Spreadsheet One

Illustration by Peter Horjus

Operation Teamwork
THERE'S A SCENE IN EVERY forties war movie in which the crusty old sergeant picks a team to undertake a heroic mission. "O'Malley," he says, pointing, "and you, Russo, and Goldberg, and Jones." It sometimes seems that first-year study groups are selected in much the same way--if not by racial and ethnic diversity, certainly by dissimilarity of interests.

From study groups to second-year team projects, collaborative work has long been a hallmark of the GSB. Yet every year a few groups have problems when members rub one another the wrong way.

"We're a very diverse community," says Margaret Neale, professor of organizational behavior and associate dean for academic affairs. "People from different backgrounds have different norms for what is acceptable behavior, acceptable communication, and so on. What may be seen as normal in one country or setting may appear rude or be distasteful in another."

Beginning in September, the course Managing Through Mutual Agreement, an elective taught by Michael Morris and John Jost of the organizational behavior faculty, will be moved into the preterm session so that every MBA student will start the Business School with some understanding of why working in teams isn't always a snap.

Says Neale, who is a specialist in negotiation and the management of teams, "We talk about how teams function effectively, the influence teams have on people and people have on teams, and how people process information in groups versus as individuals. It's critical to understand the theory behind how groups function and to be able to use that knowledge to transform groups and individuals into units that will be effective in the world environment."

Photo by Anne Knudsen

Power of Persistence
RICHARD LEZA, MBA '78, almost didn't make it to business school. In 1969 he was diagnosed with cancer and told he had only a few months to live. But he fought to be given an experimental treatment and two years later he was cancer free. Leza told this story to some 75 Latino students and alumni/ae, gathered in February to honor him, as an example of the power of persistence.

Leza has been persisting all his life. Now the head of the venture capital firm AI Research Corporation in Mountain View, Calif., this child of a family of 12 was presented the 1999 Jerry I. Porras Award by the Hispanic Business Students Association.

The award is given annually to a GSB alum who has excelled professionally and has also demonstrated a continuing commitment to the Hispanic community and the University. Leza has helped Latino Business School students break into venture capital by providing advice, contacts, and opportunities in his own firm. He has established scholarships that give preference to Mexican American students both at his undergraduate school, New Mexico State University, and at the GSB. Leza, whose son Richard Jr. is a graduate of the MBA Class of 1995, is the third recipient of the award, which honors GSB faculty member Jerry I. Porras.

The student-sponsored event had an unintended benefit. For the past year, Hispanic alums have been talking about forming their own organization, and they furthered their plans at the banquet. For more information email Jim Cervantes, MBA'86, at jcervantes@syllc.com.

Illustration by Peter Horjus

And You Thought HMOs Were Scary
SOMEONE IS KILLING THE patients at Branscomb University Hospital--several someones, in fact, and they're all doctors. In the thriller Bad Medicine, by Paul S. Auerbach, Sloan '89, the question isn't whodunit but why they keep getting away with it.

Dr. Resnick used trauma care as "a form of population control"; Dr. Schmatz saw anesthesia as "a way to keep pathologists in business"; and the chief of cardiology, Dr. Inglehart, was simply sociopathic. As for Dr. Mahnke, the surgeon had masked her Parkinson's for years with an assortment of drugs, but when the kidney hit the floor and she insisted on transplanting it anyway, well, you would have thought the dean would finally step in. He didn't, and one concerned physician and his student protégé risked their careers, not to mention their lives, to find out why.

Bad Medicine is the kind of book John Grisham would have written if he'd gone to med school. It is the first novel by Auerbach, a former emergency room chief who currently manages a physician practice, but not his first book. An avid outdoor adventurer, he has written or edited five books on wilderness medicine and compiled two books of his own underwater photos. Bad Medicine can be purchased in bookstores and from any of the Web-based booksellers, but don't expect to find it in your doctor's waiting room.

Straight Talk on Startups
"ONE NICE THING ABOUT working on the Internet is that you can seriously underdress," said Steve Westly, MBA '83, who is vice president of marketing and business development for eBay, the hot online auction company. And one nice thing about the GSB's third annual entrepreneurship conference in February was not the dress-down-Saturday informality of Westly and some 75 other panelists and speakers (20 of them GSB alums) so much as an anything-goes atmosphere that encouraged conversation among sometime rivals and discouraged the kind of corporate flackery that can turn an otherwise informative gathering into a snoozer.

Did we mention the dearth of overhead transparencies? Here were folks who came to talk, not point and read, who met to discuss the niceties and not-so-niceties of "Charting the High-Tech Waters," as this year's sold-out conference was called. They argued. Is venture capital a guild that makes victims of hapless startups? Depends whom you asked. They debated the pros and cons of initial public offerings. ("You become a target. You have to disclose a lot of information. I could go on and on about the cons," said eBay cofounder Jeff Skoll, MBA '95, whose own IPO was the stuff of legends. "Well, it sounds like it worked out okay for you," countered Upside editor-in-chief Richard Brandt.)

They named names we can't name here, telling tales of established high-tech companies that hold out the promise of funding an idea only to steal it. And they presented living case studies of their own passages through the entrepreneurial process.

That process was covered in 20 panel discussions offered to attendees in a matrix (this was organized by MBA students, after all) arranged by subject--such as people, funding, and competing--and by stages in a company's growth, from initial concept through managing the supply chain to negotiating the sale of the company. Each conference-goer could attend four sessions. And the one very full day included noon and evening keynote addresses--by Tom Jermoluk, chairman, president, and CEO of @Home Network, and Thomas M. Siebel, CEO of Siebel Systems--as well as strategic networking at a breakfast hosted by Business School faculty, an al fresco lunch with seating by career interest, and a final cocktail reception at the Schwab Center. Somebody ought to patent this baby.