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Separate Leadership from Narcissism, Fisher Warns
May 2004
STANFORD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS—Good management is not about personal interest as much as it is about contributing to society at large, Richard Fisher, MBA '75, told prospective members of the MBA Class of '06 at an Admit Weekend program. Self-serving management, he warned, is "wasted human potential."
"There are a lot of rich people around the world who have little courage and lack integrity and judgment; they live very hollow lives of dedication only to themselves. This is narcissism. It's not management; it's not accomplishment," Fisher said during his April 25 talk.
Management is always about service, but in a prosperous commercial society as in the United States, it involves additional responsibilities. "Capitalism is the bedrock of our democracy. It's your responsibility to make it work," Fisher told the future students. For him, the emphasis on management as a "noble calling" distinguishes Stanford graduates. Business School professors, he said, convince students "that there is more than just making money in business."
Fisher's personal biography is probably one of the best proofs of the social implications of good management. After two decades of a successful career in private business, he became deputy United States Trade Representative (USTR). As a USTR ambassador, he led the country's trade agreement negotiations with Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, China, Chile, the members of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum (APEC) and those of the North American Free Trade Agreement, among others.
Since 1999, Fisher has been managing director of the international strategic advisory firm Kissinger McLarty Associates. His partners are Henry Kissinger, the former Secretary of State for Presidents Nixon and Ford, and Mack McLarty, former White House Chief of Staff in the Clinton administration.
Fisher also has served on numerous for-profit and not-for-profit boards, including the Graduate School of Business Advisory Council.
In the mid-seventies, as an MBA student, he learned that the key to success was merit—a combination of discipline, persistence, honesty, creativity, pragmatism, and teamwork, he said. "No matter where you come from, no matter what you look like, no matter what's your race or creed, you advance when you perform." For Fisher, no business school articulates as powerfully as Stanford the idea of upper mobility based on hard work.
Another "rare gift that Stanford offers to its students," Fisher said, is being able to focus on the essentials in order to make decisions under conditions of uncertainty. That ability has been his basic strategy for negotiation not only within profit and nonprofit businesses, but also as a representative of the United States dealing with issues as critical as normalization of relationships with Vietnam in 1999, he explained.
—Isabel Awad