JOHN HENNESSY

>> Craig Gould: John Hennessy, thank you so much for joining me this week on the podcast. John, you’re a bit of a legend in Silicon Valley. I think Mark Andreessen refers to you as the godfather of Silicon Valley. But, back before you were director of the Knight Hennessy Scholar Program, back before you were the president of Stanford, back before you were the chairman of Alphabet or the founder of different startups, there had to be a first job back there. What was your first job and what was that like? Was it teaching or did you do something before that?

>> John Hennessy: My first job after I finished my Ph.D. was, @ Stanford. my high school job was actually, stocking shelves in a grocery store. So, and I worked on that. Then I kind of moved into doing a little computer consulting and helping people who were doing computer programming when I was an undergraduate. And then, Stanford was the job I got after I finished my PhD.

>> Craig Gould: Did I read somewhere where you still stay in touch rather closely with one of your coworkers at that grocery store?

>> John Hennessy: Yes. We’ve been married for 50 years, so there was an upside to the grocery store.

>> Craig Gould: Right. But in the end you wound up from the east coast to the west coast at Stanford, and that’s where the roots have been planted.

>> John Hennessy: Yeah, that’s right. I had the really fortunate opportunity, to get handed a thesis topic that was the early days of microprocessors, and somebody handed me a thesis topic having to do with what’s called Real Time Control, Control of a system using a microprocessor. And in those days, the microprocessors were extremely primitive, four and eight bit processors, only very primitive. and this was a really challenging problem. And I worked on some software to do this and it turned out that the whole microprocessor world was exploding. This kind of software was getting really hot. so I ended up getting a thesis that was on a really popular topic as a result and landed me a job at Stanford.

>> Craig Gould: The hope of this podcast is to help aspiring C suite leaders get insight from people that have had boots on the ground in terms of how do you lead, how do you get to the C suite, what challenges are you going to face when you get there? And so you started in academia, you ended in academia, you’re still in academia, but there’s that point in the middle where you were drawn into the world of entrepreneurship and that’s that that just kind of goes hand in hand with what people think of as Stanford these days and its location in Silicon Valley.

>> John Hennessy: Yeah, absolutely.

>> Craig Gould: Can you take me back to that time with MIPS and your interaction with Jim Clark and their use of the technology for Silicon Graphics? When I started my first startup in Silicon Valley, Rocky Roads was one of my advisors. And so, and Rocky is just this salt of the earth pragmatist. But my everything, I never met Jim but everything I read about Jim is he’s just kind of this oil filled wildcatter type of guy. Can you kind of take me back there and what your guys relationship was like?

>> John Hennessy: Sure, sure. we recruited Jim to Stanford sort of in this age when integrated circuit technology was really coming of age is called the VLSI revolution. And microprocessors were emerging from being small, limited use kinds of things into being main competing with the biggest computers in the world. and Jim was really focused on graphics. that’s what he did his PhD at Utah, then king of the graphics world in terms of people working on it. And he came to Stanford to work on this thing called the geometry engine, which was really a chip that would really dramatically enhance. In those days a high end graphics workstation cost around $250,000 a seat. And Jim said I’m going to drive it down by a factor of 10. That was his goal. so he developed this, I wrote some software for him that was a key part of being able to get these chips to work. and when he started the company he asked me to join them and I spent about almost two years consulting the company, meanwhile doing my research at Stanford. That was really the MIPS and the risk explosion. And when that work was getting done, to be perfectly honest I was kind of the reluctant Entrepreneur. I actually thought when we published the papers, industry would just say, wow, we need to pick up that idea. Here are four graduate students at Stanford. Built something that worked better than what hundreds and hundreds of engineers at intel or Digital Equipment Corporation had been able to do. But it didn’t happen that way. There’s big NIH getting over the hurdle with these companies and getting them to change. And finally, another computer, Pioneer convinced me we needed a space. I went and talked to Jim and he said, you know, Silicon Graphics has got to get its core done. We can’t afford to help you finance this, but you should go do it. so that got us started and, that was my transition to Silicon Valley with my two co founders.

>> Craig Gould: You created a product for customers who, if they purchased your product, would cannibalize their own existing products, right?

>> John Hennessy: Yeah, they would. And the history of computer industries, people are reluctant to do that. But of course, what happens is somebody else is not reluctant. They’re behind, perhaps, and they cannibalize your product instead. I always say, I say to people, you know what? Sometimes it’s better to shoot yourself in the foot than to let somebody else shoot you in the gut.

>> Craig Gould: Right? So MIPS winds up being acquired by SGI at one point. Then you also started at Theros, which wound up going public and being acquired by Qualcomm. And so at some point you wind up. Was it just kind of, your nature to say, if I’m not in the private sector, there’s a place for me to land back in the classroom? Is that how you.

>> John Hennessy: I also think once MIPS got moving along, there were still interesting things to do. But the truth is I missed working with students. I missed both being in the classroom, but also being in the research lab with students. And I decided that was where my real heart was. It’s what I loved doing. so I kind of eased my way back from mips. And I still spent part time there, but not on a full time basis. And a Theros was a rather different kind of story. Teresa Ming, my colleague, came to me having invented a technology for doing a low power gps. And at the time, gps, you know, and it was aimed at soldiers in the field who had to carry big knapsacks of batteries so that they could keep their GPS running if they were out in the field. So she invented this. And it turns out the key technology is to build a low power radio receiver. Well, that’s what you need to do. Wi fi and local area networks, previous attempts to do WI FI had failed. The technology was too expensive, too power consumptive, you know, all these kinds of things. So we kind of brainstormed this and said, you know what, we could build a technology that could really make local area wireless take off. And there wasn’t yet a standard, but it was beginning to come together and we had a big technology lead because we built a team that really had world class people in all the pieces of the puzzle in it. And it turned out that was really key to our success over time.

Is leadership broken in some sectors, Knight Hennessy says

>> Craig Gould: Well, I, want to spend the majority of our time talking about lessons you’ve learned. And I think I would love to start with the question, is leadership broken? What do you think?

>> John Hennessy: I think it’s broken in some sectors. And one of the reasons we started Knight Hennessy is I said, well, we’re clearly not teaching young people the lessons they need to be great leaders. And when m. The idea started going in the back of my mind, you know, I was observing what was happening in Washington D.C. in our country, but what was happening in Europe with the refugee crisis, they were with Brexit, with all kinds of things going on, but also even what was happening in some parts of the nonprofit sector where we had things go off the rails or the financial crisis in the for profit sector. So what, we’re not preparing these people to be ethical, thoughtful, decisive kinds of leaders that we need and people that can compromise, that can get, get the ball forward over the goal line. So that was, that was a key motivation for us. I think it’s still, we still have a long ways to go and, and I think universities have to play a key role in this.

>> Craig Gould: Sure.

Several years back, you wrote a book called Leading Matters

Several years back, I guess it’s been probably six years back, you wrote a book called Leading Matters. And in there you, you lay out a number of principles. I think you’ve refined them a little bit over the years into something called pillars. The first one of those that you touch on is humility. And I don’t know if that’s the natural place that a lot of people start when they talk about leadership, that a lot of times people think of brash ruling with a big stick. But, ah, a lot of your principles come from a place of humility. How do you develop trust? How do you become the servant leader? How do you connect with employees? Can you talk a little bit about, is that from your personal experience? I know you’re a bit of an amateur historian. What is your experience with these principles at the foundation of leadership?

>> John Hennessy: So I think it starts by a simple observation Teams are successful, it’s not one person. There are very few instances in life where one person does it all right? Even think about all the great sports players, it’s teams that do it. So a team has to work together. Then humility is important. Trust the trust of your team, especially if you go through hard times, whether it’s crisis or you’re asking them to make a big leap, you’re going to do something audacious. You need trust because you need the team with you. And part of the humility comes from the fact that a, if you send the message you’re the smartest person in the room, what’s going to happen is your team is going to shut up, they’re not going to contribute, they’re not going to say anything because they’ve concluded you have all the answers. You want them to contribute, you want them to challenge you. And you also want to be comfortable saying, does anybody have a better thought than this approach? This is my inclination, but does anybody have a better thought? So that just takes a little humility. And if you look through the book, you’ll find out I’m a big fan of Abraham Lincoln and Abraham Lincoln practiced the art of humility. He was the smartest person in the room, probably, he was certainly the best orator. But, he practiced the art of humility.

>> Craig Gould: It feels like it can be a two edged sword for entrepreneurs in that a lot of times that founding CEO, they got that initial success, they’re off the ground and they’re going because they were able to shut out all the naysayers and they have this kind of singular focus. But that means they’re not listening to the people around them. But there is a point where if they’re going to succeed, their ears need to be a lot bigger.

>> John Hennessy: Yeah, I mean I’m an absolute believer. A key for any entrepreneur is focus, focus, focus. All the wood behind one arrow, right? You put everything to get your first product because that enables you to build your second product. And you don’t want to dilute yourself. That doesn’t mean that you don’t have a team that’s working together. That. I mean, part of one of my lessons in humility was when we started mips, the, CEO got up and said, we’re going to have our executive staff meeting on Saturday morning because we’re sending the message that Saturday morning is a work. Saturday is our workday in this startup and we’re going to start by being the first ones there. That was a practiced humility, right? He was the CEO. He knew he was the CEO, but he was practicing humility to kind of say, we’re a team. We’re in this together.

>> Craig Gould: Hey there. If you’re enjoying today’s conversation, I’ve got something you don’t want to miss. Imagine having a daily dose of insights that can help you actively manage your climb to the C Suite. With Master Move Premium, you can get just that. Our premium content dives deeper into the strategic decisions, cultural leadership, and innovation that top executives like you face every day. But the most valuable resources are those that help you find the next great opportunity in the C Suite. As a Master Move Premium subscriber, you’ll get access to premium content, which includes my ongoing conversations with corporate leaders in talent Acquisition as well as C level executive recruiters. These premium episodes provide unmatched insights on executive search trends, candidate best practices, and specific job opportunities as they emerge. So why wait? Head over to MasterMove IE and become a member today. Now back to our conversation.

Another, ah, one of those core principles that you lay at the foundation is empathy

>> Craig Gould: Another, ah, one of those core principles that you lay at the foundation is empathy. And it seems like in a business school program or even just in life in general, how do you go about transferring empathy? How do you, how do you convince somebody? Or how do you mold someone into being an empath if they’re not naturally precluded to that?

>> John Hennessy: so there’s actually research now that’s been done that shows that you can build up the empathetic gene you can strengthen in people. One of my colleagues, Professor Zaki, has worked on this. And you can actually strengthen that element over time. Empathy doesn’t mean that you don’t tell people tough messages and make tough decisions. It means you try to be sensitive and humane in doing it. Because in any leadership position, you’re going to get some people angry. You’re going to do things that they don’t agree with. And if they build up that list or they become too virulent in their objection, they’re going to reduce the time you can be an effective leader. And if you want to accomplish something big, you need a long enough Runway to do that. So you need the trust of the team and the belief in them. You need them to be with you. And I think that really helps, in trying to create a sense of unity in the goals you have.

Courage is the willingness to do the right thing regardless of the consequences

>> Craig Gould: Well, that also brings up another one, which is courage, which is the willingness to do the right thing regardless of the consequences. Those consequences might be protesters in your front yard.

>> John Hennessy: Right? I’ve had it. I’ve had them. And you have to Be willing to go out and be willing to deal with it and, and face up to them and decide what. Okay, you’ve got somebody who’s upset about how far can you go before you either are, taking the institution you’re leading off mission or you’re, or you’re undermining one of your core principles.

>> Craig Gould: But I mean, it’s, it’s a real concern for aspiring CEOs. Just this week I was speaking to a former CEO about being on the podcast and they were reticent because the public had been so vocal in their final days at the helm of this company that they said, you know, you have to understand, I had death threats, I had armed guards at my house. You know, I’m not sure if I’m ready to put my voice back out there.

>> John Hennessy: Yeah, well, this is a problem with the society that, sometimes has become too violent. And in some cases, even where our leaders have even encouraged the use of violence, that’s a mistake.

Developing a winning culture starts with deciding what kind of culture works

>> Craig Gould: How do you develop a culture that is a team? What are the practical things? Is it a matter of focusing on yourself and who you are, or are there practical things that you can do, exercises or practical implementations to get to a culture that is a winning culture?

>> John Hennessy: Well, I think it starts by deciding what kind of culture works in the institution you’re leading and how do you inculcate that culture. my inclination in the leadership roles I’ve had is that we’re building a consultative decision making process. We’re going to consult, but in the end we’re going to make a decision. And as you would guess, in any large organization, 100% of the people are never on any important decision, all important decisions. What I need to do is consult sufficiently that people feel they’re heard and they can raise their concerns and their objections. And if I can explain in a rational fashion why we’re doing X and not Y, I can keep them on board and keep them as productive contributors to the organization. Culture is crucial. There’s this old saying, culture eats strategy for lunch. I mean, I think, it’s a reminder culture is a really deep thing and making sure you preserve it and that you know what your core culture is. What’s your core culture as an institution? what are you committed to, what really matters? and thinking about all your stakeholders. I mean, whether it’s a company or a university, the map of stakeholders is complicated. It’s not just shareholders. Clearly in a company. Shareholders in a public company play a key role, but they’re not the Only ones. The employees. Employees matter, the customers matter, the local community matters. And same thing in the university, except in addition to that, you have hundreds of thousands of alumni that care deeply about the institution you’re leading. So you’ve got to figure out how to build a mechanism that brings as many people on board as possible as you go forward.

>> Craig Gould: Well, it reminds me, I used to have a manager who would say that you interview for your next job every day. It just makes me think that, you know, when it comes to culture, there’s something similar there. It’s not crafting a, mission statement and, you know, paying Kinkos to put it on a poster on the wall. You have to be living that out every day. And I believe I’ve heard you tell stories about how Stanford is a large organization, but you chose to have these lunches on a micro level with every corner of the university. And it took you years to have those small groups, right?

>> John Hennessy: Yeah, it took me five years to go from one end of the university to the other, and then you start back the other direction. It’s just like painting the Golden Gate Bridge. You’re always painting, and you’re just going one direction or the other. But I’ll tell you that, first of all, it sends a message. I’m a faculty colleague of yours. Yes. I happen to have the title of president, and I happen to live in the president’s office and things like that. But I’m a faculty colleague, and I want to hear what we can do to make your life, to make your teaching and research more productive. And it made an enormous difference in keeping in touch with my colleagues. It also helped. It helped discover where there might be a, small little fire starting that, had it not got attention early, could turn into a, massive conflagration and cause real damage to the university. People would bring up things and say, you know, we got this problem over here. And I’m thinking, how did they get that problem? And, now I know I have to go talk to the dean or the department chair to try to straighten it out.

>> Craig Gould: Just creating more work for yourself, right?

>> John Hennessy: Yeah. That’s preventing. Preventing really bad things from happening is an important goal.

>> Craig Gould: Right.

I had read where CEO tenures have dropped below four years

You know, I think one of the things, when I was reading your book, one of the things that really struck me was you never mentioned it using this vocabulary, but I really got this sense of stewardship in your perspective as being president of the university, in that Stanford wasn’t yours. You were stewarding it for this period of time that there was an institution that came before your tenure and there was going to be an institution that came after and that you needed to manage within the principles of what came before and what’s the focus in the North Star and have it ready for the next president. I know for an institution like Stanford, that probably makes a lot of sense, but do you see where that applies to people in the private sector just as well?

>> John Hennessy: Well, I think it certainly applies if your goal is to build an organization that lasts. And certainly that’s the. Every CEO I know would love to have an organization they can pass on and say, you know, I did the job for 10 years and I left it better than it was when I came in. And I think every CEO would be happy if they could say, if they could say that. and I think many of the CEOs I talk to feel that they’re often victims of the short term thinking imposed by Wall street and analysts and flipping the stock over a few cents, shortfall in one quarter. Right. That’s not a mindset that I think is particularly helpful either to the CEO or for companies. And if we could get more of a long term mindset, I think, we’d all be better off, both our leadership and our corporations.

>> Craig Gould: I had read where CEO tenures have dropped, down below four years to like the three and a half year range as average for most CEOs. And it just seems like too short of a tenure to make the gains or make the impact that you would want to make. I mean NFL football coaches there, you need a certain amount of time to see the results of the changes you’ve made. Is that a result of, you know, short term thinking on the shareholder side in terms of wanting to see quick gains and how, how might we remedy that in a way that there, there are longer tenures and is a longer tenure better? What do you think?

>> John Hennessy: I think a longer tenure is better when you’re really trying to do something that is, dramatic and decisive. I think people all think about Steve Jobs and his return to Apple after being fired. What they don’t remember is it was seven years before Apple really turned the corner and began to take off. Seven years Steve worked. In fact, the first thing he did was to reduce the number of products Apple was building by half and cut way back and really focus on building fewer great products is a lot better than what they were doing. So I think we need to have more. three and a half years is just not enough. What it’s one product cycle, maybe one and a half. If you’re in a fast moving industry. so we need to think about what can we do. If I was in control, I’d say long term capital gains. You hold the stock for five years, not one year, five years. Right. And push more. And if you hold it for less than a year, then you pay an extra tax when you sell the stock. If we did things like that, we would encourage more long term thinking and I think that would be better for. We’ve also got to think about how do we get work, life balance. I mean, CEO jobs are tremendously demanding. And we have to realize that if we can’t get them well balanced, we have a problem. I used to say when I got the job of Stanford president, I said, I’m running a marathon, I’m not running a dash. I want to do this for long enough to really make a difference.

>> Craig Gould: A 16 year marathon.

>> John Hennessy: Yeah, that was a long. It was a long. It was a long. It was. I had never, I had intended to do it for about 10 or 12, but it worked. Things were working out. So.

Every company today deals with innovation on some front

>> Craig Gould: So, tell me about innovation. Like if I were a company where it’s critical that I continue to innovate, which honestly I think just about every company out there today deals with innovation on some front, how do I put that lightning in a bottle? How do I find it? How do I nurture it? How do I make it grow?

>> John Hennessy: So I think it starts by doing a set of things. First of all, you recognize that, while you may need a whole team of engineers to get a product out, you’ve got a few people in there that are the real spark, that are the fireflies, who are really going to help invent that new technology and drive it forward. You’ve got to empower them, find a way for them to really become the leaders in terms of the intellectual direction. You have to constantly think about it. I mean, one of the hardest things to do in a company that’s well run and has a great core business is to think about what other businesses do I need to be in. What adjacencies should I be looking at? Because the core business is doing just terrific and going into a new business is going to require additional resources put into that and it won’t pay off for a number of years. But if you don’t do that, then your core business becomes your limiting factor. You begin to plateau. Then everybody concludes you’re a value play, not a growth play because you’re not innovating. And then along comes that upstart that builds a version of your product, but for half the cost using new technology. And that’s the kind of thing that companies tend to see time and time again because they don’t innovate and obsolete their own product line.

Stanford explored creating a second campus in New York City

>> Craig Gould: For you, in your tenure at Stanford, it sounds like an example of that could have been your examination of, creating a second location in New York City. You were willing to investigate that innovation. I would love for you to tell the story on how you found yourself in that situation and how you found yourself out of it, because I think it’s a really interesting look at avoiding a sunk cost fallacy. Right. Just exploring the idea of putting on campus there cost you seven figures. You could have easily said, we’ve invested this much, we’re going to push on. But sometimes you have to figure out how to walk away from a bad deal.

>> John Hennessy: Yeah, you do, you do. And I think we, you know, in order to make this, I mean I was going to try something really hard for university which be in more than one place, but we thought if we could ever do it, and New York City was so complimentary to our location here in the Valley, it would get us access to new students and new faculty in a different environment. so it was an interesting proposal and I think the mayor was very excited about it, Mayor Bloomberg at the time. And so it looked like an interesting opportunity. We did a lot of exploration in order to. I had to do some things on this side with my faculty to keep them on board and get them enthusiastic about it. And in the end the city wanted us to do things and make commitments which were not compatible with that. So in the end that was the breaking point. I think it’s interesting when you talk about sunk cost because what my, the chair of the board of trustees was really scared that I would just sign the deal no matter what because I was so bought in and you had. I had to put a lot of energy into getting people to think about this because it was really far out of the box. but in the end, you know, we concluded we couldn’t do it. The bridge too far and, and we decided not to go forward. And I think it was the right decision both to explore it and the right decision not to do it. In the end.

Knight Hennessy Scholars Program is a version of the Rhodes Scholar program

>> Craig Gould: In the end, you know, the innovation came in the form of this program that you have launched after your tenure as president, the Knight Hennessy Scholars Program for the casual that may not know of the program. It is in a way a version of the Rhodes Scholar program for here in North America in Many ways it’s, an opportunity to rethink what would a program like that be in the 21st century, and how might we advance the ball even further?

>> John Hennessy: Yeah, that’s exactly right. We were inspired by what Rhodes had done, although he did it in the end of the 19th century, with some limits, which were unfortunate at the time, which the scholarship is trying to reverse over time. but clearly created a group of people who have gone on to important leadership roles. So we were inspired by that. And it then occurred to me, why is this program in the uk? The UK was once the head of the world, but not anymore. The empire is over. why not do it at the university that’s associated with entrepreneurship and innovation as its core things? So I, started putting it together. My deans were very excited about it. and M, the trustees were excited about it, and my good friend Phil Knight was excited about it. So, he helped us philanthropically. and we just, brought our seventh cohort in 89 students chosen from almost 8,000. So, we have some really terrific young people who we think will make great leaders in the future.

You say we should be investing in higher education broadly because we need both

>> Craig Gould: Well, I remember listening to a conversation you had with Malcolm Gladwell on revisionist history, where he was trying to make a case for kind of a distribution of wealth in higher education and questioning what’s going to result in the greatest good. Can you talk about the benefit of finding those students who we really, really think are the best and brightest and investing in this small subset versus doling out a wider group of funds across a wider plateau?

>> John Hennessy: I mean, I think both are important, obviously. Right? You need both. And we as a country, as a nation, should be investing in higher education broadly because we need both. But we, we kind of tried to focus on. First of all, they’re graduate students. That kind of is a different role. It also means we can judge a lot more coming out of high school. You really can’t tell what somebody’s coming out of, coming out of under. They’ve already got an undergraduate degree. Most actually have a couple years of work experience. So we know a lot more about their potential. and we. And we invest a lot of them. Most of what we’re investing is tuition and finance and living expenses, which they might well get anyway. and we are adding a little something that really helps them build their leadership skills. So from that perspective, I think you need both. You need the leaders, but you need the rest of the team too. And I think it isn’t an either or. Both. Both have a complementary role.

Without Larry and Sergey, there would have been no Google

>> Craig Gould: No, I mean, it’s really interesting because it makes me think of, you know, I really have a, fascination with Clifton Strengths finders. And one of the things they talk about in the strengths finder is, how you can spend a lot of time and resources trying to improve your weaknesses only to get them to a place where they’re just not a liability. Versus, if you spend that same time and resources trying to improve a strength, you can become exceptional. Right. And, you know, I think about that in terms of, of finding this group that if you invested a little bit more into the best, you know, can we identify people that will be future MacArthur Fellows and help them get on a fast track?

>> John Hennessy: Yeah, I think that, I mean, there’s a good analogy to Google as a company. You need Larry and Sergey to get that company started to do the original algorithm, the original search algorithm. There were at least 100 people from Stanford that joined the company in its first year, year and a half. Those were critical players. But without Larry and Sergey, there was no Google. So that’s the way I think about it.

>> Craig Gould: So how early did you know Larry and Sergey?

>> John Hennessy: I knew them when they were graduate students. And I remember seeing, I remember seeing an, early demo of then. It was called Google. It had previously been called Backrub, and we had had Search. There were other search engines out there. What’s amazing, and this is one of the amazing things about graduate students, they’ll look at something. I looked at the other search Alta Vista for was the biggest search engine we were using. It was so much better than what had come before in terms of a web crawler and things Larry and Sergey looked at and said, this isn’t very good. We can do better. That’s what’s remarkable about young people and graduate education. You get that spark to try. We can do better.

>> Craig Gould: When my first startup, my business partner, was in a little corporate office across the hall from theirs over on the Bayside, of Mountain View. And, you know, he was telling me about their company. And in my mind, Yahoo had 90% of the search market. Like, why is. Yeah, why, why is somebody else trying to compete with Yahoo?

>> John Hennessy: I mean, I think, I think the Yahoo was great. It was a portal. And by the way, Yahoo was the one that figured out you could use advertising to amortize, on the web, to monetize on the web. Which of course Google built on that monetization capability. It just. Search was the killer. search was what you really wanted. Right. Not a portal search.

>> Craig Gould: Right.

>> John Hennessy: So that’s the way it works.

Going back to the Scholar program, I know during your tenure it was predominantly domestic

>> Craig Gould: Going back to the Scholar program, I know during your tenure as president of Stanford, the student body was predominantly domestic. I mean, something like 90%. But your scholar program, it’s an incredibly international group, isn’t it?

>> John Hennessy: Yeah. So we have students from all around the world. I, think we’re up to around 70 countries in the seven classes. So, you know, we’ve got, we’ve got students from really tiny little countries that you’ve barely heard of and obviously, lots of, lots of traditional feeders that would send graduate students to place like Stanford.

>> Craig Gould: John, I have one last question for you. I understand that you once asked Charlie Munger the secret to picking great CEOs, and I’m sure everyone would love to know what he told you.

>> John Hennessy: So I asked Charlie, exactly, I said, how do you pick such great CEOs for the Berkshire Hathaway companies? And Charlie looks at me and goes, I don’t always pick great CEOs, but I fix my mistakes quickly.

>> Craig Gould: That’s the ethos I’ve always carried with me from Silicon Valley, is to fail quickly. If you’re going to fail, fail quickly. Learn from your mistakes and move on.

>> John Hennessy: And call the question when it’s time to call the question.

>> Craig Gould: Right. Well, John, this has been a real pleasure and a real honor. I really appreciate your time. If folks wanted to learn more, about you and your program, is there some place in particular where they can go keep an eye on the scholar program or, you know, your books or your writing, where, where might people keep, keep an eye on the work that you’re continuing to do?

>> John Hennessy: Well, thanks for asking that, Craig. It’s a great question. they can just do a Google search for Knight Hennessy and you’ll find it. That’s Phil Knight. K N I G H T Knight, Hennessy. And you can find there’s information about our scholars, how to apply, what we look for when we accept people. and I’m all over the web.

>> Craig Gould: Awesome.

>> John Hennessy: The advantage of being around for a while, you know.

>> Craig Gould: Again, I really appreciate your time today, sir.

>> John Hennessy: Okay, thank you, Craig. It was fun.

Craig Gould: Thank you for listening to today’s Master Move podcast

>> Craig Gould: All right, take care.

>> Craig Gould: This has been Master Move. I’m Craig Gould and I’ve been your host. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an interview with another inspiring leader. And if you’re looking for more exclusive content and behind the scenes insights, check out MasterMove IE for additional resources, premium articles, premium episodes, and more.

>> Craig Gould: I’d love to hear your thoughts.

>> Craig Gould: On today’s conversation, so feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn or drop me a line at craigastermove. IO, until next time. Remember, leadership isn’t just about making decisions. It’s about making moves that matter. Master move.