Blog Review: RUNNERSAPIEN

Wake Forest University has many active bloggers among its students and alumni. From time to time, we like to identify a noteworthy blog. If you have an interesting blog, or know someone else who does, please let us know via the comment section below.

Given the Summer Olympics going on now, our featured blog involves MBA (and competitive runner) Molly Nunn.

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RUNNERSAPIEN is a blog by Molly Nunn, who was both an undergrad and an MBA grad from Wake Forest. In the past, she has used her blog to chronicle her passion for running and her pursuit of an MBA in the Working Professionals program.

The best thing about the blog is that it is conversational and well-written, reflecting the author's English major and unique outlook on life. In addition to great posts, Molly has a column highlighting some of her favorite song lyrics!

There is an inspirational element steeped in her business school education. Here is a great example that would make Dean Reinemund proud, given the topic:

Passion never leaves, it pauses; we pause it. Sometimes, I think that this is necessary or just happens due to life's circumstances be it family, jobs, friends, et. al. It is recognizing when I have paused on purpose that I must step back and recognize why I'm walking around feeling discontent - and then make the needed adjustments. The funny part about all of this is that it is usually the smallest changes that are catalysts for big time results!

And another example following May's graduation ceremony:

This night filled me with overwhelming memories of the past several years up until now. There was much that was accomplished in this time period and I've gained the tools needed to move steadily forward. In gaining a new skill set and learning lessons, some fun - others very difficult, there are things and people to be left behind. ... I can only speak for myself because ultimately I am the one responsible for how, when, and whether or not I use the tools and knowledge that I have. It's a simple business decision made from a cost-benefit analysis.

These are just a few examples of the writing style. Molly also has a great eye for photography, so you will also see some terrific photos on her site.

KeyCorp CEO Mooney Discusses Gender and the C-Suite

“I’m going to go to my job this morning, and I’m standing a little taller and I am walking a little prouder because a woman will lead us.”

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Photo courtesy of Cleveland.com

Beth Mooney, the first chief executive of a top 20 U.S. bank, read the text above with great pride during her speech last week at an event hosted by Beta Gamma Sigma. Mooney received the email from a female employee at KeyCorp shortly after she became the Cleveland company's chairman and CEO in May 2011. 

The encouraging letter also underscored the historic importance of Mooney's appointment to lead the large regional banking company. 

"It was a comment like that that made me realize that it was a unique opportunity for our company to have a woman CEO, but it was unique for women in general,” she told attendees in a speech built around diversity and inclusion. “And it is important to me that I approach this with a sense of obligation to do this well. There is an extra responsibility in being the first and I want you to know that I actually feel that sense of responsibility every day.”

The speech seemed more timely given the recent news that Yahoo! had hired Marissa Mayer, a former Google executive as its CEO. Mayer then topped the news by announcing on Twitter that she is pregnant.

Mooney made it clear that women are poised to make more breakthroughs in the corporate world as businesses realize their success or failure hinges on the strength of the individual CEO, regardless of whether that leader is a man or a woman. “Gender doesn’t matter when it comes to delivering results,” she said.

“I do feel the leadership should be carried out by people who are the right people for the task at hand,” Mooney said. “As we move forward I have little doubt that more and more of them will be female and that they will be diverse. And that will be better because it will reflect the broader population. For a while, at least, I think a diverse leader will be something of an event. But the day will come, and it will be a great day, when it isn’t.”

Mooney also shared advice to attendees (more than 90 in person and 600 or so via a Webcast) about leadership. She touted the importance of having a “pit crew,” or a group of people with diverse backgrounds to share knowledge. “Always practice continuous learning, particularly with those who can help you see yourself more clearly and will … challenge you to grow,” she said.

“I have become a role model, and I take that obligation very seriously,” Mooney added. “Every day … people are watching what I do and listening to what I say. As leaders, we should never underestimate that how we conduct ourselves, how we extend ourselves and how we reward people matters mightily.”

In conclusion, Mooney gave her philosophy for leadership, boiling it down into five simple principles:

• Always be your best. I believe you’ll be able to look back with pride instead of regret.
• Be of service. Your community needs your gifts just as much as your career does.
• Be grateful. Not being grateful will turn us bitter and old before our time. On the other hand, I believe gratitude gives us dignity and grace.
• Remember to thank those who helped you along the way. Don’t wait to let them know how much they’ve meant to you.
• As a leader, be conscious of your legacy. To do this, start with the end in mind and craft the journey to that end.

Beta Gamma Sigma is planning to post video of Mooney’s presentation. It is well worth allocating the time to watch. She also answered several questions about the banking industry, and a write up of her responses can be found here.

Trout Fishing in Reynolds Gym Pool

That headline is not a joke.

Campus Recreation at Wake Forest University will hold its first trout-fishing event in the Reynolds Gym Pool on Aug. 3 at 5 pm. The group will stock rainbow trout (about 13-14 inches long) in the pool for people to catch, gut, fry and eat.

“We will have experts in all areas, so if you are not sure how to do any of them this is your chance to learn,” Jessica Finnerty, assistant director of campus recreation, aquatics, said in a press release.

Tickets are $10 before July 27 and $15 after. You can register online at this link, or you can register in the pool office (118 Reynolds Gym). A ticket guarantees you one rainbow trout. The event is open to anyone. Those 15 or younger will need to be on deck with an adult. The top five rows of the bleachers will be open for observation.

Frequently asked questions:

• No, fish can not live in chlorine. Chemicals will be turned off  48 hours in advance, and hose water and ice will be added.
• The pool’s annual draining and cleaning will be immediately after this event.
• Fishing poles and bait will be provided, but ticket-holders can bring their own poles. Fly fishing, anyone?
• Fishing will only be in the deep well.
• The trout are coming from a farm in Virginia.
• Only six people will be allowed to fish at one time.
• You can skip any station you want (example: take your trout to the gutting station and not participate)
• If you want to take your trout home to grill after it has been caught and gutted, that is fine.

Other questions? Contact Finnerty at finnerjm@wfu.edu or 758-3490.

Charlie Sheen Exposes Twitter's Weakness

The Face of Winning

Charlie Sheen has quit Twitter, taking with him the mantra of #winning and concepts such as tiger blood and trolls out to sabotage his career. Indeed, TV’s favorite train wreck had peaked months ago, but his sudden rise and departure from the social utility highlight a key Achilles heel for the site and for most other types of social media.

Sheen joined Twitter in March 2011, at a point where his personal and professional lives were in complete and total disarray. People ate up the online soap opera. By the time he decided to quit Twitter 16 months later, Sheen had amassed nearly 8 million followers, including 157,000 within the first two hours after his initial tweet. Amazing!

But it also shows you just how easy it is to join and leave sites like Twitter. Sheen isn’t alone. Alec Baldwin has quit and rejoined the site. (Remember Baldwin's Words With Friends airline incident?). You can also add John Mayer, Miley Cyrus and James Franco to the list. (Franco quit after just a few weeks.) For many, 140-characters of chaos brought followers, but it also led to sudden disappearances from the online world.

Editor's note: Sheen has since rejoined Twitter, further showing how easy it is to float in and out of the platform.

These celebrities all expose the great weakness of many social media sites. Low switching costs and an inability to create the so-called sticky relationships necessary to retain customers, drive revenue and produce sustainable growth. It costs nothing to set up an account. The only cost of quitting involves finding new ways to communicate with others, and there are plenty of ways to do that through social media.

Certainly, there are a high percentage of people who joined Twitter just to follow Sheen's late night rants about goddesses, Adonis DNA and warlocks. (Remember his social media intern promotion?) If just 5% of his followers were there just for him, then Sheen's departure could lead to the exodus of  400,000 Twitter users. I don't have data for this, though it seems in the realm of possibility.

Facebook, for now, has been able to create traction. There are games and communities that you will lose if you leave, but even the social media juggernaut has yet to provide a perfect value proposition to its users. (And the jury is still out on whether advertisers are actually benefiting from posting on the social utility.)

The FB isn’t helping its cause. The site recently scored 61 out of 100 on a satisfaction scale released Monday as part of the American Customer Satisfaction Index E-Business Report, which is produced in conjunction with ForeSee, an analytics firm. It was the largest decline of the 230 companies rated in the survey.

Such concerns make it so much easier for someone to try something new. It doesn’t take long for people to switch, triggering a downward spiral for a site’s popularity. Remember Digg? Betaworks just paid a paltry $500,000 for the site, just a few years removed from being lauded as a rising star in the tech world that was reportedly courted by Google and others.

NewsCorp can relate, selling MySpace for $35 million after paying $580 million for the site just six years earlier. Fame is fleeting. People are fickle. You have to not only bring them in, but also find ways of keeping them engaged. 

That, Sheen might say, is the true key to #winning.

Blog Profile: The Millennial Voice

There are a number of Wake Forest University Schools of Business students and alumni who blog. We'd like to highlight some of those individuals in coming weeks. If you blog, or know someone who does, please post the link(s) in the comment section at the end of this post.

Bobbie Shrivastav

Bobbie Shrivastav graduated from the Evening MBA program last year. She used to contribute to the student-run blog and apparently wanted to keep writing. She oversees The Millennial Voice, where she focuses on issues that are important to aspiring executives who are 30 and younger, while also looking reflectively at her own career and interest in Project Management.

Her latest post, which you can read here, recaps and summarizes a presentation that Richard Morreale gave to PMI Triad gathering last month. Morreale discusses what it takes to be on the top of the project management profession.

Duke Energy Has a Lot of Explaining to Do

Duke Energy could have given Bill Johnson at least enough time to warm the seat in his new corner office in Charlotte. Instead, the utility giant has chosen a path that will lead many to question its credibility, integrity and trustworthiness.

Early in my journalism career, a mentor told me that credibility is the most precious thing you can cultivate ... and destroy. "It is very easy to destroy your credibility," he would say. "It sometimes takes a lifetime to earn it back."

Duke CEO Rogers

I expect the same can be said of Duke and CEO Jim Rogers, who has been recognized for his advocacy for Corporate America. Duke has a lot of explaining to do: to the Progress directors who voted for the merger, to shareholders who endorsed it and to regulators who (eventually) blessed it.

They aren't the only ones who want answers. Roy Cooper, the attorney general for North Carolina, is investigating the swerve, and the North Carolina Utilities Commission will question Rogers at a public hearing tomorrow. The lead director of Progress has already called foul, stating that the merger would have never taken place if this coup had been foreseen.

There is an interesting passage in the Wall Street Journal article. "The swap also undid what had been for Progress one of the central inducements to discussing and completing a deal. According to securities filings, Mr. Rogers told Mr. Johnson at their first meeting to discuss the merger in July 2010 that he would be willing to step aside as CEO, and Progress's board saw that concession as crucial."

Ouch. Sounds sneaky and deceptive to me. And now thousands of former Progress employees get to work for this guy? Good thing for Duke that the economy is behaving so poorly. Otherwise, there should be scores of resumes spread throughout Raleigh, where Progress was headquartered.

These types of coups are to be expected. You cannot expect two CEOs, along with the prerequisite egos, to share power. But you usually go through the dog and pony show of collaboration for six months to a year. To pull the trigger a mere 24 hours after the deal's completion makes a mockery of the approval process. It laughs in the face of transparency and disclosure.

What it says to me is that this deal should have never gone through. It screams out that people will have to keep a close eye on Duke for another five to 10 years at least. Regulators, that pressure falls on you. Someone in Raleigh ought to be calling Rogers weekly, and they should rev up oversight the minute he contradicts himself. No mulligans here.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not shedding any tears for Johnson, who reportedly walks away with a sweet $44 million exit package. Not bad pay for a day's work, but it also highlights the idiocy of these packages. Think about it ... Duke was willing to pay $44 million to close this deal and immediately put its CEO back in the corner office. That should make shareholders cringe.

The only cost savings I can see comes from interior design. I hope Johnson didn't renovate his new office. He sure didn't have enough time to enjoy it.

Still, the biggest cost is Duke's credibility. I wonder how long it will take for the company to get it back

Sponsors Saved Annual Fireworks

By all accounts, the annual fireworks at Tanglewood Park were a success. And the big winners were the three companies that stepped in at the eleventh hour to rescue to the annual 4th of July celebration outside Winston-Salem.

Forsyth County officials had forecast an attendance of 8,000 people. The event featured fireworks by Hale Artificier Fireworks Inc. And it wouldn't have been possible without Winston-Salem Federal Credit Union, Piedmont Advantage Credit Union and the Winston-Salem Journal.

All three had good reason to step up with a $5,000 donation each. The credit unions are in the midst of a big push to capitalize on ill will toward banks. The newspaper, as part of Media General, is being acquired by Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway and has good reason to show it prioritizes its local community.

"Warren Buffett and our new ownership expect us to further increase our community involvement," Jeffrey Green, the newspaper's president and publisher, said in an article. "When I read ... that the fireworks were being cancelled I immediately felt like we had to help and contacted the county."

Forsyth County had actually cancelled the event just weeks before it was set to take place, attributing its decision to a lack of funding. For a reasonable amount, three willing sponsors get to claim that they saved an annual tradition.

And it likely helped boost the event's attendance. Normally, the county spends $10,000 on the event with an attendance of up to 4,000. County officials stated that the extra investment would help them boost attendance.

Hopefully, the 8,000 people who attended the event will remember the companies that salvaged the event.

See the fireworks below: