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case: ursula Burns-Xerox',s !

nspiring Leader (copyrighted 201-2 Ronatd H Humphrey att rights reserved)


Few CEO's have a more inspiring life story than Ursula Burns. ln July of 2009 she was named CEO of Xerox-the first African American woman to be CEO of such a large Fortune 500 company. She rose to an even higher rank when she added the Xerox chairwoman duties to her CEO role

and German-American heritage, and herfatherwasAfrican American. Ursula was raised by hersingle mother in a New York City housing project. Although she grew up in a tough neighborhood, her mother inspired her to be a success. Ursula recalls her mother frequently stating: "Where you are is not who yolr are" (Bryant, 2-21'-2010). Her mother also taught her two important lessons, the first about being a good person and the second about being successful. Her mother taught her that she needed to give back to the world more than she received from it. ln terms of success, her mother encouraged her to be curious, to get a good education, and to not see herself as a victim. Ursula followed her mother's advice about education by earning degrees in engineering from Polytechnic lnstitute of NYU and from Columbia University. And it was Ursula's curiosity and forthright speaking manner that attracted the attention of her first mentor at Xerox, Wayland Hicks, a corporate vice-president that made her his executive assistant and prot6g6. Later, her curiosity and willingness to ask tough questions favorably impressed the President of Xerox at that time, Mr. Allaire. president Allaire had declared during his monthly executive meetings that Xerox would stop hiring people, yet Burns noticed that Xerox kept hiring a thousand people a month. She boldly asked him why Xerox was still hiring more people. President Allaire rewarded her honesty by making her his own executive assistant. Ursula Burns credits both Hicks and Allaire with teaching her leadership skills. Together, they taught her about the need to communicate diplomatically with others and to give credit to others as a way of motivating them. As their executive assistants, she could learn by example from watching them lead Xerox. During the 1990s, Ursula was assigned to lead important projects and she supervised teams in two of Xerox's high growth areas:faxes and office network printing. ln 1999 she became vice-president of Xerox's global manufacturing. Then Xerox went through some turbulent times, with accounting scandals, falling stock prices, and even rumors of impending bankruptcy. Burns thought about leaving,

she didn't start at the top and she wasn't born with a silver spoon in her mouth. Her mother was of lrish

on May 20, 2010. But

but she felt an obligation to help Xerox survive. Fortunately, Xerox soon thereafter made Anne Mulcahy CEo, and she and Ursula developed a "true partnership" in theirefforts to transform Xerox. Ursula was given rapid promotions and placed in charge of important initiatives, and for the next severalyears Anne and Ursula worked together before Anne passed the CEO job (and then the chairwoman title)on to
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Ursula has continued to be recognized for her outstanding leadership, and in March 2O11she was recognized by Working Mother Magazine as one of the "Most Powerful Moms in STEM,, (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math). Truly, she's an inspiration for us all.

Applications: Ursula's mother taught her to be both a good person and to be successful. Can being a good person who wants to give back to others help one succeed? Ursula was good at establishing mentorship relations early in her career. How important is it to have mentors who can teach you leadership skills? What are the best ways to establish a mentorship relationship with senior leaders? Are there any leaders you can learn from?
Sources: NPR Staff, (5-23-2012). "Xerox CEO: 'lf You Don't Transform, you're Stuck,,,. Retrieved on 6-11-

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Case: Work with Friends: Tony Hsieh and Zoppos.com

From Leadership, By Ronald H. Humphrey, copyright 2OL2 all rights reserved


tn Delivering Hoppiness:

Path

to

Profits, Possion, ond Purpose, Tony Hsieh (2010) shows us

money how to make friends ond succeed in business. And how does Tony define success? Not by the defined he,s made by selling Zappos.com for 51.2 billion to Amazon.com. lnstead, Tony has always To a cynic, this may success and happiness in terms of his friendships and the life experiences he's had.
pursue his sound like a meaningless PR statement. But time and time again, Tony gave up money to interests and work with his friends. And Tony's willingness to put people and experiences first-over money-is what ultimately lead to the biggest financial returns for him and his friends. Tony and his good friend Sanjay thought they had hit the jackpot when they graduated from Harvard with great job offers from Oracle: at 540,000 a year (good money in 1995), they would be

job-running routine making more than their other friends from Harvard. But soon Tony found that his statistical tests-was pretty boring. Moreover, no one seemed to even know who he was, or care. He felt isolated. Sanjay was bored as well. Soon they started their own business-doing web design-on the income side just to keep from getting bored. After a few months, they had some paying clients, but their from web designing was still far less than they made at Oracle. Nevertheless, Tony and Sanjay decided
to quit Oracle (a nerve-racking decision for Tony) and devote their time to their web design business.
a test Tony and Sanjay came up with the idea for LinkExchange and in a couple of days they developed for free: if a program. LinkExchange allowed websites to advertise on other participating websites and website showed a thousand banner ads they would get 500 free ads posted on other sites, grew rapidly, and LinkExchange would be able to sellthe remaining 500 slots to advertisers. The site primarily in they were offered a million dollars for the site after only five months. People interested and turned money might have taken the easy cash, but Tony and Sanjay enjoyed what they were doing LinkExchange' down the offer. A few friends who had stopped by to visit began working with them on

founder Jerry wang soon 25 people, mostly friends, were working with them. Not long after, Yahoo's and running the offered them 520 million, but Tony and Sanjay were still having fun working together million site. Why sell when they were having a great time? They turned Jerry down, but accepted 53 mind working long from another investor (for a 2O% stake) so they could grow the business. Tony didn't hours because he was working with his friends. grew to about 100 Eventually Tony ran out of friends to hire and he had to hire strangers' LinkExchange stock options and money' employees. The new employees were smart, but connived and bickered over he found himself repeatedly The friendly atmosphere was gone, and Tony knew it was time to sell when million, with Tony's hitting the snooze button in the morning. Microsoft bought LinkExchange for 5265 year as a mostly share being 532 million, plus another 58 million if he agreed to stay for another that the figurehead officer. Although at first Tony agreed to stay on for the 58 million, he found gave up the extra cash' excitement was gone-what he wanted was some new experiences-and he with othersTony realized that the happiest times in his life involved being creative and connecting making money wasn't the keY.

Tony and some of his friends became venture capitalists (fund name: Venture Frogs) so they could help other people make their own dreams come true. They funded 20 entrepreneurial plans, most of which went bankrupt or were barely profitable. But one of the businesses was Zappos.com. Tony invested in Zappos.com because he liked the passion and excitement that Nick Swinmurn had for the idea of selling shoes over the internet. Tony began investing more and more of his own money in Zappos and began to take on more of the hands-on leadership responsibilities. His advisors urged him to limit his investments in Zappos.com, but Tony risked his own financial future because he felt committed to the people he knew at Zappos.com. Tony had to sell a loft he used for parlies (a 40% loss over his purchase price) to

help Zappos.com survive. Tony believed in Nick, Fred, and the many other people he had gotten to know at Zappos.com. After 10 years of struggle, Zappos.com finally became big enough to be profitable.
Zappos.com became profitable because Tony learned his lessons from LinkExchange about the importance of friendly interpersonal exchanges at work. Zappos.com became one of Fortune's 100 Best
Places to Work For because Tony encouraged everyone to know each other and to form friends at work. When employees' logged on, they would be shown pictures of other employees and asked their names

and some questions about them. Zappos.com had a long list of parties and social activities that employees could participate in. To weed out new recruits only interested in money, Zappos.com offered

new employees $2,000 if they decided to quit within the first few weeks-few accepted the offer. Zappos.com's turnover was unusually low because people didn't want to leave their coworkers-people who were like family to them. Also, Zappos.com didn't offshore its call center. Tony knew that friendly customer service was actually Zappos's core competency. Highly satisfied call center employees were able to provide friendiy service to customers and boost sales through word-of-mouth recommendations and repeat business. When you're happy and enjoy your job, you don't have to fake being cheerful to customers.

Applications: How important is it to work with friends? Are groups where everyone is friends more productive? Tony proved his commitment to LinkExchange and Zappos by investing his own money and by working hard-do you think his commitment spurred others to be equally committed? How could having parties and working with friends make call center employees better at providing
customer service?
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Case: /f Pays to Be Nice

From, Leadership, by Ronald H. Humphrey, copyrighted 201'2 all rights reserved ln their book, Ihe Pawer of Nice: How to Conquer the Eusiness World with Kindness, Linda Kaplan Thaler and Robin Koval argue that nice guys and gals can finish first. They should know: they built from scratch
The Kaplan Thaler Group, one of the fastest-growing

platitudes*the sort of stuff that you'll tell element\chool children but that you wouldn't use yourself in the cutthroat competitive world of business. O\e of their chapters is entitled, "Tell the Truth", and another one is even called, "Help Your Enemies". But they back up each of their "power of nice principles" with real life
billion dollars in billings. To a cynic, their advice might sound like sentimental
business examples where being nice helped them win clients and motivate employees. They believe
is the result not of fear and intimidation, but of smiles and compliments" (2006, page 3). They cite research that backs up their claims that nice people do better in almost all areas of life. Genial people are lucky in love, with one-half the average divorce rate (Sanders, 2005). Nice people are

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the USA, which now has

their "growth

healthier: older Americans who are friendly, helpful, and supportive have a 60% lower rate of premature death. And nice people make better employees: for every 2lincrease in siil-e employees' helpfulness and cheerfulness, revenue rises 1% (Goleman, Boyatzis, & McKee, 2002l,,
Linda and Robin back up the research with lessons from their own business careers. They believe that, "lt is often the small kindnesses-the smiles, gestures, co|npliments, favors-that make our day and can even change our lives" (2006: page a]6ie of ttEf po"r"riiiiliprinciples is that "positive impressions are like seeds" that grow and expand. Just like a tiny seed can grow into an enormous tree that bears tremendous amounts of fruit, our kind words and gestures can later pay big dividends in

terms of positive relationship with others and new business opportunities. Business people often feel they should be nice to their clients and bosses, and of course this makes sense. Linda and Robin describe how they were friendly to Donald Trump's wife Melania while she was an actress in an Aflac commercial for them. Their seeds of kindness lead to Linda being invited to be a judge on Trump's The Apprentice
show, where he gave a glowing endorsement of the advertising firm on national W free of charge. But Linda and Robin emphasize that you need to be friendly to everyone-even subordinates and strangers.

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their power of nice principle number 3, "people change". Someone who is a stranger, subordinate or apparently unimportant person can later become an important business contact or even your boss. They give an example where they received a call from a woman who wanted to meet with them-they thought perhaps she wanted to apply for a job. They met with her just to be nice. lt turned out the woman had been a junior employee who had worked with Linda 25 years earlier, and still remembered the kind way Linda had treated her when she was only a low level rookie. The woman repaid Linda's kindness 25 years later by giving her two big advertising contracts worth S40
million. ln another power of nice principle, Kaplan Thaler and Kovalstate that, "nice must be automatic." lf you are habitually nice to everyone you meet, you don't have to fake being nice on those

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