TONIGHT

• Home
• Video
• Podcasts/RSS 
• Local Showtimes
• Past Shows
• Blogs
• About the Show
• Tell Tavis
• Features
• Mobile

RELATED LINKS

• "Women Making Moves"
• About Expect To Win
• Ms. Harris' bio

E-mail a friend

Wall Street executive talks about seizing the opportunities that come with being laid off. (2:14)
 

Full interview. (13:43)
 

Tavis: We continue our "Road to Wealth" series tonight with some sound advice for dealing with this difficult economy. Carla Harris is the managing director in the strategic client group at Morgan Stanley who was named on "Fortune" magazine's most influential list back in 2005. Her timely new book is called "Expect to Win: Proven Strategies for Success from a Wall Street Vet." Carla, nice to have you on the program.

Carla Harris: Thank you very much, Tavis. Nice to be here.

Tavis: I'm glad to have you. I guess the obvious question for me is whether or not what you wrote before this - I know how this book stuff works. You had to write this before this hit to get it out right about now, so anything you want to take back?

Harris: Nothing I'd want to take back. These are timeless pearls, yes.

Tavis: What do you make - as a Wall Street veteran, as the title suggests, what do you make of what we're enduring right about now?

Harris: Well, this is a tough time that we're going through now, but after having been on the street for 21 years, Tavis, I'll tell you I've seen a version of this movie before. We saw it in '87 when the market crashed over 500 points. Everyone said, haven't seen this since 1929.

Then we saw it again in 1991 on the back of the Gulf War. We saw it again in '94 when we had a bit of a recession. We saw it again in '97 and '98 with the Russia crisis, obviously, and the demise of long-term capital. We saw it again in 2001 with what happened with 9/11, and we saw it in 2004 with the recession that we had then. And here we are in 2007, 2008, 2009.

Now, I will admit this is a bit more intense than those periods, but every time we came out and we came out in a more robust fashion than when we went into these periods. And I believe we're going to come out of this one just fine.

Tavis: And you believe that why?

Harris: Well, as I said, I'm a student of history and I've looked at what has gone on before. And we are now having conversations that one could argue that maybe we should have had before, number one; number two, I think that a lot of the changes that the government and I'd say the stimulus that they put in place broadly - not just the economic stimulus but what we're trying to do with Wall Street, what we're trying to do with the banks in order to get people lending again, to restore credit.

Those things were important, frankly, with respect to restoring the confidence and obviously trying to mitigate some of the fear that really took over Wall Street in the third and fourth quarter. Half of what you saw going on with the market was truly technical, but half of it, frankly, was perception - the uncertainty, the surprise, the fear, the lack of confidence.

And so once you start to make actions to mitigate some of that, then you start to get some stability back in the market. I'm not telling you that we're going back to a 13 or 14,000 Dow right away, but I do think we're on our way to moving back to stability.

Tavis: Is it easy to admit these days that you are a Wall Street vet? It's on the cover of your book, it's kind of hard for you to deny, but I'm not sure that's a badge of honor to be walking around saying, "I'm a Wall Street vet" these days.

Harris: Yeah - I am who I am, so it wasn't about being a badge of honor, frankly, putting it on the book or not. That is who I am, and frankly, the book is not targeted to people just in financial services. The book I think is applicable no matter what your industry vertical is. These are the things that you should know in order to be successful. I don't care whether you're in television communications, radio communications, medicine, academia.

The things that you don't necessarily learn in college, you don't learn in graduate school, and generally, when you walk into almost any corporate environment, people don't tell you.

So I've put together these pearls because these are lessons that I've learned the hard way. They are hard-earned and hard-learned pearls, and I wanted to be able to share them with other people so that hopefully they could catapult or motivate their career.

Tavis: There are two questions I want to ask that have to do with the cover of the book specifically and about the subtitle. Jonathan, put that cover back up for me, if you can. You see the cover of the book there - Carla keeps referencing pearls, indeed there are pearls. And one looks at this and one gets the sense, at least, this is a woman's business suit - a very nice woman's business suit - with a string of pearls that she, presumably, is wearing.

I raise that because I wonder whether or not the strategies - this may sound silly - are the strategies for success, you think, different, is the game different for women these days than for men? As different as it used to be?

Harris: Well first of all I think the game is slightly different for women, and I think there are certain things that women have to be particularly careful of that maybe men don't have to worry about as much. But the pearls actually come from the fact that I used to give and I still do give speeches called Carla's Pearls. And the publisher didn't want to call the book "Carla's Pearls," and I actually like the title, "Expect to Win," even more.

But I wanted to have some type of recognition on the cover for all those people who had heard me talk about Carla's Pearls. I wanted them, when they saw the book, to say, "Oh, this is the pearl lady. Okay, this is the book that I've been waiting for." Because I've gotten a lot of requests for the book.

But to get to your point about the difference between men and women, there are certain things - for example, chapter seven I think I talk about leveraging your voice. And I think that women have to be more conscious about making sure that they are heard in the work environment than men. I think it's a little bit more natural for men to talk about their expectations and what they want in their career and what they expect to get paid, and I think women have to think about that more.

So there are marginal differences that I think you would underscore if you were thinking about or approaching this book as a woman versus as a man, but it is targeted, make no mistake, to both sexes.

Tavis: You're not just a woman, you're a Black woman. One sees that, obviously, looking at you, and you've been very successful on Wall Street. Black people, brown people, people of color always seem to catch more hell during a down time - you know the old adage; when White America gets a cold, Black America gets pneumonia.

We know, and President Obama himself has said this, that he understands, even that people of color - not that many White Americans are not in a very difficult spot right now, but the numbers are pretty clear that when people of color, who are too often already on the bottom run, find themselves in a recession, they get hit even harder. As an African American woman, your thoughts about that?

Harris: Well, I'll tell you, I do agree that depending on where you start out when we go into this recession, you're likely to be hit harder. But I think in this time, with the recession that we're all dealing with, we're all dealing with a pretty tough period. And I think whether you're a man or a woman, whether you're Black or White, the challenges are the same right now.

Tavis: There are many things you talk about in the book, and you referenced a few of them. One of them is you - and I'm paraphrasing here - you tell people not to compete against other people, to stay focused on what they're doing, and yet, again, we live in a world where everything is about competition with someone else - at least, so we're told.

Harris: Right. Well, I'll tell you, the point there is to make sure that you are the architect of your own agenda, because only you know the sacrifices that you are willing to make for your career. And too often we get caught up comparing ourselves to someone else, and if you're always comparing yourself to someone else, you make them your report card. They are not you, you are not them, and you will find yourself getting distracted and off the mark with what's important for you in terms of your career.

Now, I do say in the book you should look at others with respect to a guide. So for example, if you're in an environment where people are getting promoted four years to vice president or five years to vice president and you're in your fourth or fifth year, you might want to check it to make sure that you're on track generally with what's accepted in that environment.

But again, if Tavis gets promoted at the third year because he was willing to go to Asia and uproot his family and take that risk and that risk worked out for him, you can't say, "Oh, why did he get promoted in three years and it's going to take me four to five years?" He made a sacrifice that perhaps you weren't willing to make.

And so if you get all caught up in comparing yourself to that, again, not knowing what others are willing to do for their career, again, you can become distracted and you need to stay focused on your game.

Tavis: To your earlier point, how does one go about creating not just a perception but the right kind of perception, whatever that is, of him or herself in the marketplace in the industry?

Harris: Thank you very much for asking me that question, because that was the single most important lesson that I have learned after being a woman on the street for 20 years. First of all, think of three adjectives that you want people to use to describe you when you are not in the room. And the reason I said when you are not in the room? Because all of the important decisions about your career will be made when you're not in the room - compensation decisions will be made when you're not in the room, promotion decisions will be made when you're not in the room, and new assignment decisions will be made when you're not in the room.

So pick the three adjectives that you want them to use to describe you when you're not there. Now, those three adjectives should absolutely be consistent with who you really are, because as you know from chapter one I am a proponent of being your authentic self.

However, those three adjectives should also be consistent with what's valued in your organization, and if you don't know what's valued in your organization, think about what the company told you when they hired you. "We hired you because you are X," or if it's been a long time and you've forgotten that, then go to the company's website.

Because almost every company today describes itself and its values on its Website. You want to find where those three adjectives intersect, and that's how you should behave consistently over time if you want to train people to think of you in a certain way. And your adjectives will change over time from when you start out to when you become more seasoned in that career.

Tavis: How does one use this text, "Expect to Win," to discover whether or not one is in the right field doing the right thing in the first place?

Harris: Yes, I talk about that in the book as well. If you are not motivated every morning to jump out of bed and say, "I'm going to go for this and I'm really excited about it and I'm looking forward to doing well," number one. Number two, if the job is no longer fulfilling you from a skills perspective or an interest perspective and you're just not getting out of it what you'd like to get out of it, or it's now inconsistent with your agenda, that might be the time for you to think about moving because maybe you won't win in that environment.

If you are not motivated to give your best every day, then you need to ask yourself the question why. Is it a person that is stopping you from giving your all? Or is it the content of what you're doing day in and day out? And if it's the content, you should probably check whether or not that's the right seat for you.

Tavis: And so for the person who has been downsized, pink-slipped - I love all the phrases we use - basically laid off, fired - the message in this book for them is what?

Harris: The message in this book is that you can, in fact, win, and you should take the risk in this environment to go for it. A lot of people, Tavis, frankly, that might have been pink-slipped in this environment, that might have been the right call for them because a lot of times we don't have the courage to go out and do that which we really need to do, start that business, change that seat, change that company.

And we are sitting in a spot where we're under-utilizing ourselves, our gifts, our talents, and in fact if somebody taps you on the shoulder, that may be the wake-up call to say, go for it - you have absolutely nothing to lose. This is the environment where you should be taking risks internally and externally.

I have a lot of people say to me, "Oh, this is a tough environment, everybody's being laid off, I should be really careful right now. I should keep my head down." And that's the phrase everybody uses, which I hate, because frankly this is not the environment that you should be keeping your head down.

Keeping your head down will not keep you from getting shot. You should keep your head up so if nothing else, you can see the bullet coming. (Laughter) But more importantly if everybody else has their head down, then you have free rein to look at the terrain and figure out where you should go.

Now's the time when you should talk to your superiors and talk to them about the fact that you know what the company is going through, you understand the challenges, and oh, by the way, here is a thought - here's one of my solutions. You differentiate yourself just by saying that you understand what the company is dealing with and that you are actively thinking about what you can do to help.

You want to be a part of the solution. And if you were one of the ones, by the way, that did get the pink slip, don't walk away angry, upset. Be careful how you think about walking out. Most companies that are laying off are also simultaneously hiring, and just because you don't work in that area anymore doesn't mean that you can't apply your skills to another area within the firm.

Tavis: Great advice. That's why I wanted her on, and that's why she's got a new book out. It's called "Expect to Win: Proven Strategies for Success from a Wall Street Vet." Her name, Carla A. Harris, the pearl lady. Carla, nice to have you on. Congrats on the book.

Harris: And thank you very much, Tavis. Thanks for having me.

Tavis: It's my pleasure, my pleasure.