Out Of The Wilderness And Into An MBA
Friday, February 13th, 2009 by Mark | Posted in Unconventional Thinking | CommentsWhen my business was in its early years, and my sons were 11 and 13, I hired them as consultants. In a way.
I would ask them to join me for hikes at Ward Pound Ridge, Audobon Wilderness trails and Mianus River Preserve that stretched out in a bucolic radius around our home. I would start the hike by relating to them a challenge or an opportunity I was facing in growing MSCO and ask them for their ideas on direction, what I was failing to see, creative ways to respond to the issues, any and all thoughts they had.
Never once did they say, “Hey, we’re kids. What do we know about business.”
Instead, they listened to the situation as I spelled it out, asked a few questions to clarify the scope and dimensions, and then we would hike and in a Socratic real world exercise, they would challenge assumptions, question actions, suggest what Harvard might view as naive approaches but were really raw imagination, the source of all fresh and innovative thinking, at work.
We would walk and talk for hours, honing in on the target, uncovering reasons I was myopic to possible solutions, thinking through entire new ways of dealing with a set of business issues conventional thinking says must be dealt with in the form of tired textbook cliches.
Every time my sons and I went into the woods to problem solve, to open my mind, to find a better way, we came through into the clearing. This went on as they progressed through the teenage years and even on their visits home from college….and it still hasn’t stopped. This past Thanksgiving morning, as tradition has it, we went into the woods– now to discuss their careers, their businesses, as well as mine. When we are in the wilderness, there is no difference in age. No seniority system. They are at the early stages of their business trajectory and are already extremely successful and laser determined to accomplish greatness. I feel no different. I relied on them to help me grow my company and now we help each other. We want insights. We want new prisms. We want to test new waters. We want to take risks. We want to see our individual limitations and grow beyond them.
We are our own Board Of Directors, free, as boards should be but rarely are, to talk openly, imaginatively, bluntly, searching for innovation and insight without a whit of concern for protocol. I often think we don’t hike and talk as much as hike and daydream together. And from these sessions have come the ability to do the hardest thing in business, in life: to see through the dimensions in which we live and peer into another. That is where the breakthroughs come from. Smart people unwilling to accept the limitations supposedly imposed upon us by the universe.
When we fail to daydream, we impose them upon ourselves.
I always knew how helpful my sons, my consultants, were to me on complex issues at ages people assume are video game years. In case after case, they were the catalysts for change. Perhaps because they were willing to use imagination, video game thinking, to break through the walls of academic limitations. 
Interestingly, both went on to prestigious universities. And to launch exceptional careers. Careers that require guts, brains, risk-taking, entrepreneurialism, second guessing, mid course corrections, the refusal to accept the existence of limitations. As they succeeded in these explosive and challenging pursuits, I would ask them how much they felt a sense of gratitude to the fine schools they attended to help them navigate successfully.
Each son, seperately and in his own right, said school was good, mostly for the comradery of their friendships and the time to read and think, but nothing compared to “The MBA we secured on those hikes. That was where we were introduced into the crucible of business. Nothing else came close.”
I thought I was the only beneficiary of our Socratic expeditions. But as it turned out, we all came out of the wilderness with an MBA.
One that for me makes everything I ever learned in school seem paper thin.
Some years ago, I wrote a book, Extreme Management, that reveals the lessons learned at Harvard’s famed Advanced Management Program. I spoke with roughly 50 men and women, all senior management, who had attended over the past 50 years.
All said it was the most valuable experience in their lives. Not because of the professors, but for the intense discussions they had with their peers living in dorms during the 12 week program.
Free from standard board meetings and syncophants at the office, they were forced to dig deeper. To see clearer. To go where no one back at HQ pushes them.
They all had MBAs when they entered the Advanced Management Program.
But they had never walked in the wilderness before.
Mark Stevens
CEO
Email This Post
