Reprint: R1309B
Managing resource constraints, controlling health care costs, training the 21st-century workforce, implementing smart-grid technologies—challenges of this scope can’t be addressed unless government, business, and NGOs work together. But how? Such problems need solutions designed and implemented by what the Kennedy School professor Joseph Nye has called “tri-sector athletes”—people who can bridge the vastly different cultures of the three sectors. Bill Gates is one, and so are Sheryl Sandberg, Bob Hormats, and Hank Paulson. But these leaders are a rare breed, the authors found, at once pragmatic and idealistic. Motivated by a strong sense of mission, they forge uniquely effective career paths by applying their widening range of cross-sector skills, sensitivity to context, open-mindedness, and powerful networks to some of the world’s most intractable problems.
To encourage more people to follow in their footsteps, the authors suggest how academia, government agencies, and private enterprise can do more to overcome systemic barriers, which include the obstacles presented to those in the private sector by the arduous and seemingly capricious government confirmation process; the level of transparency and public scrutiny that public service entails; the tremendous and growing disparity of pay between the private sector and both government and public service; and the sheer difficulty of hearing about cross-sector career opportunities. Aspiring leaders need both an intellectual foundation and practical pathways that will give them tri-sector experience throughout their careers without slowing their forward momentum.
A decade ago Coca-Cola faced a major crisis in South India. The government and several NGOs objected so strongly to its water consumption that it was banned from soft-drink production in the region. The company uses water not just in the drink itself but also in the manufacturing process. Making a liter of Coke consumed more than three liters of water.
HBR Learning
