In the Trenches at VF Boot Camp

摘要

THERE WERE SIX OF us, squinting down the length of a conference table at a single laptop. It was past 9 p.m., and what we could make out on the screen wasn't encouraging. We'd all met just 13 hours earlier-when I was thrown together with five fast-climbing executives at apparel maker VF Corp. for an exercise in management boot camp. Over the four days of the Leadership Institute, as VF calls it, we would face more important challenges, but what had us all flummoxed at the moment was a computer game at which we were failing spectacularly. I'm a dyed-in-the-wool HR skeptic. So after a day of lectures on communication-and tossing around Nerf footballs to "loosen up"-I wasn't so sure why we were puzzling out "Launching a High-Risk Business," a simulation cooked up by two Harvard Business School academics. Another of our band, Rob Purvey, echoed my doubts. An executive at skateboard shoe brand Vans, Purvey had once been an entrepreneur himself and had raised 30 million dollars of the real green stuff for one venture. We tried strategy after strategy. They all failed. But about a half-hour before our 10 p.m. deadline, something clicked. We partnered with the inventor, poured cash into marketing, and begged every virtual venture capitalist and bank for seed money. The offers started to trickle in, and soon our company was worth 5 million dollars. We actually whooped with joy.