When BLACK ENTERPRISE Editor-At-Large Caroline V. Clarke set out to write the powerful success book, Take A Lesson: Today’s Black Achievers on How They Made It and What They Learned Along the Way (Wiley Books, $24.95), her premise was a simple one: the best lessons on how to achieve peak performance comes from the performers themselves. Clarke’s book includes interviews with top achievers in media, politics, education, the arts and, of course, corporate America. Following is advice from three accomplished executives who are among the first generation of black CEOs at top 1,000 public companies. What worked for them, can work for you.
KENNETH I. CHENAULT, CEO, AMERICAN EXPRESS
SUBJECT: ALWAYS BE PREPARED TO GIVE YOUR BEST
There’s an African parable that I often include in the speeches I give because I think it starkly illustrates the challenges we face. It goes like this: Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest cheetah, or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a cheetah wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle, or it will starve to death. It does not matter whether you are a cheetah, or a gazelle. When the sun comes up, you’d better be running!
To western minds, this epitomizes type-A behavior. It’s a shortcut to a coronary; the paranoid vision of a dog-eat-dog world, where only the top dog survives. But if you have seen the plains of Africa — even if only in your heart — it conveys a different, more subtle meaning.
At any given moment, running fastest may be essential to existence because behind you may be a hungry predator. This is the reality of life. But running fastest is also the ultimate expression of freedom. It can be a celebration of the essence of life. So, what I take from that parable is that at any moment, no matter who you are, you must be prepared to give your best.
Personal integrity is a very big thing with me. Don’t sell yourself to the highest bidder. If you don’t believe in the product or ideals of a company or organization, don’t accept the job. Dedicate yourself to a core set of values. Without them, you will never be able to find personal fulfillment, and you will never be able to lead effectively.
Second, always try to associate with the best and brightest people. Don’t allow yourself to be intimidated by someone’s reputation for being hard and tough. A professor or boss who demands excellence from you will generally be a fair person. Believe in yourself, and never be afraid to challenge yourself. In other words, stay away from stupid people.
Third, don’t overestimate the importance of networking. Whether in school or in business, your main focus always needs to be on completing the job at hand. Having a good set of friends in the classroom will not help when the bluebooks are passed out. If you’re already in your career, don’t expect a network of strangers or acquaintances to lay the path to your success.
Execution — performance — is the bottom line measure for everything we attempt to do. To be successful, our EQ, or execution quotient, must equal our IQ. This is something I stress to American Express employees around the world. Network off of your performance.
Fourth, although security is nice, don’t shy away from organizations in chaos. In business, the greatest opportunities often lies in companies experiencing rapid growth and in those companies forced to reinvent themselves because they are in bad shape.
For African Americans, I think this is especially important, because a company undergoing crucial change is more willing to promote on merit than to hold back to serve old prejudices. American Express is a company that has absolutely thrived on rapid — even aggressive — change. Does it make things more difficult? Yes, at times.
But it can also make the environment, and your role in it, far more stimulating.
Fifth, recognize that being one of the only blacks — whether in a classroom, in a department, on a workteam, in an organization, or just in a meeting — automatically makes you very visible. Use this to help yourself. Look at it as an opportunity, and leverage that opportunity by making a visible contribution.
ANN F. FUDGE, CEO, YOUNG & RUBICAM
SUBJECT: DON’T MOVE AWAY FROM BEING WHO YOU ARE
There’s a lot of talk these days about mentors and sponsors. But, for me, what’s far more essential is internal focus and what I can learn to advance. And it is very important that an individual understand his or her core beliefs, because those basic values come through in everything you say and do and, in the end, those are the things that can propel you or hold you back.
My core beliefs are honesty, integrity, and dealing with people as I want to be dealt with. I use that as a basis for the things I stand for, and for deciding when to make a compromise. Sometimes people have different ways of reaching an end goal. As long as I get there, I am willing to compromise on the approach. But I don’t compromise on credibility and integrity or on treating people fairly.
Time and again my personal experience has shown that credibility is perhaps the key component in the leadership mix. You’ve heard the phrase, "I trust him enough to be in a foxhole with him. "That pretty much sums it up. People want to believe that in a tight situation, they can trust their leader. They can’t operate at peak performance if there is a question of trust, of credibility.
We have to stop looking at what other people are doing and how other people are leading their lives, and decide on what is right for each of us as individuals. When we look at others and try to pace ourselves against them, that is when we get confused.
So be real. Be you, not what you think you should be to fit into someone else’s definition of what you should be. Once you start moving away from being who you are at your core, your ability to remain truly authentic, to have real credibility, will slowly and very insidiously diminish. And one day you’ll wonder what has happened to you — the real you.
I truly believe that most successful people — and let me clearly state that I don’t define success as monetary success or celebrity, but rather as full realization of life’s potential — most truly successful people are authentic, they are credible.
RICHARD D. PARSONS, CEO, TIME WARNER
SUBJECT: DON’T LET RACISM DISTRACT YOU FROM YOUR GOALS
Eighty percent of what makes people successful is believing in yourself. A lot of people don’t try because they’re afraid to fail. Most people would rather follow than lead because it’s safer. That way, if it fails, they can say, "It’s not my fault. Wasn’t my idea." But if you don’t try, you can’t succeed. I will try almost anything of interest or that I think I want to do or need to do. If it works, it works, and if it doesn’t, hey, I tried.
The reality of the way I have experienced my life is that rave has not been an issue, period. Full stop. Having said that–I used to tell minority law students when they’d come into the workplace–racism does exist. It’s never particularly bitten me in the ass, but I know it’s out there. Blacks in the workplace are cut less slack, there’s less tolerance for failure, particularly up front. If a white person muffs his first big assignment at a law firm–and I’ve seen this happen–the natural tendency
of the partnership is to say, “Alright, well he wiffed the first time, but he’s a good man or she’s a good woman, he or she went to the right law school. So give him or her another chance.†When a black person wiffs, they don’t say it, but you can see it in their eyes. It’s like, “I knew they couldn’t carry the load anyway.†Subtle, but real. So, it’s a reality. But it’s kind of like being short or tall or heavy or thin. It’s just one of those things that you manage. And the management of that issue for me has never been particularly
challenging.
I do think there’s something to the notion of self-fulfilling prophecy. People who are quick to assume that anything negative that happens, or any different form of treatment, is racially motivated, are probably creating more barriers for themselves than they need to. Maybe some [motives] are [racist], but to assume that all of them are, creates a sense of your own reality that will take you down a bad path.
I’ve had people say things to me that are totally inappropriate, but if you just laugh and figure, it’s their problem not yours, and move on, it does not become an incident or an impediment. It’s a wonderful thing to be underestimated. It’s much better to be underestimated than overestimated.
I don’t get my feelings hurt or take that burden on. Let them feel or believe what they want. It’s not my issue. My issue is this: Can I come out of this having achieved what I went into it hoping to achieve? Period. Full stop.