Educational Perspective

Educating Leaders:
Insights from John D. Rockefeller
Richard B. Gunderman, MD, PhD, Gregory Matthews, BS
eadership is receiving more and more attention these days. It is becoming a more frequent topic at professional meetings, and more articles are being published on the subject in professional journals. Major new leadership initiatives by national professional organizations have recently spawned the Academy of Radiology Leadership and Management and the Radiology Leadership Institute. Many of these leadership education initiatives focus on principles of leadership, providing a how-to guide for leaders and aspiring leaders. But a key part of any complete leadership education curriculum is the study of real leaders. Some leadership lessons are best learned as abstract principles, but others come through most clearly through narratives of the life and work of real people. Such stories help to show how principles can be put into practice in everyday life also tend to do a better job of engaging the attention and imagination of learners. If wealth is an indicator of success, then John Davison Rockefeller may have been the most successful of American leaders. He was the rst person in history to amass a nominal personal fortune in excess of $1 billion. At its peak, Rockefellers net worth in todays dollars was approximately $700 billion, which exceeds the fortunes of todays richest Americans by a factor of more than 10, and in his time represented approximately 1.5% of the annual gross domestic product of the United States (1). Yet he not only made money. He also gave it away. He founded the University of Chicago and Rockefeller University, and established foundations that made major contributions to education, medicine, and biomedical science. In total, Rockefeller probably gave away approximately one-third to one-half of the fortune he amassed during his life. In this article, we provide a biographical sketch of this remarkable American and consider some of the important leadership education insights, both positive and negative, offered by his career. Where did John D. Rockefeller come from and how did he become so rich? What characteristics distinguished him as a leader? Finally, what lessons can todays radiology leaders learn from the example of Rockefellers leadership?
Acad Radiol 2013; 20:128130 From Indiana University, 702 North Barnhill Drive, Room 1053, Indianapolis, IN 46202 (R.B.G., G.M.). Received May 8, 2012; accepted May 9, 2012. Address correspondence to: R.B.G. e-mail: rbgunder@iupui.edu AUR, 2013 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.acra.2012.05.012

ROCKEFELLER Rockefeller was born in 1839 in Richford, NY, the second of his parents six children. His mother was a devout Baptist. His father was an itinerant patent medicine salesman who frequently practiced medicine under an assumed name. The Rockefellers lived in humble circumstances, and while still a boy John made money selling candy and making small loans to neighbors. His father claimed that he taught his children to be sharp by cheating his boys at every opportunity (2). Though poor, John received a good education, rst in New York and then in Cleveland, where the family had moved. At age 16, Rockefeller obtained his rst job as a bookkeeper, earning 50 cents a day. He displayed a remarkably good head for gures, and also began his lifelong practice of charitable giving, donating 10% of his income to his church. Rockefeller and a partner later launched a successful wholesale food business, then built an oil renery. Growing demand was driving the price of whale oil ever higher, and a substitute needed to be found (3). In the years after the Civil War, driven in part by the rapidly expanding railroads, demand for oil exploded. Rockefeller borrowed money and bought out his renery partners. He then began borrowing heavily to build and buy other reneries, including the worlds largest; in 1870, he formed the Standard Oil Company. His business practices enabled him to drive other reners out of business, then buy their assets at auction. By 1880, Standard was rening 90% of US oil (2). Standard Oil effectively controlled oil rening and marketing throughout the United States, improving the quality and efciency of operations. Over the life of the company, the cost of kerosene dropped 80%. In the late 1890s, while the company was still expanding at a rapid rate, Rockefeller retired from its management, devoting more time to his philanthropic activities and leisure pursuits such as golf. Rockefeller and his rm were the subject of attacks by journalist Ida Tarbell, who documented the companys questionable business practices, generating considerable public animosity. When Theodore Roosevelt became president, he initiated a variety of antitrust actions, which eventually led to the breakup of Standard Oil into companies familiar today. The dividing up of the company caused Rockefellers personal fortune to grow by more than ve times (4). As Rockefellers fortune grew, he sought to reward the same efciency in charitable organizations that he sought to promote in his business interests. Giving away his money soon became as great a burden as making it, and he recruited

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EDUCATING LEADERS: INSIGHTS FROM JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER

advisers and established foundations to carry out much of the work. His General Education Board, founded in 1903, provided considerable support to schools for blacks in the South, and also helped to revolutionize medical education in the United States by funding the recommendations of the Flexner Report. The institution that became Rockefeller University played a major role in advancing biomedical science, supporting the work of 23 Nobel laureates. The Rockefeller Foundation helped found the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and the Peking Union Medical College in China (2). Rockefeller died in Florida at age 97. POSITIVE LEADERSHIP INSIGHTS It is often said that fat cats do not hunt, but this was certainly not true of Rockefeller. When oil rening was taking off, he bought renery after renery. When shipping his petroleum products became a challenge, he sought control of railroads. When the pipes began to supplant the rails as the most efcient means of shipping, he built his own network of pipelines. When local oil supplies began to be depleted, he bought elds in neighboring states. As oil was discovered in other parts of the world, he expanded his reach across oceans and established an international oil empire. Throughout his business career, Rockefeller was never one to rest on his laurels, and this provides an important leadership education lesson for radiologists. In a fast-changing world, complacency is a prescription for obsolescence, and radiologists need to keep pushing the envelope of innovation (5). Rockefeller never failed to attend closely to the nancial implications of every decision, from broad strategy to seemingly minute details. He was perhaps the greatest business visionary of the latter half of the 19th century, helping to establish and streamline whole industries and amassing and helping many others to amass vast fortunes in the process. Yet it was said that he could peruse page after page of a complex business ledger and spot errors and inconsistencies in an instant (2). Vision and integrity are vital, but no leader can afford to neglect the nancial aspects of an organization. Rockefellers rm grasp of nance and keen attention to detail let everyone, both inside and outside his organization, know that he was watching them. Likewise, radiology leaders need to take a sincere interest in nance, discouraging nancial impropriety and ensuring that radiology organizations operate according to sound business principles. Rockefeller was more committed to the success of his enterprises than to his own personal fame and fortune. In speaking of his business activities, he rarely used the pronoun I, preferring instead to talk in terms of what we are doing. When others sought to praise him, he usually deected such words, highlighting the important contributions of others. When he spoke of what Standard Oil was doing, he emphasized the need to bring order to a uctuating, unpredictable, and inefcient industry and pointed with pride to the improved quality and dramatically lower prices his efforts had made possible for ordinary consumers. So too, radiology leaders need to think

less of their own personal success than the ourishing of their organizations and the eld of radiology as a whole (6). Leaders exist primarily to help others realize their full potential and get the credit for doing so, not to hog all the limelight for themselves. A great radiology organization is dened far less by the career of its leader than by the careers of its members. Rockefeller was, in many respects, remarkably generous to his competitors. As he expanded Standard Oil, he generally offered fair market prices for businesses he acquired. Moreover, he sought to retain the talents of their managers and delegated responsibility for the continued performance of their organizations to them. He recognized that he could not do it all alone and built an organization composed of able leaders. When he found such people, he placed great trust in them and eventually entrusted them with the operations of his business. Radiology leaders need to see their work not as a zero-sum game, in which their own wins require others to lose, but as a positive-sum game, in which efforts at cooperation and collaboration are often richly rewarded (7). The best way to succeed, Rockefeller knew, is by helping others to succeed. Every great radiology leader serves as a catalyst of others successes. Like Standard Oil, many radiology practices can begin to see themselves as monopolies, exerting substantial control over imaging (8). Yet Rockefeller did not allow quality to suffer or use his position to extract greater revenues from customers. Instead, he saw consolidation as an essential component of his effort to achieve greater effectiveness and efciency throughout the industry. He was competing not just with other reneries, but with a vision of what the industry should look like, delivering a higher-quality and less expensive product. Likewise, radiology leaders need to continually seek to elevate their organizations level of performance, not just to the minimum level they can get away with, but to its peak. As Rockefeller saw, the pursuit of excellence is a worthy goal in its own right, and ultimately it is only by offering the best value that prots continue to accrue. Rockefeller stands out as one of the most extravagant philanthropists in American history. He gave away more money than just about any philanthropist in history, but he did more than merely write large checks. He sought to relieve hunger, ignorance, and disease by attacking such problems at their roots. He supported educational and job training initiatives so that poor people could become self-supporting, and he helped to fund the complete eradication of a number of diseases, such as hookworm (9). Rockefeller believed that wealth was his for a reason, and that he had a moral obligation to give it wisely for the benet of mankind. Radiologists, who have been among the best compensated physicians, have a similar opportunity put their nancial resources to use for the benet of their communities. No less important than earning well is giving well a portion of what one has earned. NEGATIVE LEADERSHIP INSIGHTS Rockefeller also exhibited a number of weaknesses as a leader. One was his unyielding faith in his own abilities 129

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(2). Rockefeller was so sure of himself that he often regarded those who questioned him as poorly informed or envious. He also neglected to communicate effectively with the press and the public (4). During his rise, he was often seen as private and even somewhat reclusive, oblivious to the importance of what is often called public relations. This made him an easy target for muckraking journalists such as Ida Tarbell. Only later did he come to appreciate the importance of tending his image. Rockefeller was willing to skirt and even bend laws, if doing so suited his interests. Many of his contracts were secret, as were the ownership arrangements in Standard Oil, a device meant to protect them from public scrutiny. Here, too, are important lessons for radiology leaders. First, it is important for leaders to encourage questioning and criticism in order to learn from the perspectives of others. Selfcondence is a good thing, but a sense of infallibility can prove deadly. By listening to others, leaders can learn how others perceive what they are doing and how they might do it better. Because radiologists are often invisible to patients and the public, it is important that they reach out to such groups, helping them to understand the importance of radiologys contributions in contemporary health care. If radiologists do not create their own image, someone else will do it for them, perhaps with other agendas that produce very different results. Finally, it is important that radiology leaders uphold both the letter and the spirit of ethical and legal mandates (10). Few mistakes can damage an organization or end a career more quickly than a lapse in this domain. Radiologists should strive to be net contributors to the standing of medicine as a profession. CONCLUSION Rockefeller was a man of contradictions, portrayed in his day as both a villain and a saint. Though the richest man in US history, he wrote, I know of nothing more despicable

and pathetic than a man who devotes all the hours of the waking day to the making of money for moneys sake (11). Though for much of his life quite reserved and neglectful of his own image, he wrote, The most important thing for a young man is to establish a credita reputation, character (12). And though he was publicly demonized for some of his business practices, his son John Rockefeller Jr. wrote My mother and father raised but one question: Is it right? (2). Rockefeller was far from perfect, but he performed extremely well at a number of key leadership activities, and he usually found ways to compensate for his weaknesses through the recruitment of talented colleagues. His life story is a fascinating one, laden with valuable insights for radiology leaders.

REFERENCES
1. Klepper M, Gunther R. The wealthy 100: from Benjamin Franklin to Bill Gatesa ranking of the richest Americans, past and present. Sacramento, CA: Citadel Press, 1996. 2. Chernow R. Titan: the life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. Albany, NY: Random House, 1998. 3. Yergin D. The prize: the epic quest for oil, money, and power. 2nd ed. New York, NY: Free Press, 2008. 4. Weinberg S. Taking on the trust: the epic battle of Ida Tarbell and John D. Rockefeller. New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 2008. 5. Gunderman RB, Weinreb JC, Hillman BJ, et al. Leadership in radiology: the 2007 ACR Forum. J Am Coll Radiol 2008; 5:9296. 6. Dodd GD, Fletcher TB, Thorwarth WT. The crisis in academic radiology: will we help ourselves? J Am Coll Radiol 2006; 3:243247. 7. Boland GW, Guimaraes AS, Mueller PR. The evolving radiology landscape: the importance of effective leadership. Eur Radiol 2009; 19: 23212325. 8. Kuhn H. Classics in game theory. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997. 9. Boccaccio M. Ground itch and dew poison: the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission, 19091914. J Hist Med Allied Sci 1972; 27:52. 10. Lexa FJ. Qualities of great leadership. J Am Coll Radiol 2008; 5:598599. 11. Rockefeller JD, Sr. Random reminiscences of men and events. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1909. 12. Forbes BC. Men who are making America. New York, NY: B.C. Forbes Publishing Company, 1916.

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