(Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman gives the commencement address at the Vanderbilt Owen Graduate School of Management on May 12, 2017.Vanderbilt Owen Graduate School of Management)
Every year, ambitious graduates with a fresh new master's degree have to deal with the reality of having to prove themselves all over again in an organization.
It can be easy to feel resentful and trudge through the work until dues are paid, but this can also be a time to excel, explained Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman in her commencement address Friday at her alma mater, the Vanderbilt Owen Graduate School of Management.
She told the graduates about to receive their MBAs that in a culture of fast-moving innovation, they need to prioritize doing things the right way. "I admit to being a bit concerned that we're moving into a culture that values ideas too much and execution too little," Friedman said.
When she was 28, four years out of Vanderbilt's b-school, her boss at Nasdaq gave her her first product to oversee, and it was a total dud. It was the Mutual Fund Quotation Service, which Friedman described as "an antiquated system with a neglected client base that no one more senior than me at the company seemed to think had much of a future."
Friedman portrayed the situation as a project handed to a young manager without the intention of making much out of it — it was worth trying to revive, but not worth the time of a seasoned executive with abundant resources.
But Friedman "went all in," she said. She began by speaking with each of the product's clients to discover how they were using it and what they wanted from it.
Now she had goals for improving the product, but couldn't find any Nasdaq engineer who wanted to work on a project they found insignificant. Friedman said she was eventually able to convince a veteran guy from the IT department to help her out — she figured he joined "just for the entertainment value of my certain failure" — and that allowed her to recruit a few more.
The small, uninspired team went to their first project meeting and discovered that Friedman had crafted a detail-rich project schedule, and she explained each step with clarity and optimism.
Friedman said that when she finished her presentation, the veteran IT guy she recruited said, "Holy cow, I think she can actually get this done." This person ended up becoming the project's biggest champion and, motivated by Friedman's dedication, gave it his full effort.
The project took off and the product is thriving today, according to Friedman. "The success got me noticed in the organization, and set me on a path to run Nasdaq's data products division," she said.