Abdulrahman Aboubaker
Professor Boyle
Management 1000
12/9/2021
Speaker Reflection- Tom Morowski
Tom Morowski initially grabbed my attention by hearing about his success in business
and becoming COO of a company really captivated me and gave him credibility from my
perspective. His involvement in private equity also seemed to relate to my future goals. His
success in the steel company utilizing tactical goals and plans really gave a real-life image to the
concepts we learned in class. It proved that with the right utilization of what we are learning, this
stuff makes progress, and it is not for nothing.
Tom Morowski mentions balancing short and long-term goals connected to what we
learned in this chapter as the long term could provide a source of motivation, while the shortterm goals can set performance standards.
His views on embracing change and that especially of a cooperation seems to be
something I agree with. As Morowski said: “Everybody wants things to be constant. It’s never
constant.” This is something that we learned about in class. We know that was the downfall of
blockbuster, but the golden hour of Chik-Fil-A. We discussed how even during peak Covid-19
times where it was drive-thru only, they efficiently adapted and even excelled in managing their
wait times to no more than 10 minutes. This is wrapped in contingency planning which
blockbuster lacked, thinking the digital videos would not take away their market as they thought
their old experience would suffice.
There are areas where I might disagree with him. I would consider Tom Morowski an
idealist, (sometimes) to be a fault. When it came to his takes on strategic planning and goal
setting. His only thoughts on goal setting as he spoke were to be realistic. For me I would
disagree as just “realistic” goals might be unmotivating as we should shoot for the highest
possible outcome and even if we fail, we still end up in a better position than what we were
before. We watched John Doerr’s Ted Talk in class, and I feel as if he would agree with me on
this as we feel a need to have a true purpose, not just check off a box.
Tom Morowski did finish his interview by giving us some pretty good advice, as he
paraphrased a football couch asking his team “what are you willing to sacrifice?” to reach that
goal or job. Overall, his mix of old-school go-get-it attitudes, and new-school adaptability really
gave me an insight into this area of the business world. This type of interview is something that I
look forward to since when can we access this type of knowledge relating to the real world? Not
very often (at least not outside of this class).