John Mack on Leadership

Last month John Mack, CEO of Morgan Stanley, went to Wharton to describe what it was like to work during the chaos of September 2008. His talk is about leadership during crisis, and I can think of few people who are more qualified than him.

I'm a little disappointed that we didn't get him to speak at LBS...

Oktoberfest 2009

Oktoberfest in Munich should be on everyone’s ‘list of things to do before I die’! What an event – it’s your lovely local fair on steroids. Over 16 days some six million people make their way to Munich for the festival. It started in 1810, originally as a wedding celebration, and continues today as a festival most widely known for beer drinking, but in reality is much more.

We landed in Munich mid-afternoon, and after an easy train ride to our hotel we promptly made our way to one of Munich’s famous beer gardens, Augustiner-Keller. The beer garden holds a modest 6,000 people, and I imagine just under half that number joined us that Saturday night. We ate good food, enjoyed good beer and met a lot of people.

The next day we showed up to the Oktoberfest at 11am, without a tent reservation. If you’ve been before, you understand that this is not good. If you haven’t been before, let me explain. If you want to have a beer in one of the main tents you need to have a seat in that tent. The best way to ensure this is to get a reservation. But reservations are incredibly hard to get, so you need to show up at the festival early in the morning to get in line to grab a seat in the general seating section. The general seating section usually fills up by 10am and the tent shuts its doors, and if you get one of those seats you usually don’t leave the tent for the rest of the day. So, showing up to Oktoberfest at 11am without a reservation is not recommended.

All of this is negated with a little bit of luck, and fortunately lady luck was on our side! We walked in to the Schottenhamel tent (find some more info on the tent here and here) and chatted up one of the men guarding the reservation tables. For some reason he liked us, so he gave us a table for the next 2 hours until the next reservation showed up. Perfect! That’s all we need, most reservations only are for a few hours anyway. After a few hours, the next reservation showed up – turned out to be a few older guys who have come to the Oktoberfest for the last 15 years. We asked them to join us and they were happy to do so! So for the next 2 hours we remained at our coveted table, enjoying the live music, singing, dancing, and having a great time with our new friends. About six hours after we arrived at the tent (and about six hours longer than we thought we could stay at the tent) we decided it was time to go ride a few roller coasters before calling it a night.


On our final day in Munich we got a chance to enjoy the city itself. We went to the Marienplatz to see the Glockenspiel, took a tour of the Residenz (one of Europe's most significant museums of interior decoration), walked through the Viktualienmarkt (the popular Munich market) and went for a stroll through the English Gardens (where we went to yet another beer garden, the Seehaus).

What a trip!