Earning my MBA from The Wharton School in '99 was a transformational experience for me.  A big part of that experience were graduates returning to campus to speak to my class.  So I have returned to the school, once to twice per year (in more recent years, twice), on my own dime, ever since graduating to pay it forward to the best of my ability.  It strikes me that this isn't unlike shoppers, who we see encouraged to write their own content as they read more reviews, answers, and stories from their peers, receiving value and being motivated to pay it forward (see this study with the Keller Fay Group).

Last Thursday, I spoke from 9am-4:30pm to Dr. Stew Friedman's leadership and teamwork classes.  Stew has been a mentor for around eight years now.  He authored Total Leadership, an amazing culmination of his life's work and a book I deployed, with Stew's help (he graciously visited us in Austin twice, and our London team attended his talk there), to the entire Bazaarvoice staff last year and then this year to all of our new people.  You can read about that experience here, which The New York Times graciously covered.

Every time I return to speak to Stew's class, I reinvent my talk.  These talks come from the heart, and I prepare for them in the cab ride on the way to speak.  These are the key themes I spoke to on Thursday:

Humility. The single best leadership article that Stew pointed to me in our mentoring meetings was Level 5 Leadership by Jim Collins, author of Good to Great.  It is required reading for our executive team (and his class at Wharton), and I find myself referring to it often.  From the Wall Street meltdown, due to lack of transparency and oversight on very complex financial products (which still cannot be explained in most cases), to the hubris at AIG, we are living through a period of extraordinary transformation.

Lack of humility is a big problem in corporate America.  If you don't have it, spend some time in the real world (perhaps you should go help Dick Grace build a hospital in an impoverished area in Tibet).  Whatever it takes, get humble and reflective.  Ask the tough questions.  Don't sit comfortably with bad profits.  A lack of humility almost caused another Great Depression, but this time on a global scale.  It bankrupted an entire country (Iceland).

On the Bazaarvoice front, I believe our solution encourages humility through negative reviews.  You have nothing to be afraid of but having the data and the will to do something with it.  I have seen countless cases of initial shock to the negative, followed by the a-ha moment where the merchandiser realizes the reason they have such a high return rate with that product.  We are, after all, a digital reflection of offline word of mouth.  These are the conversations that people are having every day, like it or not (and you should like it – word of mouth drives your sales).  So have the humility to listen and do something about it.  Then have the wisdom to leverage it.

Transparency. The World Wide Web has brought us sites like Glassdoor.com, founded by Rich Barton, the founder of Expedia.  At Glassdoor.com, you have the ability to rate and review CEOs as well as report your salary information.  HR heads have reported the salary data as 90% accurate for large companies like Microsoft.  I learned about Glassdoor.com at Liberty Media's NetLeaders event last year, where Rich was a speaker (his theme: everything – people, person, place, service, product, thing – that can be rated and reviewed will be).  The Web has also brought us TheFunded.com, where you can rate and review venture capitalists (and not without an uproar).

Obama embraces transparency.  Leveraging social media, he went straight to the people for his election campaign fundraising efforts, and raised more money, in small amounts, than any other candidate in history.  And now, as President, he is bringing social media to government.  He gets his share of criticism (such as not allowing visitors to comment on some of the government sites), but my belief is that the genie is out of the bottle.  Just like his campaign is being heavily studied, and will be imitated, so will his efforts for social media in government.  No one can question that he is racing through policy discussions, from stem-cell research to reform on Wall Street.  The pace of legislation is unprecedented in modern times.

With the Web, including blogging, Facebook, Twitter, Glassdoor.com, TheFunded.com, reviews, and so many other forces, leaders will be held accountable to a higher level of transparency.  The opaqueness of poor employee satisfaction (and ethics) on Wall Street is coming to an end, quickly.  This transparency will transform leadership as we have known it.  The command-and-control style, coming out of military training, is dying.

Connectedness. My daughter, who is now 4, will literally grow up on Facebook (or something like it), with a digital lifestream of connectivity to her friends.  When she is my age, 37, she will be able to jump to a different job at a much faster pace than my generation.  She will be connected globally to friends that she has known since childhood.  If she doesn't like the company culture, her friends will know.  The level of transparency will be unlike anything we can imagine now.  As a result, the focus on leadership, management, and culture will be at a level that today we cannot imagine, as employee retention is already, today, often the most costly expense a company has.

Culture. Due to these themes, the importance of focusing on culture is greater than ever.  I'll spare you our uniqueness here, and instead provide you with this reference to all of our blog posts that have been categorized under culture – there are many.  I spend around 15% of my time focused on culture, and I believe it is largely responsible for our success as a company.

Total Leadership. Stew's book is the start of many initiatives to focus on the development of the whole person.  Although that may not directly help you sell or service more widgets (although it actually will raise performance), it will lead to greater retention, employee satisfaction, and, ultimately, productivity, in this era of transparency and connectedness.  Learn more at TotalLeadership.org (and check out TLTV).

Soul. The Corporation, a stirring documentary I watched 4 years ago, made me think hard about the soul of a corporation.  I'm a believer in karma, and the more successful we are, the more I focus on the nourishment of our company's soul.  The Bazaarvoice Foundation is a part of that nourishment, but there is much more (such as the charity CEO speaker series Tony Capasso launched this year).

After speaking all day (both exhausting and exhilarating), Stew and I had the pleasure of hosting dinner at Tequilas, my favorite interior Mexican food in Philadelphia, with Glen Senk, CEO of client Urban Outfitters; Dmitri Siegel, head of Direct at Urban Outfitters; Fiona Dias, EVP of Partner Strategy and Marketing at GSI Commerce; and Dana Lasher, an old friend from CDnow (former VP of Sales and Marketing) that helped me design Coremetrics' initial reports who is now an entrepreneur herself at get Ready girls, an affinity sportswear company.  It was a magical evening of discussion, and I passed along my endorsement of Total Leadership in the hopes of helping others.

I hope that this post encourages you to speak at your alma mater.  I have found it to be an incredibly reflective process, one of the most important leadership development activities that I do, and have really enjoyed the karma of it all.  To teach is to learn.

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).

Culture has been a huge focus for us from the beginning, and is, I believe, the most important reason that we now lead our emerging industry.  We have tried and adopted many practices that were controversial at the time, such as:

• Testing for all new hires – many fail the test and it is frustrating when under pressure to hire, but it ensures that we make fewer mistakes and build a strong culture (without a strong foundation, building a strong culture is not possible).
• No vacation policy – we trust our employees to not abuse it and we do not want to limit them from taking personal time when they need it; for example, we had an employee take a 3-week vacation to China just two months after starting with us (and beating all of his goals at that time).
• Quarterly performance feedback (our "3/3/1" process), including "upward" feedback for the managers from their staff – to help all of our employees rapidly grow and reduce the anxiety in our organization (everyone always knows where they stand); I have been told by many of our employees and managers that they have learned more at Bazaarvoice than anywhere else they have worked.  Our feedback is balanced (the 3/3/1 is a simple email form to document the 3 things you did well that quarter, the 3 things you could have done better, and the 1 initiative you are going to focus on as a result).  The upward feedback from staff illuminates blind-spots on our management team, many of which have never been discussed with them in previous companies because the feedback process was too poor to generate intensely constructive dialogue.
• And much more (read our Culture page to learn more).

But perhaps none of these were more controversial than the roll-out of the Total Leadership program.  Why?  Because it usually results in a decrease of time spent at work.  So why take this risk when Bazaarvoice is doing so well?  Well, because I sincerely trust our employees.  Many of our cultural policies are "discovered" at our quarterly executive strategy meetings when brainstorming on how to evolve culture by treating employees with trust, like the mature adults that they are (treat others the way you want to be treated, remember?).  And I know from first-hand experience that I wasted so much time at work before the birth of my daughter, Rachel.  Once she was born I was more focused than ever before, and it led to a corresponding increase in my productivity although my work hours actually decreased.  So, I believe that the Total Leadership program will do the same.  And, sure enough, Stew's research shows that productivity/effectiveness goes up at work once employees go through the exercises in this program.

Why did I call this "an experiment"?  Well, it certainly is one for our company, with it being a new initiative.  But, as importantly, it is an experiment for Stew too.  He has never rolled out the program to an entire company – usually just to a large team at a Fortune 500.  So he is just as excited about it as I am.

To bring the power of Stew's program to the rest of the Austin community, I also hosted Leadership Austin, Bootstrap Austin, 100 attendees outside of Bazaarvoice, and Stew Friedman at our offices the evening of May 14.  I received just as many compliments from those attendees as I did from our own employees.

This is a very powerful book, and I highly recommend it to all of our clients and partners.  Roll this out to your team and you will not be disappointed.  Buy it for your friends, clients, and partners as a holiday gift.

Total Leadership is a way of life, and I have already incorporate many elements of it into my workstream.  I hope you decide to do the same.  The workplace will be a happier place if more leaders "take the leap" to trust and empower their employees to not just be a leader at work, but a leader in all aspects of their lives.  If you want to learn more, buy the book and check out Stew's website for the program (watch the videos, especially).

Finally, I have one request.  We are going to double our staff this fiscal year, and we need your help.  Please forward this post to anyone that you think may be interested in joining us, and remember that we have four offices now (Austin, London, Paris, and Singapore).  Here is our jobs page.   Your friend would not only be joining a great culture, they would be joining at an amazing time of growth, globally, in our company.

Update 5/28:
The New York Times just wrote about the Bazaarvoice Total Leadership experience.  This will be live tomorrow in their May 29 print edition and is online now.  I am very proud of this recognition, especially for Stew Friedman who has spent his entire professional career helping others become better leaders, managers, and people.  For Bazaarvoice, I am especially proud of this press hitting on the evening of the launch of our first Social Commerce Summit, which is sold-out with 230 attendees present!  I'm off to network with our clients and partners, and I hope to see you here next year if you missed it.