Balancing your Personal Ambition with Concern for Others

On November 13, 2001, as part of the Leaders Forum Series, sponsored by the Yale School of Management, Booz Allen Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Ralph W. Shrader addressed students, faculty, and staff of the graduate business school. At the request of the Dean Jeffrey E. Garten, Dr. Shrader spoke about business in the post-9/11 environment. His talk, "Finding a New Balance in a New World: Combining Ambition and Altruism," examined the idea that talented individuals need to balance their personal ambition and success agenda with concern for others in their company and community.

"There are things we can do, as individuals and organizations, to rethink traditional measures of success, ambition, and 'business-as-usual' and come out in a better place as a result," Shrader said. "We need, in short, to find a new balance for a new world." Shrader spoke of Booz Allen's loss on September 11, when three colleagues working with a US Army client perished in the Pentagon. As a result of the attacks this fall, Shrader said there is a pressing need from government and commercial organizations to understand how they can best respond to the new world — post-9/11.

"Thinking about our world differently, thinking about ambition and altruism differently, is key for us as individuals in the post 9/11 world," said Shrader. "I don't have to tell you that you're going to business school at a very difficult time. You're making career and life decisions against the backdrop of global terrorism and a global recession."

Shrader told the standing-room only crowd of students that he believes there is a new success model that applies today, based on balancing ambition and altruism. "I see both ambition and altruism as good things, they can and should be mutually reinforcing, not opposing, forces," Shrader said. "That balance is possible when ambition is our inner drive to excel and when altruism is a better way of living that considers the greater good." Shrader encouraged the students to think about balancing ambition and altruism in their career choices, adding that if they can navigate the difficult economic currents and find the right opportunities, they will fulfill ambitions, realize potential and give back to the community.

In closing his speech to the Yale audience, Dr. Shrader asked attendees how they want to be remembered, and recalled a recent story from an ensign serving aboard the USS Winston Churchill shortly after the terrorist attacks of September. A German Navy destroyer requested permission to pass close by the American boat's side, and when it did, the ensign saw that the boat flew the American flag at half-mast, and that its crew was standing topside at attention in their dress uniforms. They had made a sign, which was displayed on the boat's side that read "We Stand By You."

"The world has changed a lot since September 11," Shrader said, "and we're all trying to find a new balance point in this new world. I for one and very hopeful. I hope you are too."