McKinsey's Vik Malhotra Shares Leadership Lessons & Consulting Career Advice

Well, thank you so much, Vice President Lamberton. Vic, it's an absolute honor to have you here with us. We genuinely really appreciate it. You've served as chairman of America's at McKinsey, a co-author of two bestseller books, CEO accidents, followed by a CEO for all seasons and most importantly, a dedicated, distinguished Wharton alumni, having served as chair of the Wharton Graduate Executive Board and currently a Wharton board advisor. So welcome and thank you. Thank you. Thank you for having me. First, to start us off, could you share a quick glimpse of your early life growing up in India and Cyprus? How did those experiences shape who you are today? I did grow up in India. I was I was born in India, spent my first 16 years in India. My father was worked for the Shell Oil Company. So we moved every, you know, two years or so. In fact, I just counted it up by the age of 11. I'd gone to five different schools, which, you know, by the age of 11 is quite a lot of schools to have gone to. I then went to boarding school in North India for five years at this really tough minded place was if there any any Brits out there was kind of modeled on the old British system of, you know, make it really hard and difficult for people. It'll build character. So it kind of went through that experience. And then the school by grade 11, kind of that that's back in the day. This is back in the in the 70s, way before any of you were around. You you sort of ran 11th graders as far as it went. So I then my father was in Cyprus. My parents were in Cyprus. I went there for two years of schooling before going to the London School of Economics in the UK. So that was the journey. And, you know, if I if I kind of think back to that time, it was some some some interesting learnings. I learned resilience, you know, when you're moving around a lot and you're having to kind of go to new schools a lot. You learn a lot of resilience. I learned a lot about friendships, making new friends quickly. And that actually has helped me in my life over time, just building friends over time, making friends with my clients. I think of my CEOs that I counsel as my clients. I don't I don't so I don't think of them as my clients. I think of them as my friends. So I learned a lot about friendships and building friendships. I learned a lot about teamwork. You know, in some of these some of these situations, I just had to kind of team with people to really make good things happen. And, you know, the school used to send us out when we were 13 years old on 10 day treks without any supervision. And, you know, you got to work as a team of 10 of you kind of survive for 10 days out there in the Himalayas up at 16000 feet. You know, it was it was an interesting moment. So I learned a lot there. But there was one pivotal moment in my in that early childhood thing, which I just didn't want to call out. Unlike Mohamed, who has a stellar resume, right? We heard we had Dean talk about his resume. I am not very smart. And I was really a bad student and I didn't focus a lot. And honestly, I was lazy. And my second year at the London School of Economics, I failed. I didn't fail a course. I failed the year. Right. As in, like, let's repeat the year now. So I'm sitting back in Cyprus having a grand old time in the summer. The report card shows up. I failed. My dad takes me into a room. I'm thinking I'm going to get the proverbial tongue lashing. And actually, I remember this conversation like it was yesterday. But he sat me down very calmly. He talked about the importance of hard work and how that could end up defining you down the road. And he talked about the importance of judgment. I still remember this little quote from him, which is, he said, you know, 20 seconds of bad judgment can change your life. All right. And he talked about the importance of thinking things through and kind of taking responsibility for your actions. He did all in a very calm way. He never really talked about me failing this year. But I remember that conversation like it was yesterday. And I completely changed my behavior going forward. So sorry, long winded answer to your short question. But there you have it. That's incredibly inspiring, though. From the five schools in LSE, because now you've spent over 39 years at McKinsey and are the firm's longest tenured senior partner. Looking back from joining right after your Wharton MBA, could you walk us through that journey and share perhaps the key lessons or takeaways along that pathway, whether it's with your career or the firm more broadly? Yeah. So before we get to the journey of McKinsey, I do have to credit Wharton, right? Wharton completely changed my life. I was a boring accountant. Again, do apologies to anyone who's off to pursue of accounting thing or so on. And it was, by the way, great training. But I did need the pivot. Wharton allowed me to do that pivot. I also met my amazing wife here, who to whom I've been married 37 years and have three children with. So I owe a ton to Wharton. I owe a ton to Wharton. I got to McKinsey and I kind of think about my time at McKinsey. I've been there 39 years. Next year, I'll be 40. I think we can all agree that's enough. And it probably is time to call it a day at 40. But I kind of think about it as three chapters. There was probably that first 15 years, which was about building the core skills of being a good advisor, a great consultant, a great counselor. And so I kind of think about that first part of it is that first 15 years. I think of the next 15 to 20 years as two pieces to it. One was really building my counseling skills with CEOs and senior teams and really helping them on their journeys while also leading within McKinsey. I was fortunate enough to lead the Americas, which is about half of McKinsey. I sat on our board for 12 years. I had a lot of fun chairing the committee for five years that evaluates and compensates our senior partners. You can imagine I'm either your best friend or you hate me. But that was that was a lot of fun. So, you know, there was a lot of great leadership opportunities as well as continuing to do what I do. And then I think of this last chapter at McKinsey as really being about indulging what to me has always been a real passion, which is leadership. What does it really mean to lead big, complex organizations? What does it mean to be great CEOs? And that's where the two books have come out. But I've also obviously continued to counsel CEOs and talk to a lot of people out there about this. And so that's been the journey. And the lessons, I think when you kind of think about the world of the corporate world, I think the lessons are the following for me. One. Strategic strategy and portfolio choices really matter. All right. I will tell you, you look back at GE. It was a great execution company at one point in the 90s, the most valuable company in the world. And it absolutely made the wrong choices in terms of its strategy and its portfolio. And till Larry Culp came, came around in 2018 and salvaged it. It was really headed nowhere. Right. So you make you if you don't make the right strategic and portfolio choices. To me, that's a big deal. Leadership is a big deal. Having the difference between a great CEO and a not so great CEO, I've learned over my 39 years at McKinsey or great leadership team and not so great leadership team, huge difference. Talent, talent really matters. One of the big questions I ask every great CEO I talk to is, what's your single biggest regret? And nine out of 10 of them say my single biggest regret is I didn't move fast enough on talent. Everyone's got a little bit of a different story, but talent is a real differentiator. Right. And and and and and teamwork. Right. Really kind of making sure you get great leadership teams together makes a huge difference. So those are some of those lessons and then some of my personal lessons. And this won't be true for all of you. It was true for me is as I went through my journey, you know, I kind of learned a lot of things about myself. Right. It mattered to me to work in things where I could make a difference, where I could have impact. You know, frankly, yes, the compensation was great, but the money was not as important as the journey and the impact and being able to make a difference. I also learned about myself that I love working with really great, talented people. You know, I observe a lot of companies where you work with a range of people, some talented, some not so talented. And, you know, I really love the fact that at McKinsey, I got to work with unbelievably talented people for 39 years. Right. That energizes me every day. And then perhaps the most important lesson I learned, which I would just urge you all to think about is I learned the importance of great mentorship and sponsorship. I was really, really fortunate in my early years at McKinsey to have unbelievable mentors and sponsors. I still remember there's this moment about four years in where I was rated issues. We have this rating system at McKinsey. It's the case of death. You get rated issues. You may as well leave. But this amazing senior partner came along and said, listen, you're worth salvaging. You need to be taught a lesson for some of the stuff you haven't done well. But he really helped kind of rejuvenate me and move me along. When I was getting elected a partner, I was put up to the election committee three times and three times they said, no, you're the wrong person. And I again had a committed group of mentors who somehow got me over the line. And to me, those moments of truth where mentors and sponsors have really stood up for you has been great, and I always try and pay it forward. And so if I were to give you all one message out of all of that is seek them out early in your career, right? Find build relationships, usually through work. Find those mentors, find those sponsors and, you know, get those people to advise you and help you and and guide you as you as you go through this journey. It's remarkable because it's so important to find those mentors and, of course, be resilient. Yeah, I know backstage we were chatting about this, but a pivotal moment during your McKinsey tenure was the decision to co-author CEO Excellence, which followed most recently a CEO for all seasons, which is off to a tremendous start. Could you take us back to the annual leadership forum and share how that retreat became the catalyst for your books? So what Mohammed's referring to is we run these annual leadership retreats and they're for kind of next gen CEOs. Right. So people we're working with are clients who we think could be the next CEO. We bring them in and the idea is to kind of give them a glimpse into what being a CEO might entail. Right. And obviously, as part of this forum, we invite. Current CEOs and former CEOs to come speak to this group. And my two co-authors and I for the CEO Excellence book, you know, we remember sitting around and there's one CEO came in and said, it's all about strategy, right? If you don't get your strategy right, you know, it's not going to work. There's another CEO came in and said, you know, execution, you know, execution, that's all it's about. And you've got to create a culture of execution. And that's what it's going to do. And there was another CEO that came and came on and said, you know, you've got to be the most savvy, you know, globalist around. You kind of got to understand all the trends in the world. Right. And there was like very little commonality. And we said, like with all the all these great CEOs out there, they've surely got to have something in common. And this is what really led us to saying, OK, let's really identify. And went through this methodology where we looked at 5000 CEOs. We culled them down to 200 based on tenure and performance and recognition and other criteria and said, OK, is there something in common with these 200 that we can really, you know, pull out and observe as is truly hallmarks of great CEOs? That's that's the journey. That's what kind of got us off on this journey of writing this book on CEO excellence. Amazing. And from the retreat really emerged that question of what does a CEO really do? And you distill this down into six major responsibilities. But honestly, in today's AI driven, geopolitically volatile environment, which one of those responsibilities do you think demands the greatest attention from leaders and why? Yeah. Well, you know, I'm glad you you actually talk about AI and geopolitics. I'm going to digress a little bit to about four years ago. This is before the latest AI wave and Gen AI and everything. I'm doing one of these fireside chats because I'm in your role. And Ian Davis, who's a former managing partner, is in my role. And, you know, this is a man who's gone on to greatness beyond McKinsey. After he left board of J&J, board of BP, executive chair of Rolls-Royce. And so I'm like, Ian, you know, tell me, what are the five five or six trends that are really shaping the world? And and he looked at me and said, young man, I'm in my mid 60s. OK, so but Ian's a little older than me, so he can call me a young man. He goes, young man, you know. You're asking the wrong question, because there are really only two trends that matter. And I said, really? He says, yes, there's one very positive trend. It has its downsides, but maybe a positive trend, which is tech. Tech has been revolutionizing businesses for the last 50 years, and it is going to only accelerate making every company a tech company, no matter what you're in. Right. And he said, and then there's this huge negative trend. And that negative trend is geopolitics. So I'm kudos to you to pick on those two, because Ian would sit here and say four years ago, that's what I told Nick. You know, those are the two trends that matter. And you're right in those those two trends are huge. But I got to tell you, the six responsibilities you talk about, which we turned into six mindsets, which actually we cheated a little because in each one of the mindsets that are in the responsibilities, there are three subsets. So there are really 18 of them out there as we cheated a little. Many of those met those those lessons are timeless. I don't care whether tech's enabling the whole world. I don't care. Geopolitics is moving us from a global world to a multipolar world. Those messages are very timeless. So I'm going to pick on five of them, not the six, but of the 18. I'm going to pick on five and tell you why I think that those five, if anything, are the really big ones. Right. So the first is as a leader, no matter what you're leading, do you really have a bold vision around where you want to go? It will eventually translate into strategy and portfolio actions. But do you really have bold vision, especially in a world which is going the way it is? A bold vision and an agile vision. Right. So that you you move and you you work with stuff. And this was brought home to me by Ajay Banga. Ajay Banga was the CEO of MasterCard from 2011 to 2018. He took the company from 17 billion in market cap in eight years to 325 billion. Just think about that. 17 to 325 in eight years. Right. And we're not talking about Microsoft and NVIDIA, NVIDIA, I should say. But here we are. MasterCard goes from 17 to 325 billion. Ajay boiled his vision down to two words, and his two words were kill cash. Right. Now, 2011, there was a lot of cash use. I know we don't use cash much anymore, but that's the kind of visionary stuff that people come up with. And then they stick with it and they get their organization to evolve to it. So whether tech's enabling stuff or geopolitics having you can work all through all of that to get to that. The second big one is resource allocation. Right. And by that, I mean capital dollars, expense dollars and talent. Right. And I'll never forget what Jamie Dimon at J.P. Moment said to me when I interviewed him, he said, Vic, you can have as bold a vision as you want, as bold a vision as you want. But if you don't put your money where your mouth is, if you really don't take all of your resources, zero sum game. And he says the problem with corporate world is we spread our resources like peanut butter. Right. And unless you're willing to take your capital and your expense dollars and your best talent put against your biggest priorities and starve other things, you're not going to succeed. And I think in an AI world and geopolitical world, are you agile about all of that resource allocation? Big deal. Right. Talent is a big deal. I talked about that earlier. That's that's the other big deal. Even more of a premium in an AI and a geopolitical world. Teamwork. Marilyn Hewson at Lockheed Martin. She said to me, she said, too often we worry about creating a star team, getting the very best people into every role, but often they don't work well together. How many sports teams have you all supported that have flunked? They may be full of stars, but they don't do well. Right. And she said it is not about a team of stars. It is about a star team. And how do you build a star team and a star team is even more important in an AI and the kind of world that we live in. And then finally, are you building an agile and fast moving culture which you really do need in this? Those are those are the five that I think in this world will make a huge difference. That's incredibly insightful. And let's shift from your first book to your second book, a CEO for all seasons, where you take this to the next level. Really a breakdown is CEO's role across these four distinct seasons from stepping up and starting strong to staying ahead and sending it forward. But as you look towards, let's say, the next decade of leadership, which your book touches on, which of these seasons do you believe will be the most challenging to navigate? And what do you mean when future CEOs should avoid the trap of the generational exceptionalism fallacy? See, Mohammed really wants me to pick things, right? He wants me to pick among my it's like picking your favorite child. You know, you've got all these different seasons. You've got to pick one. I suppose if I was going to pick one, I would pick the season off. You know, what do you have to do to stay ahead? Right. Season three, staying ahead. And the reason I say this is, you know, if you look at CEOs out there, a third of them are gone in the first three years. They just come in. They're not they don't haven't really got a donor. I'm not the right kind of people. They've gone. Right. But two thirds of them actually start pretty strong. Right. They start out well. They do great things in their first two, three, four years. Right. But for many of them, maybe even most of them, they plateau. Right. And therefore, you know, going beyond that first part of being a CEO and into that staying ahead mode, what are the things you need to do to really stay ahead? I think that is going to be critical. I worry less about CEOs starting out strong. And I think the real issue is, can they go forward? Well, right. And, you know, the five things I kind of took away from this whole season look at CEOs across time was number one, avoid that sophomore slump. Right. And you do see the sophomore slump come in and the data supports it. Right. The very best don't have a sophomore slump. Most have a sophomore slump. Right. That's a big deal. The second the second thing I take away is transitions matter, whether it is transitions as you kind of prepare yourself to be a leader or become a leader or into this transition of staying ahead or into succession planning or leaving, leaving the company. You can destroy a lot of value in transitions. Right. And you can create a lot of value in transition. So you've got to get that right. The third thing is it is amazing to me how many CEOs in different parts of their journeys have blind spots. Right. So CEOs early in their journey have blind spots around the board. Right. They think, oh, we can manage a board. Well, wake up. Right. The reality is the board manages you. Right. They are your boss. Right. And that's often a blind spot for a new CEO in this in this chapter. I'm talking about the blind spot is often, you know, I've done great for the last three or four years. Now you start believing in your own greatness. Right. Hubris kicks in. You kind of think, I know it all. These strategies have succeeded. Why won't this succeed going forward? Well, the world's evolving and changing and moving rapidly. As Arvind Krishna at IBM said to me, he said, you know, people get comfortable. And the reality is the world's just shifting too quickly. And, you know, strategies need to evolve. And that that needs to happen. The fourth thing that you you lose often in this in this moment of switching over is a learning mindset. Right. You know, one of the things that great leaders always do is no matter where they are in their journey, they keep a learning mindset. They're going out externally. They're learning from other companies. They're learning from other institutions and learning from within. And so kind of keeping that learning mindset is is a big deal. And the final thing that I think makes the great different in this era is they really do follow the principles of what I call servant leadership. I don't know if any of you have ever read the writings of Robert Greenleaf. Back in 1970, he wrote this essay called The Servant as a Leader. It's the most boring essay in the world. So don't rush out and read it. It's really a boring essay. But the core tenets of what he talks about, which is great leaders have, you know, real foresight and real perspective. But they're also great listeners. They also really realize that the company is more important than them. They look to making others successful. Those are the kinds of things you see these leaders exercising through this. Awesome. Shifting from the outcome to the process. Now that you're in a similar position as us when you did your work in MBA. But for us, undergrads, MBA students, we have some exposure to interviewing, whether that's through clubs, junior summer internships or even full time roles. But when you were interviewing your CEOs, you had a more distinct approach called laddering. What does laddering really entail? And can you share an interview where it perhaps meaningfully changed the insight you were able to draw? Laddering is just a fancy term. Honestly, I think my co-authors came up with this whole thing. I mean, it's a real concept. And they're much better at following the approach. But basically, for those of you who don't know what laddering is, it's you come up with a set of structured questions. But then as you dig into each question, you ask a lot of why questions. Why do you do that? Well, why do you do that? As long as you keep answering, keep saying why, why, why, why, why? And you're trying to get deeper and deeper and deeper down an issue. It works. I'm not that disciplined, so I jump around all over the place when I do my interviews. But I don't know if this interview I'm about to highlight would have been any different, whether we followed a non-laddering approach versus a laddering approach. But without a doubt, without a doubt of the 200 interviews I did across the two books with truly exceptional CEOs, the one interview that really stands out, and forgive me if anyone I interviewed is offended by this, but the interview with Satya Nadella at Microsoft was unbelievable. I mean, I think he's a once in a generation leader. And just the way he thinks and the way he highlights things was remarkable. And there were four things that he said and kind of highlighted that really, really stuck out to me. The first was obviously kind of his responsibility as the leader to really get the portfolio and the strategy right. And many of you are probably too young to remember this, but when he took over Microsoft in 2014, it was a dividend stock company, right? It had gone through 10 years where its market cap had declined by 20%, right? From 2004 to 2014, it was cheap, right? I mean, it essentially declined by 20% in value. And all it did was it was because it had one product, it was just throwing off cash, right? It was a dividend stock. And he turned it around into a growth company by some exceptional choices, which he continues to make to this day, right? I mean, it is now worth whatever it is. Am I right? Five trillion, something like that? I mean, it is remarkable kind of what he does from a strategy and vision point of view. And so he views himself as kind of the head of strategy and the head of kind of portfolio, right? And that was amazing. He is so articulate on this topic of resource allocation, right? I've used Jamie Dimon as the example, but I could easily use Satya Nadella. Just very crystal clear on this topic of, my job as a CEO is to make sure that my capital dollars, my expense dollars, my talent go against our very best, most important priorities. And let's not spread stuff like peanut butter. And then the things he did and the way he talks about how he shaped culture at Microsoft is truly remarkable, right? And he moved Microsoft from, these are not his words, these are my words, from a know-it-all culture to a learning culture, what he ended up calling a growth mindset. And to do that, he had to kind of really change the way people thought about collaborating, about coming together around a customer, about growth initiatives and the like. And then finally, I'm really impressed by the way that he is a continuous learner. One of the things he opened up was his calendar. And when you look at his calendar, he spends 20% of his time with customers. And he said to me, I don't view myself as a salesperson. I'm not out there with customers to sell them stuff. I view myself as the chief learning officer of Microsoft, right? I'm here to learn so I can take these insights back into the organization. So that was a remarkable interview. I don't know whether the laddering got me there or not, but there were just some amazing insights out of that interview. Amazing to hear. Transiting that lens from CEOs to consultants at your firm, how has your definition of what makes a great consultant changed over time, especially with data becoming so much more pervasive in the workforce? Yeah. Look, I think there are some things that are timeless in terms of what makes a great consultant, for any of you interested in ever being one. I think you've got to have, number one, a base level of problem-solving skills. And I distinguish problem-solving for any of you bankers out there, including you. Kind of running spreadsheets and crunching data and all of that, that's all well and good. Problem-solving to me is, we've got a big thorny nebulous issue. How do you really kind of break it down into what are the hypotheses, what are the key issues, what are we solving for, what might be some ideas, what do we really go analyze, and then some recommendations that come out of it. So there's some base problem-solving is a kind of, you know, just I think a needed piece. Teamwork's critical in consulting. You've got to, we all work as teams, so teamwork is essential. Leadership, right? You know, we need people who can lead. And then the other timeless piece is your ability as a consultant to be a counselor, right? Often as a 23-year-old, as a, you know, if you've gone through the MBA program here as a 29, 30-year-old, you're working with people who are 20, 30 years older than you. You're counseling them, you're advising them, right? How do you actually interact and work with them as a peer? So I think those are the timeless things. I think in this new world that we're in, I would say relative to certainly when I started, but particularly true today, knowledge and capability matter, right? I mean, our clients pay us because people know something about something, so you've got to know things. I think agility matters, your point around, you know, how quickly the world's moving. You know, your ability not just to be a problem solver, but an agile problem solver matters. I think the ability in this complicated world to even integrate more, right? As I said, I was in Silicon Valley in a immersion session, so I visited with NVIDIA and Google and Amazon and Microsoft and Salesforce and Stripe and others. It was interesting talking to all of them because they're still at their heart in terms of what they do, despite everything going on with Agentic and all of that stuff. They're still product companies. They build product and capabilities. And my clients, on the other hand, at McKinsey are, they're customer-centric, right? They've got to go deal with their customers. They've got to do things they do with customers. And I think there's become an increasing role for us to be that bridge between, there's all this capability out here and yet we've got to run a business that's very different than what this capability can do. And how do we really integrate across them? And I think that integration is a core new skill in this fast-paced, analytical, tech-based world that's emerged. And then finally, I still think, superior counseling to CEOs and senior most leaders is a critical thing. It's a critical thing. So building on that, on a more personal note, as the then Chairman of Americas at McKinsey, how has your approach to leadership, whether it's in client work or board positions, evolved, especially with, if there are any particular shifts in cadence or decision-making on that journey? Yeah, look, I think, ever since I did all this research, I've actually, both in conducting myself as a leader and both in counseling my clients, there are certain things that I had not put as much emphasis on that I'm putting more emphasis on. So the first is I do think that there's a real premium on our first mindset in this, in the book on CEO excellence, which is be bold, right? I think the world is moving too quickly and too rapidly for incrementalism. As one CEO said to me, if you're incremental and your company's doing well, you've got two years. If your company's doing poorly, you've got two months, right? You be incremental and you're not going to go anywhere. The world's just moving too fast. The world is moving way too fast. And so I keep pushing my clients, I keep pushing myself as a leader around, am I being bold enough? Am I really being aggressive enough? Am I being visionary enough? I think that's super critical in today's world. The second big learning for me is back to talents, talented people, but having great leadership teams, right? And how do you really, as a leader, whether within McKinsey or as I'm counseling my clients, are you really bringing the best team together, right? People make way too many compromises. It is so easy to punt things down the way. One of the hardest things around leadership is actually, I've actually done, I talked about CEOs doing great in their first three years. I've done great in my first three years and Jill and Joe were fantastic on their journey. I know they're not the right people to lead for the next three years, but boy, they've been great. Don't they deserve my loyalty? In today's world, unfortunately sometimes you've got to make those tough choices. And so teamwork to me and having great teams is critical. And then I think you've got to have a personally fulfilling and agile model, right? And what do I mean by that? I think one of the things I've learned is the importance of listening skills. Early in my career and even when I looked at my clients, I would never counsel them enough on listen a little bit more, but I've learned that listening skills are absolutely critical. You know, as one CEO said to me, you have two ears and one mouth and use it in those proportions, right? Two ears and one mouth and use it in those proportions. Sorry, I've talked too much. So I'm clearly not following that advice, but that is a, you know, listening skills I think are critical. I think if you're going to be a great leader, what I've learned is managing both your time, but also importantly, managing your energy is critically important, right? Because how do you really bring your authentic best self forward if your energy is low, right? Then, you know, different leaders manage their energies in different ways. I had this one CEO who was a bit of an introvert and his take on energy management was he said, I can work 14 hours a day, but I can't be around people for 14 hours a day just kill me. So his assistant blocks two hours in the middle of the day so he can just be by himself and recharge and just be with his thoughts and go back into battle, right? So you got to know yourself and manage your energy pretty well. So I think those are some of the things that, you know, I would have told my younger self, you know, as you're advising your clients or as you're leading, be bolder, you know, focus more on building great teams, be a better listener, manage energy better, manage your time better. Those are some of the lessons. As you were mentioning, you spend years asking CEOs some of the toughest questions on leadership and purpose. For the undergrads and MPAs here, as we start to think about joining the workforce, what questions should we be asking as we begin our own journeys? What questions should you be asking as you begin your journey? Okay, so maybe three or four things. First, have you done a gut check on your motivations, right? Have you really done a gut check on your motivations? I don't know how many undergrads versus grads there are here. I spend a lot of time just giving my history at Wharton with the grad students. And I find sometimes that there, over the years, there's been a herd mentality. You know, when I was at Wharton, everyone was like, oh, we're going to go be a banker, right? I mean, that was a big thing, right? Everyone wanted to go to Goldman and Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank or whatever it was at the time. Then there was this herd mentality of I want to be a consultant. Today's herd mentality is all I want to be an entrepreneur, right? And you know what? Any one of those things is right for some people and not right for others, right? And so is there a real gut check on your motivation, right? What really fulfills you? What really excites you? What are you good at? What are you going to be good at? Don't just have the herd mentality. So I would say number one, gut check on your motivation. Number two, think hard about what fulfills you, what excites you, what's going to motivate you, what's going to give you joy, right? You forget life isn't just about, you know, either comp or, you know, getting to that next big position. What gives you joy, right? Think hard about that. And then third, whatever you do, I would say embrace it with real boldness and vision. The world's moving quickly, so you've got to embrace anything you do with boldness and vision. But don't pursue that boldness and vision with arrogance. How do you really pursue that boldness and vision? With humility and kindness and, you know, those other attributes that I think are so important. Because I think sometimes when you kind of, you know, want to go get it, sort of, you know, you're a bull in the China shop and you've got to learn how to navigate humanity, right? You know, people matter. People matter. That's a great way to finish off the moderator section. Can we give Vic another huge round of applause?