Lindner Alumni Spotlight - David I. Beatson, '71

I had a great learning experience at Lindner during my MBA program. In addition to being a full-time student, I also taught an undergraduate marketing class. Teaching certainly enabled me to enhance my marketing knowledge and understanding of the subject. After earning my undergraduate degree at Ohio State University, I was very impressed by my fellow students at Lindner who had participated in the UC co-op program. They were very well prepared for all of their business classes, having had some real-world experiences in Fortune 500 companies, like GE.

My best ideas have come from learning to listen intently. Whether speaking to customers, employees, vendors or investors, it is very important to understand the views and perspectives of the people in our conversations. Foundational marketing courses teach us to listen to our customers before determining how to approach them from a sales perspective, and listening and fully understanding their needs and requirements is a key to gaining new clients and customers. The same process applies to employees, vendors and investors. 

Another effective approach is to develop special services for various vertical industry customer segments. For the logistics and transportation industry, this includes providing special last-mile delivery services, temperature control transportation, garment-on-hanger service for the apparel industry, kitting and sequencing for the automotive industry, etc.  These solutions can accelerate growth of new customers while concurrently improving margins and creating stickiness in the relationships.

One key ingredient in this process was to establish a customer advisory board, whereby two times each year I invited a group of customers and prospective customers into the company for a day to discuss their current and prospective transportation and logistics requirements. This was a very effective method to ensure that we were responsive to the needs of our clients, and it enabled us to adjust our services accordingly. The sessions were well received and attended by our customer base.

Having an effective and positive workplace culture is an important ingredient to any company’s success. Employees need to have a feeling of being valuable members of the company team and feel they have a voice in how the company is being run. They need to sense that the management team is actively engaged in hearing from them and listening to their ideas. 

In each of the companies where I was CEO, I established an employee advisory board similar to the customer advisory board. I met two times each year with a group of employees from all sections and levels in the company to ensure that I knew what was on their minds. Conclusions were shared with all employees along with changes being made as a result of the input we received.

The MBA curriculum is well-rounded in that all students take finance, marketing, economics, accounting and more. In addition to making the most out of those classes, think about the functional area where you want to spend your career, and put emphasis on that area through your electives, project considerations or other possibilities for greater involvement. Work hard with passion and enthusiasm for your MBA experience.