“Tell Congress to Pass the High School Athletics Accountability Act….Today is National Women and Girls in Sports Day — the perfect time to go to bat to achieve equity for girls and women in sports!” read the headlines in the American Association of University Women’s (AAUW) e-mail I received earlier.  And the organization has a reason for support action on this topic:  “Title IX, the law that prohibits sex discrimination in educational programs which receive federal funding assistance, has made great strides in breaking through barriers for female athletes. But today, 40 years later, there is still work to be done — particularly at the high school level.  High schools girls continue to face discrimination in scheduling, equipment, facilities and overall participation opportunities.”

It seems natural to continue to share information about women and girls in sports today.  Yesterday I read a post by Justine Siegal that included the headline at sports.yahoo.com that 7-year-old Anna Kimball kicked off baseball team just because she’s a girl.  Justine says that the child has “the legal right (and the moral one) to play baseball” and that her organization, Baseball for All, will fight decisions like this.  Read my previous post “Baseball for All:  Justine Siegal’s Mission” for more information about Justine who last year and for the first time in the major leagues, pitched batting practice for the Cleveland Indians.

Benefits of Playing Sports

Research in the last ten years has shown that girls who participated in sports as children reap benefits as adults.  In “As Girls Become Women, Sports Pay Dividends” (The New York Times, 2/15/10) Tara Parker-Pope writes that “A large body of research shows that sports are associated with all sorts of benefits, like lower teenage pregnancy rates, better grades and higher self-esteem.  But until now, no one has determined whether those improvements are a direct result of athletic participation.”

Tara-Pope presents the results from two studies by economists that provide “the strongest evidence yet that team sports can result in lifelong improvements to educational, work and health prospects.”

Betsey Stevenson, an economist at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, found that “increasing girls’ sports participation had a direct effect on women’s education and employment.  She found that the changes set in motion by Title IX explained about 20 percent of the increase in women’s education and about 40 percent of the rise in employment for 25-to-34-year-old women.”

Robert Kaestner, an economics professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, focused on the long term health of women and “compared rates of obesity and physical activity of women who had been in high school in the 1970s — as Title IX was taking effect — with similar women from earlier years.”  The results weren’t startling but significant since “He found that the increase in girls’ athletic participation caused by Title IX was associated with a 7 percent lower risk of obesity 20 to 25 years later, when women were in their late 30s and early 40s.”

Sports Management and Ownership

“Winning is an attitude, an attitude in all you do,” said Rita Benson LeBlanc, Owner/EVP, of the New Orleans Saints during a telephone interview I conducted with her for the November 2006 newsletter of what is now branded as The Little Pink Book for professional women.  Women are not just earning top roles in sports management they are investing in owning major league sports teams.

LeBlanc was eight when her grandfather Tom Benson assumed ownership of the Saints. As owner and EVP of the New Orleans Saints football team, LeBlanc’s responsibilities for marketing and business operations include creating the revenue to pay the multimillion-dollar contracts for the 99 players on the team along with then organizing a major effort to restore the city of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.  When I asked LeBlanc then where she saw herself in ten years, she said, “In 10 years, I’m owning and operating a Super Bowl championship team.  Male or female in the NFL, we all want that championship ring.  I then asked her if she wanted to be Commissioner of Major League Football and she replied, “When you run a team, you don’t think about running them all.  The owners are the bosses; the commissioner keeps everyone on the same page.  I prefer owner to commissioner.”

Sheila Johnson is a billionaire who together with her former husband Robert Johnson started Black Entertainment Television (BET).  Johnson is very active in business and philanthropic work—plus sports teams where she has taken on leadership roles and invested in three professional sports.  According the article “Sheila Johnson Slams BET” (The Daily Beast, April 29, 2010), “She is president and managing partner of the Washington Mystics of the Women’s National Basketball League, and also owns substantial stakes in the NBA’s Washington Wizards and the National Hockey League’s Washington Capitals. The owner of several hotels and a PGA golf course, she is building a luxury spa and convention center on a 347-acre tract in horse country in Middleburg, Virginia, where she also has a farm and indulges her love of all things equestrian.”

Happy National Women and Girls in Sports Day!  Women and girls in sports seem to be here to stay!

Yesterday the topic of LinkedIn worked its way into a conversation I had with one of my relatives.  He said that he didn’t know anyone who got a job through LinkedIn.  The social media site would not still be in existence, I believe, if not one of the 135 million profiles in the website did not generate a job.   Besides, I knew of people who had gotten jobs through the site and who had hired people from the site.

Surprisingly, though, LinkedIn is not the main source for finding a job.  Jobvite, a Burlingame, California, recruiting website, commissioned a national survey Social Job Seekers Getting Ahead to find out where people throughout the country were finding their jobs.  The results in an article More get Jobs on Facebook than LinkedIn, Twitter written by Chromwell Schubarth (Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal, November 16, 2011) showed that “more than 22 million Americans used social networks to find their most recent job opportunity—up 7.7 million from a survey done last year.”

In addition, “When asked which social network they used in their job search, 78 percent (18.4 million said they got a job by using Facebook, while 40 percent (10.2 million) cited LinkedIn and 42 percent (8 million) cited Twitter.”  Interesting!

Connections

Today I received an e-mail from LinkedIn stating that 42 of my 165 connections changed jobs in 2011—or at least started something new.  The message included images of the people in my network so that all I had to do once I signed-in to LinkedIn was to click on the image to find out what was new with my contacts.

Around this same time, I was reading “The Real Way to Build a Network,” a book excerpt in the February 6, 2012 issue of Fortune, and learned that the ‘Magic Number’ of connections is 150 because it is “the maximum number of people with whom most humans can have active relationships” according to Robin Dunbar, an evolutionary psychologist.  “Businesses and military groups tend to organize in groups that size as well.”  So what do I do?  Stop connecting with people?  Eliminate some connections since they are no longer active? 

Reading the excerpt from the book The Start-Up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career by authors Reid Hoffman, a partner at Greylock and founder and executive chairman at LinkedIn, and Ben Casnocha, an award-winning entrepreneur and author, helped to clarify how to network with more than 150 connections.

Three Degrees of Networking

Although it is Silicon Valley and techie oriented, I found many interesting and thoughtful ways on how to network more effectively reading the book excerpt.  For instance, there are transactional networkers who want relationships with those who can do something for them.  And there are what the authors call relationship builders, people who first try to help others.

The writers state that “Building a genuine relationship with another person depends on at least two abilities.”  Those abilities are seeing the world from another person’s perspective and “being able to think about how you can collaborate with and help the other person rather than thinking about what you can get.” 

The most important people in a network are between five to 10 close allies—which are different than relationships.  Specifically, “An ally is someone you consult regularly for advice,….you proactively share and collaborate on opportunities together,….you talk up an ally,.…you defend him and stand up for his reputation,….and he does the same for you.”

Instead of six degrees of separation, Hoffman and Casnocha suggest that, “When it comes to meeting people who can help you professionally, three degrees of separation is what matters.  That’s how trust is preserved.”  And the best way to network is working with the people you already know.  There is a lot of common sense here such as “Anytime you want to meet a new person in your extended network, you should ask for an introduction.” 

The article on “The Real Way to Build a Network” is definitely worth reading.  Just be certain to include “Reid’s Rules,” an assessment of how you, too, can create a wide and (selectively) deep network.

Working as an Adjunct Lecturer in the Management Department at the Zicklin School of Business within Baruch College is a labor of love.  I love what I do and enjoy the role of helping undergraduate students be prepared for their careers as managers and leaders, especially teaching “Organizational Behavior” which I define as how people act and interact in a particular setting.

When we met for the first time on a day in late August of 2008, my supervisor told me the amount I’d be paid for being an Adjunct.  I looked at him with a smile on my face since I had previously been an Adjunct at another CUNY school and knew the range.  He said words to the effect, “Being an adjunct is an intrinsic experience, not an extrinsic one.”  Meaning, it’s about the rewards of imparting knowledge to those seeking it and not the monetary value of the work.

A previous post, Teaching – The Most Important Job in America, describes how I feel about standing up in front of a classroom two evenings a week to share the knowledge I’ve gained through consulting, coaching, and working at some very interesting companies—plus reading the required textbook:  Organizational Behavior 14^th Edition by Stephen P. Robbins and Timothy A. Judge.

My pedagogic philosophy is centered on one thing:  meeting the needs of my students so that they will succeed in their academic endeavors and career development.  Below are suggestions and behaviors to make the spring semester of MGT 3300 a very good experience for everyone involved.

Journey.  My students and I will be together for 2,175 minutes spread out over 29 sessions from January 31 until May 22^nd.  The major behavior students will experience in my classroom is moving out of their comfort zones.  During Baruch’s 46^th Commencement ceremonies, Provost James McCarthy spoke of the many reasons why I was soon going to receive the Presidential Excellence Award for Distinguished Teaching from President Mitchel B. Wallerstein on the dais in front of a sea of graduating students.  As I remember, the Provost said more than once the reason my students nominated me was that “Prof. Henderson moves her students out of their comfort zones” while my soon-to-be student alumni in the audience nodded their heads.  Being open to growth is not just a behavior in the classroom; it is one that companies expect.

Show Up.  Since I started teaching at Zicklin in the fall of 2008, I have be present at every class until last October when for medical reasons, I had to miss eight classes before I was able to return to finish the semester.  I expect students to be present as well.  Those that do not show up over a period of time lose the flow of the classroom but also the learning that has been gained.  My suggestion is that each student has a “Class Colleague” to contact when they miss a class or want to clarify the assignment.

On time.  My routine is to come to class around 15 minutes early to be organized for a prompt start to class.  When I say, “Good evening, class,” it is time to start and a good percentage of students are in their seats.  Those that come in late repeatedly are duly noted in my attendance sheet; being late many times impact a student’s participation grade.

Prepared.  There is always an assignment for our next class and that is usually to have read a chapter in the textbook.  Not just read but prepared to have a question or to answer a question during class.  There will be four guest speakers during the semester and students are expected to read their bios, find out information about the speakers’ companies, etc. so that they can ask relevant questions of the speaker.

Participate.  The experiential learning approach I use in the classroom has been honed during a long career of being an educator.  Each student is expected to learn the names of the other students in the classroom and get to know where they work, what they do, etc.  Debates are part of the curriculum as is a chance to recite lines from Shakespeare.  Interaction with class colleagues is a way to learn, expand awareness, and understand other company cultures.

Present.  Everyone needs to be fully present during class.  What that means is that smart phones are turned off or are put on vibrate then put out of sight.  They are not to be on a desk, in a lap, or anywhere why they can be seen.  My eyesight is still good and I have seen students looking down at their phones thinking that I can’t see what they are doing.  Our class is 75 minutes long and no one, not even this instructor, is that important that e-mails or instant messages can’t wait until after the session.

Resources:  During the semester, there are four written assignments that require critical thinking, situation analysis, proper grammar, etc.  To help students, a librarian from the Newman Library comes to class to share with my students how to find the research they need for their papers.  Baruch College’s Writing Center helps students to improve their composition and grammar skills.  Students can request an appointment online.  The Counseling Center helps students talk about what might be keeping them from functioning at their best in class.  One of my students began the semester by earning a grade of C on papers.  After appointments with the Writing Center and the Counseling Center, she earned an A- as her final grade.

By the end of the term, my students are grateful for learning from and interacting with their classmates and I am proud that one more cohort of students gained the opportunity to be part of an experiential learning adventure.

P.S.  Two more things about classroom behavior:  I have a good sense of humor and will be sad if the New York Giants do not win the Super Bowl!

“LockerDome:  The Facebook of Team Sports” is making strides to become the go-to site for athletes, club or high school sports programs and a growing number of recruiters.  The company started with offering to “launch a sleek, customizable website” in 60 seconds for a club or high school sports program, one that could become a sports network where athletes could “create profiles, upload media, and gain national exposure.”

“LockerDome’s now ready for the big leagues. Or so it hopes,” writes Lydia Dishman in “Passion Play: LockerDome Wants To Win By Building A Better Facebook For Athletes” that appeared online on January 5, 2012 at Fast Company.  “The bet we made is that people are more passionate about sports than anything else,” said Gabe Lozano, Co-Founder/CEO of LockerDome.

Dishman writes that, “With revamped back-end architecture and a growing network of members, youth programs, and professional athletes’ pages, LockerDome’s attracted a $750,000 round of angel investing led by Jim McKelvey, a cofounder of Square, and Brian Matthews of Capital Innovators.”  She goes on to quote Lozano, “‘There’s the one company that you can [invest in] and sell for $100 million and then there’s the one company that will bring in ‘Monopoly money’ in the billions.’ Matthews had a hunch that LockerDome could be the latter.”

My hope is also for Gabe and his team to develop the best site possible.  He is not just a good tech guy, he’s a good leader, one who knows how to build and sustain a business while helping others succeed as well.  He’s someone who loves sports and is earnest in his commitment to the athletes who play them.

On Christmas Eve, I received an invitation to be one of Gabe’s sports connections on LockerDome’s ‘Facebook.’  That was a surprise but I accepted although the only sport I play is Pilates!

On January 20, Gabe included me on the following e-mail message about an athlete who was recently recruited to join the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team:

I wanted to pass along a cool video that St. Louis Cardinal, Erik Komatsu, posted today on LockerDome following his hitting session with Mark McGwire: http://erikkomatsu.lockerdome.com/media/56572

This is awesome content and exactly how we envision LockerDome being used.  Whether you’re a 10 year-old hitting your first home run or a MLB hopeful hitting with a legend, your sports content goes on LD.

Komatsu is also a talented rapper.  I exchanged private messages with him on LD and he wants to write an LD theme song!  You can listen to some of his music here: http://erikkomatsu.lockerdome.com

Cheers,
Gabe

All the best, Gabe!  Hope LockerDome makes it to the big leagues soon!

Nicholas Kristof posted “The Most Important Job in America” on his blog “On the Ground” at The New York Times on Saturday, January 21, 2012.  The esteemed columnist writes that, “I think education is, in the long run, the most important challenge America faces and the one where we’re in greatest difficulties. If we want to maintain economic competitiveness and chip away at poverty, we simply have to improve high school graduation rates and college attendance — and that in turn will depend on an overhaul of the entire education system, starting with early childhood education.”

Kristof’s blog post introduced his next day’s column:  “How Mrs. Grady Transformed Olly Neal.”  The short story is that Neal, an incorrigible elementary school boy who brought his English teacher Mrs. Grady to tears one day, picked up a book in the library, read it, liked it, returned it then was delighted to find another book by the same author.  He found a third book, then a fourth, etc.  Thinking that Neal didn’t want to be seen reading a book, Mildred Grady always placed the new book where he could find it.  Not until he was an adult and saw Mrs. Grady at a high school reunion did she tell him that she drove to a book store 70 miles away to buy books by the same author for him to read.

Thanks to the generosity, patience, and forgiveness of Mrs. Grady, Kristof writes about Neal that, “His trajectory changed, and he later graduated to harder novels, including those by Albert Camus, and he turned to newspapers and magazines as well. He went to college and later to law school.  In 1991, Neal was appointed the first black district prosecuting attorney in Arkansas. A few years later, he became a judge, and then an appellate court judge.”

As someone who last year earned Baruch College’s Presidential Award for Distinguished Teaching, I agree with Kristof about the importance of the job of teaching.  I like to think and have been told that I offer students the opportunities to transform their lives and grow into a career they love.

My first semester teaching on the college level was in the Marketing Department at New York City Technology College in downtown Brooklyn in 1990.  “Why I Teach” is the title of a blog that I posted that includes a letter of gratitude from one of students who was in my first Public Relations class.

Following is the note a brilliant student sent me in a Thank You card at the end of my first math class.  It will give you an idea of how my teaching style motivates and inspires students.

Our last scheduled class ends today and I can honestly say that I’m going to miss it!  I’ve learned a lot more that math this semester.  I have learned about caring, sharing, and friendships.  You have built up my confidence and I feel as though I can accomplish just about anything.  You have given me a direction in life which I plan to follow.  I thought this was just supposed to be a math course! 

I greatly appreciate everything that you’ve done for me.  Thank you for caring enough to motivate me.  You’re doing a great job!

Sincerely, Steve Armand

Over twenty years later, I will begin teaching another class with the same respect for my students and the belief that my job is the most important one in America.

Today while reflecting on strong women who have persevered under dire circumstances, I remembered a woman who was the keynote speaker at the Women in Business: Pearls of Wisdom 2010 Conference at Baruch College—but I forgot her name.  Searching my blog for my post on the event—I was the moderator for the panel discussion—I found the name I wanted:  Diane Garnick. 

“About” on her Facebook page describes Garnick as the “Princess of Perseverance,” a good description based on her difficult past that included having her first child at age 15 and then finishing grades 9-12 at high school in two years.  She found work in a bank but could not be promoted because she did not have a degree.  Leaving the bank, she started college at Suffolk Community College, then went on to earn her a degree from Hofstra University then an M.B.A. at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.  Her work at Wall Street companies such as Merrill Lynch & Co. earned respect for her intelligence and ability to manage the business.

When looking for more information on Garnick, I found “Diane Garnick Seeks Lift for Wall Street Women With New Firm,” an article written by Jeff Kearns and Margaret Collins published in Bloomberg Businessweek on January, 20, 2012.  I was very impressed by learning that the tenacious investment strategist had opened an asset management firm, a firm that Garnick hopes will help to balance the much needed gender makeup of Wall Street jobs.

The authors state that Garnick opened Clear Alternatives LLC with three other women and hopes to grow the company to 12 by the end of 2012—the same time she set a goal to have raised at least $500 million in assets under management.

“One of the biggest challenges is for women to find an organization that’s willing to accept them back after they leave the work force to raise children without taking a cut in compensation and responsibility….Our objective is to solve that problem,” Garnick, the active mother of two children, told the authors in a phone interview.

Garnick and Clear Alternatives will serve as a catalyst to hire and inspire women graduates from the best business schools to earn their way up the ladder to senior management roles in financial services.  My hopes are with her!

“Lookin’ for Hires in All the New Places,” an article by E.B. Boyd in the November 2011 sample issue of Fast Company caught my attention when I was flipping through the pages.  The article describes how instead of seeking and hiring college graduates or Ph.D.s, the option is to hire techies who have been self-taught.

“Silicon Valley companies have notoriously strict hiring standards for engineers.  They want grads from the country’s top computer-science programs like Stanford’s and MIT’s or people with sparkling resumes and deep experience,” writes Boyd.  However, start-up and small technology companies are also interviewing and hiring individuals who have not graduated from college (maybe not even high school).  Instead, these candidates for a position are found to be qualified because they have spent time teaching themselves how to code.

The article contained an interesting insight from Roy Bahat, the President of IGN Entertainment who is very open to hiring the self-taught employee.  Bahat asks:  is software a science or should it be seen as a craft or an art—implying that someone would use their natural talents and experiential learning.  Not everyone is a craftsman or an artist.  But those who are given the chance to learn on their own in order to meet the requirements of coding at a technology company are being taken seriously in part because interviewers realize that they are passionate and committed to doing work on a par with colleagues who have initials after their names.

As an educator, I don’t think that everyone needs to or should attend college.  There is evidence that you don’t really need to go to college to be successful in your field.  For example, in a sidebar in Boyd’s article there are a dozen images of very successful people who have dropped out of college or high school and gone on to stellar careers.  Some of the people profiled include Steve Jobs who dropped out of Reed College when he was 18 in 1972, Bill Gates who dropped out of Harvard University when he was 19 in 1975, and Lady Gaga who dropped out of New York University when she was 19 in 2005.  Walt Disney didn’t make it to college; he dropped out of high school when he was 16 in 1918.

As I mentioned in my previous post “The Learning Organization,” I was a guest speaker for second year graduate students at Columbia University’s School of Social Work on Wednesday.  It was a wonderful experience for me and the feedback I’ve gotten from students and the instructor tell me that sharing my consulting experience and tips on organizational development was well received.

When the instructor and I were getting ready to go out into the cold air, she thanked me again and I said, “You know, I have never taken a management class.”  The irony is just that I’m a trusted adviser and coach, I teach in the Management Department at the Zicklin School of Business.

When I was a temporary secretary at Lazard Frères & Co. in the early 1990s, I went to an open house at the Stern School of Business at New York University to see if an M.B.A. was for me.  After attending and learning the cost for a part-time program, I decided that working at Lazard was the business school I could afford.  After I left, assignments and consulting work at other businesses including Merrill Lynch & Co. and Allianz Dresdner Asset Management, non-profits, etc. taught me more than a classroom could have done.

Don’t overlook opportunities to succeed as a technology engineer even if you don’t have a college degree.  There are companies out there looking for your self-taught skills.

Tomorrow, I am going to be speaking for a class of second year graduate students at Columbia University’s School of Social Work.  My topic is “The Learning Organization” and I’ll be sharing my experiences as a consultant helping a non-profit take a systems approach and become a learning organization.  My audience of social workers is not interested in clinical work but instead is interested in administrative work in the non-profit area, public management, human resources management, social and economic development, and global and transnational practice.  In addition to the presentation I’ll be making, I am going to recommend a book that will be helpful to this audience and the larger one as well.

The Organization of the Future 2:  Visions, Strategies, and Insights on Managing in a New Era is a collection of 26 informational essays written by great thought leaders, produced by the Leader to Leader Institute, and published by Jossey-Bass in 2009.  (Note:  The institute changed is name to the Frances Hesselbein Leadership Institute.)  According to the cover, “The book describes how tomorrow’s organizations can chart the path toward growth and prosperity in rapidly changing times and includes amazing examples of how organizations from different sectors have created cultures that are empowering their employees and transforming their industries and communities.”

Editors are two well-known leaders:  Frances Hesselbein and Marshall Goldsmith.  Hesselbein is the founding president and CEO of the institute named after her and is well-known known for her service as CEO of the Girl Scouts of the USA for which she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.  Goldsmith is one of the top executive coaches in the world and was recognized by the American Management Association as one of 50 great thinkers who have influenced the field of management.

The Leader to Leader Institute was established in 1990, and was then called the Peter F. Drucker Foundation for Non-Profit Management.  The more encompassing name furthers the image and the book “furthers its mission—to strengthen the leadership of the social sector—by providing social sector leaders with essential leadership wisdom, inspiration, and resources to lead for innovation and to build vibrant social sector organizations.”

There are five sections in the book:  Part One – Strategy and Vision:  Setting the Direction of the Organization of the Future.  Part Two – Organizational Culture:  Values, Emotions, Hope, Ethics, Spirit, and Behavior.  Part Three – Designing the Organization of the Future.  Part Four – Working Together.  Part Five – Leadership.

When I looked up ‘learning organization’ in the Index, I was referred to pages of an article in Part One “Managing the Whole Mandate for the Twenty-First Century: Ditching the Quick-Fix Approach to Management” by Paul Borawski and Maryann Brennan.  Borawski, executive director and chief strategic officer of the American Society for Quality, and Brennan, principal for Brennan Worldwide, write that “Organizations that rely on quick fixes don’t necessarily learn from their endeavors.”  They go on to state that, “To avoid making the same mistake, you need to share knowledge about what worked and what didn’t throughout your organization so that other functional areas with similar problems can apply the solution.”

Developing a systems approach can foster a learning organization in large as well as small companies.  To make it happen and change to a systems approach to management, the authors of the article describe a process of three stages:
—Decide you believe in a systems approach.
—Help your organization build broad support to view the organization as a system by preparing for an investment of time to learn, experiment, and learn more, and making a commitment to a journey toward performance excellence that will take years.
—Craft a plan on how your organization is going to move from its current state toward a systems approach.

Tomorrow, I am going to recommend the article I referenced and the over 300 pages of other articles in the book to my audience because although a little dated, I believe the thought experts can help the reader learn how to lead with intelligence in order to effectively manage the organization of the future.

Where were you when you heard that Martin Luther King, Jr. had been killed?

In the afternoon of April 4, 1968, I was walking with a friend on Telegraph Avenue after leaving the campus of the University of California at Berkeley where I was a student.  It was then that I heard the news that Martin Luther King, Jr. had been shot and killed in Memphis, Tennessee.  News of his assassination spread quickly on a campus that was the center of the Free Speech movement, protests against the Vietnam War, racial equality, women’s equality, etc.  I was sad to hear about a man who was marching to bring about equality, a man who wasn’t afraid of marching and risking his life, a man who gave his life and left a platform on which others could build a more diverse and equal America.

My memory fails me as to what exactly I did next after learning the news of King’s assassination.  But looking online, I found an article “Where Were You in ’68?  Faculty and staff memories conjure a tumultuous decade’s most eventful year” that was published in the June 4, 2008, UCBerkeley News.  Irene Hegarty, who graduated in 1968 and went on to be the Director of Community Relations at Cal, described how the campus responded. 

Some of the students “were called to a meeting at a vice chancellor’s house to advise on how the campus should acknowledge the event.  It was decided that classes would be cancelled for the afternoon of the next day so that students could go to religious services nearby; that there would be a special carillon concert of spirituals played at the Campanile, followed by ‘We Shall Overcome’; and that students would gather at Sproul Plaza for a minute of silence and could then voice their feelings.” 

Hegarty goes on to describe what surprised yet didn’t surprise me since we were students on a campus that had diverse opinions on every topic.  She writes, “I sat on the Sproul Hall steps that day, listened to the music, and cried, while thousands of students gathered. After the music and the silence, someone stood up and said some words honoring King, but then another student stood and said that King had sold out to the White establishment. Before long, there was an active, heated debate—shouting and pointed fingers.  I remember thinking, ‘A young man—a father, a husband, a great leader—is dead.  Can’t we just honor him for a moment and fight this out later?’”

My year had gotten off to a very sad start when on February 2 my mother died suddenly.  My grief continued after King died.  On June 4, Robert F. Kennedy, younger brother of President John Kennedy, was assassinated and died two days later.  Instead of being able to nominate another Kennedy for president, Hubert Humphrey ran and lost the election to Richard M. Nixon after a tumultuous convention in Chicago.  Ronald Reagan was Governor of California at a time that the campus became a center for organizing and taking action for civil-rights marches and major anti-war protests.

We as a country have lost many great leaders, leaders who will stay alive through the contributions they have made to my life and those of others seeking peace, justice, and intelligence on who we can become when we take down the barriers to change.

Great By Choice:  Uncertainty, Chaos And Luck—Why Some Thrive Despite Them All by Jim Collins and Morten Hansen (HarperBusiness) is the latest of best-sellers on the topic of organizational excellence.  Other books by Collins include Good to Great:  Why Some Companies Make the Leap…and Others Don’t; Built to Last:  Successful Habits of Visionary Companies; and How the Mighty Fall—And Why Some Companies Never Give In.  These well researched and written books contain valuable contributions for CEOs and other executives on how leaders can manage effectively in good and difficult times. 

“Collins on Chaos:  It’s one thing to rise to greatness.  It’s another to do so in a time of upheaval, disruption, and economic turmoil (hello, 2011)” was Fortune Magazine’s cover story on October 17, 2011, a great introduction to the choices that leaders have made for success and that led them to failures.

The bottom line is that no matter the temptation, you can choose to be great and not let events you can’t control impact your pace and your plans.  As companies choose to get the right people on the bus, executives can choose habits that will help their companies be built to last.

The authors of “Great by Choice” identified “The Steady Seven,” top companies that survived successfully in a depressed economy.  “Different companies exposed to the same set of circumstances achieve vastly different results,” Collins writes.  Why?  “Part of the answer lies in the distinctive behavior of their leaders.”

The seven companies that “outperformed their industries by a wide margin” were:

Amgen:  a combination of creativity and discipline
Biomet:  dedication to new iterations of its products
Intel:  moving forward ignoring economic climate
Microsoft:  updating relentlessly and not overextending financially
Progressive Insurance:  not sacrificing underwriting profit for growth
Southwest Airlines:  discipline to hold back in good times
Stryker:  demanding 20% annual net income growth

Twenty-Mile March

Twenty-Mile March is the term Collins uses to define the concept for companies to keep a steady pace no matter the environmental factors.  The analogy Collins used was about the results of two teams led by Roald Amundsen and Robert Falcon Scott in 1911 who wanted to be the first ones in modern history to reach the South Pole.  Amundsen and his team survived while Scott and his did not.

Collins writes that, “The 20-Mile March is more than a philosophy.  It’s about having concrete, clear, intelligent and rigorously pursued performance mechanisms that you keep on track.”  Both teams were led by men of around the same ages and same expertise, the teams were similarly outfitted, and they started their hopeful roundtrips of 1,400 miles almost at the same time in the same weather as each other.  It was the behaviors of the leaders that made the difference.  Amundsen made the roundtrip home with his crew; Scott and his crew lay frozen near but not at the South Pole.

What was the difference?  “Amundsen adhered to a regimen of consistent progress, never going too far in good weather, careful to stay far away from the red line of exhaustion that could leave his team exposed, yet pressing ahead in nasty weather to stay on pace.”  The pace he followed was between 15 and 20 miles a day.  Amundsen arrived at the South Pole after keeping up a regimented daily pace in good and bad weather that averaged 15½ per day.

Scott, on the other hand, “would sometimes drive his team to exhaustion on good days and then sit in his tent and complain about the weather on bad days.”  He was erratic about keeping any sort of regimen, responding instead to the climate and energy.  Scott’s behavior led to him and his team not making the trip home.

Five Business Lessons I Learned

1. Set a pace for your company.  How much can you achieve in a quarter? a year?  How will you meet the goals you set?  Stryker CEO John Brown set a 20% net income growth and while he was in charge met that goal more than 90% of the time.

2.  Don’t compete as much as attract.  Many companies want to be number one in an industry.  Attract customers by being the best in what your company is capable of doing, like Southwest Airlines.

3.  Keep growth in the picture.  If consumers aren’t buying your product at the rate you expect, ask yourself, “What area of growth can be developed to offset that income reduction?”  Biogen created new iterations of their products.

4.  Be a leader who is authentic and open to growth.  Was Scott comfortable with marching in spurts and not a consistent pace?  Did anyone on his team lead up and suggest to Scott that there was a better way to make the march to the South Pole?  Did he listen to or ignore any suggestions?

5.  Assess current offerings to see if time to update while not overspending the way Microsoft did.

What are your lessons on the 20-Mile March?