because you think it's the right thing for the group, even though it may involve short term pain for some people, I think that's the one thing.
29:30
>> Speaker 3: What's your plan for the school going forward?
29:33
>> Speaker 1: What's my plan for the school?
29:36
[LAUGH] I have a plan for the school going forward, which is a new dean.
29:41
>> [LAUGH] >> Speaker 2: It's called a lateral.
29:44
>> [LAUGH] >> Speaker 2: But of course, I have hopes, I'm like, I'm an alum, I love the school, I want it to be a great school.
29:55
I want to see it get better and better, which means it'll change, and it'll change in ways that I don't quite anticipate.
30:02
Just as I tried to change what the people before me had been doing in ways and it wasn't something you can do on your own.
30:11
You have to enlist faculty and staff and alumni who really want to help make that change happen.
30:19
I think we're on a great trajectory, I think we've got a lot to do to kind of continually refine and rethink our curriculum.
30:26
And is it preparing our students for leadership in the 21st century in the best way possible?
30:32
There's so many possible and exciting things we can be doing with the university.
30:36
And of course, very excited to see how the new campus will really, it'll really change our culture, I think.
30:43
It'll change the place in exciting ways because it's going to be the most exciting place to be at Stanford University.
30:49
It's where people want to come and gather, and I think there's unlimited opportunities for events and collaborations there that'll put the business school on the map.
30:59
But I'm very excited about just continually challenging ourselves with how do we better prepare people, particularly, how do we prepare you to act?
31:11
I think we prepare you really well how to think, we're really good at the thinking part, the analysis, the alternatives, the decision rules.
31:20
But ultimately, you're out there, you got to act, you got to have the moral courage to act on a situation.
31:26
And there's only so much we can do, but we have to stretch ourselves and say, how could we do that better?
31:32
Because that's where we can help you, I think even more.
31:37
>> Speaker 5: You faced some pretty formidable tasks as a leader, I was just wondering if you've ever doubted yourself and had you overcome that trepidation.
31:46
>> Speaker 2: Definitely, you always doubt yourself.
31:48
Somebody, I was on the plane with my wife headed for Sydney, wondering, what in the world am I doing?
31:55
>> [LAUGH] >> Going to a place, I don't know, a situation.
31:59
Situation, with no support network, no friends, no anything, 40,000 people, lots of trouble and a lot of fear.
32:08
Somebody said to me, well, without fear there's no courage, which is true. >> [LAUGH].
32:16
>> I had a director who had a wonderful phrase whenever we had really tough things and I wasn't sure he'd say, well, this is a character-building experience.
32:25
And of course, as you look back on him, he's so right.
32:27
I mean, this is when you do build character, you have these gut-wrenching, stomach-turning, sleepless night, that's where you learn the most.
32:35
And of course you doubt, but what you don't doubt is that you're trying to do the right thing.
32:41
I think that's what keeps you in the right spot about that.
32:45
You're trying to do the right thing for the right reasons for the group, not for you, not for your personal stake, for the group.
32:52
As long as you're trying that, you'll doubt a lot, is it going to happen?
32:56
What's going to happen if it doesn't go right?
32:57
But if you're trying to do the right thing and doing it as well as you can, then I think you don't have self-doubts.
33:07
>> Speaker 2: Could you maybe comment on balancing the various constituencies as a leader?
33:11
I think of them as employees, shareholders and family.
33:15
Do you log roll from one to the other?
33:17
To what extent would you maybe put your family in second place versus employees family if you're in the same situation?
33:25
>> Speaker 1: Well, it's definitely a balancing act and life is all about balance and business is about balance.
33:30
You've got to make it a great place to work for staff, it's got to be a great place to invest for owners, it's got to be a great place to do business for customers.
33:40
If you're not attending to all of those things and often making some trade-offs, but trying to get it in balance, if it's too far, one way or another, it just doesn't work.
33:52
I can remember when I first went to Westpac, the great thing, they had a great culture of taking care of the customer, but it was so great that they'd often take a standard pre-printed contract and cross it out and make the changes that the customer wanted.
34:07
So we didn't even know actually what we had in terms of our loan agreements or portfolio commitments.
34:13
So you had to then do a lot of time and stuff.
34:16
Look, that's not necessarily good for the customer.
34:19
It's certainly not going to be good for us if we create losses.
34:22
So it's just a constant communication about balance.
34:26
I think so but you have to find it.
34:29
I mean, that's the role of finding a balance of those various interests so that people feel good.
34:33
It's the same thing here between faculty and students and staff and alumni and the university and recruiters.
34:41
They've all got to feel this is a really good school, this is a good situation.
34:45
So if somebody's being left out or in a weak position, you've got to work hard to bring it back.
34:51
And I guess the same thing goes for you and your family and your life and your work.
34:57
You have to try the best you can.
35:00
We're all imperfect human beings, we don't get it right.
35:03
But as long as you're trying and you're aware of the need for balance, I think that's the key.
35:11
>> Speaker 3: From an organizational perspective, what would be your two to three biggest pieces of advice for Professor Saloner taking on new dean?
35:20
>> [LAUGH] >> Speaker 1: I'd give the same advice to anybody taking on a leadership role.
35:35
I think don't take yourself too seriously.
35:39
Listen a lot, and then probably just those four things, have a view, you've got to be the view.
35:49
You've got to try to figure out what's going on all the time.
35:52
You have to try to be sure that you're turning the view into reality, the vision.
36:02
>> Speaker 3: Thank you very much, I really enjoyed your talk.
36:06
One of the things I was wondering with the picture of, I'm thinking it was maybe your grandson.
36:11
>> Speaker 1: It's right here, come here. >> Speaker 3: Fantastic.
36:13
>> [APPLAUSE] >> Speaker 1: Okay, you can sit down, thanks, Adam. That's Adam.
36:34
>> Speaker 3: I'm wondering, when you were in business school and applying, what mattered most to you and why?
36:40
And what is that answer now?
36:41
And if it's changed, what's going on with that change?
36:45
>> Speaker 1: Well, that's a good question.
36:46
We didn't have that question then, so I can't go back and look at the essay, but I can tell you how I felt.
36:55
I left as an undergrad and a young family, and a new marriage, and I was working in a real estate business outside of Seattle.
37:07
And I realized very quickly how little I knew and how much I wanted to know a lot more about management and organizations.
37:16
I didn't want to be in a spot where I felt trapped and dependent on a small business organization, which I was.
37:24
I was learning a lot about business, and I did learn a lot at the time, but I really, really had a sense of wanting to invest in myself to acquire a much stronger body of knowledge about management and organizations.
37:37
That's what really mattered to me, so that I could do something, I wanted to do something.
37:43
I think if you have as your aspiration in life to be something, you never can control that.
37:48
But if your aspiration is to do something, do some kind of work that you think is good work, you can control that.
37:55
And if that makes you famous, great, if it doesn't, great.
37:58
But you will have been doing things that you really thought mattered.
38:02
And I always wanted to be doing something that I thought was important work.
38:08
And that's what led me to the choices I made in terms of the work I sought.
38:12
It felt good to me, it was right for me.
38:15
It was work I thought I could do well if I made the investment and the commitment.
38:19
And a key part of that was the investment I made in coming here so that I really could do it well.
38:28
>> Speaker 2: Can you identify any major turning points in your career that kind of led to getting to the top and basically what you thought at the time and how you developed?
38:37
>> Speaker 1: Sure, boy, there'd be lots of them.
38:41
But I'm just trying to think of some particularly poignant ones.
38:45
One of the really big turning point, usually a turning point can be a real crisis or failure.
38:52
I took over an area, Trust and Investment at Wells Fargo, and I had a real disagreement with the way it was going.
38:59
And I just thought back to Carol's question.
39:02
I was going to have to make the tough call.
39:04
I decided to terminate somebody so that we could have a kind of fresh start about things.
39:11
And six other people quit, the entire management team sent me an email and said, we're leaving and going to form a new firm at a competitor.
39:21
And that was pretty daunting, that was character building.
39:26
But having to deal with that and pick myself up and find a new leader and realizing, well, it's not the end of the world and maybe I can work my way through it.
39:34
And I think doing it, and as tough a situation as that was, and building something that turned out to be much, much better than what we had.
39:43
So there was a certain sense of, I did the right thing.
39:46
I probably did it very clumsily, and in hindsight, I could have done it better.
39:50
You always learn from the doing, but it was a big turning point, I think, for me, in dealing with tough situations like that. And the.
40:00
People who were my supervisors saying, wow, he got himself in and out of a very tough situation, and we're better off for it.
40:07
So I think that was one very real example.
40:10
I mean, obviously, deciding to get on a plane and go to Australia and take on a big bank that I knew nothing about was one.
40:19
I mean, I could go on, yeah.
40:22
[INAUDIBLE] >> Speaker 1: [LAUGH] My best and worst moments as Dean of the GSB, golly.
40:32
>> Speaker 1: [LAUGH] >> Speaker 1: There's so many good moments, what can I say?
40:38
I think it's interesting, and some of you here in my class know that one of the worst moments was the way that we handled a situation at Schwab where there was a lot of carousing and partying and stuff.
40:50
And I sent a memo to the students about all this, and it just could have been done a lot better.
40:56
That was perhaps a worse moment.
40:58
I've had some others, but there's so many good moments.
41:02
There's just hardly any worse moments.
41:03
The worst moment is leaving, perhaps.
41:09
Yeah, back here and then up here.
41:12
>> Speaker 1: What leadership mistakes do you see young MBAs make early in their careers after leaving the GSB?
41:22
>> Speaker 1: Probably the biggest common mistake is taking on a leadership job without truly taking responsibility for the group.
41:34
Thinking more about yourself, it's only natural.
41:36
That's what I thought about when I was 27 years old as well.
41:41
And thinking that with pure smarts, you can just get the right answer.
41:45
You can get, strategy is everything.
41:48
And if you can come up with the right ideas and the right strategy, everybody will say, wow, what a brilliant strategy, let's go.
41:56
And underestimating and missing all the difficulties of bringing people along.
42:01
Particularly people that are different from you, that aren't like Stanford MBAs or not like analysts that you've been working for.
42:09
So, I think the biggest mistake they probably make is getting into a spot, getting excited, laying the strategy out for people, and finding you're just not moving.
42:21
This view is not happening.
42:24
And then actually compounding it, perhaps, by getting upset or getting angry at people. What's the matter?
42:30
They're just not smart enough to understand my strategy.
42:33
I think that's one we would hear over and over again.
42:39
>> Speaker 2: So looking at your background, it seems that you worked in three very different types of environments.
42:44
In the public sector as a White House fellow, years in the private sector, and then ten years in academia.
42:49
I'm curious, how was the view of the vantage point different in those three types of settings?
42:54
And how did you have to evolve or adapt your leadership style as you move from one to the other?
42:58
>> Speaker 1: Well, that's a very good question.
43:00
And certainly, being dean of a business school is very different than being a CEO.
43:05
I often tell alumni, look, it's not like being a CEO, it's like being a managing partner.
43:11
If you think of a law firm, or a consulting firm, or a professional firm, the partners periodically elect someone to be the managing partner.
43:18
Most partners don't aspire to be managing partner.
43:23
And for them, they'd much rather be a partner, but they realize somebody has to do it.
43:28
Somebody has to count the beans and open the doors and keep the place running.
43:33
And so, there's lots of partners meetings, and you have to be good at consulting with and engaging and involving partners.
43:43
So it's just very different.
43:45
It's also different in the sense of you're one school among seven within a larger university.
43:52
And I think one of the reasons that I've been so interested and passionate about engaging the GSB with the university is that I used to be a CEO.
44:02
That's not often that a dean is in that spot.
44:04
And so, I knew as CEO where I had multiple division heads, I didn't like having the division heads all off completely on their own and not feeling part of the group and part of the team.
44:15
So I knew how John Hennessy would feel, that it would be good if we could get the seven schools really working together wherever they can.
44:22
It just makes for a great organization.
44:26
Now, that's a perspective that I had. My time in government.
44:30
And the other big difference, of course, in business you kind of line up what we're saying, what's in it for the customer, the employee, the investor, and you can measure those things.
44:39
And you have a sense for what a great business is.
44:42
When you're trying to have it be a great school, you want it great for students and staff and alumni and recruiters.
44:48
The metrics aren't there as well.
44:50
So you just have a much tougher job, I think, of creating a common sense of vision about what's a great school all about and what's your role in it.
44:59
And my time in government was very young and at an early stage in my career, I mean, to me, I learned there.
45:05
It's more what I learned than what I saw.
45:08
The power of doing meaningful work is very strong.
45:12
When you're doing the work that you think is the most important work in the world for the country, it's very motivating and very powerful.
45:19
And I felt that very strongly there.
45:20
And it makes you realize that if you can get a sense of mission and meaning for people in their work, it's incredibly strong and it's much stronger than money.
45:32
How are we doing for time, guys? >> Speaker 1: One more. Last question, okay.
45:38
>> Speaker 2: So you mentioned moral courage.
45:40
And I was wondering, what you think the GSB can do as an institution?
45:44
Or what individuals within the GSB can do to make it more likely that students exhibit moral courage in the future, then, about the same as it was when they came in?
45:56
>> Speaker 1: Well, it's a very, very good question.
45:58
I think about that a lot, and I think it's something as a faculty we should challenge ourselves with.
46:02
Could we do a better job?
46:03
I always think of the three A's when you've got a problem.
46:07
Don't know why I do three C's, three A's, whatever.
46:10
>> Speaker 1: [LAUGH] >> Speaker 1: There's awareness, there's analysis, and there's action, right?
46:15
If you're not even aware that it's a problem, you're not going to do anything.
46:18
And this is one of the issues around ethical challenges.
46:21
You've got to be aware that, whoa, this smells and feels to me like an ethical problem. So there's awareness.
46:27
And I think we can do somewhat of a better job in how do we teach people about awareness and how you have your antenna up about things that could be a slippery slope.
46:40
Analysis I think we do really well.
46:41
Once you're aware what are the issues and how could you resolve and how could you balance. But then it's action.
46:48
How do you teach action, which is all about having the courage to act?
46:53
The only way I know is to be in a spot where you're responsible.
46:57
So to me, the only way to teach that or give people a leg up is to hold them responsible for certain actions where they actually have to act more.
47:06
And I always think we could probably give more to students to do here.
47:11
Not so much more academic work, more responsibility for how the school operates and runs and the culture and the climate.
47:17
And so, you have to act and you have to speak up, and you have to call on another classmate or colleague about something that's not right.
47:27
I think that's one way you learn it, by having to be.
47:29
And maybe we have to formalize that, you're on this committee and you're on that, I don't know.
47:34
But you only learn it by doing.
47:36
It's one of those I do and I understand things.
47:40
Well, let me again say to the committee, thanks for the invitation, thank you for coming.
47:44
I am very pleased that my mother, who just came back with me from her 75th college reunion, there were only two people there.
47:54
>> Speaker 1: [LAUGH] >> Speaker 1: From her class, from her class.
47:57
>> Speaker 1: [LAUGH] >> Speaker 1: And she was the only ambulatory one.
48:02
So she got to lead the parade, which is pretty spectacular, and it's really nice she could do it. Thank you. >> Speaker 1: [APPLAUSE]