This past year, Western Union celebrated its 150th birthday, but the host of the party slipped out of the festivities early. After overseeing a year and a half of giddy growth as president and CEO, Alan Silberstein resigned in August.
Silberstein, soft-spoken and bespectacled, earned his MBA from Harvard in 1972, then joined New York City's Bureau of the Budget, where he helped to streamline the city's Fire Department. He next turned his attention from hooks and ladders to the corporate ladder, acquiring a reputation as a savvy manager during 18 years at Chemical Bank and subsequent stints at Midlantic Bank and Travelers. In one of his final acts as Western Union's CEO, Silberstein sat down with Jungle at the company's Montvale, New Jersey, offices to discuss his departure, reflect on his career, and offer no-nonsense management advice to MBAs.
You recently decided to leave your post at Western Union. At what moment did you look in the mirror and say to yourself, "I'm outta here"?
I was sitting at Peacock Alley at the Waldorf-Astoria with the head of the international division, who is based in Paris. One of his missions was to move authority to the field. When he started doing that, he questioned why we have all these people in New Jersey rather than in Paris or at our parent company's headquarters in Denver. I said that made a lot of sense. But I already had a lump in my throat, because I realized that there didn't need to be a headquarters in New Jersey, and for family reasons I wasn't going to move to Denver.
Did you feel you were abandoning Western Union, having accepted the job less than two years ago?
Yes. But to be a bit glib, in today's world every job is a gig. Every job is an assignment, and you look forward to the next assignment, recognizing that nothing is forever, whether your life changes or the company changes. You need to manage your career, make sure everything is satisfying in its own right or builds your capabilities. I spent 18 years at one company, and since then I've been a bit of a hobo. I've learned that it doesn't have to be one company all your life. That it actually can be fun meeting new people, getting involved in new situations, bringing a fresh perspective and less baggage.
What's going to be your next gig?
I don't know. I promised myself that I would take a real break, and a real break means not dwelling on what I could have done differently or what I should do next.
Let's go back to the beginning of your career. Did graduating from Harvard Business School get you your first job?
No. I took a relatively unusual job for a business school graduate: I went to work for the administration of [then New York mayor] John Lindsay. Most people were heading off to consulting or finance, and here I was bringing a business school focus to the public sector. I was very interested in the environment, and they'd promised me a job in the Bureau of the Budget, funding environmental programs. Well, I showed up for work the first day and they said, "Oh, we've reorganized. The job we promised you is gone, but you'll have a chance to work in a related area-the Fire Department."
What was your reaction?
I went home and told my wife I got screwed. But it turned out to lead to some of the most important developmental opportunities I've ever had. And I learned that all this "careful planning" is nonsense-you make opportunities of whatever circumstance brings you. And it turned out that worrying about the Fire Department was equally exciting: I was taking a huge sort of paramilitary organization and improving its effectiveness. It also gave me an incredible amount of power and authority for a kid right out of school. Of course, I didn't know any better; I thought I deserved it.
Would you counsel a young B-school graduate to enter public service?
I would say that the challenge for the private sector is to make sure that it provides recent MBAs with those kinds of experiences. After a couple of years in city government, I went to work for Chemical Bank. When asked to make a presentation to the chairman, I wasn't intimidated, because I'd had to make presentations to the mayor of New York. And I spoke to the chairman not without respect but with authority and confidence, and I was treated the same way in return-not as an out-of-line young kid. I probably gained the equivalent of 10 years in my career because of the confidence and experience that I gained in two years of public service.
What, specifically, do you look for in an employee?
Passion. Work ethic. An ability to communicate. Self-motivation. Humility. If someone describes everything he's accomplished as singularly accomplished, that makes me a little suspicious of his ability to share credit and motivate others.
What mistakes do executives make that dampen employee morale?
They talk too much. They don't listen enough. Listening is very important. People want to be heard; they want to know you're listening. It's not enough to listen a little bit. You have to be a demonstrative listener. I spend time letting people know they have access to me.
Did Western Union's long-established brand hinder attempts to position it as a technological leader?
There are two answers to that, and both of them are no. First of all, it is not an old brand. It is an old brand in the United States. It's amazing how well it's carried on and evolved. But 10 years ago, the brand meant zilch in every other country in the world except possibly Canada and Mexico, and then some brilliant marketers began developing the international network-distribution, operations, a marketing presence. And they took the brand from zero to where it is today: in more than 185 countries and territories. Now, the other part of the question is that in the U.S. it is an old brand. It's 150 years old. And we do constant testing and evaluation to find out how people feel about it. How does it work in an Internet era? People tell us it stands for reliability; it stands for trust; it stands for speed, for convenience, for value.
So what are the challenges of opening shop in, say, Senegal?
It's not enough to just acquire another location in Senegal and create brand awareness and make sure the quality of service is good. It also means reaching out to the Senegalese community in Paris so that they're now aware of the availability of the service. It may mean persuading an agent in Paris to open a new location in the right neighborhood. It may mean carefully sponsoring an event around a holiday that's important to that community. It may mean stepping in with an earthquake gift or something else that lets the communities in all the diaspora countries know about Western Union's involvement.
Last year, hackers accessed more than 15,000 of Western Union's clients' credit card numbers. What was your strategy for restoring consumer confidence?
The hackers posed an interesting dilemma. We got taken hostage early on, when we had almost no customers on the Web site. The hackers said, "We have credit card information, but if you hire us, we won't reveal it or embarrass you about it." Our customers couldn't lose any money, because of the way the credit card systems work, so it wouldn't have led to loss; but it could have led to embarrassment. We had long conversations with the credit card companies and among ourselves about how to deal with these guys. Should we disclose the problem? Should we simply pay them? We decided because of our values, and the trust that we wanted to maintain with our customers, that it was more important to come clean and inform them right away that their information had been compromised and that we wanted to stand behind them. It turns out that no one lost any money or even had their credit cards used. After that, the company beefed up its security equipment and software tremendously.
Any heroes you try to emulate?
One is Winston Churchill. But there is a more serious answer. And again, this is advice I'd give to MBAs. Maybe it's because for years I was younger than many of my subordinates, but I have learned a hell of a lot more about managing and leadership from my subordinates than from my superiors. If somebody's your marketing champion, you'll learn a lot about marketing from him-if you're open to it. The fact is that in every job, I've had 8 to 12 subordinates and just one boss. So when you ask me if there's somebody I model myself on or hold out as a role model, it's a composite; I'm still striving to be as good as many of my former subordinates at one thing or another. I believe that people who are trying to ape their boss are looking in the wrong direction.
