Stanford B-School Dean Beats Harvard. But Dartmouth's Dean Gets A Rejection Notice.
In an interactive feature tied-in with this article, we invited readers to come to the website and vote whether these deans' answers to their own business school's application question made the grade.
The polls are now closed, and the most popular dean, according to Fast Company readers, is Stanford's Robert L. Joss. The dean's answer to Stanford's question "What matters most to you, and why?" led to a 57 percent acceptance rate.
Harvard's Kim Clark wasn't far behind with 55 percent, while Wharton's Patrick Harker garnered a respectable 50 percent and Kellogg's Dipak Jain managed a 40 percent acceptance rate.
Paul Danos, Dean of the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth didn't fare as well, with 44 percent actually voting to give the dean a rejection notice!
Danos' answer to Tuck's question, "What is the most important thing you have recently learned?" just didn't make the grade with our readers.
Q: Describe a situation where leadership and teamwork were critical to the outcome of a project in which you were directly involved.
A: We just completed the largest business-school fund-raiser ever. In six years, we raised more than $425 million. The campaign was the effort of an incredible team, but one that had to be directed. I took charge of it three years ago when I became dean. My challenge was to create an environment where everybody felt included. With this kind of campaign, the tendency is to reach out to senior people. I made it a priority to energize the next generation of alumni leadership.
When you seek out junior voices, two things surprise you: how much those young alumni have to say and how important it is. At the same time, so many of them -- people who have achieved extraordinary success -- feel as though they're not being taken seriously.
I've learned that lesson multiple times during my career, and it's about listening to what I call "the voice of David." It's actually a tradition in Benedictine monasteries. When a decision has to be made, the abbot asks each monk's opinion, starting with the youngest. The order is intentional. In the Bible, nobody listens to David. There were plenty of gizmos with which to fight Goliath, and David was dismissed as a punk kid with a slingshot. In the end, the kid was right. When I've made a good decision, it's usually because I've listened to the voice of David. And when I've made a poor decision, I haven't taken the time to listen.
In a position of leadership, everything that comes to your desk has been filtered. You have to make a conscious effort to go out and talk with people, and then listen and actively engage them. I spend more than half of my time outside the office. I might hang out in the MBA café or go to the Thursday pub night. Even little things matter. Does somebody always deliver your coffee to the office or do you get your own? One day, I was in line to buy a cup of coffee, and Mike Useem, a professor here, said to me, "You're in line? Good for you. That's the right leadership model."
Q: What is the most important thing you have recently learned?
A: Progress cannot happen without a good narrative. When I became dean, I learned how powerful the well-communicated idea can be as a tool to inform new directions and inspire new energy.
Eight years ago, we faced an organizational growth imperative. On the basis of bringing in world-class scholars who were also good teachers, we grew the faculty by more than one-third over a five-year period. We also grew the student body by one-third, from 180 students to 240.
Of course, people were afraid of such changes. Tuck is a place steeped in history, spirit, and small-scale community; naturally, they didn't want to lose those things. They needed convincing. And at first, I didn't realize that it was my job to be the articulator. But I quickly learned. My strategy statement has been at the heart of all of those changes, and I rewrite it every year. The basic notion stays the same: Tuck can be both highly competitive and highly distinctive. But I articulate that message in different ways.
Leadership is an unbelievably hard communications job. You must have a firm grasp of your competitive environment, encapsulate the spirit of an organization, package it in strategic statements, and then emphasize those statements repeatedly, so that the message becomes part of the conversation.
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