Dr. Robert Harrington, Chair, Department of Medicine Stanford University: Host Dr. VJ Periyakoil

Bob Harrington Opens Season Two of Stanford Healthcare Leadership Podcast

The first episode of the second season of the Stanford Healthcare Leadership Podcast features Dr. Bob Harrington, Chair, of the Department of Medicine. 

Dr. Harrington traces his early life, his journey through medical school, and his work at Duke University, Stanford University, and the American Heart Association.  His personal anecdotes paint a vivid (and sometimes poignant) picture of his life and his secret sauce to carving out a fulfilling career in medicine. 

Transcript

Hello everyone. This is Dr. VJ Periyakoil's Healthcare Leadership podcast. Through stories from international healthcare leaders, this podcast will reveal the secrets to becoming a transformational healthcare leader.

Dr. VJ Periyakoil:

Our guest today is Dr. Bob Harrington. Dr. Harrington is Professor of Medicine, and Professor of Health Policy, and the Chair of the Department of Medicine at Stanford University's School of Medicine.

Thank you so much, Bob, for joining us today. Can you get us started by telling us a little bit about your early career and some formative experiences that you've had?

Dr. Robert Harrington:

Wow, that's a big and broad question. So I grew up in Boston. I went to undergraduate outside of Boston at a small Catholic college, College of the Holy Cross. I went to medical school at Dartmouth and Tufts, got my degree at Tufts, did my residency in internal medicine, served as a chief resident University of Massachusetts, and then I migrated south to North Carolina and Duke University where I did my clinical training in cardiology, interventional cardiology and my research training at something then that was called the Duke Databank for cardiovascular disease. After finishing my clinical research training, I joined the Duke faculty and spent the next 20 plus years at Duke doing interventional cardiology, acute care, cardiology, general cardiology, consultative cardiology and clinical research as a member first of the Databank and then the Duke Clinical Research Institute, which grew out of the Databank. And then I came to Stanford almost 10 years ago.

Dr. VJ Periyakoil:

I remember that you are the first person in your family to go to college. One of the challenges when you have no role models within the family is you may not be quite aware of the process. How does one get to college? How does one write a statement of purpose? Who do you talk to? Can you tell us a little bit about those challenges in your early stages, please?

Dr. Robert Harrington:

Well, the good news is I didn't know they were challenges at the time, that I grew up in the city in Boston, I grew up in Somerville, Massachusetts and grew up with a single mom and a sister. My mother had a high school education. We lived next door to my grandparents who had less than high school educations. But I was raised in a very loving, supporting family that really thought the way for us, my sister and I, to improve our lot in life was to be educated. And a lot of my background, Irish Italian Catholic and went to Catholic schools. And so you'll appreciate, VJ. I grew up about a mile from the Harvard campus. My grandmother, who lived next door, was a maid at Harvard College, cleaned the dormitories. And I never even thought of applying to Harvard because kids like me didn't go to Harvard in those days.

I applied to a group of Catholic schools around the country and I was fortunate enough to be able to go to Holy Cross, which was founded in the mid 1800s as a place for immigrant Irish, immigrant Italian, immigrants from various parts of Europe who are Catholic to send their children as first generation college students. And I followed 130, 140 years later in that tradition of being a first generation. So as I look back, wow, there were a lot of challenges, but at the time, I don't think I realized were those challenges. And it's one of the reasons I volunteer here at Stanford as part of the first gen program because I do recognize now that there's a special set of challenges for people who don't understand the college process, the graduate school process, the professional school process. And so I'm trying to give back with my mentorship in that program.

Dr. VJ Periyakoil:

You mentioned that there was some very formative experience during college that might have been pivotal. To the extent that you can share, can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Dr. Robert Harrington:

I was 20 years old. I was young for a college senior. And my mother, who was 42 at the time, died of sudden cardiac death and left me and my sister. And that was a really obviously tragic event and a very formative event because at age 20, I became the legal guardian of my 16 year old sister. And it was that event that then triggered a series of other events, including meeting some people who remain very important in my life today, who really helped me through that period. And also helped me realize that I could still do. That I didn't have to put all my things, my dreams, my aspirations on hold, but instead work through this terrible tragedy to maybe get to the next phase. I didn't go into cardiology because I consciously said, "Oh, my mother died of cardiac disease." But I'm sure that somewhere in my brain that influenced me for my career choice. I'm sure it's all tied together somehow. And maybe one of the messages is that you don't really necessarily have to understand it at the time, but follow what you think is important to you. And that certainly seemed to be important to me.

Dr. VJ Periyakoil:

I can't even begin to imagine how traumatic that would've been to be a 20 year old boy. Senior year of college is supposed to be all about partying, right? That's what you're supposed to be thinking about and planning for. And instead of that, if you have a teenager, which is, I know personally, it's not easy to raise teenagers. It's really hard. And as I listen to you, somehow you've been able to take that incredibly traumatic experience and not be defeated by the trauma, but actually utilize it to further your personal and professional advancement. How does one do that?

Dr. Robert Harrington:

With the help of a lot of other people. And the list is a lengthy one. Maybe one of the most important was I had a cousin, my mother's niece, who lived down the street who was about six years older than us at the time. And she'd just gotten married. She and my mother had been very close, very close, and she made the decision for her and her new husband. So think about this, in her 20s, she and her new husband moved into our house so that my sister didn't have to move out, and so that I didn't have to come home from college. Because I thought about, "Well, I'll take a leave of absence, I'll do something till my sister gets out, I'll go to work, I'll get my sister out of high school and then I'll finish my education."

And my cousin said, "No, no, no. I'll do this." And so the personal sacrifice involved with that is extraordinary. And then there were other people in my family who contributed to that that were just lifesaving, if you will. And then being at Holy Cross, which is a small Jesuit Catholic college, I had all the advantages of being at a small Jesuit Catholic college where people cared deeply about the students, where they cared deeply about us as people, as individuals. And really I would say that the college came to my rescue as well. And that was all really important in the way that I developed.

Dr. VJ Periyakoil:

Let's focus on medical school next. Most people would say, you heard the chair of medicine at Stanford, that must have been one easy ride all the way from Holy Cross to Palo Alto, right?

Dr. Robert Harrington:

I applied to medical school right after my mother's death. And my guess is having read a lot of other people's applications, looking back, my application probably wasn't very compelling because I was not very focused. And for all your listeners, I got into exactly one medical school. That's it. I got accepted to one and that was Dartmouth. And Dartmouth at the time was still making the transition from a two year medical school where then everybody transferred to do their clinical training to a four year medical school. And I was in one of the early four year classes. And for a variety of reasons after my first two years I wanted to be back in Boston where I was from, and so was fortunate enough to transfer to Tufts and be able to do my third and fourth years at Tufts. But for everybody out there saying, "Oh, I only got into one medical school." Hey, that's all I got into. That's all you have to get into. And then you have to take the opportunity, maybe that's the other lesson, VJ, is you have to take the opportunity that you're given and make something of it. And I'd like to think that Dartmouth and Tufts both, who took a chance on me, can look and say, "Hey, we made a good choice."

Dr. VJ Periyakoil:

In reflecting on what you've said already, it's very clear even if someone does not know you, that there is a pattern of being very optimistic and seeing the positive things in even very traumatic situations. That's pretty clear. For example, you had the situation where mom passed away suddenly, but all I'm hearing you say is there's no bitterness. You're not saying I could have gone to Harvard. I don't hear any sense of entitlement at all. But you're saying that there are people who stepped up for you and who were supporting. So clearly that is a very defining quality that you have. But it takes a lot of effort. You went to a small college, but again, you're saying the small college is an advantage. So you have this knack of seeing the advantage even in what one might otherwise say is a challenging situation. And that takes a mindset. Is that something that comes naturally or have you worked at it to keep that going?

Dr. Robert Harrington:

It's a great question. I've not given it a lot of thought. My natural instinct is to think of the good things and to think of my good friend and mentor colleague, Dr. Rob Califf, who some of your listeners who know, he's currently the commissioner of the FDA. I was a fellow in his research group, long time colleague. He really taught me this notion of don't think about challenges, think about opportunity. And if you ask my division chiefs like Upi Singh, she always half rolls her eyes and says, "I know, Bob, it's an opportunity." And so that's how my brain works. And I don't know, VJ, if that's something I had or if that's something that came out of the response to traumatic situations, I don't know, but now I'm very conscious about that. I really think of things as, "Oh, that's an opportunity for us to think differently about this."

Dr. VJ Periyakoil:

We focus a lot on the importance of mentors for doctors and professionals. Perhaps what is even more important is the role played by early mentors who lead us to careers in medicine. These formative mentors are pivotal in inspiring young people to go into the medicine and perhaps the folks who do the most for strengthening the deep pipeline. They may be near-peers and unfortunately they don't usually get the credit they deserve when they play this vital role. Did you have any near-peer mentors?

Dr. Robert Harrington:

When I was struggling as a senior in college, the wise, I call him, pre-med advisor at Holy Cross, his name was Mike McGrath, who was a chemistry professor. He made a phone call to a Holy Cross grad who's about five years older than me by the name of Michael Collins, who was an intern at the time working in Boston at Tufts. And he said, "I've got a Holy Cross student who needs a big brother." And your listeners will say, "Well, you could never do this today." He sent me down to the emergency room on a Saturday night, a college kid, to accompany this intern for the evening. And I spent the night in the emergency room with Dr. Collins and it was one of the most important nights of my life because he really helped change my life and who's become a lifelong mentor. In fact, if you come in my office always, I look out at it. I have a picture of me and him. When he became the chancellor at UMass Boston, I was asked by him to speak at his chancellor inauguration and I talked about mentorship and that's been him. Goodness gracious, this was the spring of 1982, so 40 years ago I met this guy. And he didn't know me, he was just asked to help out. You'll meet people like that. His big thing that he always says, the phrase pay it forward. What he wants is he did this for you, you do this for somebody else. And he's very conscious about that when he talks about that. He's now the chancellor at UMass Medical Center in Worcester, which coincidentally is where I did my residency long before he got there. So I mentioned I went to a Jesuit college and the Jesuit motto is "Men and women for others." And I think people like Michael Collins, that's how they live their lives, and I'm a beneficiary.

Dr. VJ Periyakoil:

You make it sound like you were lucky to have all these wonderful people in your life, and I'm pretty sure that's true. But there's also some innate traits that you've exhibited, something that makes people want to help you. And there are, of course, around us, a lot of strangers, and I've certainly benefited from the kindness of strangers, from the kindness of mentors. But thinking about it as a junior faculty who feels like, "I don't know anyone, I'm in this little place," how do you find those connections? How do you get people to want to invest in you? Because clearly, you have that. What is that secret?

Dr. Robert Harrington:

Well, this one I do think a lot about because of my own commitment to mentorship, I really do think that mentorship is bidirectional and that the best mentoring relationships go both ways. I'll put myself as both a mentor and I'm an ongoing mentee, that the mentor is looking for someone who doesn't necessarily do everything they say. That wouldn't be a mentoring relationship, that would be a boss relationship and that's not what this is. Mentoring relationship is to learn from someone, to help someone be guided in a way that otherwise you might not do to help you work through challenging situations and problems. I like to think about the origin of the word mentor, which as you know, comes from the Greek classic, the Odyssey. And when Ulysses left for his travels around the globe, he left his son with Mentor and that's what the word implies.

You would leave the care of your son to this person, to teach them, to guide them, to provide them opportunities. And I think that's what it does. And what a mentor wants back is to share your thoughts, your hope, your dreams, so that they can understand and help perhaps guide you. So I don't think there's any secret to finding a mentor. I think it involves talking to a lot of people, seeing who you connect with. I think we all benefit from having mentor teams. And I think of it, for the people I've mentored, I've told the stories before that I have mentees who I continue to collaborate with today. I write papers, et cetera. I have mentees that I never wrote a paper with, but who I'm very, very close with. But what I provided them was maybe a sense of what's possible, what the pathway is. And so I think it can come in different ways. I think we all need content mentorship, whether that's clinical research. If we're researchers, we probably need methodologic mentorship. And we all need that overarching big picture, "Where's my life going?" Mentorship. And mentorship is not just about telling you how great you are, it's about saying, "Hey, you need to work on this and you'll be better if you do."

Dr. VJ Periyakoil:

So I heard three things there. You talked about bidirectional, so that way it's not a one way street. Both people benefit, both people learn. And then I heard vulnerability where you have to allow yourself to be vulnerable in order for true growth to happen. And then I heard authenticity. So those seem to be your secrets in being able to amass this group of wonderful people who've been so instrumental in helping you along. So after college, after Dartmouth, after med school, then what happened next? Because in the meantime, life was also happening, right? It's not like we are here to just lead our professional lives.

Dr. Robert Harrington:

Sure. I went to UMass Medical Center to do my residency and spent four years there and as a resident, as a chief resident, there really, I would say, had the bug bite me for academic medicine, that I really became intrigued by the problem solving of internal medicine, the problem solving of academic medicine. And I say that I really got into, not in a highly productive way, but was introduced to research by a coagulation hematologist. And I really fell in love with thrombosis and everything about blood clotting. Yeah, I was one of those people that actually liked the coagulation cascade. I can see you're laughing, but I really became intrigued by it.

Dr. VJ Periyakoil:

I've never heard anyone say I fell in love with thrombosis.

Dr. Robert Harrington:

I did. And I had a great mentor, Jack Ansel, who was a fabulously creative and famous coagulation hematologist. And I always give Jack, even to this day when I've seen him, I say, "Jack, you convinced me to go into cardiology." And he laughs and he said, "Well, that's because we didn't want you to become a hematologist. You never would've been able to make a living." But I worked in his lab, I spent my early days at UMass, worked during my research months as a resident, clotting off the jugular veins of New Zealand white rabbits and trying to understand how to prevent that. And when I talked to Jack about what I was going to do, I said, "Well, I think I'll be a coagulation hematologist." And he said, "Oh no, Bob, that's a terrible idea." He said, "Because you do know that hematologists mostly take care of cancer?"

And he said, "It's hard to make a living as a thrombosis hematologist." He said, "But you know where all the action in thrombosis is going to be? It's going to be on the arterial side of the circulation and cardiology." Because this was in the mid to late 80s and the knowledge base was, it was only in what, 1979, 1980, where it was shown definitively that myocardial infarction was caused by thrombosis. And it was only 1986, the first of the big fibrinolytic trials. And it was only around that same time, '86, '87, that we learned, that in what was then called unstable angina aspirin and heparin were beneficial. So this was an incredible time. I loved my exposure to cardiology there at UMass. And so I decided I'm going to go do thrombosis oriented cardiology. And that's why I went to Duke because Duke was a place at the time that was a hotbed of acute cardiovascular research, acute MI research, fibrinolysis. PTCA, PCI was a brand new procedure having only been done for the first time in the late 70s outside the US, the early 80s in the US. It was an enormously exciting time. And my mentors at UMass knew people at Duke and wrote me strong letters and I matched at Duke. And so here I was, a kid that had never really left Massachusetts, moved to North Carolina to do thrombosis related cardiovascular research.

Dr. VJ Periyakoil:

We've established that you love thrombosis, but what about actual life? Because it's really hard, you did not have night float at that time. You did not have call hour restrictions. So you were practically probably living in the hospital. And especially as a cardiologist and a researcher, was that all very stressful for life work balance?

Dr. Robert Harrington:

I had gotten married right out of medical school and had a child when I moved to Duke with my wife at the time. And then shortly thereafter, got separated and divorced. And I think in large part because of the stress of the hours, the stress of the work. I was literally in the hospital, I did cath for a year and a half straight, six months of diagnostic cath, a year of interventional cath. And I like to remind the fellows now that this was in the era before stents. So cases were quite long, quite complicated. So yeah, it took a toll on my personal life. Now that there's two pieces of good news of that, is the woman I was married to at the time was committed to raising our daughter together. And so she decided to stay in North Carolina, for which I was forever grateful.

And the second is that I met a wonderful woman who was a single mom with three daughters, and years later I got married to her. And those three daughters plus my daughter became four daughters, and so now I'm a proud dad of four daughters. And I'm very grateful that my wife now, Rhonda, and her three daughters allowed me to be such an integral part of their life. So everything worked out well, despite some challenges. And as you say, I think rightly, VJ, you didn't even know this story I bet, but you sensed something was coming and it turned out for the best. And I'm grateful for that.

Dr. VJ Periyakoil:

Again, I'm hearing the same theme. You're a like lemonade expert, as far as I'm concerned, Bob. Life keeps giving lemons and you keep making lemonade and selling them. And I think that is probably one of the key secrets that we are learning. Just listening to you because you said, "Work hours were awful, it was very hard on the family, but the good news is..." And it's very hard to imagine all that in the same sentence. And I think making that link, that transition is probably the most important lesson that I'm learning for sure today. I know that you spent quite number of years in Duke and built an extensive research empire there. Any stories, particularly riveting incidents?

Dr. Robert Harrington:

Yeah. So I was there for 22 years and I was a fellow in something called the Duke Databank for Cardiovascular Diseases. And this was in the early days of fibrinolysis, the early days of the new antiplatelet agents like the IIb/IIIa Inhibitors, the ADP inhibitors, the early days of the direct thrombin inhibitors, factor 10 inhibitors. I mean, for somebody like me who loves blood clotting and platelet issues, it was just a magnificent time. And so I got to do everything from basic translational stuff. I would actually do procedures as a fellow and a junior faculty member, draw blood, go up to the hematology lab, run all the platelet aggregation assays at night because there was no technicians at night to run them, and platelets have to be dealt with immediately. And over those years, learned so much. And then got more and more involved and intrigued by the methods of research by how you put together these large clinical trials, how you put together large outcomes research projects, how you organize research groups to be able to answer big questions.

I was fortunate to work with Rob Califf, who I've mentioned and who was the director of the Databank. And then the Databank morphed into the Duke Clinical Research Institute. And was fortunate with Rob and a number of other, at the time, we were all junior cardiology faculty, help Rob build this organization from... When I was a fellow in the Databank in the early 90s, there were maybe 30, 40, 50 people working in the Databank. When I left Duke in 2012, there were 1,200 people working to get the Duke Clinical Research Institute. And working with Califf was an amazing opportunity. He gave all of us, as young people, incredible runway to learn how to lead projects. But good message for all of your listeners as well is there's a lot of rolling up your sleeves and doing work to, like I said, middle of the night, running platelet aggregation studies and learning how research is done. And a lot of learning how research is done in addition to what I'll call the didactic or formal part of it, a lot of it is the experiential, is to find senior people who are doing interesting, good work and be part of their team.

And it's not always do you have to be the person who's standing up on the stage. You can be the person who helped the person on stage get ready to do that presentation, and that can be really important. And I did that stuff for years and I ended up with Dr. Califf, I led the cardiovascular group at the DCRI for a long time. And then when Dr. Califf moved on to take on broader leadership roles at Duke, I became the director of the DCRI. And then had a period of time where a lot of my research energy was really around continuing to build out this very large research group that did trials, that did health services research, that did outcomes research, that did health economics, that was growing policy investigators. And I had the best job in the world if you like to do clinical research. And I loved doing clinical research and I loved being the leader of the Duke Clinical Research Institute. And then Stanford called.

Dr. VJ Periyakoil:

So glad to know that Stanford called. I'm so glad you're here. Was it hard moving across the country? Pretty significantly, California is its own little world. Was that a bit of a struggle coming to a new place?

Dr. Robert Harrington:

Yeah. I never thought I would leave Duke. I tell people that my wife is a Duke graduate. Three of my four daughters have Duke degrees. Two of the daughters were born in Duke Hospital. I mean, we are a Duke family. And I never thought I would leave Duke, but the opportunity at Stanford was really interesting in that my life at Duke was, I would say, very narrowly focused. I was a clinical researcher, I was busy clinician, a clinical researcher. My life was really narrow but very deep. There wasn't much that went on in the world of clinical research that didn't cross my field of vision. But I was young enough to think, "I'm interested in maybe a broader impact." And the chair of medicine job at Stanford, as you'll remember back, VJ, Stanford at that time, with Dean Pizzo, was really rethinking itself as to did it want to be a small research oriented university, or did it want to be an academic health system?

And I came in part because of this notion that they wanted the chairs to help build an academic health system. And I always say that Pizzo took a real chance on me. I had never been a cardiology chief, I had never been a clinical section head of anything. I ran a research institute, and all of a sudden I'm responsible for big clinical operation, all the basic science research. I hadn't done any basic science research other than my own thrombosis oriented stuff. But Phil saw something in me, Dean Pizzo, that maybe I could do this. And so that by itself was scary and moving from a job that you had learned all the steps along the way to a job that, "Wow, there's a bunch of this stuff. I have no idea how to do it."

And then there was the moving across the country piece. By that point of our four daughters, two were out of college and two were in college. So it was a good time to move, but it was tough. My wife and I came across, we didn't know anybody. Neither of us had ever lived on the West Coast. Yeah, it was tough. And it's interesting, my wife and I often talk about this, that if you had given me a crystal ball at the time and shown me a year out, I never would've moved because it was such a challenging first year. If you had given me a crystal ball and showed me three years out, I absolutely would've moved. And part of the lessons for me is you don't know. And I thought it was going to help broaden my knowledge base, broaden my view of medicine, broaden my view of healthcare.

I also was interested in rethinking my own research. And certainly coming to a place like Stanford where data is king, math, statistics, engineering, computer science, I knew that that's where clinical research is going. I can really rethink what I want to do there. So in addition to my leadership administrative roles, boy, there's this whole other area of science which is going to be really, really impactful. But that was going to be hard to rethink oneself. But that's why I did it and that's the early challenges. And now having been here 10 years, it seems like it was a good choice.

Dr. VJ Periyakoil:

One of the challenges in a career is one has to pivot. You outgrow, you're at the summit of a mountain and then it's time to go to the base of the next mountain. And the skills that got you here don't necessarily transfer over that well to the next mountain. How does one pivot successfully? Because what I'm hearing is that pivoting is hard, but you hung in there, it takes time and one needs to do it to expand and broaden and go to higher, broader impact. And that's what I'm hearing. How does one have the mental fortitude?

Dr. Robert Harrington:

Yeah, I mean, I think that my observation has been that really successful academics, they're broadly defined. There are two paths one can take. One path is a really deeper dive into whatever it is that you are doing. So I could have stayed in the clinical research route and just gone deeper and deeper and deeper and probably have enjoyed my career and done good things. But the other opportunity is go broader and acquire new skills. And that allows you to do some of the pivoting that you talked about. And so Stanford for me offered up, I think, two opportunities. One of which is that nobody here had any preconceived notion of who I was. Whereas at Duke, I was the clinical research guy. And so whenever I was thought about, that was the frame of reference that people had. And I'm sure you know it's hard to pivot in that world when people think of you a certain way.

But I come to Stanford, nobody knows who I am, they just know I'm a clinical research guy from Duke. And if you express an interest in technology, computer science, informatics, all things that I was interested in, I'm like, "Oh yeah, chair of medicine's interested in this stuff, come talk to us." And then in my current role, I also had the ability to recruit people. And so I've recruited a lot of what I'll call quantitative scientists, data scientists, people who have that interest, clinical researchers. Yes, we've recruited a lot of basic science to the department as well, but I've also been able to do the other things that maybe Stanford didn't have as many of and bring them into the fold, health services researchers and outcome researchers. And so I think 10 years later we're certainly a much bigger department. When I got here, there were 240 faculty in the Department of Medicine, which as you know is a relatively small department. Now, we have over 650 faculty.

And our budget, which was $200 or so million when I got here, is now going to be over $500 million. So it's a very different place and it's been fun to do that. I've learned a ton. And I gave you a long answer to your question, which is, how does one pivot? Remain curious. And I'm always interested in new things, always. And so maybe I have the mindset of someone who likes to pivot. My executive coach who I've had for a long time, she started with me at Duke and she's followed me here, not literally, but who still works with me while I'm here on the West Coast. She says, "You just change and change doesn't scare you." She said, "That's one of your innate qualities, that change doesn't scare you." And she said, "In fact, you like change." And so I think that my pivoting has been a function of, maybe that's how my brain works.

Dr. VJ Periyakoil:

To hear you talk about putting the department together, it sounds like someone is actually putting a sports team together where each player has a different function and it doesn't make sense to hire five quarterbacks for a football team. Doesn't make sense at all, right? And so that mentality of, "I know this, but we need this, this and this," and then bring good people and support them.

Dr. Robert Harrington:

I would say that I believe in something you've said, which is that you had made the analogy to putting together a sports team. And I do think that good leaders surround themselves with people who... You can think of it in a lot of ways. They make up your own deficiencies or they offer competencies and skills and opportunities that you don't do. And another thing that I learned from Dr. Califf is to put together really diverse teams of people from all different sorts of backgrounds. It doesn't matter if that's not your expertise. In fact, it's better if it's not because let those people just do their thing.

Dr. VJ Periyakoil:

Any other stories about your leadership style where you had to be tough and do something that did not quite seem the right thing at that time, but actually turned out? Because one of the things again I'm getting is that you have periscope vision. You're able to see what's coming around the corner because 10 years ago, you're talking about data science, and that probably comes with challenges when you are seeing things that others are not able to.

Dr. Robert Harrington:

My leadership style is provide people the resources, the pathway, and get out of their way. And what I always tell people is, "Look, as leaders, as long as we're staying connected on the big picture things, I got you back. I will take no credit for what you do, but I'll take all the blame as long as we're connected." Because what I mean by that is, "Get out there and do your thing. We brought you here because you're really good at something. Well, do it and don't worry about me getting you away because I won't get in your way. I got other things that I want to do." So I have some core beliefs in leadership, which is I really believe in transparency. In fact, sometimes people say, "Bob, you're so transparent, we don't need all of this financial data or we don't..." But I really believe in giving people transparency.

I believe in consensus building. If it's going to take two hours to settle something, I'd rather use one and a half of those hours to talk about the data, to disagree, to bat it around back and forth, to see all sides of the problem, and then arrive at the decision. As opposed to saying right up front, we're going to do this and then spend the two hours arguing about why we're going to do it. I think those are very different styles and I like the back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. "Okay, let's come to a decision." So I like consensus building, I like bringing diverse teams together with different skill sets. You asked the question about making tough decisions. One of my former faculty members at Duke once said about me, he was asked, "Is Bob Harrington a nice guy?" And the he, by report, said, "He's a really nice guy until he is not."

And I think what he meant by that was that, yeah, he seems really nice, et cetera, and he is, but don't cross him either because he can be tough when he needs to be tough and he can make tough decisions when he needs to make tough decisions. But that's not my natural style. My natural style is to try to hear all sides of things, build consensus, be transparent, be fair, be equitable, be truthful, all things that I very much value. But at the end of the day, if someone has to make the tough decision, I'm willing to do that.

Dr. VJ Periyakoil:

I have this image of Patrick Swayze in my mind saying, "Be nice until it's time not to be nice." His famous lines. If you had to go back in time and talk to your 20 year old self, what would you tell yourself?

Dr. Robert Harrington:

Oh my goodness, what would I tell myself? I would say, and I think I've largely done this, have an open mind. Be curious. Don't worry that it's not going in a linear fashion, it doesn't need to. Stay true to yourself. Stay true to the things that you believe and that you want to do. Be honest. Care about the people that are helping you. In fact, maybe that's the thing more than anything is care about the people that are around you. Work together. And I think I've done a lot of those things, but I wish I could have told myself that that it was going to be okay at age... I won't say how old I am, but 40 years ago, I would've said this. This is my 40th anniversary from graduating from Holy Cross, so maybe it's a good time to ask that question.

Dr. VJ Periyakoil:

You wouldn't tell yourself to party some?

Dr. Robert Harrington:

Oh no, I've had a good time. One of the things you can definitely say about me is that I've had fun. I've only half jokingly say that, because I'm a nerdy numbers guy, data guy, so I say that I picked the projects that I'm going to do based on a formula, it's I cubed over F. All my projects need to be interesting, use some innovative methods, hopefully are impactful, but most of all, fun. I want to work with people that I enjoy. I want to try to solve problems that are going to maybe make the world a little bit better, but I really want to do it with people who I enjoy. So that's why I pick my projects. And somebody told me, they said, "Well Bob, that mathematically doesn't add up." I said, "That's not the point. The point is try to do things. Pick things for a reason. Don't just pick them because, but pick things for a reason." And sometimes my office will ask, "Why are you doing that?" I'll say, "Well because it's interesting." And sometimes that's enough for me. If you bring me a problem, I go, "God, that's interesting." Then I want to spend time with it.

Dr. VJ Periyakoil:

Any last words of wisdom?

Dr. Robert Harrington:

No. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me. I hope I didn't ramble too much and I appreciate the opportunity.

Dr. VJ Periyakoil:

I think I'm the one who's grateful. So really appreciate the honesty and the authentic conversation and thanks for taking the time, Bob. It's such a pleasure. Thank you.

Dr. Robert Harrington:

You're a superb interviewer, so thank you for using your skills to draw it out of me. These are things I don't always talk about, so thank you.

Dr. VJ Periyakoil:

Thank you, Bob.

Thank you for joining us today. For more leadership podcasts, visit us at respect.stanford.edu.