Mad Men: Don Draper's 10 Secrets of Career Success

Don Draper, the dashing lead character in the television series Mad Men, is a master in the art of re-invention. His story is taken to the extreme, as he architected his ascent from humble beginnings to the top of Madison Avenue in the 1960s.

Flash forward to today -- a difficult economic environment with many vying for fewer upwardly mobile career slots. 

What can be learned from Don's skills and strategies?

Here's an analysis -- from my perch as talent advisor and former ad agency VP:

• #1  Lack of Privilege. Don entered the world in the ultimate state of indignity. His mother was a prostitute who died giving birth to him. He was dumped on the wife of his cheating, abusive father -- an unwelcome addition to the family and on-going reminder of the infidelity.  It didn't discourage him, it propelled him.
• #2  Visionary. Don was a have-not in a world of haves. Every life experience magnified the disadvantage of his childhood status and the allure of a better place.  He would escape to the dark of the cinema and fantasize living the life he observed on the bright silver screen. He had clarity, ambition and determination.
• #3 Opportunistic. When his commanding officer was killed in the bunker, Don seized a lifeline by trading G.I. tags and undertaking a new identity. Wounded and in a state of delirium, he still had the grit and wherewithal to break out of the box of his reality and into the potential of his future. He lives his mantra, "Move forward."
• #4 HANDSOME! ! ! ! Women swoon over Don's good looks. And guys consider him a man's man. What a delightful and beneficial distraction as he's striving to jump onto a new path to prosperity. Recipients of fibs and fakery along the way probably didn't even notice, as they were no doubt dazzled by his considerable dazzle. Clearly it was an asset he was able to package and deploy.
• #5 Core Talent.  Don is a gifted story-teller, as wife Betty notes when confronting him about his double life. His talent was born out of ignominy, desire for escape and the complexity of living a lie. He knows first-hand the desperation of want -- an insight that would evolve as a secret competitive weapon.  He has the power to persuade.
• #6 Savvy Targeting. Don is not adept with money or the mechanics of business. He knows how to sell and compel. Thus he chose a brilliant career track: the go-go world of advertising. It was the glamorous, highly-compensated Master of the Universe profession of its time and a growth field, to boot.
• #7 Act and Dress the Part. To elevate into a new echelon, industry or company, you must embody the culture and nuances.  You have to fit in.  Don may have the private behavior of an alley cat, but in public he displays the patina of the elite.  He has impressive board room presence.   He is indignant at impolite behavior. ''Take off your hat," he orders uncouth gents in the elevator. 
• #8 Massive Capacity to Hold Liquor. Who isn't amazed at the proliferation of alcohol and womanizing depicted on the show? No wonder they called it the Swinging Sixties!  That said, Don is generally cool, credible and in control when on duty for Sterling Cooper business. No blithering or dialing drunk. An excellent lesson, always.  
• #9 Work Ethic. Despite the drinking and extracurricular activities, Don puts out the work -- in spades. He is constantly jotting, thinking, researching. He gets out of bed in the middle of the night when his client Conrad Hilton beckons. The original 24/7 man, he also demands high performance of others.  When turning down copywriter Peggy Olsen for a raise, he tells her, "You're good. Get better!"
• #10 Supportive Sponsor. You can't get from here to there all by yourself. Neither did Don. You need a network of support -- at the top.  Ad agency owners Bert Cooper and Roger Sterling were good star-pickers. They took Don under their wings, nurtured, challenged and rewarded him. But they called in their chits when they needed him to sign an employment contract in order to win and retain key clients.
• Bonus Boost:  The Better Half. Don was strategic and savvy in wooing a wife who would fit his future standing. Betty had breeding and Grace Kelly beauty.  She came from the Philadelphia Main Line, a Bryn Mawr alumna.  She knew how to ''keep help'' and run a proper, tastefully-appointed home. She bore him a daughter -- and two sons to carry on his made-up name.  With Betty, he had the complete package.

But it wasn't enough for Don. Or was it too much? Maybe more than he deserved?

NextGen CEOs -- A New Breed of Leadership

Here is an update of a guest column written at the end of the first downturn of the 2000s.  As we seek to recover from the most recent morass, the content is still relevant.  It's based on my experience recruiting top early career stage talent.  Enjoy!  

As the economy recovers, companies will be hiring for the CEOs of tomorrow. It will be a talent grab for future leadership – with an eye on the vacancies that will ultimately be created by the coming retirement of aging baby boomers.

With a dearth of hiring during two recent economic downturns, companies are finding serious gaps in the talent pipeline for expansion roles and succession planning.

Thus, there will be a focus on what I call “precision” hiring for early-to-mid career stage, high-potentials who have achieved very specific levels of industry and functional experience.

What are the characteristics of those candidates most likely to rise to the top?

• Track Record of Personal Excellence. With fewer years of work experience to evaluate, clients place a high value on personal characteristics, academics and even youth activities. What impresses? Good study habits. 4.0 GPAs. Teenage entrepreneurship. College leadership roles.
• Athletic Achievements. Coincidentally, the top stratosphere of the “MBA Draft” is heavily populated by sports standouts. Many of those boardroom bound are All-Americans, national high school titlists, college team captains or triathlon competitors.
• Navigational Skills. Many NextGens graduated in the depths of the downturn, but did not let that deter their success. One MBA candidate foresaw the absence of on-campus recruiting and jump-started his job search by foregoing an internship in favor of summer school, thereby accelerating his graduation date. He strategized and won a lucrative slot well before his classmates hit the streets.
• Passion. The MBA stars have a strong sense of their core competencies and how that contributes to enterprise success: Accounting, as the language of business; Valuations, as the core of decisionmaking. Dealmaking. Project management. Relationship-building. Love of a specific industry.
• High Work Ethic. Self-made achievers always win the attention of clients. We see many high-output candidates who multi-tasked full-time jobs with a full-time class schedule and campus activities. And many from difficult childhood backgrounds who sought mentorship and methods to bootstrap themselves into promising college and career programs.
• Generosity, not Greed. This is a generation that shares, rather than hoards, information. They will tell their friends about a desirable career opportunity, even when they themselves seek a slot in the candidate pool. We see an admirable focus on success of the team, rather than individual wins at any cost.
• Willing to Sacrifice. NextGens are willing to backtrack and make trade-offs. To accommodate a spouse in medical school. To be close to family in times of illness. To gain experience where they perceive a weakness in their game. They are flexible and seek such options in career planning.
• The “Internationalists.” With the increase in off-shoring and growth through M&A, many companies now have a dominant global profile – but an employee base with domestic-only expertise. Fortunately, there is an up-and-coming population with global experience and a strong desire for international assignments. It’s a diverse group that includes those who grew up in the diplomatic core, former high school foreign exchange students, children of immigrants and expatriates, those who study abroad and others.

Some questions to consider: What is your MBA port of entry? How are you attracting top engineers and designers?  What is the career growth path? How do you integrate top, fresh talent without causing a mutiny among the current team? Do you have the level of role that will attract a NextGen CEO? Or will a lower velocity player be a better fit?

Going/Growing Global

Call it the law of unintended consequences.  You're a rapid-growth local food company.  You build out your market in concentric circles.  Local...regional...national.  But one day...boom.  You're selling into the military.  Where are their end-users?  Iraq.  Afghanistan.  You've got to drop-ship into Dubai.  Congratulations!  You're now a global company. 

How do you execute on the opportunity?  Hire someone in Dubai to oversee?  Pay a premium to an international broker?  Is there a stateside supply-chain/logistics who does it all from here?  You quickly have to know what questions to ask.  Having an Advisory Board with broad reach and expertise makes a material difference to help you navigate the decision tree -- profitably. 

We're living in an interdependent, connected 24/7 world.  And despite the worldwide economic downturn, globalism is not dead, according to Richard Fisher, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.  This was discussed at the daylong inaurural conference of the new O'Neil Center for Global Markets and Freedom at SMU Cox, where I spoke on the panel, Accessing Global Talent.

The statistics are not cheery.  We're experiencing historical drops in global trade.  Sales and shipments of both durable and intermediate goods are down.  A particularly visual datapoint relates to overcapacity and slack in cargo.  Currently, there are 178,000 freight cars sitting unused.  Picture an empty train 2,900 miles long, stretching almost end-to-end across the U.S.

Fisher's soundbite of the day warned against the danger of protectionism.  ''It is, quite frankly, the crack cocaine of economics.  It may provide politicians with a temporary high, yet it is instantly addictive and inevitably proves debilitive and fatal."

But Fisher encourages us to take heart. He notes that Americans are inherently capitalistic and thrive on competition.

Thomas Falk, chairman and CEO of Kimberly-Clark, validated the continuing importance of global markets with his lieutenants overseeing China and Russia in tow.  Targeting global customers is critical to growth.  But the key to extend , target and capture worldwide market share is to learn the quirks and minutiae of local customers, which means understanding local culture, which in itself is evolving and changing with globalization.

The competitive roadmap is different for each geography.  China has 150 brands of disposable diapers.  Russia has six.  Distribution channels are even more complex.  There is no one rule/approach for global expansion.  It's not a mass-market approach, but a custom fit.  It's all local, local, local.

That means cutting through bureaucratic red tape and finding the most welcoming and efficient locales for new plants.  It means gearing up for rapid growth in China, where the best and brightest employees seek companies that can deliver 40% annual growth and a robust future career path.  10% is measly.  You have to enter the market with a big plan and commitment.

In the early gold rush to put down stakes in China, American and European companies have been competing with each other for local talent there.  Today, the big competition is with Chinese national companies which are raising the ante in compensation packages, promises for growth and patriotic prestige. 

Later in the day, Rich Templeton, chairman, president and CEO of Texas Instruments delivered an ''ah hah'' moment regarding the global aspect of their corporate DNA.  The company was founded by entrepreneurs in the oil services business -- early global road warriors with customers, relationships and a business view that was far more far-reaching than less-traveled domestic counterparts.   When I met my husband, a deepwater subsea engineering expert, he had the most exotic range of passport stamps of anyone I had ever known! 

TI was early to expand into postwar Europe in the 1950s,  Japan in the 1960s, Asia in the 1960-70s and India in the 1980s.  Today, 88% of revenue ships outside of U.S.

The company embraces the global marketplace as an opportunity not a threat.  "We do not know borders,"
he explains. 

Talent also has no boundaries, so TI casts a wide global net to target the top engineers/designers in each locale.  Their historical global presence also put them close to global customers, solving unique problems and tapping in to emerging innovations at a very early stage.  Products are developed by multi-country design teams.  Templeton touts that TI stock provides a way to invest in global markets. 

So how does Dallas fit into the picture?  As a global business nexus, opines Fisher -- with confirming statistics on the Ascension of DFW presented by O'Neil Center director Michael Cox, former chief economist at the Dallas Fed. 

With brain power, transportation, favorable cost-of-living, entrepreneurial spirit, DFW is a location to which global talent is easily willing to relocate.  The local area has grown from a scant 3,000 in the 1870 census to a burgeoning population of 6 million -- now the fourth largest metropolitan area in the U.S.  Despite an unavoidable impact from the global recession, the North Texas area still has the lowest rate of unemployment anywhere in the country, except the home of the federal government -- Washington, D.C. 

"But that's not a real city," quipped Cox.

Scott Smith, VP of staffing at AT&T, laid out an incredible, multi-media machine being built for recruitment of the 30,000 people the company targets hiring annually as it expands into new markets and replaces waves of BabyBoomers preparing for retirement.  It is a massive and impressive initiative!

For other companies fighting for the same talent pool, executive search firms like mine will continue to offer a similar, aggressive, multi-tentacled, high-tech, high-touch reach into the global talent market that the Davids of the hiring world will need to compete with the Goliaths of the Fortune 100.

Like the Marines, we're ready...we're prepared.  Bring it on!