Getting Corporate

Some of what I'm doing this week at Fuqua:

Through COLE, had a session with John Allison, the ex-CEO of BB&T Bank. Very impressive. 75% of his talk was about the importance of knowing your values, reflection, and leadership practice. If he were running business schools, he would take one whole year and teach leadership and ethics. He takes 2 weeks off each year to do something non-business-y, e.g. he'll go on a week-long workshop on philosophy. He also makes a point to read one serious non-fiction, non-business book a month... says there is tons of value in stepping outside what you know. This supports my observation that the best leaders are extremely well-read and well-rounded. The CEO also said his best quality is his honesty, especially with oneself. He's a huge believer in knowing your faults.

Guest lecture from the founders of Eurosport in my Entrepreneurial Finance class
Highlights:
- Founded by two brothers
- They went away to college and let their mom run the business, which she grew to revenues of $1M
- On the day of the US-Brazil World Cup game in 1994, they decided to switch their order taking systems. The new system didn't work and they weren't able to take orders correctly for 3 months. Had to send apology letters to all their customers to regain trust. Received one letter that said "I empathize with all of your technical difficulties. What I suggest is that you take a shotgun to your brother's head, and then shoot yourself. Please let me know when this has happened."
- It's really amazing how nobody realized how big the World Cup would be in 1994.
- The brothers admittedly "don't like business." They are in the business to support the soccer lifestyle.

This afternoon I'm going to a seminar with Duke's Muslim chaplain (one of only a few Muslim chaplains in the U.S.) to talk about Islam, business, and ethics. I interviewed Chaplain Antepli for my Ethics class, and he's a very interesting guy.

On Friday, I'm in a working group on Fuqua's career strategy. One of the participants is Michael Heisley, who is on Fuqua's Board of Visitors and the owner of the Memphis Grizzlies, among other things.

Also on Friday, I'm one of 10 pilot testers of a new class on Leadership in the Service Industry taught by Alan Schwartz, who is the ex-CEO of Bear Stearns (apparently he tried to save the company... he didn't cause their problems. I don't know).

Also, Rick Waggoner is teaching a class at Fuqua in the spring on "Corporate Crises." Pretty cool.