Networks of Success
For years you’ve been a valued employee at your organization. You’ve gained valuable experience, made friends, even had fun, and learned more than you ever thought possible. But now you sense it’s time to move on. You approach your boss, whom you’ve come to admire and respect. You’re a little nervous because you’re not sure how she’ll respond. Will she try to persuade you to stay, laying on the guilt and enticing you with a bonus? Will she become angry, accusing you of betraying the organization that has given you so much? Will she brush you off, not caring whether you stay or leave? Or will she understand and respect your needs, wish you well, and do everything possible to help you succeed?
Back in 1990, after almost five years of working as a cook at Chez Panisse, Joanne Weir decided it was time for a change. “I was ready to leave but didn’t want to go. I knew if I didn’t leave then, I might never leave. There were chefs that had been there for 10 even 15 years. I didn’t want to be what I called a ‘lifer’!”1 When Weir told Alice Waters of her plans, Waters surprised her with an invitation to her house for a glass of wine. During the ensuing conversation, Weir explained that she felt she needed to leave Chez Panisse but didn’t want to burn any bridges and in fact wanted to stay connected in some capacity. Waters came up with the perfect solution, a new transitional job tasting the food at Café Fanny, an establishment Waters co-owned. Getting paid to taste magnificent food and consult with cooks was too enticing to turn down, so Weir accepted the offer and stayed at Café Fanny for a short while before beginning a highly successful career as an author, television personality, and restaurateur.
In recalling this episode, Weir was struck that a famous, busy woman like Waters would take time to talk with her about her career. After all, Weir was only one of many in Chez Panisse’s kitchen. But this was only a preview of even greater support and encouragement Waters would give. Weir went on to author numerous cookbooks and magazine articles and appear on such PBS series as Joanne Weir’s Cooking Class and Joanne Weir’s Cooking Confidence.2 Her honors include a James Beard Award (of course!) and an appointment by Hillary Clinton to the American Chef Corps, a group charged with using food to build cross-cultural ties.3 Some bosses might have been jealous of their former protégés’ tremendous success—or at best watched from a distance—but not Waters. Upon publication of Weir’s first book, Waters featured her as a guest chef at Chez Panisse. She appeared on Weir’s TV show. For Weir’s 2012 book Joanne Weir’s Cooking Confidence, Waters wrote a ringing endorsement: “As a cook, as a teacher, and as an author, Joanne Weir has never strayed from her firm and unassailable convictions that cooking should be pure and simple and that ingredients should be pure and fresh.”4 The endorsement of the book was, in reality, no less an endorsement of Waters’s own uncompromising vision of what good food is, another indication of the synergistic benefits of the superboss playbook that accrue to superboss and disciple alike. Weir, of course, has thanked Waters repeatedly in her cookbooks and continues to stay in touch, visiting Chez Panisse whenever she can. “I just have to get a dose of it, even just to get dinner, just to be there.”5
Weir is hardly the only former employee who has retained a relationship with Waters and Chez Panisse after moving on. When Sally Clarke was celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of her Clarke’s restaurant in London, Waters visited for four days to prepare the menus, while two other prominent former Chez Panisse employees, David Lindsay and Clair Ptak, helped out in the kitchen.6 Back in America, Waters helped Michael Tusk celebrate the tenth anniversary of his Michelin two-star restaurant Quince by serving as a guest chef.7 Weir says that Waters is “extraordinarily supportive and will be forever supportive of the people who worked with her.”8
Beyond any direct help Waters might provide, the Chez Panisse brand continues to connect former protégés with one another and propel them forward, functioning much like an Ivy League degree would for job-seeking graduates. Weir has called Chez Panisse “the Harvard of restaurants,” and although she was referencing the quality and passion of her colleagues, the moniker clearly fits from a reputational standpoint.9 “You go anywhere and somehow, someone knows somebody that worked there or they’ve heard of Alice or one of the cookbooks,” Lippert said. “It even opens doors when you want to go cook in other countries.”10
For protégés of other superbosses I studied, the experience of leaving is very similar. Protégés may move on for any number of reasons and in a variety of ways, some bearing little relation to the superboss per se. Certainly many protégés I studied did wind up staying for long stretches of their careers. However, I did notice a striking pattern that held for most employees: When they departed, they didn’t ever really leave. Instead, they become permanent members of the superboss’s club—an “extended family” of former protégés as well as customers, suppliers, and other hangers-on. As time passes, club members continue to feel close to the superboss and to one another. They stay in touch. They show intense loyalty. They revel in being industry insiders. And drawing on the tremendous resources offered by other club members, they craft resounding careers and become key players in their industries, much as the superboss did.
How important are superboss networks in boosting careers? Dan Halgin, a professor at the University of Kentucky, did his Ph.D. dissertation on exactly this question. He collected data on all 282 coaching changes in Division I basketball from 2001 to 2007 and statistically assessed the odds of a head coach’s being offered a new head-coaching position at a more prestigious school. Dan looked at such things as the “cumulative winning percentage of each coach over his career” (whether as head coach or as an assistant), the “cumulative number of postseason NCAA tournament appearances of each coach” (again whether as head coach or as an assistant), and “whether the coach was either a head coach or an assistant coach of a team that went to the NCAA tournament in the year prior to switching positions.” Now, all of these indicators are solid ways to capture a coach’s track record, yet none turned out to be as important as this simple question: Is the coach a member of a well-known “coaching tree” headed by a superboss-type figure?11 Being part of the right network, it turns out, was more helpful in predicting who would get the job than anything else—even more than track record.
What about you? Do you benefit from being a member of an elite, clublike alumni network thanks to a job you’ve had under a particular boss? While the notion of creating a network of protégés is not a new one, when you look closely, you realize that few companies and few bosses have taken full advantage of the upside of connecting with departing talent over an entire career. By contrast, virtually every superboss I studied made this a priority, reflecting superbosses’ radically different assessment of employee retention. Nobody likes it when their best employees leave, but as we saw in chapter 2, superbosses don’t fear attrition. On the contrary, most regard the departure of their very best talent as a natural stage of growth and something to be accepted, if not warmly embraced. It makes sense that superbosses would see alumni networks as an opportunity and an asset for both themselves and their organizations.
The Story of Jayday
It’s your second day on the job. And by “the job,” I mean your first real job—ever. While standing at a urinal (if you’re not male, please humor me), you strike up a conversation with a guy in the next urinal. He introduces himself as the founder of your organization but, thankfully, he doesn’t offer to shake hands.
This was how Steve Alburty, an eighteen-year veteran of Chiat/Day, recalls meeting his superboss, Jay Chiat, back in 1977: “That first meeting always summed up for me the contradictory nature of Jay’s personality. His presence could make you feel simultaneously welcome and awkward. Whenever you encountered Jay, you never quite knew if he was going to praise or predigest you.” Alburty has described Chiat and the larger culture of his organization as a “confusing amalgam of hot and cold, yin and yang, hate and love.” For Alburty, Chiat was “the quintessential Jewish mother, dispensing guilt and favor with equal abandon.”12
Unlike Joanne Weir and Alice Waters, Alburty and Chiat did not part on the best of terms. Near the end, Alburty told me, Chiat approached then CFO Adelaide Horton and asked her to fire Alburty for reasons he would not divulge. Horton refused, reminding Chiat that Alburty was Chiat/Day’s longest-serving employee. She did, however, agree to revise Alburty’s duties. When Alburty got wind, he wrote Chiat “the letter from hell”; Chiat grew furious, and Alburty quit. “I got talked into coming back, but I couldn’t take it, the place was no longer the place I loved. I asked him for a meeting, knowing he would go into a rage. He did, I grabbed my coat and walked out and never returned. To me, it felt like a betrayal by my father.”13
All this happened almost twenty years ago. You might expect an employee like Alburty to harbor at least some resentment about how he was treated, or perhaps to have moved on, but here’s the crazy part: today, Alburty doesn’t just remember Chiat fondly, he maintains a website in his honor (http://www.jayday.org). As a header on the site relates, the site “is dedicated to the vision, energy, and irritability of Jay Chiat and to all the alumni who had the good fortune and patience to work for him.”14
When I interviewed Alburty, he seemed hard-pressed to explain the website. As I spoke with other protégés, I realized that such mystery and attachment surrounding the superboss-protégé relationship were precisely the point. Superboss networks are founded on deep, emotional connections former protégés retain for their superbosses, years or even decades after their last day on the job. Former employees don’t always have wholly positive experiences of their superbosses, but somehow a bond endures that fuels loyalty to and participation in the network. Protégés revere superbosses as godfathers or godmothers—the sort of person who serves as a person’s second parent, guiding that person’s career and spiritual development. That makes sense, because as we’ve seen, that’s exactly what superbosses are.
In my research, one obvious sign of protégés’ affection was their total willingness to speak with me about their superbosses. When you perform research with busy professionals, it’s not easy to secure participation; people often won’t spare the time. So I was pleased to find that the vast majority of former protégés I contacted quickly returned my calls when they understood I was interested in talking about their superbosses. When we sat down to talk, they eagerly recounted their experiences and expressed how meaningful these bosses were to them. More than a few protégés I spoke with even told me that they “loved” their superboss and regarded him or her as an “inspiration”—again, this was often decades after they had left the superboss’s organization. Jeffrey Banks, the award-winning menswear designer who got his start as a design assistant to Ralph Lauren, shared feelings that were typical; his relationship with Ralph Lauren “was almost like having a second father. He cared about me; he cared about my development as a person.”15
Protégés express their enduring affection in other ways. Filmmaker Jonathan Demme won’t make a movie without giving his superboss Roger Corman some kind of cameo role—he played the head of the FBI in Demme’s Silence of the Lambs, Mr. Secretary in The Manchurian Candidate and Mr. Laird in Philadelphia. And he’s not alone. Protégé Francis Ford Coppola cast Corman as a U.S. senator in The Godfather Part II; Ron Howard gave him a cameo as a congressman in Apollo 13.16 When Corman receives honorary awards (he received an Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2009 and has been awarded a “star” on Hollywood Boulevard), luminaries who worked for him at one time or another also happily come out to celebrate their hero.17
We can understand why protégés of Nurturers or even Iconoclasts would continue to feel close years later, but why would protégés of Glorious Bastards also feel a connection? The answer is that all superbosses impact the lives of their protégés—all serve as godparents. Mike Seashols told me that he left Oracle because he and Larry Ellison were “no longer compatible,” and that “I wouldn’t consider ourselves friends.”18 Yet Seashols still felt a tug, going on to say: “I would love to get together with Ellison because it would be fun to sort of reminisce . . . and view life and all the passages that we’ve been through.”19 Alburty told me that Chiat “had a bigger impact on my life and value system than my own parents did. He was an incredibly impacting person, and I consider myself fortunate to have worked with him.”20 Jean-Pierre Moullé, a longtime Chez Panisse chef who was fired by Alice Waters (and who has since taught cooking classes in Bordeaux and published a book), put it this way: “Her employees will give and do anything for her. But sometimes they can be annoyed . . . like when your mother tells you over and over to clean up your room, clean up your room, clean up your room. And she’s right. So that’s it.”21
The emotional bond between superbosses and protégés remains strong in part because it’s a two-way street. As Alice Waters told me, citing but one of her illustrious offspring: “Nothing makes me more proud than to see somebody like Steve Sullivan [Acme Bread Company] baking all organic bread at Berkeley and inspiring a whole group of bakers across the country and having him being a part of the Bakers Guild that is educating people about traditions in bread making.”22 Larry Ellison, the consummate Glorious Bastard, has had strained relationships with a number of protégés, yet he, too, has expressed similar sentiments: “Even when I’m fighting them,” he has said, “I feel proud of these guys.”23
Superbosses often make an effort to stay in touch with their disciples, even years after they’ve left. When award-winning designer John Varvatos completed his first collection, he received a congratulatory note from his superboss Ralph Lauren. Ken Segall, former creative director at Apple, told me that although he worked with Jay Chiat for only a year and a half during the mid-1990s, he made a practice of calling Chiat whenever he changed jobs—for years: “I would call Jay and usually within two or three hours at the most, I would get a call back. He would consult with me and advise me. He was that kind of guy.”24
Superbosses happily participate in or sponsor events that allow them to stay current with their protégés’ careers. Alice Waters hosts an elaborate party for Chez Panisse alumni every five years; Gene Roberts brought Philadelphia Inquirer staff together for a memorable 2008 reunion party; Bill Sanders and his protégés held a well-attended reunion in 2003 in Las Vegas; and Lorne Michaels has put together many anniversary celebrations and parties for Saturday Night Live alumni. Superbosses also check in with protégés on a casual basis. Rick Berman told me in 2006 (when Norman Brinker was still alive) that he still counted him as one of his great friends: “I spoke to him yesterday and I just called him up; well, he had called me up just to see how I was doing.”25 Tommy Frist’s alumni network is concentrated in a specific geographic locale (Nashville, Tennessee), allowing for an unusual degree of casual contact: “The social community around here, the arts, the various things that we do to support human service organizations here . . . we all show up at the same places and we all associate with each other.”26 It’s certainly not the norm for a boss to call up a former employee just to say hello, nor is it common for former colleagues to continue socializing with one another, but superbosses and protégés have been through so much together; both are more attuned to reinforcing their relationship than letting it slide.
“The fraternity is clear,” another Tommy Frist protégé told me. “Once you have been a part of this family, you are always a part of it. Everyone who has been a part of it can call on one another. That is just part of the philosophy of the family.”27 Former Hershey CEO Richard Lenny described the impact and functioning of the Michael Miles alumni network this way: “It’s not as though we have a secret handshake, but there are enough of us around that it helps with networking, it helps with connectivity.”28 Comedian Bill Murray remarked that he and his fellow Saturday Night Live alumni are “friends for life,” will “always be connected,” and “are sort of working together all the time.”29 A network of all-stars.
Such powerful sentiments bring to mind Henry V’s famous St. Crispin’s Day speech in Shakespeare’s play Henry V, which commemorates the English army’s defeat of the far more numerous French: “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers. / For he today that sheds his blood with me / Shall be my brother.”30 Though superbosses might not cast their protégés as members of an underdog army, the bonds formed on superboss-led teams are no less stirring. Protégés evoked for me the deep emotions they felt so many years later, relating how even the slightest trigger—the theme song from Saturday Night Live, in the case of Lorne Michaels’ protégés—brought back a flood of warm memories. And in interviews, it didn’t take long to have superboss progeny give voice to all manner of names and slogans that defined their alumni networks: the “Brinker Boys”; Michael Miles’s “Cheez Whiz Kids;” the “Tiger Cubs.” Still others talked about “Brinker University,” and the “Drexel Diaspora.”
Such potent emotional ties in the workplace are, of course, rare. So often we work at jobs, leave to go somewhere else, and never see or talk to our former colleagues again. Think of how heartening it must be to be part of a true band of brothers and sisters—to have a network of people around the country or even the world who care about you and want to see you succeed. One superboss network, OracAlumni, has boasted more than four thousand members and helped create at least one hundred start-ups. As Dominic Castriota of Rhodes Associates remarked of the Drexel Diaspora, “Working at Drexel is like having a degree from an Ivy League university. The network stands you in good stead for the rest of your life.”31 It was a sentiment I heard time and again. When you’re a protégé of a superboss, you’re no longer left on your own to sink or swim. You have a godparent and your “siblings” behind you backing you up. It’s a bond that can last forever; there is no expiration date.
Hillaryland
Perhaps the most meaningful thing superbosses do to show affection is actively promote protégés’ careers. Behaving like benevolent godparents, all the superbosses32 I studied have recommended protégés for new jobs or even made phone calls on their behalf to inquire about job opportunities elsewhere. Bill Walsh is well known for this. If he heard that a college was seeking a football coach, he “wouldn’t just make one call; he would make ten or fifteen. Lots of coaches are the exact opposite—they will not be looking out for the best interests of their people.”33
A shining example of superbosses who catapult former protégés into new jobs are Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton. The Clintons are known for spawning dozens, even hundreds, of prominent figures in politics and government. Many superboss networks are informal in nature, but the Clintons’ was at least partially codified during Hillary’s 2008 presidential campaign, taking the form of an Excel spreadsheet that charted both supporters and traitors to the cause.34 The Clintons have not hesitated to vigorously support politicians and others who have supported them, including many former employees who have gone on to seek political office or other positions on their own. Leaving politics aside, there’s no question this network creates value for superbosses and protégés alike.
Terry McAuliffe, for instance, chaired Hillary’s 2008 election campaign. As the Clintons’ chief fund-raiser, he was so loyal that he gave them a $1.3 million personal loan for the purchase of their Chappaqua, New York, home. When McAuliffe later approached Bill Clinton with plans to run for governor of Virginia, Bill supported him, even though his chances of winning were slim. McAuliffe did end up losing that year, but he won in 2013.35 Another close Hillary aide, Cheryl Mills, served as White House press secretary under Bill Clinton and has been described as Hillary’s “voice of reason.” Thanks to her position in Hillaryland, as Hillary’s core network of advisers have been called,36 Mills later received an opportunity to become the nation’s chief protocol officer under President Obama—a position that comes with a reserved seat on Air Force One whenever the president is traveling.37 Usually, this post is given to one of the president’s friends; in this case, it went to a friend and associate of Hillary’s.
Many of Bill Clinton’s staff went on to serve with Hillary during her time as New York State senator and as U.S. secretary of state. Subsequently, they became leaders of the Clinton Foundation, which suggests an important practice of superbosses: not only do they seek jobs for protégés outside their networks but they also frequently rehire employees who have left the fold. The only thing more remarkable than Jay Chiat’s habit of hiring people he had previously fired was their willingness to work for him again. And, of course, Lorne Michaels frequently brings back former cast members as performers and guest hosts on SNL. Who could forget Tina Fey returning during the presidential campaign of 2008 to satirize Sarah Palin?38
“More Aha Moments Than We Could Count”
You know how some affluent parents buy their children new cars for their sixteenth birthdays or new homes as wedding gifts? Well, in lieu of helping protégés get jobs, some superbosses create completely new businesses for them to run. Superbosses spin off these companies, maintaining contact, if not some control, over operations. Because of this, over time, a network emerges that consists of entrepreneurial ventures, not merely individuals.
It’s almost as if superbosses, in these instances, leverage the “platforms” or “operating systems” they’ve honed over their careers—the perspectives on the industry they’ve developed as well the business models they’ve established. Just as Apple’s iOS operating system creates opportunities for app developers, protégés leaving the superboss start companies that are akin to specific “applications,” or articulations, of the platform. Take Julian Robertson’s “tiger seeds,” each of whom managed his funds as independent businesses but deployed Robertson’s capital, expertise, and even his office space at 101 Park Avenue. To some extent, Saturday Night Live stands as another example: once the original show was established, SNL gave rise to a number of independent movie projects featuring SNL alumni and characters from the show. Many of these films were produced in a studio built by Michaels and associated with SNL. Michaels is also the executive producer of NBC’s Late Night with Seth Myers and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, both helmed by veterans of SNL. Of course, SNL also gave rise to other entertainment vehicles that were not direct applications of the platform, but that benefitted nonetheless from Lorne Michaels’s support or involvement in some form. The hit show 30 Rock is one such example: although Michaels served as executive producer, the show was in fact an independent creation of SNL star Tina Fey.
Yet another example comes from Oprah Winfrey. Highly influential, charismatic, and powerful, Oprah was the longtime host of The Oprah Winfrey Show, the most successful talk show in television history. Born into very humble circumstances (as a girl she famously wore dresses made of potato sacks), she has gone on to win numerous awards, including an honorary doctorate from Harvard and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.39 Early in her career, Winfrey made the bold move of creating a vertically integrated entertainment business; that is, she not only starred in The Oprah Winfrey Show but eventually came to own the studio and the production company, Harpo Productions, a setup that put her in the perfect position to launch talent. She could host personalities on her show, and if they excelled, she could develop their talent and offer them the opportunity to produce their own shows through her studio. This is the path that stars like Dr. Phil, Rachael Ray, Suze Orman, Martha Beck, and Dr. Oz took to fame and commercial success.40
Here’s how Dr. Phil came into her orbit. In 1996, Oprah became embroiled in what the press dubbed the “Dangerous Foods Lawsuit” in Amarillo, Texas. Oprah had commented on air about mad cow disease; the beef industry responded by accusing her of defamation. Oprah’s legal team then hired Dr. Phil McGraw to consult on jury selection. McGraw had already earned a Ph.D. in clinical psychology, run a series of successful self-help seminars with his partner, Thelma Box, and proved that he possessed extraordinary charisma before an audience. To Oprah, though, he was an unknown. Oprah’s trial in Texas was, in effect, a type of audition for the man who would become “Dr. Phil.”41
Their early interactions were tense. As McGraw recalled in a 2011 interview, he initially felt that Oprah was not taking her case seriously enough.42 At one point, when Oprah was attempting to limit their time together to ten minutes, McGraw reportedly shouted, “It’s not my ass being sued!” and demanded she give him as much time as needed.43 She relented. More recently, McGraw has referred to the trial as an incredibly important bonding time for him and Oprah: “During the trial a small group of us lived together in a bed-and-breakfast out on the edge of town for almost two months. And so she’s my ex-roommate . . . And I really got to know her well and we became very dear friends, as we are today.”44
Oprah eventually won the trial and McGraw soon began appearing on the show in a segment called “Tell It Like It Is, Phil.” He did a range of specials for Oprah; in one series, he performed live, on-air therapy with participants, helping them lose weight, mend their relationships, and go back to school. “He gave us more aha moments than we could count,” Oprah has said of him.45
Oprah promoted Dr. Phil’s speaking tours and supported his second book, Relationship Rescue, by structuring a series of shows around the content and giving the book to audience members.46 When Dr. Phil launched his show in 2002, working as both the host and executive producer, it quickly rose to the number two spot in the country—right behind The Oprah Winfrey Show.47 Oprah has also given Dr. Phil a regular column in her magazine. In return for all this assistance, Dr. Phil has made no secret of his gratitude and admiration for his godmother. “Have you ever heard anybody be more enthusiastically supportive of what you have to say?” McGraw has said of Oprah, “[She] is the gold standard in television.”48 She is also the creator of one of the most significant platform-style networks in entertainment, one that as of 2015 continues to grow.49
Network Building Beyond the Platform
Not all superbosses treat their organizations as platforms, spinning off new companies specifically for individual protégés—and of those that do, some take other steps to build their networks. A number of superbosses I studied maintained more fluid relationships with protégés, collaborating with former employees on occasion and at other times helping them find opportunities elsewhere. These relationships were largely informal, ongoing, and unending (at least until the superboss dies). Superbosses became the center of an array of star performers, all lingering in the superboss’s general vicinity. At Chez Panisse, chefs would pass through for periods of time and then leave. This pattern, which has continued for decades, has made Chez Panisse the center of a locally sourced, organic food constellation in the restaurant business. Other superbosses who have built similarly informal networks include the Clintons, Miles Davis, and Robert Noyce.
Still other superbosses I studied seemed even less strategic or deliberate about fostering networks—but no less committed to playing a godparent-style role. Figures such as Norman Brinker, Jay Chiat, Roger Corman, Ralph Lauren, Michael Miles, and Jorma Panula actively thought about networks and were interested in expanding them, but they tended to rely on other parts of their playbook to mold protégés into all-star talents, at a certain point freeing them to leave and fulfill their potential elsewhere. Over time, networks tended to form naturally around these superbosses, with few formal business ties and relatively little systematic effort on the superboss’s part. Yet the relationships among superboss and former employees often continued, in various forms, for decades.
In still more cases, the network-building processes constructed by superbosses seemed to result in a hodgepodge of formal and informal relationships that can only be described as idiosyncratic. George Lucas created companies such as Skywalker Sound, THX, and Industrial Light and Magic, then installed or recruited talented individuals to run them (the “platform” approach), but his protégés also often left to pursue their own opportunities. Many, in turn, started their own companies (including EdNET, Digital Domain, Tippett Studio, and Sonic Solutions), which often hired Lucas veterans for projects, sold to and purchased from other Lucas spin-offs, and sometimes relied on other Lucas alums to staff their founding teams.
Tommy Frist helped protégés start their own businesses, sometimes investing in them or providing advice, other times arranging to buy products and services from them.50 In one instance, Frist helped fund Surgical Care Affiliates, a start-up that protégé Joel Gordon had formed. In the end, Frist’s HCA owned 17 percent of Surgical Care. Not a bad investment, considering that between 1984 and 1996, Surgical Care had one of the highest percentage stock price increases of any company that went public during that period. “It could not have happened,” Gordon attests, “without the personal encouragement and strong financial support that Frist provided Surgical Care Affiliates.”51 Nashville, Tennessee, is now the headquarters of hundreds of health care companies, with Frist and HCA having some influence over, or a direct role in, the majority of them.52
“You Can’t Keep Good People Down”
As their behavior suggests, superbosses don’t conceive of the employer-employee relationship as ordinary bosses do. They don’t consider the relationship over the minute the employee walks out the door, and they’re not offended, hurt, or even all that surprised when this happens. Well, almost all superbosses feel this way. As we’ve seen, Chiat acrimoniously parted ways with Alburty. Likewise, one very well known manager at Oracle related that although he and Larry Ellison parted ways amicably, “people tended to not leave Oracle on good terms. There was a sense that either ‘you’re in this with us or you’re against us,’ and once you left, you were a bad guy.”53 Another protégé, John Luongo, was instrumental to Oracle’s growth; when he left, Ellison reportedly told him, “John, I really hope you are very successful in whatever you do, but if you blindside me I’ll ruin your life.”54 But Ellison is the most prominent exception. Most superbosses are more like Tommy Frist, who, as one protégé noted, “was always happy to see people start new ventures and be successful with it. He was never jealous. He was never saying, ‘Well, if you leave me, we don’t have anything else to do with you.’ That was never the attitude.”55
We can understand Frist’s posture as a natural outgrowth of his playbook. Given all that superbosses like Frist do to prepare and pump up their protégés, it stands to reason that the best people might feel compelled to leave when huge opportunities arise in other places. It would be surprising if this didn’t happen from time to time, or even frequently. To their immense credit, and benefit, superbosses appreciate this. They accept it. They internalize it. They fully “get” the needs of their best people to pursue their dreams. And they translate this understanding into action. Theirs, in essence, isn’t just the superboss playbook. It’s the godparent playbook.
Other superbosses openly expressed their expectations that some employees might leave. Jay Chiat encouraged his employees to reach their greatest potential and follow their passions, even if doing so meant leaving Chiat/Day. Julian Robertson told me that it was “normal” for people to want to pursue their own interests after a while: “We let these people go on an individual basis, and they left with their heads high and with great feelings toward us. It was probably the most successful thing we ever did.”56 Michael Miles echoed this sentiment: “You can’t keep good people down, and if they get a really good opportunity that you can’t match, it’s inevitable you’re going to lose them. But that’s the price you pay for having really outstanding people.”57
Even the most nurturing of superbosses are not simply altruistic, however. Superbosses nurture their networks because they view it as in their self-interest to do so. Most obviously, superbosses tap their protégés for business opportunities—just look at Julian Robertson’s tiger seeds, Lorne Michaels’s 30 Rock, or Frist’s investment in Surgical Care Affiliates. Superbosses often directly invest in their protégés’ new ventures. They know their people better than anyone, possessing a kind of insider information (perfectly legal!). Thanks to this information, superbosses are in the ideal spot to get in on the best opportunities as they arise. Protégés, meanwhile, get the benefit of the investment, and also benefit from the superboss’s stellar brand, which serves as a sort of “seal of approval” on their venture. As Julian Robertson partner John Townsend put it, “in Tiger you’ve got this iconic brand name. You couldn’t make it up if you tried.”58
A second way superbosses benefit from ongoing interactions with protégés is by gleaning valuable information from their networks, as well as assistance with specific challenges or projects. Many of the protégés I spoke with were literally waiting by their smartphones, eager for them to ring with requests from their superbosses. Hedge-fund manager Steve Mandel, another billionaire protégé of Julian Robertson’s, recommends potential hires to Robertson—and Robertson listens.59 As another confidant said, “Robertson constantly took calls from this person or that person in search of information. Some were friends, some were former colleagues.”60 Miles Davis would call up his musicians when he had a space to fill in his band, as saxophonist Bill Evans remembers: “Miles asked me, he just said, ‘I need a guitar player.’”61 A similar request eventually yielded the incomparable John Scofield, who has since appeared on Miles Davis recordings and on dozens of other jazz albums over his long career.62
More recently, the Clintons made extensive use of their network while launching Hillary’s campaign for the presidency in the 2016 election. The Clintons brought in as campaign chairman John Podesta, a loyal aide who had formerly served Bill as White House chief of staff. Robby Mook, tapped as campaign manager, contributed to Hillary’s 2008 presidential run. The Clintons looked to Nick Merrill, a longtime press aide to Bill, to work as the Hillary campaign’s traveling press secretary, while former Clinton White House staffer Jennifer Palmieri would serve as the campaign’s communications director. The deputy policy director for Hillary’s 2008 campaign, Jake Sullivan, became senior policy adviser this time around. These are but a few examples; I could cite a number of others. With the Clintons’ vast network of proven and loyal talent, imagine the inherent advantage Hillary had over competitors with a weaker talent bench, to say nothing of the usefulness of her network in raising money.63
Networks prove so useful to superbosses (as well as to the protégés who call on them for help) not merely because of the trust that exists among their members, but because of the common background, the perspectives on business, and the language that members share. Comedian Wyatt Cenac, a former correspondent on The Daily Show, recalls that when he met fellow correspondent Ed Helms, the two hit it off immediately, even though their time on the show never overlapped: “There’s this thing where we can already start communicating about, like, ‘Hey, have you ever had a field piece where the subject tried to walk out on you?’ ‘Yes! I know exactly what you’re talking about! And then they come back five minutes later.’”64
Or let’s say you’re a protégé who needs outside help for a design project. You check out three firms and find that their policies and philosophies seem uncannily similar to yours. When you look at the senior management, you find that someone who used to work for your previous boss runs each company. When you call up one of these firms, you’re put right through to the president without delay. Before you can even explain what you need, she sees where you’re headed and asks questions zeroing in on the points you were going to mention—before you’ve even begun consulting your notes. It’s like talking to someone who has already been working with you for years; her whole way of operating seems instantly recognizable, as if she shares the same DNA. This is the kind of collaborative experience that members of an alumni network provide superbosses and fellow alumni. Quite a refreshing difference from a typical supplier-customer relationship, don’t you think?
The Fountain of Youth
Yet another, extremely important way networks benefit superbosses is by increasing their own prestige and influence. The more superbosses spawn prominent individuals who are recognizably linked to one another, the more superbosses’ own stature grows. Superbosses become known not merely as innovators in their industries but as preeminent “talent brands,” people who know how to develop the industry’s next superstars. They become renowned for their role as godfathers and godmothers. Going forward, this in turn allows superbosses to become magnets for even more talent, as bright up-and-coming prospects flock to them, seeking opportunity.
A good example of this dynamic comes from a legendary godmother in the world of food, Julia Child. For decades the most famous chef in America, Child touched the careers of many young chefs, including those who had only brief contact with her. Sara Moulton, former executive chef at Gourmet magazine and one of the Food Network’s first celebrities, was hired to assist Child with her TV show Julia Child & More Company. As a result of this experience, she referred to Child as “my mentor,” writing that “Child was an angel to me, helping me to get jobs and pushing me to work hard.”65 James Beard Award winner Jody Adams met Child around 1980, serving as kitchen help for a fund-raiser in which Child was featured. Child helped guide her to a job with renowned chef Lydia Shire, where Adams began to learn the craft of cooking.66 Over time, as such protégés established themselves and a network grew up, Child became known among restaurateurs and others in haute cuisine as a conduit for talent. This only prompted more up-and-coming chefs to connect with Child in hopes of breaking in. Even Thomas Keller, the first American chef with two Michelin three-star restaurants, contacted Child early in his career for help in finding an apprenticeship in France.67 The great Jacques Pépin put it this way: “She made it her business to help young chefs.”68
Superbosses’ ability to enhance their reputation and attract talent is not a secondary benefit—it’s huge. Roger Corman’s biographer wrote that Corman would “far prefer that his graduates go shine elsewhere, trusting that their glory will reflect back on him.”69 This is not simply about glory; it’s about longevity, the ability to constantly replenish the workforce and reinvigorate the business with fresh perspectives and enthusiasm. Luc Vandevelde commented that he didn’t worry that Kraft would lose its top people; “there was so much talent building up that actually we felt that we were going to conquer the world.”70
David Swensen, chief investment officer at Yale University, has spawned many of the top names in the nonprofit endowment investing field, including Peter Ammon at the University of Pennsylvania, Paula Volent at Bowdoin College, Anne Martin at Wesleyan University, Seth Alexander at MIT, Robert Wallace at Stanford, Andrew Golden at Princeton University, D. Ellen Shuman at the Carnegie Corporation, Donna Dean at the Rockefeller Foundation, and Lauren Meserve at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.71 You can’t talk to anyone in the business for five minutes before Swensen’s name comes up. He went out of his way to help his protégés transition to their new organizations, where they could take on the number one job. As Andrew Golden, president of Princeton University Investment Company, told me, turnover for Swensen created a “natural vibrancy” and was a “great recruiting tool”; it served as a billboard proclaiming to prospects: “Come here and someday have my job, or a job just like mine.”72
For all superbosses I studied, the existence of thriving alumni networks helped create a virtuous cycle of talent spawning: as their network swelled, membership in it became even more valuable; this, in turn, made young talent even more eager to seek out the superboss. What Chris Rock has said about SNL applies to all superbosses and their organizations: “Saturday Night Live brands you as a professional. No matter what is written about me to this day, SNL comes up. Everybody passed through it.”73 In every industry I studied, membership in a superboss’s network was a golden ticket to career success. Prospective employers saw it as a diploma, a “certification” of talent and world-class training. But large, impressive networks of alumni were one of the main elements that allowed superbosses to be recognized as the premier place in their industry in the first place. For alumni, having a superboss on your résumé was the gift that kept on giving; for the superboss’s organization, the alumni network was the closest thing to a fountain of youth. It’s one thing to train the very best, and quite another to train a generation of top performers who identify so strongly with a specific network and continuously show loyalty to it. A thriving network of talent takes on a momentum of its own, with mutual payoffs that reinforce the network time and again.
Building Alumni Networks like a Superboss
For many protégés, leaving a superboss is just as memorable as being selected for a job with one. And for the best of them, it’s just as inevitable as well. Managers and leaders should pay attention to the specific ways that superbosses handle this inevitability. The first lesson is one we discussed back in chapter 2: attrition is not nearly as damaging as you think. Follow the superbosses and embrace it as an opportunity. When key people leave, we have a choice: either watch them from the sidelines or participate in their upside. Which would you rather do? Make the development of next-generation leaders a primary activity and expectation for managers, even with the knowledge that, yes, these leaders will likely go elsewhere at some point. You never do know how much departing employees may help you one day. And if you do get angry and cut ties, the opportunity is lost, like leaving money on the table.
When employees leave, don’t forget about them or, even worse, see them as traitors. Instead, be smart: act like a concerned godparent and stay in touch with them. Are you keeping track of employees who are leaving the organization or transferring to another department internally? It doesn’t take much to occasionally send an email or make a phone call to check in on someone. It’s even easier to Google former employees periodically to see where they’ve landed (and when they feel the need to tell you, you know you’re on the way to being a superboss). When you’re looking to hire someone or you’re seeking help with a project or challenge, don’t immediately run to people or organizations you don’t know. Pause and think about the assets and resources your former employees can offer. Take the initiative and trigger participation in your network. Do your part to sustain the bonds that were built while your former employees were still with you.
As you open up to the possibilities of churn, protect yourself by ensuring succession plans are in place. Large multinational corporations often think about succession planning for the top few hundred executives, but superboss logic beckons us to think about succession wherever we are in an organization. At Dartmouth, where I teach, a very talented undergraduate has started an unusual and much-beloved choir composed of students and community members. As this student was about to start his senior year, I asked him: “What’s going to happen to the choir when you leave? Are you training your successor right now?” The student replied that he hadn’t thought about it. The same is true of so many managers. The time to start thinking about succession is now, particularly since we should assume that many of our best employees will leave.
When you get right down to it, what this means is that managers should evaluate current employees with an eye toward their eventual departure. Most large companies have standard methods of evaluating talent: they coach or terminate employees who score low on key performance measures and they typically give employees who score high bigger and better jobs. While such an exercise is useful, we need to recognize that some, maybe many, high performers will eventually need to leave. So the scoring grids we use—which might normally have three designations: poor, satisfactory/good, and excellent—might need a fourth level: time to go. It’s not that we automatically want to see our best people go. In fact, many of them will stay. But we need to improve the relationships we have with top performers who do depart, and one way to do that is to have frank conversations with them about their immense potential and the best ways available for them to pursue it. We also need to alert our organizations as early as possible to the departures that should and will take place.
Lately, some forward-leaning executives have been embracing superboss-style networking practices. When Netflix CEO Reed Hastings published his well-known “culture slides” in 2009, one of the mantras within was a recognition that “Netflix doesn’t have to be for life, in which case we should celebrate someone leaving for a bigger job that we didn’t have available to offer them.”74 In his 2014 book The Alliance, LinkedIn CEO Reid Hoffman argues that the model of lifetime employment is poorly suited to today’s more volatile, uncertain, networked age and in fact “is in varying degrees of disarray globally.”75 Let’s also not forget that traditional lifetime employment is at odds with the mind-set of millennial employees, who seek growth and purpose through work and will not hesitate to change organizations to find it. Does anyone really think that the millennial generation expects to get a gold watch after working twenty-five or thirty years for the same company? We know that doesn’t make sense, but we’re still running organizations as if that’s going to happen. If we know that millennials embrace free agency more than any generation before them, why would we adopt a system that’s all about retention?
As an alternative, Hoffman advocates that companies form “alliances” with employees and think about employment in terms of shorter “tours of duty” that may or may not turn into long-term stays with the same company. Hoffman also emphasizes the importance of alumni networks, which can create a ready source of customers who already know how good your company is after their tour of duty is over. Yet as Hoffman confirms, much potential in this area remains untapped. Although more than 118,000 alumni groups now populate the LinkedIn platform, most are not formally affiliated with their companies, and surveys have found that most companies don’t invest in alumni networks.76
Long before anyone had ever heard of formal alumni networks or LinkedIn, superbosses were already building some of the most formidable networks around. They’ve proved that an alternative model emphasizing professional growth and lifelong connection (although not necessarily employment) with an organization or a boss is not only possible but also highly beneficial to both companies and employees. If you’re a boss, think of how great it would be to have dozens or even hundreds of top people waiting to take your call, as well as legions of the most unusually talented prospects knocking at your door. If you’re an employee, imagine how enriching it would be to be part of a large and committed “band of brothers and sisters” throughout your career—and to have your boss nourishing and affirming this brotherhood, too. Superbosses as diverse as Alice Waters, Lorne Michaels, Oprah Winfrey, Tommy Frist, and Ralph Lauren know that the secret to both a satisfying, lengthy career and a sustainable, perennially “young” business is not especially complicated. It’s a counterintuitive but fertile combination of letting go, staying in touch, and helping out. As you think about your own company, department, or team, don’t just strive to build a successful organization—aim higher than that. Work to craft a vast and powerful network of success.
You have a choice when it comes to talent: hire and develop people who will reach a natural ceiling, and keep them forever; or cultivate a new generation of talent that intends to surpass you, and help them do it. These superperformers will not be satisfied playing second fiddle, so unless you can keep growing at a pace that constantly opens up new opportunities for your stars, you will lose them. I’ve had more than one CEO tell me that this is nuts; why would we plan to lose our best talent? Here’s what they don’t get: their star performers will leave no matter what. The best people are constantly looking for more opportunity, more challenge, more accomplishment. The only question is whether you will leverage your best talent to create career-long connections that provide ongoing payback via new opportunities for business transactions, talent acquisition, and investment deals. And this will be even truer as the careers of millennials accelerate.
Look at it this way: Are you better off having an organization full of okay performers who stay for decades, or a company populated by the world’s best talent who expressly came to work for you, for a time, because of your track record as a talent magnet; and who, upon leaving, stay in the network, serving as ambassadors for you and your brand? The choice is clear.