Harvard Business School

Transcript

It was a program called Odyssey, and it was taught by Shoshana Zuboff, who had a rich history here. And the program was unlike anything else the school had ever done. It was a single person program, and there was no other faculty involved, and it wasn't based in research. And honestly, sitting here thinking about it, I am not sure how it ever actually got run. But she was an example of an extraordinarily talented, really smart, passionate woman who had a set of ideas that she wanted to get out into the market on how do you think about what to do with the second or third part of your career?

And it was two weeks of the most intense intellectual exercise I've ever had. It was extraordinary. And that was four years ago, and I still think about it at least once a week, and use the tools all the time. I think that's similar to what happens in a number of our programs, particularly the long ones. . . . .

I believe that Executive Education is transformational probably in a different way than the MBA program was. I clearly am a different person coming out of the MBA program than I was going in. But that happened over a long period of time. My son's a first year student now, and I'm actually beginning to see that. It will be fun to watch that in the five years or so after he graduates.

But in -- so it's not so much the longitudinal transformation, but if I go back to my Odyssey experience I was -- no question I was transformed by that program. You know, transformed by having processes and things that I could use on a regular basis that would allow me to do things differently than I ever would have before. . . . .

I used that same framework again this week, when I had another opportunity to do something that was quite significant that I can guarantee I would have done if I was using the same frameworks and analysis from pre-Odyssey. And I would have been unhappy because I would have done it. This allowed me to do what I am sure is the right thing.

So is that transformational? It feels transformational to me. And that was a two-week program. And I am sure that if you -- if you get extraordinary people, participants, all with a similar objective together with really extraordinary faculty who can do things that I don't think any other group of faculty can do, that often equates into transformation.