Kevin Roberts, the CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi, is also the CEO-in-Residence at Judge Business School. He came in to talk to us recently about Winning with an MBA, which was particularly useful considering the somewhat dismal job market that we’ll be entering later this year.
First off, he’s really an incredible speaker. His staff has a virtual command center to run his presentation, with multiple laptops and a sound mixer! Impressive, and it certainly created a good first impression toward Saatchi & Saatchi. I’m really, really looking forward to the Creativity Workshop that he’s going to be running for the MBA class later this year. From what I’ve heard, it’s a very unique experience.
I don’t want to write too much about his talk with us, but do want to point out three challenges that he set out for us. I think these apply no matter who you are or what stage in life you’re at. We’ve been tasked with thinking about these and writing the answers down; you should do the same:
- What’s my 5-year dream?
- When am I at my best?
- What will I never do?
Particularly on the 5-year dream, he pushed us to push ourselves. He called the 5-year dream of running your own business, etc., “pathetic.” It was a bit of a shock, but a fair point. That’s not much of a dream; we can do that right now if we chose. What’s our real dream, something that seems completely impossible right now? That’s what we should be aiming for.
The other two questions are more straightforward. Still, we need to be brutally honest with ourselves when we answer them in order to really get an insight into our own abilities and preferences.
I went out to dinner with some of my classmates straight afterward, and we started talking about these questions — specifically our dreams. It was interesting to hear what people thought. Perhaps it’s the current job market, but it was generally difficult for everyone to really expand their horizons to answer the question.
While I think I’ve come up with my answer, I’m going to hold off from writing it publicly. But I invite you to really think (and feel) hard and answer the questions above for yourself; it could make for an interesting revelation.
Jed Christiansen 