Indholdsfortegnelse for Fall 2008 i Rotman Management

BYTHE DAWN OF THE 21STCENTURY, a revolutionary change had taken hold in the realm of value creation: physical and financial assets were no longer the key factors of sustainable competitive advantage. Instead, leading companies like Dell, GE and Procter & Gamble depended on superior human and knowledge assets for their competitive edge. The key advantage conferred by such firm-specific ‘organizational capital’ is the fact that these resources are mainly tacit: they are difficult to codify or directly transfer to other organizations. As the knowledge economy has expanded, so too has our definition of capital, to the point where the most valuable assets of leading innovation-based firms have no actual physical presence, nor a home on a traditional balance sheet. These ‘intangible’ assets – which include reputation, brand equity, sustainability, security…

WE WOULD LIKE TO PROPOSE A SOMEWHAT RADICAL IDEA: that companies redesign their internal financial performance measurements for the digital age. It is time for organizations to take measure of the real engines of wealth creation in the 21st century: the knowledge, relationships, reputations and other ‘intangibles’ created by talented people. Companies create wealth by converting these raw intangibles into the institutional skills, patents, brands, software, customer bases, intellectual capital, and networks that increase profits per employee and returns on invested capital. Intangibles are true ‘capital’ in the sense that they produce real cash returns. A simple approximation of intangible capital is the market value of a firm less the invested financial capital. Using book capital as a crude proxy for financial capital, the intangible capital of the world’s largest…

THE FIELD OF ACCOUNTING has been broadly defined as “the measurement and communication of relevant economic information to decision makers.” This process entails the collection and organization of data regarding economic transactions from sources internal to the company and their transformation into standardized output using accounting guidelines, norms and rules. The most common output is the annual report – which typically contains (among other things) an income statement, a balance sheet, a statement of cash flows and accompanying notes. External consumption of accounting information by equity researchers, retail investors, coverage companies, shareholders, journalists and members of the general public can result in several consequences, and includes both decisions (‘should I invest in this company or elsewhere? Should I sell my stock?) as well as judgments (‘Is this company doing well?…

COMPANIES LIKE TO PROMOTE the idea that employees are their biggest source of competitive advantage. Yet the astonishing reality is that most of them are as unprepared for the challenge of finding, motivating, and retaining capable workers as they were a decade ago. Ten years after McKinsey conducted its War for Talent research [the 1997 study drawing attention to an imminent shortage of executives] the problem remains acute – and if anything, has become worse. Companies face a demographic landscape dominated by the looming retirement of Baby Boomers and by a dearth of young people entering the workforce in Western Europe. Meanwhile, question marks remain over the appropriateness of the talent in many emerging markets. Judging by two McKinsey Quarterly global surveys, business leaders are deeply concerned. The first, in…

WHEN GENERAL MOTORS TRIED to revive its Daewoo car division in the United Kingdom in 2005 by rebranding it with the Chevrolet badge, it ran into big trouble. Car buyers had difficulty linking the iconic American brand – immortalized in countless movies, celebrated in numerous songs and enjoying more than 90 per cent brand awareness – with the low-priced Korean autos. The result was falling sales and the resignation of the chief executive of GM’s operations in the United Kingdom. Moreover, the Chevrolet brand itself deteriorated significantly in the 2006 J.D. Powers & Associates annual satisfaction survey in the UK, ending up ranked just ahead of troubled automakers such as Fiat and far behind other American makes such as Ford or other Korean brands like Hyundai. In another instance, marketers…

The Institute for OneWorld Health is changing the paradigm in the realm of pharmaceutical research and development. Describe its unique approach. Basically, we challenge the assumption that pharmaceutical research and development is too expensive to create the new medicines that the developing world desperately needs. Our approach is simple: assemble an experienced and dedicated team of pharmaceutical scientists; identify the most promising drug and vaccine candidates; develop them into safe, affordable medicines; then partner with experts, physicians, hospitals, non-profits and companies in the developing world to conduct medical research, manufacture and distribute approved therapies that will impact the health of millions of people. The industry was really stuck when we came along in 2000: until then there had only been one, for-profit model in pharmaceuticals, whereby firms developed new medicines…

IT IS NOW ALMOST conventional wisdom in policy circles and in the financial press that the London stock exchanges have become more competitive in attracting foreign listings than New York’s. In 1998, the major New York exchanges, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), the American Stock Exchange (AMEX) and NASDAQ collectively attracted 30 per cent of the world’s foreign listings. The London Stock Exchange’s (LSE) Main Market and Alternative Investment Market (AIM) had 16 per cent, and no other exchange had more than seven per cent. At the time, New York’s share of cross-listings exceeded London’s by 74 per cent; but by 2005, London’s share had increased so that New York’s exceeded London’s by only 59 per cent. A popular explanation for the decrease in foreign listings on the New…

We are in the midst of what legendary financierGeorge Soros has called “the worst market crisis in 60 years.” What are the implications for capital? The crisis Soros speaks of is one of confidence. The pervasive lack of confidence by market participants is a consequence of the impairment of the market’s most valuable intangible asset, which is pricing integrity. The current crisis underscores the value of intangible assets by demonstrating – in stark terms – the consequences of their impairment. You have said that despite the state of markets, companies that are ‘superior stewards’ of their intangible assets will outperform those that are not. What does it take to be a superior steward? Superior stewardship entails an enterprise-wide commitment to increasing, protecting and recovering intangible asset value. Stewardship starts at…

A ROTMAN PROFESSOR and entrepreneur was named as one of Canada’s Top 40 Under 40 for 2008. Prof. Mihnea Moldoveanu and the other recipients were honoured during a reception on May 6 in Toronto. Paul Salvini (MBA ’04), was also honoured. Prof. Moldoveanu is the academic director of the Desautels Centre for Integrative Thinking and an associate professor of Strategic Management at the Rotman School. He joined the School in 1999, and has since received the Excellence in Teaching Award for four consecutive years. His the co-author, along with Dean Roger Martin, of The Future of the MBA – Designing the Thinker of the Future, published by Oxford University Press in March 2008, which provides a systematic review of the major contemporary debates on business education and the MBA.…

THE EDWARD J. KERNAGHAN Professorship in Financial Analysis will continue until June 30, 2015, thanks to renewed funding from its namesake donor, Ted Kernaghan, president of Kernaghan Securities. The $250,000 gift was officially announced in April at a recognition event held at the York Club of Toronto. Kernaghan is a longstanding donor to the Rotman School whose commitment extends far beyond his financial contributions. He currently serves as Value-Investor-in-Residence and is an active participant in the Value Investing class, where he offers students advice and mentorship. Kernaghan has also developed a close relationship with the student-run Rotman  Asset Management Association and has conducted valuable seminars in Value Investing for interested students. He is also an active supporter of the Clarkson Centre for Business Ethics and Board Effectiveness at the…

RESEARCH BY ROTMAN Professor of Strategic Management Mara Lederman shows that loyalty has its rewards, but it has its costs too, with frequent flyer programs driving airfares at key hub airports up by about five per cent. The cost of more expensive tickets, such as business fares, are pushed even higher, by about nine per cent, she has found. “With deregulation of the airline industry in the U.S. in 1978 and in Canada shortly after, people expected to see airfares drop. Yet, at some airports, airfares remained fairly high,” said Lederman, who holds a PhD in Economics from MIT. For years, there was speculation that frequent flyer programs may be the culprit, but evidence was scarce. To fill this void, Prof. Lederman looked not at the fares of airlines…

CHINA’S ECONOMIC JUGGERNAUT may be forcing a change in attitudes around what makes for a ‘good worker’, says a study by two researchers at the Rotman School. The study compared how Chinese and Canadian managers define and rank different job performance attributes. While the researchers expected Chinese managers to put more weight on collectivist work habits such as being cooperative, they instead put more importance on getting jobs done and favoured individualistic job performance qualities even more than Canadian managers. “We zoned in on China because previous research suggested that the Chinese tend to differ from Canadians in work-related values and behaviour,” says Prof. Maria Rotundo, who wrote the paper with her colleague, Jia Lin Xie. But, Prof. Rotundo adds, “China is growing at such a huge pace and there…

In the modern economy, intangible assets like reputation and customerrelationships matter more than physical and financial assets. How does your organization stand to benefit from this transformation? Sun Life Financial stands to benefit on a number of fronts. Rather than selling things, we help people achieve peace of mind for themselves and their families. Helping people achieve lifetime financial security is the foundation of our business and places the customer relationship at the very centre of what we do. In addition, Sun Life has both a strong reputation and a rich history in virtually all of our markets. At home, we have become a Canadian-based international champion where many longstanding Canadian names have disappeared or been acquired by foreign multinationals. We have one of the best names in the business:…

WHEN WARREN BUFFETT PURCHASED 15 per cent of Salomon Inc. in 1987, his goal was to work his investment magic from his Salomon board seat and help his investment grow and prosper. To his dismay, he found that the firm’s investment bankers were eating up all the potential upside with bonus demands that continued to grow, even when profitability was mod-est or flat. Buffett’s patience was depleted by 1991 when, as chairman, he engineered the removal of $110 million out of the investment bankers’ bonus pool, apparently striking a blow for shareholders. But the victory was short-lived, as it led to a mass exodus of Salomon bankers who sold their services to more pliable firms elsewhere on Wall Street. The incident was indicative of what has become a pervasive conflict…

The Capital Markets Institute’s mandate is to develop a clear understanding of the challenges Canada faces in its quest to become a leader among the world’s small, open markets. What are some of the key challenges we currently face? The first is figuring out how our system should be regulated. There is an ongoing debate between the ‘passport system’ – essentially a free-trade agreement based on mutual recognition of regulatory systems – and the single or ‘national regulator’ approach. Last February, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty appointed an Expert Panel to study this and determine which approach makes more sense for Canada. Its findings will be made public towards the end of 2008. Enforcement is another key issue. There is a perception out there that we don’t enforce as well as…

You have found that people from different corners of the globe value certain aspects of their lives in very similar terms. What do we value the most? Generally speaking, income is important to everyone – in particular, a capacity to provide the basics. It is also important to be able to set goals for ourselves that are realistic, so we can obtain the satisfaction that comes from meeting them. But even more important than income or achieving goals is how we relate to others – the amount and the quality of the time we spend interacting with family, friends, colleagues and neighbours, and the level of positive feedback we receive from those interactions. People systematically underestimate the satisfaction they get from engaging with others and, more importantly, engaging with people…

If most managers agree that better human capital leads to better profitability, why is HR so often relegated to bottom of senior management’s priority list? For exceptional leaders, HR issues are never relegated to the bottom: my research indicates that such leaders spend more than half of their time working on ‘people issues’. Still, many fail to make great people decisions for two reasons. First, most people are unaware of the impact of these decisions. Research showing the tangible impact of good vs. bad people decisions is very recent. Second, research shows that most organizations apply best practices for talent development, but that most are unaware of best practices for hiring. Most managers believe that they are better at selecting talent than they really are. Why is this? Last year,…

You believe that one particular type of capital has become the key competitive differentiator for today’s firms. Please describe it. Most people are familiar with ‘human capital’, which is the sum of your workforce’s education, experience and implicit knowledge. There is no doubt that our increasing collective understanding of human capital has advanced the competitive advantage of many organizations; but my colleagues and I just didn’t feel it went deep enough. We wanted to focus on the layer underneath human capital: psychological capital. We define it broadly as ‘who we are and who we can become’, and it includes at least four elements: 1. Self-efficacy: an individual’s conviction or confidence about his or her abilities to mobilize the cognitive resources and courses of action needed to successfully execute a specific…

You believe that the ability to say ‘No’ has never been as essential as it is today. Please explain. We live in an age where our ‘in boxes’ are always full. Never before have we had as many choices and information to deal with. As a result, the ability to stay focused on what is truly important – our personal and organizational priorities – and say yes to those depends on our ability to say no to lots of other things that are less important. The ability to focus on priorities and set boundaries is perhaps the most important challenge we face today – both as managers and as individuals. Describe the ‘Three-A Trap’ that often results from saying No. No is a very hard word for many of us…

You have called our current environment ‘the I-cubed Economy’. Please explain this term. I-cubed is shorthand for ‘the information, innovation and intangibles economy’. Some people simply call it the information economy or the knowledge economy, but those terms don’t capture the multifaceted nature of what is actually going on. ‘I-cubed’ highlights the three factors that are the driving forces. Information and knowledge are clearly a part of it, but not just for their own sake – they are closely tied to innovation and intangibles to form the key asset base in today’s economy. Intangible assets – knowledge, ideas, skills and relationships – have come to underpin value creation. Intangibles and information drive our innovation process through a combination of formal research and informal creativity. Together, these three elements produce the…

What are ‘knowledge flows’? The term refers to the movement of ideas across the economy. Engaging in the innovation process is often described as ‘standing on the shoulders of giants’: inventors build on the work of those who came before them. One of the topics I’m interested in is how people learn about the advancements others make. The fields I focus on are largely science and technology oriented, but the same insights apply to other areas of creativity such as the performing arts, film and music. Knowledge flows, in other words, are the movements of knowledge from person to person. In Science, every idea is a race: whoever publishes first wins. If two people are developing the same idea around the same time, whoever gets it to print first is…

MANAGING GROWTH AND CHANGE is not easy, especially in uncertain times, but the Rotman School has one answer with its Impact Consulting Group. This unique student-run management consulting service has been providing clients with innovative solutions that facilitate business planning, strategic development, financial services and market research for over 36 years. “We try to serve firms in a range of industries and sizes,” explains Sindhu Kutty (MBACandidate ‘09), one of Impact’s five partners for 2008/09. Recent projects have spanned such sectors as high-tech, telecom, biotech, green-tech, and financial services. “The most important aspect about Impact is the quality and diversity of the talent we draw upon”, says Alex Kenjeev (JD/MBACandidate ‘09). The group recruits its partners from students in the Rotman MBAprogram. Their expertise is combined with the knowledge base…

A GIFT FROM ONE OF CANADA’S LEADING FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS will support research into prosperity at the Rotman School of Management. RBC Foundation’s gift of $1 million is the first donation to the Founders Group Research Fund at the Lloyd & Delphine Martin Prosperity Institute. The fund will support research aimed at broadening our understanding of prosperity and how it is created. “When we talk about prosperity, it’s not just financial. It can mean making our communities better places to work and live, improving health care and education, and creating opportunities for Canadians to realize their dreams,” says Professor Richard Florida, the inaugural director of the Martin Prosperity Institute, which was established last year by a landmark $50 million grant to the Rotman School by the Province of Ontario. “We are…

PROFESSOR OF ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOUR Gary Latham was appointed president of The Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) at the group’s annual meeting in San Francisco in April. Prof. Latham, the Secretary of State Professor of Organizational Effectiveness, is the first Canadian to be elected president and will serve a one-year term. The Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology is a Division within the American Psychology Association whose mission is to enhance human well-being and performance in organizational and work settings by promoting the science, practice, and teaching of industrial-organizational psychology. Prof. Latham was also recently elected to the board of The Society for Human Resource Management – the world’s largest association devoted to human resource management. The Society’s mission is to advance the human resource profession to…

IF WOMEN RULED THE WORLD, everything could change, according to Dee Dee Myers, former White House press secretary, and author of Why Women Should Rule the World (HarperCollins, 2008). “Empowering women would make the world a better place, not because women are the same as men, but precisely because they are different.” On May 6, Meyers shared insights on the unique nature of female leadership in a presentation called “How Female Participation in Public Life is Transforming the World”, part of the Women and Leadership Speaker Series, sponsored by the Rotman Initiative for Women in Business. Meyers’ book, which draws upon her tenure in the Clinton administration and as a former consultant to NBC’s The West Wing, asks the reader to imagine a not-too-distant future in which increasing numbers of…

WHEN KATRINA TAI DECIDED TO HEAD BACK to school for her MBA at age 30, she knew where she wanted to end up. Born in China, she had moved to the Toronto area with her family when she was a young teenager. She had always wanted to go back to China and work in Hong Kong. So Tai applied to the University of Toronto MBAprogram (as the Rotman School was then known) and didn’t bother with any other business school. She knew that the Rotman program, top-ranked in Canada, had an excellent reputation globally. And she knew that the school had very strong business and alumni connections in Hong Kong. “It was a very important turning point for me,” she says. “I had already said in my mind that I…

Fall has arrived. Reunions, Life-Long Learning, Convocation and the Alumni Golf Day have all passed for another year. We recently launched a new alumni online community, where all of the class notes that follow are displayed. If you haven’t checked it out yet, please visit https://alumni.rotman.utoronto.ca and let us know what you think. We’ve also added a presence on both LinkedIn and Facebook, so your networking opportunities continue to expand. If you need help with any of these tools, please e-mail me at alumni@rotman.utoronto.ca. I look forward to hearing from you. Of course a Class Note for the next issue is also appreciated, especially if we haven’t heard from you in a while. The next issue is called Wicked Problems, and it will get to you early in the new…

September 17, 5:00-6:15pm, Toronto Rotman Strategic Management Speaker Series Author: Patrick Viguerie, Head, U.S. Strategy Practice, McKinsey & Company Topic: “The Granularity of Growth: How to Identify the Sources of Growth and Drive Enduring Company Performance” (Wiley 2008) September 24, 5:00-6:15pm, Toronto Rotman Integrative Thinking Speaker Series Speaker: David Komlos, President and CEO, The Syntegrity Group Topic: “How Syntegration Delivers on the Promise of Collective Intelligence” September 30, 5:00-6:15pm, Toronto Rotman Career Management Speaker Series Author: Daniel Pink, “Free Agent Nation, “AWhole New Mind” and “The Adventures of Johnny Bunko” (Riverhead 2008) Topic: “Career Secrets No One Ever Told You” October 1, 9:00am-4:30pm, Toronto Inspiring Creative Thinking in Your Employees Speakers: Gary Latham, Rotman School; Ingar Skaug, Wilh. Wilhelmsen ASA; Leaetta Hough, The Dunnette Group; David DiGiulio; Daniel Pink October…

You have called ‘organizational capital’ the most important contributor to corporate performance and growth. How do you define it? It is widely observed that within industries or economic sectors, some firms systematically outperform their competitors. Organizational capital is the sum total of all the systems, processes and procedures that these companies use to conduct their business. For example, years ago Wal-Mart was the first to implement a supply-chain management approach whereby, when a customer paid for an item at the cash register, the bar code was read and the information went directly to a supplier like Procter & Gamble, who was then responsible for replenishing the inventory. With this specific process, the largest retailer in the world managed to shift the most expensive function for retailers – inventory and supply-chain…

MOST PEOPLE WOULD AGREE that teamwork at the senior level of an organization promotes better decision making. At the same time, considerable research and anecdotal evidence suggests that senior teams often find teamwork difficult. The competing viewpoints that promote sound decision making can also lead to conflicts that waste precious time and erode interpersonal relationships. Indeed, when substantial conflicts erupt, dysfunctional group dynamics followed by frustration and flawed decisions may be the rule, rather than the exception. Prior work has advised management teams facing conflict to focus on the substance – the ‘task at hand’ – and to steer clear of relationship issues. Task conflict, it argues, can be resolved by recourse to facts and logic, whereas relationship conflict turns into unproductive personal attacks and emotional confrontations. Task conflict is…

A POSITIVE REPUTATION IS ARGUABLY the most valuable intangible asset that a firm can possess. Firms with favourable reputations are more attractive to investors, customers, suppliers, exchange partners and employees; this attractiveness yields price, cost, and selection advantages, and it often persists over time. For purposes of this article, we will define ‘organizational reputation’ as the beliefs and evaluations held by external audience members. Audience beliefs, however aligned with or decoupled from signals sent by firms, constitute the reality of reputations. To understand how reputations form, we focus on individual-level cognitive processes leading to attitudes that collectively constitute ‘firm-level reputations’. This approach is consistent with that used in Marketing to understand consumers’ beliefs about new brands and products, and is particularly appropriate given that it recognizes the possible disjuncture…

You coined the term ‘Blended Value Proposition’. Please define it for us. Traditionally, value has been understood as being either economic or social: for-profit firms create economic value and non-profit firms create social value. This ‘bifurcated’ value proposition is fundamentally wrong, because value cannot be disaggregated. That is one of the key concepts of blended value. Firms create value that is ‘whole’, and it is the outcome of three interwoven elements of performance: social, economic and environmental. For-profit firms create social value in that they create jobs, they contribute taxes that help build local communities, and their products can improve people’s ic value: they represent seven per cent of the U.S. GDP, for instance, and they create jobs and consume goods and services. You have admitted that maximizing blended value…

YOU’VE LIKELY HEARD it said countless times: “People are our greatest asset”; “We are committed to investing in our employees.” But are these statements just recruiting ploys by management, or is there actually some truth behind them? Does investing in employees correlate with bottom-line shareholder value? This is what I set out to investigate recently; specifically, whether there is a link between employee satisfaction and stock returns. Do the companies on Fortune magazine’s list of the 100 Best Companies to Work for in America, for instance, outperform the market, even when controlling for firm characteristics, industries, risk and removing the effect of outliers? To some, the idea that ‘companies do better if their workers are happier’ might seem intuitive, but in fact the relationship is not obvious; indeed, it contradicts…

ECONOMICS IS ALL ABOUT MARKETS. Prices determined in a free and competitive market allocate goods and services according to the value that individuals place on them and provide the signals for firms to produce the products most valued by society. This is the bedrock of a capitalist or free enterprise system. OK, so there are some problems. For instance, the price system doesn’t always capture the full social benefits, so we need subsidies or state control over areas like defence and education. In addition, the costs of production don’t always capture the full social costs, so we regulate mining, cigarettes etc. so that external costs such as environmental pollution are captured. Finally, we know that sometimes markets aren’t perfect, so in some instances, market power means that the prices do…

Continuum has been involved in the development of iconic products such as the Swiffer for Procter & Gamble and the Reebok Pump. Why does good design matter? Three reasons: people, profits and the Earth. Recently, I was talking with a group of design strategists about what motivates us, and the recurring theme was that we do what we do for people. We think of ourselves as the champions of the consumer; we’re always trying to make peoples’ lives better. Design affects everything we touch, feel and experience, so good design can make your life better. Then there’s the other ‘p-word’, profit. Our clients make money when we collaborate with them to create great design. These days, we have to mention the third constituency, which is the Earth. Invariably, bad design…

OVER TIME, THE ROTMAN SCHOOL has developed programs, research and events designed specifically for women’s professional development, but last February these disparate efforts were given a huge boost when the school launched its Initiative for Women in Business. Focused on supporting women in their efforts to advance and be successful in their careers, the Initiative brings these existing activities together under one roof and has launched a series of new executive – and management – level short courses for women from a range of professions and sectors. As well, regular speaking and networking events are held, partnerships to global networks are being established and relevant faculty research is being turned into new classroom content. “We must face the fact that a gender gap exists,” states Beatrix Dart, executive director of…

PARTICIPANTS IN A ROTMAN PROGRAM that equips Arts and Science undergraduates with the skills they need to succeed in their first job will benefit from a newly-established scholarship fund. Sun Life Financial has donated $50,000 to the Rotman Bridge-to-Business Program. The scholarships will be given out to high potential students who enroll in the 2008 and 2009 offerings of the program. Rotman Bridge to Business is a month-long, intensive program that provides participants with knowledge of fundamental business, management and people skills that will serve them throughout their careers. The criteria for the Sun Life scholarships focuses on students who have an interest in international career opportunities, a strong business acumen, aptitude in French, Mandarin or Cantonese languages, a strong commitment to community involvement, and a history of high achievement…

AN INTERNATIONALLY-RECOGNIZED AUTHORITY on risk management and derivatives from the Rotman School has been recognized for his contributions to the risk profession. Prof. John Hull is the inaugural honouree in the Professional Risk Managers International Association’s  (PRMIA) History Makers Series. Prof. Hull was honoured during a special reception held in July in New York City. Prof. Hull is the Maple Financial Group Chair in Derivatives and Risk Management at the Rotman School. His research deals with credit risk, executive stock options, volatility surfaces, market risk, and interest rate derivatives. His three books – Risk Management and Financial Institutions  (first published in 2006), Options, Futures, and Other Derivatives (seventh edition published in May 2008), and Fundamentals of Futures and Options Markets (now in its sixth edition) – have been translated into…

David Aycan (MBA ’05) Senior Project Leader and Business Factors Leadership, IDEO Lives and works in: San Francisco Bay Area BEST THING ABOUT MY JOB:Working in a number of industries with great clients who are hiring us because they want to do something new. I get to be creative every day. MY BIGGEST CHALLENGE: It’s daunting to start a project with the expectation that you are going to develop concepts that will be both new-to-the-world and successful. Communicating these ideas can also be challenging, but I’ve found that if you really look around at the world and talk to and observe the right people, you can find insights and inspiration that lead to new growth opportunities. MOST IMPORTANT SKILL(S) FOR MY JOB: Having empathy for clients, teammates, and most importantly,…