I had an unexpected and delightful surprise today when I learned that our guest speaker for our Strategic Thinking Program was Mr. John Grier, the Managing Director and Group Head of Citigroup’s Global Transportation Investment Banking program. Mr. Grier spoke to my class of 269 first year MBA students at Cornell about the value of thinking strategically in the business world and what he considers to be a common set of attributes found across successful business leaders. He drew upon his experiences working with many of the airline industry’s leading figures. It was a brief speech but one that I very much enjoyed. I would have liked to speak to Mr. Grier briefly after his speech, but putting an Investment Banker in front of business school students is kind of like putting a piece of red meat into the lion’s den. The wannabe IB’s swarmed quickly and, seeing as I have no interest in IB myself, I decided to extract myself instead. Regardless, I am pleased that I got the opportunity to listen to him speak.