It’s fascinating to me how often something going on in the course perfectly matches something going on in my work or personal life. Recently, I was tasked with bringing on the data visualization software Tableau. While I love data, the visualization element of it was completely new to me. Each day I was teaching myself how to use this program through whatever the internet would cough up. So, when it was time to pick a faculty member to interview, the words “Data Stewardship” in Bryan Bennett’s bio called to me like a ghost on Scooby-Doo. When I asked him what he thought was most important to being successful with data he said that you need to have the right processes in place, make sure the data is correct, have the right people to maintain the work, and get the best analytics or you aren’t going to get any benefit out of it.
Education and continuing to learn was a large element of our conversation that was brought up time and again. Bryan has a robust social media presence and recently started quoting himself 30% of the time as well as famous people. A recent post said, “The moment you believe you know everything about leadership is the moment you cease becoming a leader.”
It’s a thought that we know intrinsically but can be tough to swallow. There’s a reason humans love checklists. There’s a reason we love challenges like being the first to scale a mountain. We love to see something hard and master it. But many important things can only be mastered by staying in a constant state of learning. Bryan practices what he preaches by spending at least one hour each day reading about his field. He often curates the best articles on Trello boards that he shares with his students, so they can also benefit from his effort.
Bryan has worked extensively in education at several institutions, in addition to his work in the health care sector, and the books that he has written. When I asked him about it, he said that education is important to him because it gives you the chance to impact real lives. The corporate world is about money whereas education is about helping people learn and learn how to learn.
This can make him a challenging teacher. For students who want an A in his class, he tells them that you must do more than a Geico moment. Everyone knows that 15 minutes will save you 15 percent, but it won’t get you a good grade in his class. He is currently doing leadership training at a hospital in Chicago. He is struggling with one of his classes in getting them to be open to the fact that they don’t know everything.
While he never related it to himself, I suspect its an idea that he may struggle with occasionally. When asked about leadership skills he has struggled with in the past, he mentions humility. He notes that some of the best leaders are very humble people who aren’t above the job, not above the company, they are all about what’s best for the people and the company. He learned this when interviewing leaders for his leadership book. He spoke with admiration about an interview with one of the executives at the Cleveland Clinic that said, “I didn’t make the job, the job made me.” The executive exemplifies this by going around to all the Clinics holding town halls and making himself available for questions. It strongly reminded me of the Level 5 Hierarchy we studied in Aleen’s class. A level five leader “builds enduring greatness through a paradoxical combination of personal humility plus professional will.”
I may be reading too much into it, but I think part of the reason that he has struggled with humility in the past challenges he has faced with diversity and inclusion. Bryan spoke candidly about obstacles he has faced where he was the highest-ranking person of color and while that meant that there was diversity, it didn’t automatically make it an inclusive environment. Many times, people failed to listen to his opinions. I think being humble while needed to be a strong self-advocate can be a difficult balance. Especially when getting feedback from a past mentor that having a big ego and trying to make a name for yourself can make you an easy target.
He talked about the importance of organizations that give people of all backgrounds a seat at the table and how they are better off financially than those that don’t. He thinks going forward it will be a matter of survival for companies as the world continues to change. I strongly agree with him.
A specific example he shares was working for a regional Chicago bank with 18 branches. He told each branch that their marketing needed to reflect their users, who typically came from no more than 2 miles away. The banks existed in heavily Polish, Hispanic, and Asian neighborhoods. Additionally, he said that the services needed to be tailored to that community’s needs. For example, when a member of a Hispanic family opens a bank account, the entire family goes with, so make sure to have a play area for the kids.
When asked about lessons he has learned in the health care sector that are universally applicable, he said that you need to put the right people in charge. A lot of health care organizations are run by doctors who are trained to be independent thinkers and don’t have the collaboration abilities to make good leaders. This is a variation of something I have experienced in the work world. I’ve worked in the arts industry for several years and many people fit into one of two boxes. They were either the visionaries who came up with the brilliant ideas that made everyone want to be part of the organization but they themselves often didn’t have the foresight to keep a hamster alive. Or they were the administration who was so focused on the logistics that they may have been running any organization anywhere and would lose sight of the magic that was happening all around them and could sometimes stomp all over other people’s creative energy.
Along with humility, Bryan believes that the second ability every successful leader needs is empathy. If you genuinely know your people, those people will go to the wall for you, using a baseball reference that needed to be explained to me. Your employees need to know that you will take care of them. We talked about how empathy is especially important in marketing as you really need to understand who you are marketing too. He gave the example of how Delta and American individually tried to create a discount airline to compete with the success of Southwest but didn’t understand the mechanism for their success. Whereas Delta and American had assumed it was due to the pricing, they failed to recognize the special sauce of hiring employees based on their personality. Employees must pass a personality profile to be hired there and based on the number of Southwest safety speeches that have gone viral in the last few years for their amazing humor, it is clearly paying off.
I’ll admit, I finished the interview with Bryan feeling a little disappointed. I had hoped to glean nuggets of leadership knowledge that I could start applying to my life straight away. But after taking some time between the interview and writing up the essay, I realize how much it was reinforcing what I’ve learned this past quarter. Plus, how boring would it be if I learned everything I needed out of one conversation? What would I do for the rest of my life? So, for now, I’m happy to call myself a life long learner as well and look forward to the next lesson around the corner.
MarketingMichelle 