Peter Cohan
Executive in Residence
Babson College
On the Babson College faculty are 'Executives in Residence.' Peter Cohan discusses the benefits of cross-pollination between academics and business that a campus can achieve for its students. Cohan is the author of You Can't Order Change. web site; blog.
What is your academic and business background?
I have a 1980 electrical engineering Bachelor of Science degree from Swarthmore. I did graduate computer science work at M.I.T. while working for a computer and re-engineering consultancy founded by several M.I.T. professors, including Jim Champy. I then followed a business school goal and earned an MBA from Wharton in 1985. After Wharton I worked for Monitor Company as a consultant and later a manager. Their practice was global because their clients were large corporations like AT&T. My expertise was competitive strategy, and my leader at the firm was Michael Porter, who is still there and a Harvard Business School professor as well. I later founded a consultancy along the model used by my grandfather, an entrepreneurial accountant. In retrospect, my career is speckled with encounters with people who were simultaneously successful in the business world and on campuses.
What do you especially enjoy about being a part-time lecturer at Babson College?
I like the mix of undergraduate and graduate classroom work and advising. In the classroom, student teams are presented business cases with challenges they must solve. On the advising side I enjoy being able to advise students on two entrepreneurial outcomes, consulting and business startups. I especially enjoy the variety of Babson students. The graduate students here include a sizeable number of adults with considerable business experience. The undergraduates are mainly young adults who entered Babson from high school.
In what types of organizations is talent directly related to profits?
Include any organization that uses creative talent and brainpower to develop new solutions and new products. Health care is one. Aircraft manufacture is another. Information technology is a third. Business services like advertising, consulting, law, and accounting require talent and lots of brainpower. The media industry and education are also very much talent-driven.
How do organizations inadvertently de-motivate people?
One way is by establishing bureaucracies that shut off creative thinking among younger workers. Another is by creating an environment in which bearers of bad news get fired.
How can a senior executive identify employees who have leadership talent?
Did he or she take on leadership opportunities while in school? Did he then, or does he now, have a passion for something, especially something business-related? That passion can later deter discouragement in unfamiliar situations and in problem-solving. If the person is being hired for a position in which there's no procedure manual, individual initiative will be crucial to success.
How can a senior executive maximize the contributions of employees who may have no leadership talent?
Most career paths reward good employees by putting them in charge of other employees. However, a 'good employee' may be good because he can solve technical problems. He or she often fails as a manager. Instead, a better career path for a good problem-solver may be continually increasing his advisory responsibilities, and his compensation.
How well-suited is a campus to organizational improvement?
All people enjoy talking. In fact, campus people are paid to talk. And they're good at it. But change requires action, and many campuses are not action zones.
How did the information flow on Wall Street contribute to the recent collapse and credit market freeze-up?
Information flow contributed to the mess. The investment banks encouraged the rating agencies to give triple-A ratings to the investment equivalent of toxic waste. The investment banks used the triple-A ratings to convince buyers who would otherwise have known better. The money followed the bad information down the drain.
What explains a 30 percent drop in college and university endowments across the board?
There's been a 'keeping up with the Joneses,' or with the Harvards and Princetons, mentality among investment officers. When those exemplars lost thirty percent, so did all their followers.