Darden FY Day with Habitat for Humanity

Hello everyone! I returned to Charlottesville last week and it is glorious!! The life of a second-year in business school is sweet indeed!

No time for rest with me as I was immediately thrust back into the swing of things. This year I've joined fellow blogger Lily West on the Darden Outreach Committee, where I will be helping to coordinate Darden's involvement with our community neighbors. We have an ambitious agenda this year, including a canned food drive, tutoring at local schools, and a fund-raising dance marathon!!

Last week was orientation week for the incoming First Years. This year Darden introduced a new Outreach Day at the end of the week on Saturday for interested FY volunteers to break away from school and contribute to the C'Ville community. Students were able to participate in activities with the SPCA, the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank, and with Habitat for Humanity.

I took charge of the Habitat effort and am proud to report it was a great success! We had two shifts of roughly 40 students each putting up dry wall and siding on a multi-family community of homes. I'm especially proud of the students who made it out for the early (8AM) shift after a late Friday night of partying! The crew leaders with Habitat were grateful for the assistance and impressed with what the FY students were able to accomplish.

This new group of students is definitely service-oriented and off to a great start in school. You can see all the pictures from the day here. Welcome Darden Class of 2013!

Summer Learnings

As the summer internship winds down and Report Out Day has past, a time of reflection is upon me. Trapped inside by the Houston summer heat (under a heat advisory for the entire month of August thus far), I sit at my computer to ponder the insights I've gained over my 11 weeks here.

My summer at Waste Management has been a tremendous learning experience and I am delighted that I had the opportunity to work there. I have connected with a great network of colleagues and MBA intern peers, and I am grateful at the level of responsibility and access that WM entrusted in its interns this summer. I certainly recommend the WM Organic Growth Group to any incoming first-years considering an internship next summer.

With that overview in mind, I give you all a list of key learnings from my summer. Several may sound trite, but certainly these are meaningful to me.

1. At a public company, the shareholders are the boss
Of course this is obvious, but the meaning didn't sink in for me until recently. Before business school I had worked at a private company without any outside investors, so I knew exactly who I was ultimately answerable to -- his office was down the hall.

In the weeks leading up to WM's 2nd quarter earnings announcement on July 28th, I knew things weren't looking too rosy. Discretionary costs such as travel were being pared back and I had heard about a hiring freeze, but those who had been around for awhile said this wasn't cause for concern. Then, three days before the earnings release, I learned that my summer mentor had been laid off, along with several other employees at corporate. Earnings were dismal as I suspected, 5 cents/share below Street estimates, and WM's stock was pounded (as I write this, it is down 20% from when I started my internship -- which hopefully won't be held against me when managers consider a full-time offer!).

Since I joined WM, its stock (blue line) has had its butt kicked by both the S&P 500 (green line) and arch rival Republic Services (red line)

Now I had seen people terminated at my pre-B-school job, but never any of my close peers or people above me. Having my mentor Greg laid off hit my morale -- hard. I had lost the person I could bounce ideas off of for my summer projects, or ask questions about interpreting old analysis that didn't quite make sense. I had lost the person who set up intern lunches with all the managing directors that touch our group, and the person who made sure I was actually being paid. I just felt...loss.

Such is life at the big corporation, I realize. The layoffs felt reactive...unnecessary in better times. But when shareholders demand costs come down, the big corporation needs to respond.

CEO David Steiner talks about the difficulty in managing today's business while simultaneously investing in the future. Some investors don't care about the future, or don't believe in his story about why the company needs to change. I wonder how much these future investments played a role in missing the earnings estimate.

2. Corporate America can be very tribal
Even at a company of 70 employees, like my last job, cliques develop and managers develop favorites. That said, everyone pretty much knows everyone, and interacting with the entire organization isn't all that difficult.

At a 43,000 person company, of course, one couldn't possibly know everyone. One couldn't even know the 900-odd people at corporate. That said, I'm surprised by the extent to which people cling to small clans at a big company.

Take the 44th floor, for example. Next to the Organic Growth folks you have Corporate Communications. Down the hall are folks in Customer Experience and Marketing. These four kingdoms all seem to act independently, held together in a loose union by a common break room and air conditioning. Perhaps this is my fault, but I haven't even spoken with half the folks on my floor, probably. Off my floor this stat is far worse -- I have only been to floor 45 for the vending machine, and haven't even walked on floors 42, 46, or 47...all WM.

In analyzing this, I suppose that part of the reason could be that our projects rarely overlap. I associate strongly with those I work with, but as an intern I haven't generally been comfortable introducing myself to those who I don't. And I think this is the culture at WM. I hope that as a full-time employee I would act differently.

End of my ride-along on a truck, pulling in to the scale at the Atascocita Landfill

3. Enforcing culture from the top is a struggle
I sense a near universal disdain at WM for Human Resources. I think people's gears get ground partly by the prolonged orientation days and the ever-present reminders about how to spell G.R.E.E.N. (Great operations, Respected brand, Empowered employees, Engaged customers, Neighbors of each other and our environment -- it's on my screen saver!). I see the struggle -- managing a big battleship of an organization and trying to steer it to be a high-performing operation by delivering messages to people who generally want to be free thinkers and not told what to do.

At my old company, culture was rarely discussed, which was both good and bad -- a high-performing company evolved over time, but analysts sometimes felt overworked with a lack of purpose. The approach of the big corporation feels somewhat "1984"-ish at first, but perhaps I would grow accustomed to this messaging over time.

4. At a large company, the information you need is usually somewhere internal -- unlocking the gatekeeper can be a big challenge
During intern HR orientation (everyone's favorite!), we played a game in which your team needed to cross a vicious desert to reach a mining village, with the goal to bring as much gold home as possible. Your team could ask an old man for advice, but your team would lose time for hiking and mining, and the old man might prove unreliable. Turned out that the old man knew his stuff.

For almost every project I've needed information on this summer, there's usually an "old man" at WM (not literally, of course) with the wisdom to guide me to an answer. However, accessing this information is not always easy. Sometimes I wouldn't know that information was available internally, or sometimes I wouldn't know who in a particular group to contact. I discovered that people outside one's tribe can become very busy and difficult to get a hold of. These communication differences were often magnified by the large distances between people, sometimes across the country even. And sometimes information would be withheld, as the gatekeeper feared the information may be used against him.

I'm not sure how WM could improve its information sharing, but certainly reaching folks in the big corporation was not nearly as easy as in my old job.

5. Public exposure can be cool...except when it's not
A nice thing about working at a big company is that people outside the company know what you do. Well, they probably don't know what YOU do, specifically, but you probably don't need to explain what your company does to them. In my old job, explaining what a power trading company did and why it was valuable for society was a big challenge!

The WM Organic Growth Group explores all sorts of cutting-edge investments into new waste conversion technologies, some of which have really cool potential (in my humble opinion). The group was even profiled in the December 2010 issue of Fortune magazine (see my March posting). However, with that exposure means all sorts of used-car salesman coming to WM with crackpot ideas on how they can turn waste into gold. I've needed to screen several, which has been fun...or not!

I'd never worked before for a company that could buy space for its logo on a stadium scoreboard

6. Some companies DO value work-life balance
A BIG positive from my summer. Leaving in the evening by 6PM has been lovely, and I've put in a fairly pathetic effort in trying to fill all of those extra hours in my day. I still remember the days at my old job of sometimes trying to sneak out at 5:45 to catch friends for happy hour downtown -- people definitely took notice there. At Waste Management, on the other hand, the seemingly early departure is strongly encouraged. Definitely a plus.

7. I'm still young
Surrounded by a pool of recent college graduates at my old company, it was easy to forget that I remain a recent entry into the job market. Working in the company of "grown-ups" at WM has pleasantly reassured me that 28 is still a young age and that a life of career potential awaits!

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Well, that's a wrap on my summer. Time to pack up my car again and head back to Charlottesville!

Lunch with David Steiner, Waste Management CEO

From left: Chris, Daniel, Nimisha, David Steiner, Meredith, Stephanie, and me

Last Monday I was privileged to have the honor of dining with David Steiner, CEO of Waste Management. The Strategy and Organic Growth MBA interns met David in the "Parlor" room, the fancy-pants corner suite in corporate headquarters connecting the CEO's office with the Board of Directors' conference room. Swank digs indeed! Over a catered lunch from Lenny's Sub Shop, the local sandwich place in the basement of First City Tower, we picked David's mind to learn his thoughts about the future trajectory of Waste Management's business.

First, though, David was the one asking us the questions, an excellent strategy for buying himself time to eat his sub. He wanted to know how we thought about his company's branding, going as far as to suggest that the name "Waste Management" may not accurately represent its business. For a company looking to ride at the front of the sustainability train, Steiner may have a point. David believes that in 10-20 years a big transformation will have happened in the waste industry, that we will actually be mining landfills for raw materials. He thinks that Waste Management could eventually pay consumers for their garbage if investments in technologies pan out that can convert wastes to chemicals and fuels. David wants to put his competition out of business through his investments in these new innovations.

David told us his story about becoming CEO, which was somewhat unusual as he entered neither as a "company lifer" nor as a "celebrity boss". Rather, Steiner entered Waste Management in 2000 as deputy general counsel, a time when WM was reeling in the wake of an accounting fraud scandal and shareholder lawsuits. These lawsuits gave David visibility with the Board of Directors, which relied on his opinions to help dig WM out of its problems. Subsequently, Steiner was promoted to Chief Financial Officer in 2003 despite repeatedly being told by Board members during the interview process that he was "unqualified". David actually had a speech prepared to the Board for if he didn't receive the position, and was almost completely unprepared for when he did! A year later he became the most visible person in the company.

David shared with us his advice for aspiring CEO's of the future. Though talent is important, he said, timing also plays a crucial role in moving ahead with your career. Therefore, you must put yourself in situations where you are given visibility and asked for your opinion by superiors so that you will be considered for promotion when opportunity strikes. If you're not in such a position in your career, he said, then it's time to find another one.

Also, David believes that one can broadly categorize those in corporate America into two types: those who do as they are told, and those who ask "Why?". David firmly believes that businesspeople should aspire for careers where they can ask this latter question.

Finally we talked about the challenges of being CEO, as one would have little visibility into the role until one is actually in it (or very close). CEO is a 24/7 job, says Steiner. A CEO needs to avoid the "Godfather" dilemma -- the virtues of a corporate structure (established decision-makers, ability to manage distant operations, steady cash flows) are constantly met by roadblocks to information by lieutenants who don't tell the CEO everything. In fact, the CEO can't possibly know everything about the business; he just doesn't have enough time to research for himself. Therefore, Steiner said, it's vital as CEO get people you trust around you.

For Waste Management specifically, Steiner is challenged by getting people to believe the vision of his business's transformation from a company which hauls trash to a landfill to one which gives waste materials new life. Shifting the course of the "battleship", as David likes to refer to his company, isn't easy.  Steiner talks frequently with other CEOs who have managed transformations and is good friends with the CEO of Best Buy, an American electronics mega-retailer which managed to change itself from a high-volume outlet to a premium high-service store. Because of his focus on the future, Steiner doesn't like managing quarterly earnings, and speaks primarily to the 40% of investors he believes will stay with the company for the long-term.

Overall, I came away very impressed with David and his leadership of Waste Management. David is highly personable and could tell stories about the business for hours. I think storytelling ability is a trait which associates itself with all of the CEOs I have listened to since beginning at Darden. Also, I find that CEOs possess incredible energy for their grueling jobs. CEO's aren't superhuman -- they put on their pants one leg at a time just like the rest of us -- but they do all seem to be powered by nuclear energy. With endless meetings and pieces of information flying around these individuals are able to stay engaged and maintain their roles as face of the company. I don't quite know how they pull it off, but I realize that if I don't find this zest for a career that I will never rise to the top.

Houston and the Summer Internship

After my memorable Darden trip to Israel following the end of classes, I sadly had little time to linger around Charlottesville before packing my clothes into my car for the 1200 mile trek to Houston, Texas. I have been here for three weeks already -- time flies here just like at Darden -- so it's time to give an update and reflect a little.

They weren't lying about the summer heat on the Gulf Coast of Texas...it has been wicked hot here since I arrived in Houston. The average high temperature so far this month has been 98 degrees F!! I've dealt with summer heat before but never this relentlessly and my comfort zone, calibrated by many temperate summers growing up in the northern US, is being seriously stretched. I pray to the gods every day to keep my air conditioning in working condition...so far so good!

I've never lived in Texas before and I've heard from "real" Texans that Houston doesn't provide one with a proper introduction to this unique state, but certainly there are many differences to the style of living here compared with other places I've lived. My first impressions of Houston weren't great. I've never encountered a more car-dependent city, and I've never seen so many strip malls or tinted car windows. Houston is sprawling and super flat. The concrete and asphalt on its six-lane "Texas-sized" highways seem to extend forever. Way too many pickup trucks here, almost exclusively a lifestyle statement as few people are hauling anything -- there aren't any cattle ranches here anymore. The lack of zoning sprinkles nice neighborhoods next to dodgy ones, and the downtown is mostly a dead zone after work hours. I miss beautiful Charlottesville's rolling hills, its trees, and its starry nights.

The Greenopolis "Dream Machine"

Many of the native Houstonians I've encountered look at me as some odd foreigner who needs his head checked. "You don't have any family here?" "You're not a student at Rice?" My car is still the only one with Virginia plates which I've seen since arriving. "Austin is way cooler." I was a little shocked by the negativity with which these locals regard their hometown. I'm a non-oil guy in an oil town, which I suppose does make me an odd breed.

However, as I've started to make my way around town I have seen the good side of Houston too. The people here tend to be friendly and unhurried, a stark contrast from the DC-area and most of the Northeast US. The city is remarkably diverse, even more so than Washington DC in my opinion. In Houston you will find a melting pot of immigrants recently arrived from Asia and Latin America, and you can eat just about any type of cuisine found under the sun (the dumpling places downtown are particularly tasty). In a big city there is always something to do or a new hot spot to visit. And people tell me that winter is pretty pleasant here!

Though my verdict on Houston thus far is mixed, I have had a good experience at Waste Management thus far. There's now a lot more that you can do with garbage besides incinerate it or dump it in a landfill, and I'm excited by the investments that WM is pursuing to prepare for the future of its business. I'm interning in the Organic Growth Group, which serves as a business development arm for the business, and see the work as almost like working at a venture capital group. Globally, the biomass conversion area of renewable energy is booming right now with activity, and I'm developing a far greater appreciation as I work up a steep learning curve at WM. My coworkers, most with MBAs themselves, are intelligent and pleasant to work with. They have welcomed the interns almost like family, which I have greatly appreciated.

Corporate America is a new experience for me too. Working at the headquarters of a Fortune 500 company has a far different feel than a 70-person energy trading company. I zoom up an express elevator every morning to the 44th floor and make sure my name badge is clipped on my belt. So far our managers have kept us interns to strictly 40-hour weeks. Leave at 5:30??? Whoa! I actually can have a life in the evenings now!

So, in spite of the weather, no regrets in coming to Houston for the summer. I have greatly enjoyed the novelty of trying out this new lifestyle.

L'Chayim! Darden GBE Israel 2011

Shalom! I returned to the US on Sunday after a fantastic two weeks in Israel. With all due respect to Brazil, Argentina, Spain, and Sweden, I doubt there could be a better-organized FY GBE experience at Darden!

The purpose of the trip was to focus on entrepreneurship and innovation in Israel, which has become known as the "Startup Nation" -- it has more start-up businesses per capita than any other country in the world. We would be meeting with companies and government officials and working on projects with Israeli startups which were interested in entering the US market. We also would be visiting historical and cultural sites in Israel and learn both about the Arab-Israeli conflict as well as the religious-secular divide in Israel. 25 intrepid Darden FYs (and 2 SYs) would go along for the journey.

Venture capitalist Scott Tobin, who once turned down the chance to invest in Facebook.  Oops.

After rushing through a final week of exams and group projects at Darden, we flew to Israel just in time for its Memorial Day on May 9th. Unlike Memorial Day in the US, which is more about going to the beach than remembering soldiers, the Israelis take their Memorial Day seriously. After a morning meeting with an expat venture capitalist, we traveled to Yitzhak Rabin Square in Tel Aviv, where we watched a moment of silence at 11AM. A siren sounded and everyone left their vehicles, standing at attention. A very powerful moment!

In the afternoon we had lunch with our startup's entrepreneur and then in the evening the Independence Day celebrations began! The contrast between the somber Memorial Day and the exuberant Independence Day celebration is deliberate -- Israelis want to ensure that they remember the fallen who helped create and preserve the Israeli nation state. Independence Day fireworks and music were certainly much more fun, but I was too jet-lagged to really make a big night out of it. The actual holiday the following day was light -- we saw the Independence Museum (where the Israeli state was declared in 1948) and walked around old Tel Aviv and the port of Jaffa.

Outside the Knesset (Israeli Parliament)

On May 11th we traveled to Jerusalem, where we met with the Accountant General (the CFO of Israel) and a couple foreign affairs ministers. In the afternoon we toured the Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust museum, and received a lecture on Israeli business culture following our evening dinner. On our second day in Jerusalem, we met officials at the Ministry of Trade, followed by a visit to the Israeli Parliament (the Knesset). The afternoon was intense -- an afternoon tour of the Jerusalem Old City, including visits to the City of David, the Church of the Holy Sepulchure, and the Wailing Wall.

On Friday, May 13th we traveled to an Israeli commune, the Kibbutz Magal, where we met with irrigation giant Netafim. We toured their facilities and learned about the distinctive lifestyle in a collectivist community. In the afternoon we heard a heated debate between a reform Jewish rabbi and a follower of Orthodox Judaism, after which we recognized the Shabbat, the beginning of the Jewish day of rest on Friday evening. In largely secular Tel Aviv, though, it was plainly visible that this was not being widely observed.

Saturday was a day to work on our group projects for our Sunday presentations. Sunday is a workday in Israel, and my internal clock was a bit off when I was told we would be waking up for an 8:30 AM presentation by the head of PR at Better Place, and Israeli electric car startup. This presentation though ended up being one of the best on our trip. Better Place is pioneering an electric car model in which you rent the battery but receive free charging and battery swaps at a network of convenient automated stations. They launch in Israel and Denmark later this year...check them out!

After listening to Better Place we packed our bags and drove north to Haifa, Israel's third city. At the Technion, Israel's equivalent of MIT, each of the student groups presented to our six startups. We had three solar energy startups (Solar Bead, TIGI, Eternegy), a pharmaceutical startup (Avixenna), a software startup (AIType), and an online Israeli art portal (Omanoot). My team had worked for several weeks with Eternegy, a company which has developed an innovative tracking device which aligns photovoltaic solar panels with the highest energy photons from the sun. Through this project we learned a lot about project development in the solar industry and the challenges faced by those introducing new technologies. Though a lot of work, I really enjoyed this experiential learning component of our GBE.

The final two days of our GBE were spent in the northern part of Israel. We traveled to an industrial park where we met the highly energized founder of luxury soapmaker Gamila's Secret, kayaked on the Jordan River, toured an army base in the Golan Heights, met with the Israeli offices of Qualcomm and Google, and toured the beautiful Baha'i Gardens. Following the end of the Darden GBE, I stayed with a few classmates for the rest of the week, taking a road trip to the Negev Desert, the Dead Sea, the ancient fortress of Masada, the resort town of Eilat, and into Jordan to visit the lost city of Petra.

Darden Professor Gal Raz, our fearless leader

The Israel GBE not only was an exciting and amazing experience, but provided a great supplement to our business school educations. Business today is highly global, and without an appreciation of this your business career is likely to be short-circuited. Israel faces many challenges, for sure, but this emerging economic phenomenon is likely to continue to disrupt existing markets with its new and innovative technologies. I came away with a view of Israel quite different from what you see on the evening news, a view of a country which lives a rather normal lifestyle, albeit with typical Israeli impatience and informality. The Darden Israel GBE provided me with a far deeper view into contemporary Israeli business culture than I could have gleaned from personal travel. My GBE mates and I are grateful to Professor Gal Raz for the effort he made to introduce us to his home country!

3...2...1...ISRAEL!!!

Life in the Darden bubble continues to defy the traditional boundaries of space and time. You wouldn't believe it unless you were here but the last four weeks have flown by in a split-second and I am 48 hours away from boarding a flight for my Darden Global Business Experience to Israel! This week I've wrapped up classes, worked on four group projects simultaneously, started building the foundation for an ambitious Energy Club agenda next year, and tried to find balance by making time for some belly-busting gym action...very important before a visit to the beaches of Tel Aviv!

The triumvirate of roommates all head to Israel next week

My first year at Darden has been ending rather anticlimactically. Unlike high school (or even college) there's no crescendo to the end of the school year symphony...rather it just...sort of ends. You say bye to a couple folks and trust you'll see the rest when you return to Charlottesville in 3.5 months. As one of my Facebook friends posted today, "This is the way first year ends: not with a bang but a whimper (or the click of an "upload" button)."

Well, no time to loiter on this blog post.  Need to grab a quick Cinco de Mayo margarita as a stress relief prior to taking my last exam of the year.  Talk to you soon from the Middle East!

Awesome Section E -- Darden Cup Champs!!

Celebrating a Section E Darden Cup three-peat!

I'm not normally one to brag, especially when said bragging may alienate 80% of the Darden student body, but another year has ended and my beloved Section E is once again the Darden Cup champion!

For those us you not familiar with the Darden Cup (probably everyone not at Darden), this yearlong competition tests a section's unity through events which challenge both intellectual and athletic talents. Points are awarded for performance (after all, this is business school) but also for participation from First Years, Second Years, and faculty. Events range from flag football to softball to soccer to trivia. Throw in a community outreach component and you have a lengthy yearlong battle to establish true section supremacy.

Getting manhandled by a Section B student in Darden Cup soccer!!

The competition's purpose is to promote cohesion amongst each First Year section and Section E was able to gel around the goal of winning the Cup quickly. As two-time defending champions we had weighty expectations to live up to, and our Second Year alumni set the tone from day one: We were going to win. Thankfully, Section E had been gifted with 68 students who wanted our group to compete and win at everything -- see Dave Miller's post for more about our competitive nature. We had strong leadership from Section Rep Evan Smith (now DSA President) supported by a strong team dedicated to supporting our exam preparation, outreach efforts, and social lives.  Nicknaming ourselves the "leprecats" (based on a sectionmate's inspirational speech), we developed a "front-runner" strategy -- pick up points early and energize our section with our successes. This worked like a charm: Section E had the best participation numbers at almost every event.

Section E final day of class in December

Along the way we discovered hidden talents and found a way for everyone to contribute. We weren't the most athletic section -- our victories were in the decidedly non-athletic dodgeball, bowling, and trivia events -- but through participation and energy we were able to maximize our points at every event, and in the end won by a resounding margin.

Darden Cup isn't the only way in which First Year sections jockey with one another. Witness the Section E Mischief Team, whose pranks on neighboring Section D you can watch on YouTube, or Section A's obsession with stealing Section B's beloved mascot (see Sara Sajadi's entry for details). There are a few injuries every year from aging former athletes with Type A personalities crashing into one another in Darden Cup athletic events, but generally speaking the pursuit of the Cup is good clean fun and a way to forever forge a Darden student's section identity.  Though Section E hasn't shared case discussions together in room 190 since December, you can still identify E'ers by our "High Five Tuesday" tradition and our impassioned section spirit.

So, prospective First Years, you all should be spending your summers hoping and dreaming that Marsh Pattie's random name generator places you in the decidedly most awesome section at Darden, Section E!