Two weeks ago, I presided over an amazing “experiment” with my friend and mentor, Stew Friedman. But before I tell you about the experiment, let me tell you a little about Stew and Wharton.
Stew was my Leadership and Teamwork professor at Wharton’s MBA program. Wharton is a pretty hard-nosed school, located in a tough area in Philadelphia, with famous graduates like Steve Wynn, Donald Trump, Donny Deutsch, Charles Butt (of local fame), Leonard Lauder, Lawrence Lessig, Peter Lynch, Harold McGraw III, Michael Milken, Michael Moritz, Elon Musk, Ronald Perelman, Lewis Platt, J.D. Power III, Mortimer Zuckerman, and countless investment bankers and management consultants. Stew actually founded the Leadership and Teamwork program at Wharton in 1991. Hard to believe that no business school, in the U.S. at least, taught this subject until then.
Like many Wharton MBA candidates, I was skeptical of the subject. Most of us were thinking, “why are we in this class learning this ’soft’ stuff when we could be learning the ‘real’ stuff?” (note: Stew’s class was part of the core, or required, curriculum). However, a few years after I graduated, I wished I had paid more attention. As an entrepreneur, I can tell you that this is the most important subject of any MBA program. You cannot build a great company without great people. And you cannot attract and retain great people without great leadership and teamwork. Realizing this a few years after graduation, I contacted Stew and he has been a fantastic mentor ever since.
Stew is one of the world’s foremost experts on the subject of work/life balance, pioneering in the field since 1984 (read his amazing bio). He doesn’t like the term “balance”, though, as it implies tradeoffs. So, for the last few years, he has working on a program he pioneered called “Total Leadership”, which challenges the participants on the “balance” notion. By the way, when I say working, I mean practicing in the field, as in with real companies. This is one of the best aspects of a world-class MBA program: professors that actually learn from the field instead of inside an ivory tower.
Stew’s new book, appropriately named Total Leadership, will be released on June 8. I have been a student of leadership and teamwork for over a decade now, and I honestly think this is the single most powerful book I have read on the subject (I was an early reader, per my mentoring relationship with Stew). So I decided to buy everyone in our company a copy of it and ask Stew to visit us in Austin and personally train us on it. Graciously, he accepted.
Stew trained all of us on Wednesday, May 14 for the entire afternoon. It was the most powerful moment in our culture’s history, in my opinion. Prior to his visit, I told my co-founder, Brant, that this would have a “massive impact” on our culture, and I wasn’t disappointed in our company’s initial response. Many employees thanked me afterwards, and the fun is only beginning (we are going through the entire program and all of its exercises over the next four months).
