Below are some excerpts I got from an NYT interview with Yahoo!'s CEO posted by SY on Facebook. In this article, Carol Bartz talks about leadership and managing people. I am highlighting some bits here, a small part actually, about her views of what business schools should teach, because it resonates with what I have been thinking about for a while now, that education in schools are lacking in some vital aspects. What I mean is that schools are not teaching skills to manage the two most important things in life: one's self and one's finances. What is more important than yourself and money in your life? The usual way is to learn the hard lessons by fumbling about and making mistakes and hopefully learning from them.
We are never taught to work through complex and fundamental questions like who we really are, what do we want etc in a systematic and deliberate way, questions whose answers are the guiding posts for how we manage our lives. If we cannot manage ourselves, how do we manage others? The same goes for managing money. We are taught the importance of money and how to make more money (all those Masters in Applied Finance/Economics/Accounting/Financial Engineering courses come to mind) but we are never really taught how to manage our wealth. Making more money doesn't necessarily increase our wealth; if expenses exceed income, however large that income is, one is still poor.
Of course, I am not blaming the schools for all this or shifting parental and individual responsibility but I believe our education system can do more to help prepare our young to live a fuller life, and more importantly to lead a life that they want. To know what one really wants in life, there is no escaping from answering the question of who we really are and what is the ideal self that we want to attain. Then life is a not journey whose destination is death, but a pursuit of ideals and how we can grow in every way, spiritually, morally and mentally, to become a better person. As for money, it's simply there as a means to keep us alive and sustain us on this lifelong quest for those ideals. Nothing more, because more money will not help us grow to become a better person in any way. And if a person does not grow, he/she will never be happy.
October 18, 2009
Corner Office
Imagining a World of No Annual Reviews
This interview with Carol Bartz, chief executive of Yahoo, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant.
Q. How would you say your leadership style has changed over time?
A. I’m calmer. I think that just comes with confidence. I would hate to describe the C.E.O. I was in ’92. I think I was pretty pathetic, actually.
Q. Why?
A. Well, I thought it was such a big responsibility. I had public shareholders and I had a board and this is one step you take that’s a pretty big step. There’s a progression in management. The first step you take is when you’re a people manager, and then the next step is when you’re a manager of managers. And then there’s that step when you are on top. And who are you going to complain to now? Because everybody likes to complain to their boss, or their peers.
I think the biggest steps in that progression of a manager are the first and the last. The last because if it’s a public company, you say: “Wait a minute. I have shareholders. I have a board. I have press. I have all these things to juggle and I’m supposed to run this company. And how do I set my time and how perfect do I have to be?” You get that weight of the world on your shoulders and so I think you overreach. I thought I had to know answers that I didn’t have to know. I thought I had to be the biggest cheerleader, and so it just saps a lot of energy out of you because you’re the person that has to be up and on. It’s just a big responsibility.
And then you settle in over time. So I made some people mistakes — like I tried too hard with some people who should have gone earlier. You just make a lot of mistakes that you probably know in your gut are mistakes, but you’re not sure how to twist the organization around. You’re just not as confident. It’s that simple. So I actually wouldn’t have liked working for myself back then.
Q. You came out of retirement to run Yahoo.
A. I was so bored when I retired that I lost that whole section of my life. I mean I could keep reading, but I missed that whole people interaction. I’m somebody who loves politics — I mean politics in the company, as in, how do you help and enable people to get along? It’s not a dirty word. It’s how you organize. People say, “Oh, we don’t have politics.” Everybody has politics. And so be an expert at it. Figure out how to influence people to get things done, as opposed to running and ratting on them.
Q. What should business schools teach more of, or less of?
A. I think there ought to be some classes for people to get more philosophical about who they are and what motivates them, and therefore why they act like they act.
Some of the most fantastic training I’ve had over the years is the tests and the feedback I’ve gotten on what drives me as a person, and to sort of face up to it. What’s important to me and therefore why would I make certain decisions? For instance, I grew up dirt poor. I am constantly in fear of being poor. I’m so far from being poor, it’s crazy, but I’m constantly in fear of being poor. And I know that drives a lot.
Now you could say the dark side of that is maybe that would drive me to make risky decisions that I shouldn’t make. It actually drives me the other way. It drives me to be more conservative, so I’ve had to teach myself to get out of that conservative zone.
It also turns out that I’m an introvert. You would not believe that, would you? And I know I am because introverts have to refuel by being alone. Extroverts — Bill Clinton’s a famous extrovert — have to go to a party. At the end of the day, he comes home tired, and he wants to party. I come home. I suck my thumb and don’t talk to me. I learned how to get down time. Even an hour by myself feeds me.
What motivates you? What are you scared of? Knowing that will help inform how you lead, how you make choices, how you face the day. And I don’t think we do enough of that.
Q. What else?
A. I also think people should understand that they will learn more from a bad manager than a good manager. They tend to get into a cycle where they’re so frustrated that they aren’t paying attention actually to what’s happening to them. When you have a good manager things go so well that you don’t even know why it’s going well because it just feels fine.
When you have a bad manager you have to look at what’s irritating you and say: “Would I do that? Would I make those choices? Would I talk to me that way? How would I do this?”
When people come to me and say, “I can’t work for so-and-so anymore,” I say, “Well, what have you learned from so-and-so?” People want to take a bad situation and say, “Oh, it’s bad.” No, no. You have to deal with what you’re dealt. Otherwise you’re going to run from something and not to something. And you should never run from something.
We are never taught to work through complex and fundamental questions like who we really are, what do we want etc in a systematic and deliberate way, questions whose answers are the guiding posts for how we manage our lives. If we cannot manage ourselves, how do we manage others? The same goes for managing money. We are taught the importance of money and how to make more money (all those Masters in Applied Finance/Economics/Accounting/Financial Engineering courses come to mind) but we are never really taught how to manage our wealth. Making more money doesn't necessarily increase our wealth; if expenses exceed income, however large that income is, one is still poor.
Of course, I am not blaming the schools for all this or shifting parental and individual responsibility but I believe our education system can do more to help prepare our young to live a fuller life, and more importantly to lead a life that they want. To know what one really wants in life, there is no escaping from answering the question of who we really are and what is the ideal self that we want to attain. Then life is a not journey whose destination is death, but a pursuit of ideals and how we can grow in every way, spiritually, morally and mentally, to become a better person. As for money, it's simply there as a means to keep us alive and sustain us on this lifelong quest for those ideals. Nothing more, because more money will not help us grow to become a better person in any way. And if a person does not grow, he/she will never be happy.
October 18, 2009
Corner Office
Imagining a World of No Annual Reviews
This interview with Carol Bartz, chief executive of Yahoo, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant.
Q. How would you say your leadership style has changed over time?
A. I’m calmer. I think that just comes with confidence. I would hate to describe the C.E.O. I was in ’92. I think I was pretty pathetic, actually.
Q. Why?
A. Well, I thought it was such a big responsibility. I had public shareholders and I had a board and this is one step you take that’s a pretty big step. There’s a progression in management. The first step you take is when you’re a people manager, and then the next step is when you’re a manager of managers. And then there’s that step when you are on top. And who are you going to complain to now? Because everybody likes to complain to their boss, or their peers.
I think the biggest steps in that progression of a manager are the first and the last. The last because if it’s a public company, you say: “Wait a minute. I have shareholders. I have a board. I have press. I have all these things to juggle and I’m supposed to run this company. And how do I set my time and how perfect do I have to be?” You get that weight of the world on your shoulders and so I think you overreach. I thought I had to know answers that I didn’t have to know. I thought I had to be the biggest cheerleader, and so it just saps a lot of energy out of you because you’re the person that has to be up and on. It’s just a big responsibility.
And then you settle in over time. So I made some people mistakes — like I tried too hard with some people who should have gone earlier. You just make a lot of mistakes that you probably know in your gut are mistakes, but you’re not sure how to twist the organization around. You’re just not as confident. It’s that simple. So I actually wouldn’t have liked working for myself back then.
Q. You came out of retirement to run Yahoo.
A. I was so bored when I retired that I lost that whole section of my life. I mean I could keep reading, but I missed that whole people interaction. I’m somebody who loves politics — I mean politics in the company, as in, how do you help and enable people to get along? It’s not a dirty word. It’s how you organize. People say, “Oh, we don’t have politics.” Everybody has politics. And so be an expert at it. Figure out how to influence people to get things done, as opposed to running and ratting on them.
Q. What should business schools teach more of, or less of?
A. I think there ought to be some classes for people to get more philosophical about who they are and what motivates them, and therefore why they act like they act.
Some of the most fantastic training I’ve had over the years is the tests and the feedback I’ve gotten on what drives me as a person, and to sort of face up to it. What’s important to me and therefore why would I make certain decisions? For instance, I grew up dirt poor. I am constantly in fear of being poor. I’m so far from being poor, it’s crazy, but I’m constantly in fear of being poor. And I know that drives a lot.
Now you could say the dark side of that is maybe that would drive me to make risky decisions that I shouldn’t make. It actually drives me the other way. It drives me to be more conservative, so I’ve had to teach myself to get out of that conservative zone.
It also turns out that I’m an introvert. You would not believe that, would you? And I know I am because introverts have to refuel by being alone. Extroverts — Bill Clinton’s a famous extrovert — have to go to a party. At the end of the day, he comes home tired, and he wants to party. I come home. I suck my thumb and don’t talk to me. I learned how to get down time. Even an hour by myself feeds me.
What motivates you? What are you scared of? Knowing that will help inform how you lead, how you make choices, how you face the day. And I don’t think we do enough of that.
Q. What else?
A. I also think people should understand that they will learn more from a bad manager than a good manager. They tend to get into a cycle where they’re so frustrated that they aren’t paying attention actually to what’s happening to them. When you have a good manager things go so well that you don’t even know why it’s going well because it just feels fine.
When you have a bad manager you have to look at what’s irritating you and say: “Would I do that? Would I make those choices? Would I talk to me that way? How would I do this?”
When people come to me and say, “I can’t work for so-and-so anymore,” I say, “Well, what have you learned from so-and-so?” People want to take a bad situation and say, “Oh, it’s bad.” No, no. You have to deal with what you’re dealt. Otherwise you’re going to run from something and not to something. And you should never run from something.
