The Business Higher Education Forum (BHEF) brings leaders together twice a year in a face-to -face meeting to pursue an agenda of shared issues. It’s a two day meeting and I’m always impressed by the dedication of time the forum gets of CEOs, University Presidents and representatives of key foundations.
Two special guests at the meeting this week were Russell Hulse and Kathy Sullivan. At one point I was in a conversation them about Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). This is what the National Science Foundation (NSF) calls the focus on advancing education in these disciplines. I pinched myself a little bit. Where else could I, a guy who really majored in “Student Life”, talk to a Nobel Laureate (Russell Hulse) and a former astronaut (Kathy Sullivan)? BHEF create the community space for people who care about education to converse from very diverse backgrounds / perspectives. Education is just too fundamental to the economy to be left to a single constituency.
Hopefully I’m not violating any confidentiality pacts as I share my thoughts from the meeting here. I’ll only attribute quotes to meeting attendees where it makes sense to the story. My two direct quotes come at different times. Bill Swanson, CEO of Raytheon has expended a significant amount of time to BHEF and a STEM initiatives called the STEM Research and Modeling Network (SRMN). (These organization names and acronyms are an awful alphabet soup).
Raytheon, of course, is a defense contractor who makes missiles and rockets. Therefore, they’re filled with systems engineers and the proverbial but real “rocket scientists”.
The purpose of the STEM model is to attempt to look at education as a system of inputs (people) and outputs that flow from birth through ultimately death. It’s an incredibly complex system that for all we spend on education as a country or a world for that matter, the research about what works or not in education is pretty poor. (Chapter 7 of Disrupting Class by Clayton Christensen, Curtis W. Johnson, and Michael B. Horn does a good job of summarizing the problems with education research.
Systems’ modeling is what companies like Raytheon use to design and build missiles. It’s a heck of a lot simpler and less costly to model or simulate rockets on a computer than in real life.
So after about four hours of discussing the challenges of education research and modeling, Bill Swanson said “Building rockets is easy. Education is hard.” I got a kick out of this observation given the popular phrase, “It’s not rocket science…” He also said, “Models are easy; Implementation is hard.” And to underscore the limits of modeling, the chief systems engineer said, “All models are wrong; some are useful”. Bill Swanson summarized with, “The model helps highlight where research needs to be done. It is a tool to help make choices”.
At dinner, Sandy Weill spoke. Sandy was He former chief executive officer and chairman of Citigroup Inc. He served in those positions until October 1, 2003 and April 18, 2006. He’s subsequently written a book called The Real Deal: My Life in Business and Philanthropy and he probably wins the award for best ever timing since he stepped down 3 years ago. He didn’t really answer my question of what should the government’s position be if, as we’re learning, there are companies too big for the government to let fail. He thought I was advocating government takeovers. But he kept repeating a phrase that is much better put than I was able to do in my posting about the financial mess (Maybe Bill Joy Was Right). He said, “If you don’t understand it, don’t do it”. That should be every investor’s mantra from now on. There will be more government regulation instead of less coming out of this mess. But I’m convinced that legislation and regulation gives investors a false sense of security.
If there was no regulation and only the motto, “If you don’t understand it, don’t do it”, we investors might be better off.
Sandy Weill also had some great advice about leadership. Someone asked for lessons learned about leadership. He said that leadership is about accessibility and a willingness to work harder than anybody else. He also spoke on how he tried to create a family environment at Citi; one where people knew you were willing to work hard as a result. For a titan of the financial world he seemed very down to earth. He said leadership is about loving what you do and leading by example. He shared how there were a lot more cigar smokers at Citi when he smoked cigars. When he gave the habit up, he noticed others doing the same.
It’s all about keeping high ethical standards and making the world a better place.
