About the Author

Elizabeth Haas Edersheim spent two years working with Marvin Bower on his biography and memoirs. Interviewing more than 100 colleagues, clients, family members, and friends, she completed the manuscript shortly before his death in January 2003.

From 1979 through 1988, she was with McKinsey where she became one of the first female partners and had the privilege of working with Marvin Bower. She founded and spent the next 13 years with New York Consulting Partners. She holds a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and has provided expert testimony to Congress in the areas of industrial policy, labor policy, and small business networks.

Interview with Elizabeth Haas Edersheim

What inspired you to write McKinsey's Marvin Bower?

I can't think of a single individual who has had greater positive influence in the business world over the past 70 years. Marvin was a courageous thinker who understood the critical role of business in a democratic society and dedicated his professional life to elevating the reputation of business by practicing and teaching business values. For these reasons, the Marvin Bower story needed to be told in order to share his wisdom with the next generation of business leaders.

I should also point out that, as I started writing the book and throughout the two years it took to complete the book, I met amazing, in some cases, legendary business people &ndash more than 100. And, every single person I met became more and more excited as they related their personal experiences and recollections of "life with Marvin." That too fed the inspiration.

In light of recent corporate scandals, what lessons can be learned from Marvin Bower's business philosophy?

Marvin believed that values are at the core of business and should act as the compass for business leadership. He recognized that many businesses are managed by "rules," which, as we all know, are vulnerable to being broken, allowing important decisions, activities, and opportunities to fall through the cracks. On the other hand, he also recognized that businesses and professional firms (with McKinsey being one of them) whose leadership uses values as their compass, create a culture where responsibility, commitment, innovation, and excellence are possible. The scandals, by-in-large, are illustrations of institutions without values, not bad values, but simply valueless (e.g. Enron); institutions where the values of the founders have eroded with each generation to the point where they are no longer value-based institutions (e.g. Andersen); and institutions that are so fragmented that it is impossible to create shared values (e.g. the FBI). Rules alone are a problem because they are for mindless employees they are not meaningful unless in the context of values that every employee can embrace and live by.

Finally, Marvin believed, as do I, that it is the responsibility of every generation to revive values. This book is an attempt to continue Marvin's philosophy on values and challenge the current and future generation of business leaders.

What, in your mind, are the fundamental values that every business must embrace?

High ethical standards in all relationships
Fact-based decisions, objectively considered
Fairness in all people-related decisions
A culture of candor
Urgency about continually re-aligning and adapting to the changing customer and competitive environment
At the same time, the values are not prescribed they must fit the business and the way things are done around there.

What effect did he have on your business career?

Quite frankly, everything. I went into business having grown up in an academic family in an academic town. Business was not an acceptable ambition. My decision to enter business was all about and only because of Marvin, and he made it an acceptable alternative to academics. My father worked with him advising General Motors and came home and respected Marvin. I was an engineer, but through Marvin, I saw the power of organization, culture, and communications. I saw that asking good questions can change one's whole perspective on problem solving. It did mine. Marvin's view of the world is the reason I chose consulting as a profession and McKinsey as a firm.

Later, when I had decided to set up my own firm, I asked Marvin for advice both before and after I had made the decision. And he continued to be my conscience and role model as I grew the firm. When faced with an important decision, I virtually always asked myself, "What would Marvin do?"

An example of how I relied on his wisdom was when the firm was just getting started and I realized that, although we wanted to work with smaller-sized companies to uncover operations opportunities, many of the companies could not afford our fees. So, I was considering proposing that we do work on contingency &ndash that is, take our fees once specific operations improvements had been achieved. I believed it would appear affordable to small-company CEOs and demonstrate our confidence in our consulting advice and the client's team of leaders. Marvin had another opinion entirely. His advice was unwavering and true. He said, "Even if you do everything perfectly, people will still question your motives. You don't ever want people to question your motives. They will question whether you are advising the business with the business interests at heart or just the economics at heart and the two do not always align." The potential for someone to question our integrity if there ever were a service or quality problem was real. We decided not to take a contingency.

If Marvin Bower were alive today, what would he tell people wanting to go into business?

I believe that Marvin would tell them exactly what he told me, "When you look at a career, be sure to work at a place where the people respect you, and you respect them, and that fits with the rest of your life. I might add, don't ever let greed blind you to what is important.

Why do you think this book will be of value to people in business today?

I think the book is valuable because the lessons, Marvin's lessons, are timeless, transferable, and transportable to every realm of the professional world, and they are, at their core, about leadership. The lessons are also indiscriminate in terms of who can learn from them as evidenced by the fact that many, many business leaders, from a wide range of backgrounds, learned from Marvin.

In particular, I think the book demonstrates that business values are critical to a company's reputation as well as its success and, as such, should be ranked above virtually everything else, including returns. If the book causes a couple of leaders to think a little harder about their company's values, it will be of value.

What leadership qualities did Marvin Bower demonstrate that have earned him the reputation of a leader's leader?

Marvin was a true servant leader &ndash he served those he led and gave back so much for so long to so many. Marvin had many attributes.

Integrity and trustworthiness
Fact-based visioning and pragmatism
Absolute adherence to principles and values
Humility and unassuming respect for others that let him continually listen and learn
Strong communications and personal persuasiveness
Commitment and loyalty to people. He strongly believed that a leader's responsibility is to develop leadership qualities and responsibilities in everyone in an organization with a focus on the next generation. His belief in passing the torch sooner rather than later was legendary (retiring as managing director more than 25 years before he formally retired).

Who are the leaders today that you would say are great leaders?

There are few I know as well as I knew Marvin. There are several that have all the appearance of great leaders Oprah Winfrey someone who excites people to come work with her and do something that matters; Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway who has a reputation for speaking out on things he believes matters; Frank Weiss, chairman of Cott Beverage, who holds people to unbelievably high ethical standards and then invests in them he recently donated his salary and bonus to the fund helping employees' children with college; David Neeleman of Jet Blue who has built an innovative company to serve its customers and is changing the rules of competition; Bill George, the former Chairman of Medtronics who absolutely believed in, practiced, and now writes about the company's values; Randy Hogan, Chairman of Pentair who continually grounds his companies in mid-western values; and, of course, Andy Grove who built a company, Intel, on values and pride. Then there's Steve Jobs who at Pixar built the facility to be a place for the people to enjoy state-of-the-art lighting, ping-pong tables, etc. Two that have been in the news lately are the Google co-founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin that insist that everyone allocates at least 20% of his/her time to a pet project that he/she believes will make a difference to customer service.

I am sure there are many more. They are not in the news today like the companies without values and without good leaders, but they exist and should continue to be our role models.

Who were the most interesting people you interviewed and why?

That's a difficult question. I loved spending time with Juliette Dively who had endless stories about Marvin and her husband, George, the former chairman of Harris Graphics, that always humanized the two of them. I enjoyed Al Gordon's (the former chairman of Kidder Peabody) stories he shared a lot of perspective and personal stories with me that gave me a different kind of understanding of leadership. I also enjoyed John Macomber (the former Chairman of Celanese and the Export-Import Bank) because he had such a unique perspective on Europe in the 50s. Ken Roman (the chairman of Ogilvy & Mather after David Ogilvy) was great because he came from the Ogilvy world and admired Marvin with different glasses. My overall favorite was Tom Schick from Shell. Learning about Marvin from the client's perspective was an absolute thrill.

Marvin Bower: A Leader's Leader

About the Author

Interview with Elizabeth Haas Edersheim