Opening a door to the future: Operation Enterprise introduces hundreds of students annually to the realities of the business world

Nation's Business, Nov, 1997 by Michael Barrier

Think back to when you were 17 or 18 years old, a senior in high school or a freshman in college. What did you know about business then? Maybe your parents were in business; maybe you even worked for them in the summer, or after school. But did you really have a clue about the kinds of decisions that business people make every day.? Did you know enough even to begin considering a business career for yourself?

For most people, the honest answer to both questions would be "no." But every summer, 400 young people come away from the program called Operation Enterprise (OE), sponsored by the American Management Association (AMA), prepared to answer "yes."

What OE offers, says Richard Bauer Jr., a 1969 alumnus, is "your first exposure to business" -- that is, the first opportunity to talk about business with business people apart from neighbors and family.

Bauer grew up in a business family; he's now executive vice president and chief operating officer of Eastern Alloys in Maybrook, N.Y, a 110-employee zinc-alloy company that his father founded in 1965. But he says that having "social relationships that have a business slant to them" is very different from sitting down with an entrepreneur and hearing what it's like to be in business.

Teenagers don't know what business is like, Bauer says. "I certainly didn't. You've taken a lot of things for granted. Now you get to see it for yourself. You get to ask questions."

A Select Student Body

Operation Enterprise was started in 1963 as an outgrowth of the management courses that the AMA has offered for many years to people in the midst of their business careers. Most OE sessions are held at a 150-acre facility in rural Hamilton, N.Y, that the AMA built -- complete with an airport -- in the 1960s as an executive retreat. (OE's other sites are in Troy, Mich.; Washington, D.C., and Lloydminster, Alberta.)

Each 10-day session -- there were six last summer in Hamilton, as well as a six-day session designed for older college students -- is restricted to no more than 40 students, who hear from as many as a dozen "practitioners," as Reg Wilson, the program's director, calls them.

The business people, who range from high-ranking executives at big companies to front-line supervisors at small firms, are, Wilson says, "sharing experiences they had just the day before." He estimates that about half the practitioners come from small companies.

"We are attracting people who want to give something back, who want to share what they've learned," says Wilson. "All of our speakers are volunteering their time, and most of them are picking up their own travel expenses."

Faculty members change from program to program, but the topics -- including leadership, entrepreneurship, planning, and team building -- remain the same.

The speakers follow "topic outlines," Wilson emphasizes. "They're not coming in just to tell stories," he says, but to cover specific points, illuminated by their experience. The students also go through simulations in which they deal with typical business issues such as budgets, personnel, and internal communication.

Says Wilson: "We're getting into the essence of management, developing management skills for whatever profession you choose, [and explaining] how processes work, how relationships work."

The setting is relaxed, and as Bauer points out, "chances are the people who volunteer to speak are pretty motivated individuals themselves. They enjoy business; they're not just putting their time in. These are people who love what they do. It provides a very positive experience."

Benefits For Both Sides

It is a positive experience not only for the students but also for them, participating business leaders say. One who takes part two or three times each summer is June Stahl, president of Stahl Soap Corp. in East Rutherford, N.J. Staw Soap, which has about 65 employees and originated in pre-World War II Vienna, makes bar soap for industrial and institutional markets.

"They prepare the kids, they give you a lot of prep materials," Stahl says. "I really enjoyed getting up in front of the kids and talking about how I got into my business, what it really means.

"It made me really think about what I do and look at my own job in a slightly different light. We very rarely, as business people, step back from our day-to-day activities."

Stahl made her first three-hour presentation about 10 years ago, and at the end, she says, she felt "absolutely" that she had connected with her audience. "And their questions were questions that I wish I had had the opportunity to ask someone" before she was forced to assume leadership of the family firm at age 25, upon the sudden death of her father.

Stahl adds: "Everyone I've talked to who came back from the program has told me that it was the most incredible experience they've ever had. You hear that, and you know it's worthwhile."

The ripples of that enthusiasm have reached business people who have not yet served as speakers themselves. Joseph Green, who founded PPS, Inc., a 55-employee specialty printing firm in Olathe, Kan., in 1964, has visited Operation Enterprise sessions several times while attending other AMA meetings in Hamilton. He provides a scholarship for one student every year, as does June Stahl. "The recipients of the scholarships, in the letters I get, just rave about it," Green says.