Business, Conscience, Service

Businessman and philanthropist Bob Gay visited the Huntsman School on November 13, and delivered an incredible talk about business, conscience, and service.

Although Mr. Gay didn’t care for business growing up, his father, a very successful businessman, convinced him to enroll in Harvard Business School’s PhD program in economics. From there his career moved from McKinsey & Company, to Bain Capital, where he was managing director for 16 years, and then co-founder and CEO of Huntsman Gay Global Capital.

But the greatest lesson he learned came during volunteer service for his church, where he served as the mission president in Ghana for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. On a treacherous trip to Sierra Leone, one of the many obstacles that faced the crew was a road “with potholes the size of caves.” Due to a random UN cell tower along the route, he received a phone call from his former business partner from Bain Capital, who was calling to tell him that Bain had just closed a very large business deal, primarily due to the effort Mr. Gay had built for Bain before leaving for volunteer service.

“I had been the largest shareholder in Bain Capital, although I had turned it all in when I left on our mission. Once I knew the size of the fund, … and not in a second, but in nanoseconds, I knew what my partnership was, and I knew approximately what that fund would return. And all of a sudden I knew what it had cost me to serve as a mission president in Ghana,” Mr. Gay said.

“It was massive, massive amounts of money that would make anybody blush,” he continued.

As “what if” thoughts crossed his mind, he fell into a “stupor for two hours.”

Then, all of sudden, their tire got caught in a pothole and flipped their vehicle. The truck slid, going 65 miles an hour, on a gravel road. When the crew came to, the villagers were singing the death wailing cry. As the crew explained that no one was dead, the villagers said to Mr. Gay, “You’re dying.”

As he looked down, he saw that his body was covered in blood and that there was huge wound in his arm. In the middle of nowhere, they wrapped the wound as best they could and waited for the next car to come by.

When they arrived at the medical clinic, the doctor said he would lose the arm, but that he could kill the infection. As Mr. Gay laid down in the small operating room, the doctor saw his name tag and asked if he was a member of the LDS Church. When he answered yes, the doctor said that the gowns he was wearing, the instruments he was using and the drugs he was administering, were all new. The only reason their hospital had these supplies was because some elderly couple from the LDS Church came and donated everything just under a year ago.

“And in that instant, I heard the great voice in my life say, ‘Everything you have in life is because somebody else went out and did service,’” Mr. Gay said. “I haven’t looked back since that day.”

His final message to students was this: If you focus on a career, your impact will be limited…and you are likely to get it wrong. If you honor conscience, hone skills, take ownership, and look to serve, you can astonish the world.

"When am I ever going to need this?"

I have been a college student for almost four and a half years now. I have taken classes in subjects from all over the academic spectrum, from history of the civil rights movement (an excellent class, by the way) to social media to calculus II.

Connor Child

In almost every class I have ever taken, I have heard at least one of my classmates complain that the information being taught is worthless as it pertains to practical use. "When am I ever going to need this?"

I can't say that I have never asked this question myself, but I can assure you that I have never had any doubts regarding this matter while attending the Dean's Convocations that are frequently held at the Huntsman School. I know it sounds corny, but I sincerely mean it. Every so often, the Huntsman School will invite a dynamic individual with a wealth of experience to speak to our students and community free of charge. In every instance, the featured speaker has provided me with new insight into how I should approach my education and future career.

This Friday (Feb. 17), Thomas Donaldson will be the Dean's Convocation featured speaker. He will be speaking from 12:30-2:00 p.m. in the auditorium of the business building. Donaldson is a professor at the Wharton School who has a strong background in business ethics. On Friday, he will present on a paper he wrote titled, "Three Ethical Roots of the Economic Crisis."

I can't think of a more time-relevant subject to learn about. I look forward to seeing you there.

- Connor Child

Entrepreneurs and how they can benefit those around them

Students interested in entrepreneurship should know that the Huntsman School struck gold with the recent hiring of Michael Glauser as the executive director of entrepreneurial programs. He was the featured speaker at the Dean’s Convocation today, and his experience, knowledge and passion for entrepreneurship were on full display.

Michael Glauser

Dr. Glauser is especially fond of organizations that seek to satisfy a social need in the community. He talked about Henri Landwirth and how he started Give Kids the World. He spoke of Mimi Silbert and the lives she has touched with the Delancey Street Foundation. It didn’t take him long to talk about our school’s namesake, Jon Huntsman, and all that he has done in cancer research and education.

Dr. Glauser was emotional at times as he talked about the great things these people have done, and his sincerity and passion made it impossible not to get on board with what he was saying. He has extensive experience starting up successful businesses of his own, and he has been exposed to many of the world’s best entrepreneurs.

He closed with a list of what makes a successful entrepreneur. Entrepreneurial leaders:

• Work in the boundary of their organization
• Apply creativity and innovation in problem solving
• Pivot to opportunities from being in market
• Engage a "Brain Trust" of helpful mentors
• Build powerful entrepreneurial teams
• Establish networks to commercialize ventures
• Create more with less resulting in lower costs
• Build extraordinary customer service systems
• Serve a broader purpose in their community

The NBA Draft and design thinking

The NBA Draft took place last night, which means I’ve been doing a lot of reading. As a die-hard fan of the NBA, people often come to me with questions about certain selections and I try to be prepared. My favorite writer when it comes to the NBA Draft is Chad Ford from ESPN.com.

Ford recently wrote an article for my favorite website, Grantland.com, about how teams have evolved in the ways they evaluate potential selections. They rely much more on spreadsheets and sophisticated statistical formulas and much less on face-to-face contact with the players.

Has it worked? Ford provides a compelling argument that it hasn’t. Between 1990 and 1999, when the process was a lot more personal, 37 percent of all lottery picks (players taken within the first 11-14 picks, depending on the year) turned out to be All-Stars, while 31 percent were busts. In the past decade, when the process has become a lot more analytical and impersonal, just 21 percent of all lottery picks turned into All-Stars while a whopping 42 percent are draft busts. Even though teams are spending more money, they are having much less success at identifying the best players.

Roger Martin

This all reminds me of when the Huntsman School had Roger Martin come for a Dean’s Convocation last September. Martin, who is the dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, spoke about design thinking. Design thinking combines the best of analytical thinking and intuitive thinking. A business that can find the appropriate balance between the two will continually experience innovation and will have a constant advantage over its competitors.

Martin did not discount the importance of analytical thinking, and neither did Ford in the aforementioned article. But there is so much more to making important decisions than quantifiable statistics. We can make the best decisions when we combine what we have diligently analyzed with intuitive thinking.

Connor Child

I attended the Dean's convocation that featured Roger Martin this morning. I thought it was one of the best presentations I've seen at a dean's convocation. He is the author of the book, The Design of Business, and he talked about how some people tend to be more analytical thinkers and others are more intuitive thinkers. He believes both sides can benefit by learning to communicate better with each other and suggested that everyone could benefit from seeing things from a new point of view. That's a vast simplification of his presenation. I have a recording of it and hope to write a story for the Huntsman Post or The Huntsman Magazine. There was a lot of valuable insight shared. If you missed it, you might want to check out his book.

I'm looking forward to the Stephen Covey convocation on Thursday and the Henry J. Eyring convocation on Friday. Both of them are outstanding teachers. If you miss one of those presentations you may up saying for the rest of your life, "Darn! I wish I hadn't missed that presentation."