March 21, 2005
Failure Forms Leaders as much as Success, Say
LeaderShape Speakers
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If you founded a wildly successful business, you might feel inclined to dwell on your success. But Marc Seriff, the co-founder of AOL, would rather talk about his failures.
Speaking to McCombs undergraduates March 14, Seriff reminisced about his
days as the head of the doomed Control Video Corporation.
“In three years, we burned through 20 million dollars in venture capital
with only 40 thousand dollars in revenue to show for it,” said Seriff,
who currently runs The Seriff Foundation.
“And about half of that revenue,” he added, “came from the sale of our
hot air balloon.”
Seriff spoke at the LeaderShape Institute’s guest leader night. LeadersShape, an annual event sponsored by the PepsiCo foundation, brought almost 40 undergraduates to the T Bar M ranch in New Braunfels to think about leadership’s role in communities and their futures as leaders.
The night’s other speakers were Deborah Edwards, executive director of Greenlights for NonProfit Success, Frank Fernandez, acting executive director and director of programs of the Austin Community Development Corporation, and Louis LaGuardia, the vice president of staffing and diversity for Frito-Lay.
Recovering from a failure quickly is a hallmark of leadership, said Seriff. He added that a related quality, the ability to be flexible, is particularly important for entrepreneurs, who have to contend with external pressures as well as their own ego. On the one hand, an entrepreneur has to believe that he is always right, so he has the drive to pursue his dream, even if that means “sending a disc to everyone in America six times.”
At the same time, said Seriff, “You have to be flexible because if you always believe you’re right, you’ll often be wrong.”
The other executives agreed that whether you’re a leader in a small nonprofit organization or in a multibillion-dollar behemoth, you can heed the cliché and expect the unexpected.
“The old saw, ‘All leadership is situational,’ is really true,” said Frank Fernandez.
Fernandez offered a definition of leadership in general terms: “It’s the ability to use your resources—financial, human—to achieve a desired end.” But he emphasized that what exactly that means depends on the context, even within an organization. Managing programs, for example, requires a different kind of leadership from being on the board of a childcare center.
Wearing so many hats, according to Edwards, leaves leaders little time to pontificate. “I don’t look at myself as a leader. I look at myself as a pretty effective doer,” she said, citing passion, persistence, stamina and focus as valuable skills.
The executives agreed that you should hire people who are leaders themselves. “I consider myself a leader, not a manager,” said Seriff. “I don’t believe in weekly reporting or a lot of those managerial techniques. I hire people who don’t need direction.”
Future technology, LaGuardia said, will facilitate communication within organizations and make leadership more accessible. To maximize the value of that communication, LaGuardia encouraged students to learn how to listen actively to their employees, and understand what motivates them.
Seriff added that it’s perennially important for young people to understand what motivates them. “You’re going to spend a long time doing whatever it is you’re going to do,” he said. “The key is, when you come to the fork in the road, don’t just amble down one fork or the other. Know yourself well enough to know which fork to take.”
Fernandez concurred that you should know yourself well, to ensure not just your long-term happiness but the integrity of your decision-making process.
“The road to hell is paved with good intentions,” Fernandez said, quoting C.S. Lewis. “So is the road to minimum-security prison.”
For information on specific programs at the McCombs School, consult our contacts page. For media information, contact the Communications Director by phone at 512-471-3314 or by email at CommunicationsDirector@mccombs.utexas.edu.
