All in a Day's Work
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| Oakes and Sternhell Photos by Jared Leeds |
How to Get Your Foot in the Door
It’s a few minutes before nine o’clock at Samsung’s offices in Ridgefield Park, New Jersey. Employees stream through the building’s glass doors; some stop off in the lobby for a muffin and juice (a holiday treat courtesy of Samsung’s landlord) before clustering at a bank of elevators. Paul Sternhell is already at his desk, having made the daily commute across the George Washington Bridge from his studio in Manhattan; his ninth-floor cubicle overlooks a stretch of I-95 and the more bucolic scene of a pond and playing fields. Sternhell, who works in Samsung Electronics America’s corporate management division, was hired in October to implement a company-wide Six Sigma initiative. (Six Sigma, Sternhell explains, is a statistics-based methodology for improving quality and reducing costs.) Not long after that, he and three other recent hires — Paul Kim, strategic planning manager for new business development, Stephanie Kivett, director of strategic planning for digital consumer electronics, and Harry Kim, e-commerce strategy manager — were asked to form a task force under CEO Dong-Jin Oh’s direction to recommend improvements to the company’s organizational infrastructure. “The idea is that we haven’t been here long enough to have any biases or entrenched opinions,” Sternhell says. “We gave a final presentation to the CEO and his staff two weeks ago; now we’re in the process of meeting a couple of times a week to figure out how to implement some of our recommendations.”
On this rainy Wednesday morning, the group is meeting first thing to discuss support and training for Samsung Electronics’ sales force. There’s a web of topics to address on the subject; it’s a fast-moving, wide-ranging discussion that quickly shows the complexity of internal systems and processes involved in a multinational company with 64,000 employees worldwide and 2002 sales of $35 billion.
Sternhell, who studied industrial engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, listens intently and makes recommendations throughout the meeting, which is held in a small, fluorescent-lit copy room. (“It’s easy to meet here without booking ahead,” he explains.) During his undergraduate years, Sternhell worked as a co-op student at General Electric, where he was hired after college. There he learned about Six Sigma, a quality improvement program that Motorola developed in the 1980s. At GE, Sternhell undertook a variety of Six Sigma projects, from designing new electronic systems for its washing machines to digitizing sourcing processes across six manufacturing plants — a move that saved over $600,000 in the program’s first year.
“That experience helped me land my current position at Samsung,” notes Sternhell. “The overall message I took away from the job search process in this environment is that it’s difficult to make a complete leap from one field to anotherÉbut there are ways to build on past experience to create transitions that will allow you to get your foot in the door in a new area.”
The decision to attend business school came gradually. “After working for a few years, I realized I wasn’t someone who could be fully satisfied by just focusing on technical, detailed projects like product design,” says Sternhell. “It soon became clear that I got more out of managing systems and people and that I would have to develop stronger business skills to advance to a position with more leadership responsibility.” Terry Ross (MBA ’99), a coworker at GE, suggested that Sternhell consider HBS and guided him through the application process.
Attending HBS only confirmed Sternhell’s original aspiration — to enter general management at a technology-focused company — but he names a number of influential classes that have helped him in his current position, including Competition and Strategy, Leadership and Organizational Behavior, and Power and Influence. “So much of what I’m trying to do here revolves around changing management and leading the implementation of an initiative that is foreign or perceived as potentially threatening to people,” he says. “Communication and building internal networks is paramount in any job.”
New York, New York
Samsung’s cafeteria isn’t that different from those found in other office buildings. There’s a salad bar, a sandwich station, and a rotating menu of hot specials; one additional option is the selection of dried noodle meals and green tea meant to appeal to Asian employees at the Korea-based corporation. Sternhell (who sometimes eats out at local Korean restaurants but today has chosen hamburger and fries) says he spent a week at Samsung’s headquarters in Seoul and at its factories in Suwon. “In the Korean work culture, rank and position are clearly defined and linked more closely to age,” he observes. “It’s important to know how that affects the way you address a person.” Decision-making, he adds, is tied closely to building consensus across departments, and change occurs only after all parties are in open agreement about a new direction Ñan important consideration as Sternhell introduces Six Sigma to company managers.
Since adopting New York as his home base, Sternhell has been exposed to another new culture: life in the Big Apple. His studio in the financial district is the smallest space he’s ever lived in, but the Philadelphia native says it’s worth it for now. “I’ve always wanted to live in New York,” he remarks. “Most of my family is on the East Coast, and so many people from HBS wind up settling here that I knew it would be an exciting place to stay involved with other alumni.” Although he’s still making the expected weekend shopping runs to furnish his new living space, Sternhell says he’s managed to indulge in a frequent local pastime — dining out — and has kept in touch with former classmates (including Mardie Oakes) through e-mail and gettogethers over Sunday brunch.
“When you go to HBS you not only get a great education, you inherit an amazing network of alumni and professors,” he observes. “It’s a tough combination to beat.”
What Next?
Aside from the day-to-day challenges of their new jobs, what’s the next step for these two young alums? Sternhell notes that his position is a new one at Samsung and sure to evolve over the coming months and years. After finishing as a top-four finalist in the 2002 HBS Business Plan Contest (he and his teammates proposed a business to design and sell lifestyle products for people with disabilities), he hasn’t completely ruled out the possibility of launching a start-up at some point; on the other hand, the cross-departmental nature of his job allows a fair amount of entrepreneurial independence and flexibility. “I like a nice balance and variety of activities — there’s no ‘typical’ day here — and I appreciate the resources and heft of a large company,” he says simply.
For Oakes, the question of what comes next may be more pressing. Although she may explore the possibility of staying on at BCC, the initial term of a Service Leadership Fellow lasts one year. Oakes says that it’s easy to see how her experience at BCC will open a lot of doors in Boston and nationally; the experience of translating case analysis and discussion into real-world practice has been an education in itself. “At first it was a bit overwhelming,” she admits. “I was concerned that I would be missing the necessary skills to do my job, but that hasn’t been true. You just have to go out and use what you’ve learned. It’s been very clear how the tools I acquired at HBS are useful for working with organizations like Paige Academy.”
Reflecting on the differences and similarities between their work experiences, Sternhell notes that their organizations are quite different in size and mission — at BCC, Oakes’s measure of success goes beyond the for-profit bottom line to calculating social good. On the other hand, he adds, Samsung is driven by performance issues that also transcend monetary considerations: “Are we building brand equity? Satisfying our customers? Fostering employee excitement and loyalty? It’s not always as simple as increasing the bottom line.”
As the borders between the nonprofit and for-profit sectors become increasingly blurred, the options for these recent graduates seem more open than ever; whatever the future holds, both alums maintain the sort of positive outlook useful to any recent graduate. “This first-year work experience makes me very optimistic that I’ll be able to go on and start or lead a great organization that’s well run and achieving its mission,” says Oakes. “I’m learning a ton.”
