Leadership and Debra Benton

The woman in the picture is executive coach, speaker and author Debra (D.A.) Benton.

You know that leadership is something I think about a lot. One of the most useful reference frames about leadership I’ve ever heard (and I owe this one to a select group of Stanford faculty) is that it’s not practical to think of leadership as the product of intrinsic charisma you’re born with: if you deconstruct leadership, it boils down to a set of behaviors you choose to apply deliberately, consistently and relentlessly.

Debra is not an academic; I think her books are among the clearest and most usable guides to those behaviors. I met Debra a couple of times many years ago and we’ve occasionally stayed in touch over time. She lives and breathes what she preaches. You can even tell from reading her: she’s not just telling you to “use short, sharp sentences”: she does it.

Her latest book, CEO Material, re-uses some of the themes in her previous books – the basics of her teachings haven’t changed, after all – synthesized in a crisp package. It’s all about how you get to be described as “memorable, impressive, credible, genuine, trusted, liked, cool, calm, collected, charismatic, comfortable, competent, and confident.” And that’s the way she is. Sure, it’s hard work, and I’m particularly bad at some of it (smiling to strangers in an elevator, striking up a pleasant conversation with the person sitting next to you on the plane), and I don’t do it all. But what I do, I do because I believe it works.

One more thing I particularly like: Debra’s style teaches you to infuse reciprocity and exchange (the stuff that academics tell you influence is made of) with kindness, courtesy, decency and integrity. There’s no sustainable leadership without integrity. Make all the fun you want about American leadership literature as self-help for aspiring leaders. As long as there is a moral compass guiding those leadership behaviors, I’m fine with it.

A letter from the President of Stanford University

Today I received an extraordinary message in my email inbox: “A Message from Stanford’s President”.

John Hennessy, President of Stanford University, has taken the initiative to write to the broader Stanford community, including students’ families and Stanford alumni, to acknowledge that Stanford too is impacted by the state of the financial markets, and explain the implications of the dramatic shift in the economic environment for the University.

Please read the letter (I believe President Hennessy won’t mind my sharing it with you). I was deeply moved as I read it. This is a man who felt that it was his responsibility to reach out and explain these things to us; and it is clear that he put a lot of thought into how to say them. The letter is clear, to the point, empathic, forward-thinking, and deeply human. It makes me trust his leadership. It makes me proud to be a Stanford alumna.

	Dear Alumni, Parents and Friends: Many of you have contacted me over the past few months with questions about the recent shifts in the economy and how the University is affected. I would like to update you on our response to these challenges. Financial Aid Commitments Still Secure The questions came to me even before the academic year was under way, from parents moving their sons and daughters into their residences this past fall: Given the state of the economy, would the University be able to meet its commitments to financial aid? Would we be able to help in situations where decreased home equity might preclude a loan they were counting on to help pay tuition? How would we deal with job losses by a family member? Our response: We will stand by our commitments and, yes, we will reconsider the financial aid needs of any family negatively impacted by the economic downturn. The questions continued through Reunion Homecoming Weekend as the Dow Jones average dropped approximately 25 percent further. How was the University’s endowment affected? What would this mean for financial aid, for operations and for the capital facilities projects already under way? The Tightest Financial Outlook in Decades Let’s start with the endowment. We weathered the period through early summer comparatively well, achieving an overall return of 6.2 percent for the year ending June 30, 2008. Since then, the endowment has declined steeply, although somewhat less precipitously than the market indices. In addition, sponsored research, our second largest revenue source, has been declining in real terms over the past several years, and given the challenges in the federal budget is unlikely to improve quickly. Tuition, our third major source of revenue, cannot be raised significantly out of fairness to our students and their families. All of these factors contribute to the tightest financial outlook we have seen in decades. Fortunately, Stanford entered this period in a relatively healthy financial position, bolstered by several years of revenue increases, generous gifts from alumni, parents and friends, and remarkable growth in the endowment, which for the first time ever became the University’s largest source of revenue. To manage our finances going forward, we anticipate reducing the $800 million general funds budget – which pays for most of our faculty and staff salaries, central administrative operations and non-research expenses – by 10 to 12 percent over the next few years. Declining federal research dollars could double the total revenue loss across the University. We cannot achieve these reductions without some significant and permanent cutbacks. Cutting Costs Wisely As we implement these budget cuts, we will do so with several principles in mind. First, we will focus on preserving the investments we have made in our faculty over the past decade. Likewise, we will maintain our commitment to both undergraduate and graduate students. The excellence of the University depends on its people, and we will do our best to maintain the quality of our faculty, staff and students as we make adjustments. Second, we will review our capital projects. We are in the midst of a major capital program that includes some vital construction projects. Halting projects in mid-construction, even temporarily, would cost us more money in the long run. But not all our projects will be built according to the original schedule. We will reexamine projects that incur significant amounts of debt. Third, through support from The Stanford Challenge we have launched a variety of efforts to address the most challenging problems facing humankind: sustaining our planet for future generations, enhancing peace and stability around the world, exploring the potential of stem cells for autoimmune diseases, improving K-12 education in the United States, and finding new ways to generate energy that will not increase greenhouse gases. These are critical initiatives, and while we must adapt our efforts to present circumstances, we will not shy away from our long-term responsibility to lead in finding solutions for these problems. Trust in Our Stanford Community We know we are not alone in dealing with this financial shockwave; some of you will experience situations far more difficult than we see on our campus. My sincere wish is that those whose lives have been disrupted will find firmer footing in coming months. In any crisis, we look to the people and places whose connections sustain and strengthen us. I hope that your place in the Stanford community provides such nourishment for you. As always, I am happy to hear from you. Send your comment, suggestion or question to me at president@stanford.edu or to Howard E. Wolf, ‘80, vice president for alumni affairs and president of Stanford Alumni Association, at alumnipresident@stanford.edu. Sincerely, John L. Hennessy President

Myth of the day debunked: the commitment gender gap

Quick LinkedIn poll on European LinkedIn users:

And, ladies and gentlemen, I truly hope someone brings out these results when at promotion time people argue that a man is likely to be “more committed to the job” (whatever that means) than a woman:

Five dimensions of leadership

Here’s a good framework for a quick check of how you’re doing as a leader. Do you need some fine tuning in any of these five areas? Do you need a major boost?

You can also read the full article by Barsh, Cranston and Craske, “Centered leadership: How talented women thrive”, at McKinseyQuarterly.com (free registration required). Like all good leadership literature, it is quite relevant for both women and men. Enjoy!

From philosophy to robots: Fiorella Operto

Yesterday I had the chance to listen to a talk by Fiorella Operto, Vice President of the School of Robotics in Genoa, which she co-founded in 2000. Robotics, as she said, is somewhat unlike other technologies because (outside of SF) it has not yet confronted a crisis: it hasn’t yet had its own Chernobyl, its Bhopal, its Exxon Valdez, its Hiroshima. And we should try to keep it that way.

How so? one way is to develop the field of roboethics. The other is to demistify robotics by teaching it to young people. Specifically, to young girls. This is the mission of the Roberta project, an initiative started at the Fraunhofer Institut to train teachers in teaching science, technology and IT by having the kids build and program real robots. It is a long-term investment in trying to close the gender gap in scientific education, and Fiorella Operto is spearheading it in Italy.

Operto’s academic path started in philosophy, and she was active in science dissemination before turning to the challenge of robotics. Yesterday, she was chosen as the “Technovisionary 2008″ and awarded the “BlackBerry Women and Technology Award” within the Women and Technologies conference. Go Fiorella!

Leading online communities: is there a gender perspective? Your point of view

There are whole worlds of computer science and IT professionals that are not Silicon-Valley-centric; and it seems like a fair number of academics and practitioners are going to be converging on Milan for the 2008 World Computer Congress on Sept. 7-10.

The agenda is full of events intriguingly titled Biologically Inspired Cooperative Computing, Human Computer Interaction, Open Source Systems, Distributed and Parallel Embedded Systems, and includes some IFIP (International Federation for Information Processing) working group symposia and conferences on such diverse topics as Artificial Intelligence, Entertainment Computing, Information Security, and Theoretical Computer Science. If you have a professional interest in open source business models, don’t miss the keynote address by Fabrizio Capobianco, CEO of Funambol (one of the few, it seems, Silicon Valley speakers at the Congress).

I am honored to have been invited for a small part in a panel at a non-technical hosted conference, Women and Technologies: Research and Innovation, organized by the formidable Gianna Martinengo, founder of human learning and knowledge management solutions pioneer Didael.

Since I am a mere practitioner with no academic background in the matter, I will try to bring some practical knowledge to the discussion. To make a long story short, the issue for my panel discussion is whether, contrary to expectations and historical norms, women may end up being better leaders of online communities (or virtual communities) than men. In the words of the organizers (full briefing here if you’d like to read more):

Disciplines such as Philosophy, Linguistics, Law are very popular among women. Practices such as conversation, argumentation, group management are women’s specialties. Is it not the case that, contrary to the common preconception, women may be today privileged in the developments and use of the next generation ICTs?

As a starting point, my answer would be no. On the contrary, I am inclined to recognize that a lot of hours logged on World of Warcraft, far from exposing slackers with a weak work ethic, may actually be a predictor of leadership potential (a hypothesis that is strong enough to be explored in a recent Harvard Business Review article about the organizational features of MMORPGs, “Leadership’s Online Labs”, by Byron Reeves, Thomas W. Malone, and Tony O’Driscoll).

I myself, unfortunately, haven’t had the pleasure of leading 25 guild members in a six-hour raid on Illidan the Betrayer’s temple fortress. But I like the MMORPG example because it highlights a few characteristics that leaders of communities ought to have, and, in my experience, are less likely to appear as demonstrated competences in women’s resumes than in men’s:

1. Passion: leading communities requires true passion for the matter at hand. It may become a consuming 24/7 experience, and it’s never “just a job”. Yet, women’s frequent desire to set boundaries (in the name of a chimerical “work-life balance”) works against them in this respect.
2. A systemic view of the world: whether simple or complex, communities are dynamic entities, exhibiting unpredictable behaviors (think of the “butterfly effect”) and nonlinear returns. A good leader thinks ahead, recognizes interrelationships, and is prepared for the unexpected (again, MMORPGs seem to be a fitting example). I would propose that a solid background in engineering or computer science may be a better preparation for these opportunities than the study of more “feminine” disciplines such as sociology, linguistics, philosophy or law.
3. A moral core: here I do think that both genders start out equally, as both women and men are equally capable of integrity, authenticity and accountability. Yet, in practice, we are less likely to seek out opportunities where those of us who excel at these qualities would stand out (just think about politics and the often-heard case that it repels women due to its level of corruption). As a result, even when we are intrinsically gifted, we don’t shine.

That’s a quick list I brainstormed by myself (and yes, I do have brainstormings scheduled with some other people before the conference… in spite of being an Introvert, I am trying to move beyond the university-exam-solitary-cram mode when preparing for such events). But I would like your opinion, my readers. Have you played a role in one or more online communities? What makes a person a talented and effective leader of an online community? And are those characteristics more likely to be found in men, in women, or equally distributed?

Four recipes to save Italy: “Meritocrazia” by Roger Abravanel

The Italian malaise, so widely chronicled in its various facets of gerontocracy, corruption, stagnation and economic insecurity, is one of those systemic issues that have become so entrenched that it seems nearly impossible to do anything about it. Yet, author and former management consultant Roger Abravanel believes that many Italians’ dissatisfaction with the status quo may have reached the threshold that triggers change.

A few words on why, far from being impartial, I am a member of the subterranean Roger Abravanel Fan Club. When I joined McKinsey, Roger was already a senior partner at the firm, having returned to Milan after his years in Tokyo, Mexico City and Paris. I had the privilege to work with Roger on several assignments throughout my years there, and I looked up to him as a leading role model; he was, I believe, the most sincere practitioner of the caring meritocracy that kept many of us going through those nights and weekends at work. After retiring in 2006, Roger spent his time as a board member at companies in both Italy and Israel, and started writing a book about meritocracy, published this month.

Meritocrazia argues, with Roger’s characteristic optimism, that four concrete solutions can inject a jolt of leadership and excellence into Italian economy and society, and jumpstart its turnaround. These are his four proposals:

1. Establish a Delivery Unit for the public sector in Italy, modeled after the one launched by Tony Blair in 2001 to monitor progress on and strengthen the British government’s ability to deliver on its key priorities across education, health, crime and transport. Roger has extensively discussed that experience with Sir Michael Barber, the first head of the Delivery Unit, and argues that an Italian version of it could both improve quality and reduce waste in the public sector, and train a new generation of young leaders. The extraordinary civil service of Singapore and, though only in part, the Ecole Nationale d’Administration in France provide more food for thought on how to turn around our dismal performance in government services.
2. Create a standardized testing system for Italian schools, similar to the SAT Reasoning Test in the United States (“the secret weapon of American meritocracy”, in the words of Nicolas Lemann). No education reform and no amount of money showered onto schools and universitites can ever achieve any impact, if we can’t measure how schools and teachers are performing.
3. Launch an Authority to deregulate and promote competition in private and public local services. From food retail to urban transport, from pharmacies to taxis, from water utilities to toll roads, from gas stations to local professions, local services are the bulk of the economy: and they have largely been untouched by liberalization, thanks to the extortionary power they exert on consumers’ daily lives (try driving through Rome during a taxi strike) and the political consensus that protects local monopolists and oligopolists. This Authority should lead an extraordinary effort to unlock competition in local services. “Devolution” is not the answer: on the contrary, getting results will require strong alignment from the center.
4. Unlock the leadership talent of Italian women through affirmative action for women in corporate boards. The model here is the recent Norwegian law mandating that medium and large companies must have at least 40% of board members who are women, or face tough sanctions, including forced liquidation. Italian women themselves are not fond of the affirmative action idea, and some of them have, most insidiously, interiorized our culture’s worst stereotypes. But I believe Roger is right in saying that we’re not going to get anywhere without a shock therapy forcing the end of discrimination at the top of our economy and society. Women’s careers should also be supported through incentives for shorter maternity leaves and a better public and private child care network.

Roger’s book is well-documented, wide-ranging and convincingly argued; it has the crucial virtue of moving beyond diagnosis and adopting a “can-do” attitude to defeat the defeatism so prevailing in public discourse. It is also a direct appeal to our Prime Minister, whoever that would be (the book was going into print just around the time of the April elections), to adopt these proposals. Whether Roger is listened to or not will be, in my opinion, a crucial test for the openness of this government’s agenda to citizens’ needs.

Finally, an apology to some of my Twitter followers. Last Wednesday I inundated them with a live twittercast from the presentation of the book, in Italian – I understand it looked like a ton of spam to those who don’t speak it. But now you understand why I cared so much about what was going on!

Update, September 2008: Please visit www.meritocrazia.com to leave your comments and questions for Roger Abravanel!

Meet Emma Marcegaglia

No, I’ve never met her.

But I’m glad that – like the French – at last we have a woman leading the industralists’ federation in Italy.

Two underwhelming books: “Success Built to Last” by Jerry Porras + others, and “How” by Dov Seidman

I’ve stated before that I am a massive consumer of books about what to do with one’s potential for leadership and fulfillment; this summer, I read two more. I was, however, disappointed by both.

“Success Built To Last“, by Jerry Porras, Stewart Emery and Mark Thompson, builds on hundreds of interviews with highly successful people to discern patterns in their motivation, their thought processes and their action styles. When I say “successful”, the bar is quite high: we’re talking about Sir Richard Branson, Nelson Mandela, Michael Dell, Maya Angelou and even the Dalai Lama. That’s the kind of crowd you meet in Davos, if you’re invited.

Yet, as much as I love all Stanford authors, this time I have to say that Professor Porras hasn’t convinced me. Although supported by rigorous analysis and an ambitious survey, at the end this boils down to biography as an attempt at inspiration. We already know that truly successful people are the ones who love what they do, who find deep meaning in the mission they have discovered for their lives, and who would do the same things they do today even if they didn’t make any money doing them. We also know that they are relentlessly optimistic and resilient in the face of failure. We know they are like that. We can try to model our thought processes and action styles on theirs. But will you learn anything new about success from reading this book? No matter how well thought out and documented, the actionable advice in here boils down to following your passion, and adopting certain habits of thought and action while you pursue it. The fact that this book comes with a full range of five-star reviews and was in the top 3 editors’ picks in the business category of Amazon’s Best Books of 2006, in my opinion, only reflects rather poorly on the 2006 crop of such books – or on the standards of the Amazon editorial staff and the community of reviewers.

“How” by Dov Seidman, a book about how ethics is changing the rules of business for the better, was another disappointment. More personal, more based on “war stories” from the author’s career, which makes it somewhat interesting at times; yet, full of extremely superficial summaries of the way the world has changed from the Industrial Revolution up to today (if you want to read “The World Is Flat“, I suggest you read “The World Is Flat”, and not Seidman’s reductionist synopsis); of pseudo-evolutionary biology talk about why trust develops in human societies (again, much better: read “The Origins of Virtue” by Matt Ridley); and of rants about the lack of such values as transparency and trust in today’s business world.

Maybe I’ve been lucky, but that’s not my experience: the world is not all Enrons, WorldComs, or Parmalats. On the contrary, I’ve always been able to work in organizations that were guided by sound values and constantly reinforced them (my previous employer even used to hold an annual worldwide “Values Day”), and where people mostly trusted each other – not trusting each other was simply not feasible (you would die under avalanches of work, among other effects). Even today, I am regularly evaluated on both results and behaviors, and I evaluate my team on their results and their behaviors. And, we do not backdate stock options – that is simply not done around here. So, that “how” we do things (meaning, our behaviors) might be a source of key advantage in today’s business world strikes me as a somewhat naive proposition.

Perhaps this can be a useful book if you’re either very young, or very cynical about the value of personal and institutional integrity. If you’re neither, this is a book you can skip without regrets.