Dr. Sreenivas Koka, EMBA ’13: From Dentistry to Leadership Through Empathy and Impact

In this episode of Sloanies Talking with Sloanies, host Christopher Reichert, MOT ’04, interviews Dr. Sreenivas Koka, EMBA ’13, about how his multicultural upbringing and MIT Sloan experience transformed his approach to dentistry and leadership, emphasizing empathy and value-based care.

Starting his academic journey at 19 at the University of Michigan’s School of Dentistry, Koka earned multiple degrees, held roles like Chair of Dental Specialties at the Mayo Clinic and Dean at the University of Mississippi’s School of Dentistry, and founded the Koka Dental Clinic.

After being let go from his deanship, he co-founded Executive Leadership Enterprises to focus on developing first- and second-time supervisors, while continuing to serve underserved communities, such as providing dental care to Mississippi prison inmates.

Koka defines success as living a purpose-driven life, a perspective shaped by Sloan’s courses on strategy and innovation, which expanded his mindset beyond technical expertise to create meaningful societal impact.

Transcript

Dr. Sreenivas Koka: Even though going from Minnesota to Boston was not easy, I can say Sloan changed my life. It made me a different person. I was this dentist. I was technically successful and then Sloan opened so many paths to the way I think and expanded my mindset.

Christopher Reichert: Welcome to Sloanies talking with Sloanies. A candid conversation with alumni and faculty about the MIT Sloan experience and how it influences what they're doing today. So what does it mean to be a Sloanie? Over the course of this podcast, you'll hear from guests who are making a difference in their community, including our own very important one here at Sloan. 

Hi, I'm your host, Christopher Reichert, and welcome to Sloanies Talking with Sloanies.

My guest today is Dr. Sreenivas Koka, he goes by Sree, a 2013 MBA graduate from MIT Sloan, where he was active in the Global Operations Lab, also known as GO-Lab. And in that same year, he was served as Executive Director of the Foundation for Oral Rehabilitation in Zurich, Switzerland, which I think is going to be a theme we're going to follow here, which is multitasking.

So welcome, Sree

Dr. Sree Koka: Thank you so much, Chris, for having me.

Christopher Reichert: Excellent to have you. So let me give our listeners some more background about you. Sree grew up in Rumford, England, to Indian immigrants, and grew up with two nationalities, two religions, Anglican and Hindu, two languages and two cultures.

He began his higher education early, entering the University of Michigan School of Dentistry at age 19, earning his DDS by 22, and then completing an MS in Prosthodontics. And those are the first two, by the way, of his five total degrees. So that's just the beginning of the story there.

He joined the University of Nebraska faculty and earned a PhD in Oral Biology. He also held the Merritt C. Pederson Professorship and received multiple outstanding teacher rewards. In 2004, Dr. Koka joined the Mayo Clinic as Consultant in Prosthodontics, and by 2007, he became Chair of the Department of Dental Specialties and a Professor in the School of Graduate Medicine. Dr. Koka founded the Koka Dental Clinic in San Diego in 2014, shortly after graduating from Sloan. He also held academic roles at UCLA and at Loma Linda University, and in 2021, Dr. Koka became Dean of the University of Mississippi's Medical Center School of Dentistry, leading the state's only dental school.

He's authored over 100 peer review publications and book chapters and presents extensively at global scientific venues, and finally, before we start our conversation, I met Sree when both he and I were on the MIT Sloan Alumni Board. He was the chair, and he also won the Margaret MacVicar Award, which recognizes innovation, dedication and meaningful impact to the alumni association and alumni community. He now serves as the co-founder of Executive Leadership Enterprises where he focuses on leadership development and training and emphgasizing resilient leadership and team building in professional contexts.

So, did I miss anything in your background?

Dr. Sree Koka: No, Chris, that was more than enough. Thank you for sharing all that with everybody. 

Christopher Reichert: Quite the journey back, right? Well, it's a real great pleasure to see you again. I really enjoyed our time on the Alumni Board. You impressed me at the time with your enthusiasm, but beyond that was even the way you were prepared. So, when the meeting started, we had a solid agenda and we had a direction and we had issues that we could chew on and I look back and think about that. I think about how your education and your upbringing influenced how you kind of approached leadership roles or even taking on leadership roles. Tell us a bit about your time, I guess, with the dualities of your upbringing.

Dr. Sree Koka: I think for me, growing up with those dualities, you really do realize that people are fundamentally the same. We all have the same basic needs. We want to roof over our head, food in our tummy. We want a steady income. We want stability. We want our children to grow up and be healthy and successful, right? And when we do distill it down to those basic elements, we're all the same.

And a lot of the challenges that we have, I think, between us, are when we're actually quite comfortable and we have the luxury of being able to disagree with people and maybe turn a bit more competitive than we do at times of crisis when we're exceedingly collaborative. It taught me a lot about how we're basically the same and London's a very international cosmopolitan community. So even though I grew up with these two things, there's lots of other things around me still, which just reinforced that same basic premise that I call humanity, we're all the same. 

Christopher Reichert: And did the education you had in high school, how did that sort of influence your decision to go into dentistry or is it something in your family background?

Dr. Sree Koka: Oh, definitely. I'm one of 16 dentists in the family, Chris.

Christopher Reichert: Wow.

Dr. Sree Koka: And number 17 is started his second year of dental school in California. No, it's very much a family thing. We have some physicians, we have one rogue lawyer, but other than that, we're pretty clean.

Christopher Reichert: Amazing. So how far back does that go? 

Dr. Sree Koka: My mother's father was a dentist and my mom's great uncle was a dentist as well. Five generations, we believe. 

Christopher Reichert: Moving to University of Michigan from England, how was that transition for you? You were 19 and presumably you didn't know anybody when you landed there?

Dr. Sree Koka: Sometimes I think that the concept of growing up is learning how to worry. You know, I was 19 and I didn't worry that this could go wrong. I just sort of got on a plane and landed in Detroit Airport and took a bus to Ann Arbor and began and now I think if I were to do that now, I'd worry about all the things that could go wrong and they probably would. But back then it was this great big adventure for me. 

I didn't know a soul at the university and most of my classmates said, you're like the age of my kid brother or kid sister. And in England, you don't do undergraduate before dental school. You go straight from high school. So, for me, I was on the normal cadence, but it was obviously very different than the American system.

Christopher Reichert: And it seems like soon after graduating, you went into teaching positions as opposed to going into sort of dental practice. What were you thinking for that path?

Dr. Sree Koka: I actually thought I would be a general dentist like my father, and then during my dental school training, I fell in love with one of the specialties, prosthodontics, which can break it down to its Latin, it’s prosthesis and teeth. So, any kind of replacement tooth or fake tooth, that's the specialty, and I thought then I would practice that. But then during my residency, I had the opportunity to have some teaching experience and some research experience. I really liked it. 

So, after my residency for a year, I practiced part time in Farmington, Michigan and toured part time at the University of Michigan, and during that year, I kind of decided, what felt right? What did I love more, and what could I see being a path for growth and opportunity more? And that was an academic pathway, and University of Nebraska was kind enough to give me a faculty position. In that role, they gave me so much freedom to make mistakes. That's where I learned how to teach, how to do research, how to improve my patient care. It was a wonderful time.

Christopher Reichert: I watched your TED talk, and one thing that struck me about that, besides the incredible transformation of the woman you spoke about, was the way you approached dentistry as, I think you used the term value-based, and then you kind of parsed, what does that mean, those values? I'm wondering how that sort of influences or permeates your either teaching style, leadership style, or bedside manners, so to speak, in the dentist suite.

Dr. Sree Koka: So patient care and leadership are both, they're both vocations of service. And so if one wants to be the best patient care provider, the best clinician one can be, I say it in the TED talk too, we use healthcare like it's one word, it's really two words, it's health and care, and patients want care, and how do we provide that environment? 

It's no different than when you're teaching a student, you have to learn your student, you have to learn your patient, you have to learn your team members when you're leading, and so this concept of value-based dentistry or just value-based life in a way is understanding what matters to others, and then cultivating yourself to be what that patient needs, because each patient is unique, and we hear a lot about evidence-based practice, and that's good, but the data tend to come from population-based research, so the average typical scenario, this option might be the best one, but that may not be the best one for the patient that's sitting in your chair. 

That concept of using the golden rule, perhaps, or using evidence, I don't think is the right way to take care of people. I think it really has to be completely focused on what that individual patient's preferences and beliefs and values are. A lot of times we may be missed that, in our conversations with our patients. I like this rule called the Platinum Rule, where it says, do you want to others as they would have you do unto them. So that's a rule that really is built on the premise of empathy more than anything else. 

Christopher Reichert: You've had quite a journey geographically. I remember when we were serving on the alumni board, you were in, and I was very jealous, by the way, you were in San Diego. You had a thriving dentistry practice, multiple offices I've seen to recall, and then you moved to Mississippi, which must have been quite a change. Tell us about that transition, or that opportunity and how you thought about embracing that.

Dr. Sree Koka: Well, I think the first question is, why would you leave San Diego? And it comes back to a statement made by President Reif at our commencement ceremony in 2013. It rained cats and dogs out there, we were all soaked. But during the ceremony, he said, your job as an MIT graduate is not to go out there and solve the world's problems. Your job as an MIT graduate is to go out there and solve the world's biggest problems.

And I would say that for some of my class that they were already doing cool things, big things, and for the rest of us, some of us embraced that challenge. And to be honest, Mississippi, in oral health at least, Chris, represents some of our biggest challenges. And so the allure of going there was through the dental school initially to be a way to change the systems, test new models of care that could make a difference in oral health. And Mississippi would be a great testing ground for that. 

I would also say, I think for some of my class, the weight of that challenge from President Reif has almost actually been too much for some people. Because then they worry about am I wasting this MIT degree, I should be doing more. And so I've seen that whole panoply reactions kind of play out over the last 12 years. 

Christopher Reichert: Yeah, I understand. That resonates with me. The whole notion of like, if you don't get up in the morning and you aren't reinventing some major problem, then are you living up to the ideals and standards that are we living up to it? And it can be overwhelming at times. And my father said, he was an architect, he said, you know, you can't reinvent the wheel every Monday morning.

Dr. Sree Koka: Yeah, and I think I think the way is to kind of break it into small pieces, right? And I just keep persevering and one step at a time. 

Christopher Reichert: You have a long resume of taking on leadership positions. You know, we serve together, you are chair of the MIT Sloan Alumni Board and the deanship at University of Mississippi. Tell us about that motivation. 

Dr. Sree Koka: Yeah, it's really an odd motivation because for most of my early academic career, I wanted nothing to do with leadership. I wanted to perfect my craft as a teacher, as a researcher, as a patient care clinician. And I saw leadership as being embroiled with all these maybe unpleasant experiences at times, hear the word politics, et cetera, et cetera. And then when I went to Mayo, I found myself for the first time in a place where I felt so aligned my values with the values of the organization all the way to the very top. 

And there was a consistency to those values. I mean, it's a big organization. Does it get things wrong every day? Absolutely. But this, this sort of focus on patient care. And I thought, ooh, this is a place where leading might be something that fits me. And it ended up being sort of a continuation of that element of wanting to serve, of wanting to be a servant. And leadership, I think, is just about the only systematic capability that brings more out of people together than it does out of them as individuals. You can add systems and processes and you can do lots of things. But to get to the absolute best of us as a team, I think, you know, leadership and specific elements of leadership are absolutely critical, and I found myself turned on by that. 

I do think that each of us has natural types of leadership that we're drawn to. Glenn Forbes at Mayo once said to me, think about the position and whether it fits you. You know, is this a transformation position? Is this a crisis position? Is this a growth position? Is this a consolidation position? You know, what is this? And I like transformation and crisis. I've kind of learned that. It's a great way of making a difference. It goes beyond one's technical attributes and that that's really been the allure. And when it works and when you see a team come together, it is the most unbelievable feeling to see people feel great about what they've achieved together. Yeah, it's magic. It's great. 

Christopher Reichert: You were at the University of Mississippi for roughly what three, three plus years? 

Dr. Sree Koka: Three years, yep, just over. 

Christopher Reichert: Tell us about that transition to what you're doing now. 

Dr. Sree Koka: So the dean position was a great way for me to learn a lot about Mississippi about different elements of it. Over the years, even before that, I had been putting on leadership workshops for people in dentistry. But over the years, the content ended up being agnostic. There were no teeth, there was nothing to do with dentistry in the workshops. And people really walked away and to this day, it still surprises me, saying, wow, this really changed me. This, and I would think two days changed you? And they would be like, yes, two days, we talked about things that I knew nothing about. And I realized they were important. I got to meet some really interesting people in a setting where I mattered and who I was as a person was really important here and celebrated. And yeah, I'm leaving a different person. I feel like I can do more with my life. 

And so, the Mississippi angle really brought into focus my desire to kind of do things that will help the underserved and the vulnerable. Through leadership is one of the parts that I would like to make that difference. 

Christopher Reichert: As you transitioned from academic leadership to leading sort of broader leadership development initiatives like SHIFT and also Executive Leadership Enterprises what kind of made you step back from another organization and start your own organization? Was it to kind of reflect and pull together some threads that you've been observing in your own career and try to help others? 

Dr. Sree Koka: Well, in full transparency and the whole story, I was actually let go by the University of Mississippi. That was a really difficult time, but at the same time, I think I've grown a lot from it. One of my classmates, Kate Bergeron, when I called her to say, you got any advice from me? She said, here, talk to this friend of mine. She'll have some advice for you. And that person said, Sree, go on a 100 professional dates. And at the end of the date, ask that person two questions, who do you think I should meet with next? And would you please make the introduction? You meet some really neat people, but it also forces you to almost interview yourself because each time you are describing what's important to you and the process really allowed me, I think, to narrow down what really mattered and realized at the end of a conversation, that part of what I was saying actually was really exciting to me and the other part maybe was forced.

I realized as we went through the process that I'd like to make a difference, I really want the world to be a better place. It can be through leadership. I love to teach and I love leadership. And now, maybe the path is to try and teach the human side of leadership, the relationship part of leadership that really, I think, separates good teams from amazing teams. 

And so that's where Executive Leadership Enterprises came from with two co-founders. We formed this company to really focus on the human side of leadership. And perhaps today, that matters even more than ever. And then within our portfolio of where do we want to start with our activities, the Sweet Spot Leader program became the first product in essence that you would say of the company. I'm really excited by it. It launched about three months ago. The program is now running for the first time. We have the first people going through it. And every day we learn something else that we forgot to get done ahead of time. They're being being wonderful. It's like a startup. It's been a really, really magical experience.

Christopher Reichert: So who's typically coming to you and saying, I need help or I don't know, I have no idea what to turn next or whatever that whatever their challenge is? What's the sort of typical demographic you've seen? 

Dr. Sree Koka: Chris, I see lots of organizations that will invest in leadership education for their upper management and C-Suite people. What I believe is that, and the research says this, I mean data from Gallup and other places will say that that workplace culture, but within that, the relationship that the frontline employees have with their supervisor is a critical relationship. That relationship often doesn't get a lot of attention. Yet, it's the one that drives the engagement, the turnover, the productivity, the profitability of the organization, right? 

So the Sweet Spot leader program is really specifically targeted towards first and second time supervisors who historically have been successful because of what they did on their own, and now they're being judged by how a team of people does. And it's a very difficult transition to make. Oftentimes an organization might help that person with the systems in the process. As you know, here's how you might schedule your employees or do payroll or do billing whatever it is, but that human side, which is actually the differentiator of whether somebody goes above and beyond every day and is team oriented and chips in and all that stuff, that makes great teams, great teams. 

So, our content is really focused on the human side, but because that's the group that we're focusing on, it's a different type of breadth and depth of content than you would give somebody who's a vice president, for example. 

What we see is two kinds of constituencies. One is a corporation or a company that says, yeah, our supervisors or managers are really struggling. Or it's people who are really successful and we feel like they could have a little more investment in them. Or it's an individual who maybe is in a small business environment, a dentist would be a great example, but it could be anybody who's in a small business, an accountant, or a lawyer. And they have their own business or they're a partner in a business, but they want their team now to excel. They come as an individual to take on this education. 

Christopher Reichert: How do you get people to come out of their mental model of what it means to be a leader? You know, some people think it's the heraldic, you know, George Washington on the horse type of thing. And there's other types of leadership, which is more behind the scenes and pushing others. How do you get people to find what their style is, but also find what aligns with the culture of an organization that might be trying to influence?

Dr. Sree Koka: Yes, Stephen Covey said this. He says, you know, there's that question are leaders born or made? And he said, I think this is a false dichotomy. He says leaders choose to be leaders. And again, there are different qualities that can make you very effective. And being extroverted or being charismatic is not necessarily something you need to be an incredibly effective leader. There's lots of introverts that are very effective leaders. I like Jim Collins’ Good to Great book because in that it's very simple, but it's also very profound. I think that level five leader has only two qualities, perseverance and humility. And you know, if you've ever worked for a leader that doesn't quit, you can't quit. But they're not doing it for themselves. They are doing it for the mission. They're doing it for the corporation. 

And that's where the humility comes in, right? If somebody says to me, well, can you teach humility? I had this line I came up with recently and I'll be curious to see what you think, but humility is believing that you're no better than anybody else. And confidence is believing that you're no worse. I think humility is something that can be taught the importance of it and how you can come across with others is critical. People will follow somebody who's humble because they want to. They'll follow a cocky person because they have to. You get to choose.

So, all these things can be learned and taught. You know, I was this dentist. I was technically successful and then Sloan opened so many paths to the way I think and expanded my mindset. And I thought, oh, I want to take this back and teach this to my colleagues. And then you realize, well, the content is for everybody. People who come to our program are people who have made a commitment. You know, they've done the books. They've done the podcasts. Maybe they're not ready to do an MBA, but they want to be better leaders and they want to have a bigger impact with their life. And they might find this as an individual. They might find us through their company.

Christopher Reichert: How did you decide that this was the time to go and get an MBA and why Sloan?

Dr. Sree Koka: Yeah. So here I am in Mayo Clinic. I am appointed chair and I can fix teeth. I'm really good at that. And then I realized, but I know nothing about leadership or management. But I mean, it makes no sense to me that we don't let people practice medicine without going to medical school. We let people practice leadership with no education all the time. And there is a science and an art to this. And so, I wanted to learn that science and art. I wanted to have the structure of a curriculum. I'm not the best person at making myself sit down and read stuff. But if I'm in a degree and it has an exam at the end of the course, then yeah, I'll do it. And I'll learn and I'll meet lots of interesting people along the way. And I can be pragmatic at times. And I wanted to go to one of the top schools. 

And at the time, there were only two schools that didn't require the GMAT for an executive MBA program, they were Sloan and Kellogg. Those are the two schools I applied to, and I was looking at Minnesota going to Kellogg would have been much easier. But the admissions process separated the two out.  At MIT it felt very personal. At Sloan, I felt like they really cared about who they were accepting. And even though going from Minnesota to Boston was not as easy as going for Minnesota to Chicago. When I got in, it was a no brainer. I can say Sloan changed my life. It made me a different person. 

Christopher Reichert: The executive MBA has an on-site residency component. But the majority of it is remote. How did you balance the connection and the networking side or getting to know your peers at MIT with your day-to-day life? 

Dr. Sree Koka: Well, there's definitely a trade-off. So your day-to-day life, you can keep your job, you can keep your income. You have to be a little nuts to add an MBA. Because the amazing thing is you are around other people just like yourself who are already reasonably successful. But you still want more. You're driven to do more and learn more. And about half of my class was from New England area and the rest flew in or took a train in or drove in from far away. And I would say the half that came in from far away probably got more out of the program than from the people who lived close by. Because when you lived close by, you got tempted by family events or work events that sort of distracted you.  But for the rest of us, you were there. 

And we flew in on average about every third weekend. And then during the two years of the program, there were four to five one-week periods of time where we had to be there the whole week. And it's a lot of work at the end of it. You're like, how did I ever do that? But you did. 

And a lot of the work is remote. You do a lot of teamwork, some individual work. And the networking is the trade-off. I mean, you certainly have these intense times when you're together. But you don't have that continuous time for more impromptu kind of stuff. And that's true not just with your classmates, but it's actually true with your faculty too. You can't just run into somebody in the hallway or in the cafeteria in the same way. 

Christopher Reichert: Are there classmates that you connected with or that you stay in touch with? How about faculty? 

Dr. Sree Koka: You know, being on the alumni board, you might run into certain faculty as well. So, you know, running into Nelson Repenning every now and then. Scott Stern is someone that I always enjoyed chatting to and his company very much. John Van Maanen, kept in touch with him a little bit right after the program, lovely man. 

And then with students, that's also had two groups. There's the group that I was close during the program. And we've stayed very, very close. And then into that group have sort of come three or four people that actually didn't spend that much time within the program. But for whatever reason we've had some reason to reconnect. And then the connection has just deepened and deepened and deepened. And now there's a group of eight of us that are on a text chain. And we play a game where if somebody travels, we'll take a picture and say, where am I? And, you know, there's just ways to keep connected. And, but we're also a resource, like I said, when I got let go, you know, that group was really important to me, not just to give me a shoulder to cry on, but also some guidance, some advice on what to do next.

Christopher Reichert: If you look back at only courses that you took or wish you had taken any, any come to mind?

Dr. Sree Koka: You know, the strategy course that Pierre Azoulay and Scott Stern taught us I found profoundly impactful to me. You know, being in a technical field like dentistry, but it also has this major human side to it, right? I knew that going to MIT, that was a quant school, that that was not my strength. Actually, going there made me, I spent my time around people from the worlds of finance and entrepreneurship and engineering. And these are people that I, that I normally hung out with. And it was great. That sort of expanded my mind. And I enjoyed that. That's part of part of going. So, those courses that relate to the strategy where I didn't really grow up having to think about that stuff. My profession hadn't required it of me. Those were the courses that really, really impacted me more than anything else. 

I mean, I learned the fundamentals of economics and finance and accounting. And they're really important too. But in terms of stretching my mind, I would say it was the strategy course. And a little bit, maybe more than a little bit, the Idea Week that Dame Fiona Murray taught us on innovation also really changed the way I look at how to take on projects and how to initiate new ventures. 

She set a line that stuck with me during class. I kind of remember where I was sitting in the room when she said it. She said, “it's a rare leader that will embrace the failures that drive true innovation.” And I think it's a pretty profound comment. Ever since then I've tried to be the leader that's, that's done that, that's embraced failures, for example. 

All those experiences have made me who I am. And each one tells you a little bit more about yourself, what you can do, what you're good at, what you're not good at. But really, they tell you what matters to you. In a lot of times, especially in large organizations, I think we take on roles where there's parts of the job that we love. And like in any job, there's parts of the job we don't love. 

The nice thing about being in the situation I'm in now, which is co-founding a company with people that have the same values and the same passions that I do, is that there really isn't any part of what I'm doing now that I don't love. Because I can see how every single piece of it relates to something I care about deeply. And did I find my time as dean impactful and meaningful as well? Yes, absolutely. So this is a different way. But in some ways, as I get near it, I mean, I don't know if this is the last thing I'm going to do, or if there's two or three or four more things afterwards. But in the here and now, I feel like I'm in the right place, like I'm right where I'm supposed to be, given all the experiences, sometimes successful, sometimes not successful, that have happened. The first two weeks was tough. I was sort of in this day because I didn't see it coming. But since then, it's just been an immense amount of growth. 

Christopher Reichert: And how does the dentistry side continue to fit in or reflect upon? 

Dr. Sree Koka: As you can tell, I love to serve. And I do have this skill. And I do have these years of experience, which would be it would be a shame to completely walk away from that. Although at some point, everybody retires. But what I do now two days a week to still serve Mississippi and myself, I take care of prison inmates at one of the maximum-security state prisons in Mississippi. This prison is a men-only prison. And if you're in there, you've probably done something pretty bad. Every now and then, I'll ask an inmate how long they have left, but I don't ask them what they're in for. 

And we take care of the inmates. We give them some dental care. I was there two days ago. And one of the patients, I said to him, when's the last time you saw a dentist? He says, I've never seen a dentist. I'm naturally drawn to the vulnerable and the underserved. And that's a population that sort of runs in parallel with the rest of us that we don't really often realize is even there. So, it's been eye opening for me. It's the first time I've done it. So there's lots to be grateful for. And there's a lot of reasons why you don't get upset about if your coffee is not quite hot enough.

Christopher Reichert: So I have a question that I normally ask people. And what is your definition of success? But I want to ask in a slightly different way for you. Because I think you're in a position to ask people that same question in your leadership trainings and teachings. So first, maybe one, how would you define success? And then the second part of that question, when you're talking to people in your new role, how do you frame that question for them in terms of what their goal is for seeking your help? 

Dr. Sree Koka: The answer is actually the same for me and for them. But it has two parts to it. The first is a Mark Twain quote, which is “the two most important days in your life or the day you were born on that day when you find out why”. And I think a lot of people focus on things that don't relate to their second day, their why. And sometimes people say to me, well, how do I know if I've had my second day yet? And I didn't have mine until I was actually in the program in a John Van Maanen class at Sloan, and I was 42 years old. I do think you have to have some life experience to know what matters to you. So when it comes along, do you realize, a-ha, this is it? 

Or you've had it and you haven't been honest with yourself that you've had it because it wasn't something that maybe you thought was what you'd always thought it would be or what your family thinks it should be or society thinks it should be. So, you've kind of suppressed it. 

When I was interviewing to be chair at Mayo, I went to see the Chief Administrative Officer of Mayo Clinic. I said, can I have 30 minutes of your time in case I get this job, so you could give me some advice and maybe even help me prepare for the interview? He said, sure. I asked him, I go, Bob, Bob Smoldt is his name. I said, Bob, if I do get this job, do you have any advice for me? And he said, yeah, he goes, Sree, I don't know exactly what the number is, but I'm going to pick the number 94. For every hundred decisions you make as chair, 94 of them don't matter. Only six matter. And you have to have a focus and a discipline on those six. 

And everywhere I've gone since then, I've taught what I call Bob's Smoldt’s rule of 94. And a lot of times leadership teams and people will ask ourselves, is this one of the six? Should we spend time on this? Because if we add something to that pool of six, we are by definition going to have less resources to spend on the ones that are already in there. So that sort of comes back to the why thing in the sense of it's a more broad way of saying, you have to know what matters. 

And success to me is spending your life on something that matters. So that you don't get to the end of your life with a bunch of regrets. Another friend of mine, Mijin Choi said, “I don't fear failure, I fear regret”. William Carey said, “I'm not afraid of failure. I'm afraid of succeeding at the things that don't matter”. So, you can see we're weaving some threads together here. But success to me is living a life that matters. And it's built around the things that matter to you. And if we bring all that back to, we're all fundamentally the same. What matters to you probably matters to everybody. And that's my definition of success. 

Christopher Reichert: Well, that's great. So on that note, I want to thank Dr. Sree Koka, a 2013 MBA Sloan graduate for joining us on Sloanies Talking with Sloanies.

If you want to follow Sree's work, in particular, his TED Talk search for Sree Koka Without Teeth, and I'll put that in the show notes. I think it really kind of encapsulates a lot of what Sree's about and what he's been doing the work in his life. So, thanks very much for joining us here today. 

Dr. Sree Koka: Chris, it was an absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me. 

Christopher Reichert: Excellent to see you again.

Christopher Reichert: Sloanies Talking with Sloanies is produced by the Office of External Relations at MIT Sloan School of Management. You can subscribe to this podcast by visiting our website, mitsloan.mit.edu/alumni or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. 

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