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If there’s one word Chicago GSB’s class of 2007 should keep in mind as they head toward their careers, it’s strategy, according to James Schrager, clinical professor of entrepreneurship and strategic management. “Know strategy and you understand the organization,” he said.
Schrager and Roger Altman ’69, chairman and co-chief executive officer of advisory and investment firm Evercore Partners, spoke to graduates during spring convocation on June 10 at the Harper Quadrangle on the Hyde Park campus. “The most important thing you can do is to figure out the strategy of that company,” Schrager said. “Strategy is what makes you great. It’s what makes your organization work. It’s the reason why that company exists.”
Schrager identified four attitudes that are fundamental to strategic thinking, the first of which he called “search for reality.” Good strategists always make sure they understand the facts, he said. “The facts trump theory every time.”
The second point was respect for people. Traveling to Japan in the 1980s to find out how that country’s industries were doing both better and cheaper work, he discovered the philosophy that every employee from janitor to CEO can make a meaningful contribution to success.
As a third provision, Schrager said, teaching is possible whether the person is in the spotlight or on the sidelines. “More is caught than is taught,” Schrager said. “The light of leadership is never extinguished for those in its glow.” He reminded the graduates that the people they work with would always be asking them two questions: “Are you sincere? Can I trust you?”
Trust and sincerity might be more easily proved if the graduate follows the fourth tenet Schrager offered up: the elegance of simplicity. “Those who know something very well can state it in plain English, using logic and common sense.”
Altman told graduates they will suffer the occasional defeat, but said it would teach them valuable lessons. “It’s not success that will define you to those that mean the most to you,” he said. “Actually, it is life’s defeats that have taught me the most and which will teach you.”
He offered examples from his own life that ranged from being fired from his first job out of graduate school after only a month for writing an unsatisfactory memo to being unceremoniously ousted from the Clinton-era U.S. Department of the Treasury. “You will learn more from your low moments than from your high ones, and I am an Olympic gold medalist in low moments.”
Altman also pointed to the many trials, tribulations and tragedies Abraham Lincoln endured en route to and during his presidency, as a further example of hardship defining character. “We all suffer defeats and we suffer lots of them. They are life’s greatest teachers.”
Among the lessons Altman learned from his own low points were an appreciation for calls from friends and colleagues when he was down, and an improved recognition of when someone else might need an upbeat call.
The tough experiences can also teach humility. “They’ll teach you there is no such thing as getting to the top and staying there,” he said. “They’ll teach you to look in the mirror and see the real you, not some puffed up caricature.”
— Jenn Q. Goddu