Strickland takes the time to talk to every person. He reads their business cards carefully and puts them in a special jacket pocket he uses for that purpose. If each moment is crucial, each person is more so.
Strickland's Cambridge talk ends the way all his talks do, with people jumping to their feet. As he steps down from the dais the M.B.A.'s crowd around him, pumping his hand, thrusting out their business cards, asking how can I get involved and is MCG/Bidwell hiring. Strickland takes the time to talk to every person. He reads their cards carefully and puts them in a special jacket pocket he uses for that purpose. When he gets back to Pittsburgh he'll give the cards to his staff and they will follow up with mailings. If each moment is crucial, each person is more so. Strickland is beginning to think about his legacy. He will tell you flat out that he wants to save the world.
And if you want to save the world, paradoxically, you've got to pay more attention to individuals, not less. It won't work any other way. At least, it won't work for long.
"Mr. Strickland, thank you," says Jehan Velji, one of the women of color in the audience. Velji explains that she had seen him give a presentation seven or eight years earlier, while she was studying at Harvard Business School. "Your talk changed my life," she tells him. "I didn't even know a career like yours was possible. You showed me that it could be done."
After earning her degree and moving to California, Velji continues, she became a consultant with a nonprofit company.
"That's cool," Strickland tells her. "You're doing it your own way."
Strickland clearly enjoys the attention and acclaim. He likes being able to say that he's friends with Herbie Hancock, that Laura Bush has visited, and that he taught his late great fellow Pittsburgher, Fred Rogers, how to throw pots on Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood.
Velji beams and departs. Another admirer immediately takes her place. Strickland clearly enjoys the attention and acclaim. He likes being able to say that he's friends with Herbie Hancock, that Laura Bush and the Archbishop of Canterbury have visited Manchester Bidwell in recent years, and that he taught his late great fellow Pittsburgher, Fred Rogers, how to throw pots on an episode of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood.
When Strickland drops names, however, it is never abrasive; he's ingenuously sharing his pride at associating with people whom he admires. By the same token, he dearly loves the first-person singular, yet, somehow, does not employ it in an egotistical manner. His only topic, however variegated, is his work. No portrait of Strickland hangs in Manchester Bidwell's halls. He has spurned repeated offers to join Fortune 500 companies and to run for public office.
Strickland thanks his hosts, then breaks out of the hotel into the brisk, brilliant Cambridge afternoon, the Charles River glinting in the distance beyond the MIT campus. He is on his way to meet Jim Heskett, a Harvard Business School professor. Strickland wants to tell Heskett, an especially valued mentor, about his company's replication plans.
Strickland settles into the back of a taxi and watches the city pass. It's been a long time since the dawn flight from Pittsburgh. Last week he'd flown to Los Angeles to give a talk at evangelist Robert Schuller's Crystal Cathedral. Strickland had had to dig deep for that unusual audience but, in the end, had earned yet another standing ovation. The hard miles have carved dark circles under his eyes, but he doesn't seem particularly weary. "I haven't slept in 40 years," he says with a shrug.
I don't get butterflies anymore before a talk. Last time I got nervous was 10 years ago, right here in Cambridge. Jim Heskett invited me to talk to his M.B.A. students. I sat down in the middle of this theater-in-the-round-type lecture hall and those M.B.A.'s just wailed on me. They picked apart my business, showed me all the places where I was going wrong. Man, those cats go for your throat. But it's a great experience for the small-business person. A million dollars' worth of consulting, right there. Yes, that got my stomach going a little bit, a black man from the Manchester neighborhood of Pittsburgh speaking at Harvard.
Strickland falls silent for a moment, looking out the window. For a man who rouses so much hope, he rarely smiles. Of course, Miles Davis never smiled much either.
"Finally I just did like always," he says. "Showed some slides of what I do for a living. The people liked it just fine."
