Adventure in China

Can a small-town girl from the boondocks of China discover happiness in the international adventure-travel industry? Consider the tale of Zhang Mei (MBA ’96), “the daughter of a humble electrician” from one of the remotest and poorest regions of the country, as the South China Morning Post (January 8, 2001) reported. The article described how Zhang, through hard work and sacrifice, made her way to HBS and eventually founded WildChina.com, a firm that specializes in off-the-beaten-track tours of China’s scenic and culturally rich landscape.

A graduate of a provincial university in Kunming, where she excelled at English and law, Zhang went to work as an assistant and interpreter at the regional railway. She so impressed a visiting Thai bank president after interpreting for him that he offered to pay her way through HBS if she would later work for his bank. Zhang accepted the offer, but her initial enthusiasm was tempered when she arrived at the School. “I had only worked on projects in a state plan but I was being told about shareholder value, equity, and management,” she recalled. “It was all new.”

Zhang was a quick learner, however, and after the Thai bank released her from her commitment there (asking her only to repay its tuition costs plus interest), she worked at McKinsey for two years after graduation. Growing restless, she spent six months backpacking on her own through three continents, an experience that inspired the launch of WildChina.com. CEO Zhang has set up trips that include biking along the Silk Road, hiking pilgrimage trails in Tibet, or exploring Shanghai’s colonial past. “This year we will have several thousand clients, mostly foreigners,” Zhang said. “By 2002, we aim to have half foreigners and half Chinese.”

Harvard MBAs Rule? “Harvard Business School graduates are literally ruling the world,” gushed an article in Fortune (January 8, 2001). The magazine observed that in the last year alone, a whopping number of HBS alumni had taken over the corner office at some of the country’s largest and most prestigious firms, GM and GE among them. As if that weren’t enough, it noted that even the newest occupant of the Oval Office, George W. Bush (MBA ’75), “spent some time hanging at Harvard.” With HBS producing so many entrepreneurs in recent years, Fortune apparently had forgotten that one of the School’s traditional strengths has been to furnish corporate America with executive leadership at the highest levels. Seeking perspective on this flurry of HBS alumni promotions, the magazine asked Continental Airlines president Gregory Brenneman (MBA ’88) if he thought that this was the Year of the Harvard MBA. Deadpanned Brenneman, “Isn’t every year the Year of the Harvard MBA?” RETURN TO THE TOP OF THE PAGE

The Natural Advantage After a long career in marketing and management with top U.K. and international companies, Alan Heeks (MBA ’76) turned over a new leaf in 1990. He set up the Wessex Foundation, an educational charity whose centerpiece is Magdalen Farm, which consists of a residential center and 132-acre organic farm in Dorset, England. As he worked the property, Heeks realized that principles of sustainable development and sound organic farming could be applied to the successful management of an organization, according to an article in The Grocer (January 6, 2001), Britain’s leading retail publication. One result is Heeks’s new book, The Natural Advantage, which lays out seven organic farming-derived principles that visiting executives learn during stays at Magdalen Farm. Lessons include the importance of drawing energy from “clean sources,” such as appreciation and inspiration, rather than from “polluting” pressures such as stress and fear. Problems should be “composted” — by turning negative feelings into constructive output, “waste” becomes a source of future growth. “It’s already obvious that the natural environment won’t support continued economic growth without radical change in our use of it,” Heeks said, “and the same is true for human resources.” RETURN TO THE TOP OF THE PAGE

Turnaround Situation

Marty Cordova (MBA ’74), a Vietnam vet who has seen good days and bad, is dedicating himself to helping other vets get their lives back together. Cordova is finance director of Rehabilitation Services and Veterans Programs (RS&VP), a nonprofit corporation headquartered in Albuquerque, New Mexico. One of his agency’s current projects, the conversion of an aging 109-room motel into housing for the city’s homeless veterans, has special meaning for Cordova.

Following a tour of duty as a Navy corpsman in Vietnam, Cordova attended college and HBS, “but after a few years running successful businesses, he began drinking heavily and eventually lost it all,” the Albuquerque Journal (December 7, 2000) reported. Cordova said that he wound up “high-class homeless — that means I lived in a van.” Later, he learned about RS&VP, a transitional living organization, and joined up.

Cordova noted that the centerpiece of the restoration project, the old Sundowner motel, was once home to “a struggling computer geek named Bill Gates who had a special deal with the Sundowner’s owner for an extended stay” while he tried to raise funds for his fledgling company. “We like to say that was back when Microsoft was homeless,” Cordova noted with a smile.

When Cordova came to RS&VP in 1997, its operating budget was $30,000. Under his leadership, it has grown this year to $1.7 million, which helps provide housing, employment training, and legal services for some seventeen hundred homeless vets annually. RS&VP relies heavily on contributions; inquiries about tax-deductible donations can be made by calling 505-255-8440.

HBS Bon Mot Enriches the Lingo

Pick a word or phrase you love to hate, be it “impactful,” “scalable,” “mission-critical,” “face time,” or...well, don’t get us started. Such utterances, unlike memorable, enduring slang terms, are ephemeral due to their very vapidity. They are “buzzwords,” according to Webster’s New World Dictionary, words or phrases “used by members of some in-group, having little or imprecise meaning but sounding impressive to outsiders.”

While business must take its fair share of the blame for promoting these and other annoyances, we were delighted to learn that the term “buzzword” was “coined in the middle 1940s by students at the Harvard Business School,” according to the December 2000-January 2001 edition of Copy Editor newsletter, which cited the Dictionary of American Slang.

“Buzzword,” a useful and long-lived appellation because it so aptly describes what it derides, thus becomes the first bit of HBS classroom jargon (e.g., cold call, chip shot) to really go national. Who were the linguistic geniuses that first articulated “buzzword”? Was it “a shortening of ‘business,’ ” as the Dictionary of American Slang speculates? Alumni from the 1940s or others who can shed light on this matter are invited to message the Bulletin anytime, 24/7.