I’m Hungry Like the Wolf

A major objective of our Leadership stream is to understand better the role our subconscious minds play in everything we do. One tool we use is dream analysis since the content of dreams is subconscious. I have been keeping a dream log for the past two months, waking up in the middle of the night, fumbling around for the pen and then scribbling in the dark whatever I can remember from the dream I was just having.

I can’t remember last night’s dream, but apparently I tried to document it as my bedside notepad was not empty when I woke up this morning. What articulate words did I jot down to provide enlightening analysis of the deep, sophisticated inner workings of my mind?

“There are hunters and gatherers.
I am a hunter.”

Thanks, sleepy Bryan, that’s very helpful.

All I can do is leave you with a related quote from one of my favorite movies about hunters, Predator. During a pivotal scene in which Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s character decides to go on the offensive, he taunts his predator-turned-prey as follows:

dun-dun-dun-dun-dun. Dun-Dun-Dun-Dun-Dun. DUN-DUN-DUN-DUN-DUN. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

There, just as intelligible as my dreams.

Early ’80s

My American popular musical Odyssey has arrived in the early ’80s and I couldn’t be more pleased. Why? Two words: Air Supply. I still remember how vehemently I disagreed with my mom as she tried to convince me that they were two male vocalists. I listened to their songs over and over again–how was at least one of them not a woman?? Anne Murray had at least two octaves of lower range on them. I was pretty young at the time and I guess I had a lot to learn about women . . . some things never change!

Around the house I was left to my own musical devices, listening to tapes I had made of records on my dad’s juke box (a lot of Elvis, Beatles, Platters, and other Oldies). It was on road trips where Mom exposed me to more contemporary music. I still fondly remember stretching out in the back seat of our car and listening to Air Supply, James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt, Dan Fogelberg, Neil Diamond, and Lionel Richie for hours at a time until we reached our destination. As you can tell, Mom was a fan of the soft rock. However, our musical selection was dependent on our destination. Whenever we were headed to the beach, it was Jimmy Buffett all the way!

I’ve made it through 1982 so far and following are the early 80s highlights (and lowlights) for me, in roughly chronological order:

The emergence of Air Supply
The emergence of Blondie
Way too much Olivia Newton-John
Michael Jackson goes solo and is on the cusp of truly breaking out
Kenny Loggins’s solo career finally achieves success
Kenny Rogers hits his stride
The emergence of Billy Joel
The Rolling Stones just keep on rolling
Lionel Richie goes solo
Sheena Easton briefly captivates the nation
So does Christopher Cross
So does Toto
So does the Alan Parsons Project
So does Men At Work
All of the Beatles continue to produce solo hits–until John Lennon’s assassination
Eric Clapton kicks his heroine habit and ramps up his productivity
Barry Manilow just won’t go away
Neither will ELO
The emergence of Pat Benetar
The emergence of The Cars
The emergence of Journey
The emergence of the Police – not a big fan
Lots of movie theme hits, e.g. Eye of the Tiger, 9-to-5, For Your Eyes Only

Actually, if there is one early ’80s emerging band that is more nostalgically important to me than Air Supply, it is Huey Lewis & The News. The first tape of popular music I ever bought was their 1986 album, Fore! In 1982 they had just entered the scene with Do You Believe in Love (and, to a lesser extent, Workin’ for a Livin’) and were poised to dominate with their subsequent Sports and Fore! albums.

It’s warming up a little outside and the snow is turning to rain. I’m off to wade through it toward the gym before what will surely be a wonderful weekend in Lugano.

The Rite of Spring

As I mentioned last weekend, spring is in the air here in Lausanne. Or at least it was. Today, the first full day of spring, is cold and foggy with wet snow and high winds. That’s no problem for me, though, as I’m planning to spend most of the day indoors anyway.

We have today and Saturday off from classes so I am working right now on my group’s LPO paper on “Authenticity in Leadership.” It is very in vogue to talk about authenticity as a given “must have” in Western leadership right now. However, some of my international colleagues have mixed feelings about it. In China, for example, where leaders have a more stoic style, authenticity could be seen as a weakness. This makes for a very interesting topic that we are analyzing from three different perspectives: research in the popular press, our own LPO coursework, and our multicultural group members’ experiences. There may be no hard and fast leadership rules (e.g., “A leader is this.” or “A leader does that.”), which is exactly why I came to IMD. My leadership experience has been in leading small (< 500 people), mostly homogenous organizations and I want to be aware of what issues are at play in larger, more diverse ones.

Peanut Butter

Hold the presses! Stop what you’re doing right now and pay very close attention as I have a very urgent message for each and every one of you. I have just been informed that March is National Peanut Butter Month. I love peanut butter but have yet to find any of the real stuff here in Switzerland. So please, especially those of you fortunate enough to have access to a steady supply, take a moment to pause and give thanks for the many wonders and joys the peanut brings to our lives every day.

That is all.

Missed Opportunities

In Friday’s POM class, Corey focused on knowledge brokering–how to find solutions to problems instead of solving them. As part of the lecture, he walked us through his own knowledge brokering experience at HP, which led to the invention of several products. One of these products was the HP Universal Notebook Expansion Base, which I happen to have in my apartment and on which I am typing right now. As many of my readers know, I have a very personal attachment to my computer hardware, so you can imagine my excitement when I realized that Corey held the patent to one of my favorite computer accessories. I did not contain my excitement well in class and was made fun of by my American and Danish colleagues for being a brown-noser–but then I suppose I can’t really argue with that.

If I am a brown-noser, though, I am not a very good one as I missed a serious opportunity that day. Our morning marketing case was about the International Children’s Heart Foundation. Its founder, Dr. Novick, flew all the way in from Memphis, TN to speak with us about his life’s work and his difficulties in branding/promoting it. The class responded by providing him with insightful marketing ideas and a check for $1,500. The way the $ is going (On Friday it slipped below the Swiss Franc for the first time!), though, he’d better spend it fast!

Our afternoon POM case was about NASCAR‘s efforts to cut pit stop times in half by using knowledge brokering. Suggestions made by last year’s class are already being employed and this year we came up with several ideas that had not been tried before, too. Perhaps IMD should change its MBA slogan from “90 Exceptional People Who Will Shape the Future of Business” to “90 Exceptional People from 44 Countries Who Will Shape the Future of Entertainment for Millions of Americans Who Still Wear Jeans Shorts.”

It wasn’t until Saturday that I realized what an opportunity I had missed. Our classes were about a doctor from Memphis and a NASCAR pit crew. I have with me here in Lausanne a Red Hot & Blue t-shirt that says “MEMPHIS” on the front and “PIT CREW” on the back. Never again will I have the opportunity to wear that shirt and have it be so incredibly appropriate. I missed my chance. I lose at life.

Oh well, speaking of pit crews, Saturday was Beer Bike at Rice–the first Beer Bike I’ve missed in a decade! Lovett’s theme this year, 300 Proof, would have been particularly fun to celebrate, but I was there in my traditional role of pit crew captain in spirit. EOL RRF!

On an unrelated note, the Class of 2009 began interviewing this week. There was a group on Tuesday and another on Friday. IMD is not like some schools where the hard part is getting in and then it’s smooth sailing afterward. However, getting in is so rigorous a process that you at least have an accurate idea of what you’ll be getting yourself into if accepted! Good luck to all of you applicants out there and don’t hesitate to send me any questions you have about the IMD experience.

Oh What a Day

Yesterday was one of those days that made all of us glad we chose a program in Lausanne. It was around 60 degrees F, sunny, and absolutely beautiful. The flowers were blooming, the birds were chirping, and it truly felt like spring. I went for a run along the lake but had to keep stopping to take pictures. I wasn’t the only one with that idea and it was great to see everyone else out running, walking, roller blading, sitting, picnicing, and otherwise enjoying the weather.

I’ve thought before that if there were one thing Lausanne could do to endear itself to me more, it would be to seem more Tolkienesque. Yesterday it checked that off its list. As the hot sun bore down directly on the cold water of the lake, mist rose from the surface, creating a transluscent shimmer between me and the mountains on the other side. It made me want to do the Misty Mountain Hop so I listened to Led Zeppelin IV during my run–not a bad way to spend a Saturday afternoon!

Today it is raining and I’ve been inside working all day, which gives me plenty of time to ponder my birthday next week. I can’t believe I’ll be 29–another year closer to the big 3-0! So far every year of my life has been better than the previous, so I have high expecations for this one. Interestingly, this is the first time in my life that my birthday has fallen on Easter Sunday. The last time it happened was 1913–a little before my time–and, not withstanding some miracle of medicine, it won’t happen again in my lifetime. I suppose I’ll have to savor it!

Another One Bites the Dust

Not only was it the #65 song of 1981, but Queen’s Another One Bites the Dust is appropriate for today as well. No, not because of its driving bass line or its well timed injections of Brian May “Red Special” guitar riffs; rather because today we sadly bade adieu to our Leading People in Organizations course. Technically we still have a group paper to write and a final exam to take, so it isn’t “over” per se, but gone are the case studies of extreme management methodologies, engaging lectures, and musical tie-ins to course themes.

When I decided to come to IMD, LPO was essentially what I had in mind, academically speaking. My leadership development prior to 2008 had been exclusively learning by doing, and I certainly learned a lot leading football (American) teams, university organizations, volunteer groups, and software companies. However, I was just doing what seemed to work and who was to say that that was optimal? Could it scale to larger organizations? Could it transfer to other industries? Would it work with multinational teams?

I thought it was probably naive to think that there were universal “best practices” in management but I at least wanted to study what others had done–in a variety of contexts–to augment my arsenal of leadership “tools” for the future. That is exactly what I found in LPO: systematic analysis of people-centric managment challenges in contexts as varied as European orchestras, New York investment banks, and Chinese manufacturers.

Maury, our professor–or perhaps “maestro” is a more appropriate term–brought much more to our lectures than just case studies and discussion leading; he also brought culture and class. This was driven home as he concluded our final session by reading us a poem, The Chambered Nautilus by Oliver Wendell Holmes. This left us in a pensive, reflective mood, which we combatted by surprising him with a gag parting gift: a toy keyboard! Although it is probably useless to him, hopefully he will at least take the meaning that we all thoroughly enjoyed his performance and many of us are hoping for an encore during electives.

Thank Goodness for the ’80s!

The mid-’70s were a low point for American popular music. This period marked the exit of folk and rock and roll while disco and harder rock had yet to hit their respective strides. In the vacuum between there was . . . a bunch of generic-sounding R&B and soft rock, bleh. Seriously, if I hear any more Barry Manilow I may strangle someone. And Paul McCartney, your knighthood should be stripped for besmirching your reputation as you did with Wings. The Eagles, anyone who has seen The Big Lebowski knows how I feel about them.

Don’t get me wrong; there was definitely some great music being made; it just wasn’t all that popular–according to Billboard, at least. This is perplexing because it’s not as if America’s taste took a sabbatical. Look at the Academy Award’s for Best Picture during that period: The Godfather, The Sting, The Godfather II, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Rocky, Annie Hall (should have been Star Wars, of course, but Annie Hall was still a great choice) . . . not exactly a shabby line-up. Oh well, at least this period saw the rise of Queen.

Around 1978 things started picking back up. Disco really found itself and began churning out the iconic songs we still associate with it today. New rock bands began popping out of the woodwork. And hey, Grease; you can’t beat that. 1979 continued the momentum and the stage was set for the fabulous music of the ’80s. What could explain this resurgence of musical quality? Let’s see, was there anything important that happened around this timeframe? Hmm. Oh, hey, that’s right, I was born! I’m not drawing any conclusions–just throwing it out there . . .