LEADERSHIP FOR GOOD: PART 1

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72 TD | August 2017

development
CAREER DEVELOPMENT

W hat word do you hear quite often in the business world, social
events, and especially when you are considering your career?
Networking. While it has become somewhat of a buzzword, it is

extremely important as a life skill.
What is networking? First, let’s talk about what it’s not: Networking is not

about collecting business cards. Rather, it is about building relationships.
A more formal definition of networking is that it’s a supportive system of

sharing information and connections among individuals having a common in-
terest. You have heard the expression that whenever we want to get something
done we can do it most effectively through people and relationships. That is
true not only when it comes to one’s career, but also in one’s personal life.

The Lifelong Pursuit of Networking

Making professional and personal connections shouldn’t be a chore.

BY AMY DINNING

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August 2017 | TD 73

I believe that the reason I am suc-
cessful and fulfilled in my life is
because of the network that I am
constantly building and maintaining.
Networking enables us to gain new in-
formation, find answers to challenges,
understand others’ viewpoints, de-
velop ourselves and others, and gain
new connections and friendships. We
learn and grow through these rela-
tionships and being open to what we
can experience from them.

Where to network
The truth is, we can network anywhere
and everywhere. I am always looking
for people who I can help, new infor-
mation that I can learn, ways that I can
connect people to information and
people to other people, and ways to
broaden my own horizons. Some great
examples of places to network are:

• work
• socials events
• professional associations
• networking or informal groups
• gatherings with family and friends
• children’s activities
• religious organization events
• clubs
• sporting events.

How to network
Now that you know where you can
network, how do you go about it?

First, it is important to have a mind-
set that you are always networking,
and to be prepared to do so.

If you are attending an event and
know who will be there, decide be-
forehand who you would like to
connect with. Research those individ-
uals online so you can determine what
you might have in common and top-
ics that you can discuss. Think about
questions you might ask these individ-
uals or things you want to learn from
them.

When you’re at parties or network-

ing events, be willing to break the ice
and go up to people. Usually people
are waiting for someone else to come
up to them—be that person. Be curious
and inquisitive. Ask great questions
that get people talking. Show interest
in others and what they have to share.

Take that one step further and have
something of value to share with them.
Think of ways that you can add value to
that person, such as information, di-
rection, resources, or connections.

Follow up to stay in contact with the
people you network with. Many people
meet others but never follow up, thus
losing valuable connections. Ask if you
can connect on LinkedIn and make
sure to send them a personalized invi-
tation. You might want to remind the
person what you discussed in person.

Accept that you will not have
strong connections with everyone
you meet. Identify individuals who are
power connectors and work at main-
taining those relationships.

Remember, networking is about
forming mutually beneficial relation-
ships. Make sure that both of you have
the opportunity to share, ask ques-
tions, and learn from each other.

Keeping track of your network
Develop a record-keeping system for
your network. LinkedIn is a great tool
by which to make connections, stay
connected, and find connections. You
can export your LinkedIn connec-
tions to an Excel spreadsheet, then
add notes to track information, such
as where and when you met some-
one, what information you shared with
them, who they connected you to, and
any other information that you want
to remember.

Finally, how do you maintain your
network? If you are not in contact,
those connections fade over time. Here
are several strategies you might want
to use to keep your network alive:

Be visible, both online and in person.
I post on LinkedIn, tweet or retweet,
blog, write articles, and share infor-
mation that I believe benefits others.
I also attend networking events and
professional association gatherings to
make sure that I am visible.
Connect and reconnect. When at-
tending events, my goal is to make
new connections as well as to re-
connect with people already in my
network. I want to find out what is
happening with them, how I can help
them, and also share what is happen-
ing with me.
Make a special effort with power con-

nectors. Make it a point to reconnect
with power connectors on a regu-
lar basis. You will want to keep those
relationships alive and growing to
benefit both you and your connection.
Reach out in between events. Consider
sending a newsletter to your network-
ing circle every so often to stay in
touch. If you are in job transition, this
is a critical tool in your job search tool-
kit. You can send an email, a message
through LinkedIn, or use a service such
as Constant Contact. The newsletter I
send includes my current role, how I
can help others, and how they can help
me.

You never know when you might
need your network, so it is important
to find ways to keep in contact, recon-
nect, and add value wherever possible.

I cannot put a price on the friend-
ships I have developed, knowledge
that I have gained, and the many other
benefits I have acquired as a result of
focusing on networking as a lifelong
pursuit. Plus, I believe that I have been
able to help many people through my
openness to networking.

What’s stopping you? Don’t miss
out; start networking today.

Amy Dinning is a senior training and talent

development leader; [email protected].

Copyright of TD: Talent Development is the property of Association for Talent Development
and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without
the copyright holder’s express written permission. However, users may print, download, or
email articles for individual use.

HCM Sales, Marketing & Alliance Excellence presented by HR.com OCTOBER 2018 31 Submit Your Articles

The most successful entrepreneurs typically
have one thing in common (other than a great

business idea): They’re good at networking.

Networking is an important skill to learn for small
business owners. Some people are naturals who
can work from a room without breaking a sweat and
seem to float from conversation to conversation.
Others often do break a sweat and tread water from
conversation to conversation.

If you’re in that second group, know it does get easier
with a bit of practice and trial and error.

In order to boost your networking confidence,
try breaking up the task into three main areas:
philosophy, networking, and follow-up. Here’s how.

1. Philosophy
When it comes to networking, it’s important to step
back and remember what this is all about. At the core
of it all, you’re looking to make connections that can
potentially help you down the road. Even if someone
seems like they have nothing to offer you, treat them
as if they do. You never know who they might know.

Set a goal for yourself.
To ensure you’re actually getting out there and
networking, set a goal. It could be a target for how
many events, meetings, happy hours, etc., you’re

4 networking tips All
small Business owners
should Know

tips for those who are not good in networking

By Milan Vracarich

going to attend each month. This is especially
important if you’re reluctant and don’t like doing it.

Take opportunities.
Go to events even if they don’t seem completely on
target with what you’re doing for your business. This
could be a networking happy hour with folks outside
your industry or a speaker discussing a topic you
already know. Go to those events and meet people
who might bring up future opportunities (business
partners, customers, clients).

Look for opportunities in unexpected places.
Whether it’s at your kid’s school or community events
(fairs, holiday boutiques), places where you might
not think to talk about business could be places for
creating partnerships or garnering future sales. Make
sure you turn over every rock in your own backyard.

Treat everyone you meet as an opportunity.
Even if they can’t help you today, you never know
the contacts someone has in their Rolodex. Making
people feel important and treating everyone as a
potential opportunity can open doors you previously
didn’t have access to.

Treat everyone you meet as a friend.
Don’t be shy to introduce yourself (which can be
easier said than done). The only way to get to a point
where you’re used to meeting new people is to get
out there and shake some hands.

HCM Sales, Marketing & Alliance Excellence presented by HR.com OCTOBER 2018 32 Submit Your Articles

4 Networking Tips All Small Business Owners Should Know

Reset competitors.
Think of competitors as potential mentors. Meet
them and attempt to nurture that relationship the
same way you would with anyone else. Not all
competitors will be receptive to this but those who
are can share helpful information or become good
avenues for advice when you need it. Don’t forget to
refer customers to your competitors, but only do so
when it makes sense for you and them.

Create a support system.
Family and friends are great for helping out in a
pinch. However, it’s important to have a network
of peers and a mentor to discuss ideas, solutions,
and problems.

2. networking
You’ve got a plan and you know what you want to do.
Now it’s time to execute.

From formal networking events and business
meetings to cups of coffee, happy hours, classes,
speeches, picnics, mentorships, volunteering —
the list of networking opportunities/events is
almost endless.

If, as we mentioned above, you mentally frame
everything as a networking opportunity, you’ll be
prepared to take advantage of every interaction that
comes your way.

Here are some things to do in order to prepare
yourself as well as a few dos and don’ts.

Prepare
1. Have your elevator pitch nailed down and make it
second nature. It should be easy to explain what you
do and why you do it. For deeper conversations, it’s a
good idea to also nail down how you do it.

2. This might seem obvious, but make sure you have
business cards on you at all times. You don’t have to
carry a stack in your pocket but keep extras in your
car and bag, so you can always refill your wallet or
pocket at a moment’s notice.

3. If you go to any sort of networking event with another
person, make sure you’re not just talking to that person
all night. It’s nice to go with someone you know so you
have a home base in case you run into a lull, and they
can also introduce you to people they know.

4. Come prepared with things to talk about or
general questions you can ask other people about
themselves or their business.

5. Do your research before you go to an event.
Who will be there? What it’s all about? Will there be
snacks? Give yourself every advantage by doing
your homework.

6. Try to get a speaking spot at an event. Speaking at
an event can sometimes get you the biggest bang for
your buck. It doesn’t have to be a major conference.
Something as simple as an alumni association
event is a great chance to speak in front of others.
Not just for those who hear you speak but all of the
people after the event who come up to you for that
one-on-one time. 

Dos
1. Genuinely listen when you’ve asked a question.
Practice active listening and don’t think about what
you’re going to say next.

2. Be interested in what others have done or are
doing. When you’re at an event, you’re not just selling
yourself. Ask questions. Focus on them.

3. Be humble. Give a good handshake and dress
appropriately for the occasion. Don’t brag or try to
impress someone with money.

HCM Sales, Marketing & Alliance Excellence presented by HR.com OCTOBER 2018 33 Submit Your Articles

Don’ts
1. Don’t overindulge on free drinks. You want to
remember the connections you make, and you don’t
want to be that person at a networking event.

2. Don’t talk to someone for too long. Talk, get to
know them, exchange information if it makes sense
to do so, and then move on.

3. Don’t talk during a presentation or over a speaker.
If you’re at some sort of presentation or some
community event with a presentation component, it’s
rude to continue networking while others are trying to
pay attention.

3. follow-up
Networking isn’t a one and done thing. Once you
meet folks, it’s important to keep those relationships
going. But now that you’ve done the legwork, what’s
next? After you network, how do you keep your
network? Use social media.

Nothing beats coffee meet-ups and lunches for that
face-to-face time, but you need to keep those social
networks, so you won’t fall out of mind if you’re trying
to keep something going.

That doesn’t mean you need to post on social media
all day every day, but it’s good to stay engaged with
what others are doing. Send the occasional email,
message or comment. It’s also a good idea to share
others’ wins with your own network.

The platforms you choose to utilize for social
networking can depend on your industry.

LinkedIn, in general, is easily the best bet for small
business owners. It’s the most business-driven
platform and its sole intention is for professionals to
use it for their digital networking.

Facebook is great for networking on a deeper level.
Just be mindful that no matter how private your
profile may be, those in your network can see what
you do, screenshot it and share it publicly.

Twitter is a good platform for keeping up with current
events and industry-related influencers. It’s especially
helpful for networking at in-person conferences.

A good idea to stay informed at all times is to set
up Google alerts for your business, your industry
and some of your competitors. This will also help
with networking because you can easily share
relevant content on your social media accounts
and also congratulate competitors and industry
leaders for their successes, nourishing those
positive relationships.

4. lather, rinse, repeat
Remember to pay it forward. If someone introduces
you to some really great connections, make sure
you’re introducing them to great connections as well.
Sometimes you need to give to get.

Also, having a great network can help when you’re
ready to expand your business and hire an employee.
You can utilize these relationships to find the perfect
candidate to help run your business and take it to
new levels. Ideally, it’s someone who can take over
tasks and responsibilities that you don’t need to do
on a day-to-day basis. This will free up valuable time,
so you can focus on expanding the business and
work on expanding your network.

The whole idea of networking is cyclical. One digital
platform for finding those in-person community
events or networking opportunities is meetup.com.
You can actively engage in those online communities
and then meet with the same folks in person.
Then, go back to the top of this article and start all
over again.

This article originally appeared here.

Milan Vracarich is a Digital Marketer
with a passion for the written word.
With a background in journalism,
his focus is to always discover the
right story to align with big-picture
objectives.

Would you like to comment?

4 Networking Tips All Small Business Owners Should Know

Copyright of HCM Sales, Marketing & Alliance Excellence Essentials is the property of
HR.com, Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a
listserv without the copyright holder’s express written permission. However, users may print,
download, or email articles for individual use.

www.hbrreprints.org

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How Leaders Create
and Use Networks

by Herminia Ibarra and Mark Hunter

•

Included with this full-text

Harvard Business Review

article:

The Idea in Brief—the core idea

The Idea in Practice—putting the idea to work

1

Article Summary

2

How Leaders Create and Use Networks

A list of related materials, with annotations to guide further

exploration of the article’s ideas and applications

9

Further Reading

Successful leaders have a nose

for opportunity and a knack

for knowing whom to tap to

get things done. These

qualities depend on a set of

strategic networking skills

that nonleaders rarely possess.

Reprint R0701C
This document is authorized for use only by Yaina Delgado in Dynamic Leadership-Summer 2023 at Walden University (Canvas), 2023.

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How Leaders Create and Use Networks

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The Idea in Brief The Idea in Practice

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What separates successful leaders from the
rest of the pack? Networking: creating a tis-
sue of personal contacts to provide the
support, feedback, and resources needed
to get things done.

Yet many leaders avoid networking. Some
think they don’t have time for it. Others dis-
dain it as manipulative.

To succeed as a leader, Ibarra and Hunter rec-
ommend building three types of networks:

•

Operational

—people you need to ac-
complish your assigned, routine tasks.

•

Personal

—kindred spirits outside your
organization who can help you with per-
sonal advancement.

•

Strategic

—people outside your control
who will enable you to reach key organi-
zational objectives.

You need all three types of networks. But to

really

succeed, you must master strategic
networking—by interacting regularly with
people who can open your eyes to new
business opportunities and help you capi-
talize on them. Build your strategic net-
work, and burnish your own—and your
company’s—performance.

The most effective leaders understand the differences among the three types of networks and
how to build them.

LEVERAGING YOUR NETWORKS

Networking takes work. To lessen the pain and
increase the gain:

•

Mind your mind-set.

Accept that network-
ing is one of the most important require-
ments of a leadership role. To overcome any
qualms about it, identify a person you re-
spect who networks effectively and ethi-
cally. Observe how he or she uses networks
to accomplish goals.

•

Reallocate your time.

Master the art of del-
egation, to liberate time you can then
spend on cultivating networks.

•

Establish connections.

Create reasons for
interacting with people outside your func-
tion or organization; for instance, by taking
advantage of social interests to set the
stage for addressing strategic concerns.

Example:

An investment banker invited key clients to
the theatre (a passion of hers) several times
a year. Through these events, she devel-
oped her own business

and

learned things
about her clients’ companies that gener-

ated business and ideas for other divisions
in her firm.

•

Give and take continually.

Don’t wait until
you really need something badly to ask for
a favor from a network member. Instead,
take every opportunity to give to—and re-
ceive from—people in your networks,
whether you need help or not.

Operational network Personal network Strategic network

Network’s
purpose

Getting work done
efficiently

Develop professional
skills through coaching
and mentoring;
exchange important
referrals and needed
outside information.

Figure out future priorities
and challenges; get stake-
holder support for them.

How to find
network
members

Identify individuals
who can block or
support a project.

Participate in profes-
sional associations,
alumni groups, clubs,
and personal-interest
communities.

Identify lateral and vertical
relationships with other
functional and business-
unit managers—people
outside your immediate
control—who can help you
determine how your role
and contribution fit into
the overall picture.

This document is authorized for use only by Yaina Delgado in Dynamic Leadership-Summer 2023 at Walden University (Canvas), 2023.

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How Leaders Create
and Use Networks

by Herminia Ibarra and Mark Hunter

harvard business review • january 2007 page 2

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Successful leaders have a nose for opportunity and a knack for knowing

whom to tap to get things done. These qualities depend on a set of

strategic networking skills that nonleaders rarely possess.

When Henrik Balmer became the production
manager and a board member of a newly
bought-out cosmetics firm, improving his net-
work was the last thing on his mind. The main
problem he faced was time: Where would he
find the hours to guide his team through a
major upgrade of the production process and
then think about strategic issues like expand-
ing the business? The only way he could carve
out time and still get home to his family at a
decent hour was to lock himself—literally—in
his office. Meanwhile, there were day-to-day
issues to resolve, like a recurring conflict with
his sales director over custom orders that com-
promised production efficiency. Networking,
which Henrik defined as the unpleasant task
of trading favors with strangers, was a luxury
he could not afford. But when a new acquisi-
tion was presented at a board meeting with-
out his input, he abruptly realized he was out
of the loop—not just inside the company, but
outside, too—at a moment when his future in
the company was at stake.

Henrik’s case is not unusual. Over the past

two years, we have been following a cohort of
30 managers making their way through what
we call the leadership transition, an inflection
point in their careers that challenges them to
rethink both themselves and their roles. In the
process, we’ve found that networking—creating
a fabric of personal contacts who will pro-
vide support, feedback, insight, resources, and
information—is simultaneously one of the most
self-evident and one of the most dreaded de-
velopmental challenges that aspiring leaders
must address.

Their discomfort is understandable. Typi-
cally, managers rise through the ranks by dint
of a strong command of the technical elements
of their jobs and a nose-to-the-grindstone focus
on accomplishing their teams’ objectives.
When challenged to move beyond their func-
tional specialties and address strategic issues
facing the overall business, many managers do
not immediately grasp that this will involve
relational—not analytical—tasks. Nor do they
easily understand that exchanges and interac-
tions with a diverse array of current and poten-

This document is authorized for use only by Yaina Delgado in Dynamic Leadership-Summer 2023 at Walden University (Canvas), 2023.

How Leaders Create and Use Networks

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harvard business review • january 2007 page 3

tial stakeholders are not distractions from
their “real work” but are actually at the heart
of their new leadership roles.

Like Henrik (whose identity we’ve dis-
guised, along with all the other managers we
describe here), a majority of the managers
we work with say that they find networking
insincere or manipulative—at best, an elegant
way of using people. Not surprisingly, for
every manager who instinctively constructs
and maintains a useful network, we see sev-
eral who struggle to overcome this innate re-
sistance. Yet the alternative to networking is
to fail—either in reaching for a leadership po-
sition or in succeeding at it.

Watching our emerging leaders approach
this daunting task, we discovered that three dis-
tinct but interdependent forms of networking—

operational, personal,

and

strategic

—played a
vital role in their transitions. The first helped
them manage current internal responsibilities,
the second boosted their personal develop-
ment, and the third opened their eyes to new
business directions and the stakeholders they
would need to enlist. While our managers dif-
fered in how well they pursued operational
and personal networking, we discovered that
almost all of them underutilized strategic net-
working. In this article, we describe key fea-
tures of each networking form (summarized in
the exhibit “The Three Forms of Networking”)
and, using our managers’ experiences, explain
how a three-pronged networking strategy can
become part and parcel of a new leader’s de-
velopment plan.

Operational Networking

All managers need to build good working rela-
tionships with the people who can help them
do their jobs. The number and breadth of peo-
ple involved can be impressive—such opera-
tional networks include not only direct re-
ports and superiors but also peers within an
operational unit, other internal players with
the power to block or support a project, and
key outsiders such as suppliers, distributors,
and customers. The purpose of this type of
networking is to ensure coordination and co-
operation among people who have to know
and trust one another in order to accomplish
their immediate tasks. That isn’t always easy,
but it is relatively straightforward, because the
task provides focus and a clear criterion for
membership in the network: Either you’re

necessary to the job and helping to get it done,
or you’re not.

Although operational networking was the
form that came most naturally to the manag-
ers we studied, nearly every one had important
blind spots regarding people and groups they
depended on to make things happen. In one
case, Alistair, an accounting manager who
worked in an entrepreneurial firm with several
hundred employees, was suddenly promoted
by the company’s founder to financial director
and given a seat on the board. He was both the
youngest and the least-experienced board
member, and his instinctive response to these
new responsibilities was to reestablish his func-
tional credentials. Acting on a hint from the
founder that the company might go public,
Alistair undertook a reorganization of the ac-
counting department that would enable the
books to withstand close scrutiny. Alistair suc-
ceeded brilliantly in upgrading his team’s capa-
bilities, but he missed the fact that only a mi-
nority of the seven-person board shared the
founder’s ambition. A year into Alistair’s ten-
ure, discussion about whether to take the com-
pany public polarized the board, and he dis-
covered that all that time cleaning up the
books might have been better spent sounding
out his codirectors.

One of the problems with an exclusive reli-
ance on operational networks is that they are
usually geared toward meeting objectives as
assigned, not toward asking the strategic ques-
tion, “What

should

we be doing?” By the same
token, managers do not exercise as much per-
sonal choice in assembling operational rela-
tionships as they do in weaving personal and
strategic networks, because to a large extent
the right relationships are prescribed by the
job and organizational structure. Thus, most
operational networking occurs within an orga-
nization, and ties are determined in large part
by routine, short-term demands. Relationships
formed with outsiders, such as board mem-
bers, customers, and regulators, are directly
task-related and tend to be bounded and con-
strained by demands determined at a higher
level. Of course, an individual manager can
choose to deepen and develop the ties to dif-
ferent extents, and all managers exercise dis-
cretion over who gets priority attention. It’s
the quality of relationships—the rapport and
mutual trust—that gives an operational net-
work its power. Nonetheless, the substantial

Herminia Ibarra

(herminia.ibarra@
insead.edu) is the Insead Chaired Pro-
fessor of Organizational Behavior at In-
sead in Fontainebleau, France, where
she also directs the Leadership Transi-
tion, an executive program for manag-
ers moving into broader leadership
roles. Her most recent book is

Working
Identity: Unconventional Strategies for
Reinventing Your Career

(Harvard Busi-
ness School Press, 2003).

Mark Hunter

([email protected]) is an inves-
tigative journalist and an adjunct pro-
fessor of communications at Insead. He
is the author of

The Passions of Men:
Work and Love in the Age of Stress

(Put-
nam, 1988).

This document is authorized for use only by Yaina Delgado in Dynamic Leadership-Summer 2023 at Walden University (Canvas), 2023.

How Leaders Create and Use Networks

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harvard business review • january 2007 page 4

constraints on network membership mean these
connections are unlikely to deliver value to man-
agers beyond assistance with the task at hand.

The typical manager in our group was more
concerned with sustaining cooperation within
the existing network than with building rela-
tionships to face nonroutine or unforeseen
challenges. But as a manager moves into a
leadership role, his or her network must reori-
ent itself externally and toward the future.

Personal Networking

We observed that once aspiring leaders
like Alistair awaken to the dangers of an ex-
cessively internal focus, they begin to seek
kindred spirits outside their organizations. Si-
multaneously, they become aware of the limi-
tations of their social skills, such as a lack of
knowledge about professional domains be-
yond their own, which makes it difficult for
them to find common ground with people out-
side their usual circles. Through professional
associations, alumni groups, clubs, and per-
sonal interest communities, managers gain
new perspectives that allow them to advance
in their careers. This is what we mean by per-
sonal networking.

Many of the managers we study question

why they should spend precious time on an ac-
tivity so indirectly related to the work at hand.
Why widen one’s circle of casual acquaintances
when there isn’t time even for urgent tasks?
The answer is that these contacts provide im-
portant referrals, information, and, often, de-
velopmental support such as coaching and
mentoring. A newly appointed factory direc-
tor, for example, faced with a turnaround-or-
close-down situation that was paralyzing his
staff, joined a business organization—and
through it met a lawyer who became his coun-
sel in the turnaround. Buoyed by his success,
he networked within his company’s headquar-
ters in search of someone who had dealt with a
similar crisis. Eventually, he found two mentors.

A personal network can also be a safe space
for personal development and as such can pro-
vide a foundation for strategic networking. The
experience of Timothy, a principal in a midsize
software company, is a good example. Like his
father, Timothy stuttered. When he had the
opportunity to prepare for meetings, his stut-
ter was not an issue, but spontaneous encoun-
ters inside and outside the company were
dreadfully painful. To solve this problem, he
began accepting at least two invitations per
week to the social gatherings he had assidu-

THE THREE FORMS OF NETWORKING

Managers who think they are adept at networking are often operating only at an operational or personal level.
Effective leaders learn to employ networks for strategic purposes.

Operational

Getting work done efficiently;
maintaining the capacities and
functions required of the group.

Contacts are mostly internal and
oriented toward current demands.

Key contacts are relatively nondis-
cretionary; they are prescribed
mostly by the task and organiza-
tional structure, so it is very clear
who is relevant.

Depth: building strong working
relationships.

Personal

Enhancing personal and profes-
sional development; providing
referrals to useful information
and contacts.

Contacts are mostly external and
oriented toward current interests
and future potential interests.

Key contacts are mostly discre-
tionary; it is not always clear who
is relevant.

Breadth: reaching out to contacts
who can make referrals.

Strategic

Figuring out future priorities and
challenges; getting stakeholder
support for them.

Contacts are internal and external
and oriented toward the future.

Key contacts follow from the
strategic context and the organi-
zational environment, but specific
membership is discretionary; it is
not always clear who is relevant.

Leverage: creating inside-outside
links.

Purpose

Location and tem-
poral orientation

Players and
recruitment

Network attributes
and key behaviors

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ously ignored before. Before each event, he
asked who else had been invited and did back-
ground research on the other guests so that he
could initiate conversations. The hardest part,
he said, was “getting through the door.” Once
inside, his interest in the conversations helped
him forget himself and master his stutter. As
his stutter diminished, he also applied himself
to networking across his company, whereas
previously he had taken refuge in his technical
expertise. Like Timothy, several of our emerg-
ing leaders successfully used personal network-
ing as a relatively safe way to expose problems
and seek insight into solutions—safe, that is,
compared with strategic networking, in which
the stakes are far higher.

Personal networks are largely external,
made up of discretionary links to people with
whom we have something in common. As a re-
sult, what makes a personal network powerful
is its referral potential. According to the fa-
mous six degrees of separation principle, our
personal contacts are valuable to the extent
that they help us reach, in as few connections
as possible, the far-off person who has the in-
formation we need.

In watching managers struggle to widen
their professional relationships in ways that
feel both natural and legitimate to them, we
repeatedly saw them shift their time and en-

ergy from operational to personal networking.
For people who have rarely looked outside
their organizations, this is an important first
step, one that fosters a deeper understanding
of themselves and the environments in which
they move. Ultimately, however, personal net-
working alone won’t propel managers through
the leadership transition. Aspiring leaders may
find people who awaken new interests but fail
to become comfortable with the power players
at the level above them. Or they may achieve
new influence within a professional commu-
nity but fail to harness those ties in the service
of organizational goals. That’s why managers
who know they need to develop their network-
ing skills, and make a real effort to do so, none-
theless may end up feeling like they have
wasted their time and energy. As we’ll see, per-
sonal networking will not help a manager
through the leadership transition unless he or
she learns how to bring those connections to
bear on organizational strategy.

Strategic Networking

When managers begin the delicate transition
from functional manager to business leader,
they must start to concern themselves with
broad strategic issues. Lateral and vertical rela-
tionships with other functional and business
unit managers—all people outside their im-

From Functional Manager to Business Leader: How Companies Can Help

Executives who oversee management devel-
opment know how to spot critical inflection
points: the moments when highly successful
people must change their perspective on
what is important and, accordingly, how they
spend their time. Many organizations still
promote people on the basis of their perfor-
mance in roles whose requirements differ
dramatically from those of leadership roles.
And many new leaders feel that they are
going it alone, without coaching or guidance.
By being sensitive to the fact that most
strong technical or functional managers lack
the capabilities required to build strategic
networks that advance their personal and
professional goals, human resources and
learning professionals can take steps to help
in this important area.

For example, Genesis Park, an innovative in-
house leadership development program at

PricewaterhouseCoopers, focuses explicitly on
building networks. The five-month program,
during which participants are released from
their client responsibilities, includes business
case development, strategic projects, team
building, change management projects, and
in-depth discussions with business leaders
from inside and outside the company. The
young leaders who participate end up with a
strong internal-external nexus of ties to sup-
port them as their careers evolve.

Companies that recognize the importance
of leadership networking can also do a lot to
help people overcome their innate discomfort
by creating natural ways for them to extend
their networks. When Nissan CEO Carlos
Ghosn sought to break down crippling inter-
nal barriers at the company, he created cross-
functional teams of middle managers from di-
verse units and charged them with proposing

solutions to problems ranging from supply
costs to product design. Nissan subsequently
institutionalized the teams, not just as a way
to solve problems but also to encourage lateral
networks. Rather than avoid the extra work, as-
piring leaders ask for these assignments.

Most professional development is based on
the notion that successful people acquire new
role-appropriate skills as they move up the hi-
erarchy. But making the transition from man-
ager to leader requires subtraction as well as
addition: To make room for new competen-
cies, managers must rely less on their older,
well-honed skills. To do so, they must change
their perspective on how to add value and
what to contribute. Eventually, they must also
transform how they think and who they are.
Companies that help their top talent reinvent
themselves will better prepare them for a suc-
cessful leadership transition.

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mediate control—become a lifeline for figur-
ing out how their own contributions fit into
the big picture. Thus strategic networking
plugs the aspiring leader into a set of relation-
ships and information sources that collectively
embody the power to achieve personal and or-
ganizational goals.

Operating beside players with diverse affilia-
tions, backgrounds, objectives, and incentives
requires a manager to formulate business
rather than functional objectives, and to work
through the coalitions and networks needed to
sell ideas and compete for resources. Consider
Sophie, a manager who, after rising steadily
through the ranks in logistics and distribution,
was stupefied to learn that the CEO was con-
sidering a radical reorganization of her func-
tion that would strip her of some responsibili-
ties. Rewarded to date for incremental annual
improvements, she had failed to notice shifting
priorities in the wider market and the resulting
internal shuffle for resources and power at the
higher levels of her company. Although she
had built a loyal, high-performing team, she
had few relationships outside her group to
help her anticipate the new imperatives, let
alone give her ideas about how to respond.
After she argued that distribution issues were
her purview, and failed to be persuasive, she
hired consultants to help her prepare a coun-
terproposal. But Sophie’s boss simply con-
cluded that she lacked a broad, longer-term
business perspective. Frustrated, Sophie con-
templated leaving the company. Only after
some patient coaching from a senior manager
did she understand that she had to get out of
her unit and start talking to opinion leaders in-
side and outside the company to form a sell-
able plan for the future.

What differentiates a leader from a man-
ager, research tells us, is the ability to figure
out where to go and to enlist the people and
groups necessary to get there. Recruiting stake-
holders, lining up allies and sympathizers, di-
agnosing the political landscape, and broker-
ing conversations among unconnected parties
are all part of a leader’s job. As they step up to
the leadership transition, some managers ac-
cept their growing dependence on others and
seek to transform it into mutual influence.
Others dismiss such work as “political” and, as
a result, undermine their ability to advance
their goals.

Several of the participants in our sample

chose the latter approach, justifying their
choice as a matter of personal values and integ-
rity. In one case, Jody, who managed a depart-
ment in a large company under what she de-
scribed as “dysfunctional” leadership, refused
even to try to activate her extensive network
within the firm when internal adversaries took
over key functions of her unit. When we asked
her why she didn’t seek help from anyone in
the organization to stop this coup, she replied
that she refused to play “stupid political
games….You can only do what you think is the
ethical and right thing from your perspective.”
Stupid or not, those games cost her the respect
and support of her direct reports and cowork-
ers, who hesitated to follow someone they per-
ceived as unwilling to defend herself. Eventu-
ally she had no choice but to leave.

The key to a good strategic network is lever-
age: the ability to marshal information, sup-
port, and resources from one sector of a net-
work to achieve results in another. Strategic
networkers use indirect influence, convincing
one person in the network to get someone
else, who is not in the network, to take a needed
action. Moreover, strategic networkers don’t
just influence their relational environment;
they shape it in their own image by moving
and hiring subordinates, changing suppliers
and sources of financing, lobbying to place al-
lies in peer positions, and even restructuring
their boards to create networks favorable to
their business goals. Jody abjured such tactics,
but her adversaries did not.

Strategic networking can be difficult for
emerging leaders because it absorbs a signifi-
cant amount of the time and energy that man-
agers usually devote to meeting their many op-
erational demands. This is one reason why
many managers drop their strategic network-
ing precisely when they need it most: when
their units are in trouble and only outside sup-
port can rescue them. The trick is not to hide
in the operational network but to develop it
into a more strategic one.

One manager we studied, for example, used
lateral and functional contacts throughout his
firm to resolve tensions with his boss that re-
sulted from substantial differences in style and
strategic approaches between the two. Tied
down in operational chores at a distant loca-
tion, the manager had lost contact with head-
quarters. He resolved the situation by simulta-
neously obliging his direct reports to take on

As a manager moves into

a leadership role, his or

her network must

reorient itself externally

and toward the future.

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more of the local management effort and send-
ing messages through his network that would
help bring him back into the loop with the boss.

Operational, personal, and strategic networks
are not mutually exclusive. One manager we
studied used his personal passion, hunting, to
meet people from professions as diverse as
stonemasonry and household moving. Almost
none of these hunting friends had anything to
do with his work in the consumer electronics
industry, yet they all had to deal with one of
his own daily concerns: customer relations.
Hearing about their problems and techniques
allowed him to view his own from a different
perspective and helped him define principles
that he could test in his work. Ultimately, what
began as a personal network of hunting part-
ners became operationally and strategically
valuable to this manager. The key was his abil-
ity to build inside-outside links for maximum
leverage. But we’ve seen others who avoided
networking, or failed at it, because they let in-
terpersonal chemistry, not strategic needs, de-
termine which relationships they cultivated.

Just Do It

The word “work” is part of networking, and it is
not easy work, because it involves reaching out-
side the borders of a manager’s comfort zone.
How, then, can managers lessen the pain and
increase the gain? The trick is to leverage the
elements from each domain of networking into
the others—to seek out personal contacts who
can be objective, strategic counselors, for exam-
ple, or to transform colleagues in adjacent func-
tions into a constituency. Above all, many man-
agers will need to change their attitudes about
the legitimacy and necessity of networking.

Mind your mind-set.

In our ongoing discus-
sions with managers learning to improve their
networking skills, we often hear, “That’s all
well and good, but I already have a day job.”
Others, like Jody, consider working through
networks a way to rely on “whom you know”
rather than “what you know”—a hypocritical,
even unethical way to get things done. What-
ever the reason, when aspiring leaders do not
believe that networking is one of the most im-
portant requirements of their new jobs, they
will not allocate enough time and effort to see
it pay off.

The best solution we’ve seen to this trap is a
good role model. Many times, what appears to
be unpalatable or unproductive behavior takes

on a new light when a person you respect does
it well and ethically. For example, Gabriel Che-
nard, general manager for Europe of a group
of consumer product brands, learned from the
previous general manager how to take advan-
tage of branch visits to solidify his relationships
with employees and customers. Every flight and
car trip became a venue for catching up and
building relationships with the people who
were accompanying him. Watching how much
his boss got done on what would otherwise be
downtime, Gabriel adopted the practice as a
crucial part of his own management style. Net-
working effectively and ethically, like any other
tacit skill, is a matter of judgment and intu-
ition. We learn by observing and getting feed-
back from those for whom it’s second nature.

Work from the outside in.

One of the most
daunting aspects of strategic networking is
that there often seems to be no natural “ex-
cuse” for making contact with a more senior
person outside one’s function or business unit.
It’s difficult to build a relationship with any-
one, let alone a senior executive, without a
reason for interacting, like a common task or a
shared purpose.

Some successful managers find common
ground from the outside in—by, for instance,
transposing a personal interest into the strate-
gic domain. Linda Henderson is a good exam-
ple. An investment banker responsible for a
group of media industry clients, she always
wondered how to connect to some of her se-
nior colleagues who served other industries.
She resolved to make time for an extracurricu-
lar passion—the theater—in a way that would
enhance her business development activities.
Four times a year, her secretary booked a buf-
fet dinner at a downtown hotel and reserved a
block of theater tickets. Key clients were in-
vited. Through these events, Linda not only de-
veloped her own business but also learned
about her clients’ companies in a way that gen-
erated ideas for other parts of her firm, thus
enabling her to engage with colleagues.

Other managers build outside-inside connec-
tions by using their functional interests or ex-
pertise. For example, communities of practice
exist (or can easily be created on the Internet)
in almost every area of business from brand
management to Six Sigma to global strategy.
Savvy managers reach out to kindred spirits
outside their organizations to contribute and
multiply their knowledge; the information they

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glean, in more cases than not, becomes the
“hook” for making internal connections.

Re-allocate your time.

If an aspiring leader
has not yet mastered the art of delegation, he
or she will find many reasons not to spend
time networking. Participating in formal and
informal meetings with people in other units
takes time away from functional responsibili-
ties and internal team affairs. Between the ob-
vious payoff of a task accomplished and the
ambiguous, often delayed rewards of network-
ing, naive managers repeatedly choose the
former. The less they practice networking, the
less efficient at it they become, and the vicious
cycle continues.

Henrik, the production manager and board
member we described earlier, for example, did
what he needed to do in order to prepare for
board meetings but did not associate with fellow
board members outside those formal events. As
a result, he was frequently surprised when other
board members raised issues at the heart of his
role. In contrast, effective business leaders spend
a lot of time every day gathering the informa-
tion they need to meet their goals, relying on
informal discussions with a lot of people who
are not necessarily in charge of an issue or task.
They network in order to obtain information
continually, not just at formal meetings.

Ask and you shall receive.

Many managers
equate having a good network with having a
large database of contacts, or attending high-
profile professional conferences and events. In
fact, we’ve seen people kick off a networking
initiative by improving their record keeping or
adopting a network management tool. But
they falter at the next step—picking up the
phone. Instead, they wait until they need
something

badly

. The best networkers do ex-
actly the opposite: They take every opportu-
nity to give to, and receive from, the network,
whether they need help or not.

A network lives and thrives only when it is
used. A good way to begin is to make a simple
request or take the initiative to connect two
people who would benefit from meeting each
other. Doing something—anything—gets the
ball rolling and builds confidence that one
does, in fact, have something to contribute.

Stick to it.

It takes a while to reap the bene-
fits of networking. We have seen many manag-
ers resolve to put networking at the top of
their agendas, only to be derailed by the first

crisis that comes along. One example is Harris
Roberts, a regulatory affairs expert who realized
he needed a broader network to achieve his
goal of becoming a business unit manager. To
force himself into what felt like an “unnatural
act,” Harris volunteered to be the liaison for
his business school cohort’s alumni network.
But six months later, when a major new-drug
approval process overwhelmed his calendar,
Harris dropped all outside activities. Two
years later, he found himself out of touch and
still a functional manager. He failed to recog-
nize that by not taking the time to attend in-
dustry conferences or compare notes with his
peers, he was missing out on the strategic per-
spective and information that would make him
a more attractive candidate for promotion.

Building a leadership network is less a mat-
ter of skill than of will. When first efforts do
not bring quick rewards, some may simply con-
clude that networking isn’t among their tal-
ents. But networking is not a talent; nor does it
require a gregarious, extroverted personality. It
is a skill, one that takes practice. We have seen
over and over again that people who work at
networking can learn not only how to do it
well but also how to enjoy it. And they tend to
be more successful in their careers than those
who fail to leverage external ties or insist on
defining their jobs narrowly.

Making a successful leadership transition re-
quires a shift from the confines of a clearly de-
fined operational network. Aspiring leaders
must learn to build and use strategic networks
that cross organizational and functional bound-
aries, and then link them up in novel and inno-
vative ways. It is a challenge to make the leap
from a lifetime of functional contributions and
hands-on control to the ambiguous process of
building and working through networks. Lead-
ers must find new ways of defining themselves
and develop new relationships to anchor and
feed their emerging personas. They must also
accept that networking is one of the most im-
portant requirements of their new leadership
roles and continue to allocate enough time
and effort to see it pay off.

Reprint R0701C

To order, see the next page
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Savvy managers reach

out to kindred spirits

outside their

organizations to

contribute and multiply

their knowledge; the

information they glean,

in more cases than not,

becomes the “hook” for

making internal

connections.

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M

A N A G I N G

Y

O U R S E L F

How Leaders Create and Use Networks

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page 9

Further Reading

A R T I C L E S

Competent Jerks, Lovable Fools, and the
Formation of Social Networks

by Tiziana Casciaro and Miguel Sousa Lobo

Harvard Business Review

June 2005
Product no. R0506E

Operational networks pose a dilemma: Do you
collaborate on a key project with those col-
leagues best able to do the job? Or those you
like? Many managers opt for likeability over
ability. True, good things happen when people
who like each other collaborate: Projects flow,
and people gladly help each other. But people
who like each other typically share values and
ways of thinking, so they tend not to generate
fresh ideas. They also avoid unpleasant but able
colleagues—leaving the expertise of “compe-
tent jerks” untapped.

The solution? Support development of posi-
tive feelings in critical relationships; for exam-
ple, by creating cross-departmental project
teams to deemphasize functional alliances.
Have widely liked individuals serve as evange-
lists for important change initiatives: people
listen to likeable colleagues. And use coach-
ing to burnish competent jerks’ social skills.

How to Build Your Network

by Brian Uzzi and Shannon Dunlap

Harvard Business Review

December 2005
Product no. R0512B

The authors provide insights for building your
personal network—and transforming it into a
more strategic network. A strong personal
network helps promote and execute a prom-
ising strategy by delivering private informa-
tion, access to diverse skill sets, and power to
the individuals who can implement the plan.
But your personal network doesn’t just spring
into existence at professional association
meetings or college reunions. You have to
carefully construct it through relatively high-
stakes activities that bring you into contact
with a diverse group of people. When some-
one in one cluster of like-minded people
within your personal network knows some-
one else who belongs to a whole different
group, this “superconnector” can help you ex-
pose your idea to a new world, filled with
fresh opportunities for success. The authors
explain how to identify superconnectors and
diversify your contacts.

This document is authorized for use only by Yaina Delgado in Dynamic Leadership-Summer 2023 at Walden University (Canvas), 2023.

HBR.ORG July–AuGust 2013
reprinT r1307D

Spotlight oN iNFlUENCE

The Network
Secrets of Great
Change Agents
by Julie Battilana and Tiziana Casciaro

This document is authorized for use only by Yaina Delgado in Dynamic Leadership-Summer 2023 at Walden University (Canvas), 2023.

The Network
Secrets of Great
Change Agents

by Julie Battilana and Tiziana Casciaro

Spotlight Artwork Jessica Snow
Louis II, 2010, acrylic on paper
13.5″ x 11.5″

ChANgE iS hArd, especially in a large organization.
Numerous studies have shown that employees tend
instinctively to oppose change initiatives because
they disrupt established power structures and ways
of getting things done. However, some leaders do
succeed—often spectacularly—at transforming their
workplaces. What makes them able to exert this
sort of influence when the vast majority can’t? So
many organizations are contemplating turnarounds,
restructurings, and strategic shifts these days that
it’s essential to understand what successful change
agents do differently. We set out to gain that insight
by focusing on organizations in which size, complex-
ity, and tradition make it exceptionally difficult to
achieve reform.

There is perhaps no better example than the
UK’s National Health Service. Established in 1946,
the NHS is an enormous, government-run institu-
tion that employs more than a million people in
hundreds of units and divisions with deeply rooted,
bureaucratic, hierarchical systems. Yet, like other
organizations, the NHS has many times attempted
to improve the quality, reliability, effectiveness, and

Copyright © 2013 harvard Business sChool puBlishing Corporation. all rights reserved.

Spotlight on influenCe

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July–August 2013 harvard Business review 3

For arTicle reprinTs call 800-988-0886 or 617-783-7500, or visiT hbr.org

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value of its services. A recent effort spawned hun-
dreds of initiatives. For each one, a clinical man-
ager—that is, a manager with a background in health
care, such as a doctor or a nurse—was responsible for
implementation in his or her workplace.

In tracking 68 of these initiatives for one year
after their inception, we discovered some striking
predictors of change agents’ success. The short story
is that their personal networks—their relationships
with colleagues—were critical. More specifically, we
found that:

1. Change agents who were central in the orga-
nization’s informal network had a clear advantage,
regardless of their position in the formal hierarchy.

2. People who bridged disconnected groups and
individuals were more effective at implementing
dramatic reforms, while those with cohesive net-
works were better at instituting minor changes.

3. Being close to “fence-sitters,” who were am-
bivalent about a change, was always beneficial. But
close relationships with resisters were a double-

edged sword: Such ties helped change agents push
through minor initiatives but hindered major change
attempts.

We’ve seen evidence of these phenomena at work
in a variety of organizations and industries, from law
firms and consultancies to manufacturers and soft-
ware companies. These three network “secrets” can
be useful for any manager, in any position, trying to
effect change in his or her organization.

You Can’t do it without the Network
Formal authority is, of course, an important source
of influence. Previous research has shown how dif-
ficult it is for people at the bottom of a typical orga-
nization chart—complete with multiple functional
groups, hierarchical levels, and prescribed reporting
lines—to drive change. But most scholars and practi-
tioners now also recognize the importance of the in-
formal influence that can come from organizational
networks. The exhibit at left shows both types of re-
lationships among the employees in a unit of a large
company. In any group, formal structure and infor-
mal networks coexist, each influencing how people
get their jobs done. But when it comes to change
agents, our study shows that network centrality is
critical to success, whether you’re a middle manager
or a high-ranking boss.

Consider John, one of the NHS change agents we
studied. He wanted to set up a nurse-led preopera-
tive assessment service that would free up time for
the doctors who previously led the assessments, re-
duce cancelled operations (and costs), and improve
patient care. Although John was a senior doctor,
near the top of the hospital’s formal hierarchy, he
had joined the organization less than a year earlier
and was not yet well connected internally. As he
started talking to other doctors and to nurses about
the change, he encountered a lot of resistance. He
was about to give up when Carol, a well-respected
nurse, offered to help. She had much less seniority
than John, but many colleagues relied on her advice
about navigating hospital politics. She knew many
of the people whose support John needed, and she
eventually converted them to the change.

Another example comes from Gustaf, an equity
partner at a U.S. law firm, and Penny, his associ-
ate. Gustaf was trying to create a client-file transfer
system to ensure continuity in client service during
lawyers’ absences. But his seniority was no help in
getting other lawyers to support the initiative; they
balked at the added coordination the system re-

FormAl
hiErArChY lukAs

EmmA NAtHAN VikRAm

JAck sOfiA mAx miGuEl sARA Ji-HuN JOsH ANNE BEN liNA

NAtHAN

sARA

lukAs

mAx

JAck

sOfiA

EmmA VikRAm

JOsH

liNA

BEN
ANNE

miGuEl
Ji-HuN

iNFormAl
NEtwork

in the formal hierarchy of one unit in a large company, lukas holds the most senior
position, while Josh is at the bottom of the pyramid. But, as the informal network
diagram shows, many people seek Josh out for advice, making him more central to
the network than lukas and thus highly influential.

4  harvard Business review July–August 2013

Spotlight on influenCe

This document is authorized for use only by Yaina Delgado in Dynamic Leadership-Summer 2023 at Walden University (Canvas), 2023.

quired. That all changed when Penny took on the
project. Because colleagues frequently sought her
out for advice and respected her judgment, making
her central to the company’s informal network, she
quickly succeeded in persuading people to adopt
the new system. She reached out to stakeholders
individually, with both substantive and personal
arguments. Because they liked her and saw her as
knowledgeable and authentic, they listened to her.

It’s no shock that centrally positioned people like
Carol and Penny make successful change agents; we
know that informal connections give people access
to information, knowledge, opportunities, and per-
sonal support, and thus the ability to mobilize oth-
ers. But we were surprised in our research by how
little formal authority mattered relative to network
centrality; among the middle and senior managers
we studied, high rank did not improve the odds that
their changes would be adopted. That’s not to say
hierarchy isn’t important—in most organizations it
is. But our findings indicate that people at any level
who wish to exert influence as change agents should
be central to the organization’s informal network.

the Shape of Your Network matters
Network position matters. But so does network
type. In a cohesive network, the people you are con-
nected to are connected to one another. This can be
advantageous because social cohesion leads to high
levels of trust and support. Information and ideas
are corroborated through multiple channels, maxi-
mizing understanding, so it’s easier to coordinate
the group. And people are more likely to be consis-
tent in their words and deeds since they know that
discrepancies will be spotted. In a bridging network,
by contrast, you are connected to people who aren’t
connected to one another. There are benefits to that,
too, because you get access to novel information and
knowledge instead of hearing the same things over

and over again. You control when and how you pass
information along. And you can adapt your message
for different people in the network because they’re
unlikely to talk to one another.

Which type of network is better for implementing
change? The answer is an academic’s favorite: It de-
pends. It depends on how much the change causes
the organization to diverge from its institutional
norms or traditional ways of getting work done, and
how much resistance it generates as a result.

Consider, for instance, an NHS attempt to trans-
fer some responsibility for patient discharge from
doctors to nurses. This is a divergent change: It vio-
lates the deeply entrenched role division that gives
doctors full authority over such decisions. In the le-
gal profession, a divergent change might be to use a
measure other than billable hours to determine com-
pensation. In academia, it might involve the elimi-
nation of tenure. Such changes require dramatic
shifts in values and practices that have been taken
for granted. A nondivergent change builds on rather
than disrupts existing norms and practices. Many of
the NHS initiatives we studied were nondivergent
in that they aimed to give even more power to doc-
tors—for example, by putting them in charge of new
quality-control systems.

A cohesive network works well when the change
is not particularly divergent. Most people in the
change agent’s network will trust his or her inten-
tions. Those who are harder to convince will be
pressured by others in the network to cooperate and
will probably give in because the change is not too
disruptive. But for more-dramatic transformations,
a bridging network works better—first, because un-
connected resisters are less likely to form a coalition;
and second, because the change agent can vary the
timing and framing of messages for different con-
tacts, highlighting issues that speak to individuals’
needs and goals.

idea in brief
tHE QuEstiON 
large organizations—and the people work-
ing in them—tend to resist change. yet
some people are remarkably successful
at leading transformation efforts. What
makes them so effective?

tHE REsEARcH
an in-depth analysis of change initiatives at
the uK’s national health service revealed
that the likelihood of adoption often de-
pended on three characteristics of change
agents’ networks of informal relationships.

tHE fiNdiNGs
Change agents were more successful in the
following situations:

• when they were central in the informal
network, regardless of their position in the
formal hierarchy;

• when the nature of their network
(either bridging or cohesive) matched the
type of change they were pursuing; and

• when they had close relationships with
fence-sitters, or people ambivalent about
the change.

CohESivE
NEtwork
the people in your network
are connected to one an-
other. this builds trust and
mutual support, facilitat-
ing communication and
coordination.

bridgiNg
NEtwork
your network contacts
are not connected to one
another. you are the bridge
between disparate individu-
als and groups, giving you
control over what, when,
and how you communicate
with them.

AlEx

cHRis

July–August 2013 harvard Business review 5

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diagnose your network
how central am i in my
organization’s informal network?
Ask yourself: “Do people come to me for
work-related advice?” When colleagues
rely on you, it signals that they trust you
and respect your competence, wisdom, and
influence.

Ask yourself: “Are my network contacts con-
nected to one another?” You may not be able
to answer this question with 100% accuracy,
but it is worth investigating. Your network
type can affect your success.

do i have a cohesive or a bridging
network?

Ask yourself: “Who in my network is ambivalent
about a proposed change and who is strongly
opposed to it?” If it’s not obvious where your
contacts stand, use the OAR principle—observe,
analyze, record—to sort them into groups. Pay
attention to how people behave; ask questions,
both direct and indirect, to gauge their senti-
ments; and keep a mental record of your obser-
vations. Research shows that managers can learn
to map the networks around them—and network
insight is, in itself, a source of power.

which influential fence-sitters
and resisters am i close to?

Consider, for instance, an NHS nurse who imple-
mented the change in discharge decision authority,
described above, in her hospital. She explained how
her connections to managers, other nurses, and doc-
tors helped her tailor and time her appeals for each
constituency:

“I first met with the management of the hospital
to secure their support. I insisted that nurse-led dis-
charge would help us reduce waiting times for pa-
tients, which was one of the key targets that the gov-
ernment had set. I then focused on nurses. I wanted
them to understand how important it was to in-
crease their voice in the hospital and to demonstrate
how they could contribute to the organizational
agenda. Once I had their full support, I turned to doc-
tors. I expected that they would stamp their feet and
dig their heels in. To overcome their resistance, I in-
sisted that the new discharge process would reduce
their workload, thereby enabling them to focus on
complex cases and ensure quicker patient turnover.”

By contrast, another nurse, who led the same ini-
tiative at her hospital, admitted that she was handi-
capped by her cohesive network: Instead of support-
ing her, the key stakeholders she knew quickly joined
forces against the effort. She never overcame their
resistance.

The cases of two NHS managers, both of whom
had to convince colleagues of the merits of a new
computerized booking system (a nondivergent
change), are also telling. Martin, who had a cohesive
network, succeeded in just a few months because his
contacts trusted him and one another, even if they
were initially reluctant to make the switch. But Rob-
ert, whose bridging network meant that his key con-
tacts weren’t connected to one another, struggled for
more than six months to build support.

We’ve observed these patterns in other organiza-
tions and industries. Sanjay, the CTO of a software
company, wanted his R&D department to embrace
open innovation and collaborate with outside groups

An executive whose informal network isn’t right
for the change initiative can appoint a “cochair”
whose relationships offer a better fit.

6  harvard Business review July–August 2013

Spotlight on influenCe

This document is authorized for use only by Yaina Delgado in Dynamic Leadership-Summer 2023 at Walden University (Canvas), 2023.

rather than work strictly in-house, as it had always
done. Since joining the company four years earlier,
Sanjay had developed relationships with people in
various siloed departments. His bridging network al-
lowed him to tailor his proposal to each audience. For
the CFO, he emphasized lower product development
costs; for the VP of sales, the ability to reduce devel-
opment time and adapt more quickly to client needs;
for the marketing director, the resources that could
flow into his department; for his own team, a chance
to outsource some R&D and focus only on the most
enriching projects.

Change agents must be sure that the shape of their
networks suits the type of change they want to pur-
sue. If there’s a mismatch, they can enlist people with
not just the right skills and competencies but also the
right kind of network to act on their behalf. We have
seen executives use this approach very successfully
by appointing a change initiative “cochair” whose re-
lationships offer a better fit.

keep Fence-Sitters Close and
beware of resisters
We know from past research that identifying influ-
ential people who can convert others is crucial for
successful change. Organizations generally include
three types of people who can enable or block an ini-
tiative: endorsers, who are positive about the change;
resisters, who take a purely negative view; and fence-
sitters, who see both potential benefits and potential
drawbacks.

Which of these people should change agents be
close to—that is, share a personal relationship built
on mutual trust, liking, and a sense of social obliga-
tion? Should they follow the old adage “Keep your
friends close and your enemies closer”? Or focus, as
politicians often do, on the swing voters, assuming
that the resisters are a lost cause? These questions
are important; change initiatives deplete both en-
ergy and time, so you have to choose your battles.

Again, our research indicates that the answers
often depend on the type of change. We found that
being close to endorsers has no impact on the suc-
cess of either divergent or nondivergent change. Of
course, identifying champions and enlisting their
help is absolutely crucial to your success. But deep-
ening your relationships with them will not make
them more engaged and effective. If people like a
new idea, they will help enable it whether they are
close to you or not. Several NHS change agents we in-
terviewed were surprised to see doctors and nurses

they hardly knew become advocates purely because
they believed in the initiative.

With fence-sitters, the opposite is true. Being
personally close to them can tip their influence in
your favor no matter the type of change—they see
not only drawbacks but also benefits, and they will
be reluctant to disappoint a friend.

As for resisters, there is no universal rule; again,
it depends on how divergent the change is and the
intensity of the opposition to it. Because resis-
tance is not always overt or even conscious, change
agents must watch closely and infer people’s atti-
tudes. For nondivergent initiatives, close relation-
ships with resisters present an opportunity—their
sense of social obligation may cause them to re-
think the issue. But in the case of divergent change,
resisters typically perceive a significant threat and
are much less susceptible to social pressure. It’s
also important to note that the relationship works
both ways: Change agents might be reluctant to
pursue an initiative that’s opposed by people they
trust. They might decide that the emotional cost is
too high.

An NHS clinical manager who failed in her effort
to transfer responsibility for a rehabilitation unit
from a physician to a physiotherapist—a divergent
change—described her feelings this way: “Some of
my colleagues with whom I had worked for a long
time continued to oppose the project. Mary, whom
I’ve known forever, thought that it was not a good
idea. It was a bit hard on me.”

By contrast, a doctor who launched the same
initiative in her organization did not try to convert
resisters but instead focused on fence-sitters. This
strategy was effective. As one of her initially ambiva-
lent colleagues explained, “She came to me early on
and asked me to support her. I know her well, and I

+

–+

–

lO
w

H

iG
H

BRidGiNG cOHEsiVE
NEtwork tYpE

Ch
A

N
g

E
d

iv
Er

g
EN

CE

mAtCh YoUr NEtwork
to thE tYpE oF ChANgE
YoU’rE pUrSUiNg

CoNSidEr how bEiNg CloSE
to iNFlUENCErS CAN AFFECt
YoUr SUCCESS

+ –

++

ENdORsERs
fENcE-
sittERs REsistERs

NO
impAct

NO
impAct

lO
w

H

iG
H

Ch
A

N
g

E
d

iv
Er

g
EN

CE

iNFlUENCErS

July–August 2013 harvard Business review 7

For arTicle reprinTs call 800-988-0886 or 617-783-7500, or visiT hbr.org

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like her. I could not be one of the people who would
prevent her from succeeding.”

Similarly, John, a member of the operating com-
mittee of a boutique investment bank, initiated a re-
balancing of traditional end-of-year compensation
with a deferred component that linked pay to longer-
term performance—a particularly divergent change
in small banks that rely on annual bonus schemes
to attract talent. His close relationships with several
fence-sitters enabled him to turn them into propo-
nents. He also heard out the resisters in his network.
But having concluded that the change was needed,
he maintained his focus by keeping them at a dis-
tance until the new system had the green light.

The important point is to be mindful of your rela-
tionships with influencers. Being close to endorsers
certainly won’t hurt, but it won’t make them more
engaged, either. Fence-sitters can always help, so
make time to take them out to lunch, express an au-
thentic interest in their opinions, and find similari-
ties with them in order to build goodwill and com-
mon purpose. Handle resisters with care: If you’re
pursuing a disruptive initiative, you probably won’t
change their mind—but they might change yours. By
all means, hear them out in order to understand their

opposition; the change you’re pursuing may in fact
be wrongheaded. But if you’re still convinced of its
importance, keep resisters at arm’s length.

All thrEE of our findings underscore the importance
of networks in influencing change. First, formal
authority may give you the illusion of power, but
informal networks always matter, whether you are
the boss or a middle manager. Second, think about
what kind of network you have—or your appointed
change agent has—and make sure it matches the type
of change you’re after. A bridging network helps drive
divergent change; a cohesive network is preferable
for nondivergent change. Third, always identify and
cultivate fence-sitters, but handle resisters on a case-
by-case basis. We saw clear evidence that these three
network factors dramatically improved NHS manag-
ers’ odds of successfully implementing all kinds of
reforms. We believe they can do the same for change
agents in a wide variety of organizations.

hbr reprint r1307d

how wE
CoNdUCtEd
thE StUdY
our findings are based
on in-depth studies of 68
change initiatives over
12 months at the uK’s
national health service
(nhs). We began by
mapping the formal rank
and informal networks
of the middle and
senior clinical manag-
ers spearheading the
changes. data on their
demographics, posi-
tion, and professional
trajectories came from
their curriculum vitae
and nhs human resource
records, while informal
network data came from
surveys, field visits, and
interviews with them and
their colleagues. We then
gathered data about the
content and adoption
rates of the initiatives
through field visits, inter-
views, telephone surveys
conducted 12 months af-
ter implementation, and
qualitative assessments
from colleagues who
had either collaborated
with the change agents
or observed them in the
workplace.

Julie battilana is an associate professor of organiza-
tional behavior at harvard Business school. tiziana

Casciaro is an associate professor of organizational behavior
at the university of toronto’s rotman school of Management.

“isn’t there a sports metaphor that would explain this?”

Ca
rt

o
o

n
: K

aa
M

ra
n

h
af

ee
z

8  harvard Business review July–August 2013

Spotlight on influenCe For arTicle reprinTs call 800-988-0886 or 617-783-7500, or visiT hbr.org

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Digital
Article

Emotional Intelligence

Is Your Emotional
Intelligence
Authentic, or Self-
Serving?
by Ron Carucci

This document is authorized for use only by Yaina Delgado in Dynamic Leadership-Summer 2023 at Walden University (Canvas), 2023.

Is Your Emotional Intelligence
Authentic, or Self-Serving?

by Ron Carucci
Published on HBR.org / May 23, 2018 / Reprint H04CDF

Kittiyut Phornphibul/EyeEm/Getty Images

It’s possible to fake emotional intelligence. Similar to knockoffs of

luxury watches or handbags, there are emotions and actions that look like

the real thing but really aren’t. With the best of intentions, I’ve seen smart

leaders charge into sensitive interactions armed with what they believed

was a combination of deep empathy, attuned listening, and self-awareness

but was, in fact, a way to serve their own emotional needs. It’s important

to learn to spot these forgeries, especially if you’re the forger.

Plenty of research has documented manipulative misuses of emotional

intelligence — the intentionally subtle regulating of one’s emotions to

HBR / Digital Article / Is Your Emotional Intelligence Authentic, or Self-Serving?

Copyright © 2018 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. All rights reserved. 1

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engineer responses from others that might not be in their best interest.

Given that most people aren’t sociopaths, in my experience, the more

common misuses of emotional intelligence are subconscious. To safeguard

against inadvertently falling prey to them, we need deeper levels of self-

examination. Here are three of the more common counterfeits I’ve seen

snare well-intended leaders.

A need to be the hero disguised as empathy. Empathy is one of the key

components of emotional intelligence. The capacity to understand and

share others’ feelings creates authentic connection and deepens trust. But

a leader’s genuine desire to demonstrate care can transcend healthy

boundaries in unintended ways. I saw this play out when debriefing with

the Chief Operating Officer of a $20 billion global company. I’d helped him

prepare for a potentially volatile conversation with his direct report, who

was behind on the implementation plan of a major initiative. The project

costs had ballooned, and the direct report was emotionally frayed. Some of

the issues were legitimately outside her control, but some were the result

of her mistakes. The goal of the conversation was to agree on how she

would get the project back on track. When I asked him how the

conversation went, he responded with exuberant relief, “Better than I

could have expected.” He went on to explain: “I was sure to start with

empathy the way you coached me, and when I felt it was time, we moved

into problem solving.” When I asked about the resolutions they’d agreed

to, he told me, “We’ve agreed to push out the completion date by a year,

I’ve given her the extra $40k she needs for the consultants, and at her

request, I’ve agreed to step in as co-leader of the initiative.”

Over the next two hours, we unpacked the conversation to reveal how his

need to feel indispensable completely overshadowed what she actually

needed: accountability, coaching, and guidance. He felt the conversation

had gone well because he felt needed by her. She thought it went great

because she was no longer on the hook alone. At first, he defended his

intention of being a caring and compassionate leader. But eventually he

was able to see that when his expression of care turned to rescuing her

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This document is authorized for use only by Yaina Delgado in Dynamic Leadership-Summer 2023 at Walden University (Canvas), 2023.

from a difficult situation, it stopped being compassionate, and became

selfish. When a leader indulges a codependent need to feel central to

another person’s success, it takes away the other person’s power, making

them weaker instead of stronger.

When expressing empathy for those you lead, pay attention to any need

you might have to be the hero. Compassionate understanding for the

challenges of others is emotionally intelligent. Rescuing them from the

consequences of those challenges may be more cruel than kind.

A need to be right masquerading as active listening. A fundamental

social skill of emotional intelligence is being an effective listener. Being

attuned to the spoken and unspoken concerns of others demonstrates an

openness to their views, a willingness to engage ideas different from ours,

and honors the courage of others to express divergent perspectives. Most

leaders I’ve worked with claim to want pushback, believe they listen to

dissenting ideas, and are willing to have their minds changed when

stronger beliefs and facts are presented. But many would also admit, if

they were being honest, that letting go of being right is painful, and

relinquishing their views to those of others feels like a loss of control and

influence.

But unaware of the tension between a genuine desire to take in others’

views and a need to be right, leaders can feign listening while actually

trying to lure others to their side without realizing they’re doing it. I

watched this happen in a leadership team meeting as the heads of

marketing and sales tried to resolve a common stalemate. Trying to sound

conciliatory and open-minded, each would attempt to “summarize” the

other’s views with statements like, “So what I hear you saying is the only

way you’ll agree to those quotas is if….” and “I’m really trying to

understand your view on this, given that last month you seemed to be

more aligned with….” and “I sense that you’re really frustrated right now,

and I’d love to find a solution that can work for both of us, if we could just

agree that…” Both believed they were genuinely interested in finding a

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mutually acceptable compromise. But nobody in the room saw it that way

and neither of them believed it about the other. If you have strong views or

a critical agenda, own it. It doesn’t mean you don’t care what others think.

Working to suppress your strong views to appear as if you’re engaging

others never works, even if you mean well. People are more likely to

believe you’re open to hearing their ideas if they feel you’ve been

straightforward about where you stand on yours.

A need for approval dressed up as self-awareness. Keenly self-aware

leaders detect how others experience them, actively solicit critical

feedback from others, and accurately acknowledge their strengths and

shortfalls. But when fueled by an unquenched desire for approval, self-

awareness can warp into self-involvement. One executive, who prided

himself on his astute self-awareness, regularly asked his team for feedback,

believing he really wanted it (and on some level, he probably did). But

what they saw was a neurotic plea for affirmation. In a diagnostic

interview, one direct-report said to me, “Every time he asks how I’m

doing, we all know the best thing to do is just say ‘Great,’ so we can get on

with our day.” I’ve seen leaders begin lengthy speeches with declarations

like, “I know sometimes I get impatient. When I do, I want you to call me

on it,” and then obsessively ask, “Am I being too impatient?” even when

impatience may actually be warranted. Every leader is insecure about

something. Genuinely self-aware leaders face that insecurity head on, and

don’t put the burden of soothing it on others.

Our ability to express emotional intelligence is sometimes impaired by

unacknowledged, unhealthy, emotional needs. If you want to genuinely

employ effective emotional intelligence skills, pay attention to the

unaddressed scars and voids lurking beneath the surface of your inner

emotional landscape. Tend to those honestly and carefully, and you’ll

better be able to maintain credibility and strong relationships with others.

HBR / Digital Article / Is Your Emotional Intelligence Authentic, or Self-Serving?

Copyright © 2018 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. All rights reserved. 4

This document is authorized for use only by Yaina Delgado in Dynamic Leadership-Summer 2023 at Walden University (Canvas), 2023.

Ron Carucci is co-founder and managing partner at Navalent, working
with CEOs and executives pursuing transformational change. He is the
bestselling author of eight books, including To Be Honest and Rising to
Power. Connect with him on Linked In at RonCarucci, and download
his free “How Honest is My Team?” assessment.

HBR / Digital Article / Is Your Emotional Intelligence Authentic, or Self-Serving?

Copyright © 2018 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. All rights reserved. 5

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46 TD | May 2015

HUMAN CAPITAL

TDFE690503Tavakoli.indd 46 4/17/15 2:57 PM

May 2015 | TD 47

drive success for
today’s leaders

Effective organizations
and leaders are those that

recognize diversity and
inclusion as essential to

business operations.

DIVERSITY &

Too often diversity and inclusion aren’t recognized as vital assets
to the performance of an organization. Instead, they are rel-
egated to the HR department and often viewed as merely token

programs—not key parts of long-term vitality and success, particularly
in the area of leadership development and growth.

Today’s workplace, however, has departed from the traditional hi-
erarchical model and transitioned into flatter and less-structured
paradigms. Accordingly, the means and methods of leadership develop-
ment also are changing. As organizations evolve, diversity and inclusion
are becoming more integral to cultivating strong leaders and strong
organizations.

More than buzzwords
Leadership, diversity, and inclusion: each is a word now common to
business vernacular, yet the meaning behind the terms has evolved.
Where leadership once denoted the role held by managers and execu-
tives, in an agile workplace a leader is anyone who marshals resources
toward a common objective. In flatter organizations, leadership resides
at all levels as team members work with increased autonomy to achieve
the company’s goals. Within this framework, leadership stems not just
from education or experience, but innate, natural abilities.

BY MAHAN TAVAKOLI

INCLUSION

podcast

PHOTO: VEER

TDFE690503Tavakoli.indd 47 4/17/15 2:57 PM

Originally, diversity generally referred to
race, gender, or sexual orientation. But to-
day its meaning has expanded: Diversity, as
an organizational asset, also encompasses
economic, educational, and generational dif-
ferences, along with any other disparity in
background.

Diversity’s counterpart, inclusion, is a term
that communicates that all individuals are
valuable to the organization, not just those
who are “different.” Inclusion confers impor-
tance to the opinions, talents, and skills of all
team members.

Overlooked assets
Diversity and inclusion are among the most
overlooked organizational assets. Although
HR departments have metrics to measure and
evaluate both, the larger organization often
doesn’t recognize their impact to the overall
performance of the company.

Global product launch teams commonly in-
clude members from the countries affected,
but there is benefit to having a cross-section
of the population represented in all initiatives:
They will be better implemented, more effec-
tive, and more rapidly adopted.

When diversity and inclusion are minimized
(or altogether absent), “group think” takes the
reins in plotting strategy, which yields less ro-
bust decisions that have costly ramifications.
Even more problematic, when no dissenting
viewpoint is presented due to a lack of diversity
and inclusion, no one is even aware that group
think is occurring. Diversity and inclusion have
tremendous value to the performance of any
entity, as evidenced by robust decisions, expe-
dient implementation, and rapid adoption.

Out with the old
The new definition of leadership gives rise
to a new model of leadership development. If
a leader is simply any person who marshals
resources to meet an objective, then the devel-
opment of leaders—at every level—will diverge
from the traditional models that only suit a hi-
erarchical career progression.

Consider the limitations of conventional
methods of leadership development.
Ambiguity in mentoring. In some companies,
mentoring is an official program designed to
groom an individual for advancement. How-
ever, a significant degree of ambiguity exists in
such relationships, making success difficult to
gauge. Furthermore, since career progressions
aren’t linear, determining who is best suited to
mentor a particular mentee poses additional
challenges.
Lack of stretch assignments. While ad-
vantageous as a development tool, stretch
assignments are difficult for smaller compa-
nies to provide and, as such, aren’t well-suited
to developing leaders in a marketplace ripe
with many smaller and start-up companies
that comprise nearly 50 percent of today’s
employment.
Emotional costs. Formalized models of lead-
ership development can’t account for the
emotional dynamics that exist in any personnel
issue. Family-owned businesses, for example,
can have difficulty surrendering leadership to
an unrelated person.
Territorial posture. Regardless of the size of
the company, official corporate development
programs can inadvertently breed an un-
healthy sense of ownership and control over
employees. An investment made by a com-

48 TD | May 2015

TDFE690503Tavakoli.indd 48 4/17/15 2:57 PM

May 2015 | TD 49

pany perhaps unintentionally, but implicitly,
becomes a debt owed by the employee to the
company, and can sometimes be used as a
means to control that person. In an era where
the majority of people work for more than one
company over the course of their careers, this
is especially problematic.
Inability to account for external resources.
In the digital age, vast amounts of information
(books, classes, articles) and large networks of
people are quite literally at our fingertips 24/7.
Leadership development needn’t be limited to
merely the forms prescribed by the company.
These resources provide constant, varied, and
effective means for developing leadership,
even if untracked by company metrics.
Opportunities limited to a small portion of the
workforce. Traditional programs often are ac-
cessible to a select few participants—those
who have been flagged for having exceptional
talent and leadership potential. Flatter orga-
nizational structures demand that leadership
take place at every level, by every person. Fail-
ing to develop all people within the company
severely limits the potential of the individuals
and the entire organization.

In with the new
A new workforce paradigm necessitates a dif-
ferent model for developing leaders. Just as
the reporting structures are more fluid and
dynamic, so too will leadership development
strategies be more amorphous and harder to
define and measure, but no less effective.

Diversity and inclusion are potent tools
in cultivating leadership, especially in flatter
organizations, because of their profound ef-
fect on risk taking. A less hierarchical system
demands that all members self-govern, self-
lead, and mutually submit to the leadership of
their peers.

When that peer group isn’t homogenous
and, therefore, less susceptible to group
think, a variety of ideas are promoted and ex-
plored and greater risks are taken. A Forbes

Insights study surveying 321 companies with
more than $500 million in revenue found that
85 percent agreed or strongly agreed that di-
versity is key to driving workplace innovation.

A culture of inclusion fosters a willingness
to take risks, push boundaries, and attain new
collective heights, simply because all people
and all ideas are deemed valuable.

Case Study

Shipping company UPS, headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, does busi-
ness across the globe every day with employees in 220 countries. To re-
flect its customer base, UPS has cultivated a deep commitment to diver-
sity and inclusion, as evidenced in the following initiatives.

Business resource groups—evolved from leadership development initia-
tives launched in 2006, 2010, and 2012—are designed to expand employees’
professional networks and develop new skills. The current BRG initiative in-
cludes African American; Asian American; Hispanic/Latino; individuals with
disabilities; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and allies (LGBTA); Millennial;
veterans; and women’s leadership development programs.

Community internship programs for senior managers expose UPS
executives to social and economic challenges for three-week intervals.
Witnessing poverty, homelessness, and drug dependency first-hand—
something foreign to most corporate executives—equips the managers
to make better decisions and learn how to partner better. It also encour-
ages them to engage more deeply in their own communities.

UPS is a corporate supporter of the Black Executive Exchange Pro-
gram, which links businesses and government agencies to universities
with predominantly black populations. Fifty UPS executives volunteer an-
nually as visiting professors to role-model and teach students.

In addition, an annual survey of employees, which includes ques-
tions on diversity and inclusion, serves to benchmark not just the statisti-
cal representation of diverse backgrounds, but also the perception and
opinions of those who may not feel included or involved. Establishing
the level of engagement of employees is relevant to the bottom line: The
2008 Towers Perrin Global Workforce Study found that companies with
highly engaged employees have recorded a 19 percent increase in oper-
ating income.

DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION ARE AMONG THE MOST OVERLOOKED
ORGANIZATIONAL ASSETS.

TDFE690503Tavakoli.indd 49 4/17/15 2:57 PM

50 TD | May 2015

The upside
Many of today’s leaders already are reaping
the rewards of diversity and inclusion. They’ve
made strategic decisions to deploy those as-
sets to benefit themselves as leaders and the
company at large.

Being able to recognize their own limi-
tations—having only one set of personal
experiences to draw on, for example—they sur-
round themselves with people from a variety
of different backgrounds. Akin to having ad-
visers to the president in the White House, a

strong leader knows the boundaries of his own
knowledge and skills, and seeks to have defi-
ciencies compensated for in the staff mix and
personal relationships.

Taking it a step further, by encouraging
dissenting opinions, today’s best executives
are able to glean robust, well-tested ideas and
make better decisions with which to lead the
organization. Google’s Eric Schmidt (executive
chairman) and Jonathan Rosenberg (former
senior vice president of products) attribute
much of Google’s success to their hiring prac-
tices: assembling a team of passionate, “smart
creatives” to tackle large, difficult problems
instead of looking for a particular grade-point
average or specific background.

In an ideal world, hiring practices across the
entire company would strive to build a team
comprised of people from varied educational,
social, and geographic histories. A study con-
ducted by Cedric Herring, sociology professor
at the University of Illinois at Chicago, linked
racial diversity and gender diversity to profit-
ability, noting, “For every percentage increase
in the rate of racial or gender diversity up to
the rate represented in the relevant popula-
tion, there was an increase in sales revenues of
approximately 9 and 3 percent, respectively.”

This type of environment fosters ampli-
fied creativity, especially when innovation is
rewarded instead of results. By separating the
condition of success from the willingness to
risk, all parties are engaged in thinking in fresh
and exciting ways without being encumbered
by fear of failure. Likewise, creating a culture
in which no negative judgment is placed on
ideas or perspectives creates a framework for
innovation and potentially great reward.

The challenge
Today’s workforce spans many generations,
from teens through septuagenarians and be-
yond. The generational differences pose a
significant challenge in the area of diversity
and inclusion. The younger generation is likely
to underestimate the significance of diversity
issues; they are instead prone to think dif-
ferences needn’t be of any concern at all and,
therefore, they tend to disregard initiatives

Next Steps

To move toward a more inclusive and diverse workforce, initiate the fol-
lowing steps.

Start a dialogue. Whether it’s with employees or colleagues, begin the
conversation. There’s no need to wait for an official program or an edict
from the higher ups in the organization. In fact, starting the conversation
among peers ensures engagement and buy-in that often is difficult to mus-
ter when mandated from upper management. Define the terms—as be-
ing pertinent to more than gender or race—so that all parties see the rel-
evance in the workplace.

Gauge receptivity. Don’t move forward with official programs until
team members recognize the importance and value of a culture of diversity
and inclusion. Establish an environment where open dialogue can occur,
and continue that dialogue until the group is responsive and engaged be-
cause the value of diversity and inclusion is apparent to them.

Foster awareness. Hone in on the knowledge elements of diversity and
inclusion. Highlight for team members the many categories of differences in
the workplace and the value of having many perspectives, which often cre-
ate more robust decisions, faster adoption rates, and more effective imple-
mentations.

Implement training. When having a diverse and inclusive workforce
represents a common value, seek some coaching or guidance to cultivate
a new culture. Determine a course of action to engage those individuals
or groups that currently feel excluded. Learn to recognize differences and
how to benefit from them.

Reinforce it. Make it a part of ongoing efforts. Maintain a high level
of competency in collaborating with individuals from all varieties of back-
grounds, not just those with whom much common ground exists. Cultivat-
ing a diverse and inclusive workplace is more than a one-and-done initia-
tive. It is a pervasive, ongoing, and intentional mindset.

TDFE690503Tavakoli.indd 50 4/17/15 2:57 PM

May 2015 | TD 51

designed to promote an inclusive workforce.
On the other end of the spectrum, the older
generation typically limits the dialogue around
diversity and inclusion to refer merely to ra-
cial issues when it pertains equally to gender,
sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and
much more.

Continued dialogue to educate, train, and
make both ends of the spectrum aware of the
importance of a diverse and inclusive work-
place is paramount to the success of individual
leaders, as well as the corporate entity at large.

Leadership no longer can be defined as
the responsibility of those holding the lon-

gest tenure or the most senior titles. Instead,
leadership resides at every level of every
organization.

This becomes especially evident as more
companies adopt flatter, more autonomous
organizational structures. Here the relation-
ship between strong leaders and their ability
to lead—using diversity and inclusion initiatives
to foster engagement and improve decision
making—is essential to success.

Mahan Tavakoli is regional vice president and
chief diversity officer for Dale Carnegie Training;
[email protected].

Register online at mindsatwork.com/register

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Immunity-To-Change® Process

Based on Lahey and Kegan’s breakthrough discovery of a hidden dynamic called the “immunity to change,” the ITC approach is designed to help individuals, teams,
and organizations make deeply sought personal and collective changes. Once the true obstacle to change is revealed, the approach then addresses these underlying
commitments and helps participants forge a new path to transformation and sustainable change.

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A S F E A T U R E D I N . . .

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This one-day session is open to those who
have already completed an ITC Facilitator
Workshop, and is intended to help
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will lead you through a Team ITC process and share their current
methodologies about applying ITC to teams.

2015 Workshop Dates: June 13 | October 10

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Digital
Article

Leadership & Managing
People

Empathy Rules
by Sherry Turkle

This document is authorized for use only by Yaina Delgado in Dynamic Leadership-Summer 2023 at Walden University (Canvas), 2023.

Empathy Rules

by Sherry Turkle

Published on HBR.org / February 17, 2022 / Reprint H06V8S

Pepino de Mar studio/Stocksy

In August 2021, my employer, MIT, announced that all instruction,

without exception, would be in person, with vaccination and regular

testing. In context, I found this anxiety-provoking. As soon as I took a

Covid test, I was cleared to teach, even though I wouldn’t get my results

until the next day. The protocol was designed not to protect individuals

but to prevent community spread. Students would wear face coverings;

my classrooms were a jumble of surgical masks and makeshift

bandanas. Faculty were asked to teach without masks, a directive

everyone seemed to ignore.

HBR / Digital Article / Empathy Rules

Copyright © 2022 Harvard Business School Publishing. All rights reserved. 1

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But those rules were only for MIT. The week after MIT began classes, I

gave the freshman convocation address at Boston College. There, I was

told, no masks were allowed on campus. I lectured by Zoom, my

electronic presence an affront.

So it was, across offices and industries, corporations and legal

jurisdictions — a patchwork of hygiene and work protocols, each

fiefdom declaring its reality.

Emile Durkheim, whom I’ve studied since I was an undergraduate

trying to understand the social changes of the 1960s, would call this new

normal anomie — a destabilized and destabilizing state when rules and

rule givers lose legitimacy. It is a time of disorientation, depression, and

anxiety. Durkheim used the idea of anomie to explain when people are

most likely to commit suicide. It’s the act of people who’ve fallen out of

communities and clear relationships with social norms. It’s what we feel

when we face a virus that plays by one set of rules, politicians who play

by another, and a professional life that proceeds independent of each.

And when we face all of this in social isolation.

The practice of empathy can help us navigate this period of anomie.

Empathy is the act of putting yourself in someone else’s problem in the

hopes of understanding, of bridging a gap. It helps us feel in

community, not abandoned to anomic isolation. It helps us feel seen

and known for who we are.

What we know about empathy in the workplace is that it’s a messy

affair. It’s both rewarding and time consuming to listen to other people

without preconception. Business consultants sometimes suggest

something that seems close enough: radical candor. A continual round-

robin of criticism and praise promises to dissolve the boundaries

between colleagues. But this truth-telling practice proceeds from the

HBR / Digital Article / Empathy Rules

Copyright © 2022 Harvard Business School Publishing. All rights reserved. 2

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feeling: “I know you.” Real empathy starts from a different premise,

radical humility: “I don’t know how you feel, but I’m here to listen.”

Radical humility is the first of four empathy practices that can help us

move away from anomie and shape the new “new normal.” More

imperative than guidelines, they are fundamental to emotional and

social well-being.

The first practice is to embrace not knowing. You can’t put yourself into

someone else’s situation if you have preconceptions about its contours.

This isn’t easy. We’re trained to relate to others by expressing what we

think we share with them: “Oh, you lost your job. I know how tough that

is; I lost mine as well!” It’s the opposite — the strategy of not knowing —

that leaves you open to the truth of things.

Step back and recognize that you don’t necessarily know what someone

else is thinking or feeling. Stop, look, listen, and stay open. It’s not what

you know, it’s what you’re willing to learn that provides space for

empathy.

Second, embrace radical difference. Empathy doesn’t start with a

reassuring “I’m like you.” On the contrary, empathy accepts friction.

Colleagues may have profound disagreements, just like family

members, neighbors, and friends. Empathy is not about being conflict-

averse — it’s noisy because people are. To be empathetic, we must be

willing to get in there, own the conflict, and learn how to fight fair. It’s

about full engagement, even when it is uncomfortable.

Third, embrace commitment. Empathy implies that you will do the work

necessary to comprehend not just the place the person is coming from

but their problem. It’s a discipline of basic respect, both personal and

HBR / Digital Article / Empathy Rules

Copyright © 2022 Harvard Business School Publishing. All rights reserved. 3

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civic. You have a stake in helping your neighbor make things better. You

can’t get bored or turn away.

Finally, embrace community. Empathy isn’t altruistic. It enlarges those

who offer it and binds them to others. It fights anomie. If you’ve been

heard, and the rules you’ve been asked to follow take your situation into

account, you feel part of something larger than yourself.

I call these four practices “empathy rules,” evoking the double meaning

of the phrase. When Durkheim talked about anomie, the lack of rules, he

focused on the stress of disorder. With these empathy rules, we can

combat the dislocation and anxiety that people feel when they face a

moment of crisis alone. Empathy is not a cure for social dislocation, but

when we need to face change and shifting realities, empathy does rule

as an enabler of constructive change.

Empathy fights anomie because it is transitive. It cuts across the

divisions in our lives.

So, those who think that work is not the “place” for empathy miss the

point. The empathy you receive at work makes you a better friend,

partner, or parent. The empathy you receive at home makes you better

able to listen at work. And there, empathic leadership makes room for

intimacy and honesty, driving innovation and engagement. If you open

yourself to empathy, you’re allowing yourself to listen across difference.

Empathy keeps us from discounting, dismissing, or even canceling

others.

These four practices — embracing not knowing, radical difference,

commitment, and community — cultivate a respect for others. And if

you respect others, you’re not only going to be a better colleague, you’re

going to be a better citizen.

HBR / Digital Article / Empathy Rules

Copyright © 2022 Harvard Business School Publishing. All rights reserved. 4

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Sherry Turkle is the Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social
Studies of Science and Technology at MIT and author of The
Empathy Diaries, out in paperback on March 1 from Penguin Books.

HBR / Digital Article / Empathy Rules

Copyright © 2022 Harvard Business School Publishing. All rights reserved. 5

This document is authorized for use only by Yaina Delgado in Dynamic Leadership-Summer 2023 at Walden University (Canvas), 2023.

analyst for CNN, and former presidential
adviser), Carter Roberts (President and CEO of
World Wildlife Fund), Joe Kennedy (CEO and
President of Pandora), and Rich Lyons (Dean of
Haas Business School, University of California–
Berkeley).

Passion & Purpose offers profound insight
into the values and vision of today’s emerging
leaders, with inspiration and ideas for anyone
who aspires to catalyze enduring change in the
world.

John Coleman earned an MBA from Harvard
Business School, where he was a Dean’s
Award winner, and an MPA from the Harvard
Kennedy School, where he was a Zuckerman
Fellow and a George Fellow. Daniel Gulati
holds an MBA from Harvard Business
School, where he was a Baker Fellow and an
Arthur Rock Entrepreneurial Fellow, and was
awarded the Robert F. Jasse Distinguished
Award in Entrepreneurship & Leadership.
W. oliver SeGovia was born and raised in
the Philippines and received an MBA with
Distinction from Harvard Business School,
where he was a LeBaron-McArthur-Ellis
Fellow.

(Continued on back flap)

(Continued from front flap)

jac k e t d e s i g n: ja m e s d e v r i e s

au t h o r p h oto s: w e s l e y c h a n n e l, t r acy p ow e l l,
pat r i c k a n d pat r i c i a s e g ov i a

Get inspired. Stay informed. Join the discussion.
Visit www.hbr.org/books www.hbr.org/books

manaGement US$25.95

“ many baby boomers like to characterize the Facebook generation as entitled slackers.
In reading the amazing stories of the leaders in Passion & Purpose, you quickly realize that
nothing could be further from the truth. the reality is that this new generation of leaders is
committed to making a difference and is ready to lead—not tomorrow, but now.”

— Bill GeorGe, Professor of management Practice, Harvard Business School;
author, True North

“ It doesn’t matter where you begin your career. What matters most is developing the ability
to connect the dots . . . the rarest and most valuable commodity in our work is those
individuals who can bridge government, business, civil society, and academia in solving
the biggest problems facing our society.”

—Carter roBerts, President and CeO, World Wildlife Fund

“ With america—and the world—at a major inflection point, strong and principled leader-
ship is as crucial as it’s ever been. as this book shows, the younger generation is stepping
up more and more each day to provide that leadership—in ways all of us should be paying
attention to.”

— DaviD GerGen, Director, Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School;
senior political analyst, Cnn; and former presidential adviser

“ the younger generation has an integrated identity that is consistent between workplace,
home, and society . . . they not only want to make a difference themselves, they want to
know that the company they work for is also making a positive contribution.”

—DeB Henretta, Group President, Procter & Gamble asia

“ the great challenge and the great opportunity we face today is the ability to work almost
any time and any way. the new generation of leaders seems to embrace the opportunity
side of this, approaching work more flexibly in terms of when and where it takes place.”

—Joe KenneDy, CeO and President, Pandora

“ Leadership is not being the CeO; leadership is influencing outcomes. Leadership is often
without formal authority. I think that for a lot of these younger folks, they demonstrate
the skills of leadership, but they also embody a new mind-set.”

—riCH lyons, Dean of Haas Business School, University of California–Berkeley

“ the next generation of leaders will have the opportunity to shape the world. they will deal
with exciting and quite different challenges than their predecessors—all in the context of a
globally connected and rapidly changing world.”

—DominiC Barton, Global managing Director, mcKinsey & Company

ISBN 978-1-4221-6266-8

9 781 422 1 62668

9 0 0 0 0

john coleman
daniel gulati
w. oliver segovia

foreword by bill george

Stories from the
Best and Brightest

Young Business Leaders

H a r Va r D B U S I n e S S r e V I e W P r e S S

PASSION
PURPOSE

PA
SSIO

N
PU

R
PO

SE

coleman
gulati

segovia
How will the next generation
of leaders shape business?

From questions about globalization and
sustainability to issues surrounding
diversity, learning, and the convergence

of the public and private sectors, tomorrow’s
leaders have a lot to think about. But these big
issues aren’t the only ones facing young leaders
starting out in business today. What else are
they focused on? And how do they prioritize
the challenges and opportunities before them—
while also making the world a better place?

In Passion & Purpose, recent Harvard
Business School MBAs share personal stories
about assuming the mantle of leadership in
ways unlike any previous generation. In candid,
often moving accounts of their successes and
setbacks—from launching start-ups or taking
on the family business to helping kids in the
Arabian Gulf or harnessing new technology to
develop clean energy—they reveal how their
generation’s ideas, aspirations, and practices are
radically reshaping business and transforming
leadership.

Drawing on insights from a survey of five
hundred students from top U.S. business
schools, Passion & Purpose provides an
overview of today’s big hot-button issues,
followed by firsthand accounts from the young
leaders who are tackling these issues head-
on. Their personal stories are rounded out
with broader perspectives from established
luminaries in business, academia, and the
public sector, including Dominic Barton
(Global Managing Director of McKinsey &
Company), Deb Henretta (Group President of
Procter & Gamble Asia), Nitin Nohria (Dean
of Harvard Business School), David Gergen
(Director of the Center for Public Leadership at
the Harvard Kennedy School, senior political

to learn more, visit: www.hbr.org/passion-purpose

Coleman10343_Mechanical.indd 1 9/26/11 5:03 PM

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PASSION
PURPOSE

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107124 00 i-xiv r2 vs 9/19/11 8:11 PM Page ii

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PASSION
PURPOSE

JOHN COLEMAN
DANIEL GULATI
W. OLIVER SEGOVIA

HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW PRESS

Boston, Massachusetts

Stories from the
Best and Brightest

Young Business Leaders

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Copyright 2012 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation
All rights reserved

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a re-
trieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the pub-
lisher. Requests for permission should be directed to [email protected],
or mailed to Permissions, Harvard Business School Publishing, 60 Harvard Way,
Boston, Massachusetts 02163.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Coleman, John, 1981-
Passion & purpose : stories from the best and brightest young business leaders /

John Coleman, Daniel Gulati, W. Oliver Segovia.
p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-4221-6266-8 (alk. paper)
1. Leadership. 2. Executives. 3. Success in business. 4. Organizational

effectiveness. I. Gulati, Daniel. II. Segovia, W. Oliver. III. Title. IV. Title:
Passion and purpose.

HD57.7.C644 2012
658′.049–dc23

2011025148

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Find more digital content or join the discussion on www.hbr.org.

The web addresses referenced and linked in this book were live and
correct at the time of the book’s publication but may be subject to change.

This document is authorized for use only by Yaina Delgado in Dynamic Leadership-Summer 2023 at Walden University (Canvas), 2023.

Contents

Foreword, Bill George ix

Introduction 1

1. Convergence 11
Creating Opportunities Across Sectors

Floating Above the Boxes 17
Business, Nonprofit, and the Age of Falling Boundaries

UMAIMAH MENDHRO

Learning from Kibera 23
Nonprofit Lessons for Business from East Africa’s
Largest Slum

RYE BARCOTT

Commerce and Culture 28
Combining Business and the Arts

CHRISTINA WALLACE

Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Business of Peace 34
JAKE CUSACK

Business in the World 41
How Corporations Can Be Change Agents

KELLI WOLF MOLES

Interview with David Gergen, adviser to four presidents, 47
Director of Harvard’s Center for Public Leadership,
and senior political analyst for CNN

2. Globalization 55
Embracing the Global Generation

Bridging Two Worlds 61
An India Story

SANYOGITA AGGARWAL

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vi Contents

QatarDebate 67
Education, Civic Engagement, and Leadership
in the Arabian Gulf

ANDREW GOODMAN

Emerging Social Enterprise 74
Learning the Business of Agriculture in Tanzania

KATIE LAIDLAW

Global Citizen Year 79
Learning from the World

ABIGAIL FALIK

The Business of Reconciliation 85
How Cows and Co-Ops Are Paving the Way for Genuine
Reconciliation in Rwanda

CHRIS MALONEY

Interview with Dominic Barton, Global Managing Director 91
of McKinsey & Company

3. People 99
Leading in a Diverse World

Nonconforming Culture 104
How to Feel Comfortable in Who You Are No
Matter Where You Are

KIMBERLY CARTER

Diversity Day 110
Whole People, Whole Organizations, and a
Whole New Approach to Diversity

JOSH BRONSTEIN

Women and the Workplace 118
TASNEEM DOHADWALA

Joyful on the Job 124
A Generation Pursuing Happiness at Work

BENJAMIN SCHUMACHER

People Leadership from Baghdad to Boston 130
SETH MOULTON

Interview with Deb Henretta, CEO, P&G Asia 134

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4. Sustainability 139
Integrating Preservation and Profits

A Sustainable Career 145
ANNIE FISHMAN

From Safety Nets to Trampolines 151
VALERIE BOCKSTETTE

The Value of Community Partnerships in 158
Addressing Climate Change

CHARLEY CUMMINGS

Interview with Carter Roberts, CEO, World Wildlife Fund 164

5. Technology 171
Competing by Connecting

Building an Online Marketplace 175
JAMES REINHART

Technology and Social Good 181
Loans, Relays and the Power of Community

SHELBY CLARK

Mobile Millennials 185
JASON GURWIN

Interview with Joe Kennedy, 191
CEO and President of Pandora

6. Learning 197
Educating Tomorrow’s Leaders

The Leadership Boot Camp 203
Training the Next Generation of Corporate Leaders

KISHAN MADAMALA

The MBA of Hard Knocks 210
Why Fast Failure Is the Best Thing for Business Education

PATRICK CHUN

The New Corporate Classrooms 216
Training’s Tectonic Technological Shift

MICHAEL B. HORN

Contents vii

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Tackling Financial Illiteracy 223
ALEXA LEIGH MARIE VON TOBEL

The Education of a Millennial Leader 228
JONATHAN DOOCHIN

Interview with Rich Lyons, Dean, Haas Business School, 235
University of California–Berkeley

Moving Forward 243

Capstone Interview with HBS Dean, Nitin Nohria 246

Appendix: About the Passion and Purpose MBA Student Survey 255

Notes 263

Acknowledgments 273

Index 275

About the Contributors 289

About the Authors 295

viii Contents

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Foreword

Many baby boomers like to characterize the Facebook generation as enti-

tled slackers. In reading the amazing stories of the leaders in Passion and

Purpose, you quickly realize that nothing could be further from the truth.

The reality is that this new generation of leaders is committed to making a

difference and is ready to lead—not tomorrow, but now.

The authors of this remarkable collection of twenty-six stories, all writ-

ten by exceptional young leaders, were deeply impacted by the leadership

failures of 2008 that led to the Great Recession. The three authors con-

clude, “We have faith in the young generations of leaders who have wit-

nessed the lessons of the crisis and are now seeking to learn from the

mistakes that were made and offer a new vision for the future.”

Georgian John Coleman believes that “business offers solutions to

some of the most pressing problems we face.” Filipino Oliver Segovia

quotes the local saying, “He who doesn’t appreciate his roots shall never

succeed.” Australian Daniel Gulati saw firsthand examples of how organi-

zations can meet their financial goals and simultaneously make positive

contributions to society.

Unwilling to wait their turn in line, these leaders are already having

enormous impact. Look at the global citizens being developed by Abby

Falik, the transformation of leadership that Jon Doochin is leading at

Harvard College, Marine Captain Rye Barcott’s initiative to help the

slums of Kenya’s Kibera become a safe community that works for

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everyone, and Katie Laidlaw’s efforts to make agriculture in Tanzania

profitable for all. Theirs are just a few of the initiatives that vividly illus-

trate how this generation of leaders really is different from mine.

Anthropologist Margaret Mead once said, “Never doubt the power of a

small group of people to change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that

ever has.” Through their initiatives, young leaders are confirming Mead’s

wisdom.

My generation started out just as idealistically as these young leaders.

We were kids of the Kennedy era who flocked to Washington, D.C.,

Selma, and Watts to try to change the world. Somewhere along the way

we lost sight of that idealism. Was it the futility of the Vietnam war and

the assassinations of the Kennedy brothers and Martin Luther King, Jr.,

or were we seduced by flawed economic theories into believing that self-

interest should take precedence over the common good? Whatever the

answers, the leadership failures of the last decade—from the fall of

Enron through the economic meltdown of 2008—have vividly demon-

strated the flaws in twentieth-century leadership and the need for a new

generation of leaders to take charge.

The response of this new generation, as these stories vividly illustrate,

is to use their talents now to make a positive impact in helping others. As

a professor of management practice at Harvard Business School the past

eight years, I have had the privilege of working closely with several of

these leaders and many more like them.

After completing my tenure as CEO of Medtronic in 2001 and board

chair in 2002, I took a working sabbatical in Switzerland to teach at two

leading Swiss institutions. It was there that I decided to devote myself for

the next decade to helping develop the next generation of leaders, from

MBA students to the new generation of corporate CEOs. In early 2004 I

returned to my alma mater, Harvard Business School, to help launch a

new course, Leadership and Corporate Accountability, and later created

Authentic Leadership Development, a course based on leading from

within and built around six-person Leadership Development Groups.

During these years I have spent hundreds of hours in the classroom

and many more in private discussions with students in my office.

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Through these open, thoughtful, often poignant talks, I have learned just

how committed these young leaders are about using their talents to have

an impact. They are willing to work countless hours to realize their

dreams, yet they also want to lead integrated lives. I have seen them fol-

low their hearts to unite people around common causes, and the impact

has often been stunning.

Their approach to leadership differs sharply from that of the baby

boomer generation. Command-and-control is out. So is exerting power

over others. They eschew bureaucracy, hierarchical organizations, and in-

ternal politics. That’s why many are opting to start their own organizations

rather than joining established institutions.

The focus of their leadership is to build on their roots and align people

around a common purpose and shared values. They recognize that they

cannot accomplish their goals by using power to control others, as so

many in my generation did. Instead, they amplify their limited power by

empowering others to take on shared challenges.

Their leadership style is collaborative, not autocratic. Nor are they

competitive with their peers. They seek to surround themselves with the

most talented people representing a wide range of skills that can be help-

ful in achieving their aims. They care little who gets the credit, so long as

their mutual goals are achieved. Most of all, these young leaders seek to

serve, using their gifts and their leadership abilities.

One of the characteristics of this new generation of leaders is their

ability to move easily between the for-profit, nonprofit, and government

sectors. In fact, that’s because many of them have worked in all three sec-

tors. They have firsthand knowledge of how people in each of these sec-

tors think, how they measure success, and how they get things done. A

number of the contributors to this book have joint master’s degrees in

government and business, with a substantial dose of social enterprise

courses and projects.

This broad perspective is increasingly important because developing

workable solutions to the world’s intractable problems—global health,

energy and the environment, education, poverty and jobs, and global

peace—requires multisector approaches. For example, take the challenges

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of AIDS in Africa. It isn’t sufficient for pharmaceutical makers like Glaxo-

SmithKline to give their AIDS drugs away. It takes support from local gov-

ernments to get the drugs to the people who need them most, NGOs like

Doctors Without Borders to administer the drugs to HIV patients, and

funds from global organizations like the World Health Organization and

the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. These emerging leaders, with the

diversity of experiences they have accumulated before the age of thirty,

understand how to bring people together from these organizations and get

them to collaborate to solve major problems.

That’s what former Marine Captain Rye Barcott is doing to address the

problem of poverty in Kibera, Nairobi’s largest slum. While still a student

at the University of North Carolina, Barcott formed Carolina for Kibera,

investing $26 and combining it with the sweat equity of nurse Tabitha

Festo and a local youth named Salim Mohamed. Incredibly, he was able

to build this new organization while serving for five years as a counterin-

telligence officer in Bosnia, Iraq, and the Horn of Africa.

Barcott sees similarities between the tactics he used in building the

Kibera community and the Marines’ task in community building in war-

torn towns like Fallujah, Iraq. He writes, “I feel fortunate to have been

able to work across the public, private, and nonprofit sectors at a young

age, and I aspire to continue to incorporate such a balance throughout my

life. The solutions to our world’s toughest problems, such as the growth of

megaslums, require full engagement and collaboration from each sector,

and we have no time to waste.”

These leaders of the future are global in their outlook and comfortable

working across diverse cultures. By the time they reach graduate school,

they have lived and worked all over the world. In sharp contrast, I never

traveled outside North America until my honeymoon at twenty-six, and

first moved overseas at age thirty-seven.

Abigail Falik is typical of this new generation. Completing her MBA in

2008, Falik didn’t follow her classmates into financial services or consult-

ing. Instead, she took a big risk and founded Global Citizen Year. Its pur-

pose is to enable talented high school graduates to do a gap year of service

before entering college by immersing themselves in a developing country.

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In a sense, Falik is trying to replicate for others the experience she had

as a sixteen-year-old in a rural village in Nicaragua. She believes these

formative experiences will enable young people to learn the empathy and

gain the insights they need to address twenty-first-century challenges.

Falik concludes, “Not until we walk in another’s shoes can we truly feel

others’ hopes and fears, and have the wisdom to know what it would

mean to work together toward a common cause.”

Katie Laidlaw had a similar experience in Tanzania during a summer

internship with TechnoServe, studying how to make fruit and vegetable

markets run profitably. She concludes, “This experience confirmed my

own hypothesis that future leaders will be better equipped to tackle the

problems of tomorrow by being successful in operating across geogra-

phies and sectors today.”

The Facebook generation may be the first that is genuinely color-blind,

gender-blind, and sexual preference–blind. Writes former HBS LGBT

president Josh Bronstein, “My call to action for our generation is simple:

be authentic. That means bringing your whole self to work, not just those

characteristics that you think your employer wants to see . . . A defining

characteristic of our generation is that we want to be recognized as indi-

viduals—not anonymous cogs forced to think, act, and dress in the same

way.”

These new leaders are changing the way leaders are educated as well.

Jonathan Doochin, who struggled with dyslexia throughout his school

years, couldn’t wait to graduate from Harvard College to transform the

school’s education of future leaders. During his senior year Doochin

founded the Leadership Institute on the premise that developing leaders

requires practical experiences that cause individuals to reexamine their

perspective of the world, learn to empathize with others, and develop

their unique leadership style.

Doochin organizes students into Leadership Development Groups that

enable them to understand their authentic selves by sharing their life sto-

ries, how they have coped with their failures, and what brings them gen-

uine happiness. Doochin writes, “Each of us has the capacity to lead . . . all

of the mysterious qualities that once defined ‘leadership’ are not inherent,

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but eminently teachable . . . The model for leadership is not one-size-fits-

all, but should be individualized as we play to our own strengths and per-

sonalities.”

In 1966 Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., said prophetically, “Few will have the

greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small

portion of events. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief

that human history is shaped.” The acts of these young leaders will write

the history of this generation as they focus their talents on making the

world a better place for everyone.

If these emerging leaders stay on course through the inevitable pitfalls,

setbacks, and disappointments, I have confidence their accomplishments

will exceed their greatest expectations. The time is ripe for the baby

boomers to provide emerging leaders the opportunities to take charge.

Their passion and dedication to their purpose gives all of us hope that our

future is very bright indeed.

—Bill George

Bill George is professor of management practice at Harvard Business

School and former chair and CEO of Medtronic, Inc. He is the author

of four national best-sellers: Authentic Leadership (2003), True

North (2007), Finding Your True North: A Personal Guide (2008),

and 7 Lessons for Leading in Crisis (2009). His newest book, True

North Groups (2011), was released in September 2011.

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Introduction

It’s been an interesting time to come of age in business.

Arguably, the past decade has been one of the most intriguing and terri-

fying in history. Technological innovation has led us from the infancy of

the Internet to the nearly ubiquitous online connectedness, social net-

working, and location-based technology we enjoy today. The world order

has shifted dramatically—billions of people in developing economies have

joined the ranks of the middle class, and business has become ever more

global, with goods and services moving more freely over national bound-

aries and corporations seeking greater growth in transnational commerce.

And, of course, the global economy crashed, falling from a period of un-

matched prosperity into one of frightening destruction and uncertainty.

It’s an era that cries out for new leadership and new thinking. And it’s

an era that has left a generation of young leaders wondering how they can

contribute even as they seek a life of meaning, passion, and purpose in

the private sector. Whether in the world’s biggest corporations, local

small and medium business, or nimble start-ups, they aren’t entering

business solely for financial gain, but as a way to find meaningful work

and make a positive difference in the world.

Yet few forums have provided these young leaders an outlet to voice their

visions for the future, to highlight the trends they’ve seen emerge from the

chaos of the last decade, or to offer both practical advice and hopeful inspi-

ration to their friends and colleagues as they embark on their careers.

We hope this book helps fill that void. Our purpose? To share the sto-

ries of young business leaders and thereby give a glimpse into the future

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2 PASSION AND PURPOSE

of business and leadership—offering both practical learning and inspi-

ration. To do this, we “crowd-sourced” much of the content—asking

more than twenty young business leaders to tell their stories, conduct-

ing an exclusive MBA Student Survey of more than five hundred cur-

rent and recent MBAs from top U.S. business schools, and interviewing

seven business luminaries who offer a seasoned perspective on the

themes analyzed.

We “crowd-sourced” in this way because we wanted to present a

broader set of views than the three of us could provide alone; we’ve been

constantly impressed with and encouraged by the vision, entrepreneur-

ship, and passion of our classmates and colleagues, and we wanted to

give readers a better sense of that diversity. We also wanted to capture

their views on several key themes we saw among the young leaders in our

cohort. We organized those themes into six chapters and put out a call

for submissions, from which the book’s stories were drawn. We derived

these six chapter themes from our own experiences in school and in the

workplace; from conversations with friends, professors, and colleagues;

and from the input we got from more than a hundred initial essay

proposals. We read through these proposals in depth, looking for the

most interesting, compelling, and inspirational stories, then worked over

the course of three years to refine them—evolving our six themes in the

process.

For young leaders today we believe these are the core issues—sector

convergence, globalization, people leadership and diversity, educational

evolution, technology, and sustainability. The chapters built around them

illuminate the topics from the point of view of young leaders who are

finding passion and purpose in their profession and reimagining the fu-

ture of business leadership. The stories that follow, however, aren’t frame-

works, nor do they follow a single narrative with one point of view. Rather,

they are powerful, candid accounts of successes and setbacks, personal

dilemmas, and reflections on the future. From launching start-ups in

Boston to taking on the family business in India; from teaching debate in

the Arabian Gulf to helping rebuild war-torn Rwanda; from striving for

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Introduction 3

gender equality in the workplace to helping people bring their “whole

selves” to work, these stories reveal that leadership is a deeply personal

journey unique to every individual.

The structure of the book is simple.

First, each chapter begins with a short introduction that frames the

context of the chapter.

Second, the chapter illustrates and elaborates on these trends through

several stories from current and recent MBAs who are trying to make a

difference in a fast-changing world.

Third, these stories are supported by outside research and our own

MBA Student Survey. Between September and October of 2010, we con-

ducted a survey of more than five hundred current and recent MBA stu-

dents from Harvard Business School (HBS), Stanford, Darden, Tuck,

Wharton, MIT Sloan, and other business schools. We’ve collected and

analyzed those results here.

Finally, each section is capped by an interview with a senior leader—

distinguished men and women such as Dominic Barton (global managing

director of McKinsey & Company), David Gergen (adviser to four presi-

dents, Director of Harvard’s Center for Public Leadership, and senior po-

litical analyst for CNN), Rich Lyons (dean of Haas Business School,

former chief learning officer of Goldman Sachs), Deborah Henretta

(president of P&G Asia), Joe Kennedy (president and CEO of Pandora),

and Carter Roberts (CEO of World Wildlife Fund). These leaders pos-

sess a rich array of experiences that make them uniquely positioned to

comment on the generational changes taking place in business.

HBS professor and former Medtronic CEO Bill George introduces the

book with a foreword on his views of the challenges and opportunities

that will confront young leaders, and HBS Dean Nitin Nohria ties these

themes together with a concluding interview. We then cap the discussion

with a detailed appendix of the results of our MBA Student Survey.

The result is a holistic picture—quantitative and qualitative, empirical

and anecdotal—about the trends we see shaping the passions of young

leaders and the future of business.

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4 PASSION AND PURPOSE

Why Passion and Purpose

So who are we, and why is finding passion, purpose, and a new vision for

the future important to us?

For John, business has been an experiment. A product of Georgia and

Florida, he grew up with an appreciation for the power of private enter-

prise. His dad, a former rodeo cowboy turned financial advisor, had used

business to build opportunities for his family; but for most of high school

and college, John thought he’d more likely be a journalist or professor

than a marketer or investment banker. Then, after an itinerant year fol-

lowing his college graduation, John found an organization in business that

still allowed him to think about hard problems, write a little on the side,

and take his ideas from the printed page to organizations where he could

put them into action. He met colleagues he genuinely enjoyed and found

mentors willing to take chances on him and invest in his future.

And the more businesspeople he met, the more he realized his private sec-

tor colleagues were some of the most passionate people he’d encountered—

many pursuing their careers not out of necessity but because it was through

those careers they’d found purpose, a way to channel their talent and cre-

ative energy. He saw businesses creating opportunities for millions of peo-

ple, and while he’s never abandoned his other passions, he truly believes

that business offers solutions to some of the most pressing problems we

face. Passion and Purpose was a way for him to think more deeply about

those solutions and meet some of the young people creating them.

Every day of his first year at HBS, meanwhile, Oliver would see the

Philippine flag displayed across his section’s classroom. In HBS, first-year

classrooms are adorned by the flags of each student’s country of origin.

For Oliver, this was a powerful reminder of the importance of the past,

and how the past helps leaders form their self-identity through their per-

sonal stories. In Filipino, there’s a saying: “Ang hindi marunong lumingon

sa pinanggalingan ay hindi makakarating sa paruruonan” (“He who doesn’t

appreciate his roots shall never succeed”).

The Philippines has a turbulent past. One of the most prosperous Asian

economies after World War II, decades of institutional corruption and

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political upheaval since the Marcos era in the 1970s have stagnated

growth. It’s the resiliency of private businesses and overseas remittances

that have kept the country afloat. Oliver’s story reflects those of millions of

Filipinos living around the world. In his twenties, he too worked abroad

and also became part of the Filipino diaspora. His interest in business and

leadership was sparked by growing up with entrepreneurial parents. Wit-

nessing everyday the immense poverty and inequality that persists in his

homeland and in other parts of Asia, he came to believe in the power busi-

ness can have to make a difference in the world. Oliver believes that the

stories of young leaders featured in Passion and Purpose can help catalyze

similar reflections in young people throughout the developing world.

Daniel came to HBS with a sense of optimism about the role of busi-

ness in the world. Like Oliver, Daniel spent his childhood outside the

United States—in Wollongong, a seaside Australian city. Over the course

of his young adult life, Daniel witnessed firsthand the power of business

to change lives. Whether observing a start-up, a large investment bank, a

management consulting firm, or a mature industrial company, Daniel saw

examples of how organizations could simultaneously meet their financial

objectives and contribute enormously to modern society.

It is this raw conviction that motivated Daniel to write Passion and Pur-

pose. At the time of the financial crisis, journalists accused “businesspeo-

ple”—particularly alumni of top business schools who had reached

executive-level positions—of arrogance and greed. At a time when the

world desperately needed glimmers of hope, this negative stereotyping

hid from public view the individual stories of young people using business

as a lever to positively impact their communities. The stories of these

young business leaders—the best and brightest—had to be told.

In the spring of 2009, Oliver ran an article in the HBS campus news-

paper looking for someone to help coauthor a book on our generation’s

ability to “reimagine leadership” in the midst of crisis. John responded al-

most right away. Then he and Oliver spent the next few months working

with former Random House CEO and HBS senior lecturer Peter Olson

to think through a book manuscript that could help voice the aspirations

of the friends and colleagues with whom they interacted every day while

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offering a fresh and compelling view of the future. In the fall of 2009,

Dan joined the team, and gradually we came up with an idea—a crowd-

sourced book on leadership, targeted toward the younger generation, that

could help give voice to new visions of leadership.

Today’s Young Leaders: Passionate and Purposeful

Young businesspeople want to find purpose in their profession and have a

passion for what they do. As they come of age, they are growing up with the

belief that business can provide us with a way of translating a meaningful,

personal purpose into work that impacts the world in a positive way. In our

own 2010 survey of more than five hundred current or recent MBAs, “intel-

lectual challenge” came up as the most important reason for choosing one’s

work, significantly more important than compensation or a firm’s prestige.

We hear a lot about generations—millennials, Gen-X’ers, boomers—

but whatever you call them, today’s young leaders have a fresh perspective

about what it will take to lead moving forward. They’re twenty-somethings

in the early years of their careers, but they’re in jobs that require tremen-

dous amounts of responsibility, whether it’s managing a brand, starting a

new venture, or transitioning in the family business. Most have a few

years of work experience and are readying themselves for the next step in

their careers, such as getting promoted, moving abroad, or joining another

company. They are current MBA students and recent graduates embark-

ing on new paths after business school. Regardless of what stage they’re

in, these young leaders share several characteristics.

According to the Pew Center, they are the most educated generation in

history—in the United States, 54 percent of millennials have college de-

grees, compared to 36 percent of boomers.1 In our own survey, fully 80 per-

cent agreed or strongly agreed with the statement, “My generation views

business leadership differently than previous generations.” Moreover, they

see the world differently compared to previous generations. According to

the IBM Future Leaders Survey, 77 percent of current MBAs see rising

complexity in the current environment, compared to 60 percent of current

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CEOs.2 And 65 percent of students believe that the scarcity of resources—

water, food, land, and talent—will significantly impact businesses in the

next few decades, compared to 29 percent of CEOs.

These emerging business leaders represent a shift in thinking. They

have exciting visions for the future. They are the first generation raised in

a truly global and networked world. They’re thinking about careers that

integrate the public, private, and nonprofit sectors; and they’re learning

from the current crisis in ways that we hope will lay the foundation for an

ethical and economic recovery and long-term innovation.

As previously mentioned, our chapters are organized around six core

themes we see as prominent in the lives of rising young business leaders:

• Convergence: Creating Opportunities Across Sectors. More than any-

thing else, we hear from our colleagues about the convergence of

the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. In the nonprofit world, the

term social enterprise has recently gained prominence to describe

organizations with a social purpose but a self-sustaining business

model. More students, even early in their careers, are switching

between the sectors almost frenetically—cross-applying lessons

from government and nonprofit to business and vice versa. In this

chapter, contributors reflect on their cross-sector experiences, and

CNN analyst and presidential advisor David Gergen talks about

generational changes in cross-sector careers.

• Globalization: Embracing the Global Generation. As globalization has

leveled the walls between countries, the first decade of the twenty-

first century has led to an unprecedented opportunity for collabora-

tion, cooperation, and learning. Young leaders are gaining

international experience earlier in their careers, shaping the first

truly global generation of young leaders. Here, several young

businesspeople talk about learning to lead in a global world, and

McKinsey & Company global managing director Dominic Barton

talks about his own global career and what it will take to survive in

an environment in which national boundaries are lower than ever.

Introduction 7

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• People: Leading in a Diverse World. As labor force participation in-

creases and old racial, class-based, religious, and gender barriers

are gradually lowered, the workplace will benefit from the

multiplicity of perspectives that these newly integrated groups can

bring. Our contributors look at ways that unprecedented diversity is

impacting the workplace and how rising business leaders can em-

brace that diversity as a way to generate greater happiness and

more “wholeness” at work. They also look at how leading diverse

people requires diverse leadership experience. P&G Asia president

Deborah Henretta talks about P&G’s efforts to use diversity to cre-

ate greater people leadership and how the next generation can

shape these trends.

• Sustainability: Integrating Preservation and Profits. One of the biggest

trends in global business has been the push for sustainability. Many

businesses are attempting to become more environmentally

friendly and, in the process, more cost effective and energy effi-

cient. The young people in these firms are now focused clearly on

“green” business and alternative energy—and think of sustainability

as a way to build a career. They’re also emphasizing a culture of en-

vironmental intelligence that emphasizes eliminating the trade-offs

that have made sustainability movements so unsustainable in the

past. Contributors discuss their own passion for sustainability, and

World Wildlife Fund CEO Carter Roberts talks about building a

sustainable world through sustainability-focused careers.

• Technology: Competing by Connecting. No discussion of the

future of business would be complete without thoughtfulness

about the way technology—social media, mobile connectivity, and

transportation—is revolutionizing business. Today’s young leaders

are the first to have truly come of age in a connected society, and

our contributors—including founders of innovative new technology

companies like thredUP and RelayRides—talk about the ways in

which technology has influenced their lives and will change the

way organizations do business. Pandora president and CEO Joe

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Kennedy talks about life, career, and innovation in the fast-

changing world of online technology.

• Learning: Educating Tomorrow’s Leaders. By many conventional

measures, the next generation is one of the most educated in his-

tory, and young businesspeople are looking increasingly to educa-

tional experiences, within or beyond their everyday jobs, to make

them better managers and leaders. Yet there’s a growing feeling

among young business leaders that current learning models are not

enough. Amid increasing complexity and uncertainty, how are

young people learning to lead? Our contributors discuss learning in

business school, through entrepreneurship, and in corporations;

Haas Business School Dean and former Goldman Sachs chief

learning officer Rich Lyons talks about what business learning has

looked like and what it will look like in the years ahead.

Within each of these topics, we seek to explore the subtrends that make

them meaningful, and we support these trends in a few distinct ways.

We should note that we don’t consider ours the only perspective on

these issues. We developed our views based on conversations with profes-

sors and colleagues, independent and external research, and reflections

on our own experiences. But our writers come from one school (HBS)

among many. More than anything, this focus resulted from our own un-

derstanding of how difficult it would be to capture the impossible diver-

sity of all young leaders in fewer than thirty stories. And so, we focused on

a subsegment of classmates and friends we know well, hoping that this

effort becomes part of a wider discussion. We want this to be an invita-

tion to other schools, businesses, and institutions to join the conversation

about how passion and purpose shape one’s path to leadership. To that

end, you can find more material—from blog posts, new stories, videos,

and more—at www.hbr.org/passion-purpose, where we’ll continue to post

stories from young leaders at HBS and around the world.

These are trying times—but with every challenge, there is also opportu-

nity. We—the authors of this book—have faith in the rising generation of

leaders who have witnessed the lessons of the crisis and are now seeking

Introduction 9

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to learn from the mistakes that were made and offer a new vision for the

future. As a global community, our goal should be to come out of these

most recent challenges stronger, more united, and more dedicated than

before to gaining purpose from our work and living with a passion for the

future.

—John, Daniel, and Oliver

10 PASSION AND PURPOSE

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CHAPTER 1

Convergence
Creating Opportunities Across Sectors

I believe that in the years ahead, the organization and expansion of

public-goods markets will become one of the most important areas of

philanthropy, and will be an area where philanthropy sometimes

blurs into strict private enterprise.

—Bill Clinton, 20071

What do a Pakistani dreamer, a Swahili-speaking ex-marine, and an

investment banker have in common? In many ways, not much.

Their careers have been as messy and, at times, unfocused. But they

share a common desire prevalent among many of today’s young business-

people to work across sectors—managing careers in the for-profit, non-

profit, and government arenas—often building both financial well-being

and a legacy of social good.

Fortunately for them, the world seems to be moving in the same direc-

tion. In the United States, GDP grew 36.6 percent between 1994 and

2004, but, according to the Urban Institute, nonprofit revenues grew an

astounding 61.5 percent over the same period; and in 2005, more than 61

million Americans volunteered.2 While private sector employment col-

lapsed in the most recent economic crisis, public employment in the

United States remained relatively stable—with high-profile public sector

agencies like the U.S. Treasury attracting top talent from private industry,

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12 PASSION AND PURPOSE

and public sector salaries surpassing those of employees in the private

sector.3 Simultaneously, the past several decades have seen the privatiza-

tion of many previously government-operated activities—in transporta-

tion, utilities, and warfare—even as sovereign wealth funds, public-private

partnerships, and other hybrid organizations have begun to gain promi-

nence on the international stage. The approaching reality is that, in many

cases, meaningful distinctions between these sectors and their activities

are disappearing even as talented young professionals seek to chart ca-

reers that cross traditional boundaries.

This is certainly not a novel concept. Business schools have produced

a number of notable participants in the public and nonprofit spheres, in-

cluding Hank Paulson, Robert McNamara, Mitt Romney, Michael

Bloomberg, George W. Bush, Elaine Chao, P. Chidambaram, and Antony

Leung, to name a few. But the prevalence with which graduates actively

seek cross-sector careers seems to be growing.

HBS’s Social Enterprise Initiative, founded in 1993, now has nearly a

hundred involved faculty and more than four hundred cases and notes for

use in classroom environments; the student-run Social Enterprise Club is

one of the school’s largest, with more than four hundred members.4 The

mission of the Yale School of Management—“to educate leaders for

business and society”—explicitly outlines this cross-sector focus. And

many of today’s top social entrepreneurs are business school grads, like

Stanford’s Jessica Jackley, cofounder of Kiva.5 HBS saw a 106 percent in-

crease in the number of students finding employment in the government

and nonprofit sectors between 2008 and 2009.6 And many business and

law schools support this transition with various loan forgiveness and

fellowship programs that encourage work in the government and social

enterprise sectors.

In our own survey, we found an astonishing amount of interest and ex-

perience in cross-sector careers (see figure 1-1). Despite the fact that all

of our respondents were students of self-described business schools, 30

percent had worked in the public sector prior to school and 30 percent in

the nonprofit sector. Thirty-nine percent believe they will have worked in

the nonprofit sector within ten years of graduation, with 33 percent

predicting work in the public sector.

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Convergence 13

30

30

92

33

39

95
Private

Nonprofit

Public

I have worked in
the following
sectors.
Within ten years I
will have worked in
the following sectors.

FIGURE 1-1

Employment experiences and expectations

Further, 11 percent of those surveyed had worked in all three sectors,

and of those who worked in the private sector prior to school, 24 percent

had also worked in the public sector and 30 percent in the nonprofit sector.

When asked about the nature of this overlap, the response was even more

astonishing (see figure 1-2). Fully 88 percent of respondents answered

“agree” or “strongly agree” when prompted with the statement, “Most busi-

ness principles can be transferred to the public or nonprofit sectors,” with

rates not differing appreciably depending on whether the respondent had

worked in the public, private, or nonprofit sector. And 84 percent answered

FIGURE 1-2

MBA views on cross-sector interaction

Percent who agree or strongly agree with the following statements

88% 84% 84%

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

Most business principles
can be transferred to
the public or nonprofit

sectors.

It is essential for business
leaders to understand

the public and/or
nonprofit sectors.

There is increasing overlap
between business,
nonprofit, and the

public sector.

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14 PASSION AND PURPOSE

“agree” or “strongly agree” to the statement, “It is essential for business

leaders to understand the public and/or nonprofit sectors.” Further, 84 per-

cent of respondents saw “increasing overlap between business, nonprofit,

and the public sector.”

This shouldn’t surprise us. Our generation has been raised in an era of

global privatization of public utilities and in an America where banks and

even automakers have been “bailed out” by the federal government. We’ve

seen arguably the greatest businessperson of recent decades, Bill Gates,

become the world’s most prominent philanthropist; and we’ve seen next-

generation businesses, like Google, frame their mission statement in social

terms: “Don’t be evil.” Democratic revolutions are now facilitated by social

networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. And while not all of this conver-

gence is necessarily good, it’s happening. What should you do about it?

Managing the Next-Generation Career
for Convergence

For young professionals, this convergence alters the landscape of career

opportunities and changes the ways in which we seek training, education,

and mentorship.

First, successful young businesspeople will need knowledge of how

the nonprofit and public sectors work, and employees in those sectors

will need a better understanding of business. Some graduate school pro-

grams, like Harvard’s, offer joint master’s degree programs from their

business and public policy schools. Stanford offers a similar joint pro-

gram with its school of education, and many young professionals are

seeking such cross-sector work early in their careers to cement their

credibility across sectors.7 Young professionals can scarcely hope to op-

erate effectively in private sector enterprises like finance, health care, or

even agriculture without an extensive knowledge of the public sector,

and the increasing relevance of models like microfinance make nonprof-

its relevant to those businesses as well. For the next generation, cross-

sector training and understanding will be essential to effective

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Convergence 15

leadership—particularly because best practices can and should be

shared between sectors.

Second, the “boxes” into which professionals once conveniently confined

their careers are not as relevant or constraining as they may have been for pre-

vious generations. Businesspeople don’t have to either relegate their non-

profit and public sector work to nights and weekends or to later in their

careers. Private sector organizations themselves increasingly incorporate po-

sitions that intersect closely with social and public sector work—in govern-

ment relations, social initiatives, sustainability, and other areas. For instance,

TOMS shoes promises that for every pair of shoes bought by a consumer, it

will give away one pair to a needy child.8 The structure of the firm allows it to

increase its brand recognition through its social initiatives and free media,

while doing good and attracting employees who are looking for purpose-

driven careers. Many professionals are also finding value transitioning be-

tween public and private organizations early in their careers. For those

seeking to chart careers, these options should gain increasing consideration.

Managing the Modern Organization for Convergence

Similarly, managers will have to acknowledge these trends and work to

position their organizations for an environment that reflects them and a

labor force that desires them.

From the perspective of current executives, those tasked with managing

the next generation should seek to use these young professionals’ interest

and experience in cross-sector initiatives to their advantage. For genera-

tions, business has recognized the valuable leadership experience provided

by the U.S. military, but understanding more broadly the role that those

who have worked in emerging markets, public organizations, FOPSEs (for-

profit social enterprises), political campaigns, think tanks, and academic

organizations can have in private sector organizations will be essential to

managers who wish to navigate a new environment where the sectors are

more closely intertwined. Similarly, managers in nonprofit and government

should continue awakening to the increasing usefulness of private sector

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16 PASSION AND PURPOSE

experience, models, and best practices in their organizations. In a 2007

Atlantic Monthly article, journalist Jonathan Rauch noted the ways in

which Bill Clinton was incorporating private sector practices, employees,

and models into his own nonprofits; and organizations like the Gates Foun-

dation and governments like Singapore have followed similar paths. Multi-

national organizations in particular—which must often interact with hybrid

government/private sector industries in a multiplicity of countries, from

China to Great Britain—must be keenly sensitive to this transition.

These managers should also seek not only to hire talent that under-

stands the cross-sector perspective, but also to train their workforce to

value these experiences and offer opportunities to young professionals to

pursue jobs—temporarily or permanently—that suit their passions. The

consulting firm McKinsey & Company, for example, offers professionals

an opportunity to do private, public, and nonprofit work simultaneously

(as law firms have done for many years); and organizations like Bain &

Company offer opportunities through partner or sister organizations that

allow professionals to work on social problems about which they are pas-

sionate while gaining valuable experience they can later transmit back to

the firms for which they work. Public organizations and political bodies—

in Singapore, Brazil, and even the United States—seem to be placing a

higher premium on business experience, with many policy makers moon-

lighting in the private sector between appointments and administrations.

The result is a different way of thinking about value creation in busi-

nesses. Senior managers create value not simply by defining an opportu-

nity, crafting a strategy, and allocating economic and human capital.

More and more, the real challenge of leadership lies in creating roles, or-

ganizations, structures, and belief systems that allow disparate individu-

als to work together in pursuit of a common vision.

Organizations in every sector would be better served by acclimating to

a new environment in which all three sectors are gradually and in certain

ways, converging—and organizations can use the talents and passions of

a new generation of cross-sector professionals to help them chart their

courses. And young leaders should feel empowered to find their passion

and purpose in cross-sector careers.

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Convergence 17

Floating Above the Boxes
Business, Nonprofit, and the Age of Falling
Boundaries

Born in Pakistan and raised in Saudi Arabia, UMAIMAH MENDHRO

was the first woman in her family to leave the country for higher ed-

ucation. She studied human development at Cornell University and

completed her MBA from Harvard Business School as a Baker

Scholar. Umaimah is currently a senior manager at Microsoft Cor-

poration, where she leads corporate entrepreneurship and incuba-

tion efforts. She is also the cofounder of thedreamfly.org, a global

initiative that strives to create human connections across commu-

nities in conflict around common causes.

Nothing but the bleak darkness of a starless night. Deafening thumps of

what felt like a thousand elephants marching into our living room. Shrieks

of panic. My first reconstructed memory of life. “What did my father do?

Why are all the soldiers after him?” In 1980, when Zia Ul Haq proclaimed a

military coup, my parents, young aspiring revolutionaries-cum-physicians,

escaped Pakistan with their two toddlers in the middle of the night to buy

survival in return for a life in exile in Saudi Arabia. “It must’ve been some-

thing all the big, powerful people despised,” my five-year-old self thought.

“Interesting . . . we’re all somehow alive and doing fine.”

My ten-year-old self, covered from head to toe in an ultraconservative

Arabic garb, holding tight to my mother’s hand, walking and dodging

strange men’s nasty stares. Sitting cross-legged on princely rugs in the

vast, serene, open spaces of Haram-al-Sharif, observing rows of women

in black and men in white, now heads on the ground, now standing

upright, now hands on the knees, connecting with their creator on

command. Makkah looked to me like an exotic and spectacular world

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18 PASSION AND PURPOSE

of contradictions, a place where I clung to any opportunity to form, rather

than find, an independent identity. With manufactured dreams and opin-

ions, which the big people might honor or despise, I began to love the

feeling of freely floating in thin air, right above the borders of right and

wrong as defined by a people, charting out my own rules of good and evil.

We returned to Pakistan after eleven years, when democracy was finally

restored.

“Duck, now!” my father exclaimed to all of us in the backseat. I peered

out the window, terrified. A growing crowd of angry young men, with

clubs and arms. The driver hit the gas pedal. None of us said much. We

didn’t play our favorite tunes. Just waited for the shrill silence to dissolve.

Once we left the outskirts of the city, Karachi, we left the home we had

built with half a decade of savings, yet the air felt more breathable again.

Ethnic violence between the Sindhi-speaking and Urdu-speaking popu-

lations had reached a crescendo. Families were stopped, commanded to

say words only Sindhis knew how to pronounce, and depending on

which side the other side was on, were harassed, mugged, and often

enough, shot on the spot. That year, the year I turned thirteen, we ended

up making a life for ourselves by my father’s village, Akri, in a town

named Badin. Some five hours away from the civilization I knew, Badin

allowed our parents a life they had been wanting to come back to—one

where, through their chosen profession, they could care for the sick and

helpless who have no place else to go. We children were home-schooled

and determined to prove to the world that we could and would go places.

I always liked intellectual exploration, but it was in the solitude of a life

with virtually no visitors to host or places to visit, no cliques to try to fit

into, and no norms to sport, that I fell in love with education for the sake

of exploration and illumination of the mind. With squealing chirps of

rodents as my backdrop and a gentle feeling of suffocation on warm

summer nights, I’d sit on my bed and imagine my fifty-year-old self giving

interviews, reflecting on a lifetime of achievements, a Nobel Peace Prize

winner one night, CEO of a conglomerate that brought the country to

prosperity another, while carefully name-dropping some of the world’s

best universities, usually Harvard, that I was supposed to have attended.

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Convergence 19

I graduated from Cornell with a major in human development; mar-

ried a wonderful, wise person who speaks Urdu and cannot pronounce

those words only Sindhis are supposed to say; took a job in consulting

and, in the wake of the dot-com bust, got laid off within nine months;

and then fast-tracked my career with a company I fell in love with,

Microsoft Corporation. Microsoft allowed me the freedoms to chart my

destiny and be rebellious with reason. Outside of my job as a product

manager, with strategic business management and P&L responsibilities

at age twenty-six, I headed up Microsoft’s women’s employee group, rep-

resenting over five thousand members and twelve thousand female em-

ployees around the world—and in the process fought for simple rights

that questioned age-old company policies that did us no good. I felt I

made a difference. That it mattered that I was there.

I traveled to the pits of Sindh and the brinks of Pakistan and Kashmir,

working for an education not-for-profit and a microfinance organization.

This was not part of my strategic life plan. No form of nonprofit was.

During my third week of Harvard Business School, I was forced to take a

medical leave of absence and rejoin the program almost ten months later.

Unemployed in the United States, between a work and student visa, and

eager to make something of the days handed to me, I took the first flight

to Pakistan so I could force myself into a corner to do something I would

never otherwise have done in my now interesting-on-paper life. I found

myself among half-naked children running on the streets, with glimmers

of rebellion in their eyes and dreams of doing something they will one

day be truly proud of. I visited my cousins in our village, whose eyes and

smiles reminded me of my four-year-old self, and that the life I was living

now was alien to me as a child. I saw my aunts and uncles, who didn’t

know what or who Harvard is or even how to spell that word, who had

likely never owned an independent thought or harbored any reason to

reason.

Crack of dawn. I was driving Mona, a dear friend, to Akri. No one out-

side my family—none of my friends, nor my husband—had ever visited

my family in Akri. She had flown in from the United Kingdom after a

brief conversation about whether she would join me in founding an

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20 PASSION AND PURPOSE

organization that would plug into communities around the world, give

them the option and ability to think for themselves, and create better al-

ternative realities. We stood in the heart of my village—in front of chil-

dren young and old. With glazed eyes in an inaccessible world, the older

ones looked through us. We met with the village elders. They com-

plained about lack of education. About the government. About the state

of the country and how we’re all heading toward disaster. They com-

plained, and my heart sank in my chest. I felt privately and acutely

embarrassed.

And then we met the little ones. Girls and boys five, six years old, in

their orange shalwar qameez and big, wide-open eyes. Some with their

hands on their mouths covering their giggling teeth. Others elbowing

their neighbors, pointing at us. I stood in front of them all, taking in the

distinct energy in the room. Mona threw a question to the room, “So, can

anyone tell me what you want to be when you grow up?” A little voice at

the back said out loud, “A heart surgeon.” Mona and I stared at each

other. Other voices joined. “A teacher—for the little children,” said a

little girl, fixing her head scarf. “A lawyer, like in the movies, to arbitrate

justice.” We found that for the little children, the realities of Akri and of

their destined life in this village had not yet set in enough to convince

them how unreasonable their dreams sounded. Images of young Bill

Gates flashed before my eyes—with big, round eyes, and too much en-

ergy for his slender little body to hold in, saying, “We will have a com-

puter on every desk!” Gates morphed into Sam Walton, who faded in and

out with Warren Buffett. “We will make a school for you here,” I blurted

out to little Atta, “so you become all that you said.” “Really?! Here?

When?!” he exclaimed back. And we never looked back.

Thedreamfly.org, the organization we founded that day, exists to bring

together communities in conflict to coinvest in each other’s success for a

better common future, one where drive for personal distinction, appreci-

ation of differences, and thoughtful, independent reasoning prevails. It

exists to create a human connection that’s inviolable by culture, religion,

and politics. We chose business and education, not charity or literacy, as

the means to achieve this goal.

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Convergence 21

I was on one knee, looking at young Nazeem through the eye of my

SLR camera. We had gone for a stroll in the village and I wanted to cap-

ture the moment. “Remind me what you want to be when you grow up?”

He smiled at the camera, looking calm and confident; he must’ve grown

several inches since the last time I had seen him with Mona several

months ago. “Last time I wanted to be a pilot but I now want to be a sci-

entist.” I was moved. You, Nazeem, are why we’re doing what we’re doing,

I thought to myself, and looked to find my voice. “That’s fantastic! Do you

know what kind of a scientist?” Looking straight in my lens with his beau-

tiful smile that belied his words, Nazeem said, “Ones that know how to

make bombs. So I can bomb India.” And you are why we’re doing this.

August 2008. I had returned to HBS, completed my first year and

I was now standing on the ground inside the dreamfly school in Akri.

I could hear uncontrollable excitement and energy everywhere. Kids

were laughing, signing, playing, learning. My throat kept lumping up

with overwhelming emotions of excitement, astonishment, and grati-

tude. I stepped into Class One, Section Blue. The class seemed to be

having a discussion about whether kids should ask the teacher for per-

mission before they have to step out of the class. “If anyone can go at any

time, there will be no rules,” one said. “That’s a good point, but why do

we need rules?” asked the teacher. The class paused for a moment. And

my eyes immediately teared up. They weren’t just learning A-B-C’s and

1-2-3’s. They were . . . thinking. “Maybe to avoid chaos?” said another

student, “because sometimes when there are no rules, every man thinks

he’s the boss.” The class fell into a fit of laughter and applauded. I was

seeing the HBS case study method in action in Akri in Class One. We

weren’t imparting knowledge to our children, we were merely inviting

them to learn for themselves. As the class settled down for a bit, a hand

went up in the air: “Teacher, why did we all clap this time, when we

didn’t clap when Syed had the right answer earlier to your question?”

We are now looking to take dreamfly to Afghanistan. Adopting a for-

profit business model that can help us ensure that our efforts can be self-

sustainable and self-propelling, we want to establish an organization that

outlives its founders. We are using technology and social networking to

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22 PASSION AND PURPOSE

sew the seams between communities at war, giving each exposure to the

world outside the one they most comfortably fit in—connecting Pakistan

with Afghanistan with the United States, humans with humans, really,

regardless of where they live or stand.

Graduating from HBS, I didn’t explicitly consider going into the not-

for-profit sector. Neither was I thinking I was going into the for-profit

sector. The incredible freedoms that come with floating across and above

boxes—the boxes of business and social good, of cultures we must fit in,

of beliefs we must abide by—and the courage and power to look through

sacred norms, that’s what I care to build into myself and the world

around me.

I decided to come back to Microsoft Corporation, to a rebel organiza-

tion within the company that runs internal groups like external start-ups

unhindered by the large-company mentality and practices. We’re looking

to break a few rules, fall on our faces, pick ourselves up, learn, reason,

and march ahead. I take my dreamfly spirit to work and my work ambi-

tions to dreamfly. I take my ability to manage with near-zero resources to

my Microsoft start-ups and my business savvy to Afghanistan. And my

anxious energy to do more, my fervent desire to make an impact, my un-

systematic at-the-edge-on-the-border-of- boxes thinking to everything I do.

More and more, I feel, we must define ourselves by who we are, our

deeply personal naked self, and what we want to do, rather than by

which professional hole the peg fits best. And we must find our way to

our vision through our own crooked path, exposing possibilities we never

imagined might exist.

I don’t know where the fullness of my life will take me. If I will be-

come that CEO. If I will win any accolades. If I will die when I’m forty.

But I know I want to live a life that gives people reason to reason; to

pause and question the comfortable assumptions, to form and inform

beliefs, and never give up common sense for common opinion.

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Convergence 23

Learning from Kibera
Nonprofit Lessons for Business from
East Africa’s Largest Slum

RYE BARCOTT cofounded Carolina for Kibera in 2001. He graduated

from Harvard with an MBA and MPA, is a TED Fellow and a World

Economic Forum Young Global Leader, and works at Duke Energy.

His first book, It Happened on the Way to War: A Marine’s Path to

Peace, was published by Bloomsbury in April 2011. He is passionate

about participatory development.

“Vipi beshte?” I asked over Skype. Something was wrong. Cantar’s voice

was tense. “What’s up?”

“Si poa hapa. Hakuna panga iko Uchumi,” he replied from Kibera in

Swahili, referring to Kenya’s largest grocery store. “It’s not cool here.

There are no machetes left at Uchumi.”

It was January 2008, and Kenya had just held a disputed presidential

election.9 Kibera was an ethnic fault line, a slum in Nairobi, Kenya,

where more than three hundred thousand people resided in an area the

size of Central Park. In the next thirty days, more than ten thousand resi-

dents would be displaced, and the medical clinic a widowed nurse

named Tabitha Atieno Festo had founded with a $26 grant would treat

more than a thousand patients wounded by gunfire and pangas.

I was in my first year at Harvard Business School. It was Christmas

break, and I was preparing to return to Kibera to welcome a delegation

from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to Carolina for Kibera (CFK),

the organization I founded in 2001 with Tabitha Festo and the community

organizer Salim Mohamed to build a better generation of African leaders.

“It might not be good to bring the Gates people,” Cantar, our sports

program officer, warned.

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24 PASSION AND PURPOSE

I did not want to cancel the trip. We had courted the Gates Foundation

for two years, and they were interested in how our model of participatory

development could be used to prevent violence and empower youth living

in abject poverty worldwide. However, Cantar and I had worked together

for over eight years. I trusted him. I had learned from him, and he had

learned from me. That was the key to participatory development, an ap-

proach that is rooted in the conviction that solutions to social problems

must be driven by the affected communities, not outsiders.

I cancelled the Gates Foundation visit. The following day Kibera’s

largest church was looted and set on fire, igniting weeks of vicious blood-

letting and ethnic cleansing.

I had decided to attend HBS to better understand business manage-

ment after having founded and helped lead CFK as a volunteer while

serving on active duty in the U.S. Marine Corps. CFK needed better

management practices, having grown from a start-up reaching two hun-

dred children in its inter-ethnic sports program to a fully integrated lead-

ership development program involving more than thirty-five thousand

residents. I arrived at Harvard thinking nonprofits had more to learn

from business than vice versa.

My business education has since suggested to me the learning can go

both ways.

I think there are three broad areas where business best practices can

greatly assist nonprofit organizations like CFK: cost-benefit analysis,

strategic planning, and accounting.

Nonprofit managers typically need to take into consideration factors

that cannot be easily quantified, such as community support. Neverthe-

less, cost-benefit analysis is a powerful way to think through trade-offs sys-

tematically. Over the past year CFK has implemented basic cost-benefit

analysis at a programmatic level. The results have been encouraging. Our

program officers have found that cost-benefit analysis is a tool that helps

surface healthy debates and keeps us grounded and focused on our core

mission, which is to help create a better, more ethically guided generation

of African leaders from an unlikely place—East Africa’s largest slum.

An excellent business education can also equip nonprofit managers

with useful tools for strategic planning. Many of my nonprofit colleagues

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Convergence 25

think they need to hire expensive outside consulting firms to manage the

strategic planning process, and they fear that their organization will lose

operational flexibility and initiative once a plan is complete. I held simi-

lar viewpoints before I attended business school. I now see strategic

planning as a vital and dynamic process that should be prioritized in an

organization’s growth. Too often nonprofits such as CFK simply fall back

on the “founders’ stories” for guidance. Founders’ stories are important.

They are part of the culture of an organization, but they are not a strate-

gic plan. When effectively conducted and used, strategic plans help

organizations maximize their impact.

Finally, many nonprofit managers with whom I’ve worked have never

been formally educated in accounting and thus cannot properly supervise

their finance departments. Most of my classmates at HBS took only

one accounting course during their two years, a first-year course called

Financial Reporting and Control. That class taught the basics, and

although it was not a favorite class among my peers, it was among the

most important courses that I took. I entered business school without

the knowledge of how to prepare and read financial statements, and

these are skills that most, if not all, managers need.

Shortly after the postelection violence in Kenya threw the nation into

turmoil, the real estate bubble burst and the U.S. economy imploded.

It was a unique time to be at business school, especially a school like

Harvard, which had educated many of the CEOs whose firms destroyed

staggering amounts of value, and who came under the fiercest public

criticism for their failed leadership. It was in this context that I revised

my initial presumption that nonprofits had more to learn from business

than vice versa.

Nonprofit best practices can greatly assist business, and they merit

more examination at business schools. Specifically, there are at least two

broad areas where nonprofits may offer substantial insight for corporate

executives and entrepreneurs: values and stakeholder outreach.

The financial crisis occurred in part because American firms were

guided by poor values. CEOs sent the wrong messages when they incen-

tivized productivity primarily though financial bonuses. In any industry,

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nonfinancial factors should be more powerful motivators for employee

retention. This is true even for employees who were primarily motivated

by financial gain when they first joined the business. Nonfinancial fac-

tors are cultural, and they include pride in the product delivered, the

strength of firm identity, unit cohesion, and the integrity of the organiza-

tion. Exceptional nonprofits have their values aligned with their missions

and rely on nonfinancial incentives to keep their employees and volun-

teers motivated. At CFK, for example, our teenage members must partic-

ipate in community clean-ups in order to compete in inter-ethnic soccer

tournaments, and winning teams receive soccer balls and uniforms, not

financial rewards.

Second, business should learn not to overemphasize shareholder value

at the expense of broader stakeholder outreach. Donors are the nonprofit

corollary of shareholders to business. Exceptional nonprofits ensure that

their donors are not prioritized over their other stakeholders. This can be

challenging, because many donors exert pressure on nonprofits to alter

their service delivery. For example, CFK once received an offer from a

foundation to build a vocational school for older women. The initiative

would have detracted from our mission and core competency of youth

empowerment. We turned it down. It was a difficult decision, because

the grant was large and would have provided a substantial contribution

to our overhead. Business executives also must make difficult decisions

to balance shareholder demands for profit maximization with their duties

to serve a broad base of stakeholders. Best practices in nonprofit man-

agement can assist businesses in better measuring and evaluating their

impact and contributions to all of their stakeholders.

I finally had a chance to return to Kibera during spring break in 2008.

Although I continued to volunteer much of my life to CFK, the violence

made me question what we were actually achieving. The most ravaged

parts of Kibera reminded me of Fallujah, Iraq, where I had served with

the Marines in 2005 and 2006. The buildings around our youth center

had been reduced to charred rubble. I became depressed looking at the

damage, and after a day I confided my feelings to my cofounder Salim

Mohamed, who was CFK’s executive director.

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“What are we really doing, man?” I asked Salim.

“Bro, even me, I have to ask myself the very same question,” Salim

replied. “But it’s the tough times when we have to push, and let me tell

you something that gives me hope. When things were really bad, the

community united.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know, thugs, they came here. They wanted to take our stuff and

burn our buildings. The community though, it stopped them. They pro-

tected this place. A group of mamas and youths faced those men with

their pangas. They risked their lives for this place.”

Salim’s words gave me peace of mind. We will never be able to mea-

sure the depth of community support for CFK displayed through the ac-

tions of an anonymous group of residents. Their actions were profound,

and I interpreted them as an indicator that we were doing the right

things for our most important stakeholder, our reason for existing—the

community.

As much as Harvard Business School made me a more effective non-

profit manager, my experiences in Kibera did much more to equip me

with the core values and skills that will keep me grounded as a leader as I

pursue a new stage of my career, building and growing companies in

North Carolina that exist to serve American communities.

I feel fortunate to have been able to work across the public, private,

and nonprofit sectors at a young age, and I aspire to continue to incorpo-

rate such a balance throughout my life. The solutions to our world’s

toughest problems, such as the growth of megaslums, require full en-

gagement and collaboration from each sector, and we have no time to

waste.

Convergence 27

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28 PASSION AND PURPOSE

Commerce and Culture
Combining Business and the Arts

Originally from Lansing, Michigan, CHRISTINA WALLACE now lives in

New York City where she is the cofounder of Quincy, an early-stage

online women’s professional apparel company. She holds a BA in

mathematics and theater studies from Emory University and an

MBA from Harvard Business School. She has worked as a profes-

sional musician, actress, theater director, and arts administrator at

organizations including Theater Emory, Georgia Shakespeare, Ac-

tors Express, the Schwartz Center for Performing Arts, and the Met-

ropolitan Opera. Contact her through www.christinamwallace.com.

I arrived at the T stop in Central Square on a stiflingly hot day in August

2008 carrying a rucksack overflowing with dirty clothes and smelling like

a Latin American hostel. Although I had just endured the heat and hu-

midity of Nicaragua, there was something about the air in Boston that

day that felt heavy as I walked the mile from the station to the Harvard

Business School campus, white sand leaking through the seams of my

pack and dusting the pavement with each step. In just three days I would

start the Analytics Program at HBS, which would prepare us “nontradi-

tional” students to begin our MBAs in September.

I was certain I was about as “nontraditional” as they come. I had stud-

ied first as a classical pianist and cellist, then as a mathematician and ac-

tress, and I had a tattoo of a Fibonacci spiral on my right shoulder blade.

I was sure I wouldn’t fit in. But that didn’t matter. I was on a mission to

figure out what business had to offer the arts.

My life in the arts began early, when, at the age of five, I insisted I begin

piano lessons so I could be just like my big sister Stephanie. Music

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Convergence 29

quickly gained a prominent place in my life. After a decade of lessons,

master classes, competitions, and recitals, I decided to spend my last two

years of high school at Interlochen Arts Academy, a preconservatory arts

boarding school in northern Michigan. It was there that I realized I did

not want to make my career as a professional pianist. I loved music, and it

would always be a part of my life, but I longed for something different.

So I went to college instead of conservatory and spent four years div-

ing into number theory and discovering theater. I fell in love with Paul

Erdos, Richard Feynman, Richard Greenberg, and William Shakespeare;

with cryptography, directing, dramaturgy, and Mersenne prime numbers.

I toyed with a career in theater or a PhD in math, but knew neither was a

great fit. With experience in music and theater and a brain that delighted

in quantitative problems, the true match for me was arts management. It

combined my artistic passion with a love of planning, producing, strate-

gizing, and communicating. After internships with two theaters in

Atlanta and a one-year fellowship with the Schwartz Center for Performing

Arts at Emory University, I was hooked. I moved to New York to see what

it was like in the “big leagues.” On a whim I applied to a job at the Met-

ropolitan Opera and, unbelievably, I got an interview. I was speechless.

The Met isn’t in the big leagues; it’s in a league all its own.

In my interview for a rehearsal associate position with the Met, my

potential supervisor and her boss made me promise that I would not try

to change a thing in my first year. The fact that this request did not trig-

ger a flashing neon warning sign is a testament to how ingrained and per-

vasive that attitude is in many of our cultural organizations—and how

anxious I was to simply be part of such a legendary institution. Peter

Gelb, who had served for a decade as president of Sony Classical, had

just been named the new general manager of the Met. It seemed like the

dusty institution was poised for a renaissance. Surely 2006 would be an

exciting year for a young person to help revitalize one of the country’s

most important arts institutions.

The HR manager thought otherwise and did his best to scare me off.

He said the days would be long, the pay terrible, and the pressure un-

yielding. He said I would not be promoted until someone died or retired,

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30 PASSION AND PURPOSE

since people rarely left the company for any other reason and openings

were scarce given that the Met was long past its growth phase. I would

have the worst job in the house, he insisted, and be stuck there for a

while. I took it anyway. I was certain I could make a difference.

Yet on my first anniversary with the opera, leaving work frustrated by

my ineffectiveness for the fifth time that week, I wondered if this was

what a career in arts management really meant. I had completed my one-

year trial period and was excited to share my ideas to innovate and trans-

form the stodgy Rehearsal Department. There were processes that could

be streamlined and structures that could be created to systemize much

of the repetitive and error-riddled work streams. The department had

one central database with 90 percent of the information we needed to

access over the course of the day, yet we repopulated that data into

schedules by hand, increasing the likelihood of human error along the

way. We ran the same handful of reports every week by marking up docu-

ments with a highlighter and adding figures with pencil and paper, burn-

ing through hours behind a desk that could be better invested in face

time with the artists. We spent the bulk of our day in our “command

center” buried in a corner of the administrative wing while most of the

rehearsals were going on three floors below.

Yet when I approached my manager and the head of our department

with ideas to improve our processes, my proposals were deflected one by

one: there was a certain way that things were done here. I just didn’t un-

derstand the customs yet. Making suggestions, it was pointed out, was

not in my job description.

This culture seemed at odds with the strides Gelb was making at the

helm of the Met. In his first year as general manager he had focused on

reinvigorating the repertoire with new theatrical productions, reconnecting

with the public through a provocative outreach plan, and establishing an

innovative new-media strategy that ultimately set the bar for all other arts

organizations. His sharp business acumen was unquestionably foreign to

the velvet-cloaked halls of the Metropolitan Opera. The speed with which

he enacted his ideas felt like Mach 5 in a company that was still using type-

writers in many departments through the end of the twentieth century.

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Convergence 31

Just two months after officially taking the reins in 2006, he opened

the theater to the public in an unprecedented event by holding a free

open house for the dress rehearsal of Anthony Minghella’s production of

Madama Butterfly. Partnering with a longtime board member, he

launched a rush ticket program with $20 orchestra seats available two

hours before curtain for most performances. To celebrate the season’s

opening night in September, Gelb simulcast the performance both

on the Web and on the big screens in Times Square. Days later he

announced a dedicated Met channel on Sirius satellite radio, and

by Christmas the Met was broadcasting a live performance of

Julie Taymor’s The Magic Flute in high-definition video to movie

theaters around the world.

It seemed so easy for innovation to blossom at the top of this promi-

nent institution, but from where I sat, I felt like I didn’t have a voice to

contribute to the momentum. Gelb’s passion from atop was translating

into an external revitalization, but it wasn’t affecting the internal culture

one whit. And I wasn’t the only one whose passion was dwindling. The

few Met employees under the age of forty were growing frustrated and

leaving in rapid succession. Moreover, this wasn’t just affecting the Met;

my colleagues in comparable roles at other cultural institutions were

feeling similarly disillusioned. An entire generation of passionate non-

profit kids was transitioning out because they felt they had so much to

offer, yet no one was willing or able to harness their zeal. Surely there

was something I could do about it. There had to be.

I briefly considered master’s programs in arts management but quickly

realized it wasn’t the “arts” I needed to learn—it was the “management.”

I wanted to learn the best practices of companies that are ultimately

responsible for a bottom line. So I applied to business school.

My subsequent experiences in business have confirmed my belief that

private sector frameworks, tools, and best practices can fundamentally

contribute to the social sector, even the performing arts. In my HBS class

on managing high-performing nonprofits, we read a case study on the

Edna McConnell Clark Foundation. This innovative foundation offers

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grants to support organizational development, insisting that nonprofits

prioritize structural health alongside program expansion. In general the

philanthropic capital markets still penalize nonprofits for significant over-

head costs, but it is heartening to see one leading foundation acknowl-

edge that overhead is essential to the development of controls, processes,

and human capital. Overhead like employee training and mentoring is

what allows nonprofits to create a pipeline of leadership and establish

succession plans. Clearly defined processes and well-developed controls

strengthen organizations, providing employees with necessary resources

and setting them up for success in achieving their mission.

I’ve also been inspired to learn about the significant growth in the for-

profit social enterprise space. Cochairing the 2010 Harvard Social Enter-

prise Conference exposed me to companies that are eradicating diseases,

increasing access to financial services, and supporting at-risk youth with

more success than their nonprofit counterparts. In many cases the profit

motive can support a social agenda by encouraging innovative business

models wherein the people controlling the cash flow (usually by buying a

good or service) are the same constituents receiving the benefits of that

enterprise. This stakeholder alignment translates into a more sustainable

funding model than exclusive reliance on government or foundation sup-

port, replacing a charitable relationship with a customer relationship.

To be clear: social enterprise is not about balancing the double bottom

lines of social impact and profit as though they are equally important.

Profit, in these sectors, is ultimately a means to achieve social impact,

not the end itself. But it is a mechanism to encourage growth, innova-

tion, and evolution.

On an even more basic level, however, I learned that businesses re-

ally do aim to create value. In the traditional sense, they create value

for their owners or shareholders. But they can do so only by encourag-

ing the types of ingenuity and entrepreneurship that impact the

broader world. Translating and adapting business frameworks and best

practices for the social sector means leveraging these resources to cre-

ate value for society. From this perspective it becomes absolutely nec-

essary for leaders in the social sector to utilize business tools, not only

32 PASSION AND PURPOSE

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to create innovative enterprises but also to scale high-potential organi-

zations to maximize social impact.

Over my two years at HBS I learned that there isn’t simply a place for

businesspeople in our cultural institutions; there is a desperate need for

them. The integration may be difficult since there is currently little dia-

logue across the nonprofit/for-profit divide, but it is in our best interests

to foster such collaboration.

Peter Gelb began that collaboration when he brought to the Met the

marketing and media savvy he developed while at Sony Classical. There

is no doubt that the “new Met” has been wholly transformed from the

audience’s perspective. But there is more that can be done internally.

The cultivation of human capital should be one of the company’s priori-

ties, by mentoring and coaching employees to think beyond their job

description and understand more than just their corner of the company.

And the Met is not alone.

Moreover, in an organization that spends about 75 percent of its oper-

ating budget on payroll, the Met must consider how sophisticated plan-

ning techniques and other applications of technology could transform

their costs. Adapting tools and analysis from the business world could im-

prove the coordination and utilization of their large union groups and help

reduce the need for expensive overtime. With seventeen unions and a

century of data to analyze, the impact of such tools could be substantial.

It seems like an eternity since I plodded that first time from the sub-

way in Cambridge to my new home at HBS, but my experiences have led

me to believe ever more firmly that business is how I can help build and

sustain the vitality and accessibility of arts institutions in a world that

needs them more than ever.

Convergence 33

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34 PASSION AND PURPOSE

Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Business
of Peace

JAKE CUSACK is a former Marine Corps officer who served in Iraq

as a sniper platoon commander and intelligence officer from 2005

to 2008. He will graduate with a joint degree from the Harvard

Business School and Harvard Kennedy School in 2012, and has

written extensively about entrepreneurship and economic growth

in Afghanistan. He is passionate about economic development in

conflict zones.

My idea of war in Mesopotamia was so steeped in mythology that I felt

the laws of gravity might be upended when I landed as a marine in Al

Taqaddum, Iraq, on Christmas Day 2005. I thought I was being trans-

ported into a world of legend, populated with heroes and filled with

pageantry amid chaos. But I soon learned the difference between my

abstractions and reality.

I found the same laws of physics that applied to me growing up in

Michigan applied in Fallujah. There was no particular romance or mys-

tery as to how battles were won or why people died. Small projectiles

ripped into skin in combat the same way twisted metal cut through flesh

in a highway car accident. Fighting the insurgency was blue-collar work,

sweat and tedium under a hot sun. Hours of patrols, census-taking, and

conversations with local elders over warm tea were punctuated by the

briefest moments of extreme violence.

I was woefully clumsy navigating a war so unlike the one I had imagined.

Two months into my first deployment, I remember standing with another

Marine lieutenant on a rooftop in a city of over twenty thousand Iraqis.

Both in our early twenties, we were the senior officers present, working

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Convergence 35

for the security and welfare of the city. We discussed the current prob-

lems: complaints from the city council, closed markets, illicit trades, the

virulent imam, unreliable electricity, and undrinkable water. I realized

that while I knew how to employ a machine gun or call in air support,

I was completely unprepared for the full spectrum of modern conflict.

Economic factors were fundamental to the surprisingly base logic un-

dergirding the war. Profit—not just nationalism, religious fervor, or need

for honor in battle—motivates behavior under even the most anarchic of

circumstances. In Al Qaim, a dusty Iraqi town on the Syrian border, a

local tribe became one of the first to turn against Al Qaeda in 2005. The

tribe was driven neither by patriotism nor by fear of an extremist Islamic

state, but by its desire to regain control of lucrative cross-border smug-

gling routes.

On another hot summer day two years later, I sat in a meeting of se-

nior Iraqi leadership discussing problems in the Ninewah province. Little

of our conversation actually stemmed from typical security or military is-

sues. Instead, the topics were the price of refined and unrefined oil; in-

frastructure at the points of entry; taxation schemes; the relative health

of agricultural commodities. I was the only one present who wanted to

talk about foreign fighters or illicit weapons smuggling. Everyone else

was concerned with business.

In the peak of the insurgency, senior military leadership advocated a

“carrot and stick” approach to bringing the populace to our side. But ini-

tially, our sticks were frail and our carrots were stale. We found we could

never win an intimidation battle with the insurgents: if Iraqis gave infor-

mation to us, Al Qaeda would come in the night and kill their families;

if Iraqis passively cooperated with Al Qaeda, we might be able to detain

them for two weeks. Too often, our enticements were equally weak: to an

unemployed Iraqi, pencils and soccer balls for schoolchildren or a few

meal packages tossed from a Humvee seemed at best platitudinous and

at worst insulting.

We eventually realized that robust funding and effort at the lowest lev-

els could show a road to a more tolerable future—one with electricity,

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36 PASSION AND PURPOSE

jobs, and education—than the lawless bloodletting that Al Qaeda’s Is-

lamic State of Iraq offered in the territory it controlled. Although the

endless raids and captures of insurgents were important, I saw subtle po-

litical and economic shifts rapidly yield more significant results. The in-

famous Sunni “awakening” that turned Al Anbar province against Al

Qaeda went beyond local leaders finally banding against foreign fanat-

ics—it was also a jobs program, pumping millions of U.S. dollars into the

hands of military-aged males who had formerly been our foes.10

In 2009, I returned to academic study with a desire to gain new perspec-

tives on the interaction of business, governance, and security at the

edges of chaos. After subsequently finishing the first year of the joint

MPP/MBA program, I spent the summer in Afghanistan. A fellow stu-

dent, Erik Malmstrom, and I hoped to explore private sector growth and

constraints in the country from the perspective of the indigenous busi-

nesses. We worked to find Afghans who had stayed clear of the easy

short-term money suckled from international forces and instead

launched more sustainable ventures in industries like carpets, dried fruit

exports, and light manufacturing.

Landing in a war zone as an independent researcher was a jarring

departure from my time as a marine. At first, I felt almost naked without

a bit of body armor or the camaraderie of fellow armed men. In tense sit-

uations, my hand moved unconsciously to my right hip, grasping for the

9-mm Beretta that was no longer there.

But I soon felt far more comfortable wearing local dress than I ever

did with Oakleys and fatigues. I relished spending hours in conversation

with locals in their homes without having to mentally count down the

time it would take for the insurgents to set an ambush or lay an IED out-

side. I even enjoyed it when Afghans refused to speak to me—a leveling

of roles that had not generally been possible when I showed up for meet-

ings carrying a semiautomatic weapon.

Time spent with businesses was also more uplifting than my old pur-

suits hunting “high-value targets.” Although the summer of 2010 was a

tumultuous time—the relief of General Stanley McChrystal, rampant

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Convergence 37

intelligence leaks, and a growing chorus labeling “failure”—I left more

optimistic than I had ever felt about a conflict zone. The reminders of

war were still there: the owner of a flour mill in a large city near the Ira-

nian border answered a question about his company’s growth by dividing

it into “before and after I was kidnapped” (he escaped and moved to

Kazakhstan for a year, shutting down a portion of the business). But good

businessmen are by nature optimistic about the future—their money is

tied up in it, after all—and their entrepreneurial enthusiasm and willing-

ness to invest was contagious.

Even in Kandahar, where the local Pashtun tribesmen who accompa-

nied me to meetings carried Glock pistols under their long dress—not

just for my protection, but for theirs—I found enterprises still growing.

The risk, substantial of course, could be overrated. The chairman of

Afghanistan’s first insurance company explained to me how they had

gradually been able to lower the annual property premiums they passed

on from Lloyd’s of London from 12 percent to around 1 percent. Though

the governance and regulatory framework could be massively unpre-

dictable, outsiders generally overestimated the actual physical threat to

normal business.

As in combat, the test of a chaotic environment revealed character.

Some businessmen were entrepreneurial in the worst sense, staging at-

tacks to drum up business for their security company or monopolizing

control of scarce resources for personal power. But this made the forti-

tude of others all the more impressive: a television station refusing to

bias its news coverage despite relentless political pressure; a clothing

manufacturer employing hundreds of women; a custom-made carpet

manufacturer providing jobs to thousands of rural families; a supplier

forgoing a contract rather than paying a bribe.

After six years in and out of conflict zones, I have learned that people can

continue to respond to economic incentives in rational ways, even in the

most dangerous of circumstances. Outside forces conducting ambitious

interventions desperately require private sector expertise in order to

reconstruct failed states. Nascent local government leaders need to

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38 PASSION AND PURPOSE

remember that businesses—their success staked to overall stability—can

be an invaluable support.

An infusion of private sector talent could benefit our national security

apparatus. Specifically, I can offer a few examples of what government

might learn from a private sector mind-set:

• Focus on ensuring predictability and stability to enable economic

growth. Contrary to expectations, neither physical security nor cor-

ruption is the primary constraint on business in Afghanistan. In-

stead, over and over again, entrepreneurs complained about the

overall uncertainty of the business environment. Tax structure, cus-

tom tariffs, local power brokers, American force posture, financing,

government officials—all were in constant flux. Just like in Western

markets, uncertainty is even worse than a large but specific down-

side. When given a specific threat, business can adapt or hedge by

shifting operations, becoming more liquid, or paying bribes (a form

of tax). As one of the most adept businessmen told me: “The prob-

lem is not the variables themselves, but the variability of the vari-

ables.” International forces can help mitigate such uncertainty by

making public long-term policy commitments, providing advance

purchase financing, and incorporating private sector considerations

into even low-level military planning.

• Be willing to make long-term investments. Ironically, I found the

American government—which should be looking toward long-term,

regional implications—to be absurdly short-term in orientation.

Quarterly reporting deadlines and year-long deployments lead to a

culture where everyone is looking for the fix that will pay off on

their watch. This in turn makes the businessmen focused on the

quick dollar (often from trading), when they otherwise would be

willing to make three- or five-year investment (in fixed-capital pro-

duction facilities).

• Allow reasonable profits. Despite working on behalf of a country

that was built on capitalism, some in the State Department and

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Convergence 39

USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development) seem funda-

mentally uncomfortable with the idea that a good business will

enrich its owners. They sometimes seem to perceive profit as ille-

gitimate and immoral, and feel that the best small business projects

should verge on socialism. This has created a culture where

Afghans applying for a grant hide the “profit” part of their business

plan because they think the donors will not support an enterprise

that may reward the owners. Interestingly, the reverse is true for

contracting in the security, transportation, and construction sec-

tors, where international forces turn a blind eye to blatant rent-

seeking and windfall returns.

• Abandon failing projects. Unlike a business, which will cut its losses

and move on, each layer of a traditional development project has no

incentives to acknowledge failure. Elegant reports with glossy pic-

tures substitute for real performance. Donor, implementer, and

beneficiary often maintain the facade of obviously flawed projects

because evaluation is based on money spent—“burn rates”—and

vague social metrics.

From the other perspective, Western business can find it both finan-

cially and socially rewarding to be a partner in the rebuilding of a sus-

tainable economy amid conflict. There are lessons the private sector

might find useful for doing business in chaotic countries:

• Do not make risk assessments from media reports. Western compa-

nies often significantly overestimate the physical security risk and

avoid even safe areas of Afghanistan. At this very moment, Turkish,

Chinese, Lebanese, and other investors are seizing business oppor-

tunities because they are more realistic in their assessments. If

Westerners travel and act in a low-profile manner, some areas of

Afghanistan seem safer than some American urban centers.

• Vertically integrate and replicate missing government functions

internally. In the absence of contract sanctity, the best way to know

the transport trucks for your goods will always show up is to own the

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40 PASSION AND PURPOSE

trucks. Bereft of government protection, industrialists are forced to

replace government functions with their own. Effectively, they de-

velop internal police forces (Ministry of Interior), external protec-

tion (Ministry of Defense), independent communications, electric

and water infrastructure, and so on. This actually can be a sustain-

able business model, so long as the profits are sufficiently strong.

• Ensure security by working with the community. The largest company

in Afghanistan, Roshan Telecom, used to hire outside security con-

tractors to protect its numerous cell towers. Faced with rising costs,

they switched to a model where they paid local villagers to guard

the towers, and offered incentive benefits for the community. The

new “socially responsible” initiative resulted in lower costs and im-

proved security.

• Be proactive in finding entrepreneurs and investing in local human

capital. In a conflict climate, the men who show up at your

doorstep asking for investment money often cannot be trusted, as

they are often locals who have become expert at gaming a donor

system. It is better to identify the sector you are interested in, then

go scour the countryside for the entrepreneur already making

progress in that area. Once you find a good one, keep investing—

human talent is the hardest to find and the most irreplaceable fac-

tor. Those who rely too much on outside consultants discover that

as security worsens, the outsiders leave and will not return except

for exorbitant fees.

I find my classmates at Harvard, with significant business expertise,

unaware of how much their skills can help in our current global struggle

with terrorism and our efforts to rebuild failed states. The tools of na-

tional security are far more diverse than those of the military or even de-

velopment aid. The capacity to build a secure world will not be found

only in West Point or unleashed from afar by unmanned technologies.

Now, more than ever, the call for service in national security can be an-

swered by everyone.

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Convergence 41

Business in the World
How Corporations Can Be Change Agents

KELLI WOLF MOLES worked in investment banking at JPMorgan in

New York before graduating from Harvard Business School with the

class of 2011. Kelli is founder and CEO of Project Spark, a nonprofit

that promotes sustainable philanthropy and organizes volunteer

trips. Kelli is passionate about helping businesses give employees

greater purpose through public service.

In 2006, my husband and I took our honeymoon in Africa. We went on a

safari, and then spent two weeks volunteering at an orphanage in

Uganda. Nine months after our trip, while working in investment bank-

ing at JPMorgan, I began to feel ill. For two weeks, I refused to take time

off from work, trying a few outpatient visits to remedy my flulike symp-

toms. Finally, I went to the emergency room. With a team of ten to fif-

teen doctors surrounding my bed, I was diagnosed with an advanced

form of malaria. This deadly disease had lain dormant in my body since

our return. My tests showed a life-threateningly low white blood cell

count, and the doctors determined that my spleen had ruptured and was

pouring toxic blood throughout my body.

In my darkest hours, I found myself drawing on my faith. I had to be-

lieve that something positive would come from this, and looking back,

this experience changed my perspective forever. My brush with death re-

minded me that life is short. I realized I want to change lives and influ-

ence people more than I want power or wealth. Wall Street is an exciting

and challenging place to work, but making a positive impact on communi-

ties and individuals is equally important for bringing meaning to my life.

Soon after I recovered, I began raising funds and awareness for

malaria prevention. After raising $5,000 for malaria nets in 2007, I was

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42 PASSION AND PURPOSE

asked to host a booth at JPMorgan’s volunteer fair and speak on a panel

about my project. I quickly realized how many of my colleagues also ap-

preciated the fact that life should not be taken for granted and were in-

terested in leveraging business to change the world.

Business and its leaders play a powerful role in shaping society. This

has always been a core belief of mine, and it is the reason that I chose a

career in business. In my travel to more than forty countries, I have seen

firsthand that businesses and corporations are often more powerful than

governments. Whether you believe that business is only for profit maxi-

mization, or that it has a broader role, it is undoubtedly a force producing

many effects—both positive and negative—in the world.

After talking with my colleagues and friends, we organized a group we

called Project Poverty to serve two goals: (1) to raise money for sustain-

able development projects and (2) to organize trips to developing coun-

tries to see the work firsthand. In the first year our team planned six

events, from a three-on-three basketball tournament to a cocktail hour.

JPMorgan supported our work in many ways—from featuring us as a

“Project of the Month” to matching donations to helping with publicity

of our events. It was great to see the positive results when competitive

businesspeople unite toward a common goal. The friendships and cama-

raderie we developed through Project Poverty stuck with us as we

worked through challenging client situations.

After the success of our fund-raising, we wanted to take Project

Poverty further. We suspected the investment of “sweat equity” into the

clinic’s construction would help us all connect with our cause. My first

visit to Africa had changed my life, and I knew the same would happen

to my colleagues. In September of 2008, thirteen professionals, includ-

ing five coworkers from JPMorgan, traveled with me to Ghana. We spent

five days carrying stones and mixing cement by hand to build a health

clinic.

Since that time, Project Poverty has brought forty-five people to devel-

oping countries and raised over $100,000. Of the people who have gone

on Project Poverty trips, all have found their lives impacted in very differ-

ent ways. Many of us learned about ourselves and the world during our

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Convergence 43

time abroad, and brought the insights and stories back to our jobs and

clients. Managers today have to understand the diverse, interconnected

world we live in while still paying respect to national pride and cultural

sensitivities. More than ever before, we will be managing global teams

with people very different from ourselves. Understanding and appreciat-

ing other cultures and people more deeply makes it easier to work

together.

Soon after that trip, I also got involved in a program called Bankers

Without Borders and served as one of the inaugural volunteers. This is a

program set up by the Nobel Prize–winning Grameen Foundation to uti-

lize private sector resources to make a difference by helping the poorest

of the poor. JPMorgan gave me time off and sent me to Africa to serve as

a project leader for a technology pilot at a microfinance institution.

Using banking skills halfway around the world was an interesting learn-

ing experience. I learned as much as I helped, and came back with new

ideas and a greater appreciation for banking in emerging markets.

I believe this tendency among large corporations and professional

firms to devote more resources to giving their employees life-changing

experiences in the public and nonprofit sectors is both growing and in-

credibly valuable to the firms themselves. The company I am now work-

ing with, McKinsey & Company, offers opportunities for interested

professionals to take sabbaticals, and through various secondments

and externships, consultants are able to take time off to pursue their

passions.

To keep a dynamic workforce, these options are important. These

types of programs truly set employers apart. They attract talent, motivate

employees, and transform workforces. Not only do they show commit-

ment to employees and provide meaningful and valuable options, but

they also demonstrate cutting-edge thinking, a willingness to try new

things, and flexibility. All of these options then equip employees to

become more thoughtful, engaged leaders.

In my experience with Project Poverty, Bankers Without Borders, and

McKinsey, I’ve noticed a few patterns in the way managers and organiza-

tions have successfully imagined and executed these public service

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44 PASSION AND PURPOSE

programs. A few of the key elements each program seems to contain are

partnership with first-class organizations, easy and accessible options for

involvement, senior leadership support, publicity of events and impact,

and inclusion in a formal review process:

• Partnering with first-class organizations allows companies to do what

they do best, while lending talent to nonprofits that are best in class

at fulfilling their mission. Bankers Without Borders allows the

Grameen Foundation to join forces with those working in tradi-

tional banking areas. Many of these public service organizations

have formalized programs that limit the administrative burden for

companies building new programs. These organizations often have

successful models that can be leveraged for everything from select-

ing volunteers to choosing projects. Partnering with these top

organizations also provides employees the best opportunities to

learn and to develop new skills to bring back to the workplace.

• Easy and accessible opportunities for employee involvement are also

key. It is a big commitment to take time away from personal obliga-

tions and an already busy workload to participate in volunteer activ-

ities. The volunteer fair my company held over lunch enabled me to

recruit employees interested in getting involved with Project

Poverty. Providing opportunities such as volunteer fairs, lecture

series, benefit happy hours, and companywide service days allows

employees to find out more and consider further involvement. We

found that shorter events over lunch or breakfast encouraged em-

ployees to stop by without making a large upfront time commit-

ment. This also broadens the reach of the programs and allows

greater awareness and participation.

• As with any major corporate initiative, senior leadership must buy in

and be personally committed to ensuring the success of the pro-

grams. Senior leaders who are excited about the public service pro-

grams spark enthusiasm from employees. Executives must be

flexible and willing to support employees’ involvement. Senior

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Convergence 45

involvement helps to work through any problems with the initial

implementation of the program and ensures it is institutionalized

for years to come.

• Publicity of events and impact is crucial to communicating the suc-

cess and importance of the work with a broader audience. When

Project Poverty was selected as Project of the Month, we were fea-

tured in the company newsletter and on the website. A short video

and pictures were included to show firsthand the work being done.

This kind of publicity provides a platform to share the impact not

only with employees but also with customers and clients. With the

rise of social media, there are many low-cost ways companies can

showcase the work being done and garner further support for

future initiatives.

• Last, inclusion of the employee’s involvement in the formal review

process also helps to build a successful program and a company cul-

ture that promotes participation in volunteer opportunities. This is

usually done as a “back page”—additional information to accom-

pany the core performance review. It showcases employee leader-

ship and involvement in company programs outside of the basic

day-to-day activities. It shows a true commitment on the part of the

company to encourage employee participation. It also provides ad-

ditional incentives for those considering whether or not they will

have the time and the ability to volunteer in addition to their cur-

rent jobs.

Corporations are vast and often untapped resources for sustainable solu-

tions to the world’s greatest social and economic ills. I have learned this

lesson firsthand through my fund-raising work and my current role in

management consulting. Companies that support and empower employ-

ees to take on challenges they care about will win in the long term. We

will bring our experiences out in the world back to our jobs, while devel-

oping loyalty to the companies that are determined not just to make

money, but to leave a positive footprint along the way. As I learned

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46 PASSION AND PURPOSE

through my brush with death—life is short. Each day should be trea-

sured and our talents used to their highest purpose. Imagine the impact

of more companies lending top talent to good causes. Through partner-

ships and public service programs, we have the opportunity to leverage

business to play a positive role in society.

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Convergence 47

INTERVIEW WITH . . .

David Gergen
Adviser to four presidents, Director of Harvard’s Center for Political
Leadership, and Senior Political Analyst for CNN

David Gergen discusses a new, cross-sector generation and what

the increasing convergence of the public, private, and nonprofit

sectors will mean for the world.

David, over the course of your career, you have interacted with a lot
of influential leaders—of previous generations and of the current
generation. What do you see as some of the primary differences or
similarities between those groups?

There are some similarities. The leaders of past generations whom I

have known led incredibly demanding lives. They had to put in long

hours, often at the expense of their families, and they had to dig deep

into complex questions—often not knowing what the answers would

be. Complexity is not new. It comes back to us in different forms, but

it’s not new for leaders. Another thing that hasn’t changed is that lead-

ers have always had to have a set of values and to be deeply rooted in

values. The context has changed but the importance of integrity,

courage, and fair play has not changed—over time or across countries.

But there are also notable changes in the context of leadership today

that place fresh demands on young leaders who are emerging from

business schools and other institutions of higher learning. For one, the

pace of change has quickened dramatically in recent years so that

young leaders today have to be much more adaptable than leaders of

my generation. It’s unimaginable now that if we were faced with a mis-

sile crisis coming out of Cuba—or today, in Iran—that any president

would have thirteen days to resolve it. Modern technology and other

changes demand that you act much more quickly. And a modern presi-

dent wouldn’t be able to maintain the privacy that Kennedy had.

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48 PASSION AND PURPOSE

Henry Adams famously wrote in his memoirs that the nineteenth

century was when things really began to speed up. Prior to that, what

the father did was what the son tended to do, and what the grandson

tended to do. But in the nineteenth century, things started moving more

rapidly, and now in the twenty-first century, we’ve reached warp speed.

You have to have much broader, wider bandwidth to deal with it.

In my generation, you tried to be an expert in a field. You might,

for example, be an international relations specialist focused on Sub-

Saharan Africa.

Today, you must know not only international politics but also inter-

national economics, health care delivery, issues related to education,

and so on. Knowledge has spilled out of individual fields and there’s

much more need for knowledge across fields. Universities today are

developing more and more interdisciplinary studies. Someone com-

ing out of businesses is expected to understand the government and

the civic sector. And inevitably, people are finding their careers span

sectors far more than they did in the past. Now there is a real pre-

mium on an education that allows you to build foundations across

sectors.

This is not to say that an individual doesn’t need some specialized

knowledge. I still think it pays rich dividends for a leader to have at

least one or two areas in which he or she has made a deep dive. To be

a generalist who skims across things on the Internet or depends on

another person’s knowledge is insufficient in today’s world. You can’t

simply rely upon the competence, knowledge, or backgrounds of

those who work with you or report to you. As you rise to leadership,

the decisions that come to you are always very close calls. They’re

often 51/49 and you find that your advisors are divided about them.

Somebody has to make the ultimate decision. And that requires a

person who has training or at least a capacity for judgment that goes

beyond “front porch” understanding. George W. Bush, for example,

was a man of integrity but often had divided advisors and had to

make decisions on his own about things he hadn’t really had the

chance to study deeply.

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Convergence 49

So you’re driving toward a point here about the increased bandwidth
that a lot of young leaders need to have, both because of the pace of
change and because there’s so much interaction now between the
different sectors?

I think that’s right. They’re all in partnership now: the civic sector, the

private sector—you know, companies today operate internationally and

have to be worried about issues of sustainability, and inevitably that

brings them into close contact with NGOs. And then the web of

regulations—government regulations and government engagement—is

growing. Companies have a lot of international bodies to deal with and

an increasing number of financial rules and regulations that impact

them. You can’t operate a modern environment as a corporate leader

without having a very clear appreciation of that. A lot of leadership

studies talk about leadership as a matter of concentric circles. The

inner circle is the individual; the first circle out is the people in that

leader’s organization or the team. Most of our earlier studies focused

on those two circles. Now we concentrate on a third circle as well, and

that is working outside your team, with leaders of other teams, and

with other organizations. You increasingly have to learn how to align

yourself with others in order to tackle the major problems.

It seems like you’re driving toward different skills younger leaders will
need in a cross-functional world. Do you think there are a lot of skills
that are transferable between these sectors?

There are definitely some skills that are transferable. For example, a

capacity to work with and to lead through the Internet is transferable.

You see that with social media in Egypt. It’s also extremely important

for politicians running for office, as we learned with Barack Obama.

And social media has become important for corporations to under-

stand as an offensive and defensive tool. Corporations are ill-designed

to defend against online attacks. They are in the situation that if they

make one mistake or they leave themselves vulnerable, then suddenly

a mass movement can be organized against them on the Internet.

They’re scrambling to figure it out. But corporations are also

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50 PASSION AND PURPOSE

scrambling to figure out how they can use the Internet offensively.

Starbucks, for example, has developed a network of people online who

have come to appreciate its special culture. Other companies in the

apparel industry use the Internet to have interactions on questions on

fashion. There are a lot of imaginative uses that could cross the sector

boundaries we’ve been talking about.

You’re kind of driving to some of the differences between sectors,
too. Are there things that you think the sectors can learn from one
another? We’ve seen deficiencies in each sector in its own way over
the past decade or so. And I think that young people are acutely
aware of that, particularly in business. Are there key lessons to learn?

You have to learn across sectors. For example, the pioneers who are re-

ally challenging the status quo in public education are rarely public

employees. They tend to be coming out of the civic sector. And cer-

tainly government has a great deal to learn from business about effi-

ciency, technology, and setting concrete goals and achieving them.

Think of health care in the United States. We pay twice as much as

any other mature economy and get less for it. There’s a widespread

feeling now that the health care industry has to learn from the compe-

tition that exists in the business sector. And that people who come out

of business schools can make excellent hospital administrators and di-

rectors. They might also make very good school administrators. Look

at the number of cities now looking to MBA graduates and lawyers to

help run public schools.

Are there examples where you think leaders in the public sector or
the nonprofit sector could make a big and positive change in
business the same way you’re highlighting the ways in which
businesspeople might be able to come into sectors like health care
and education?

The transfer is not as easy as it looks. I can’t remember a senator

becoming a CEO in recent years. There are some things that don’t

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Convergence 51

transfer there. But yes, I do think that business can learn a great deal

from some aspects of work in government or nonprofit. A CEO in a

field like health care may, from years in a NGO, understand what a

patient may need or what a society may need and from there, figure

out how to make money doing it. I was just talking with Coca-Cola

two weeks ago and had dinner with their advisory board and sat with

the chairman of the company. Coca-Cola is now deeply engaged in

sustainability projects in which they make money. They’ve got whole

areas where they’re working with farmers and developing new ways to

produce things—their bottling, for example—and they’re finding that

these are profitable enterprises. It goes to the heart of what Michael

Porter argues—that a growing number of companies are finding ways

to solve societal problems and make money at the same time.

Renewable energy is potentially one of those areas. In that case,

many of the people solving the energy problems are coming from uni-

versities, coming with ideas just as they did with the Internet. A lot of

those ideas came out of government. As you know, the Defense De-

partment was the originator of the Internet. And that created a whole

industry. And now there are areas where energy research is going on,

sponsored by government in major universities like MIT. Twenty per-

cent of the allied key faculty at MIT now work in energy research.

There are also private companies that are in the renewable energy

field that have great promise.

Can I ask a question from the young business leaders’ perspective?
You’re talking about all the ways in which companies are beginning to
interact more fruitfully and more consistently with the different
sectors . . .

This is not entirely new. If you look at where the real growth areas

have been, they have often been clustered around major research uni-

versities, whether in Silicon Valley, Austin, the Research Triangle, or

the Harvard-MIT area. They all have this synergy that occurs among

knowledge workers who cut across sectors.

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52 PASSION AND PURPOSE

If you were a young businessperson now, but you did have some
kind of passion for the other sectors, how would you get involved?
Through universities? Through internships? Is it through their
extracurricular activities? Or through sustainability programs within
companies? Are there ways you see young people, especially in
business, beginning to get involved in those sectors outside of
business—in the public or nonprofit sectors where they can make
an impact?

I think it begins in the university days. You open yourself to trying to

understand not just one field but to develop secondary interests in

other fields. I do think it’s important to exit your formal education with

an area in which you’re strong and you’ve really gone deeper. But I

think in today’s world, it pays to have a secondary field or even a third

field that may or may not be related. You may find somebody who

majors in physics but also has an interest in the arts. She can suddenly

start making connections across them that may seem unlikely at first

but may actually turn out to be more helpful than they look. I think of

our friend Sidney Harman, who passed away in his nineties. Sidney

was a renaissance man who believed that CEOs probably ought to hire

poets because they think outside the box. I think that someone who

comes into the business who graduated in the arts and then goes on to

business school has got a very strong background. If you have time and

are inclined, it’s good to get a double major or joint graduate degree far

more than it was when I came through. I went to law school and if I

were coming through now, I would probably get a law or business de-

gree but then look for a joint degree in another field—maybe in public

policy. I would definitely think about trying to get that dual degree.

In business, you have to manage your career. If you’re a young ris-

ing star, it’s wise to have some exposure beyond your own area and not

get too specialized too early. You certainly have to make your mark

somewhere. And that often requires you to pare down and really go

deep into some area of the company and be content spending three to

five years doing it in order to build something or create something.

I think it’s really important to get your hands dirty and understand that

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Convergence 53

things get more complex as you get deeper. And I think that’s valuable

work. What is important, though, is even as you professionalize your-

self, to maintain a curiosity toward life so that you’re continually read-

ing, learning, growing. You know, the best businesspeople I’ve

met—I’m incredibly impressed by how much they read, and not nec-

essarily just in their fields. David Rubenstein [co-founder and manag-

ing director of The Carlyle Group] probably reads fifty books a week.

I’m astonished, really. I don’t see how they find the time to do it, but I

do see that it broadens them, and I think they see themselves as on a

learning journey. Les Wexner [founder, chairman, and CEO of Lim-

ited Brands] is a veteran CEO who built a retail empire, but he’s still

very much on a learning journey.

One criticism of younger leaders today is that they sometimes lack
focus—the ability to drive deeper or maintain an attention span. Are
there any words of caution you would have for young leaders?

Don’t be afraid of failure. The metaphor for my generation was “climb-

ing ladders”; the metaphor in your generation is increasingly “riding

waves.” You have to ride waves as they go. You’re often going to find

them collapsing underneath you, and you have to ride the next one

when it comes. That’s the nature of careers today. Companies come

and go quickly. People are CEOs for only—you know, a twinkling of an

eye—and then they have to start over. And you’ve got to be prepared.

I don’t know what the latest numbers are in the Department of Labor,

but a few years ago they were projecting that someone graduating with

a degree today would hold at least seven or eight jobs over the course of

a lifetime—three of which would not have been invented when they

graduated from college. It just goes back to bandwidth and adaptability.

One must be prepared to take risks, to take the fall, pick yourself back

up, and start again. It is also important to build some financial security

very early if you can, so that you have reserves and can afford to take

risks. When you’re doing the start-up, you know, it’s almost a badge of

honor to have a couple of start-ups that fail. But if you’re going to do

that, it helps to have some financial reserves to fall back on.

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54 PASSION AND PURPOSE

And so you’re driving a little bit toward dealing with the obstacles,
especially dealing with failure. A lot of young people, particularly in
business, have been a little discouraged by the difficulties of the past
five or six years as we have been coming of age. Do you have a word
of encouragement or hope for this generation as we try and move
forward, and especially as we try and correct some of the difficulties
that we’ve encountered politically and economically?

We’re entering a period that will be one of the most unpredictable,

fast-moving, and toughest we’ve ever seen. But at the same time, it’s

one of the most fascinating because so much is uncertain that if you

choose to lead, you can have a tremendous impact on reshaping the

future. For those of us who are older, one of our greatest regrets is that

we may not be here to help and to see how this turns out. I think we’re

just at one of those hinge points in history in which mankind can go in

more than one direction. And it’s the younger generation that really

could shape what those answers are, what direction we should take.

We talk about people in their twenties being the leaders of tomorrow.

But with everything we’re seeing now—especially on the streets of

Cairo and elsewhere—I believe that people in their twenties can and

should be the leaders of today.

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CHAPTER 2

Globalization
Embracing the Global Generation

I find that because of modern technological evolution and our global

economy, and as a result of the great increase in population, our

world has greatly changed: it has become much smaller. However, our

perceptions have not evolved at the same pace; we continue to cling

to old national demarcations and the old feelings of “us” and “them.”

—The Dalai Lama

The scene of a typical Harvard Business School classroom in the

1950s would seem rather peculiar today. For one thing, there were no

women. The MBA class would be composed mostly of white American

men, dressed in business suits and taught by a male professor. Fast-for-

ward to 2010. Displayed on the walls of first-year classrooms are the flags

of countries from around the world, representing each member of the

class. You’ll hear a plethora of accents. More importantly, if you listen

closely, you’ll learn that the educational and professional experiences that

these students bring to the classroom also span almost every country and

region. Globalization has become as commonplace in MBA programs as

in business itself.

The next generation, more than others, is taking advantage of the

learning opportunities globalization provides. Instead of simply using

their formative years to develop their professional skills, young people in

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56 PASSION AND PURPOSE

business have used globalization to gain practical experience earlier in

their careers, learn more about different cultures, and ultimately, learn

more about themselves. Like it or not, globalization is now an inescapable

part of the emerging millennial zeitgeist, whether this means work experi-

ence in a multinational company, participation in addressing global prob-

lems such as climate change, the pursuit of new ventures abroad, or

connection to an expanded international network.

According to the IBM Global Leaders Survey, when respondents were

asked to name the top factors that would impact organizations in the fu-

ture, globalization garnered the most votes, with 55 percent of students

ranking it number one. In contrast, CEOs voted globalization the sixth

most significant factor. In the same survey, students were 46 percent

more likely than CEOs to identify “global thinking” as a crucial leadership

skill in the coming years.1

In short, the next generation views globalization in a fundamentally

different way—and this has ramifications for companies, governments, and

international institutions around the world.

Can Globalization Build Better Leaders?

Working in an international setting has become the new normal for young

leaders. In our MBA Student Survey, respondents had worked in an aver-

age of 3.8 countries, including their country of origin. International stu-

dents tend to have worked in more countries—MBAs born outside the

United States had worked in an average of 5.3 countries, versus 3 coun-

tries for those born in the United States (figure 2-1).

After pursuing international opportunities early in their careers, young

MBAs expect to have worked in even more countries by the time they hit

their midthirties. Our respondents expect to work, on average, in 4.6

countries within ten years of graduating from business school. Forty-eight

percent intend to work in 1–3 countries, 32 percent intend to work in

4–6 countries, while 10 percent would like to work in 7–9. Once again,

country of origin also matters in choosing how global one’s future career

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Globalization 57

4.1

0 1

Number of countries

2 3 4 5 6

5.3

3.01

5.3

All (n=510)

U.S. (n=331)

Non-U.S. (n=179)
In how many countries
have you worked?

Within 10 years of
graduation, how many
countries do you hope
to work in?

4.6

3.8

FIGURE 2-1

Today’s MBAs seek global experiences

will be: those born outside the United States intend to work in an average

of 5.3 countries in the next ten years, compared to 4.1 countries among

those born in the States. As a result, this generation of managers will have

more global aspirations and experiences than any in history. This comes

with its own challenges and opportunities.

The first challenge is the complexity that a boom in global business

creates. Globalization, particularly trade liberalization, doesn’t always

move forward in a straight line. Despite the explosion in trade, with more

than two hundred free trade agreements signed in the last two decades

alone, the global economic crisis has brought about renewed fears of pro-

tectionism.2 Yet despite the current gloom, it’s hard to ignore the stagger-

ing explosion in the number of multinational companies around the

world. There were approximately 79,000 multinational companies around

the world in 2006, up from 7,258 in 1970.3 And their leaders are seeing a

very different global economic environment from the one that marked the

past four decades. In the 2010 McKinsey Global Survey, 63 percent of

more than 1,400 executives expected increasing volatility to be a perma-

nent fixture of the global economy.4 And in the IBM Leaders Survey, stu-

dents pursuing MBAs were 28 percent more likely than CEOs to believe

that the new economic environment is increasingly complex.5 Inevitably,

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58 PASSION AND PURPOSE

young people will play an important role in helping these new multina-

tionals navigate uncertain global markets, especially in demographically

young regions like India and Southeast Asia.

One respondent in our survey summed up the next generation’s senti-

ments about globalization nicely: “Leaders will be forced to unify groups

with greater and greater diversity. They will ask for sacrifice from men and

women who have rarely been asked to give up much. They will be re-

quired to explain issues that are growing in complexity and scope with the

same simplicity as leaders have been required to do in the past.”

The second challenge is increasing and enriching the global exposure

of young leaders early in their careers. This is crucial in helping them to

get comfortable with uncertainty, and to grow the knowledge, skills, and

networks to thrive in a world filled with it. The general importance of

working abroad to develop one’s skills seems to be more important among

international MBAs. Eighty-two percent of non-U.S.-born MBAs agree

or strongly agree that “by working abroad, I have learned new skills that

will be valuable to my career,” compared to 60 percent among American-

born MBAs.

Young people will also have to address the crises of identity that global-

ization inevitably creates. Globalization has influenced young leaders’

sense of identity in two ways: by helping shape common values that tran-

scend national and cultural divisions, and by taking them out of their

comfort zone and forcing them to learn more about themselves.

Growing up in a time of ubiquitous globalization and connectivity,

today’s twenty-something manager has developed values that transcend

country or culture. As one of our respondents said, “Leadership will in-

creasingly be attributed to improving the lives of others around the world.

By the end of the twenty-first century, one’s actions will be judged more on

[their] impact, on what we call ‘externalities’ today. We will get better at

determining the value of these externalities, and this will have to be a pri-

ority for any leader.” What’s fascinating is that as young people around the

world develop a shared sense of global citizenship, they’ve also become

more astute students of local and unfamiliar environments. Consider the

cases of contributors such as Andy Goodman, who grew up in the United

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Globalization 59

Kingdom and helped the government of Qatar establish a new educational

program, or U.S.-born Christopher Maloney, who worked in Rwanda.

Their global perspective is built around a series of local experiences.

Global experiences have also become a crucial way for the next genera-

tion to develop a sense of personal purpose. In the MBA Student Survey,

61 percent of respondents agree or strongly agree that “working in differ-

ent countries has helped me learn more about myself and what I plan to

do in the future” (see figure 2-2). This holds more true for MBAs born

outside the United States, as they are 42 percent more likely to agree

with this statement than those born in the U.S. Part of this is driven by

global educational opportunities. In 2005, there were 2.7 million foreign

students enrolled at tertiary educational institutions around the world.

And though traditional sources of foreign students such as Hong Kong,

Japan, Korea, and Malaysia are expected to plateau and eventually de-

cline, “sunshine” markets such as India, China, and Chile are expected to

pick up the slack and drive the growth of mobile international students.6

Percent of respondents who agree or strongly agree with the following statements

By working abroad, I have learned new
skills that will be valuable to my career.

Working in different countries has helped
me learn more about myself and what I

plan to do in the future.

Non-U.S. (n=179) U.S. (n=331) All (n=510)

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90%

FIGURE 2-2

MBAs find immense benefits in working abroad

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60 PASSION AND PURPOSE

The third challenge is adapting to the shift in global political and eco-

nomic affairs—the “rise of the rest.” While it’s been fashionable to say

that globalization is no longer driven solely by the West, nobody really

knows for certain how a multipolar world will take shape. This shift has

enormous consequences. A unipolar world is shifting to a complex multi-

polar global economy. Chinese and Indian companies have been aggres-

sively expanding overseas. Indian companies announced more than a

thousand M&A deals, valued at $72 billion, between 2000 and 2008.7

Chinese companies, meanwhile, are buying foreign companies from

Africa to Singapore to gain access to precious oil, gas, and mineral re-

sources to fuel the country’s expansion. The share of developing Asia in

global GDP has more than tripled to 23 percent in 2010, compared to 7

percent in 1980.8

Young MBAs see this trend. When asked which countries are the most

important for businesspeople to understand in the next ten years, respon-

dents of the MBA Student Survey voted China the overwhelming fa-

vorite, with 63 percent decisively ranking the world’s most populous

country first. India came in a distant second with 11 percent, and other

developing countries were frequently highlighted.

The rise of the rest undeniably requires integrative work across func-

tions, cultures, and classes. Young leaders will have to adapt to places

where extreme poverty is spurring new ways of creating value through the

role of private enterprise in delivering public infrastructure such as water,

energy, and health care, or minimizing externalities such as pollution and

social inequality. When asked openly on how leadership will change in

the twenty-first century, learning to manage in an interdisciplinary way

emerged as a recurring theme on the MBA Student Survey. As one stu-

dent summed up nicely, “I think that leaders will be forced to work glob-

ally in a way they haven’t before—requiring leaders to understand and

adapt to different cultures, manage teams and relationships that span the

globe, piece together divisions and companies that operate under com-

pletely different environments.”

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Globalization 61

Bridging Two Worlds
An India Story

SANYOGITA AGGARWAL leads business development at Dev Bhumi

Cold Chain Ltd. in Delhi, India. She received her MBA at Harvard

Business School in 2010. San talks about the decision to return to

India after studying abroad and the surprising, often counterintu-

itive, lessons she’s learned in bringing global best practices to a

traditional family business.

Upon graduation from Cornell, I had to choose between two paths. One was

to work for Morgan Stanley in New York; the other was to work in our family

agribusiness company in India. Most of my best friends were going to be in

New York, and Morgan Stanley offered a traditional path to prestigious insti-

tutions for higher education. On the other hand, I also longed to be home. It

was a personally hard decision to make. But in the end, I chose India.

India was not only my home; it was also the new land of opportunity.

It was poised for explosive growth in the coming decade, the place where

we would witness societal change unfold. With the second-largest popu-

lation in the world and retail giants like Walmart and Carrefour zeroing

in on India as the “next big thing,” there was no doubt in my mind that

the future here would be full of promise and optimism. This was a far cry

from the India of the 1970s, which suffered from political instability,

hyperinflation, high unemployment, and decrepit industries. The bright

optimism in India in the first decade of the twenty-first century mirrored

that of the United States in the 1950s. And it was contagious.

So, I decided to work in Delhi with my dad in his agribusiness company,

Dev Bhumi Cold Chain Ltd. The company is a complete one-solution

provider for farm-fresh produce, starting at the farm and ending on the

supermarket shelves. I was beginning to look forward to the experience.

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62 PASSION AND PURPOSE

Confronting Reality at Home

When I started working with my father, I was expecting it to be familiar

territory. I was hungry and passionate to do big things in an environment

I thought I understood. Brimming with ideas, bursting with ambition,

and full of confidence, I had no inkling of the troubles ahead. The next

few months brought reality home for me.

The company was entrenched in the “family business” way of working.

In other words, employees were not evaluated on any performance met-

rics, work was carried out in an ad hoc manner, and there was a lack of

organization and systems. Many thought that the business of fresh pro-

duce was fit only for men. Women would never be able to adapt. Conse-

quently, I was the only woman in the company. Not only did some of the

old senior management object to my coming to the office, but some of

the new female staff that I hired faced a lot of heat. One of the new fe-

male MBAs hired for marketing faced significant opposition and nonco-

operation from various fronts, and eventually she quit. Furthermore,

many in the company disproportionately valued experience over educa-

tion. My American education was seen as an obstacle rather than an

accomplishment. My “new” ways were despised, looked upon with

suspicion, and labeled as impractical.

One of my very first projects was to set up a mineral water plant at the

company’s Himalayan facility. This project had been sidelined due to

skepticism and contention within the organization about its future bene-

fits. So when I decided to conduct a feasibility study to conclusively de-

cide the potential, there was widespread dissent, touting this exercise as

a waste of energy and company resources. Every activity I undertook for

this project met with hostility and noncooperation. Halfway through the

study, my budget was completely withdrawn for a few months because

I was told that the company resources needed to be dedicated to core

activities.

Four months into the job, I was seriously considering quitting. What

made me stay?

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Globalization 63

Establishing Roots, Making a Commitment

Indian agriculture has long suffered from outdated pre- and postharvest

technologies as well as antiquated systems. The average yield of apples for

the Indian farmer, for example, is approximately 5 metric tons per hectare,

compared to a whopping 60 metric tons per hectare for his European or

American counterpart. In addition, an estimated 40 percent of fresh pro-

duce is lost in value and kind due to the lack of cold chain infrastructure in

the country. Despite these dismally low yields and the staggering wastage,

India continues to command a 10 percent share of the global production

of fruits and 13.7 percent of vegetables. The opportunity is simply mind-

boggling. With the right systems in place, India could very well become

the “fruit bowl” of the world. A complete cold chain infrastructure that

starts at the farm gate with procurement facilities for the farmers; takes

the freshly harvested produce through the entire chain of cold storage fa-

cilities, uses refrigerated trucking, packaging, and palletizing; and delivers

fresh produce into the hands of the end consumer would elevate India to

the world platform in agriculture. However, one of the biggest obstacles to

achieving this objective is educating the Indian farmer.

To do so, our company started the Yield Improvement Program. The

objective of the program was to work closely with farmers to introduce

higher-yielding varieties of fruit and educate them on the latest pre- and

postharvest technologies, in conjunction with following food safety pro-

tocols and promoting sustainable agriculture. During one of our initial

visits to the Himalayas, while conversing with the locals, one farmer said,

“We absolutely love this program and are fully on board with you. If your

intentions materialize, generations to come will never forget you.” This

left a lasting impression on me and at that point, I realized the immense

impact this program could have on the farmers in the area and, eventu-

ally, the entire country. I believed that the goals I was pursuing recon-

ciled the profit motive with the right underlying social objectives. I fell in

love with what we were doing, and this outweighed the daily predica-

ments I faced in the workplace. So, I decided to stay and confront my

problems head on.

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64 PASSION AND PURPOSE

Changing the Status Quo

I learned several important life-changing lessons, lessons that hopefully

will be relevant to anyone hoping to do business in India, working in a

family business, or entering an unfamiliar market.

First, I witnessed firsthand how change is always resisted. The best

way to make change is to first understand the reasons behind the status

quo, then become a part of the system, gain people’s trust, and make the

change slowly but steadily. It’s easy to approach problematic situations

thinking that most things should be changed from the ground up, as fast

as one can. But I realized that confrontational attempts at change are the

most damaging. Most of the time, there aren’t any real reasons for this

stance except for the manager’s hubris to leave his mark quickly. When I

got past my youthful naiveté, it dawned on me that the most meaningful

changes must be initiated at a slower pace.

In my particular case, to address the sensibilities of the staff, I started

wearing only Indian attire to the office. Once everyone got comfortable

with me, I slowly changed to Indo-Western clothing and then to my normal

Western outfits. For the female staff, I decided to hire candidates already

known and trusted within the company. For example, we hired the daughter

of an existing staff member, and since she already knew most of the people

in the company, she found it much easier to adapt and fit in. Most of the

senior management, who had previously resisted all female hires, consid-

ered her like their own daughter. Hence, they were more protective of her

and cooperative in helping her understand the work and the systems.

I learned that local conditions can lead to very different and unique solu-

tions. In the United States, for example, I would never have considered this

approach for fear that my action be termed as favoritism. But it worked

wonders in my Indian situation. This woman quickly grew very comfortable

working in the difficult environment, and the staff soon acclimated itself to

her. This ultimately opened the door to new female hires who now had not

only a more receptive organization but also a ready mentor.

Second, I learned not to fall prey to a one-size-fits-all philosophy of

leadership. Unique problems always call for unique solutions. For

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Globalization 65

example, in my initial months in the company, I came to realize that

our employees placed a strong emphasis on relationships with clients

and suppliers, and less, or none at all, on quantitative analyses. Busi-

ness decisions were often made on the basis of old associations and

relationships, and completely without any NPV or IRR calculations.

Thus, the most important leadership skill I’ve learned—and would en-

courage my peers to learn—is to be sensitive to the intricacies of the

situation at hand.

I soon realized that an amalgamation of both quantitative and relation-

ship-driven approaches would lead to a “best of both worlds” result.

Coming from a strong educational background in quantitative business

management, I found focusing on relationships baseless and immature.

But I soon realized the immaturity of my own thinking. There was no

black-and-white answer to this. No one way of working was better than

the other; the two were simply different. The Indian way of working

relied heavily on a “trust” culture, and a lot of business was conducted

based on good faith. One glaring example of this was what I saw in the

fields while talking to farmers during the procurement season. Huge

multinational mammoths were out to procure from the same fields and

the same farmers at higher than market rates. Despite the monetary

advantages, the farmers somehow preferred to sell to us. Logically, this

made no sense. When asked, one of them replied, “It’s because we have

faith in you. We have worked with Dev Bhumi for many years and we

know you would never cheat us. Money is not everything and our rela-

tionship is based on a lot more than just rupees.”

Last, I learned interesting lessons on how to adapt to a family busi-

ness environment, a situation that I foresee several of my peers face as

they return to Asia, where family-owned and -controlled companies are

the norm. Working in a family business is not only about the bottom line,

but also about legacy and emotional attachments. Many projects in fam-

ily businesses are driven more by the founder’s passion than by purely

economic reasons. The founders often invest their personal wealth and

life into building these businesses, and many of their memories are asso-

ciated with the grueling efforts they put in.

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66 PASSION AND PURPOSE

Family businesses have been and will continue to remain important

drivers in India’s economic future. They account for roughly 65 percent

of the economy’s GNP and for 75 percent of the employment in the

country.9 The new generation inherits the responsibility of taking the

business much further than the previous one and needs to earn the cred-

ibility and respect of its peers and employees. I learned that working in a

family business also requires a very entrepreneurial attitude, especially in

interacting within the company.

In my case, as the fourth generation in the family business, I was ex-

pected to hit the ground running from day one. My challenge was more

than just problem solving; it was also getting buy-in from the staff, prov-

ing to them that I was capable of the responsibilities handed to me. The

first approach I applied was to start small with projects that could be

completed in a short period of time. Small projects allowed me to have a

lot of interaction with different groups of people and better get to know

them and their problems at work. This increased our comfort level of

working together and we soon transformed from a group to a team.

As the next generation transitions in, it becomes important to thor-

oughly understand the undercurrents of the business. In family-run

companies, often the staff members are equally committed and passion-

ate about the business and share the founder’s values and principles. The

next generation needs to demonstrate the very same ideals that represent

the foundations of the company. One of our company ideals is to provide

for better living to all staff members through higher education opportuni-

ties and extracurricular experiences. I initiated English classes at the

office for staff who were not fluent. We also started the policy of paying

for complete school education for children who showed high academic

performance in school. All this helped the staff to realize that I was just

as committed to them as they were to our company.

In retrospect, the decision to continue on in India turned out to be

one of the most fulfilling commitments of my life. It was here that I

learned what doing business in the real world truly means, what it means

to be a part of the system and yet be an agent of change, and what it

means to become “comfortable being uncomfortable.”

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Globalization 67

QatarDebate
Education, Civic Engagement, and Leadership
in the Arabian Gulf

ANDREW GOODMAN graduated from the Harvard Business School in

2010 as a Baker Scholar. Before attending HBS, Andrew cofounded

QatarDebate, a civic engagement initiative that aims to develop

and support the standard of open discussion and debate among

students and young people in Qatar and the broader Arab world.

Andrew’s story helps young leaders appreciate the importance of

cultural intelligence, the right partnerships, and a pipeline of local

leaders in building ventures in unfamiliar markets.

If you had asked me when I started college in England if I expected to

find myself two years later in the midday heat of the Qatari desert, being

filmed balancing precariously atop a camel with a Scottish man in a kilt,

the answer would probably have been no. The state of Qatar is a tiny

desert country at the tip of the Arabian Gulf. A conservative Muslim

country, ruled by an emir, it is home to 1.6 million people and the world’s

third-largest reserves of natural gas, from which the country derives its

prodigious wealth. Before the summer of 2007 it was certainly not a

place I had ever imagined commuting to every month during my final

year at Oxford and the first year of my MBA at Harvard.

It was a passion for education that drew me to the Middle East. Qatar

is richer per capita than Luxembourg or Switzerland, but its scores on

the PISA tests, which assess students’ educational literacy in math, read-

ing, and science, are comparable to those of the former Soviet republics

of Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan. In historically failing many students,

Qatar’s education system is by no means unique. However, unlike most

other countries with very poor educational outcomes, Qatar has a rare

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68 PASSION AND PURPOSE

combination of advantages: the leadership, willingness, and funding to

implement genuine education reforms.

From the early 2000s, the emir, Qatari government, and Qatar Foun-

dation embarked on an ambitious education reform program. From these

reforms came substantial changes in both secondary and tertiary educa-

tion. At the secondary level, reformed, charter-style “independent”

schools were created that used a new syllabus and were accountable for

their results to a Supreme Education Council. At the tertiary level, Qatar

Foundation invested billions of dollars to develop an “Education City”

that housed the branch campuses of six leading U.S. universities and nu-

merous other education initiatives.

An Unusual Job Interview

My time in Qatar began in the summer of 2007 with an unusual job in-

terview. Alex Just, a colleague from Oxford, and I were invited by Ali

Willis, an executive director at Qatar Foundation, to spend ten days in

Qatar, working with students to improve their debating, civic engage-

ment, and critical thinking skills. At the end of the ten days, Alex and I

were asked to attend a meeting with Her Highness Sheikha Mozah Bint

Nasser Al-Misned, the Queen Consort of Qatar and, in her role as chair-

person of Qatar Foundation, one of the leading education reformers in

the Middle East. We were told simply to expect the unexpected.

At the meeting, we suggested that Qatar Foundation create and fund

a national organization to work with students and teachers within the

Qatari education system to improve critical thinking and civic engage-

ment. Our background had been in competitive debate, where teams of

students would compete in national and international competitions to

hone arguments and marshal evidence to support an assigned position

on a variety of moral, political, and social issues. We believed that this

type of training—at that time mostly alien to the region—built skills,

civic engagement, and a connection to a global community of high-

achieving students. Such a national organization could therefore be

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Globalization 69

based initially around a culture of debate and discussion, gradually ex-

panding to incorporate other elements and pedagogies.

As we flew back to the United Kingdom following the meeting, we

reflected that Qatar was a fascinating country, and despite our precon-

ceived notions about conservatism in the Arabian Gulf, a large number

of the students we had met seemed to embrace the concept of debating

important political, moral, and social issues. We knew, though, that gov-

ernments and national foundations were not generally in the habit of

entrusting millions of dollars of funding to unproven undergraduates.

It was therefore a surprise when Ali called us in Oxford a few days

later to say that Sheikha Mozah had recommended that Qatar Founda-

tion fund our project, and that we should make arrangements to start

work immediately as program directors . . . in Qatar. Alex and I would be

working under a mandate to fill just a small piece of Qatar’s broader edu-

cational puzzle—student engagement and critical thinking—creating a

national organization that would foster an emerging culture of debate

and discussion among students in Qatar, with the hope of developing the

country’s “leaders of tomorrow.”

QatarDebate

Over the eighteen months after our initial meeting, Alex and I, under the

direction of Ali and with the support of Qatar Foundation, created and

managed a national civic engagement initiative for Qatar that would be-

come known as “QatarDebate.” Life took on a surreal rhythm, writing

undergraduate essays in the rain and gloom of the Oxford winter one day,

and the next, pitching the importance of debate as an educational tool to

education ministers from around the Arab world in the heat of the Qatari

capital, Doha, living out of suitcases and working from Qatar Founda-

tion’s headquarters, airport lounges, and our university dorm rooms.

In its first eighteen months of operation as a not-for-profit start-up,

QatarDebate worked with more than three thousand students and teach-

ers in thirty schools and universities in Qatar. We delivered a curriculum

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to students that encouraged them to think critically about the world,

contest complex concepts, and challenge political and social beliefs.

Schools and universities formed debate teams that constructively and

often heatedly discussed policies from censorship to negotiating with

terrorists to Islamic dress on a weekly basis. At an international level,

we created, selected, and coached the first Qatari national debate team,

which went on to break records at the World Schools Debating Champi-

onship as a first-time entrant. We distributed curriculum materials on

debate and civic engagement to partners in more than fifty countries,

including every state in the Arab world. We even successfully bid to host

the world championships in Qatar in 2010, exposing Qatari students to

some of the brightest young minds from more than forty countries,

including the United States, Israel, and Mongolia.

We were given access to former heads of state and education ministers

from around the Middle East to explain the importance of debate and cit-

izenship education, and provide a blueprint for similar national programs

in their countries. In the media, we brought student debate to promi-

nence on the often controversial satellite channel, Al Jazeera, and were

featured in an award-winning documentary that premiered at the Tribeca

Film Festival in New York. Sitting in a cinema on the Lower West Side

and observing New Yorkers watch Qatari, Iraqi, and Syrian students

engaging in an intellectually rich discussion of U.S. policy in the Middle

East since 9/11 on screen is an experience that I will never forget.

Launching a Start-Up in the Arabian Gulf

The experiences of launching and operating QatarDebate highlighted

several of the challenges that come as part of launching an organization

as an outsider in an unfamiliar environment.

How to organize. The relatively simple process of creating an LLC, pub-

lic limited company, 501(c)(3), or registered charity is typically taken for

granted in the United States and Western Europe. In an emerging market

70 PASSION AND PURPOSE

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like Qatar, the process of creating an organization presents often over-

looked challenges and pitfalls. To create a new charity in Qatar requires

paperwork, time, and approval from the government. We launched

QatarDebate within an existing organization, Qatar Foundation, and as a

result were able to start operations immediately and benefit from the foun-

dation’s funding and goodwill. In contrast, even major multinationals en-

tering Gulf markets as new entities find themselves waiting several months

for the required documents and permits to be approved. However, to posi-

tion your new entity within or in partnership with an existing organization

is to be bound by additional policies, procedures, and protocols in the

longer term. Young managers confronted with the realities of an unfamiliar

market must find balance between speed to market and freedom of opera-

tion, or be fortunate enough to find a rare partner that offers both.

How to bridge cultural divides. Within our first few weeks in Qatar, it

quickly became apparent that there was a gulf between the fundamental

paradigms of U.S. and Qatari education. When our Western-educated

trainers entered the classroom, one of the first questions they faced from

Arab students was simply, “What is debate?” To many students, the con-

cept of critically discussing important political, moral, and social issues

was entirely new. Alex and I were often unsettled early on when con-

fronted by culturally “different” events—in one instance a highly educated

woman wearing the niqab (face veil) and yet strongly advocating that this

choice was a woman’s right and an expression of freedom. We quickly

learned that the Arabic word inshallah (God willing) had a multiplicity of

meanings, and often wondered if specific divine intervention was required

to accelerate meetings, permits, and procurement orders. Managers in

emerging markets must draw a mental line between those cultural differ-

ences they will embrace and those things on which they will stand firm.

How to measure impact. Observing the academic progress of students

who had been through QatarDebate’s programs demonstrated in our

minds the ways in which the coaching improved their critical thinking,

structure, and English fluency. To prove impact, though, we needed to

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72 PASSION AND PURPOSE

develop a much more rigorous assessment process that tracked cohorts

of students over time. Young managers in emerging markets should be

aware that they will have to modify their existing assumptions about re-

search and tracking. Market research in the Gulf is thought to be at least

twice as expensive as in Western markets, and traditional survey meth-

ods face severe constraints. When entering a market in the Gulf, organi-

zations need to have rigorous KPIs (key performance indicators) to avoid

spending large amounts with limited ability to prove impact, but man-

agers also need to be specific up front about what meaningful data they

will actually be able to collect, sometimes departing from standard met-

rics and getting creative about what measures might provide a reliable

proxy for some other outcome that they are not able to observe directly.

How to lead. When it comes to leadership in the Gulf, we found that

small is often beautiful. By working with students in a relatively small

country, we genuinely had the potential to change the way those young

people will think about the world in the future, for better or for worse.

Those students whom QatarDebate spent hundreds of hours coaching,

now imbued with a new set of tools with which to evaluate the world,

will very likely become the key decision makers within business, govern-

ment, and society in Qatar. When observing those multinationals who

had been successful in Qatar, we saw a similar phenomenon. Successful

companies who had entered the market brought experienced expat staff,

but over time, the most successful companies hired a small number of

very talented locals into genuine leadership development schemes.

These Qataris were given incredible amounts of training and exposure,

and they were told to aspire to be the future CEOs and executives at

those multinationals. Less successful firms complained about a dearth of

local talent, but the market leaders set about generating their own local

talent pipelines from the very beginning.

How to transition. For a national organization to become truly sustain-

able in a world in which individual leadership is only ever temporary, it

needs to be run, at least in part, by nationals. Expatriates can bring

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Globalization 73

significant expertise and dynamism, but they will never quite be able to

match local managers in cultural insight, local knowledge, and a desire

to make their lives in that country. Resistance to this reality is danger-

ous—the Gulf has historically seen many examples of the vicious cycle

in which expats fear losing their positions in the longer term and there-

fore act to maximize short-term gains. Locals in turn perceive foreigners

as concerned more about their short-term gains than long-term sustain-

ability. Handing over control of QatarDebate’s day-to-day operations and

watching a new, Qatari leadership team embark on a new and different

path was extremely challenging—QatarDebate was after all something

that we had created—but it was the right thing to do to create a truly

national organization.

Leaving Qatar

My time in Qatar drew to a close in July 2009 as the full transition to a

Qatari leadership team for QatarDebate concluded, and I decided that I

would return to the United Kingdom after completing the MBA. I look

back on those eighteen months as my first leadership role—a plethora of

incredible enriching, rewarding personal experiences. Many of the chal-

lenges faced were similar in nature, although definitely not in scale, to the

challenges faced by countless case protagonists that I have subsequently

encountered during my two years at HBS. With hindsight and the im-

parted wisdom of various cases and scenarios, I would certainly make

many decisions differently. However, Qatar “made real” for me some things

that had been lost over the course of the seven hundred or so MBA cases.

As I sat with a Qatari friend on Doha’s Corniche on one of my last

evenings in Qatar, watching the sun set over the Arabian Gulf, we found

ourselves discussing the fascination modern business education in the

United States has with “leadership.” Leadership in the Gulf and beyond,

my Qatari friend concluded, required the serenity to accept the things

you cannot change, the courage to change the things you can, and the

wisdom to know the difference.

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74 PASSION AND PURPOSE

Emerging Social Enterprise

Learning the Business of Agriculture in Tanzania

KATIE LAIDLAW is a consultant in the New York City office of the

Boston Consulting Group. Prior to joining BCG, Katie was a senior

associate at the Parthenon Group and served as executive director

of Inspire, Inc., a nonprofit organization that advises community-

based nonprofits. She is passionate about international develop-

ment and future growth in public-private partnerships.

Deo, the local government agriculture officer assigned to Mhonda,

directed me to sit in a red plastic chair as farmers entered the weathered

brick structure in the center of the village. Mhonda, Tanzania, was my

first stop along a series of village visits to gather field data through farmer

group interviews during a summer internship with TechnoServe, a U.S-

based international nonprofit focused on poverty reduction through eco-

nomic development. TechnoServe hired me to work independently on a

three-month study to analyze the fruit and vegetable markets of Tanza-

nia. After a seven-hour truck ride over freeways, dirt roads, mud trails,

and mountainous terrain, I was excited to continue learning about the

business of agriculture in Tanzania firsthand from farmers.

I smiled at each farmer who entered the meeting space. They

stared back at me with facial expressions exhibiting everything from

cautious optimism to anxious skepticism. They were not yet sure of

what I wanted or offered. I noticed how each farmer arrived with his

or her own smoothed sitting stone. Seeing them sitting perched upon

stones in seemingly uncomfortable, crouched positions, I felt in-

stantly self-conscious about my thronelike chair. I then nearly com-

mitted a serious, albeit unintentional faux pas by attempting to lower

myself discreetly to the dirt floor to join them. Deo quickly corrected

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Globalization 75

my move before I fully sat down by simply stating, “Visitors sit in the

chair. You must sit, you are a visitor.”

Feeling a bit flustered, I quickly reviewed my questions for the group

interview. The purpose of my project was twofold: to identify opportuni-

ties within or beyond the existing supply chain that could result in in-

creased farmer income, and to submit a completed grant proposal in

order to access funding for the implementation of any proposed plans.

For me, this opportunity to gain international field experience across

private, nonprofit, and public sectors through TechnoServe was a dream.

Social enterprise, the pursuit of innovative opportunities to create social

value through market mechanisms, is one of my personal passions. I knew

that this three-month experience would be a short-term entrée into a life-

long, multisector career at the intersection of business and social change.

Assembling the Puzzle Pieces

The data I gathered through farmer interviews informed the creation of a

pro-forma profit and loss statement for growing and selling fruits and

vegetables throughout the year. Starting with a baseline financial per-

spective, I brainstormed ways to change assumptions of cost and rev-

enue drivers, with the goal of increasing farmer income. In addition to

the more specific data inputs, farmer group interviews also answered

questions about their savings rates (low), up-front seed and fertilizer

input costs (high), and investments in more sophisticated processes like

irrigation (low and rare). Due to the seasonality of planting and the lack

of access to savings or banking, I could not directly ask farmers how

much money they had made in profit in the past year. Instead, I cobbled

this data together by analyzing what was planted and harvested through-

out the year, typical high and low market prices, and what volumes were

actually grown and sold.

Data collected in each village helped to narrow my focus on farmers

producing primarily mparachichi (avocados) and nyanya (tomatoes). And

thus, my “guacamole plan” was born. I honed in on the differences

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76 PASSION AND PURPOSE

between these two fruits and suggested a comprehensive plan to support

groups of farmers through pilot programs in two distinct farming regions

in Tanzania. I supported TechnoServe’s Tanzania country director to

complete a grant proposal to a large U.S. international development

funding agency identifying the need and income increases possible

through interventions with avocado and tomato farmers. As the grant

proposal served as a summary of my field findings to date, I started to

recognize other peripheral constraints to operating in the international

nonprofit space that impacted my understanding of the sector.

Patience, Not Speed, Is Required for Results

Constraints on time, human capital, or funding (or all three) are com-

mon across the private, public, and nonprofit sectors. While success in

the for-profit sector is often measured by stock performance, progress in

the nonprofit sector, particularly international development, can be more

challenging. Stock prices change in real time. Measurable gains in

tomato production or avocado quality require a longer runway to imple-

ment change and measure impact, and adjustments in perceptions, cul-

ture, and expectations in emerging economies are even more ethereal.

I was surprised to discover that most global aid programs are built

upon the expectation of three to four years of funding, often with no re-

newal. This funding approach is severely disconnected from any longer-

term goal of institutionalizing improvement. Just as many development

programs hit their stride in meeting goals, funding ends, leaving a well-

designed idea half-tested and uncertainty around what truly “worked.”

The nonprofit sector plays a unique role in global capitalism. It is not

predominantly concerned with campaigning and election as in the public

sector, nor subject to the scrutiny of private sector shareholders. It is, in-

stead, a useful go-between. The sector provides a way to work with and

within global markets and local politics to encourage real, on-the-ground

change. But the nonprofit sector, particularly in the field of international

development, will need to increasingly free itself from the constraints of

short-term financing to achieve lasting impact.

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Globalization 77

Applying Lessons from One Sector to the
Other, and Vice Versa

At the end of my time in Tanzania, I felt confident in what I had learned

from my experience as well as in what I had contributed to designing a

program for agricultural economic development. This experience con-

firmed my own hypothesis that future leaders will be better equipped to

tackle the problems of tomorrow by being successful in operating across

geographies and sectors today. Leaders must also recognize that there are

no longer silos but, rather, continuous opportunities to achieve greater

social good through collaboration.

Throughout my time in Tanzania, I relied upon skills from my private

sector training, my previous nonprofit sector involvement, and my willing-

ness to learn and understand new approaches specific to the international

development community. The opportunity to work in agriculture provided

me with new information and perspectives that I have since applied in

other industries. By establishing a consistent company relationship with a

single organization or encouraging employee choice, for-profit businesses

today can benefit from expanded employee perspectives gained by working

in a nonprofit or public sector arena, in very unfamiliar environments.

The same benefits of global, cross-sector involvement can result when

nonprofits seek for-profit or public sector resources as a complement to

their internal capabilities. Though I lived and worked in Tanzania for a brief

time, I felt that my final outputs contributed to longer-term knowledge and

resources of TechnoServe. Nonprofit leaders today can fill gaps or further

challenge their organizations by looking beyond their sector and benefiting

from short-term engagements with public and private sector organizations.

Investing Time and Resources for the
Changing Global Economy

Upon returning to the HBS campus, I served as a copresident of the So-

cial Enterprise Club, the student-run umbrella organization offering pro-

gramming and networking opportunities for HBS students interested in

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78 PASSION AND PURPOSE

this intersection of market mechanisms and the social sector. The Social

Enterprise Club continues to grow in membership and is currently one

of the largest clubs on campus. This membership metric demonstrates

the increased awareness by business school students of the personal

value of doing good in one’s community and doing well in one’s profes-

sional life, concurrently throughout a career.

During the start of my fall semester, I learned that the proposal submit-

ted for this avocado and tomato project had received a multimillion dollar

grant. It was a deeply fulfilling and satisfying outcome. News of winning

the grant reminded me of so many distinctive memories of my summer tra-

versing along the highways and dirt roads of Tanzania’s Southern High-

lands. My awkward and uncertain start in Mhonda village, seated in a red

plastic chair, was a distant but wonderful reminder of future possibilities to

tackle some of our society’s largest problems through the intersection of

private, nonprofit, and public resources. And young people like me can

find an enhanced sense of purpose through pursuing them.

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Globalization 79

Global Citizen Year
Learning from the World

ABIGAIL FALIK is the founder and CEO of Global Citizen Year and a

recognized expert in the fields of education reform, international

development, and social innovation. For her work as a leading social

entrepreneur, she has received awards from the Draper Richards

Foundation, the Mind Trust, and the Harvard Business School.

Abigail has made a commitment to using global immersion as a way

to equip the next generation of leaders with the empathy and insight

needed to overcome twenty-first-century challenges.

Today, fewer than 1 percent of American college graduates have ventured

beyond the wealthiest environments to meet any of the world’s 4 billion

people living on less than $3 a day, according to the Open Doors report

sponsored by the U.S. State Department. Without firsthand experience

with the global majority, how can American leaders possibly expect to lead

with global skills and insight?

Early Journey, Lifelong Commitment

When I was sixteen, my sense of self and the world was blown open

when I spent a summer in a rural Nicaraguan village. Living with a host

family, I learned to speak Spanish and make tortillas by hand, spent my

days working in the fields, and taught English in the community’s

schools. And while my motivations as a do-gooder high school student

were initially to provide some form of “help” to a community plagued by

material poverty, it didn’t take long for me to realize that my hosts were

far from victims to be pitied. Instead, they were resourceful, persistent,

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80 PASSION AND PURPOSE

and better attuned than any well-intentioned foreigner to what was really

needed to lift themselves out of poverty.

Energized by my first experience working abroad, I called the Peace

Corps to see if I could join when I graduated from high school. When I

was told to call back in four years, I was struck by the incredible irony

that our country allows young people to wield a gun in military service at

age eighteen, but requires a college degree or significant work experience

to join the Peace Corps.10

I was determined to find a way to continue learning from the world.

Without these experiences, how could my higher education be relevant

to life outside the classroom?

As an undergraduate at Stanford, my coursework focused on poverty,

inequality, and international development. Always eager to test what I

was learning in my classes in the real world, I took time off midway

through college to return to my host community in Nicaragua and

support them in developing their first library.

Armed with grant money and Spanish language books, I arrived in

Nicaragua with what seemed like a simple goal: to help bring to life a

community’s dream of building a library. What transpired, however, was

far more messy and challenging than I could ever have imagined. Soon,

I was the forewoman on a construction project in a culture and language

that weren’t my own. The daily obstacles ranged from navigating political

faultlines to secure the permits for our new construction site, to waiting

for days on end for the rains so that we could mix the cement foundation.

My learning that year was incalculably more valuable than anything I

had gleaned in a classroom. The experience was so profound that it left

me with a question that I’ve now spent my professional life trying to an-

swer: how different would the world be if every young American had ex-

periences like this?

Years later, after a decade spent working across the nonprofit sector in

the United States and abroad, I found myself increasingly disillusioned

watching good intentions and resources fall short in the face of in-

tractable social challenges. It was when one boss told me to rein in my

ambition and begin to “think smaller” that I realized I needed to go to

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Globalization 81

business school. With my vision for using education to drive social

change on a global scale squarely in mind, I hoped to learn how to build

a high-impact enterprise where “nonprofit” would describe our tax status,

but not our management style.

Global Citizen Year Is Born

Just before graduation from HBS, I entered the Pitch for Change

competition—an annual event that features the most promising new so-

cial ventures from around the world. With an impassioned elevator pitch,

I proposed something outrageous: that someday, every American student

would have an opportunity to spend a “Global Citizen Year” working in

the developing world before college.

When I won first prize in the competition, I was shocked and hum-

bled. Most important, the experience served as a critical moment of

commitment. From the excitement in the nine-hundred-seat Burden

Auditorium, I could tell that this wasn’t just my idea anymore; instead it

was a vision that had resonance far beyond me. In that moment, I real-

ized that my calling as a leader is to help catalyze a transformation in

how America prepares its young people for effective leadership in our

globalized world.

We all have a sense that today’s youth have not been well prepared for

college or for a twenty-first-century global workforce. The statistics are

striking. Fewer than 9 percent of anglophone Americans develop fluency

in another language (compared to 54 percent of our European peers),

and just 1 percent study abroad (and of those who do, two-thirds don’t

venture beyond Western Europe). In a world where economic recession,

climate change, and poverty transcend geopolitical boundaries to affect

us all, how can we possibly expect to overcome these challenges if we

can’t work effectively—and collaboratively—across borders?

One year after graduating from HBS, I had raised over $1 million from

leading venture philanthropists—individuals and foundations looking to

maximize the social return on their early investment—to launch Global

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82 PASSION AND PURPOSE

Citizen Year. I built a founding team, and together we launched a pilot

program with an inaugural cohort of Fellows—young people from across

the United States who had the courage to buck the cultural pressure that

moves our youth straight along the conveyor belt from high school to col-

lege. Instead, each deferred admission from schools ranging from

Harvard to Evergreen State, with the aim of taking their education into

their own hands and out into the world, then starting college the follow-

ing year with a clearer sense of purpose and a more global perspective.

Our founding Fellows came from diverse geographies and varied

socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds, but they were united by their

passion and potential as leaders.

In September, as their friends were heading off for their first weeks in

college dorms, our Fellows came to the Bay Area for our inaugural U.S.

Training Institute. We introduced them to leaders across the public, pri-

vate, and social sectors, and helped them develop a framework for un-

derstanding the experience they would soon embark on overseas. During

the U.S. training, the Fellows had to reflect on two core questions that

would help focus their learning objectives in the months ahead. The first

was external: What are the causes of poverty? What approaches are most

effective in improving peoples’ lives? The second was internal: What is

my authentic style as a leader? Who am I when I’m so far from my com-

fort zone? What is it that really makes me happy? While these may seem

like obvious questions for a young person, for the most part, this type of

inquiry is systematically excluded from the conventional high school and

college curriculum.

From here, our Fellows traveled in teams, each guided by a youth de-

velopment professional we hired and trained to be a “team leader,” to

their country posts in Africa and Latin America. The first month was in

an urban center where the group members acclimated to their new con-

text while engaging in an intensive language immersion and cross-

cultural orientation. Next, the Fellows moved to more rural communities,

where they were paired with host families and apprenticeships—work

placements that matched their interests and skills with the needs of the

community.

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Globalization 83

In Sengalkam, Senegal, an aspiring doctor spent a few days a week

shadowing a traditional healer, and the other days working in a public

pharmacy and a private clinic. In Seibkotone, Senegal, another Fellow

revived the school’s library and unpacked the box of U.S. government–

donated computers that no one knew how to set up. A few weeks

later she was holding workshops to teach teachers to use Google and

Wikipedia for the first time. In Santo Tomas, Guatemala, another Fellow

worked with a women’s group on nutrition issues, and supported the

development of a community garden.

Our Fellows had netbooks and flipcams, and throughout their experi-

ence corresponded regularly with K–12 classrooms and communities in

the United States. Stateside, as interest in their work grew, we helped

ensure that our Fellows’ experiences touched the lives of their parents,

peers, and a broader public through partnerships with Current TV and

op-eds in the Huffington Post and New York Times. A change of mind-set

may begin with our Fellows, but ultimately, we hope they will create a

ripple that reverberates across America.

In May 2010, our first class of Fellows returned home—transformed

in their sense of themselves and the world and hungry to start their col-

lege careers. They spent the summer sharing what they had learned

about their guiding questions through presentations in classrooms, blog

posts, and publications in their hometown papers. In the fall, they

headed off to colleges across the country, having developed the passion

and perseverance that make the difference in college, careers, and life.

With this first year’s success, my vision is emboldened and we are now

on track to triple the size of next year’s cohort, with the aim of engaging

ten thousand Fellows annually by 2020. We are working to do more than

build another exchange program—our aim is to catalyze a movement

that engages colleges, companies, governments, and social enterprises

around the world.

As our effort gains momentum, Global Citizen Year can fundamentally

restructure the way young Americans learn about and engage with the

world. By supporting emerging leaders at the moment they are most

ripe to new ideas, growth, and exploration, we can awaken their true

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84 PASSION AND PURPOSE

potential. Our Fellows enter college knowing what they want to pursue,

why, and how to use their education to have an impact in business and

public service—for our nation and our world. Over time, we will build an

undeniable force: a pipeline of new American leaders with an ethic of

service, the fluencies needed to communicate across languages and cul-

tures, and the ability to work at the interface of the public, private, and

nonprofit sectors to build a more peaceful and prosperous world.

Broader Lessons for Business Leaders

At its core, good leadership requires empathy, and empathy requires first-

hand experience. If we aspire to develop global leaders, then we must also

understand the breadth and diversity of experiencing people, places, and

problems that we won’t otherwise experience if we stay close to home.

As Global Citizen Year prepares the next generation of leaders, Ameri-

can corporations can—and should—be equipping our current leaders

with the empathy and judgment they need to make effective decisions in

a globalized world. Following the lead of programs like IBM’s Corporate

Service Corps, a growing number of companies have developed programs

that enable employees to live and work in the developing world as a

means of learning about new markets, building internal capacity, and

supporting employee retention. But this kind of experiential learning

must become the norm, not the exception. GE should send product

designers to rural communities to truly understand which technological

innovations are—and are not—appropriate in improving lives at the bot-

tom of the pyramid. The Gap should send product managers to work in

the plants where their clothing is being produced.

Not until we walk in another’s shoes can we truly feel others’ hopes

and fears, and have the wisdom to know what it would mean to work to-

gether toward a common cause. One day, we will have redefined effec-

tive leadership training to include firsthand knowledge of people,

languages, cultures, and solutions that can only be found beyond our

borders. Simply put, we can’t afford not to.

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Globalization 85

The Business of Reconciliation
How Cows and Co-Ops Are Paving the Way
for Genuine Reconciliation in Rwanda

CHRIS MALONEY works as a management consultant on projects for

public and private sector clients across Africa, especially in agricul-

ture, health care, and policy. A native of New York, he holds a BA in

economics and African/African-American studies from Stanford

University, and both an MPA/International Development and an MBA

from Harvard University. In reflecting on his experience in Rwanda,

Chris realizes how unfamiliar environments abroad can lead one to

reevaluate traditional notions of business risk and social return.

It was late at night, and I was tired. Perfect timing for my inner consul-

tant to become narrow and critical. I had come up to Rwanda to look at

ways in which the main agriculture challenges in the country were being

addressed by both the government and foreign donors. I was knee-deep

in documents, sitting outside on a typically breezy, eerily silent Kigali

evening. As I read through the reports, my mind started raising red flags

on two programs in particular:

• The “one cow per poor family” program intended to get every poor

family in Rwanda a cow—thereby increasing the amount of milk,

protein, and fertilizer available to the average family, which

sounded good on paper.11 But this was in the most densely popu-

lated country in Africa, where almost everyone was poor (living on

less than $1 per day) and stuck on tiny hillsides. How on earth

would this work? There were few people with the skills to care for

the cows, little land for grazing, little land on which to use the new

source of fertilizer, and little credit to allow the farmers to expand

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86 PASSION AND PURPOSE

their farming activities once they had the cow—it was hard to see

how this program could be sustainable.

• In the government’s action plan, the co-op approach seemed to be

the main way of solving problems—a tough way to go.12 For farmers

to move beyond subsistence, they need to be able to buy the right

inputs to grow more and access the right markets to sell more.

Co-ops are one way to do this (form a group to access credit for

inputs and sell products in bulk), but they are notoriously messy

and hard to sustain. There are challenges with misaligned incen-

tives, poor leadership and management, and too many stakehold-

ers. Individual entrepreneurs, on the other hand, were more what

I was used to seeing in African agriculture transformations—

individuals who would have private sector incentives to work with

farmers to help them access inputs, and aggregate their output to

help them access markets in bulk and get better prices for every-

one. But such entrepreneurs seemed to figure only vaguely in the

Rwandan government’s plans, and I couldn’t figure out why. Why

take the riskier co-op approach?

My mind started to wander. As with everything in Rwanda, one cannot

ignore the 1994 genocide, in which Hutus, the largest ethnic group, sys-

tematically slaughtered a million Tutsis in one hundred days under an

extremist Hutu government. This led to the displacement of millions of

Rwandans, both Hutu and Tutsi, before Tutsi rebels came in and

stopped the genocide. This was a brutal time, involving machetes and

constant fear, where friends and neighbors somehow switched off their

humanity for four months. This hotel where I stayed—the Serena, Ki-

gali’s main business hotel—was called the Hotel des Diplomates during

this awful period. The Diplomates was the antithesis of the Hotel des

Mille Collines, which was right down the road, and now famous from

the movie Hotel Rwanda. As opposed to the Mille Collines, which had

served as a sanctuary during the genocide, the Diplomates served as the

genocidal Hutu government’s headquarters as the Tutsi rebels eventually

closed in on Kigali. It was here at the Diplomates where district

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Globalization 87

governors of the Hutu extremist government were ordered to update the

ministers on how fast their “work” was progressing—that is, killing all the

Tutsis in their home regions—and where many grisly executions were

carried out on the top floors. But now, sixteen years later, I couldn’t even

fathom such a thing. The hotel had since been bought, gutted, and trans-

formed into a modern facility that could have been anywhere in the

world. Today the place was sterile, and it was comfortable. And just

below this shiny surface, it was filled, like everything in Rwanda, with

the ghosts of the past.13

How does a country begin to put such spirits to rest? Perhaps, amaz-

ingly, the way the government was going about its agriculture transforma-

tion activities was one such way. As I thought about these programs, and

as I pressed for more feedback in interviews with various people around

Rwanda over the subsequent days, I realized that both the cow program

and the co-ops were trying, perhaps, to use business as a means of recon-

ciliation. To me, it was a startling idea.

Spending some time in the rural villages and meeting with farmers

themselves painted the picture for me. After the genocide, many villages’

lands had to be completely reconfigured as many families had been

killed, or fled, while other people, sometimes totally new, came to the vil-

lage for the first time. In a few places I visited, genocide victims were

given plots of land right next door to someone who had been a perpetra-

tor of the genocide, thereby encouraging some form of reconciliation

since they had to see each other every day. It was not easy. One woman I

spoke to, who had lost most of her family, simply said, “It’s very hard, but

he is my neighbor.” How does one rebuild in a setting like that? It was

here where I began to see that the cow program had a part to play in this

story. A program rule in many places was that the first calf of the cow

must be given to a neighbor. In this way, the cow program was not just a

subsidy or “gift from the government,” but rather an asset with a strong

future value that brought neighbors together and gave strength to fami-

lies where so much had been lost. This gift of the first calf was incredibly

significant. A cow, it turns out, can often provide a family with just

enough cash to access higher education, and have a steadier, more

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88 PASSION AND PURPOSE

diversified diet, among other benefits. As I began to understand it, the

gift of a cow could change lives, as it would work across families, and

help, in some small way, to aid in reconciliation—if nothing else, it

would certainly help bind neighbors together.

Rebuilding communities was the other big challenge. The fractured

villages needed something to pull them together—not just at the family-

to-family level (as was being done with the cows), but at the community

level. This is where the co-ops came in. As tough as they are to build,

manage, and sustain, the role of co-ops in a Rwandan village was more

than just helping farmers improve their income. Looking closer, I saw

that the co-ops would give farmers a common sense of purpose, an in-

centive to want to work together and achieve a positive outcome. A co-op

changed the lives of farmers economically and socially. It could be a criti-

cal tool for pulling a community together and provide an incentive for it

to rebuild itself. It also avoided the appearance of favoritism. If the

government was seen as supporting one individual entrepreneur over

another in some of these places, the fractures in the community could

grow. But the co-ops could avoid all of this, as they would first pull the

community together, and maybe at a later point spur more individual

entrepreneurship.

Stepping back, I realized the co-ops and cows were important in ways

that no IRR (internal rate of return) or competitive strategic analysis

could measure. I learned that, as with so many things in Africa, the con-

text was everything. It is hard to put a number on the “value” of reconcili-

ation, but it is here where measures like social return on capital and

deeper cost-benefits would be critical. Indeed, the amount of effort that

would be needed to make “one cow one family” and the co-ops work

would be high, but the value it could create was socially tremendous,

and something I might have missed had I not gone into the villages

themselves, or thought more deeply about the programs’ unspoken moti-

vations. You wouldn’t see any explicit reference to reconciliation in the

dry, official policy document. Instead of thinking of the cows and co-ops

as too risky, in fact I realized it was this high amount of risk that could

possibly guarantee a very high return—one that went far beyond

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Globalization 89

monetary value, but helped families confront the horrors of the past, and

reconcile entire communities.

For me, the lessons from this experience are twofold. First, business

can be used to create incentives not just for economic return, but also

for social return. This is happening all over Africa and across the world,

but Rwanda was the first place I saw business used as a cornerstone of

such broad social transformation. Second, it is not always easy to see this

idea of “social return,” nor is it easy to quantify. The risks of “social busi-

ness” are high, and likely require some economic cost to capture the

value of increased social return. Efforts need to be placed on under-

standing how to mitigate these risks to maximize the social return, and

shed new light on what might have originally been a questionable busi-

ness case. For young managers seeking to grow global careers, this

implies several things:

• First, working in environments completely different from the ones

you are used to requires you to push harder to understand the con-

text and keep an open mind. Though difficult, you must think

through the project from the point of the view of “the other side,”

looking at all the players’ motivations and incentives, or else you

might miss the whole point. No one ever explicitly told me these

projects were about reconciliation—my realization came through

getting out into the field and interacting with a range of people,

from individual farmers to political and social experts. What would

the government want? A country put back together and moving for-

ward. What did the villagers need? A stronger social fabric and a

way to start lifting themselves out of poverty. Using this lens, I

began to see how these projects were using business to achieve

such outcomes.

• Second, because projects in areas with profound social challenges

may have positive externalities that are hard to quantify, the process

may be as valuable as the end product. While the programs are

rolled out, the “cow annuity” and the small businesses formed by

the co-ops bring families, neighbors, and communities together.

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Therefore, when weighing the risk of a particular project in such a

situation, one must consider all of the possible effects that might

come out of the process of implementing it—and what might hap-

pen if it is not implemented. This then needs to be weighed against

what the project will ultimately create, to see if the trade-offs be-

tween the various costs, risks, and returns are worth it.

• While perhaps stating the obvious, when you work in socially trou-

bled areas, there is a high risk of failure. Alternatives to achieve the

implicit outcome (in this case, reconciliation), as opposed to just

the explicit outcome (income generation for poor farmers), should

be explored up front, to see which approach makes the most sense.

From the cows to the co-ops, many of the programs I saw in

Rwanda are risky and difficult to implement. But the social return I

believe is worth the risk, and we need to shift the focus to ways to

increase the likelihood of success and to solve the execution prob-

lems during roll-out.

What I love about working in Africa is that I am constantly reminded

that I don’t know what I don’t know, and that with every project there is

something more to learn, a new perspective to add to my toolbox as I

work on various projects around the continent. In the end, I cannot guar-

antee the cows will turn Rwanda into the next Wisconsin, nor can I guar-

antee that every co-op will run smoothly. However, I do believe that the

process of working through this venture can help put many of Rwanda’s

ghosts to rest.

90 PASSION AND PURPOSE

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INTERVIEW WITH . . .

Dominic Barton
Global Managing Director of McKinsey & Company

Dominic Barton talks about his own global experience, what global-

ization will mean to organizations and young leaders, and how

businesspeople can use global experience to improve themselves

and their organizations.

As a firm with a global footprint, McKinsey has nurtured an
organization that cuts across cultures and boundaries. How have
McKinsey and its clients responded to globalization over the past
several decades?

In the late 1950s, we began to help emerging multinational compa-

nies expand their presence in Europe, South America, and parts of

Asia. We also began hiring global talent (at some scale) in key univer-

sities in the U.S. and Europe. This helped to set us up for globaliza-

tion over the next fifty years. Over the past several decades we have

broadened our geographic footprint (now fifty-five countries with the

opening of our Nigeria office in November 2010). In fact,

McKinsey—and many of our clients—have responded to globalization

by expanding physical presence to where demand opportunities are in

key geographic nodes around the world and by becoming locally rele-

vant in each of those nodes. We have also pursued a global or “one

firm” culture—a common standard across geographies for our client

service approach (e.g., all clients are clients of the firm and not the

local office—we serve our clients with global teams and bring to each

of them the most relevant parts of our global knowledge); global train-

ing; one language; our talent development approach (e.g., all partners

are elected globally and have been from the beginning; a strong

encouragement of mobility between countries throughout one’s

Globalization 91

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92 PASSION AND PURPOSE

career—I have personally lived in seven countries on all major conti-

nents while at McKinsey), which encourages a global perspective; and

our remuneration approach (e.g., one firm global profit pool).

In your experience, how has globalization affected the careers
of today’s young managers? How is this different from the previous
generation of managers?

Managers today are playing and need to be equipped to play in a signifi-

cantly larger, more diverse—but interrelated—and fast-moving playing

field. They need to understand the broader world context in which they

are operating—rather than just their immediate surroundings. This ap-

plies not only to new potential “demand” markets, but new sources of

supply, innovation, and talent. For many, if not most, industries, disrup-

tive change and innovation is as likely to originate from across the globe

and adjacent businesses as it is in just the local market, and managers

will need a wide field of view that includes deep awareness of global

trends. Technology has a role to play in making emerging managerial

challenges easier. There are also new decision-making and oversight

skills to learn to ensure that the challenges associated with globalization

and increased volatility and risk are met.

Young managers will also need to be much more versatile and mobile.

Of course, overseas “chapters” in a career will be a much more prevalent

part of career development for a far greater portion of leaders than in the

past. However, versatility will need to go much farther—including the

ability to work more seamlessly across public, private, and social sectors.

The challenges we see in a globalizing world (for example, job losses in

developed economies) require the strong collaboration of business, gov-

ernment, and social sectors. I think that young mangers should seek out

opportunities to work across those areas—in effect becoming “tri-sector”

athletes over the course of a career—and some parts of the world do this

more naturally, such as India, China, South Korea, and Singapore.

Finally, for all mangers, the bar for depth of knowledge and the abil-

ity to work across cultures continues to rise in a globalizing economy. It

is not sufficient to be the best within a market or region. In today’s

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Globalization 93

world, young leaders must have relevant expertise and skills in a multi-

country setting.

In what ways does global experience early in a businessperson’s
career help him or her become a better leader?

Global experience early in one’s career can be likened to a “leadership

accelerator”—developing a broader understanding of cultures and of de-

cision-making and team-building approaches, as well as the challenge of

what can be built from a “standing start,” enhances leadership “muscle.”

Global experience early on forces one to challenge basic assumptions—

for example, what is important to customers; what is important to tal-

ent; how to get things done—skills that are important for innovation

and improving performance anywhere in the world. These managers will

understand the cultures and values of partners outside their home

country—making them more effective in building relationships every-

where. They will also develop bonds with suppliers and customers that

are much harder to achieve at a distance. I spend a lot of time encourag-

ing CEOs to take their boards into emerging markets to see in-person

the changes taking place. The earlier that businesspeople can get to

grips with the communities in which their customers live, the more

likely that they will successfully lead companies that serve those cus-

tomers well.

There are broader macroeconomic benefits as well. Workers over-

seas often act as ambassadors for their home country—making connec-

tions and opening pathways for other business leaders in their home

country.

What are the skills and experiences that managers and organizations
should nurture in their young business leaders that will enable them
to succeed in tomorrow’s global marketplace?

One of the most important, but least valued, skills is the ability to put

oneself in the shoes of others. We have been living in historic times with

continued—and often disruptive—changes from all sectors and all parts

of the globe, creating a constant stream of new possibilities.

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94 PASSION AND PURPOSE

In this context, leaders should seek out experiences outside their

own country to understand dynamics, trends, and approaches that

could create opportunities and challenges for their businesses.

Cross-sector perspectives can also be very helpful. Retailing and

technology, health care and telecom, banking and consumer goods are

all examples of industries where connection and cross-experiences

will benefit young leaders. Even today, many CEOs get a lot of value

from connecting with leaders in industries unrelated to their own.

Young leaders also need to be constantly open to change—seeking

and even stimulating continuous experimentation with new technolo-

gies, new products, and new business models. One of the hardest

things for any of us to do is to let go of business models that have

proven successful in the past. Leaders need a “healthy paranoia” that

will keep them on a high state of alert for new possibilities. By con-

stantly questioning assumptions and orthodoxies, we can avoid be-

coming too comfortable with past success models. As the rate of

change in the world increases, leaders need to learn to do this even

more aggressively than their predecessors.

Finally, leaders need to learn how to anticipate and prepare for

risks. The volatility we have experienced recently will become a more

normal part of how we operate. The sources of risk for any organiza-

tion can be quite different and wide-ranging. Spending sufficient time

with key stakeholders and people in the organization that directly

serve them—especially key customer segments—is very important.

You’ve traveled extensively throughout your career. What was your
own global journey like, and what have you learned from it?

I have been very fortunate to have worked with McKinsey clients on

six continents, and to have witnessed firsthand the growth of Asia as

an economic powerhouse while living in Seoul and Shanghai. My con-

fidence and excitement about Asia’s economic future comes in part

from that experience of having called the continent my home for the

last twelve years. I have learned a lot about learning. In many of these

country experiences, I felt like I was starting over again and, while

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Globalization 95

painful and stressful at many times, I think one benefits a great deal

from these experiences. I learned a lot about relationship building—in

several of the countries, I did not speak the local language but had to

learn how to communicate effectively and “read” people—in fact, I

think I developed a deeper sense of “radar” than I ordinarily would

have if I had not moved around so much.

You’ve spent a significant part of your career in China. What can
Chinese companies and business leaders learn from the rest of the
world? What can the rest of the world learn from China?

For Chinese companies, it is crucial to recognize that strategies and

organizational models that work well in China will not necessarily

work in other parts of the world; in particular, talent models and deci-

sion-making processes will need to be quite different. Adapting to the

world beyond China’s borders is their biggest challenge—they need to

understand and respond to the diversity of other markets; not only

customers, but employees, competitors, and regulators.

For companies from outside China, the learnings are very similar.

For example, you would be surprised how often executives assume

that China is a single market—and indeed that most Chinese con-

sumers will view a product or service in a similar way. Of course, the

reality is that China is far from homogenous. Companies coming into

the Chinese market for the first time need to understand its tremen-

dous diversity, and build this into their strategy. For example, in con-

sumer goods sectors we often advise our clients to think of China as

twenty-two distinct markets. For many, this will also mean creating a

second headquarters in China and substantially “beefing up” govern-

ment relations as a means to becoming an insider in the country.

What are the most important lessons that American business leaders
can learn from the process of globalization and from their global
business partners?

The coming decade will be the first in two hundred years when

emerging market countries contribute more to growth than developed

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96 PASSION AND PURPOSE

ones. Leaders of American businesses need to prepare for dramatic

changes to the world in which they operate.

We will see 900 million new middle-class consumers driven by

these shifts. Their demand for goods and services will reshape indus-

tries. It is far from clear how companies will serve that new demand

successfully, and I expect consumers in developing markets to put

tremendous pressure on companies to innovate. Similarly, technology

brings near-instant connectivity and innovation continues to rise

alongside connectivity as consumers have a global field of view and a

multiplicity of choices.

Ideas and innovation occur all over the world, and globalization will

push the pace of innovation to increase further. While the U.S. will

remain an important individual economy, American businesses will

need to figure out how to go after these 900 million new middle-class

consumers—often challenging major orthodoxies to meet new prefer-

ences and provide high-quality products and services at significantly

lower price points. Many businesses will also need to significantly re-

think their talent and talent-development models—both to access

great talent in different parts of the world and to develop an even

deeper bench of globally minded leaders. Finally, American business

leaders, like all others, are going to need to be comfortable with and

learn to thrive with levels of uncertainty and volatility we have not

seen in recent times.

Are there any words of caution you’d offer to the next generation of
global leaders? Are there any words of encouragement?

The next generation of leaders will have the opportunity to deal with

exciting and quite different challenges than their predecessors—all in

a context of a globally connected and constantly changing world.

They need to have both a “long lens” and a “short lens” and keep both

in constant balance. A long view keeps careful watch on where the world

is going and makes investments accordingly. At the same time, the short

view enables one to be nimble and move quickly in the moment—

adapting to sudden changes and capturing pockets of opportunity.

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Globalization 97

The next generation of global leaders should nurture curiosity and

seek new experiences as much as possible by traveling, working across

cultures and even sectors, connecting and forming relationships

across country borders, absorbing new perspectives—especially be-

yond Anglo-Saxon ones—and reading broadly. Information, ideas, and

innovation come from many sources, and they should develop as

many “source spots” as possible.

Finally, I would encourage leaders to develop their “resilience

muscle”—there will surely be shocks, challenges, and failures along

the way. We all need to get back up on our feet when (not if) we are

knocked down—our research shows that more successful people

and leaders actually experience more “bad luck” than less successful

people—and reach out for more experiences, especially

international ones!

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CHAPTER 3

People
Leading in a Diverse World

Variety is the spice of life.

—William Cowper

One of the striking facets of modern business is the incredible diversity

of the people—customers, colleagues, suppliers, and competitors—

with whom we now interact. On a day-to-day basis, businesspeople engage

people of every race, religion, color, creed, and personal preference—and

while this variety can prove difficult to navigate, it’s also equipping young

leaders to operate with agility, humility, and individuality.

Businesspeople, of course, have always had to lead diverse groups.

Historically great cities like Piraeus, Alexandria, and New York were both

cultural and commercial centers—where trade brought together people

of every race, religion, and ethnicity. The private sector has often flat-

tened class differences and offered excluded peoples a means of partici-

pating more fully in society. And, particularly in modern times, the

entrepreneurial desire to reach every untapped (and profitable) niche has

led to an explosion of various “long-tail” business ventures—from inde-

pendently produced online music albums to art house movies and organic

vegan restaurants.

And despite occasional resistance, workplaces around the world are

becoming ever more diverse. On a global level, we may be living in one of

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100 PASSION AND PURPOSE

the most inclusive times in history. As labor force participation increases

and old racial, class, religious, and gender-based barriers are gradually

lowered in many regions, the workplace is benefiting from a multiplicity

of perspectives. In practical terms, these varied points of view are often

quite necessary to reach the equally diverse array of consumers who now

purchase goods from multinational institutions. Companies like Coca-

Cola must now serve customers of every conceivable nationality, class,

and creed. And they have often recognized the importance of this diver-

sity more quickly than global political institutions.

That’s not to say these companies are perfect—far from it. Senior exec-

utive suites are almost all still dominated by historically powerful groups.

In the United States, this means that many CEOs are older white males.

In Mexico, it means that very few native people hold executive positions,

and in many companies around the world it means an underrepresenta-

tion of women.

But the trends—at least on these conventional measures of diversity—

are improving. In 1975, for instance, only 11 percent of the MBA class at

HBS were women, 6 percent were U.S. minorities, and 15 percent were

international. By 1995, women comprised 28 percent of the class, U.S.

minorities 14 percent, and international students 23 percent.1 And for

the HBS class of 2012, the figures had climbed to 36 percent women, 23

percent U.S. minorities, and 34 percent international students.2 Other

business schools, like France’s INSEAD, are even more diverse (at least

by country of origin), with INSEAD boasting a 2010 class that was 92

percent international, with 59 percent of students from outside of West-

ern Europe, and 33 percent women.3 Those of us who recently attended

business school can attest to the dedicated efforts these schools make to

celebrate the religions, cultures, and passions of these various con-

stituencies in very authentic ways.

In our own survey, more than 92 percent of respondents answered

“agree” or “strongly agree” to the statement, “Increased workplace diver-

sity can lead to better business outcomes.” And a majority of respondents

selected numerous categories when prompted with this statement:

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People 101

“I hope my future employers seek to actively foster the following ele-

ments of diversity in the workplace” (see figure 3-1)

Of particular interest is that these respondents don’t simply or even

predominantly value racial, ethnic, and gender diversity—but diverse

professional experience, functional expertise, and educational back-

ground. There seems to be a realization that out of these diverse experi-

ences and identities come the strength of alternative perspectives—and

next-generation leaders value those perspectives for the personal growth

and professional success they can bring. This kind of diversity is both a

challenge and an opportunity.

30

41

47

49

51

60

59

60

77

81

40

54

52

52

54

56

68

74

79

23

32

44

47

50

62

52

77

82
Professional experience

Functional expertise

Gender

Race

Ethnicity

Educational background

Citizenship

Language

Economic class

Sexual preference

Religious tradition

Total MenWomen

53

67

75
87

77

FIGURE 3-1

Traits to foster in the workplace (percent responding “yes”)

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How Can We Lead in a Diverse World?

So where do we go from here? Certainly, the next generation of business

leaders will continue to seek out inclusive workplaces; and they’ll likely

be more effective at creating them because they themselves are more di-

verse in almost every conventional sense. But there is a growing belief

that these external measures of diversity—particularly race and gender—

are insufficient, and that sensitivity training programs are quickly becom-

ing outdated and ineffective. We are also realizing that as important as

the diversity of the people you lead is the diversity of your own leadership

experiences.

This generation—fed on the aforementioned “long-tail” idea that each

person is unique beyond his or her class, race, or gender, having unique

tastes and preferences—is instead pushing for greater “wholeness” in the

workplace. Alternative work schedules. Part-time or remote employment

for mothers and fathers who choose to stay at home with children. In-

creasing incorporation of various religious and cultural practices in the

workplace and increasing openness among employees about sensitive

topics. This generation is pushing the idea that no one achieves happi-

ness by cleaving herself in half—one part “professional” and one part

“personal.” And as technological and cultural shifts increasingly allow

such radically individualized diversity, the next generation’s leaders will

use these shifts to gain a competitive advantage among customers even as

they create a fuller work experience for employees.

This shift is perhaps most pronounced among millennial women. Ac-

cording to a recent Accenture survey, 94 percent of millennial women be-

lieve they can achieve “work-life balance”—a modern euphemism for

happiness and fulfillment in one’s personal and professional life. And 70

percent list “maintains work/life balance” as a critical quality of a success-

ful female leader.4

But the shift toward individualization is also clear, more anecdotally, in

the changes companies are making to accommodate the needs of their in-

creasingly varied workforces. Google has traditionally offered employees

“20 Percent Time”—one day per week dedicated to their own pursuits

102 PASSION AND PURPOSE

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People 103

and initiatives; 3M has promoted something similar with its “15% cul-

ture.”5 And in 2007 at least, Netflix claimed that it did not even track the

hours of its employees.6 Far from the purview of radical companies in Sil-

icon Valley, similar techniques are employed by the likes of JetBlue,

which pioneered a program of at-home call center agents, many of whom

were stay-at-home moms, in locations like Salt Lake City.7

Some pioneering companies are even embracing religion. Tyson Foods,

for instance, created a chaplaincy program—staffing its various facilities

with religious mentors who reflect the dominant faiths of workers in their

particular regions, and are available to employees of all faiths for counsel.

This program would seem eccentric if similar versions hadn’t been imple-

mented, in whole or in part, in other prominent companies, such as

Coca-Cola, R. J. Reynolds, and Texas Instruments.8

And, of course, businesses have often been harbingers of social change

on lifestyle issues like sexual preference—many private firms began to

offer same-sex partner benefits, for instance, long before same-sex part-

nership became a prominent political issue. According to the Human

Rights Campaign, by 2003, 64 percent of the Fortune 100 offered same-

sex partner benefits, and by 2009, that number had reached 83 percent.9

In short, companies are both expanding what it means to be “diverse”

and doing so in ways that attempt to empower employees and offer them

greater fulfillment, wholeness, and happiness in the workplace. And the

next generation of business leaders is thinking in ever more innovative

ways about how to expand these initiatives and lead these varied individu-

als in the pursuit of common goals.

The following stories address the idea of leading in a diverse world

with the benefit of diverse leadership experiences. People are freer to live

with greater passion and purpose when they feel more “whole” at work.

Over the next twenty years, the best organizations will find ways to har-

ness this incredibly diverse and dynamic talent pool to revolutionize the

way they do business.

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104 PASSION AND PURPOSE

Nonconforming Culture
How to Feel Comfortable in Who You Are
No Matter Where You Are

After five years in the consulting practice, KIMBERLY CARTER now

works as a senior manager in the Leadership Development Group

focused on talent development and corporate university launch

for Deloitte. Kimberly earned a BS in accounting from Florida A&M

University and a minor in German from Florida State University. She

is passionate about education and leadership development.

Imagine walking through the streets of a small town and always being met

with stares—most are inquisitive while others are laced with malice.

Imagine questioning how someone could seemingly judge your worth or

meaning without knowing anything about you. I experienced something

like this when I lived in Germany as an exchange student in the early

1990s, a time of heightened hostility toward outsiders. At the time,

Germany had an influx of immigrants following the collapse of the Berlin

Wall along with a rash of fire bombings and “Ausländer raus” (“foreigners

get out”) demonstrations that expressed a widespread negative sentiment.

There were also a number of marches organized to address tolerance and

to counter xenophobia. On the surface, many assumed I was an African

seeking asylum and employment rather than an African American study-

ing the language and culture. The internal conflict I felt from not always

feeling welcome given the color of my skin spurred me to write a poem

entitled “Identity” for my high school literary magazine. That experience

not only exposed me to the stark realities of modern-day bias but drove

me to never let others’ perceptions of me limit or determine my path.

Growing up in Mississippi, I was no stranger to prejudice. The impact

of discrimination in the United States lingered past the abolition of

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People 105

slavery because certain laws prevented blacks from having the same civil

rights (e.g., to vote, to use common restrooms or drinking fountains) as

whites until the late 1960s, particularly in some Southern states. My

parents experienced segregation firsthand and dealt with systematic in-

justice; however, those experiences fueled their desire to earn university

degrees to create a better life and demand fair treatment professionally.

Even after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, some mind-sets

had not changed enough to grant African Americans immediate access to

education, jobs, and housing—even if they were overqualified. My family

emphasized that education held the keys to equal opportunity. They

grounded my life in the idea that you can excel in spite of adversities and

still be true to yourself. With a deep appreciation for the faith and sacri-

fices of those before me, I kept those memories dear as I worked my way

up in the business world. Although I initially struggled with the expecta-

tions to conform to corporate environments in order to succeed profes-

sionally, I soon discovered there should be no real boundaries for

diversity in the workplace.

Many of those unspoken expectations and my feelings about them

may seem superficial (e.g., always having straightened hair because natu-

ral hair is not acceptable, or feeling as if I had to represent the universe

of African American females at work since we represented 1 percent of

our starting class). But at the end of the day, I had to be comfortable with

the person I saw in the mirror and happy with the choices I made. I rec-

ognized that companies figured out that the true value for them did not

lie in having everyone look and act the same.

Over time, I’ve come to understand the profound impact of my experi-

ences in Germany, growing up in Mississippi, and traversing the profes-

sional world, and translated it into three key principles in my life and

career—three things I wish I could have told myself earlier as a young

person entering the working world:

1. Do not be afraid of what you do not know. Every day, I had to men-

tally prepare for any number of reactions from others, but that did

not keep me from walking out the door and enjoying what

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106 PASSION AND PURPOSE

Germany had to offer. Furthermore, I had the courage to make

bold moves on my own and not let fear hold me back. For exam-

ple, the decision to move from the South to New York and work in

investment banking after college was considered a big risk. I dared

to be the first in my circle of friends and family to embark out of

state to work without any nearby support. My great-grandparents

long ago made the decision not to migrate the family up North for

industrial jobs in the early 1900s and took pride in establishing

themselves as pillars in the local community (through teaching

and preaching), yet I decided to seemingly break away from my

Southern roots. There was an inherent fear that anything could

happen given the perceived corrupting influences of the big city.

But there also must have been a strand of wanderlust in my genes,

because one of my great aunts ventured to California to pursue

her dream to dance and act. She somehow made it despite the

challenges of her day. How would I know whether I could be

successful at my venture if I didn’t try?

That does not mean that I do not get a queasy feeling every

time I decide to shift directions. But I close my eyes, take a deep

breath, remember that the feeling will pass (eventually), and

then make the first step. No matter where I end up, the journey

has always been worth it and has made me more comfortable

with accepting what I do not know in order to continually move

forward.

2. Look for ways to bridge the gaps. To bridge the gaps between peo-

ple you have to understand where there are gaps and why. Obvi-

ous differences such as race, gender, and age are easier to

address given various levels of “diversity training” offered today,

but other cultural influences that are often not easily discernible

offhand also shape a person’s views. Opposing beliefs or mind-

sets tend to emerge through casual conversations and informal

networking. Gaining an awareness of those differences equips

you with areas to focus on in order to better relate to colleagues.

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I realize that human nature allows us to make assumptions

about others when we do not know or understand enough about

them. I was perceived as a potential threat by some in Germany

because my skin color was different. However, there was almost

immediate acceptance if my onlookers discovered I was an Ameri-

can. In fact, I had more in common with them than they would

ever have thought. That also translates into the workplace, where

far too often I have been the youngest, the only person of color,

the only female—or all three.

There are, however, commonalities underneath the surface of

those obvious differences. It is too easy to get distracted if you

become stuck focusing on what separates you from others versus

what connects you. I have understood the value of leveraging the

unique skills, talents, and perspectives each person contributes

to a team. Having a diverse workplace requires a comprehensive

understanding of all facets of an individual to truly embrace the

new diversity that transcends generations and a demographic

checklist.

3. Do not forget to pay it forward. Exposure to completely different

environments and social issues has had a transformative impact

on me. I grew the courage, confidence, and resolve to make

decisions and test uncharted waters personally and profession-

ally. Without that experience, I probably would have still suc-

ceeded in my endeavors but remained in the South, in my

comfort zone.

I feel it is my responsibility to encourage others by helping

them recognize that they cannot grow unless they realize they

don’t have to fit in any predefined box. I am an advocate for study-

abroad programs because of the immense opportunities they offer

to expand one’s horizons. It opened doors for me that made me a

more complete person and deepened the core beliefs and values

that make me who I am—regardless of the country, the culture, or

boardroom I occupy.

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108 PASSION AND PURPOSE

And now that I manage people—primarily those under-thirties who

are rising leaders in business—I’ve developed a few rules of thumb for

helping them succeed as well:

1. Reevaluate how well you know your colleagues and managers. Learn

about each team member individually and their interests versus

assuming certain stereotypes or gross generalizations. With the

proliferation of information on the Internet and social networking,

you can easily find out more about others informally and share ex-

periences by joining and using the sites yourself.

2. Be open to other viewpoints, and expect to be surprised. Even

though you won’t always agree with a different perspective, you

can often learn a lot just by listening to alternative approaches to

situations. It is easy to think you have “the answer,” but life en-

counters teach us there is more than one solution. Many paths

can lead to the same destination. Given an appreciation for his-

tory and the experiences of others, you do not always have to

reinvent the answer when something has been proven effective in

the past.

3. Understand that although change is inevitable, not everyone adapts at

the same speed. With the evolution of virtual workplaces, there

are new ways of communicating and working together. These

methods are effective only if everyone uses and understands

them. It is just as important to have an awareness about the im-

pact change has on others on your team as it is to understand the

change itself. How you respond and help others adapt will demon-

strate your capabilities as a leader. And understanding a person’s

heritage or background can be essential to a deeper understanding

of the ways they can understand and adapt to change.

Since my parents first entered the workplace, I have noticed changes

that allow me to be bolder with who I am and what I expect from others.

Blatant discrimination is not tolerated today. My generation grew up in a

fully integrated society and benefited from diverse experiences. I can

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People 109

easily reference many successful role models in business and politics

with nontraditional backgrounds. Companies have taken steps to teach

employees about diversity and how to handle sensitive situations. They

recognize in this age that you cannot mask who you truly are and maxi-

mize your productivity at work. Self-awareness and cultural acceptance

are critical elements of feeling confident with yourself and treating others

with respect.

As business professionals in the twenty-first century, we should recog-

nize that the new diversity encompasses a breadth of attributes not con-

strained by race, gender, and other stereotypical factors. It requires first

embracing and celebrating the essence of who you are before you can ap-

preciate what others bring to the table.

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110 PASSION AND PURPOSE

Diversity Day
Whole People, Whole Organizations,
and a Whole New Approach to Diversity

JOSH BRONSTEIN has been a human capital consultant since 2005,

specializing in talent and change management strategies. Josh

holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a bachelor of

science in industrial and labor relations from Cornell University.

He is passionate about helping people bring more of themselves

to work.

In the first season of the hit television show The Office, an episode about

“Diversity Day” pokes fun at a tacky diversity training session that

teaches employees to become HEROs through Honesty, Empathy,

Respect, and Open minds. The comedic routine highlights the skeptical

views most employees have toward an outdated view of “diversity.”

When many of us think about diversity, we think about these silly, over-

dramatic sensitivity training sessions that have been the subject of such

ridicule. We think about nondiscrimination policies that exist on paper

but allow the highest-revenue producers to opt out. We think about affir-

mative action and hiring a greater number of underrepresented minorities

or women. Or perhaps we think about the most tangibly strategic efforts

in which organizations mirror customer or client segments, such as His-

panic or LGBT (lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender) marketing efforts, to

increase revenues. Most people think about these manifestations of diver-

sity because most leaders who came before us viewed workplace diversity

in the context of affirmative action, litigation avoidance, or access to di-

verse markets. But these views of diversity are evolving dramatically.

In conversations with my peers, I’ve realized that our generation be-

lieves that such diversity practices are simply table stakes. Of course,

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People 111

it’s still important to ensure employers aren’t discriminating and that

individuals are sensitive to the way they treat each other at work.

Such practices are necessary, but not sufficient. Our generation

wants to lead companies that willingly celebrate a broader definition

of diversity in order to galvanize top talent who can deliver better

business results.

Value of a Broader View of Diversity

I was twenty-five years old and a relatively new employee. After dis-

cussing some time off I was requesting for an upcoming family vacation

with “significant others,” my manager asked me in a crowded, open team

room, “How long have you been with your girlfriend?” I could play the

pronoun game and say “I’ve been with her for two years.” Or I could tell

the whole truth. I grabbed a piece of paper and quickly scribbled

“boyfriend—2 years.” “Oh, cool,” she responded.

In hindsight, I made the right decision. The energy required to hide

my identity from those who I assumed wouldn’t like it distracted me

from the work that I was being paid to do. Since then, being openly gay

has only helped me professionally—I’ve benefited from a stronger sense

of community and a professional network that spans functional silos,

more confidence when speaking with senior leaders, and the comfort of

always being able to use accurate pronouns.

As a human capital consultant and former leader of the LGBT student

association at HBS, I’ve spoken with dozens of general managers, HR lead-

ers, and peers about the role of diversity in a wide cross-section of compa-

nies. There are tremendous variations in how diversity and inclusion

efforts play out across companies and geographies, but in all of my discus-

sions on the subject my consistent observation has been that diversity is no

longer defined by typical indicators such as gender, race, or religion. I’ve

realized it takes a broader view of diversity to foster an environment in

which everyone feels comfortable telling the whole truth, scribbling—or

maybe even outwardly discussing—their diverse backgrounds, experiences,

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112 PASSION AND PURPOSE

and individual situations, even if those attributes don’t fit neatly into the

categories previously associated with “diversity.”

Employers today realize that to remain competitive, they must at-

tract, motivate, and retain individuals from a wider range of experi-

ences, and look for diverse geographic origins, socioeconomic

backgrounds, academic experiences, personality types, sexual orienta-

tions, generational views, ways of thinking (left brain/right brain, e.g.),

and styles of communication. They also realize that by removing con-

straints that may have deterred applicants in the past, the broadest view

of diversity will attract the largest talent pool from which to find the

best and brightest future leaders.

By fostering discussions out of differences, we can all challenge the

status quo and help our colleagues think outside of the traditional con-

straints placed on them. Doing so also develops increased intellectual

rigor through vigorous debate and a well-rounded ethical compass by

avoiding groupthink. The companies that can extend this broader view

outside of the United States can also enable enhanced global mobility

among diverse high performers.

And let’s not forget the human element—a big component of the

value proposition for diversity investments and the broader view of diver-

sity, is that it is simply the right thing to do. How hard was it, really, for

my manager described above to react supportively? In today’s business

world, collegial values and supportive, strong leadership go a long way.

Redefining Professionalism

To make this new view of diversity work, our generation is prepared to

bring our whole selves to work, being open in the workplace about differ-

ences in our backgrounds and feeling comfortable enough to resist the

temptation to force-fit ourselves into a preset definition of a stereotypical

“professional.” This isn’t easy or always comfortable for employees or

managers, but true professionalism requires incorporating differences in

an inclusive way—not hiding them.

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People 113

In the past, decision-making authority was limited to a few suit-wear-

ing executives, usually white straight males from prestigious back-

grounds. As a result, some employees have been guided to act more

“masculine,” more “straight,” or even more “white.” Some managers have

historically hidden these suggestions under the guise of encouraging em-

ployees to act more “professionally.” But business is inherently personal,

not just professional. Our relationships drive our success. And our indi-

vidualism drives our relationships.

Now more than ever, work and life have converged. With ever-longer

workdays and technology—like Facebook and Twitter—that puts us “al-

ways on,” we are forced to discuss our work-life balance needs with our

managers, and we encourage our employees to do the same with us.

Avoiding the subject of a same-sex partner, a child at home, or one’s in-

volvement in certain religious activities takes valuable energy away from

the work at hand. It can also be considered untruthful.

Rather than fight this convergence between work and life and calling

it “unprofessional,” as many of our predecessors did, take the opportunity

to discuss and embrace personal differences in your professional life.

Those distinct qualities that make up your identity, beliefs, and situa-

tional characteristics arm you with a very unique perspective from which

to view business challenges—and hopefully arrive at less traditional and

more value-adding solutions. Lead by example—telling the whole truth

about who you are—and encourage your employees to do the same.

Authentic Leadership

As the LGBT Student Association’s liaison to admissions, one of my pri-

mary tasks was to organize an LGBT open house for prospective students.

I knew that the attendees were in for a real treat when Frances Frei—one

of the most remarkable, inspirational individuals I’ve ever met—agreed to

deliver the faculty address. As the first openly gay tenured HBS faculty

member, Frances spoke about LGBT life at HBS, as well as the academic

experience, the section experience, and other subjects. But when the

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114 PASSION AND PURPOSE

million-dollar question came up—should you be “out” in your appli-

cation—she brought it back to the school’s mission: educating leaders

who make a difference in the world. Leadership, Frei has repeatedly ar-

gued, fundamentally requires authenticity. And authenticity is tough to

demonstrate when you’ve buried the truth deep in the closet.

My call to action for our generation is simple: be authentic. That

means bringing your whole self to work, not just those characteristics

that you think your employer wants to see. Because as Frances Frei

taught me as a teacher and a mentor, being true to yourself and your col-

leagues will enable you to lead more effectively.

Generation Why

A defining characteristic of our generation is that we want to be recog-

nized as individuals—not anonymous cogs forced to think, act, and dress

in the same way.

We see Steve Jobs dress in jeans and a black turtleneck and we won-

der why we can’t wear an outfit to work that reflects something about our

individualism. We saw the meteoric rise of Sarah Palin, embracing her

status as a “hockey mom” and articulating the value such experiences

would add to her leadership, and wonder why we can’t do the same. For

the first time in history, our generation has seen countless examples of

very successful leaders succeed because of their differences, rather than

in spite of them.

We also believe that anyone who can address a business challenge in

a respectful, intellectual, and honest way is acting “professionally,”

even if it means disrespecting the traditional hierarchy. As a part of this

new view of diversity, therefore, organizations must flatten. Young lead-

ers are notorious for impatience. As such, we’re empathetic to junior

employees who don’t want to wait until they reach the top of the corpo-

rate ladder to contribute their unique ideas; we didn’t want our ideas to

be held back by our age, and we don’t expect to hold back those who

come after us.

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People 115

Most of us also realize that with the acceleration of technology, some of

our knowledge will be outdated by the time we reach the c-suite. For ex-

ample, it was just a few years ago that texting and social networking were

exclusively for social use, making it highly inappropriate for a young em-

ployee to text his boss or add her as a friend on Facebook. Today, execu-

tives at all levels use text messages and social media to communicate with

us. We realize that trends in communication styles must evolve. Based on

these experiences, our generation will be even more open to diverse com-

munication styles as they emerge in the years ahead, no matter how for-

eign they may seem to us by the time we’re middle-aged executives.

As the next generation—“Z” or “I”—enters the workforce, we want to

engage them early. Organizational flattening is a critical component of

generational diversity that will enable us to take full advantage of the

youngest and most creative talent pools. We understand the need to do

so because we lived through the greatest technological advancement in

modern corporate history, and we saw how some of the most successful

companies were those who kept their youngest talent relevant.

Managing Differences

But all of this doesn’t mean that we should be encouraging everyone to

conform to the new definition of nonconformity. For example, Steve Jobs

can wear his typical jeans and black turtleneck outfit, but if everyone had

to do the same to conform to Apple “culture,” employees wouldn’t be

bringing their whole selves to work. If a single woman is surrounded by

working mothers and made to feel like an outsider for not having a child

at home, then the benefits of bringing her whole self to work are negated.

If an LGBT-friendly culture becomes so LGBT focused that a straight

employee feels uncomfortable bringing his whole self to work, the orga-

nization will have a serious talent problem.

The new view of diversity requires a delicate balance that enables

employees of all talents to bring their whole selves to work and to

acknowledge—and work through—the inevitable conflicts that might

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116 PASSION AND PURPOSE

arise from doing so. The moment an employee feels uncomfortable

bringing his whole self to work because others are doing the same is the

moment the leader must interject to regain balance. Without such lead-

ership, the business case for this new view of diversity falls apart.

What Can I Do?

As a young leader, there are a number of steps you can take to be on the

forefront of the next wave of diversity strategies. First and foremost, lead

by example. Bring your whole self to work. Talk about your family—

traditional or nontraditional. Bring your background and experiences—

traditional or nontraditional—to the conference room table. Your

authenticity will be contagious.

Second, articulate to senior leaders how differences drive success. Re-

fresh the business case for your company’s diversity investments to focus

on bringing the most varied views to the table to foster innovation—

which is forward thinking— rather than being obliged to find employees

who fill in boxes on your diversity checklist—which takes your organiza-

tion a step back. As a hiring manager, bring this view to life. Hire truly

diverse employees with unique backgrounds and perspectives that will

help you grow your business, not just those individuals who will help you

to meet your diversity targets.

Third, take ownership over fighting the hierarchy. Diverse ideas flow

best when there aren’t consequences for sharing them, and hierarchies

inherently create such consequences. Plus, the youngest talented em-

ployees are also the least influenced by “the way things have always been

done” and often have some of the most diverse perspectives. This isn’t

easy: it takes young leaders to articulate this strategy and cooperative,

secure senior leaders to facilitate it. Make the case and push hard.

Fourth, embrace a variety of communication styles and mediums.

Organizational communication mechanisms evolve. The more you use

emerging technologies for business communications and spread such

trends to your peers, the more responsive your organization might be.

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This document is authorized for use only by Yaina Delgado in Dynamic Leadership-Summer 2023 at Walden University (Canvas), 2023.

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Beyond technology, a broad view of diversity takes a range of information

processing styles into account when communicating key messages. The

most creative and varied styles of communication, rather than the loud-

est, cut through the information clutter within organizations and reach a

variety of people who don’t all learn and interpret information the same

way; therefore, push your organization to vary communication styles and

mediums. At the very least, do so with your own communications.

Finally, reward individuals on your team for bringing their unique per-

spectives to the table. A few words of praise for having the courage to talk

about a relevant personal situation or experience in a meeting can go a long

way—and the positive impact can spread throughout the organization.

The business case for expansive diversity is gaining strength—gone are

the days when companies hire a few more underrepresented minorities,

hold a “Diversity Day,” and call themselves “diverse.” A diverse workforce

of the future will be an innovation machine. Such an organization will be

armed with individuals anxious to share their unique experiences, be-