To Howard H.

Stevenson, a man of head and heart, of wisdom

and warmth, of perspective and emotion— one who has given
these gifts selflessly to thousands throughout his life, and who,
despite initial trepidation and an endearing bit of shyness,
permitted me to share them with the readers of this book.

To Frederika Stevenson and the Stevenson family.

To the men and women who collectively kept a

heart-stopping moment from becoming a tragic one—including Jeff
Sandefer and Linda Hill, Andrew O’Brien, William Kaden,
Andrew MacMillan, Bruce Biller, and Debra Poaster from Harvard
Business School; and Drs. Kim Saal, Robert Campbell, Vladimir
Birjiniuk, Michael Kjelsberg, Michael Farmer, and the caring and
skilled professionals at the Mt. Auburn Hospital Cardiac Unit.

In their honor, a portion of the proceeds from Howard’s

Gift will be donated to Mt. Auburn Hospital and Harvard
University— supporting miracles yet to be performed.

howard’s gift. Copyright © 2012 by Eric Sinoway. All rights reserved. Printed in
the United States of America. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175
Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
www.stmartins.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sinoway, Eric C.
Howard’s gift : uncommon wisdom to inspire your life’s work / Eric C. Sinoway
with Merrill Meadow.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-250- 00424-6 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-01562-4 (e-book)
1. Business planning. 2. Strategic planning. I. Meadow, Merrill. II. Title.
HD30.28.S477 2012
650.1—dc23
2012028243
First Edition: October 2012
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
chapter one
Business Planning for Your Life’s Work

use a wise man or woman in our lives. Some-

W eonecanwhoallhelps us make sense of the challenges we face.
Who guides us as we navigate times of change. Who counsels
us as we move along life’s path.
Who among us wouldn’t want to call on a person with wis-
dom and experience when we have to make important decisions
about our careers and our personal lives? Especially when those
decisions are fraught with risk and uncertainty, and complicated
by fundamental changes in the world around us.
And let’s face it, wisdom is at a premium, as we’ve experienced
an unbelievable amount of change over the last few years.
When I first had the idea of writing this book, the stock mar-
ket was at an all-time high, prosperity was increasing all over
the world, and megamillionaires were being created every
other day. It looked like the economic good times would never
end. Quite frankly, it was an environment in which many people
who weren’t getting rich—and that’s most of us—were wonder-
ing why not, and whether we should be approaching our lives
and careers in a very different way.
The assumption, of course, was that wealth equaled success
and success equaled happiness. The initial concept for this book
was to help people think through how to achieve happiness and
meaning in their lives within that environment.
2 howard’s gift

And then things changed, seemingly overnight.

In a breathtakingly short period of time, the economic world
as we knew it imploded. A company that was once synonymous
with American economic success, General Motors, went bank-
rupt. The disintegration of a single Wall Street icon, Lehman
Brothers, threatened the entire global finance system. Average
people—like you and me and the folks across the street—
unwittingly helped overzealous lenders drive the nation’s mort-
gage industry and housing market over a cliff.
As a society, we ran headfirst into an inflection point.
What is an inflection point? It is what Andy Grove, the
founder and former CEO of Intel, defined as an event that fun-
damentally changes the way we think and act. Usually, an in-
flection point isn’t a little change. It is a moment when—by
choice or not—we pivot from the path down which we are
traveling and head in an entirely different direction.
During the past dozen years, we’ve gone through several extra-
ordinary inflection points. We have experienced a series of eco-
nomic and political events that caused the future to look very
different from what we’d expected it would.
Until not too long ago, a whole generation of college gradu-
ates believed they were destined to follow the path of the
founders of Microsoft, Google, and Facebook and become
multimillionaires before they were thirty. Investment banking
was seen as the guaranteed path to becoming a “master of the
universe.” People were celebrated as heroes for running com-
panies based on business models that, in any other time, would
have been considered laughable. Policy makers in Washington,
DC, were so confident that the stock market would keep rising—
seemingly forever—that they considered privatizing Social Se-
curity, the economic safety net of the American working man
and woman.
Beginning in 2007 and continuing to this day, we’ve been
reminded of two rules that we’d apparently forgotten: (1) what
Business Planning for Your Life’s Work 3

goes up does eventually come down, and (2) businesses built on

a foundation of smoke and mirrors will surely fail.
At breakneck speed, discussions about the stock market
turned to preserving capital, not growing it. People with jobs
were satisfied just to keep them—forget about promotions and
raises. Homeowners went from visions of windfall profits to
hopes of avoiding foreclosure. Folks with newly minted college
and graduate degrees suddenly faced a frozen job market.
Even those people whose financial lives did not collapse had
a tremendous scare. And we’re all trying to guess if there’s a
new problem just over the horizon.
In times of extraordinary challenges and dizzying change—
whether it’s happening around us or to us—we can all use a
wise guide. A person who helps us think through our basic as-
sumptions about what we want and need in our lives, about
what “success” means to us and how best to navigate our lives
during unsettling times.
Wise men and women come in plenty of flavors and sizes,
and with varying degrees of insight. Like beauty, wisdom is
often in the eye of the beholder. And the wisdom you find de-
pends a lot on the kind of wisdom you may benefit from at a
par ticular moment. For some, the ideal wise person looks like
Abraham Lincoln or Mother Teresa; for others it’s Warren Buf-
fett or Oprah Winfrey.
The wise man I’ve found is a mixture: he has the business acu-
men of Warren Buffett, and the warmth and spirit of Morrie
Schwartz, Mitch Albom’s professor in the book Tuesdays with
Morrie. He also has a rather humorous resemblance to Yoda, the
wise, skilled, and experienced Jedi knight of Star Wars fame.
Although my wise man looks a bit like Yoda, in place of a
light saber he wields razor-sharp logic and scalpel-like insight.
He is a real-life teacher, mentor, and guide through challeng-
ing, risky, and downright scary adventures. His name is How-
ard Stevenson.
4 howard’s gift

Howard is an entrepreneur, an author, and a philanthropist.

And for forty years, he has been one of the most important and
respected professors at Harvard Business School. He possesses
an amazing combination of business brilliance, keen psycho-
logical perception, energetic spirit, and long-term vision. He
has an endearing perspective on life, something I didn’t fully
appreciate until it was almost gone.
Howard is exactly the kind of person that so many of us
would like to be able to turn to when important decisions are
to be made or challenges met. One whose wisdom and experi-
ence have guided thousands of men and women through the
inflection points in their lives.
Over the course of four decades, Howard has taught, men-
tored, and counseled thousands of Harvard MBAs, graduate
students, and global business leaders. His students have included
world leaders, CEOs of major corporations, and entrepreneurs
whose visions have changed our world.
Numbered among Howard’s many students, friends, and con-
fidants are some of the most successful businesspeople and phi-
lanthropists in the world. They have included people like Jorge
Paolo Lemann, the Brazilian billionaire co-owner of the inter-
national beverage conglomerate Anheuser-Busch InBev, William
Bowes, one of the creators of the U.S. bio tech industry; Hansjörg
Wyss, the Swiss medical appliance industry pioneer and mega
philanthropist; the late Frank Batten, who created the Weather
Channel; and Arthur Rock, the legendary investor who helped
launch Intel and Apple.
Why have business icons like Lemann, Bowes, Wyss, Batten,
and Rock—people who have reached the pinnacle of professional
success—continued to look to this remarkable man? For the same
reason that I do: to benefit from the insight, wisdom, warmth,
and pragmatic perspective that this rumpled Harvard Business
School professor shares with everyone whose life he has touched.
Business Planning for Your Life’s Work 5

This book is my way of introducing you to my friend and

mentor Howard Stevenson.

Every book has a catalyst, something that makes an author be-

lieve, “It’s essential that I tell people about this.” For some au-
thors that moment feels like an earthquake or a thunderclap; for
others, it’s a slowly dawning realization or a voice whispering
in the mind’s ear.
To me, that moment felt like a punch to the gut and the urge
to vomit.
I was standing in the parking lot of Harvard Business School
one mild winter day in Cambridge, Massachusetts, staring
dumbly at a colleague who was telling me something I didn’t
want to believe. I heard his words, but I couldn’t absorb their
meaning. “Howard had a heart attack two hours ago. It’s bad.”
At age sixty-six, Howard Stevenson was a legend at Harvard
Business School. An iconic teacher, he was an innovator who
defined the academic field of entrepreneurial business. He was
a successful businessman who’d made a fortune several times
over, and a philanthropist and philanthropic adviser of the first
rank. A towering figure among corporate leaders, he was a
warm friend and a generous mentor.
Howard was considered the father of entrepreneurship at
HBS, and he was like a second father to me.
We had first met when I was a thirty-something “mid-career”
graduate student at Harvard’s Kennedy School and he agreed to
advise me on an independent study project. From our initial
conversation, I found myself oddly connected to this Ivy League
scholar with a quirky smile. His ruffled hair, piercing gaze, and
slightly hunched posture were an amusing contrast to the inte-
rior man: brilliant, witty, playful, and endlessly curious. I came
to adore his unique spirit.
6 howard’s gift

And now . . . “They had to give him CPR. He might not

make it.”
Despite getting a clean bill of health from his doctor only
weeks earlier, Howard had collapsed in cardiac arrest as he
walked across campus after lunch. It had been an otherwise
typical day until his ticker simply stopped ticking.
I was frantic at the news and spent the next several hours call-
ing colleagues and rushing from one office to the next, vainly
trying to get some update on Howard’s condition. It was only
days later that his assistant, Bobbie, could give me good news.
Howard would be all right—but only because of amazing good
luck: he had collapsed next to a building that had a portable
defibrillator, and someone immediately brought the device to
his side; plus the HBS campus is just two miles from a good
hospital. (That evening, when I saw my friend Josh Silver-
man— a brilliant surgeon and scientist—I learned that the sur-
vival rate for “unattended cardiac arrest” is about 1 percent. So
in any other circumstances, Howard likely would have died
there on the manicured lawns of Harvard Business School.)
Even when I knew that he’d fully recover, my stomach
clenched at the thought of Howard lying flat on his back, star-
ing up at the clouds, wondering if he was headed to what he’d
once called “the great business school in the sky.” I realized that
during the endless hours we’d spent joking, debating, and ana-
lyzing together, I hadn’t stopped to tell him what he meant to
me. Hadn’t thanked him for making me think about things dif-
ferently, for challenging my assumptions about business, about
my career, about my life. I hadn’t expressed my gratitude for
the wisdom he showered on me each time we spoke. And I
hadn’t told him that I loved him.
Ironically, when I went to see Howard in the hospital, he was in
remarkably good spirits. So good, in fact, that when I asked him
what he’d been thinking when he first woke up after his heart at-
tack, he gave me a deadpan answer that made me laugh out loud.
Business Planning for Your Life’s Work 7

“Well, first I thought, ‘Damn, I bet they ruined the favorite

sportcoat I was wearing when I collapsed.’ Then, seeing all the
equipment they had me hooked up to, I thought, ‘Gee, I’m glad
I gave the hospital a nice-sized gift last year.’ ”
His humor was encouraging, but something in me wanted a
more serious answer, so I asked, “Howard, when you were ly-
ing on the ground, knowing you might die right there in the
middle of the campus, did you have any regrets?”
“You mean like regretting that piece of cheesecake I ate at
lunch just before I collapsed? Or kicking myself for not order-
ing that expensive bottle of wine at the restaurant the night
before?”
“I was thinking of something more significant,” I said. “Like,
‘Boy, there are sixty things I’d do differently about my life, if
I could,’ or ‘If I survive, I’m going to change things in a major
way.’ ”
He thought about it for a minute, then answered, “They tell
me I was unconscious when I hit the ground, so—technically
speaking—I had no time for regretting anything. But I under-
stand what you’re asking. And the answer is nope.”
“And in the days since— any regrets?”
“Not a one.”
“Really?” I asked.
“Look, Eric, a person has regrets when his life doesn’t match
up with his expectations, or when he has dreams he hasn’t vig-
orously pursued,” Howard said in his smooth growl. “I’ve lived
the life I wanted, and accomplished more than I could have
wished. I have an amazing wife and a loving family. I’ve been
surrounded by wonderful friends. And I think I’ve left a little
piece of the planet a bit better for animal and man.”
“So you would have died happy and satisfied?”
“Well, not happy about dying. But satisfied with the life I’ve
lived,” he replied. “No one can say that he or she hasn’t made
mistakes or had faults—we’re human, and you’ve got to accept
8 howard’s gift

that. But I would have gone with no major regrets over things
I’d done or not done.”
For a reason I didn’t immediately understand, I left Howard’s
hospital room feeling worse than I think he did. He was up-
beat, encouraged, joking. I was reflective, brooding, confused. I
couldn’t figure out why. Instead of heading home after that first
hospital visit, I drove back to the Harvard campus and spent
a  few hours that evening wandering around, alone with my
thoughts.
I remembered my first meeting with Howard several years
earlier, and how he had challenged me—right off the bat—to
think differently than I had been doing to that point. He’d done
it in a way that was hard-nosed and stimulating, insightful, and
warm and caring, all at the same time. As I continued to walk
aimlessly around campus late into the evening, I realized that
while I was incredibly grateful that Howard had survived and
had lived his life with what he described as “no regrets,” there
was something eating at me. A thought sitting, annoyingly, just
beyond my mind’s reach. Then it came to me: Howard’s expe-
rience had made me realize that I had a giant regret of my own.
For the last three years, Howard and I had been spending a
few hours a week together—in his office, at his home, or sim-
ply walking around the Harvard campus. In that short time, he
had evolved from my professor to a mentor to a dear friend. We
had talked about many things, some frivolous, but most serious.
Our conversations had touched on music and books and travels,
on politics and economics, on family and philosophy, on business
strategy and professional development, on the value of educa-
tion versus experience, and on the many ways one could make
a difference in the world. We talked about pursuing success and
recovering from failure. About setting goals and setting out to
achieve them.
If I had to sum up the topic of all those conversations in one
Business Planning for Your Life’s Work 9

sentence, it would be this: we talked about how to chart a satis-

fying path through career and life— about pursuing what
Howard called your “life’s work.”
“Life’s work” was a term I had heard in several different con-
texts. Most often for me it conjured images of deep and long
devotion to great causes and difficult, admirable labors. The
phrase brought to mind Mother Teresa and her work with In-
dia’s poor and sick, or Paul Farmer and his efforts to heal and
rebuild Haiti. Or it made me think of the anonymous strug-
gling artist, or the inventor determined to bring her mind’s
vision to reality. When Howard talked about people pursuing
their life’s work, he was certainly referring to all the saints and
visionaries, but not only to them. He was talking about every-
one and anyone who got up each morning hoping to achieve
something of substance with their lives. He was talking about
accountants and engineers, teachers and Web designers, lawyers
and social workers, business owners and nonprofit executives.
He was talking about you and me and the folks living two
doors down.
For Howard, describing one’s life’s work means the totality of
who we are: the interwoven strands of our labors, our loves, our
hopes, and our tangible needs and wants; the interdependent ele-
ments of our lives that we sometimes try to wall off into inde-
pendent silos that we name “the job,” “the family,” and “the rest
of my life.”
In my many conversations with Howard, I had soaked up the
seemingly endless ideas and sage advice that he offered on ap-
proaching my life’s work. But I’d made no effort to capture
exactly what he was giving me. At first, I hadn’t even realized
how much I was learning. I’d met many smart, even brilliant,
people at Harvard. But Howard was different—he wasn’t just
smart, he was wise. And, eventually, I understood the cause of
the energetic buzz in my brain after our conversations: it was
10 howard’s gift

from the tiny infusions of wisdom I’d been receiving. He was

like no one else I had ever met.
Driving home on the night of my hospital visit with Howard,
I recognized that I had more than regret on my mind. At the
moment that I learned Howard had cheated death, I had made a
subconscious decision that was only just becoming clear to me.
The decision that was coming into focus was to capture some
of the wisdom that Howard had been effortlessly dispensing—
and to share that wisdom with people who’d never have the
chance to learn from him directly.
That’s why, visiting Howard again a few days later, I told him
that I had his next project picked out. “Once you’re done with
all those tubes, wires, and probes you’re wearing, I want us to
write a book together. Actually, you’ll talk, I’ll write it down,
and it’ll be your next book.”
“Really?” he asked with a wry smile.
I explained my idea for a book based on his experience and
insight—on the things he’d learned directly and the lessons
he’d gleaned from watching his students’ careers and lives over
the decades. “I want to capture some of the amazing things
we’ve talked about. Give everyone a chance to learn from you
like I’ve been doing these past few years.”
Howard thought about it for a few minutes, then said, “Well,
writing a book sounds fine. But I think we should do it a little
differently. I don’t want you to simply transcribe my words. I’m
happy to do some talking, but you’ve got to talk, too.”
“Talk about what?” I asked.
“I want you to add yourself to the mix, put your experiences
in there. I’ll be part of it—most if it, even—but it will be your
book.”
“But why?”
 HOWARD'S  GIFT

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