CHAPTER 8

A Connection to Contribution: Creating a Footprint

Featured Narrative: Dana Born, Co-Director of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, Lecturer in Public Policy, Retired Brigadier General, USAF, and Ninth Dean of the USAF Academy

Dana Born had a goal to climb all 55 of the 14,000+ foot peaks in Colorado, the state where she lived and worked as the ninth dean of the United States Air Force Academy. Only two peaks remained when she left for the East coast, for Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, where she would be teaching students and executives about leadership. A brigadier general who had a 30-year career in the USAF, who held positions of command during 9/11 and Afghanistan, Dana was retiring. Her family needed more of her attention, and there was a full bench of very capable leaders who could succeed her. If there was such a thing as an ideal time to leave, that was it. But the challenge, Dana tells me during our interview, was that in the military, “you get addicted to the mission.” What would take its place? What could?

“It was a hard step,” Dana recalls. The natural career move would have been to a university presidency, but that would have placed demands of time and social commitments on her family similar to those during her position as dean. And, besides, she wanted to give her full attention to transitioning well, to keeping it as smooth as possible for those whom she was leaving. Not to mention that it was a big move for her family; they’d been on the base in Colorado for 11 years. She’d tackle her next chapter a little later. But then the calls started coming in. She immediately ruled out the university presidencies that search firms brought. While she aspired to such a role in the future, it simply wasn’t the right time, wasn’t next. There was the nonprofit that was doing work in ethics and education that she explored. And then there was Harvard. It would mean being in the classroom again rather than administrating, and that was a huge draw. But it was the Kennedy School’s mission, one that she describes as “developing top students for public service and preparing them to be successful in their passions to make the world a better place” that convinced her. It wasn’t simply that the mission was so similar to the Academy’s; it was that she thought it the place where she could bring her passion for leadership, for working with leaders of the future, to really make a difference.

“Having command is the pinnacle of being able to lead within our Air Force,” Dana tells me. Earlier in her career, when she worked at the Pentagon on several policy assignments, a two-star general approached her to consider just such a position. And Dana’s first response was to tell the general that her area was in policy. Command, Dana tells me, is a “huge responsibility and a great privilege,” and one that she didn’t feel ready for. Looking back, she says, “I didn’t have the confidence that I had the ability because I hadn’t had the experiences I thought you needed to be able to command.” But when the general asked if she was declining, Dana could not. Her ascension to dean of the faculty was similar. There was a nudge from a mentor who asked if she was interested, and when Dana thought herself too junior for the role, her mentor suggested that Dana allow others to make that determination before disqualifying herself. In fact, it was Dana’s duty to step forward to serve.

Reflecting back, there were many people “who believed more in me than I believed in myself,” Dana recalls. People who had a profound influence on her life and career, who planted the seeds of ideas, made suggestions, saw her potential, helped her to see what was possible. She now measures her own success “to the extent that I’m able to do that for others,” she tells me. Teaching at Harvard, being in the classroom “closer connected with students,” as she describes it, was a way to do that.

Despite her successful path and the bounty of mentors, it wasn’t always blue skies. Her own experiences with “crucible moments,” as she calls them, times of trial for a leader, infuse the perspective she now brings to the classroom. “A real pivotal moment for me was a challenge I went through not long before I retired,” Dana says. I’ve asked her about any critical junctures during her 30-year career and what might have helped her to steer through them. “Pivot points typically are around crucible moments, whether it’s a failure or a death or a health challenge.” But those times, as difficult as they are, can be used for reassessment and reevaluation of oneself, for taking stock of one’s determination, focus, and direction. For Dana, that meant remembering where she most needed to invest her energy and attention, where it was most important. As Dean of the Faculty, “There were a lot of people that were relying on me to serve in that capacity and to stay focused on what it was that we were contributing to the overall mission,” she recalls.

In her course on authentic leadership at Harvard, she teaches her students about the importance of crucibles, that the choices leaders make during those times of trial are not only about how they find their way through, but about what lies beyond, about how to use a particularly difficult circumstance for something more. She shares a snowboarding analogy with me and explains that snow boarders who are able to go quite high “are not always successful in terms of what they do at the top. Their success is really about how they transition through the lowest point in order to reach their highest point.” Crucibles, the toughest moments of our professional and personal lives, have the potential to “contribute to us being part of something greater than ourselves,” Dana says.

As she glances back to take in the whole of her leadership experiences, Dana acknowledges that life can be challenging, far more so than she ever thought growing up. But in the next breath, she says, “There’s resolve in each of us.” Although it was difficult to leave the Air Force and its mission, I wonder if Dana hasn’t discovered her own, one where education and leadership, although admitted passions, are vehicles for putting trial to use. And I wonder if that inclination toward finding a larger context for life’s challenges, for contribution, even in the midst of turmoil, isn’t both her resolve and her mission.

Featured Narrative: Glen Tullman, CEO, Livongo Health, and Managing Partner, 7 Wire Ventures

Sometimes you have to bet the company. You’re in a race against time, to get to market, to meet an anticipated shift, to stay ahead of technology. And those times, Glen Tullman tells me, are scary. When the former CEO of Allscripts left in 2012, he’d grown the company to more than 1.4 billion dollars in revenue from a starting line of less than 50 million. He’d bet wisely, having created substantial success from significant risk. When I interviewed him in his new seat as CEO of Livongo Health, he was starting over. That, he said, was a little scary, too.

There are two critical junctures in the life of a company, Glen tells me. One is at the beginning when you’re in a fight for survival, the other comes later when you attempt to leverage for success. They are equally crucial, requiring an intense focus. But they are distinct. And Glen has seen his way through both. With a knowing laugh, he says, “Either one can kind of kill you.” Survival requires money, sales, quality processes, and really good people. But that just means you’re up and running, you’ve got your head above water. Success requires something altogether different because it asks different questions: How do we take this to the next level? How do we become the industry leader?

In an ideal world, you and your team grow as the company grows. There’s time for iteration, for experimentation, for practicing. And in that context, leaders can foster a “very rapid kind of learning environment,” Glen explains, one in which mistakes are made and shared. Google and Facebook, for example, are known for constantly learning from their users, for experimenting with what works and what doesn’t, he says. But on occasion, there is a deficit of time. “In some cases, you no longer have the luxury of saying we’re going to do these things small,” Glen tells me. Looking back on his tenure as CEO of Allscripts, when they were trying to get electronic prescribing into the hands of doctors, he says, “We just believed that we had to take a substantial amount of risk because we thought the world was changing. We were very fortunate that we got those right. Most of the time.”

But what’s required for the survival of the CEO, for the person under whose guidance and leadership the future of the company resides, I wonder? What’s needed to face the enormity of the responsibility and the risk? Without a moment’s hesitation, Glen says, “You have to have a tremendous amount of perseverance and energy.” He describes being CEO as an increasingly challenging role, if for no other reason than the world has become 24 × 7. There are so many audiences: employees, shareholders, the board. Self-confidence is a must. “You’re making tough decisions, and the reality is you can’t go to your board and say, ‘I just don’t know,’” he explains. And in the midst of the pressures and deadlines, incredibly important is also the ability to make the “right, values-based decisions,” he shares.

“It can be a very lonely position,” Glen says candidly. More than 12 of the people who worked for him at Allscripts went on to become CEOs, something he takes great pride in. And almost without exception, the most common thing he hears from those executives now is that they had no idea what he was dealing with, even when they thought they saw the whole picture, confirming that the responsibility of the role can be isolating. And in addition to the stewardship of the company is the leadership of its people. He says,

And that requires that CEOs recognize that they can’t do it all, that in addition to inspiration, they must be strategic and set direction. Delegation of what Glen describes as “real responsibilities” is essential, and for entrepreneurs, this can be particularly challenging. With a knowing chuckle, he tells me that “one of the blessings of growth is there is no other way to do that. No matter how many hours you have, you run out of hours when you get to a certain size.”

What, then, takes a CEO to sustained performance? To the other side of survival and to success? As we talk about his experience as chief executive, about serving as Chancellor to the International Board of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, about investing significant amounts of his family foundation’s money in the artificial pancreas project, it strikes me that these roles serve as opportunities for Glen, channels, for a much greater ambition. When he decided to choose Livongo as the place where he’d make that scary, new start, it was because the company was part of a larger picture, one in which, he says, “We’re going to make a lot of different investments, but this one just felt like we could make a real difference in people’s lives, and especially those who are underserved.” The further we delve into his work and leadership, the more it becomes clear that Glen has deliberately applied his strengths and skills and talents, the whole of which would likely enable him to succeed anywhere as a CEO, to two gigantic social problems.

“Healthcare and education, these are the two fundamental problems of our country and our generation,” Glen says emphatically. And he feels lucky to work in both, to attempt to make a real impact at scale. As we talk about his efforts, he can’t contain his enthusiasm for some of the projects that he’s attached to: cell towers that are reducing mortality rates among children, kids who had behavior problems in the classroom but are now engaged and learning through interactive sight, sound, and motion software, and Livongo’s reason for being—to empower people living with chronic diseases to live better. Glen recognizes that other CEOs may not have the good fortune to work in these two important arenas and is quick to acknowledge that there are many important challenges that need attention. He points out that in addition to the fulfillment that he gains from working on these social challenges, the other area where he likes to see progress is the growth of people. And although it was deeply gratifying to see so many of his team go on to become CEOs, he’s also invigorated by “seeing young people start to realize their dream,” as they enter into his organization.

As he takes a wide-angle view of his work and leadership, of what he’d tell young people entering the workforce, Glen shares the importance of having diverse experiences, of volunteering, and of exploring some of the world. He talks about passion and doing what you love, that if you’re really exceptional at something, it’s amazing how you can be financially successful, and that true success is measured by one’s happiness. He qualifies that as important as passion is, it requires effort, and that while there are stories of overnight success, those are unique and rare. He describes giving back as an essential quality and core value, one that he cultivates in himself and those who work for him, and emphasizes that, in addition to contribution, a connection to making a difference sustains everyone in an organization through the tough times. Citing Allscripts as an example, he recalls, “When we did electronic prescribing, we could calculate the number of peoples’ lives that we saved from introducing our technology.”

It’s during the final moments of our conversation when I wonder if Glen doesn’t capture, with simple precision, his sustained success as a CEO: “It’s hard work, but it’s worth it,” he says.

Yes, running companies, leading people, taking risks, starting over, these are big things, often difficult things.

But the challenges of health care and education are, as well. And they ask that leaders be bigger.