Working to Be a Leader

I love to read.  And I love to read Fortune Magazine.  Why?  The voice, the tone, the integrity of its articles and the scope of business covered.

The September 6, 2010 issue is now torn apart.  Not out of frustration or anger.  It is torn apart because as I went through the issue, I tore out a single page of an opinion piece, seven pages of a profile, etc.  Right now, you may be asking yourself, “Why do you tear out articles?”

I inherited the gene from my mother.  I remember that she tore out and referenced articles from at least two if not three newspapers to share with her children or neighbors.  I continue this habit.  A habit that I know could be eased by going to the www.fortune.com website, reading the article online and sharing the article electronically.

I like paper.  I like that I can sort the articles into five “destinations” or folders:  1) MGT 3300—“A Management Approach to Organizational Behavior”—the undergraduate class I teach in the Management Department at the Zicklin School of Business within Baruch College, part of the City University of New York; 2) “Ideas” that can help my business; 3) “Writing” that inspires me to be a better writer; 4) “Investments” that can help my bottom line; and 5) “Other” which includes “Technology” articles to reread and then maybe discard.

For instance, this is the beginning of a new semester and I’ve filed the following in MGT 3300:

The cover story, “Trader Joe’s:  America’s hottest retailer is also notoriously hush-hush.  Fortune uncovers the secrets of its success” will be used to illustrate organizational culture.

“Why J&J’s Headache Won’t Go Away:  Once praised for setting the standard in management crisis, the health care giant is battling a stream of drug recalls.  Fortune investigates what went wrong—and why it isn’t getting any better.”  This can be of interest in the leadership, communications, or other sessions; my corporate communications majors will find this of interest.

“Chrysler’s Speed Merchant:  CEO Sergio Marchione is racing to fill a dry product pipeline; his unorthodox methods aren’t for everyone” by Alex Taylor III will be discussed in class tonight.  The assigned reading in the textbook for the session is “Foundations of Organizational Structure.”  The chapter starts with a picture of CEO Sergio Marchione (in the very same clothes he is wearing in the Fortune photo) and an overview of “Restructuring Chrysler.”  Good timing!

The next article will eventually go into “Writing,” a bulging folder that has more than one article by the excellent Wall St. author William D. Cohan.  His latest for Fortune is, “Dick Fuld in Exile:  Already lampooned and vilified, the former Lehman Brothers CEO now faces investigation and maybe a cash crunch.  Now wonder he’s working so hard.”  Fuld will be discussed during the chapter “Personality and Values” or “Emotions and Moods.”

There are too many technology articles that I’ve saved to mention.  Technology is defining our culture and determining our future.  I want to keep up-to-date and I also want to provide my students rational anticipation of how their “technical future” will evolve by 2020.  Actually, writing about the impact of technology on the future of business is going to be part of their term project.  And I’m ready to share with them the articles in my files that I tore out from Fortune!

Management as a business term refers to the act of using people to meet specific goals and achieve company objectives.  A manager uses technical, interpersonal, and conceptual skills—as well as their natural talents and knowledge learned from experiences—to engage employees to perform at their best.

Since I don’t have the students’ permission to use their responses, here are some examples of what I would have written.

Being a manager is like being a symphony orchestra conductor making the best use of the individual talents of violinists, drummers, and other performers to collectively interpret works from centuries ago or recent compositions then present the resulting production to an audience of listeners.

Being a manager is like being a painter looking at a palette of watercolors and wondering what picture will result after applying an assortment of hues to a canvas and how it will be received once it goes on display in a gallery.

Being a manager is like being a teacher who has the privilege to educate a class with the profile of a meeting of delegates to the United Nations, to push students out of them comfort zones to find and occupy new comfort zones, to challenge their written skills by assigning five papers in five weeks on topics relevant to their careers, to give them time to interact and exchange divergent points of view, to let what once were strangers become colleagues who experience and understand the art of management.

It was my privilege to be the instructor for a wonderful group of students who are now better prepared to fulfill their individual potential as effective managers and strong leaders.

“The Impact of Technology in the Workplace” is the topic of Written Assignment #3 for my summer students enrolled in “A Management Approach to Organizational Behavior” or AMAOB.  Why?  Because technology changes behaviors.  And not always for the good.  Leaders, managers, and staff need to be smart on the how they use technology and the systems that they put in place.

The textbook I use in AMAOB is hot off the press.  Yet, there is little if anything of significance in the chapters of this latest edition that addresses how technology programs and devices change workplace behaviors.  When I looked up “Technology” in the Index, the definition was “The way in which an organization transfers its inputs into outputs” and mentions three pages where the topic can be found in the text.  The purpose of AMAOB’s written assignment is to help my students understand and manage the uses and/or abuses of technology by employees.

On July 26, 2010, Fortune Magazine published an article on “Ten Smartest People in Tech.”  What goes into being the smartest people in technology?  Fortune states that it’s, “An alchemy of intellect, ambition, and that uncanny ability to peer around corners.”

Not used in AMAOB

When looking through the list of the smartest people in tech, I started thinking about a guideline I have in my classroom.  That is, I do not allow the use of laptops and request that all technical devices such as cell phones are turned off—or on vibrate—and placed out sight.  It has taken a few class sessions to get full compliance.

Mine is a classroom based on experiential learning.  I want my 30 ambitious students each evening to have their full attention on listening to me and their classmates, contributing their thoughts and experiences, and being respectful of the sanctity of the classroom.  The classroom is where seeds are planted, ideas are generated, knowledge transferred, and invitations to “peer around corners” delivered.  It’s an opportunity to learn and grow from one another.  It is also a chance to be intellectually challenged.

If I had one thing to say to the smartest people in technology, it’s this:  “Technology is important.  I couldn’t communicate the way I am doing now without the use of technology.  Yet, there are limits when people need to take center stage and interact with one another.  A classroom on the topic of management is a time to unplug students from technology and allow them to relate to what they will be doing in their careers:  developing interpersonal skills and understanding workplace behaviors.

Okay, it’s now time to answer the question: Who are the smartest people in technology according to Fortune Magazine?  Here’s the list:

Smartest CEO:  Steve Jobs, CEO, Apple
Smartest Analyst:  Mary Meeker, Analyst, Morgan Stanley
Smartest Founder:  Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, Facebook
Smartest Engineer:  Christophe Biscigila, Co-Founder, Cloudera
Smartest Designer:  Jonathan Ive, Senior VP of Industrial Design, Apple
Smartest Investor:  Jim Breyer, Accel Partners
Smartest Hybrid:  James Cameron, Director, Avatar
Smartest Scientist:  Robert Morris, VP, Services Research, IBM Research
Smartest Academic:  Danah Boyd, Social Media Researcher, Microsoft Research
Smartest Executive:  Todd Bradley, EVP, HP Personal Systems Group

And I am going to be the smartest person in class this evening.  Why?  I’m going to use technology to transfer knowledge contained in a PowerPoint presentation to my class while interacting each one of my students, all of whom will be giving me their total attention since they are not using technology.

Look at this picture.  What do you see?  Who do you see?  How do you see them?  Where do you see them?  Why do you see this picture?

Spring 2010---A Management Approach to Organizational Behavior

When I look at the picture, I see my spring 2010 class of “A Management Approach to Organizational Behavior”—a class that whether they liked it or not, moved out of their comfort zones to meet and excel at challenging course expectations.

When I look at the picture, I see a microcosm of Baruch College, the nation’s most ethnically diverse campus of over 15,500 students who speak 110 languages and come from 160 countries.

When I look at the picture, I see decision makers who will climb the corporate—or small business—ladders to achieve the success that they so much want to attain.

When I look at the picture, I see the future, a future that includes other students in classes like mine who will take what they have learned in college and use it to be effective and efficient managers and leaders.

When I look at this picture on my computer or now posted on my blog, I smile.  These “students” are part of today’s workforce.  While working to be a leader, they are making a difference in people’s lives as a manager, an intern, a small business owner, an executive at their parents’ company, a receptionist at a medical office, a technology lab assistant.  They are working to be managers and leaders, and in that process using directly or indirectly the knowledge that they gained in my class.

When I look at this picture, I see these and other individuals who in coming years will be making decisions about the future of America.  I like to think that the curriculum of the class that they took with me will help them make those decisions.  That required essays to examine their organizational behavior; identify and understand the bully or the procrastinator or the older worker in the workplace; acquire a realistic perspective on women in leadership from guest speakers and conference panelists; and compare a founding father with a technology pioneer helped to put innovation and risk-taking into a meaningful and historical context.

Part of my students’ final written assignment was to write about workplace 2020—what they will be doing, how they will be working, where they will be doing that work, etc.  Their essays included finding work-life balance and needing to be continuous learners.  One student, the only one in a class where everyone included technology as part of their future, mentioned that soft skills—interactions with others—will also be needed.

Relationships are part of the future.  My relationship with my students was a rewarding one, one where I could see the future develop during each and every class.  I salute my class of spring 2010 and wish them great achievement.

“Who was your model?” one of my students asked me after I had posed the same question to the class last week during “A Management Approach to Organizational Development” at the Zicklin School of Business.  We were discussing the topic of  “Motivation Concepts” and specifically “self-efficacy,” an individual’s belief that she is capable of performing a task.  One of the ways to develop self-efficacy is “vicarious modeling.”

 Vicarious modeling is a process during which you can gain self-confidence while watching others perform a task similar to the one you are doing.  Through observation, you can picture yourself performing that same way.

 “Prof. Ogletree,” was the answer I gave to my students.  Although I’ve had many good professional role models in my career, Charles J. Ogletree topped my list that evening.  Today, Ogletree is the Jesse Climenko Professor of Law and the Director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law School.  Former instructor of President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle when they attended Harvard, Prof. Ogletree is an esteemed and prolific writer and public speaker involved in sometimes controversial and embarrassing situations.  Yet, his style of conducting a college class has remained my model for almost twenty years.

 In 1990, I transitioned my master’s degree in early childhood education into a career as an Adjunct Faculty member in the City University System.  Sometime in the 1990’s, I watched a weekly program on PBS that featured Prof. Ogletree conducting a class of what were probably his law students.  I forget the name of the program but I can’t forget his “in the face” type of approach when educating his audience.  He sat down on a desk near his students, he called on everyone, and he relentlessly challenged the answers and the assumptions they offered.

 Watching Prof. Ogletree over a long time, I vicariously became him in not just college classrooms but corporate classrooms where I would teach employees how to use technology, manage workplace relationships, or engage in innovative exercises.

 During my “performance” each evening when I’m teaching students at Zicklin, I am “in their faces,” moving around the classroom to be physically close to individuals while challenging them to provide “stretch” answers that expand their horizons.  I call on every one of my almost 30 students in each session, requiring them to state their opinion on a topic, explain a concept, or come up with another idea on how to deal with a difficult employee.  I push them out of their comfort zones and they answer back with a willingness to be in-the-moment and to perform on the classroom stage.

 While watching Prof. Ogletree on TV, I incorporated his style into my training as an educator.  I felt capable of performing the role because I earned positive feedback from my students and on faculty evaluations.

 I love teaching and I thank Prof. Ogletree’s style of teaching during his shows on PBS for the vicarious modeling he provided.