Conversations with: Carla Harris

it has not been a priority in the Investor community and you know most investors would tell you that they don't invest in things that they don't understand but I would argue that if you extend that sentence it would it be things they don't understand if people they don't understand [Music] I've heard you say that your latest role is a 1u is that you have found to be the most rewarding can you just talk a little bit about what you're doing absolutely that's a rewarding and exciting because now I'm I have an opportunity to work with early-stage companies that were founded by women and multicultural entrepreneurs and I can't think of a better way to apply 31 years of investment banking experience than with these companies who have great ideas great leaders but really don't have a real idea about what it takes to evolve and scale into a company that could go public in today's market or tomorrow's market environment explain the multi-cultural Innovation Lab the multicultural Innovation Lab is a regular way accelerator where we bring in companies that we give them three things we give them cash like all accelerators do in exchange for a single-digit percentage of the company we also give them content six months of learning around how to negotiate your term sheet you know how to manage your shareholder list how to think about your KPIs how to pivot from a b2c to a b2b all of those things that you need to know as a leader and a founder and we also have content around how to evolve as a leader if you will and then we also give them connections because as the leading global investment bank there's really not a relationship that we can't access that could be useful to these companies so we do make introductions to our clients or to people who we have relationships with that could help them scale their business or could be a supplier or it could be a major customer or an acquirer of these companies why is this particularly important to morgan stanley if you're looking for just returns you might say let's just start an Innovation Lab why you focus on multicultural there is a clear opportunity here dan because as you know only 4% of VC dollars depending on your source go to women founders and less than 2% go to multicultural founders and as an e-collar concentrator I know very well that where there is a market inefficiency there is a commercial opportunity you probably know that we've started a multicultural client strategy which I was asked to lead in the summer of 14 and frankly my chairman said you know no bank has ever led in this space and this is not about diversity and inclusion that's really an HR pursuit this is not about philanthropy that's what we do at the foundation this is around commercial opportunities nobody has led we can lead and I'd like you to figure out how to do that what have you learned in the first two sessions yes the most important thing that I've learned is if you listen to popular business press everyone says well we can't find multicultural entrepreneurs and we can't find enough women entrepreneurs well I think that we have forever dispelled that myth when we started our first class we did not advertise anywhere we went out on the whisper Network and we got a hundred submissions for five spots last year for the class - we put it out publicly during the Christmas holidays so in about three weeks we got 300 submissions for nine spots this year we launched our invitation to apply on our demo day November 20th and I will tell you that within five days we had 50 submissions that's the first big learning there is not a supply problem with respect to fighting entrepreneurs of color and entrepreneurs that are women so what's the problem people just haven't been looking I do believe that's really the issue it has not been a priority in the investor community and you know most investors will tell you that they don't invest in things that they don't understand but I would argue that if you extend that sentence it be things they don't understand and people they don't understand and if you haven't been trafficking in that space you do have some trepidation and you do see an inordinate risk when there's not one there a lot of people are looking at 2019 and saying economy might be challenged especially in the second half of the year do you think about working with founders differently when the economy turns sour or is it the same curriculum no matter what's going on around you it'll pretty much be the same curriculum but I think what we probably will do is to you know sort of turn up the fire if you will around how do you create the illusion of scarcity how do you create momentum when in fact people are sort of stepping away from risk how do you make people feel like they must own this and they must do it now so despite the fact that they pull back on risk this is a bet worth taking so we'll probably spend more time on those kinds of arguments and those kinds of pitches if you will I heard a great interview with you with poppy Harlow it was a terrific interview when you talked about finishing Harvard finishing HBS going to Morgan Stanley you had all the learning you had all the knowledge you had all the drive but what you didn't realize was the importance of networks or of how to connect with people or how to build these relationships can you just talk a little bit about the impact that had on you or how you real came to realize that I realized that being smart and working hard wasn't enough it still wasn't getting me at the top of the class despite how smart I thought I was and despite how hard I was working because you cannot outwork me dad but I realized that you know there was somebody who had to be behind closed doors arguing passionately on my behalf but at the end of the day while performance currency gets your name on the list that's being discussed behind closed doors when your name is called if no one else in that room can speak on your behalf they just go to the next name and it has nothing to do with your ability to do the job or nothing to do with whether or not you deserve top bucket or middle bucket but because no one in that room speaks on your behalf by default either you don't get chosen for that specific opportunity or you end up in the middle bucket and that was the AHA for me and that's when I realized that there was a missing component in my success equation and it was a relationship of a sponsor as I started calling it way back in 1990 and how did you find the sponsor I started realizing that the sponsor number one had to be within your organization unlike a mentor your mentor can be outside of your organization but they just need to understand your context but that person needed to be in the organization and they needed to have a seat at the decision-making table and they needed to have some juice so once I figured that out then it was okay who can I identify and I started thinking about who has access to my work it doesn't necessarily have to be your boss that's great if it is but it just needs to be somebody that will have credibility behind closed doors when they're talking about you so any exposure to your work gives them that credibility sometimes you run into people who feel that once they discover this path they'll be accused of being naked ly ambitious so being you know overly career focused does that ever slow you down that's right and let me tell you what I tell people who worry about that because when I say that people say oh but what about it people think I'm brown nosing and you must realize that there's not one role in any industry where you can succeed without a relationship so that is just table stakes part of anybody success equation so don't think about it with respect to brown-nosing because remember a relationship goes two ways so while that person may be spending their currency on you at that moment it is your job to also spend your currency either with that person or on somebody else because remember the people who are empowered today won't always be the people who are in power and you might rise to a position of power and that person may choose to still be on the playing field and now you have currency to help them also talk about that at some point you went from being the person wondering what was going on in the closed-door room to being in that room having a seat at the table making those decisions where there are things that you explicitly did to be able to when help to people who didn't know this was the path or it get people's voices in the room who wouldn't have necessarily been in the room so when there's a gross generalization that's been thrown out in the room for example oh you know Dan's a good guy but I'm not sure that he has the the quantitative muscle I'm not sure he has the skills here's where I enter so what have we done to test them and if there's silence in the room that there's no credible backup to that that's somebody's impression well that's not really fair that that impression prevails we need facts especially when you're talking about somebody's bonus somebody's promotion or somebody's ascension to the next opportunity so some of the most important things I've done is ask the question in the room and if there's no answer now that's exposed and then I can say well if we failed to test dais quantitative skills we can't tag Dan for that so we got to give them a pass on this one right guys right that's one of the most important things that you can do you your voice is power but if you have been invited into that room you cannot afford to to leave your voice dormant when you have an opportunity to spend that voice in that currency on somebody's behalf well I always loved to ask questions about career advice there must be people all the time to come to you and say you have this phenomenal career what can I do to get on the same path that you've been on is there any particular piece of advice you give them now the first thing I say is what do you want to do so you don't want to Sara Lee walk my path the most important thing that you can do is authentically figure out what you want to do then I tell them to you know figure out what relationships that you'd like to build and think about that now and lastly I tell them have flexible knees because if you had told me that my life would look the way it looks now 31 years into it I would not have bought that because that was so far away from the vision that I could see as a 24 year old but now I see how every experience bills and actually opens up other opportunities for you and you need to stay flexible because sometimes those other paths are far bigger than you could have imagined

Channel: LinkedIn News

Views: 4,723

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Keywords: LinkedIn, LinkedIn Video, LinkedIn Editorial, This is Working, Conversations With, Daniel Roth, Carla Harris, Chase Bank, JP Morgan Chase, Banking, Investing, Career Advice, Business Advice

Id: G0PqqM6fndU

Length: 10min 3sec (603 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 10 2020