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Don't Be Afraid of Pressure, Counsel Speakers at Black Business Students Conference

February, 2003

STANFORD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS—If you're comfortable in your job, you probably aren't learning enough. Don't be afraid to hire people who are smarter than you are or to fire people who aren't getting the job done. Remember the board of directors that matters most: your family and friends. And when you make the big money, give back in a big way.

These were some of the nuggets speakers offered at the 20th annual Black Business Students Association conference, "Building Black Economic Power," held Feb. 1 at the Graduate School of Business.

Striking a note that was echoed throughout the afternoon, keynote speaker Myrtle Potter urged students, "Get comfortable getting pushed out of your comfort zone. You might be making incredible contributions to your company, but you're not learning anything. Don't be afraid to be afraid. Don't be afraid to break a sweat. Push yourselves and ask other people to challenge you."

Potter, executive vice president of commercial operations and chief operating officer for Genentech, shared the difficult decisions she had to make when she was hired to run the poorest performing company at Merck. She'd inherited a mediocre team and she didn't know how to improve their performance. During a retreat a trusted advisor told her, "One of you is going to be gone at the end of the year. Is it going to be you or is it going to be them? You're trying to run a $1 billion business and your team is flipping you off."

When she got back from the retreat, Potter cleaned house. "It was the most courageous thing I'd ever done." Within three months, her company had risen to number one within Merck.

"Companies hire you because they believe the business will be better because you touched it than it would have been if you hadn't come along," Potter said. "I ask myself, how is this job going to be better because I'm in it?"

Potter, who holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Chicago, told students she was "covetous" of their MBA degrees. Instead of stopping to get an MBA, she said she decided to "outsmart all of these people I'm competing against." A big part of her strategy is to hire the smartest people she can find. "Never be intimidated by people who are smarter than you are. Your job as a leader is not to have all the answers, but to understand the questions."

Several of the Stanford alumni panelists said that coming to the university forced them out of their comfort zones. Woodrow A. Myers, executive vice president and chief medical officer for the Healthcare Quality Assurance division of WellPoint, described his odyssey from his native Indianapolis. Myers, who earned his undergraduate and business degrees at Stanford, chose the university after looking it up in the World Book Encyclopedia. Against his parents' advice, he flew to San Francisco on a $70 TWA student fare and took a bus down to Stanford. "I came up Palm Drive and my life changed forever. I had never seen a palm tree before. I felt as if I had finally made a really good decision."

Myers was coasting through his undergraduate years when one night a friend shared his philosophy of life: "Woody, there are two kinds of people in this world: hustlers and suckers. If you aren't a hustler, by definition you are a sucker."

"It was one of those transformative moments," Myers said. "I knew I had to start hustling. Hustling is taking advantage of the opportunities that are presented to you. When no opportunities exist, create them."

Myers hustled his way to Harvard Medical School. During his rotations he noticed disturbing inequities in the quality of care patients received at the different hospitals affiliated with the medical school. He realized that if he was ever going to address this problem, he would need tools he wasn't going to find in his medical kit. "If you knew where the money was going, you could change the quality of care. I needed to be able to speak the language of money." Myers earned his MBA in 1982.

A good hustler knows who to call. "My most important asset is the 3,000 names in my contacts file in Outlook. I'm always on the phone touching base. It's amazing how many times people will reenter your professional life."

Another business school alumnus, Robert Taylor, joined Myers on the View from the Top panel. Taylor, who graduated summa cum laude with a BS in engineering from California State University Northridge, experienced several degrees of culture shock when he arrived at Stanford to earn joint degrees in law and business (1986). "In engineering, it's black and white. There are right answers and wrong answers. Here, I discovered all these shades of gray."

Taylor, who was raised in Los Angeles, came from a world where no one could tell him what to expect when he got where he was going. "Most of my classmates at Northridge came from blue- collar backgrounds. I am here today in great measure due to naiveté. If I knew then what I know now, I probably wouldn't be sitting here today."

Managing director and founder of Blue Capital, Taylor spent 11 years with McKinsey and Co. "I wound up being mentored by people I never would have thought of," Taylor said. When he first got to McKinsey, another black colleague took him aside and told him to steer clear of 'X.' "I learned never to judge a book by its cover. 'X' helped me tremendously in my career."

Taylor came at the comfort question from a different angle. "I ask myself, am I happy? Am I having fun? Is there something I can do that would make me happier? Asking myself those questions has gotten me where I am today. Every day think about what would be fulfilling for you."

Recently Taylor was congratulating himself on succeeding in making several airline connections to be at two different kinds of meetings in one day. He thought he was doing pretty well until he got home and faced his children. "My children wondered where I'd been all week. I have to answer to them. I would encourage all of you to have children. They will constantly challenge you. When all of this is over, they will be the ones who will edit what goes on your tombstone."

During the Social Entrepreneurship panel, Vincent Robinson (Stanford BA, MBA 1999) also challenged students to think about what kind of legacy they might leave. "Be philanthropic throughout your careers," Robinson said. "This includes time and money."

Robinson, executive director of Social Venture Partners Bay Area, said most of the donors he works with are white people in their forties. He urged black business students to think about putting themselves in positions to become major supporters for programs serving people of color.

"As people of color we need to create more pools of capital. Create wealth and become a major donor as a person of color—we need that. Do it and give it. You can have a tremendous impact."

—Teresa Moore