My Greatest Lesson

The movie, Gorillas in the Mist, had turned into a logistical nightmare. We wanted to film at an altitude of 11,000 feet, in the middle of the jungle, in Rwanda - then on the verge of a revolution - and to use more than 200 animals. Warner Brothers, the studio financing the movie, worried that we would exceed our budget. But our biggest problem was that the screenplay required the gorillas to do what we wrote - in other words, to "act." If they couldn't or wouldn't, we'd have to fall back on a formula that the studio had seen fail before: using dwarfs in gorilla suits on a soundstage.

We called an emergency meeting to solve these problems. In the middle of it, a young intern asked, "What if you let the gorillas write the story?" Everyone laughed and wondered what she was doing in a meeting with experienced filmmakers. Hours later, someone casually asked her what she had meant. She said, "What if you sent a really good cinematographer into the jungle with a ton of film to shoot the gorillas? Then you could write a story around what the gorillas did on film." It was a brilliant idea. And we did exactly what she suggested: We sent Alan Root, an Academy Award-nominated cinematographer, into the jungle for three weeks. He came back with phenomenal footage that practically wrote the story for us. We shot the film for $20 million - half of the original budget!

This woman's "inexperience" enabled her to see opportunities where we saw only boundaries. This experience taught me three things. First, ask high-quality questions, like "What if?" Second, find people who add new perspectives and create new conversations. As experienced filmmakers, we believed that our way was the only way - and that the intern lacked the experience to have an opinion. Third, pay attention to those new voices. If you want unlimited options for solving a problem, engage the "what if" before you lock onto the "how to." You'll be surprised by what you discover.

Peter Guber was chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures Entertainment from 1989 to 1995. The films that he helped produce there earned more than $3 billion worldwide and received more than 50 Academy Award nominations. In 1995, he founded Mandalay, which has made films such as Donnie Brasco and Seven Years in Tibet.

Jim Hackett
President and CEO
Steelcase Inc.
Grand Rapids, Michigan

It's a simple but important lesson: What you do does not define who you are. I learned that the hard way - by trying to be perfect at everything I did (which I wasn't) and becoming exhausted in the process. You'll run into big problems if you believe that your value comes mainly from your work.

We all have tremendous potential, and there are a lot of areas in which we can be effective. And whether or not we reach our potential, our value remains the same - because it comes from "being human."

Jim Hackett has been at Steelcase for 17 years. Steelcase is a leading designer of office furniture, with 47 manufacturing facilities in 15 countries and worldwide sales of $3.2 billion.

Alexis Herman
U.S. Secretary of Labor
U.S. Department of Labor
Washington, DC

As a young girl growing up in the South, I would hear my grandmother singing an old Girl Scout song: "Make new friends but keep the old - one is silver, and the other is gold." The older I get, the more I realize how this simple rhyme expresses one of the best lessons I've ever learned.

That lesson was reinforced for me during the Senate confirmation process that I went through to become the nation's 23rd Secretary of Labor. The process was long and arduous. But my friends were always there for me - sending notes, calling me day and night, offering prayers, contacting senators on Capitol Hill in my behalf. In Washington, people say, there are no permanent friends - just permanent interests. I beg to differ. Friends make the bad times easier and the good times sweeter.

Friends - the kind who are with you "through thick and thin" - can remind you of who you are. Success and good times don't matter much unless you have friends with whom you can share them.

Alexis Herman was appointed Secretary of Labor by President Clinton in 1997. During the Carter administration, she was director of the Women's Bureau at the Department of Labor.

John Peterman
Chairman and CEO
J. Peterman Co.
Lexington, Kentucky

Failure has been my best teacher. If what you're doing is worth anything, then failing now and again is inevitable. Ultimately, success is about getting past the setbacks that you encounter. When I was raising money to start J. Peterman, I talked to several venture capitalists. They all wanted to know if I'd ever failed at anything. They didn't see failure as a weakness. Instead, they reasoned that anyone who had never come back from failure probably didn't have what it takes to build a business.