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Hi. Thanks so much for joining us, Mike. Erika Thank you. It's a privilege to be here.
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So I thought I'd start with this age
old adage or debate
whether or not leadership can be taught.
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It's probably something
to do with our family, our maybe friends and school culture,
too, along the way.
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But I don't think anybody is born
with the leadership gene or the teamwork gene or the creed,
the culture gene.
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And if not and I actually think not, then it's up to us to find ways
to help people.
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Grade school on influence, parents
help people develop. And it takes a long time.
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It's a it's a hard road to begin to master fairly early on. The key elements, the key capabilities
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of helping other people
to get to a more promised land. It's learned. Tell us your professional origin story
of how leadership
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became so ingrained in something
that you wanted to do professionally. Here's the origin story.
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And like many origin stories, I'm
the accidental guy. So I'm on the faculty here
at the Wharton School.
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I was asked to join a committee
that was then going to bring a new curriculum at the time into the MBA
program for executives.
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Long story made sure we had no faculty
member to teach a newly required course on leadership and teamwork
and the head of the committee.
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I compliment the head of the committee
of being excellent at strategy and negotiation.
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I had pointed out that we don't have
anybody to teach the horn course, and he looked at me and said, Well, Mike,
I guess you're going to have to do it.
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I said, I can't do it. I don't know a thing about the topic. And he said, Perfect.
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You won’t have any prior prejudice or bias. So he was good. Next thing I knew,
I was walking into a leadership classroom.
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But like every topic that any of us teach here at the Wharton School,
we weren't born with that.
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We had to learn it. And I had to. I had to sit down and think about it. Learn about it. I read about it.
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I spent time with people like yourself. Gradually,
I learned a little bit about leadership,
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enough to teach
and teach really well over the years. If you can remember that
first year, the first couple of years
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when you were teaching leadership and you're learning it
along with your students in many respects.
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Walk us through what that class was like. What were some of the topics
that you covered?
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How did you bring these issues to life
and get the students to enact leadership,
not just read about it theoretically.
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You know, Erika, it began with a head
start in the sense that the students in the executive MBA
program, the MBA program for executives
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average age 34, 35, as you know well, they, without putting it quite in these words, had an enormous hunger
for learning,
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mastering, developing,
strengthening their own leadership, often because they had taken over a team,
maybe a division, maybe a clinic,
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because so many were in medicine,
some had become heads of law firms. And they said,
I can't believe the mistakes I made.
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Can you help us out? And so in a sense,
I had a head start in that the classroom did not need
a proof of concept.
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The people in the class,
and that's true for our students now when they arrive,
they've seen great leadership.
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They've seen deplorable leadership. So the first point I would make
is that went into a classroom.
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And even then
and unequivocally these days, you you'd know that because
you go into classrooms to teach leadership
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the interest and hunger for the that the principals, the concepts, the the capabilities of leadership
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cannot be overstated. With that said, the classroom itself was good, but not great
for the mastery of leadership,
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the classroom as a venue, returning the concepts and the action can be subpar. With that, said Ryan, as I do on cases
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examples, I bring leadership speakers
into the classroom. It I also concluded it's really important
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to take students mid-career
or even undergraduates. iSchool students for that matter,
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into settings where they can feel
and see the leadership moment. They can feel the moment
where their own leadership
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is being tested or it's needed. And for that, we began to experiment
very gingerly
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with taking our students out to the great
Civil War battlefield, Gettysburg. This, of course, is July one,
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two and three, 1863,
a kind of turning point in the Civil War. And as you stand,
we're at some of the history making
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locations were to appreciate, for example, how critical
it is to be prepared ahead of time,
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to be resilient when the time has come
to make a decision to be ready to act. You come to appreciate all that much more
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how vital it is to be prepared to have thought through strategically
what you're going to do to have
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people animated, motivated to follow you
when you go into battle. So the Gettysburg battlefield
proved a kind of an experiment.
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I didn't know it was going to work. A worked in my own experience very well in helping people become more
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committed to engaging with the ideas and above all, more committed to then
applying the ideas that they the concepts,
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the principles to the workplace,
or if they're still a student and in the student organizations
they may be maybe part of.
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Since then, working now with what
we call the McNulty Leadership program, we have rolled out a series
or a comparable experiences.
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So, Erika, as you know well, we take students for a day
with the New York Fire Department
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at its great training center on Randall's
Island, East River of Manhattan. And our students go through
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a day of direct engagement and survey. Now equipment and all around them
and a helmet on their head,
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serving in small teams,
going in to fire combat. You have to be safe. Risk is considerable.
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We don't put our students
in a risky circumstance there. So we have developed a program
that emphasizes, for example, teamwork
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and risk abatement and working
with the New York Fire Department. We have a program going back,
I think, about 20 years now with the U.S.
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Marine Corps
officer, candidate School, Quantico, the base in Virginia, about 45 minutes
south of Washington.
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And there are students
that I've been through the program under the extremely effective instruction
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of Marine Corps officers and drill
sergeants. Our students
I've been on a team down there.
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I put myself through. I learned the vital importance of here
and a small team of everybody contributing
to the team of the team leader run
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the best out of
all four or five people on the team. If you're ultimately
going to meet your objective and I think
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all of that is just so representative
of what makes Wharton's approach to leadership really distinctive
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and helps us
then put out into the world really strong leaders, regardless of their professional
background and over the last 30 years,
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this school, your school now as Dean has in my view, pioneered the provision of leadership,
learning opportunities in class work,
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extracurricular settings to high school students, to undergraduates, MBA
students, executive MBA
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students and mid-career
people for a good reason. And that is the world that we live
in, I think has learned
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that the difference
between a prospering company, a company
that is going to grow but not grow as fast
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as it should, or a company
that can adopt new technologies. And one that does not depends
critically on the quality
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of the leadership at the top
and actually through out the links. So our engagement
now with all of our constituencies
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in providing leadership
development opportunities I think is just a direct product
to how the world is calling for it.
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And we are trying to deliver it. I was hired to be Dean of Wharton
as an external hire.
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How how should companies
think about succession planning for leadership when it comes to
internal or external hiring?
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It was a great question because it always comes up
when almost anybody is hiring.
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There is always a let's look over our shoulder
and there's some outsiders that are good.
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But when you know the data, 90% of let's make it the S&P 500 companies,
when you have a succession
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event in 90% of the cases
they hire internally and that's a good sign that usually points
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to, in fact, a very good indication that the company has been concerned
about leadership development.
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30 years ago, a very few companies,
except GE, had a whole lot of leadership development
going on today.
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Everybody does and does one product of a great internal leadership
development, a specific educational program,
or helping people move around the company
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to learn all the different functions
before they are ready to become a totally general manager.
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These kinds of endeavors have become not only widespread,
but they're commonplace snow and ice.
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In saying that, I do point to the fact
that I think companies have become, with the prodding of their boards,
much better
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at internal leadership development,
which partly explains the 90%. There are great people
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appreciate the person
that you just brought up at your company. It's great. Looks like a very promising future.
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That said,
there is also great academic research on the fact
that if a company is in trouble,
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kind of strategically misdirected or maybe just poorly managed, showing up in the stock price
or whatever metrics you use,
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it's good to take a look
over your shoulder and ask yourself
whether great people out there
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that can make up for the cultural
shortcomings or the strategic shortcomings that have become endemic
within our company.
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So quick summary is companies
much better leadership development. So I expect that 90% to stay pretty high.
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We're looking at on the inside. But it is, you know, this
the duty of director is to make certain
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you're getting the best out there
and of a company has been in trouble. It's languishing, it's underperforming.
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It's an especially good time
to take a look around. So I have been fortunate
to have been invited by you
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on several occasions to teach in some of
your programs at the Wharton School. And as you know, my own area of expertise
is in crisis leadership.
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As you see what's happening in the world,
there are all sorts of dynamics that make it increasingly difficult
for companies to be successful.
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How do you think about leadership in a time of crisis versus
in sort of more strategic growth
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context? Well, to take a step back on that,
to establish a baseline, good to ask yourself
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as a leader of an academic institution,
has the leader of a private sector company,
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under
what conditions does your leadership have? It has to impact. Good way to sum that up.
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Not talking. Now we're really talking when this comes out again, University research
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has when the university,
the company, the the hospital, the community group is facing
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a difficult period when uncertainty
is high, it's unclear which way to go. Leadership has greatest consequence
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in a period of uncertainty and change. And not only that, if we look very carefully, it's hard
research to do, but has been done.
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If we look very carefully at
how much difference one person could make who is elevated from the inside
or maybe brought in from the outside.
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The statistic that for me says it all is that if we hire the right person as opposed to the wrong person,
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the right person can make as much as 20
to 30% difference within 1 to 3 years. Same finding for collegiate sports,
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same finding for professional football. So as they bring in a new general manager
or a new coach,
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everything else, the same same players,
same fan, same venue, right Coach versus the wrong coach,
the right general manager versus
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the wrong one can make
as much as 20 to 30% difference. So we've really got to get it right.
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And I think that's increasingly
so because of this uncertainty. Markets in a way,
a capital follows these days in the U.S.
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and abroad. So to put this a little bit
more normatively or prescriptive play, really important to get the formula right
for the kind of leader
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that's going to make a difference. Every institution is different. That is true because the impact is a,
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it's subscale. It certainly is. And I think also about what's happening
just in our country
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and what many people would describe as a void of leadership at every level. And how do we move as a society
from what we're seeing.
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You know, the House had trouble finding
a new speaker for a period of months that was leaderless.
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There are so many examples of ineffective
or troubled leadership. How do we, with credibility,
teach our students at Wharton
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that leadership actually matters
when all around them they're seeing such a vacuum of leadership
in some respects,
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and with the proviso
which I should have referenced earlier, that the impact of the
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the coach at a professional NFL team,
the impact of a dean or a president of university is especially consequential
in a period of uncertainty.
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Change, and in particular during a crisis. So that itself tells me, as I've looked at the research
literature that supports that,
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it is vital to reiterate that point. The conceptual framing that we can offer and then provide opportunity is
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where people will come to our shores
or undergraduates or MBA students. Last time I checked,
I think we have about 2000 MBA students
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and several thousand
undergraduates, 15,000 mid-career people, a couple million people
who were coming into our programs online.
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Really important, really important for us
to get the content of those programs right
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and to make them available to everybody
who was looking to strengthen their ability to make a difference
and get us all
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to a born promised land. So I want to switch the conversation
back to you for a minute.
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As you think about your career at Wharton and and beyond. Was there any particular student
that stood out for you
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as someone who helped
you think about your own work and life and responsibilities
around leadership differently?
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Who, Who has impacted Mike Useem? I'm going to name two students,
and I'm actually going to name them.
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They're their public figures. So I think this is appropriate. One is Tricia Griffith,
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who is the chief executive
of Progressive Insurance. By the way, a couple years ago,
she was the star on the front of Fortune
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magazine
as the Fortune 500 CEO of the Year. I've met her. I understand why
she received that designation.
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And she is a terrific performer
and she's just a wonderful person. She's an alumnus who came out of our
what we call
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our advanced management program
that you teach in. And just to make an observation on her
that has
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forever affected how I think about what
you do, what our President does, what the President of the United States
does is.
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I had asked to follow her around for a day
at her headquarters outside of a little bit
to the east, to Cleveland, Ohio.
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He said, yeah, come on out. We walked into a room that was already filled up
with 300
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new hires, a progressive insurance
there, huge 40,000 employees. They're always hiring.
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So income in comes Tricia Griffith, CEO. She stopped on the way
to the front of the room.
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Stuck out a hand and had a conversation with maybe a dozen people
on the way to the front.
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She said as she then took the microphone,
she says, I'm Tricia Griffith. I started here at Progressive
as an adjuster many years ago.
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I realized sometimes you had to lift
cars up to see underneath. So I became a certified lift operator,
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forklift operator, where you can pick
large objects up, including cars. And I'm thinking, Whoa.
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So she is Lucy's CEO. She's the CEO as they come now, But she has a blue collar past.
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And I could sense in the room
when I talked to a few of the participants that at the end of that,
Tricia Griffith had just given me a lesson
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on the vital importance of being in touch
to the extent that you can. She's got 40,000 people
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with always their last way to illustrate the same point. There is a lunch room at the headquarters where it must be
hundreds of people will come to take
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a table. And Tricia Griffith happened
the habit of walking into the lunch room, looking to a table that haven't had five
people seated, not six.
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And she would come over and say,
Do you mind if I step down, sit down with you for lunch?
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Everybody is looking at their neighbors,
texting their partner. I can't believe I'm
sitting next to the CEO.
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But with that repeated effort to personalize her relationship, her ability to lead the company
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put her under front of Fortune magazine
as the best CEO of the year. So here is a second example.
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Just a very quickly
get back to your question. Here a person I knew, you know well named
Alex Gorsky had been chief executive
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at Johnson Johnson for the better part of a decade. He now serves,
as you well know, also on the board
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of Apple of IBM and JPMorgan Chase. So he's moved from running companies to now
helping helping the governance countries.
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I personally have known Alex. He was an executive MBA student
quite some time ago.
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We've kept in touch. He has come in many times. He's a great supporter
of the Wharton School, as you know.
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I've had him come in many times
as a guest instructor, and the who's impact on students
is just extraordinary
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as he and his case places
an almost emphasis on what Johnson & Johnson
has always called the credo,
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the 302 words that provide a almost a blueprint on serving patients, first families, communities and,
of course, shareholders are there.
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And as Alex Gorsky comes into the classroom, you know
better than anybody I've ever seen.
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He helps us understand the power
of company culture to get the job done. And I'm proud that I have had an
opportunity to interact with both of them.
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So great examples. So we're almost out of time,
and I want to just have this end
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on how you think about your own legacy. And you spent years at the Wharton School.
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We all know your impact. How would you most like to be thought
about when people reflect on your role with Wharton?
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We all have a purpose. We all have a calling,
and let's get clear minded about what it should be
was focused on that.
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Let's get really determined to make the best possible impact we can. And for me personally, it's
been a gift to be a faculty member here,
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a privilege
and a gift to be here as a faculty member. But being drawn as an external professor
into a course on leadership,
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I came to appreciate that
wherever my legacy may be, I'm going to try as hard as I can
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to help high school students, undergraduates,
MBA students and mid-career people
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and strengthen their ability
to make the world a better place. Well, you have done that with
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aplomb, and we are fortunate to
have had you part of the Wharton School. Thank you.
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Mike Useem thank you so much.