Q} Why did you join St. Thomas?
A} My predecessor [as chair of the Center of Family Enterprise] left for a full-time job in Paris. So, the need was to bring someone in who could take a look at what the programs were, how they were running, and who had relationships with the business community to ascertain how the university could serve their needs in the family enterprise area. This was very attractive to me because I had a great love for the university and had taught there over the years. Plus, I had been involved in some very substantial family businesses in the Twin Cities, and felt my background as CEO at Dairy Queen—where I dealt with thousands of family businesses, primarily the franchisees—meant that I had some insights of significance and importance.
Q} What is your impression of today’s students?
A} First of all, I have six children, so I’ve stayed in touch with younger generations over the years. As a general comment, today’s students certainly are smarter than my recollection of me and my contemporaries, both in street smarts and book smarts. Today, there is a greater appreciation of what business is—certainly more so than was the case with my generation. They have greater sense of entrepreneurship, a greater sense of what capital does. I also think they’re quite serious, perhaps because of the tough competition out there. They have a greater appreciation of the cost of an education, the value of an education. So they don’t waste as much time.
Q} Are today’s students more inclined toward entrepreneurial opportunities, or ‘safer’ jobs at big companies?
A} It’s hard to generalize, but many of the students have a better sense of the fact that the security of a big company, at least in the way my generation looked at it, really isn’t there. It’s an illusion. They’re not looking for a job for their lifetime; they’re looking for a job that best fits their needs at a particular time. They do recognize, however, that they can acquire extremely valuable knowledge about systems and methodologies at larger companies, which tend to be more disciplined.
Q} What’s the hardest lesson about business to communicate to students?
A} I think many don’t understand that success in the business world doesn’t come of brilliant strokes or dealing with the bigger issues all the time. So much of success is grunt work, a lot of tough things, a lot of disappointments. There is no quick, clear line to success. There may not be enough appreciation that even hard work and brilliance will lead, in many instances, to unsuccessful conclusions. For every Curt Carlson who goes out and makes it, there are another thousand people who have as much talent—but circumstances don’t quite work out.
Q} How confident are you that entrepreneurship or business leadership can actually be taught? Or is it like basketball, where the coaches say you can’t teach speed and you can’t teach height?
A} The makeup of the person, their DNA, has an awful lot to do with creating a situation where training can be brought to bear. But there is a lot about business that isn’t just natural and must be gotten through mentoring or special business courses.
For instance, you may have a predisposition towards numbers, but that doesn’t mean much if you don’t know what kinds of numbers or what kinds of things are important in the numbers. I think back over my own career and wish I had had the advantage of knowing more, let’s say, in the marketing or human resources areas. In the world of the seminary, they don’t talk about educating a priest, they talk about the formation of a priest. The same is true in business: doing things that help form people with whatever talents they already have.
Q} What have you learned about yourself in the process of teaching?
A} Two things. There are a lot things you haven’t thought about. And, two, the insights that students have in a number of areas are not only surprising, but refreshing. You really learn—and this is not a matter of conceit—what insights your experiences have brought you. You may not think of them in an academic sense, but you do have a surprising amount of learning that you were not that conscious of. It makes it exciting to share those thoughts or ideas with students.
