Who is the happy Warrior? …It is the generous Spirit…   [William Wordsworth]

Much was said about America’s veterans yesterday.  It was Veterans Day in the United States, a holiday originally established to remember the Armistice ending World War I and “a day to be dedicated to the cause of world peace.”  This year, the occasion was fraught with talk-show reflections about ongoing wars, last week’s tragedy at Fort Hood, and geopolitics.  We should have these conversations.  But on Veterans Day I wish the discourse dwelled more on the veterans themselves rather than on lofty abstractions.  What do we know about these people who put themselves in harm’s way to serve our country?  Each year, I meet plenty of men and women coming to Darden from the military of the U.S. and other countries.  Because of my proximity, perhaps I see things that the pundits and public speakers don’t. 

For instance, foremost in my mind yesterday was the attribute of generosity, the first quality mentioned by the poet, William Wordsworth, in his classic, The Character of the Happy Warrior.  This poem is great source material for students of leadership.  I see among our military veterans a tendency to lend a hand, form a team, find common ground, help a neighbor, and share ideas.  They tend to be optimists and at the same time realists.  They are people of proportion, willing to listen to all sides of a debate and yet think for themselves.  Military leaders tend not to get very far without basic expressions of generosity—nor do great business executives.   Wikipedia says that “Generosity is the habit of giving freely without coercion… spending time, money, or labor, for others, without being rewarded in return… looking out for society's common good and giving from the heart.”  In focusing first on generosity, Wordsworth got it right.  I think that Veterans Day should be about celebrating generosity.

Veterans enrich our learning community.  We actively seek excellent students from the ranks of the military.  For this reason, Darden participates in the Yellow Ribbon Program, a component of the Post 9/11 GI Bill. This program assists veterans in going back to school to re-tool, launch a new career, and/or continue their service to society in new ways.  The Veterans Administration provides matching funds equal to three dollars for every dollar provided by the Darden School and its alums.   Our capital campaign is aiming to raise the funds to sustain this wonderful outreach to veterans. 

The difficulty with which even the strongest graduates are finding work is certainly a sign of the times.  This is the late stage of a recession: the economy is growing but there is so much excess capacity that it will be a while before companies will start hiring again in any volume.  I’m interested in Bob Herbert’s assertion of a cultural shift, a harbinger.  Who or what is shifting?

Thus far in 2009, I’ve made 60 calls on companies to promote our students and discuss how to engage with the Darden School.  My main point is that the hunt for top talent is not a sometime thing—the best corporations stay in the market all the time.  It is an error to believe that you can turn on the flow of talent like a spigot.  When firms take a holiday from recruiting, they hurt themselves.  After a break, it may take years to rebuild a strong recruiting franchise on Grounds.  From companies, the feedback I hear is universally warm, respectful, and engaging.  I recall none unwilling to simply consider our students for possible employment.  Darden is fortunate in that a large majority of companies is returning this season to recruit.  The only difficulty is that they don’t have as many jobs to fill. 

But of what are these circumstances a harbinger?  I see five ways in which this environment may be shifting the culture of employment: 

·         Greater reliance on a social network to get leads and offers.  A lot of solid research reveals that the success of a job hunt depends on the ability to tap into acquaintances who are rather far out of your immediate social circle.[1]  This is the strength of weak ties.  In a study of how people find jobs, Mark Granovetter discovered that three-quarters of the successful connections to a job offer were through “weak ties,” people whom the job seeker saw “occasionally” or “rarely.” Commenting on this, Malcolm Gladwell wrote in his book The Tipping Point, “Your friends…occupy the same world that you do. They work with you, or live near you, and go to the same churches, schools, or parties. How much, then, do they know that you don’t know? Mere acquaintances, on the other hand, are much more likely to know something that you don’t….The most important people in your life are, in certain critical realms, the people who aren’t closest to you, and the more people you know who aren’t close to you the stronger your position becomes.” Darden’s Career Development Center is the conduit for many good leads.  But candidates will need to supplement this kind of institutional support with considerable personal networking.  Ironically, this is the way it has always been, at least before the Internet and real estate bubbles.  The best jobs don’t usually show up on your doorstep.  You must prospect for them.

·         Technology plays a greater role: email exchanges, digital resumes, interviews over the phone, Skype, and Live Meeting.  A job candidate needs to master techniques of good self-presentation over these media.  Companies need to recognize that technology gets you only so far—much of business is personal: the strength of a handshake, manners, mannerisms, communication skill, and self-confidence are best detected in person.  This is crucial in looking to fill jobs requiring “front office” work such as client relations, presentations to executives, and leadership of any kind.

·         Focus becomes decisive.  I personally assisted a few students in their searches last year and found that those who had the greatest clarity about what they wanted, tended to get it.  And those who didn’t, didn’t.  Career switchers might fret about this, but there is nothing about career switching that is inconsistent with focus.  The focused candidate displays clarity of purpose, determination, preparation, and accumulated learning, all of which come through in the interviews to establish the focused candidate as the one to hire.  Lack of focus breeds uncertainty about the candidate.  Candidates need to understand that the hiring company is not a monolith.  Competing factions within a firm may be looking to fill the position.  With several candidates for each position, each one must have a champion inside the company.  In the critical meeting where all the champions are gathered around a table, the focused candidates will stand out.   

·         Less tolerance for error.  Companies are less forgiving about typos on a resume, poor preparation, inappropriate attire, and rude manners.  Above all, ethical lapses are fatal.  One firm shared with me the story of an applicant (not from Darden) who blatantly misrepresented his credentials.  When confronted with the facts, he brashly insulted the executive and the firm.  Word of his behavior has spread.   He foolishly spiked his employment chances in that company, and possibly the industry, city, and region.  Conduct your search with absolute integrity.

·         Entitlement gets hammered down.  The sense that the world owes you something can be a big handicap.  I’ve written about the problems with entitlement in a previous posting and won’t repeat it here.  A key idea in all of business is the importance of focus on what customers and markets need, not on what you may feel like offering.  A stiff recession is a humbling reminder of this idea.   Our culture and pundits serve to reinforce a sense of entitlement—note that Bob Herbert says “we’re having trouble finding…we’re doing something profoundly wrong,” which implies that society owes bright students a job.  The social contract is a subtle concept; it is problematic to assert that employment is part of Thomas Jefferson's "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."  But as a practical matter, one gets a job the old fashioned way, one earns it.  My casual observation of students reveals less entitlement talk than before the recession started. 

These five shifts won’t likely be permanent.  Wait a couple of years, and the culture of employment will have changed again.  As the great investment manager, Sir John Templeton, said, “The four most dangerous words are ‘This time it’s different.’”  Bob Herbert implies that a paradigm shift is taking place.  I’m not so sure--in any event, big cultural shifts are really only identified in retrospect.  The change I have seen in MBA recruiting has tended to come slowly and continuously.  And recessions are perhaps the worst vantage point from which to opine on the employment outlook: Darden’s web site hosts podcast interviews of alums[2] who graduated in the depths of previous recessions—all of them went on to great careers  and solid accomplishments.

Yesterday’s newspapers brought a study in contrasts.  The Wall Street Journal conveyed assessments that the government’s stimulus funding to date has had little effect.  New York Times opined that the U.S. economy needs an expansion of stimulus funding—the Times echoes sentiments that some economists’ blogs have been offering for a while.  These discussions occur in the midst of realization that the recovery is looking like it has much longer to run.  Today, the ability to mount a second  burst of stimulus spending is hampered by mounting fears of creditors of the U.S. (read: China) that the AAA-debt rating of the government is in jeopardy, or that the government will simply print money, triggering inflation and a wealth transfer from creditors to debtors.  The only other possibility for financing a second stimulus would be to raise taxes, which would have the effect of dampening the stimulus.  What to do?  This is one of these dilemmas of which worthy case studies are made. 

Like any headache remedy, we want a solution that is fast-acting and effective.  Plainly, the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009” (ARRA) passed in February has been slow in acting.  Eight months after the fact, only about one-quarter of the stimulus funds have been spent: $173.2 billion out of the $787 billion to be awarded under the act.  Mind you, we want the money to be spent well.  But at this rate, it will take more patience to see the stimulus fully deployed. 

As for effectiveness, there is some uncertainty about the benefits of stimulus spending—this entails a debate over whether the so-called “fiscal multiplier” is greater than, less than, or equal to 1.0.  If greater, then a dollar spent by the government creates more than a dollar’s worth of national income.  Keynesian economists estimate multipliers in excess of 1.0. 

On the other hand, some economists, such as Robert Barro of Harvard, say the multiplier is less than 1.0.  Perhaps stimulus spending, financed by debt, “crowds out” financing for other economic activity.  Or perhaps consumers recoil from a stimulus, seeing it only as a time-transfer of wealth: borrow so that we can spend today, leaving it for us to pay the debt in the future by means of higher taxes.  Or maybe the projects that the stimulus supports don’t yield much economic value.  ARRA is pretty opaque about how the funds will be spent but the Journal mentions projects such as “a $6 million snowmaking facility in Duluth, Minn. or a $3.4 million "ecopassage" to help turtles cross a highway in Tallahassee” that can only raise doubts.  ARRA does contain numerous categories of spending on new technology though one might question whether central planners make better resource-allocation decisions than do venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, inventors, and researchers. 

The big issue in my mind is this: missing from the discussions is a focus on creating value rather than transferring value.  Growth in employment, national income, and economic activity is fundamentally a matter of deploying resources in a way to earn good returns.  Better returns flow from improvements in efficiency and generally, from innovation.  Economist Paul Romer said it well: “No amount of savings and investment, no policy of macroeconomic fine-tuning, no set of tax and spending initiatives can generate sustained economic growth unless it is accompanied by the countless large and small discoveries that are required to create more value from a fixed set of natural resources.”[i]

I’d like to see an economic recovery policy that lifts the ecosystem of innovation in the U.S. through more investment in research, more new-venture formation, more mobility of financial capital, reduction of barriers to entry for investors and inventions, acceleration of time-to-market, encouragement of risk-taking, reduction of taxes on capital gains, and celebration of inventors and entrepreneurs.   We need more creative cooking, to borrow a metaphor from Paul Romer:

 “Economic growth occurs whenever people take resources and rearrange them in ways that are more valuable. A useful metaphor for production in an economy comes from the kitchen. To create valuable final products, we mix inexpensive ingredients together according to a recipe. The cooking one can do is limited by the supply of ingredients, and most cooking in the economy produces undesirable side effects. If economic growth could be achieved only by doing more and more of the same kind of cooking, we would eventually run out of raw materials and suffer from unacceptable levels of pollution and nuisance. History teaches us, however, that economic growth springs from better recipes, not just from more cooking. New recipes generally produce fewer unpleasant side effects and generate more economic value per unit of raw material.  Every generation has perceived the limits to growth that finite resources and undesirable side effects would pose if no new recipes or ideas were discovered. And every generation has underestimated the potential for finding new recipes and ideas. We consistently fail to grasp how many ideas remain to be discovered. Possibilities do not add up. They multiply.”

Students will study the current macroeconomic dilemma for years.  Given all of the constraints the U.S. faces (high debt, continued instability in real estate and banking, uncertain fiscal multiplier, already large deficits, falling dollar, etc.) it seems unlikely that government will be able to mount a sensible second stimulus.  As Romer would say, it cannot simply spend our way out of this recession.  Ultimately, we must innovate and grow our way out. 

Fortunately, history shows that given time, the right kind of ecosystem, and innovation, such growth may be possible.  I’m cautiously optimistic that somewhere in the depths of this trough are the inventors and entrepreneurs who are laying the foundations for the next recovery.  Policies of economic recovery must encourage them on with their work.

                --Where the Wild Things Are

I’m not a big fan of fantasy novels and movies—weird beings and lands don’t generally relate to my view of the world.  But fantasies have proven to be of enormous significance through the centuries as lessons of some kind.  Think of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Homer’s The Iliad, or C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  Therefore, I noted with interest the release this weekend of Where the Wild Things Are, a movie based on the book by Maurice Sendak.  It happened that my family wanted to see the show.  The early reviews of the movie have been positive.  Therefore, early this evening I found myself walking out of the theatre with family members who were scratching their heads, wondering what that was all about?

Any synopsis of the plot understates the predicament of a young boy who finds himself vaulted into a land of fearsome and unpredictable beings.  Loaded with conflicts, envy, uncontrolled anger, and enough hurt feelings to populate a soap opera, psychiatrists will have a field day with the story.  The core problem for the boy is to survive amidst these beings, and particularly to avoid being eaten.  He tells a lie: he is a king with vast powers.  One of the fearsome beings asks, “Can you make us happy?”  Yes, the boy says.  The wild things melt at the thought; it seems that they have been rather, well, beastly to one another until the boy appeared.  There follow several vignettes of growing unity within this group.  Then one beast challenges the boy’s supposed powers .  Other beasts defend the boy.  There is a coming-to-terms among them and the boy decides to return home.  All in all, it’s an exciting action-filled plot, with nicely-developed characters, and ultimately, warm sentiments.

As the boy departs, one wild thing says, “You are the first king we haven’t eaten.”  What can Maurice Sendak have been saying?  

I choose to think that this is an allegory about leadership and followership.  What does it take for the leader not to be “eaten”?   Followers can consume leaders in a variety of ways.  Think of Captain Bligh in Mutiny on the Bounty, or Lieutenant Commander Queeg in The Caine Mutiny—in my book, Deals from Hell, I profiled Pehr Gyllenhammar, CEO of Volvo, who was cashiered when his employees rebelled at the thought of a merger with Renault. 

The boy in Sendak’s story portrays a profile in courage, a well-trodden path in the literature on leadership.  But the boy offers two other attributes also worthy of note.  First, the boy offers hope that the group will become happy again.  I think that hope is a gift that leaders necessarily must bring to their followers.  Some of the more inspiring presidents—think of Barack Obama’s Audacity of Hope and Ronald Reagan’s “morning in America”—succeeded in conveying hope to Americans in trying times.  Second, the boy engages the wild things where they are and in the way they like to be engaged, in wild playful games.  The leader and his followers have fun together. 

The parallels between the boy’s experiences and those of leaders are unmistakable.  (Professionals of all kinds, including academicians (especially university Presidents, Provosts, Deans, and Dean wannabees) will compare professional life and the community of wild things.)  I would encourage students of leadership—at least those who can digest fantasy-type plots—to see Where the Wild Things Are.   

Still, these prospective applicants remain tough-minded, as they should be.  They ask, is now the time to get an MBA?  Where should I consider applying?  These questions require careful reflection, since a considerable expenditure of time, effort, and money is at stake.

This is a good time to get an MBA degree.  It would be easy to say this on the basis of exploiting the economic recovery that is just getting underway.  Presumably the recovery will create a demand for MBAs that in two years will buoy job prospects.  But betting on the economic cycle is always risky, as MBA graduates in the Class of 2009 discovered. 

I think that the stronger argument is based on the long-term view: we are in the midst of a great industrial revolution, fueled by growth in global trade, productivity, innovation in information technology, social liberalization in civil and political rights, and the rise of a middle class in emerging countries.  I’m not alone in this view.  A couple of weeks ago, I hosted visits by George David, Chairman of the Board of United Technologies Corporation, and Paul Laudicina, Managing Partner and Chairman of A.T. Kearney—both of these leaders are bullish on the long-term future of the U.S. and global economies.  This cycle of advance seems likely to take the better part of this century to run its course.  And it will require new supplies of trained administrative talent to sustain the path of growth.  Getting an MBA degree now prepares one to participate proactively in this industrial revolution: inventing new products and services, founding companies, solving problems, and leading large and small enterprises.  From the perspective of the long term, this is an excellent time to get an MBA.

The decision about where to apply would be best informed by the answers to four questions:

1.       In what theatre are you ambitious to work?  Local?  Regional?  National?  Global?  My advice is to pick the broadest scope possible, since the competitive trends of the past and future suggest that the traditional geographic barriers of operation are dwindling.  The most consequential problems and opportunities in business will transcend borders.

2.       What do you need to learn to operate on the stage to which you aspire?  Certainly, there is the canon of business ideas—the core knowledge of tools and concepts.  Thanks to the diaspora of Ph.D. graduates from leading schools, the teaching of this core curriculum is by now widespread.  Among the best schools, one’s choice doesn’t depend very much on differences in the content of the core curriculum.  But schools do differ widely in the sense they make of the core tools and concepts: are these interpreted in a purely local light?  Or are they considered for application more broadly?  Do the schools focus on deep theory or best practice for application of the tools?  Who are the exemplars in their application—are they local firms or global leaders?  Significant differences in business practice persist across regions: the world of business is not perfectly “flat” or global; rather, it is at best curved.  The chief implication of this is that business students need to understand how to apply business tools and concepts across many different localities.  MBA aspirants must get out of their comfort zone.  Go where you encounter a diverse student body and faculty; go where you can broaden what you know; go where you will be challenged rigorously.

3.       How do you need to learn?  Part of our comfort zone consists of familiar styles of classroom teaching, typically lectures combined with problem sets and the occasional test.  Unfortunately, the real world of business isn’t so forgiving in the way it serves up challenges.  Recognizing this, a number of business schools are adopting the use of case studies, simulations, and team-based projects to better mirror the processes of discovery, analysis, and resolution that occur at the best firms.  But learning by these methods isn’t for everyone; you must be ready for it.  Generally, my advice is to choose the approach that best fits how you need to grow.  When in doubt, get out of your comfort zone.  My take on the buoyant interest in the Darden MBA as I travel around the world is that talented young people are looking beyond their borders for promising new ideas around which to make a meaningful contribution with their lives. 

4.       How do you define “best”?  With over 11,000 institutions in the world that grant degrees in business, an applicant has plenty of choice.  My strong advice is not to settle for what is easy, cheap, or convenient.  Reach for the best school you can attend—not just out of attraction for that glittering notion of a brand.  Rather you should reach for the best schools because as the saying goes, eagles flock together: talented teachers and students tend to go to those schools where they are likely to find each other, challenge each other, grow together, and form a lifetime bond as the important basis for a personal network.  You must define “best” in your terms and not just settle for the opinion of an impersonal ranking.  Factors such as size, location, teaching style, diversity, culture, and special strengths of the school should figure into what’s “best” for you. 

My message is that MBA applicants have a lot of choice and must do their homework before making a decision.    I advise applicants today as follows: go anywhere in the world to study with the best and then apply your knowledge where your impact is likely to be greatest.

You can sample the Feynman lectures at the following link: http://research.microsoft.com/apps/tools/tuva/index.html.  My son, who told me about the link, wrote, “Bill Gates bought the rights to film recordings of several Richard Feynman introductory physics lectures, and Microsoft Research has made them public via an interactive viewer. You may have to download Microsoft's free Silverlight browser plug-in to view the videos, but it's well worth it. Feynman's delight in both his subject matter and his teaching is brightly apparent, and the lectures are an excellent introduction to both physics and the history of science.”

“Delight” indeed.  You can watch the lectures for the sake of their content; but I’ve enjoyed simply watching the style of a great lecturer.  He is articulate but not overwhelming.  He speaks in complete sentences and paragraphs with no “ums” and “ahs.”  He is animated, moves around, smiles, and gestures actively.  He reads some parts of his lectures but improvises considerably—of special note is his use of humor and asides delivered with good timing.  At one point in his lecture on gravitation, he discusses the attraction between two bodies (planets) and asks the audience, “do I attract you? …I don’t mean physically!”  This guy is plainly having fun.  He delights in his subject and his engagement with the audience.

 In my career, I’ve probably spent several thousand hours learning to teach, preparing to teach, or helping other teachers get up to speed.  Though there are lots of tricks of the trade, I’ve learned that Feynman’s kind of delight simply can’t be faked or borrowed.  You must feel it inside.  If you do, you will probably excel at your work—this is a lesson relevant to teachers, students, and pretty much everyone.

Feynman said, “Fall in love with some activity, and do it! Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn't matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough. Work as hard and as much as you want to on the things you like to do the best. Don't think about what you want to be, but what you want to do. Keep up some kind of a minimum with other things so that society doesn't stop you from doing anything at all.”

A week ago, I gave an interview in which the journalist seemed keen to discuss my blog.  Her main question was, “Why don’t more deans do this?”   Certainly precious few do.  My peer at UVA, Meredith Woo, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, has started to blog and Twitter.  I told the journalist that blogging is time-consuming and that most deans are swamped with stuff.  Sure, she said, but a number of CEOs manage to blog.  I averred that most CEO blogs are to blogging what military music is to music: lots of oompah, less subtlety, and absolutely no improvisation.[1]  A leader must want to blog in order to do it consistently and well.  Given the obvious risks and demands of time, why blog?  Why Twitter?

“Blog” is short for “web log,” a stream of postings by a writer to the general public.  Today, millions of blogs fill the blogosphere.  “Twitter is a microblogging service that allows members to report on what they're seeing, thinking, and feeling by posting comments that are limited to just 140 characters each. You can subscribe to someone's Twitter feed and receive what are called "tweets"—brief bits of information,” wrote Melissa Hart.[2]  Twitter has over 8 million users and is growing rapidly.  It belongs to that elite club of companies whose names are ubiquitous and have become a verb, like Google and Xerox.  A typical Twitter user contributes very rarely, says a poll conducted by Harvard Business Review.  The top 10% of Twitter users account for 90% of tweets.  It seems that Twitter is about a few people talking to lots of people rather than a lot of people talking to each other. 

So, why should a leader participate in this?  The answer: to engage a social network-- these media help to build connectivity with one’s community.   I find that it works.   I’ve been blogging[3] for about three years and Twittering[4] for about a year.  All of this has generated a steady stream of conversation and comment from the wider Darden community and groups outside.  In contrast, email just doesn’t seem to cut it anymore.  Emails from leaders to a community are treated by the recipients as just so much spam.  But blogs and tweets get a different reception—as long as they deal with subjects on which the leader is knowledgeable and cares enough to write.   A leader should consider blogging and Twittering for reasons including:

·         Frame an agenda.  As the Proverb says, “without a vision, the people will wander.”  An important role of leaders is to frame the mission and vision of the enterprise—or, at the very least, to ask the kind of questions that will kick-start the work of the community in framing a vision.  In addition, the leader needs to help the enterprise look ahead, typically by identifying opportunities and challenges to be addressed.  Blog postings of 1,000-1,500 words are ideal for this.

·         Reaffirm values.  For instance, diversity and ethics are two values espoused by many corporations.  But unless these values are articulated by the leader, messages about them begin to look like spam.  Last winter, an applicant asked me whether Darden has an ethics problem, since I write about it so frequently; I answered that Darden doesn’t have an ethics problem, precisely because I write about it so frequently.  See, for instance, my message on Darden as a community of ethics, which I send at the start of the calendar year, or my message on diversity, which I send on Martin Luther King day.

·         Participate in a conversation; learn from others.  You can choose to be part of a conversation or be silent.  But willful silence imposes a huge opportunity cost.  Obviously, you must pick your fields of conversation prudently.  I opine on the issues that I know something about and that cross my desk with regularity: problems of leadership in business, the ongoing economic crisis, coaching for students and executives, etc.  The learning is tangible: among a circle of people you care to follow, you can gain a sense of changing priorities and interests.  Jeffrey Pulver, an investor in Twitter, believes that “Twitter has forever changed the way people interact with the Web, making it possible for everyone to live online in what he calls the “state of now.”   An application, Tweetdeck, gives you a real-time feed of the top subjects that are the current focus of discussion (called “Twitscoop.”)  Twitter is a medium for conversation among like-minded people.  Noam Cohen wrote, “Social networking, a distinctly 21st-century phenomenon, has already been credited with aiding protests from the Republic of Georgia to Egypt to Iceland. And Twitter, the newest social-networking tool, has been identified with two mass protests in a matter of months — in Moldova in April and in Iran last week, when hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets to oppose the official results of the presidential election.”[5]

My experience with the rising generation of MBA students and graduates is that they are adept at using these digital media to express ideas, and increasingly, they expect it of their leaders.  I don’t think leaders have much choice—you cannot lead from behind.  The conversations with my friends, the CEO, the law professor, and the journalist reinforce in my mind that the chief rule for blogging and Twittering is to write what you care about and what you know about.  The time demand can be considerable, though I believe that the benefits probably outweigh the costs.

I saw him for the first time in December 1999, when he announced a $60 million gift to Darden to found the Batten Institute.  His vision was to marry entrepreneurship and innovation; focus on both large companies and small; and combine a mission of research with a mission of education.  By virtue of its size and multi-dimensional charter, the new institute would be a novelty; fulfilling its aspirations would be ambitious.  But the moment for such an institute had certainly arrived: the U.S. economy had experienced an exceptional growth spurt in the 1990s, fueled by innovations in information technology, corporate restructuring, and globalization.  Capitalist economies tend to go through waves of economic advancement; Frank Batten sought to capture the lessons of entrepreneurship and innovation for the benefit of future generations. 

Ten months later, I was selected to be the founding Executive Director.  Thereafter, I met with Frank Batten and members of his family several times each year.  He was a good steward of his own gift: watchful, encouraging, and practical regarding the progress of the institute.  He was also a trusting philanthropist.  In the past decade, some high-profile disputes at some other leading universities have erupted over the apparent divergence of faculty practice from the donors’ intent.  But in Frank’s case, he seemed perfectly at ease with letting the team of faculty and staff at the Institute run as far and as fast as they could, with the resources at hand—assuming, of course, that we adhered to his expression of intent.  This expression may stand as one of the shortest statements for any gift its size: “…to enable and challenge the Darden School to become the preeminent educator and thought leader of entrepreneurship and innovation.”  That was it.  The brevity of his statement makes eminent sense when you consider that the terrain of entrepreneurship and innovation changes rapidly; to specify detailed marching orders would doom such an enterprise to obsolescence before long.  For this to work, he had to trust the team in place.  He and his family asked plenty of questions; they were steadily interested in the progress and activities of the institute.  But he wanted us to invent the details.  He was an enthusiast and trusted us to do what was not only right, but also optimal. 

I leave it for others to judge the results, though there is plenty of objective evidence to suggest that today the Batten Institute is a leader in its field.  Jeanne Liedtka followed me as Executive Director of the Institute; and just over a year ago, Mike Lenox stepped into that position.  Each new leader has necessarily brought fresh ideas and new capabilities.  The future is a moving target.  But each year, the Institute staff, some Trustees of the Darden School Foundation, and I review the direction and progress of the Batten Institute against the expression in Frank’s letter.  We are still on-course. 

My ten years’ acquaintance with Frank Batten helped greatly to inform my ideal of the business leader: social awareness, audacity, trust, patience for the academic process, and encouragement.   These are but a subset of the notable qualities of an extraordinary friend of UVA, Darden, and mine.  We will miss him but will remember him through his legacy. 

A couple of years ago, I went hiking with a group of people in the Italian Lakes District, gorgeous country.  The hills are steep and demanding.  And on this particular day, the weather turned from overcast to drizzling to blowing rain.  We were soaked to the skin despite raingear.  The guide assured us that our destination, a cozy chalet featuring a sumptuous meal, was not far ahead.  The inclination of the group—a collection of can-do types—was to hike onward.  I got to talking with one of the hiking party, a co-founder of Yahoo!   In our enthusiasm to chat, we fell to sauntering along and brought up the end of the lengthening line of hikers.

But we were not alone: lagging with us was an unfit person who had been given the hiking trip as a gift for concluding some medical ordeal.  Neither she nor the giver really knew the demands that the hikes involved.   Her shoes and clothes were inappropriate.  Her feet got sore.  And her attitude, none-too-good to begin with, got worse as the altitude and rain rose.  She unburdened her personal problems to us, deepening the gloom.  She declared that she felt like such a schlub and that we should just leave her behind.   Mr. Yahoo! and I looked forward and behind, only to discover no one else was in sight.  What to do?

Simply leaving her there was out of the question.[1]  So we slogged on, more slowly.  Hoping to get the conversation away from the dreary personal issues, Mr. Yahoo! and I engaged her around four questions. 

·         Why did she come on this trip?  What did she look to achieve?   She said that she wanted to prove a come-back of sorts.

·         What values did she hope that this trip would embody?  Courage, she said. 

·         How did she suppose the others felt about this situation?  Would it be realistic for us to leave her behind?  We said ‘no.’  Her health and well-being were vulnerable to the exposure close to a mountaintop. 

·         What would it take to get through this?  Stopping was not an option.  Carrying her was a last resort.  Simply slogging ahead at a sustainable pace was what we were doing anyway.  To make it sustainable, we sang songs, told jokes, recounted anecdotes from the worst travel experiences we had.  But we got there.  We arrived at the chalet well behind the others, who were warm and into their second decanter of brandy.

I have reflected on this episode ever since, dwelling particularly on the unusual dynamic that got us going and up to the chalet.  Something about the experience gave me energy and buoyancy.  Mr. Yahoo! was part of the inducement—as a serial entrepreneur, he brought considerable life experience of confronting challenges and disappointments.  He was fun to watch in the way he engaged the woman.  Rather like a case method teacher, he engaged her with questions to confirm in her own mind that the only way was to put one foot in front of the other.

A new book by my colleague, Ryan Quinn, and his father, Robert Quinn, helps me understand the turnaround that day and gives me a way of thinking about the successes and failures of leaders I see.  Their book, Lift: Becoming a Positive Force in Any Situation describes the buoyant effect one can have on others and the psychological state, thoughts, and feelings, associated with that effect.   This is a wonderful, timely, and important presentation of ideas that are relevant to leaders in all situations.  The Quinns describe “lift” as “a psychological state, a temporary pattern of thoughts and feelings in which we are (1) purpose-centered (we have a purpose that is not weighed down by needless expectations); (2) internally-directed (we have a story of how our personal values will guide our actions); (3) other-focused (we feel empathy for the feelings and needs of others); and (4) externally-open (we believe that we can improve at whatever it is we are trying to do).  When we experience these thoughts and feelings, we feel uplifted and lift the people around us. “[2]

I think the concept of lift and its elements are important for the development of leaders.  Positive motivation is essential to addressing challenges and opportunities.  I’ve seen it time and again: a listless group is galvanized to a higher level of performance by one or two people.  It’s a learning team, or a consulting engagement team, or a community group.  A certain individual comes along and WHAM, suddenly the group has energy.   In an earlier blog posting of mine, I described the buoyancy of Byrne Murphy a Darden alum and real estate developer in France; his book, Le Deal, conveys exactly this sense of unleashed energy by a very positive individual. 

History offers examples too.  In the Second World War, Winston Churchill supposedly said that Dwight Eisenhower’s smile was worth ten divisions.  Eisenhower could coax high performance and collaboration out of prickly and demanding personalities such as Bernard Montgomery.   A close reading of Eisenhower’s biographies suggests a personality with purpose, a story, empathy, and confidence—the qualities of lift.

There is an immense popular literature about leadership, much of it banal or outright wrong.  To some pundits, the ability to create energy in a group comes from barking orders or bringing out the “alpha” in you.  To another it is a matter of systems: the right information technology, monetary incentives, or reporting relationships.  These and other pundits miss what I see: the intervention of a person (maybe not even a leader) who simply infused a new spirit into the group.

Instead, I think that the most promising reading in this area comes from the field of positive psychology.  In contrast to abnormal psychology, which studies deviant or destructive behavior, positive psychology looks to identify strengths and virtues—and how to develop them.  I especially commend Learned Optimism by Martin Seligman, Flow by Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, and Mindfulness by Ellen Langer.  To these good works, I’m glad to add Lift by the Quinns: well-grounded in research, highly readable, and full of useful insights for the practical person. 

“I have traveled extensively in Concord.” – Henry David Thoreau

I’m just back from vacation.  Thoreau’s words came to me: he chose to go “to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”   His classic work, Walden, describes one of the classic exercises in getting away.   It is interesting to note that Thoreau chose to stay close to home.  George Kateb, a professor emeritus at Princeton said, "I think that is a rejoinder to those who think you have to go to great distances to come across the exotic, the unfamiliar, the strange, the contemplation-worth, it's right under your nose."   It might be said that Thoreau’s Walden established the “staycation” 150 years before it became popular or a necessity.   (Staycation is a neologism defined as a “holiday in which you stay at home and visit places near to where you live”). 

On the theme of vacationing, I wrote a blog posting for the Washington Post.  They had asked me to comment on how leaders should strike a balance between recharging and yet staying in-touch and available to their organizations.   I offered some tips and concluded:

Less is more.  The leader’s art of vacationing well is all about setting limits to connectivity.  …  General Robert E. Lee averred that the art of generalship is fundamentally the art of choosing where to fight your battles.  You can choose how much to connect and whether to work on vacation.  My advice is: set limits; say when.