Northern
Trust president delivers Kellogg CIM address
Rick Waddell ’79 brings 30 years of experience to incoming
Kellogg students during Pre-Term orientation
By
Aubrey Henretty
September
6, 2007 - With day two of Complete
Immersion in Management underway on Sept. 5, the Kellogg
School’s Class of 2009 streamed into the Owen L. Coon
Forum for a presentation by Rick Waddell ’79, the president
and chief operating officer at Northern Trust Corp., a financial
services company with offices around the world.
Kellogg
Dean Dipak C. Jain, a member of Northern Trust’s board
of directors, introduced Waddell. “He is a real icon,”
Jain told the students, noting that Waddell has found time
throughout his distinguished 30-year career to contribute
to various charitable community organizations.
But the
Class of 2009 reserved its loudest applause for a particular
credential found on the Waddell résumé: “He
is also a Kellogg graduate,” Jain told the capacity
audience to cheers.
Waddell
began his presentation with a story about Jain. “I have
been very fortunate, not only as a Kellogg alum, but on the
board at Northern Trust, to see Dipak in action,” he
said. When the company launched its first service center in
India, senior leadership invited Jain to attend the opening
ceremony to help “explain what Northern Trust was all
about” and to ensure that nothing important was lost
in the cultural exchange. Jain offered an unusual suggestion:
“Invite their parents to the opening.” Waddell
recalled Jain’s observation that, in Indian culture,
“If you have the parents, you’ll always have the
employees.” The company tried it. The event was a huge
success.
“Sometimes
I think we forget that element of management and of leadership,”
Waddell said. “But in the end, it’s about people.”
Though
Waddell has defied the statistics and spent his entire professional
career at a single company, he said he has had approximately
13 jobs at different stages of his Northern Trust career.
He said that he looks for new recruits who share his spirit
of adventure. “I like people who are willing to take
a bit of a risk and move around in the company.”
On his
company’s commitment to contribute to the communities
it serves, Waddell’s outlook was both thoughtful and
practical. Helping people is important in itself, he said,
but building up the community is good for the company too:
“We find that when we’re involved with local nonprofits,
we get to know some influential people.”
As his
presentation concluded, Waddell reminded the new Kellogg students
that they should consider themselves at the service of the
people they manage.
“When
I have performance reviews, when I set expectations, I always
ask people, ‘What can I do better?’” |
