Stanford Business

MAY 2007


Lessons That Stand the Test of Time

Over the years, GSB classes have provided a direct line to a career for some, lasting philosophical insights for others.

by Janet Zich

Chuck Horngren likes to tell the story of when he was a young Stanford Business School professor and a casual acquaintance asked him what subject he taught. Accounting, he answered. “Accounting?” she exclaimed. “Well, at least it’s at Stanford!”

The lady might be interested to learn that last year, in a survey conducted by the School’s Alumni Relations Office, accounting was remembered by Business School alumni/ae as one of the subjects most valuable to them in later life—and Horngren was one of their most memorable teachers. Other courses deemed important were finance, entrepreneurship, and interpersonal dynamics, although there was virtually no subject (or faculty member) that went unappreciated.


Nobel laureate Bill Sharpe, shown here in 1993, taught a portfolio management class
that prepared Chris Mothersill, MBA ’86, for 20 years in investment banking.
Photo by Linda Cicero

Stanford Business followed by asking in its quarterly update forms why people found some courses and teachers so special.

Not surprisingly, many of the magazine’s correspondents saw a direct line from class to career. The portfolio management class taught by Nobel laureate Bill Sharpe had the biggest impact on Chris Mothersill, MBA ’86. “Understanding risk and how it impacts asset valuation and returns has been fundamental to the work I have done in my career,” wrote Mothersill, who spent the 20 years after graduation in investment banking, 15 of them in Japan and Hong Kong. Managerial accounting proved the key for Credit Suisse HOLT director Mike McConnell, PhD ’74. “It gave me a language in which to interpret corporate performance, management decisions, and competitive position,” he said. Venture capitalist Eric Postel, MBA ’83, agreed. “Accounting is the language of business,” he wrote. And Gianni Ragazzi, MBA ’74, CEO of Autoprint Srl, found that accounting and finance courses taught him how to structure his thinking, enabling him to examine a problem, explore alternatives, and find a solution.


Ted Marks , shown in a 1967 photo, was the "superstar"
of postwar money and
banking classes.

Bob Quigley, MBA ’57, put his choice in historical perspective. Back when Quigley was a student, “MBAs were just beginning to be attracted to the commercial banking field following the long uphill return from its bottoming out in 1933,” he wrote, “and Professor Ted Marks’ class in money and banking caught my interest.” Quigley, who is now retired, began his career at Northern Trust Bank in Chicago. He returned to California with First Interstate System and became CEO and president of one of its banks. “I finally started a de novo bank in Oakdale, which today is a high-performing, $250 million bank. Ted Marks was my superstar!”

Quigley wasn’t the only alum to mention a personal Mr. Chips. Mark Lange, MBA ’94, most recently a vice president of SAP America, cited two teachers who made a lasting mark on his career: Jim Van Horne and Jim Collins. Lange, a former presidential speechwriter, had entered the Business School as a “poet.” He found that “Jim Van Horne made finance accessible without watering it down. His approach was engaging enough to keep it amusing—even for classmates with far more direct experience than I had at the time. But he was pragmatic enough that I was able to put much of what he taught us to good use after the GSB. When I found myself at a private equity fund, unexpectedly asked to build a depreciation model for satellite receivers (overnight, of course), his textbook gave me just enough guidance to get it done. I could almost hear his calm and measured voice behind the pages. I still keep his book behind my desk, all dog-eared and yellow-stickied,” Lange wrote.

“Jim Collins’ course in entrepreneurship was a celebration of the art of the possible,” Lange continued. “He had plenty of the pragmatic nuts-and-bolts tips that ‘toolbox’-oriented entrepreneurs always crave—how a small business can grow itself to death, for example. But he also challenged us to set high goals for ourselves and the businesses we would create and lead. After the obligatory financial tour in New York and a couple of years in a smaller company, I found myself in my bedroom working on a pricing model and go-to-market plan for an on-demand application that, to my astonishment (and after five years) actually became a sustainable, healthy business. I don’t think I would have tried that without his influence. And later I learned Jim’s appreciation for the possible applies equally to growing more ‘mature’ lines of business, in my case at PeopleSoft and SAP.”


Professor Gene Webb, shown teaching in 1975, persuaded Betsy Leichliter, MBA '77, to plan for her plans to go awry.
Photo by J. Mercado

Betsy Leichliter, MBA ’77, finds that many of her Business School courses have proved valuable in her current career as a qualitative market researcher and moderator. But she singled out Gene Webb’s Implementation as both the most practical and the most mind-expanding. “At the time, I’d had plenty of professional experience with implementation as a theatrical designer,” she explained. “I was raised in the Midwest and genuinely believed that the show must go on and the Protestant work ethic was a true path to professional success and personal satisfaction. But it had never occurred to me that perhaps I should give equal attention to thinking from the perspective of a counter-implementer. Once I expanded my imagination beyond how to make things happen to also consider how to make things not happen, it became a lifelong habit. Every time we plan a research project, I ask my team to figure out when, where, or how it can get derailed. Right now, I’m brainstorming ways to motivate a client to change direction on a major project—without kicking me off the project.

“In keeping with his own warm, down-to-earth, anecdotal style, Gene encouraged us to express our implementation/counter-implementation theories creatively rather than academically,” Leichliter continued. “I wound up handwriting an illustrated notebook that I re-read yearly. I laugh when I read the tips on accelerated budget-busting, mastering the art of technical obfuscation, living the ‘I just work here’ ethic, and other weapons in the counter-implementation arsenal—none of which can hurt you too badly if you can see them coming.”


Professor George Leland Bach “continually offered to defend either side in classroom debates, having the class take the opposing side.”
Photo by Bob Isaacs

After more than two decades in high tech, Tom Owen, MBA ’76, owns and operates a home remodeling business in Washington state. On the surface, it’s an unlikely career path for someone who learned one of his most memorable lessons in Business School from the macroeconomics course he took from George Leland Bach. But Bach taught more than the ups and downs of a nation’s economy. As Owen explained: “Professor Bach continually offered to defend either side in classroom debates, having the class take the opposing side. He reminded us again and again that it’s possible for sensible people to disagree, based on their differing values, life experiences, premises, and logic. I have always found that perspective admirable, even more so in today’s polarized society.”

When it comes to life lessons, no single class was cited more often by Stanford Business correspondents than Interpersonal Dynamics, fondly known as “touchy-feely.” “It taught me to be honest with myself about my strengths and weaknesses,” said Jerry Moreno, MBA ’82, lead consultant with Integrated Strategic Solutions in Texas. It gave General Motors’ Joe Ponce, MBA ’84, who is in charge of all GM’s negotiations with United Auto Workers, “an appreciation for differences that exist in each of us, as well as our similarities.” But perhaps the most eloquent tribute came from Roger Pedder, Sloan ’73, recently retired chair of C&J Clark, the footwear company. Known as “Britain’s top troubleshooter,” Pedder has spent much of his career delicately turning around his own and other family-owned businesses. His work has clearly required fine-tuned interpersonal skills, but it is what David Bradford’s class taught him about himself that he remembers best. “I understood myself for the first time at age 32,” he wrote.

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