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You probably know Tom Harrison as the CEO of Omnicom DAS, the world’s largest holding group of marketing services companies. You may not know that before he got into marketing, Tom was a cell biologist. In between, Tom started his own agency, Harrison Star, which Omnicom later acquired. This combined background in science and business led Tom to a theory that the ability to succeed as an entrepreneur is hardwired into our DNA — that some of us are simply born to win. Tom wrote about this idea in his recent book, Instinct, and sat down with us to answer a few questions about it. You open your book with a DNA test. Why? It’s a rather simple, but serious, test that you can take that really assesses where you are on a series of five personality traits that are important to success as an entrepreneur. One is openness to new experiences. Second is conscientiousness. Third is extroversion. Fourth is agreeableness and fifth is neuroticism. How do you score on the test? I score as a serious entrepreneur. I’m pretty open to new experiences, moderately high on conscientiousness, and on extroversion I’m pretty out there. Agreeableness — I kind of tip off that scale. Maybe I’m a little bit too agreeable and rather low on the neurotic scale. It’s important to be low on the neurotic scale? It’s important to understand where you are on the neurotic scale. For example, Donald Trump is neurotic to the point where he won’t shake anybody’s hand, yet it hasn’t hurt him. So, I can’t say whether too much or too little neuroticism is bad. What I can say is you need to know where you are and how to address it. There’s no one trait that’s disqualifying? No. We’re all born with our own measure of each of these five personality traits. Those of us who want to be successful understand who we are and bring in compensatory mechanisms that will help counterbalance what we were given in the genetic lottery. Those compensatory mechanisms are really the eight success-promoters, which is what the book is about. What are success-promoters? Genetic success-promoters are behavioral patterns that we adopt to begin to counterbalance what we were given in the genetic lottery. So, if we are highly open to new experiences but we’re low on the conscientiousness scale, success-promoters are the things that we need to do to counterbalance that. But it’s not like there’s a one-size-fits-all prescription for success. It’s not as if you do these eight things — like the seven habits — and you’re going to be immediately successful. Each person is different and needs to take a personalized approach to success. Is there any one trait that is first among equals? They are all pretty equal, but they’re paired just like DNA strands are paired — the double helix. For example, openness to new experiences and conscientiousness are paired. That’s important because a person can be incredibly open to new experiences and dart from one business idea to another. But unless they have some degree of conscientiousness, they’re never going to get anything done. Extroversion and agreeableness pair together, as well. You have these people who love to be in the front of the room, like Bill Clinton, who like to suck the oxygen out of a room. Or you get the people who are constantly in the back of the room. There’s something interesting about that that tells you a bit about yourself. You say in the book that nice guys finish first. That’s true. We’ve gone through the era where people like Dennis Koslowski and Bernie Ebbers go to their people and say, “Aren’t you fortunate you’re working for me?” That’s opposed to people I call the servant CEOs, who go out and say, “Aren’t we fortunate we are working together towards this goal? I know as a CEO that I cannot be fully successful unless I ensure your success.” Who would be an example of that kind of CEO? Me. Anybody else? Sam Palmisano at IBM. He’s a nice guy. The CEO of Xerox, Anne Mulcahy. Indra Nooyi at Pepsi is really concerned about the success of all of her people as well as the company. But being a nice guy doesn’t mean you’re a card-carrying pushover. It means you’re as interested in other people’s success as much as your own. Does your theory apply to corporate DNA too? It can apply to corporate DNA. I have a general philosophy about corporations that they do have DNA and they evolve. As they evolve, one of the things that happens is that they need different types of leadership. As corporations evolve, the genetic needs of the corporation change because it is moving, because the CEO has delivered it to a point where it has gotten to a different plateau, if you will. At that point, the CEO needs to know that it’s time for him to go because he’s delivered that baby to where it needs to be. Have you applied your theory at Omnicom? Yes. I’ve pretty much assessed all the CEOs of my companies relative to their personality traits, where they are as leaders and where their companies are in terms of leadership needs. How would Omnicom score on the traits? Omnicom is a fairly entrepreneurial-driven organization. Most of us who are running the company have been entrepreneurs who have had our businesses acquired by Omnicom. We interact with people in a very non-bureaucratic, entrepreneurial fashion. We help them when they need help and we’re not around when they seem to be doing fine and don’t need help. Do you have any favorite entrepreneurs? Sam Zell, whom I talk about in the book, who was chairman and CEO of Equity Properties, which is the largest holding company of corporate, commercial real estate in the country. He recently sold it for 60-plus billion dollars. From a very, very young age Sam understood that he was different from other people and it really helped shape his decision making as he became more entrepreneurial and assumed leadership roles. The thing that made him unique was that he was out buying commercial real estate when other people were running away from it. Sam knew that it would come around and everything was going to be fine. He put together some of the most incredible properties and now Blackstone has bought them and divided the company up. Your father was an entrepreneur. Yes, and that’s what gave me a taste for independence, for running my own company, for taking risks and seeing things that other people didn’t see. My father was one of my favorite entrepreneurs. What’s your best advice to those who want to succeed? I talk a lot in the book about painting a picture of success. Simply put, when you feel you have an idea — when there’s something that you really want — you need to close your eyes and paint a picture of yourself in that picture of success and see how it feels. My test is that if your palms become sweaty and you get a pain in your gut, chances are it’s not right for you. But if it seems right and looks right in that dream, it’s probably pretty good for you. It’s about knowing who you are as an individual and being honest with yourself. -- TOM HARRISON, author of Instinct, is chairman and CEO of Diversified Agency Services, a division of the Omnicom Group, which has more than 5,000 worldwide clients and is the largest unit within Omnicom, itself the world’s largest advertising holding company. --
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