ISRAEL
Orit Gadiesh was born “Orit Grunfeld” in Haifa, Israel, post the independence at the end of the Arab–Israeli War of 1948. In that war, the Zionist Israeli army defeated an Arab military coalition including Egypt, paving the way for the Zionists to establish Israel as an official Jewish state in Palestine. Many of the first Israeli settlers were immigrants from Europe, and Grunfeld's parents were no exception. Her father had emigrated from Germany, her mother had come from Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Empire, where Jewish people had been persecuted by means of pogroms, a form of ethnic cleansing.
Orit told me that her father did a “sensitive job” in the young Israeli state, working as a Defense Force colonel in the army. She explained her father was asked by David Ben-Gurion to change his name to a Hebrew name. He chose to combine the first letter of his last name, G, and Diesh, the Hebrew word for Grunfeld (his German name).
Just like every young Israeli, Gadiesh had to fulfill a mandatory service in the army when she graduated from high school. It was through that experience, she said, that she learned how to lead in times of crisis. “I was 17 when I started my service, and was appointed to work for the deputy chief of staff.” In hindsight it may seem as if she got that job because of her father's role in the army, but she assured me that wasn't the case. He was known in the army as Grunfeld, and she was admitted under the name Gadiesh. “The role I had was part of the basic training every Israeli performs in the army,” she said. “But I was younger than most, as I graduated early from high school, and got special permit to join the army at 17. I was selected to work for the deputy chief of staff office—I had been a grade-A student. But it was a huge responsibility, and I was fortunate to be selected.”
Her most vivid memory of that period, she said, was when she was present in the “war room” during a conflict situation. While Israeli soldiers in the field were risking their lives in a combat situation, the army generals had to decide on their strategy. “The war room was in a bunker, so we were physically all very close to each other, with the chiefs of staff, the people that ran the army in that particular time, all there. I was merely listening in, but I could hear what was going on in the field hundreds of miles away.”
She saw how the generals often followed the advice of those in the field no matter what their rank or title was. “In the Israeli army, you lead from the front, not from behind,” Gadiesh said. “People in the war room were making decisions [based] on imperfect information. I listened to the debate and saw how they went about that. There was always consultation. Sometimes the generals in the room were several levels higher up in rank from those on the ground. But if the person on the ground [was] under fire and said: ‘I need to do this,’ then the generals would say, ‘Yes, go for it.’”
What she took away from that, she said, is how as a leader, “you [should] trust your people, how you work under extreme stress, and how you work as a team to come up with the best possible decisions. At that age, it's something that you never forget.”
After completing her service, Gadiesh went to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and got a bachelor's degree in psychology and human geography (her minor). She was a top student, and she planned to stay in academia. “I always thought I was going to be a professor in Jerusalem,” she said. So after earning her degree, she looked for a master's and PhD program, to eventually become a professor. But things turned out differently. While looking for a PhD program abroad, she came upon a highly selective but prestigious double degree in the United States: the Harvard MBA-PhD program.
“I didn't know anything about accounting, finance,” she said. “And I couldn't imagine getting a PhD without having an MBA as a basis.” The idea of going for an MBA in the United States was “crazy,” according to Gadiesh: “Every business school required that you did economics before—only Harvard didn't. It was literally the only school I could apply for—they looked for leadership grades instead. Most people in my country said I was crazy, but my father was supportive. He said, ‘If you want to do it, you should do it.’”
Thanks to her outstanding grades in college, Gadiesh managed to get accepted at Harvard, and even got a scholarship to pay for it. It was much needed “because inflation in Israel was sky high, and I couldn't get a loan for my studies.” After the initial excitement, however, reality kicked in. Despite her stellar academic background, the Hebrew-speaking Gadiesh could barely speak English, and her knowledge of American culture was close to zero. At first, “I could hardly say ‘Hi,’ ‘Hello,’ or ‘How are you?,’” she said. “I certainly couldn't have a conversation about politics, and I took hours to read a text.”
But the hardest thing, she said, was not knowing about the American culture. “I had never been to a supermarket. I had never eaten cereals in my life. And I didn't know who Johnny Carson was.” That was a problem for her because, as she explained, “HBS [Harvard Business School] is all about case studies, and one of the first ones was about whether or not Kellogg's should add another cereal to its offering. So I started to go to the supermarket with a friend, [where] we looked in the aisles [to find out] about what Americans were eating, and went to a friend's apartment to watch television.”
It was all very overwhelming. “We had to study at least three cases per week,” she said. “With my level of English, I had to translate every word at first. It was hard. Take the word contribution. It didn't mean what I thought. It took me six hours instead of one hour just to read the case. In class, I couldn't express myself. In my third day, I remember I was looking at a particularly long case. It was midnight, and I hadn't even finished reading the case. I said: ‘I can't do it.’”
For Gadiesh, it was an exercise in perseverance, in believing in herself despite the challenges, and in keeping the right perspective. “That night, I decided to just go to sleep. I woke up the next morning, and I thought: ‘I never quit anything in my life. So I shouldn't quit this. I should read the important cases, and do so until I master them.’” She made a plan, and stuck it out. “I went to talk to professors, and I joined a study group, which was encouraging. I decided that I wasn't going to be shy about asking things if I didn't understand them.”
In such cases, the motivation can come from simple human interactions and small encouragements. “There was one guy who thought it was hysterical,” Gadiesh said. “I was a woman, I was Israeli, and I didn't speak English. So I asked him if he would be willing to help me. And he did.”
But the slow learning process continued to cause challenges, and overcoming them wasn't easy. One professor gave Gadiesh three cases to choose from for her exam, each consisting of 40 pages of text. “Could you tell me which one to focus on?” she asked, worried. “If you have no background in economics, why don't you just fail the course?” her professor retorted, and added: “I like to see long answers.”
Gadiesh was shocked. “I wasn't mad at him, but I was upset. After all, I was studying to become a professor, just like him.” But she tried her best. “I spent 3 hours and 40 minutes reading the case. I knew I could never finish answering. So during the remaining time, I wrote: ‘Here's what I would have done. I would make these analyses. I would think of these two options. And here's what I would choose.’ Much to her surprise, after the test, Gadiesh got summoned to her professor's office and received good news: he had given her an “Excellent.” “You actually spent time thinking about options, instead of going straight into the case,” he explained.
In the end, Gadiesh said, “I spent a lot of time getting to know the language, the culture, and the business. But it was all very exciting.” By the time she finished her MBA, in May 1977, she was in the top 5 percent of her graduating class, and got the prize for Most Outstanding Marketing Student. But the next challenge was already on the horizon. Having finished her MBA two years into her four-year doctorate program, Gadiesh realized she didn't want to remain in academics.
“In May, I decided—when everyone had a job already—that I didn't want to teach. I wanted to practice. I made up my mind, but no recruiters were coming to campus anymore. I wanted to do either of two things: retail or consulting. I was interested in retail, because my father's family had a history in it, and I applied directly to Macy's and Bloomingdales, after they already accepted everyone. I got an offer from both of them, but after consideration, I turned them down.”
The reason was a new, up-and-coming consulting firm that had gotten Gadiesh's attention: Bain & Company, founded just four years earlier, in 1973. Having learned to love to “crack cases” at HBS, Gadiesh decided she was set for a career in consulting, rather than one at a large company. It was a decision she shared with many business school graduates at the time. “I was interested in consulting, because it was thinking about problems and solving them,” she said.
The most obvious choice would have been McKinsey & Co, the longtime industry leader, or Boston Consulting Group, a strong Boston-based competitor.1 But a new kid on the block was making strides: Bain. Founded by Bill Bain, a former BCG vice-president from Tennessee, Bain & Co worked in ways that were unconventional for the industry at the time: It w...
