Tom's leadership travels

Harvard here I come

6.00 a.m. Sitting in Schiphol airport, gazing bleary eyed out of the window at a dozen KLM planes sitting on the tarmac.

I'm off to Boston, to Harvard to be precise to do a course in Private Equity and Venture Capital. It is so far outside my comfort zone that it could be studying astrophysics on the moon. I have a stack of papers and case studies I should have read. I did try, a bit……but, just like most my education, I figured I would do it all the day before. When I did get down to it, I realized I hardly understood a word. It's a mythical language – multiples of capital contributed, preferential convertible loan stock, capitalization growth, cumulative redeemable preferred stock, deposit orientated leasing, full ratchet anti-dilution, liquidation preference provision. Actually read with the right accent it can sound quite sexy….not that that makes it any more understandable.

Why then?

Well, I am at heart, a producer. I'm not necessarily clear of what, but I have a creative and entrepreneurial mix that drives me to put creative projects and schemes together. I am a huge admirer of talent more creative than myself, and would much rather work with them than on my own. When I was younger I was always the one carrying the briefcase and calculator, alongside a book of poems.

In the end producing is about money. The ability to attract it, to structure it, to make it feel safe, to translate ideas into its language and present massive risk as worth it. To bring creative ideas to fruition, money is oxygen. Without it the ideas remain dormant on the page, or just a memory lingering as part of another late night conversation, or worse, a gnawing, burning, passion that is carried too long inside until it slowly gives up hope and at some indeterminate moment in the past, it dies.

So whichever path forward I take, it will always come back to money.

But money is the ticket it is not the event. It is the electricity that flows when all the right circuits are in place and the right switches are thrown at the right moment. So that is what I want to understand better, the circuitry, the cogs, the oily workings, the current and the gravitational pull that leads to the release of money.

The first Harvard case study I picked up was on Canadian Pension Fund investments, though I understood little, I somehow ended up grasping the challenges of a volatile portfolio and the dangers of congruent investments. So I plan to do it by osmosis. I will commit everything to the course, take part in as much as possible, contribute in every way I can, even though I understand very little. Above all, I will listen, in the hope that I will somehow come out at the end having absorbed more than I came in with. I will keep every pore open and suck in whatever knowledge is floating around the lecture hall, even if I don't know what it means, it will be stored, somewhere in my cellular structure, for later.

And this is all supported by the Clore Leadership Programme. I never would have thought of Harvard if Sue Hoyle hadn't suggested it. For me, Harvard is an unobtainable place, a place of extraordinary excellence and over achievement, a very very long way from my comprehensive in Stevenage, or the LCP at Elephant and Castle. Who would have thought….

Calm before the storm

Stuff that put me in the right mood – lovely chat with serial entrepreneur on the plane who told me a friend of hers did the course and it changed his life! Meeting a real U.S. venture capitalist at the hotel welcome drinks (this is the U.S. hotels have welcome drinks here, and you go to them 'cos you might meet people like Eric)

Stuff that put me in the wrong mood – watching a couple of sad films on the plane, Sunshine Cleaning and Sin Nombre. Loved them both, but both very harrowing. If you liked Little Miss Sunshine you will like Sunshine Cleaning (will all the films from this team have the word Sunshine in?) If you liked City of God you will like Sin Nombre first feature from Cary Joji Fukunaga.

I went to the hotel welcome drinks because I am determined to find as many people to listen to and chat to. Remember that is part of the plan. Lucked into Eric who has his own VC company. He was very interesting about the discipline, he talked about timing being like surfing or skiing (normally me that raises the surfing metaphor) the moment to make the turn is when you feel it is too early. If you wait until it feels right, it is too late. What can seem like a sector that is storming ahead can equally be a bubble about to burst.

Eric talked about the importance of networks and particularly of family networks in the business. VC began as a way for the big wealthy US families to invest. These types of networks are still vital.

It reminded me of how difficult it is for many people in the North East to get out of their comfort zones and their region and become part of bigger networks. So many people I meet there seem to feel that networking is somehow demeaning or false. It is the lifeblood.

Here's the obligatory pic of the view from my hotel room. Bit like a hotel in the City of London.