YouSaid · the spoken record

Carla Harris

lines on the record: 53
first: 2022-08-22
most recent: 2022-08-22
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Oh, I didn't expect that one. Okay. All right, here we go, and it's called Expect to Win. It was written by a group called Swat Singers with a testimony from Brown Memorial Baptist Church. They heard me speak on Expect to Win, wrote the song, showed up at my office one day, and I loved it and decided I was going to record it on my third album. So I'm going to give you the chorus. Expect to win. No matter what you're up against, don't give up, don't give in Oh yes, you can Not fear but faith will win the race Don't give up, don't give in Expect to end.”
2022-08-22 · Capital Allocators · Carla Harris – Pearls of Career Wisdom (Capital Allocators, EP.267) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That I'm supposed to do well, I'm very spiritual, and my mother had a lot to do with that devotion around spirituality and recognizing the power of who I am as a child of God and never forgetting that.”
2022-08-22 · Capital Allocators · Carla Harris – Pearls of Career Wisdom (Capital Allocators, EP.267) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Until otherwise notified, we still have work to do no matter what's going on out there. And I look back and realize how important that was, because despite the fact that I was looking at the market meltdown and the stock meltdown and therefore my own fortunes meltdown, I wasn't deterred from keep your phone the gas, Carla, and keep going. And I think a lot of it was that he made me feel like we knew what was going on.”
2022-08-22 · Capital Allocators · Carla Harris – Pearls of Career Wisdom (Capital Allocators, EP.267) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm going to pick two leaders here at Morgan Stanley. One is a guy by the name of Bob Scott, who was head of Capital Markets when I first came to Capital Markets. He really did have an open mind and was willing to learn about people on his own and not just take other people's views. And I really respected that. The other person is John Mack because he was running fixed income when I was a young associate, but he ended up obviously becoming chairman and CEO of Morgan Stanley. And when we were going through the financial services crisis, he pulled together the manager directors a lot to say, hey, I was down in Washington yesterday. Let me tell you what was going on. And I know good well now, especially after the fact he couldn't tell us everything that was going on. However, it felt like we were in the boat with him. And that probably was far away from the truth on many of those occasions, but it empowered me as a leader to go back to my people with some confidence and say, let's keep drinking.”
2022-08-22 · Capital Allocators · Carla Harris – Pearls of Career Wisdom (Capital Allocators, EP.267) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You fail to remove a poor leader, you hold the rest of the organization hostage. And boy, was she right? So because I recognize that, I'm much better about that. I'm quicker. I now look for that. I ask myself about that, knowing that it's a potential blind spot.”
2022-08-22 · Capital Allocators · Carla Harris – Pearls of Career Wisdom (Capital Allocators, EP.267) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's easy. Giving people too many chances. Let me give you a quick and dirty around that. I realized that when it comes to taking someone off of a project or removing someone out of a spot, that's the one thing that I'm slow about. Everything else I'm decisive. But I find myself wanting to give people chances. Over the COVID period, I asked myself, what is that all about? And I realized that it's cultural. Because growing up as a black woman, people always said you don't have as many chances as everybody else. You only get one shot because you look like you look. You're black, you're a woman, you got one shot. Don't screw it up. I couldn't help but think that perhaps somehow that had curbed my risk appetite over the years. And I remember thinking as a young professional man when I get in a position, I'm not going to just give people one shot. Let me give people a chance to recover. But in doing that, sometimes you're too slow. I heard a great leader, Ursula Bursa, one time that somebody told her that.”
2022-08-22 · Capital Allocators · Carla Harris – Pearls of Career Wisdom (Capital Allocators, EP.267) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As a singer and a performer, I have become hypersensitive to the audience. So not only do I think I'm a good listener when I'm speaking to you, but I'm a good listener when I'm on that stage reading the audience, feeling the energy from the audience. And I'll give you an example of what I mean. My very first concert at Carnegie Hall in 2005, the band and I had rehearsed 14 songs and we were ready. But Ted, when we got to number 12, I knew that was it. I knew that we were at the top of the mountain. And if I sang one more note, I was going to slip on the other side of that mountain. At the end of that 12 song, I said, good night, everybody. And the band and the choir, everybody was looking like, what is she doing? But I knew it. I know we were there. And we said our goodbyes, our bows, and we left the stage. I learned how to read that way.”
2022-08-22 · Capital Allocators · Carla Harris – Pearls of Career Wisdom (Capital Allocators, EP.267) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I love God's music. That's my number one. I love RB. I love pop. I love classical music. But gospel music is at the top of the list because I do feel like it's universal. There's a message for everybody, no matter who you are, black, white, blue, or green in gospel music because we all go through tough times. And gospel music is about hope. It's about faith. It's about future. It's about opportunity. So I love saying gospel music.”
2022-08-22 · Capital Allocators · Carla Harris – Pearls of Career Wisdom (Capital Allocators, EP.267) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And if I could be half the mom she was, I'd be okay. And then third, I got to get a grammar ted. I got to get myself a Grammy. Whether that's singing or spoken word, but I want to figure that out. And then in the role of senior advisor, because I've had the privilege of working for a great firm like Morgan Stanley for 35 years, if there's anything else that I can do to bring value to the firm, I want to be able to do that too.”
2022-08-22 · Capital Allocators · Carla Harris – Pearls of Career Wisdom (Capital Allocators, EP.267) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The major thing is that I'm trying to get the pearls out to as many different people as possible. I still feel that professionals who are 25 to 44 years old, many of them start out the robust, excited, and then they get stuck. And they don't know how. So there's no playbook out there. And expect to win, strategize to win are playbooks around how do you maximize your success and the seat that you're in or the seat that you want. And lead to win is okay. You got the seat. Now, how can you be the most effective and impactful leader and create other leaders, amplify your voice and who you are by helping other people to become great leaders? So my main focus, Ted, is to try to get those pearls out to as many people as possible to help them get theirs however they define theirs. That's the main thing. Second, I've been honored and grateful and blessed to be able to adopt two amazing girls. One is seven and one is two. And I want to figure out what it means to be an amazing mom. I'm finding my way, but I think my mother was an amazing mother.”
2022-08-22 · Capital Allocators · Carla Harris – Pearls of Career Wisdom (Capital Allocators, EP.267) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Mistakes are those things that come from the universe to teach you a lesson. And the only way you're going to get the lesson is if you fell in the hole, if you made the mistake. Those are some of the things that are in the letter”
2022-08-22 · Capital Allocators · Carla Harris – Pearls of Career Wisdom (Capital Allocators, EP.267) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Try to convince somebody else that you are worthy of being with them. If they don't see your value and how fabulous it is to be with you, then let that go. Another lesson to my twenty-five-year-old self and a good friend of mine, Reggie Van Lee, taught me this when I was like 23 years old. It's much easier to beg for forgiveness than it is to ask for permission. But here's what I add to that. Sometimes you find yourself asking for permission of someone that doesn't have the power to tell you no, but because you ask them, you gave them the power to tell you no. If you know something should be done, do it. If it was the wrong thing, then somebody will say, oh, you shouldn't have done that. Now you can get the great male cooper, but you already have the experience of having executed. One of the other things, this is real life, is not a dress rehearsal. Live it. Go for it. Put your foot on the gas. You make a mistake. That's okay.”
2022-08-22 · Capital Allocators · Carla Harris – Pearls of Career Wisdom (Capital Allocators, EP.267) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The number one thing was on your power so many times in my 20s and my 30s, I gave away my power, not realizing that I had power. As a young associate, thinking that I had so much to learn and everybody was smarter than me. And so the discounting that I came to the table with something just come.”
2022-08-22 · Capital Allocators · Carla Harris – Pearls of Career Wisdom (Capital Allocators, EP.267) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That girl talks all the time. I've always enjoyed communicating with people. As a public speaker, I speak the way that I talk. There's nothing different about Carla the Speaker than Carla the conversationalist or Carla the business person. And even when I present in a boardroom, I speak plainly around what it is that I want to say. If I'm speaking in that setting, either on a stage to a thousand people or in a board to 15 people, I'm thoughtful about what I want to say and organizing it in a way that the listener can follow me. That's the only thing that I do that's different than you and I talking right now.”
2022-08-22 · Capital Allocators · Carla Harris – Pearls of Career Wisdom (Capital Allocators, EP.267) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Obviously, everything that happens in a boardroom is confidential, but I will say in the few short years that I've been sitting on corporate boards and in the 20 some odd years that I've been sitting on nonprofit boards, I have yet to have a situation that was so sticky that people sidestepped it. And maybe that's because I've had the privilege of being on boards with some amazing people, but I have yet to have a situation where there's been a tough thing to come up that people didn't deal with. It's been dealt with.”
2022-08-22 · Capital Allocators · Carla Harris – Pearls of Career Wisdom (Capital Allocators, EP.267) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There are a lot of people that depend on me to be front and center and focused, people that I will never see. And that's my job. And the third thing I'm going to say is that the companies and organizations that I have the privilege of sitting on the boards of, they are certainly paying attention globally. They are looking at things from every angle. And I now have a bigger and better appreciation for how difficult the CEO job is.”
2022-08-22 · Capital Allocators · Carla Harris – Pearls of Career Wisdom (Capital Allocators, EP.267) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Funny, you should ask that question right after the one you just asked because I think there's no other place where it's even more important to be able to call a thing a thing that's in the boardroom. Your job as a board director is to represent shareholders. That's why you're there. If there's something that you don't understand or something that you think may cause risk to the company's franchise and to its value, it is your responsibility to exercise your voice. Call the thing a thing, even if it's not popular in that room or even if no one else has said it or even if it feels uncomfortable to say it. If you believe that it's going to benefit the company and it's going to benefit the shareholders, then you have to be willing to call a thing a thing. The other thing I realized is that you have to make sure that you are prepared, that you pay attention, that you're firing on all cylinders. When I'm going to a board, my friends know that I can do the all night or three times a week, if you will, and I can function on very little sleep. But when I go to those board meetings, I try to make sure that I am as fresh, open, thoughtful, not sleepy, not distracted as possible.”
2022-08-22 · Capital Allocators · Carla Harris – Pearls of Career Wisdom (Capital Allocators, EP.267) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's about transparency. If something is not going well, or if there's a problem, you have to tell people exactly what it is. Because guess what? Your team already knows that there's likely to be a reduction in force. They already know there could be a restructuring. And when you fail to give voice to that, you impair the trust, you impair the transparency, and you also compromise the authenticity that you've been trying so hard to display and to deliver. So calling a thing a thing is saying exactly what it is. Whether it's personal, you really screwed up on that last thing. Don't fail to tell me where I screwed up and then you crush me at the end of the year. That's not going to work. But say, listen, you screwed up right at that point. Call a thing a thing. Or if the organization is not being fair, we didn't give that person a shot or we're not where we need to be around diversity. Or we're saying one thing in the marketplace, but we're doing another. Being able to call a thing.”
2022-08-22 · Capital Allocators · Carla Harris – Pearls of Career Wisdom (Capital Allocators, EP.267) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Have to intentionally give people things that you used to cut your leadership teeth. You have to intentionally delegate those things to other people and be thoughtful about it because, again, it won't just happen. So you say to somebody, Ted, I'm going to put you in this meeting and I want you to present. Here are the five points that you need to present. Here are some questions that might come up. If this comes up and you're not able to do it, throw me the ball. I have you. Those are the kinds of things that you have to be intentional about and tell people, I'm doing this so that you'll be able to handle this on your own. I'm doing this so that these three people in the room get to see you as a leader, as a thought leader, because we're going to need to vote when it's time for you to be promoted. But that's being intentional and making sure the person knows what you're doing. You and I grew up in a clandestine world where people would put us out there, but they wouldn't tell us necessarily that we're being tested. And I'm not so sure that that was the right way to do it because millennials and zers value highly when they believe somebody.”
2022-08-22 · Capital Allocators · Carla Harris – Pearls of Career Wisdom (Capital Allocators, EP.267) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A colleague relationships because if the people that you are leading don't trust you, you will never get maximum performance and productivity from them.”
2022-08-22 · Capital Allocators · Carla Harris – Pearls of Career Wisdom (Capital Allocators, EP.267) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, thank you for that question. The way you build trust is you deliver over and over and over. Think about people in your life that you trust right now, the people who are taking care of your kids, the people who are looking after your parents, the folks that you let cut your hair, the restaurant you go to every time is important. Why do you trust them? They've delivered consistently over and over. The second point, people will always tell you what they value. All you need to do is ask the question and create the space where they can define what they value. Then you can strategize on how you deliver that. That's how you build the trust. You know what they value? Deliver it. Over and over again. And they come to trust you. Transparency is key to building trust. Because if I even perceive that you're holding something back or you're not telling me something, you impair the trust. Authenticity is critical to that. You're not being who you really are. There's no way you're going to get the trust, not 100%. Trust is important in customer relationships, but it is critical.”
2022-08-22 · Capital Allocators · Carla Harris – Pearls of Career Wisdom (Capital Allocators, EP.267) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Those are some of the pearls of intentional leadership that I talk about in the book, and I'm very prescriptive because not only do I say you need to do these things, I tell you how to do them. I also speak to young entrepreneurs. There's a whole chapter that talks about here are the questions that you want to ask when you are interviewing people for your C-suite, because many of these entrepreneurs are 28, 32, 35. They don't have any track record of interviewing people. And if you make a bad hire in your first six or seven people that you're hiring, it can be catastrophic for your business.”
2022-08-22 · Capital Allocators · Carla Harris – Pearls of Career Wisdom (Capital Allocators, EP.267) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'll go straight there in terms of my pearls of intentional leadership. The thesis is most of us grew up in a producer culture where if you were a great producer, you were rewarded with outstanding compensation and titles and promotions without any thought as to whether or not you'd be the kind of person that could motivate and inspire people to deliver. I argue that you can't just be a leader because your most senior or you get the title. In today's environment, especially with millennials and zers, being a dominant population in the workforce, they want to be inspired. They want to be motivated. They demand as table stakes transparency, inclusivity, and feedback. And many of us who are in leadership seats today don't know how to do that because we didn't have it. And most people lead the way they were led. I talk about you have to be authentic. You have to build trust. You have to create clarity. You have to create other leaders. You have to be intentional around diversity. You have to be intentional around innovation and inclusivity. And you have to be willing to call a thing a thing. Because your voice is at the heart of your power as a leader.”
2022-08-22 · Capital Allocators · Carla Harris – Pearls of Career Wisdom (Capital Allocators, EP.267) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One of the things we need to do, or that I saw happening, was more storytelling and the amplification of the data and the difference. People have been saying for a long time that there was a commercial outcome around diversity, but now companies are starting to talk about the innovation that's happening. Now you're starting to see the change in the performance that you can track back to having the right people in the right seats. So the more stories that we tell, the more data that's out there, the more powerful I think it will be in creating that kind of change.”
2022-08-22 · Capital Allocators · Carla Harris – Pearls of Career Wisdom (Capital Allocators, EP.267) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that we will never go back to there being a lack of awareness. I think people now know. Now it's going to be about the intentionality and the courage to move forward and to make sure that you have more women and people of color at your decision-making table as an asset allocator to make sure that you're partnering and you're engaging with those organizations where a lot of these entrepreneurs and these fund managers actually congregate. And I do believe what we haven't done yet is we haven't sparked enough of the appetite among the LPs to hold their GPs accountable the way corporates are now seeing their shareholders hold them accountable because of ESG because I believe the S is quickly becoming the D. So now you have large shareholders say, talk to me about the diversity on your management team. Talk to me about what your boardroom looks like. That is one of the things that's been a powerful motivator for companies to make the kind of changes they need to make. We need that same kind of intentionality and focus from LPs on the GPs and the”
2022-08-22 · Capital Allocators · Carla Harris – Pearls of Career Wisdom (Capital Allocators, EP.267) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I will tell you that 2020 and 2021 were record years with respect to asset allocators giving money to either funds that were run by people of color or businesses that were founded by people of color and women. But interestingly enough, in 2021 I had so many interviews where people said, well, is it going to change or what? And I said, I believe this is a movement and not a moment, but it's incumbent upon us to keep the conversation vibrant. This year, I'm sorry to say that I've started to hear entrepreneurs say that it's getting tough out there again to raise the money. So I'm hoping that it's not a complete reversion to what we saw before 2020. But I do think if nothing else, the level of awareness that there's not a supply problem, there are lots of entrepreneurs of color out there. There are lots of fund managers that are out there that you do have to get yourself in the traffic as an asset allocator if you want to find.”
2022-08-22 · Capital Allocators · Carla Harris – Pearls of Career Wisdom (Capital Allocators, EP.267) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“From there, I helped to develop the next level fund that I raised with my partner, Alice Vilma. We created the podcast, Accessing Opportunities, just off of a conversation with Tom Nides, who said, hey, why don't we do a podcast to elevate this conversation about the inequity that's in the marketplace? And now we've won two Webby Awards and 12 Markham Awards, again, from a black sheet of paper. We didn't have such a podcast. We also started the Senior Multicultural Leaders Conference, which to date is the only conference in the marketplace that is a business conference that brings the most senior people of color, African American, Hispanic, Asian, that are in corporate or at the board level to talk about the topics that are germane to business leaders in any given year, whether it's counterterrorism, cybersecurity, the geopolitical environment, the instability of the political environment around the world, those kinds of things.”
2022-08-22 · Capital Allocators · Carla Harris – Pearls of Career Wisdom (Capital Allocators, EP.267) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Way, let's think about the companies that we take public, how can we engage at the private wealth management level. We started to do some of that when the tech market was really hot, but there wasn't a long-term history of thinking about all the ways to bring that in. He reintroduced that thinking in 2005. So I'd been thinking about that for a number of years by the time I got that seat. So I was much more attuned when I got that role to thinking about cross-fertilization and ways that we could bring value around a client relationship by the time we did that. And it wasn't long after I was in that role that he asked me to start the multicultural client strategy, really a black sheet of paper to put Morgan Stanley in a leadership position in the marketplace. And that's where I created the multicultural innovation lab where we bring in early stage companies, just like any other tech accelerator, and we give them cash and six months content that's been carefully curated to help develop them from being a founder to a CEO, because as you know, there's a difference also to connect them to some of our larger investment banking clients to advance the scaling of their business.”
2022-08-22 · Capital Allocators · Carla Harris – Pearls of Career Wisdom (Capital Allocators, EP.267) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I had seen that a long time before, actually, because when John Mack came back to the firm in 2005, he had a mantra of one firm firm. And he kept saying that we were working in silos. And I realized he was correct. Unless some bankers worked with the investment bankers, and we didn't really have a lot of connectivity with the wealth managers at all. Because remember, we didn't actually have expansion in wealth management until 1997 when the Dean Whitermer merger happened. And then again in 2010 with the Smith Varney acquisition. As a banker, I rarely worked with people who were in private wealth management. We always had a wealth management piece with private wealth management, but that was the ultra ultra wealthy. But I'd gone a long time in my career without having a lot of interaction as a capital markets banker. We always did allocate stock to private wealth management. But there wasn't this sort of strategic, let's think about who in private wealth management is sitting at the top of the house that could direct investment banking business out.”
2022-08-22 · Capital Allocators · Carla Harris – Pearls of Career Wisdom (Capital Allocators, EP.267) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In an asset management context now, and I wouldn't have been able to do that in the preceding 20 years. But that was an important risk for me to take. And from there, it led me to the job as a vice chairman at the firm, working at the firm level to create greater client connectivity and penetration. And then in the summer of 14, chairman and CEO asked me to start the multicultural client strategy to position Morgan Stanley as a leader in the marketplace that engages with multicultural decision makers.”
2022-08-22 · Capital Allocators · Carla Harris – Pearls of Career Wisdom (Capital Allocators, EP.267) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Couldn't have been worse. I made that move in the summer of 2008. I don't need to tell you what happened in September. The good news about that is making that move fit my criteria that's in Chapter 7 expect to win about when you should take risks. And the questions that you ask yourself, will this new thing give me skills and experiences that I wouldn't get if I stayed in my current seat another 12 months? Second question, will this new thing expose me to people, relationships, and networks that I wouldn't get if I stayed in my currency another 12 months? Third question, will this new thing create new branches on my personal decision tree of opportunity, i.e. I could go off and do some other things that I wouldn't have been able to do if I stayed in my currency another 12 months? If the answer to all three of those questions is yes, you should take the risk. And all of those questions applied. I learned a whole new part of financial services, investment management, which I know nothing about. I created relationships that the firm still uses today. And third, I could do anything.”
2022-08-22 · Capital Allocators · Carla Harris – Pearls of Career Wisdom (Capital Allocators, EP.267) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then I found something I loved. I did MA because I kind of understood MA, it was hot, it was supposed to be difficult. So that's why I went into it, didn't know what a capital markets banker did really and loved it. And to this day, go back to being a capital markets banker. So that was an important trajectory. The next one was 2007 when I kept hearing myself say, if you consider yourself a leader in the 21st century, you must be comfortable taking risks. And I had to ask myself, because at that point, I was approaching twenty years in my career. And I said, what risks are you taking? You can price four deals in a week, do a Carnegie Hall concert, start writing a book, and nobody even knows that you're doing anything else. That sounds like you might have some capacity. What risk are you taking? In 2007, I decided I was going to try something entrepreneurial. I was going to try to help the firm raise a fund that would invest in women and minority-owned asset managers.”
2022-08-22 · Capital Allocators · Carla Harris – Pearls of Career Wisdom (Capital Allocators, EP.267) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I started my career right out of Harvard Business School in mergers and acquisitions. And part of the reason was because, again, I'm negatively motivated. Everybody told me, don't do M&A. You won't have a life. They wear beepers. And so I said, okay, that's where I'm going. Love M&A, but M&A was hot in the late 80s. And the last big year was 89. And in 1990, it was dead. And in 1991, as I like to say, it was dead squared. So I thought to myself at that point, if I'm going to be long-term in this business, I better make sure that I understand the bread and butter of investment banking and that's capital raising. So that's when I made the decision to go to capital market. So that was an important decision because it also changed my career trajectory because it gave me a level of visibility with senior people in the firm that I would not have had if I had stayed M&A. I went in as an operations officer, which was the person that assigned deals, helped the senior person to run the department, did all the administrative things. That made me connect with the head of equity, made me connect with the head of investment banking. So it gave me a level of visibility I don't think I would have had.”
2022-08-22 · Capital Allocators · Carla Harris – Pearls of Career Wisdom (Capital Allocators, EP.267) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When I started going through the presentation and what was wrong with the presentation, I could see the look on my colleagues' face, everybody was sort of looking and not breathing. And I was like, well, look, my job is to get it right before we go out there on the road. She was sitting at the other end of the table with him. She got up. All the air went out of the room. And she came and sat right next to me. And everybody's eyes were like big as half a dollar. And she said, I want to hear what this woman has to say. Because she said some important things. So I just want to move a little closer so I can hear it. Ted, I wasn't afraid. I wasn't intimidated. I wasn't upset. My job is to make sure you have an A-plus IPO and I'm going to get that done. And it was fine. But that's the authentic Carla. Treat everybody on an equal basis. The inauthentic Carla would be careful, walk on eggshells, be afraid like the rest of my colleagues were at the time. But that's not me.”
2022-08-22 · Capital Allocators · Carla Harris – Pearls of Career Wisdom (Capital Allocators, EP.267) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And Carla was bringing my southern self to the table talking about my singing, being able to ask a question and be unafraid to ask that question and not be bothered by somebody's notoriety because I believe that we're all equal. We're all people at the end of the day. For example, I would want to name the person, however, it was a personality that we were doing a deal for, very well-known personality. Everybody was afraid of this person because she had a reputation of eating up talent. Everybody was like, oh, she's in the building. Everybody was walking on eggshells. And everybody was afraid that I was going to screw it up because they knew by then I was just an authentic carlin. So they thought, oh my gosh, you got to handle this person in such a way. But I was like, she said, it's a woman just like me. My job is to give her excellence. And I'm going to give her the very best of what I'm supposed to do. But that means Carla, too. I remember going into the meeting and I sat at the end of the table. It was a long table. All of my colleagues were sitting at the other end of the table.”
2022-08-22 · Capital Allocators · Carla Harris – Pearls of Career Wisdom (Capital Allocators, EP.267) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Mentioned earlier this important concept of authenticity. So there's one thing about realizing the skills that are required to be a capital markets banker. You talked earlier about quantitative and modeling and now it's reading people and listening. Where did you find your own superpowers in this process to ascend the ladder as you did?”
2022-08-22 · Capital Allocators · Carla Harris – Pearls of Career Wisdom (Capital Allocators, EP.267) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Deal making sure that you get it right, even being able to telegraph what could happen was also important to your success. So over time, you start realizing the things that made you successful as a capital markets banker and then deploying those things. But that's observation, that's being self-aware, that's being intentional, that's also being fearless to take some risks and ask questions. I started figuring out what was the right formula to be an A plus capital markets banker.”
2022-08-22 · Capital Allocators · Carla Harris – Pearls of Career Wisdom (Capital Allocators, EP.267) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How do you excel is understanding what is expected? For example, when I was in the capital markets, being able to demonstrate that you had judgment around how to capture feedback that you got from some of the accounts that the company that you were raising money for when they went out on a roadshow, how those accounts were viewing that company, how they valued the company, what they thought of the management team, what they thought of the opportunity. It's really a matter of discernment because people say one thing, but you need to be able to understand what they really mean away from the words that they articulate. And that actually came with experience and dealing with certain salespeople who covered fidelity or Wellington or Capitol or Janice, you get to know those people so you know what they really mean when they use this word or what they really mean when they don't give you any feedback at all. Over time, I started realizing that being able to make the call on where the price is.”
2022-08-22 · Capital Allocators · Carla Harris – Pearls of Career Wisdom (Capital Allocators, EP.267) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Nobody was using that word sponsorship. And now every time I hear somebody say it, it just gives me goosebumps because it's now out in the ether. People were saying words like advocate or champion. But I've been talking about sponsorship, which has caught on now since then because that's even more important than mentorship. The sponsor uses their capital on your promotion, your pay, your ability to get new opportunities. The mentor in my parlance is the person that will give it to you straight no chaser. Good, bad, and ugly and tell you what you need to do, how you need to manage your career, how you need to course correct, all those things. And an advisor is anybody in your environment that can answer any question you have about that environment because they have the intellect or the experience.”
2022-08-22 · Capital Allocators · Carla Harris – Pearls of Career Wisdom (Capital Allocators, EP.267) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The kids will walk a disaster, doesn't have a clue person goes in the bottom. And I remember I was clutching my pearls, Ted. I said, who's going to speak for me? Because until that moment, I thought it was completely objective. I thought it was meritocratic. I thought it was black and white. Either you did a good job on the deal or you didn't do a good job on the deal. Here's what the definition of a good job looks like. And all of a sudden I realized the amount of subjectivity that goes into any kind of evaluated equation, and especially one like that where things weren't written down. Now there's a little bit more of a written down process, but back then, no. And then I thought, look how this conversation, who's speaking, what they say, how they say it, look at the impact on the outcome. That was a huge lesson. So that's when I started using the word sponsor. And the first time I used that word in public was 1990 at the University of Michigan, where I was given a speech.”
2022-08-22 · Capital Allocators · Carla Harris – Pearls of Career Wisdom (Capital Allocators, EP.267) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, that happened my first year when I was sitting in the roundtable. So this goes back to the question you just asked. How did you learn that at Morgan Stalemate? Well, at the time, the entire street used to do evaluations by something called a roundtable. So the analyst would have a roundtable where the associates and the VPs would be in the room. The associates would have a roundtable and only the VPs, the EDs, and the manager directors. So you see how that works. The seniors would talk about the juniors. And in that first round table, I went into that room and somebody says, let's just throw it out. Ted Sitas. And somebody says, ah, superstar, superstar, the kid's just a monster. He's awesome. Then whoever was recording that put top group, and then somebody says Carla Harris. And they say, oh, you know, safe pair hand. She's good. She gets the work done. Another special safe pair hands. The person recording put middle group. Then somebody says John Smith and somebody says.”
2022-08-22 · Capital Allocators · Carla Harris – Pearls of Career Wisdom (Capital Allocators, EP.267) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Observation. I always tell people to study your environment. But here's what I tell most people ask those questions when you're interviewing. That's when you're going to really get down to the truth. And most of the time you have six to eight to twelve interviews before you actually get the job. Every single interview, you should say to someone, describe a superstar to me in this environment. So when you say so-and-so is a superstar of Morgan Stanley or in your organization, what's that look like? Give me three words and they're going to tell you. Now you're going to know what they value. And here's the second most important question you should ask when you're interviewing. Give me the profile of the last person you fired. When somebody doesn't make it here, why don't they make it? Now you will know what they don't value. And the reason why that's important is if they describe what they don't value and that happens to be your strength, don't take that job. That's your first indicator that there's a mismatch. So at Morgan Stanley, because I didn't know those questions to ask, I observed.”
2022-08-22 · Capital Allocators · Carla Harris – Pearls of Career Wisdom (Capital Allocators, EP.267) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That pearl is chapter four, and expect to win, and it's called Perception is the co-pilot to reality, how people perceive you will directly impact how they deal with you. In order for you to train people to think about you the way you want them to think about you is you first need to understand the adjectives that are associated with success for that seat. And the mistake that most people make, including me, is that you go in there and say, I'm going to work really hard. They'll see that I'm good and I'm loyal and I'll be rewarded accordingly. But if you work in a way that is inconsistent with the way they think about success, you're not going to be successful. So first of all, you need to know what those adjectives are. Second of all, you need to make sure that your behavior is consistent with those adjectives. So if I'm going to”
2022-08-22 · Capital Allocators · Carla Harris – Pearls of Career Wisdom (Capital Allocators, EP.267) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That is pretty solid by then. I didn't know that you had the ability to train people to think about you in the way that you want them to think about you. Don't just leave it out there for chance and let them create their own narrative. You have to be mindful about that. I didn't know about asking questions at the time that somebody gives you an assignment. Don't walk away thinking that you know or being afraid to ask the question and then burning a lot of time that might cause you to be late turning it an assignment which will really cost you in the end. So there were so many things that I didn't recognize and I didn't know and I certainly did not know how to leverage other relationships. I've been so used to as an academic thinking I was doing it on my own. You got a problem set? You figure it out. You turn it in. That's not the way you work in business. It's very collaborative no matter what you're doing.”
2022-08-22 · Capital Allocators · Carla Harris – Pearls of Career Wisdom (Capital Allocators, EP.267) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I tell you, I call them my hard-earned and hard learned pearls because these were things that I didn't know. Every company said we're a meritocracy. All you have to do is be smart and work hard and you'll go straight to the top. I started to realize that there were other things that really informed your success equation. How did I learn by making mistakes, falling in the hole, crawling out of the hole, and then being reflective on what I could have or should have done that might have avoided that hole and then applying the lesson because of course it's going to come again. So when it came around again, I had a lesson that I could apply and say, aha, that works. So the things that I didn't know are the things that I write about in my first book expect to win. I certainly didn't know about the power of authenticity, but let me hold that one for a second. I didn't know that you have about 90 days to create an impression when you go into a new space or you're working with somebody for the first time because it's just natural to form an opinion.”
2022-08-22 · Capital Allocators · Carla Harris – Pearls of Career Wisdom (Capital Allocators, EP.267) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“At 19, doing work from which people were making decisions to issue millions of dollars of bonds. Number two, I wanted to call the shots. That was the summer I realized that the lawyers didn't call the shots. The business people called the shots. And the lawyers help you get it done within the context of the law. And third, I want to make a lot of money. And all of a sudden, I learned what people on Wall Street did in terms of making a lot of money. So I decided I was going to focus on that. But I'll give you one last piece. I'm negatively motivated. So when you tell me I can't do something, I'm all over it. And that summer, I didn't see a lot of women. And I didn't see a lot of people of color. And I couldn't figure out why. So at the margin, that made that profession even more attractive to pursue.”
2022-08-22 · Capital Allocators · Carla Harris – Pearls of Career Wisdom (Capital Allocators, EP.267) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“God takes care of fools and babies, and I was both. I sat there, the interview was supposedly tough, but I was just Carla. And I answered the questions as they came. By that point, they had realized that they wanted only juniors, but I was a sophomore at the time and I got it. And that was the summer that changed the trajectory of my life because all of a sudden here I am on Wall Street at a firm that was their first time participating in the SEO program. And SEO was really good about making sure that you focused on not just you. Your job was to do a great job that summer so that that firm would want to participate in the program the next year. So keep the seat open for somebody else. So that's what my focus was in addition to doing well. But all of a sudden that summer, I realized that the things that attracted me about a career in law were actually found in business. I wanted to have a lot of responsibility early on.”
2022-08-22 · Capital Allocators · Carla Harris – Pearls of Career Wisdom (Capital Allocators, EP.267) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Summer after my sophomore year, there was this program called SEO, and they had just started this career program the summer of nineteen eighty one, which was the summer after my freshman year, and a bunch of my friends applied they got in, they came back, and they were raving about it. And I said, I'm going to do that because these were people that were my classmates, peers, looked like me. I respected them. They were super smart. And I thought, I want to do that. After my freshman year, I went home. I went back to Jacksonville and I worked in the law firm, which was amazing because I had never worked in the law firm. And at that point, I thought I wanted to be a lawyer. It was called Patrick Pagrick Dale involved. And they gave me a shot. That was a great summer. But when my colleagues came back and they were raving about it, I said, I want to do that. So I applied to SEO. And Ted, this was the funniest thing I had never been in New York City. I had never had a stress interview. So I didn't know that three-on-one, three people interviewing you at the same time was supposed to be stressful. I had no idea.”
2022-08-22 · Capital Allocators · Carla Harris – Pearls of Career Wisdom (Capital Allocators, EP.267) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Again, this mentality of always reaching for the top meant whatever the top was, go get it. So that meant get A's. Then when it was time to go to college, it was interesting. I didn't have any aspirations to go to Iver League Schools at all. That was not something we talked about in my household, but my parents did expect that I would go to college because I was so good academically. So they just assume I would get scholarships. And my biggest aspiration was to go to UCLA because my favorite aunt lived in LA. That was it. Full stop. However, by the time I was a junior and senior in high school, I was taking all honors classes. And the kids around me started talking to each other not.”
2022-08-22 · Capital Allocators · Carla Harris – Pearls of Career Wisdom (Capital Allocators, EP.267) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Supposed to do well. People ask me all the time why we so focused, was it hard, or did you have to study a lot? Of course I studied like everybody else, but they had pretty high expectations for me and would always say go for the top. And my mother, I realized now, God bless her, the way she would tell me that the world wasn't fair is that she would say things like, if you want an A, go for the A plus. So if you get shaved a little bit, you'll still have the A. And again, that was her way of saying you won't always get your do. And she would say, be so outstanding that there's no debate. So that drove me that my father, he would always say, my job is to create an environment where you can get your job done. And your job is to get your lesson. And you better get to A's. So that was pretty much my household.”
2022-08-22 · Capital Allocators · Carla Harris – Pearls of Career Wisdom (Capital Allocators, EP.267) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source