Achieving on the Frontlines: Interview with Viva Ona Bartkus, Former Partner at McKinsey & Company
I recently went one-on-one with Viva Ona Bartkus. Viva is a Professor Emerita at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business and a former partner at McKinsey & Company. Viva is the co-author of the new book Business on the Edge: How to Turn a Profit and Improve Lives in the World’s Toughest Places.
Adam: First things first, though, I am sure readers would love to learn more about you. How did you get here? What experiences, failures, setbacks, or challenges have been most instrumental to your growth?
Viva: Growing up as the daughter of World War II refugees from Lithuania instilled in me a deep sympathy for those most impacted by war and suffering. In my teens, an overwhelming sense of adventure encouraged me to venture far from my close-knit Catholic immigrant family in Indiana to attend Yale and Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship. For my doctoral research, I traveled alongside insurgents and guerillas in places like Tibet, Kurdistan, and South Sudan to understand why communities take up arms to fight wars of self-determination, mainly so that I could understand better the fierce drive for independence occurring in my parent’s homeland of Lithuania. After graduation, I joined McKinsey & Company, and was eventually elected the youngest female partner in the Chicago office.
In 2004, inspired by its mission to combine faith and reason in service of others, I joined the faculty of the University of Notre Dame and the Board of Catholic Relief Services. But now, with a decade of work in the private sector and several years as a business professor under my belt, I was keenly aware that the dynamism and energy of business was missing in the impoverished violence-ridden regions I had previously studied for my dissertation. In 2008, I founded the pioneering course, Business on the Frontlines (BOTFL), with the objective of harnessing business to serve societies ravaged by conflict and deep poverty. Over the past 15 years, my faculty, student and alumni teams have collaborated on 90+ business and peace-related projects in over thirty countries with a global network of partners including multinational corporations (Newmont Mining, GE), international humanitarian organizations (Catholic Relief Services, World Vision, Mercy Corps, Aga Khan Development Network), local NGOs, the US Army Special Operations Command (USASOC), and the Catholic Church to create jobs and set the economic conditions for growth. Business on the Frontlines has been named one of the Ten Most Innovative Business School Courses in the country by Forbes and has recently received $35 million for its endowment. Through the BOTFL projects, over 30,000 people now have the dignity of work in some of the world’s toughest places. Based on this rather unique combination of experiences, my co-author, Dr. Emily Block, and I wrote our book, Business on the Edge: How to Turn a Profit and Improve Lives in the World’s Toughest Places (Basic Books, 2024).
Even though I feel equally at ease in the classroom, in the field working with the poorest of the poor, or in the corporate boardroom, I am happiest hiking with my daughter, Ava, and my yellow lab, Montana, across the sand dunes overlooking Lake Michigan where I live.
Adam: What do you hope readers take away from your new book?
Viva: In the race to access new market opportunities, foreign investment has saturated most of the easily accessible parts of developing countries. Over the last twenty years, trillions of dollars have poured into emerging markets, far beyond the obvious targets like India, China, and Brazil. Confronted with the inexorable demands for growth, and concerned with the prospect of diminishing marginal returns, business leaders are scouring the map but finding fewer greenfield opportunities. I cannot tell you how often I have fielded the same boardroom question, “Where’s next?”
Welcome to the frontlines.
The frontlines are not areas that immediately come to mind when thinking about business investment. They hide in disputed corners of the world. Their distance from cities leaves them disconnected from much of their home country’s infrastructure. National governments often do not extend basic services like electricity or sanitation. Even the rule of law and rudimentary security are frequently left to local militias or criminal cartels. These areas often teeter on the razor’s edge between stability and violence, where every decision, event, or investment could mean the difference between encouraging society toward opportunity or sending it back into conflict.
Given this challenging terrain, it is unsurprising that foreign investment has largely overlooked these complex, far-off places. However, these areas are full of possibilities. The 1.4 billion people who live and work in frontline environments generate over $20 trillion of annual economic activity. Their vast untapped potential takes the form of abundant natural resources and young growing populations desperate to work to create a better future. There is real money to be made in the frontlines and the first movers will earn disproportionate returns.
Moreover, business leaders are increasingly being called upon to contribute innovative solutions to the urgent challenges facing humanity. However, many perceive that these calls butt up against the hard logic of economics which prioritizes shareholder wealth maximization. But business can achieve both goals – it can turn a profit by operating in frontline environments, and in doing so, it can nudge societies toward a more prosperous and stable future. Corporations as diverse as Newmont Mining, Green Mountain Coffee, Jollibee, and General Electric have already adopted this strategy.
Adam: In your experience, what are the key steps to growing and scaling your business?
Viva: Growing and scaling businesses in the frontlines depends on effectively managing risk abroad. Many multinational corporations address this challenge by building walls to protect themselves from the vulnerabilities associated with complex, fragmented, and uncertain environments. They may do this literally, by building compounds with armed guards, or figuratively by insulating themselves by controlling as much of their operations and supply chains as possible.
Yet our experience indicates that companies should essentially do the opposite of this more traditional approach. The best strategy for expansion and security is to become deeply embedded in the local community so that it protects your operations as if they were its own.
This means that companies investing into frontline environments need to embrace a stripped-down business model in which you only control those few steps in the value chain where you have a unique capability or asset. Then you build relationships with a broad range of local actors to take care of the remaining necessary business activities. Although the operational costs may increase due to managing all of these local partnerships, the far lower upfront capital outlay drives the return on investment.
Adam: What do you believe are the defining qualities of an effective leader?
Viva: Because developing local relationships is so critical to working effectively in the frontlines, determining whom to trust becomes the defining quality of an effective leader. In any MBA international business course, you will learn that the dominant strategy for international expansion is to find a local you can trust and have them serve as your guide for market entry. These partnerships can help navigate hiring a labor force, handling relationships with suppliers, buyers, and governments, and navigating the differences in values, norms, and behaviors between two societies. However, in more fragmented and less stable conditions, such an existing playbook leaves your business vulnerable to misinformation, faulty strategic decisions, and even fraud, corruption, and regime change.
We certainly learned this lesson the hard way in Lebanon. By building relationships with a broad range of local partners, our diverse and informal information sources saved our operations. Indeed, the hushed whispers with friendly acquaintances revealed a lurking threat: behind the façade of one of our contacts - a civic-minded businessman who had been introduced by a reputable partner - was the local commander of a terrorist organization.
In order to mitigate this risk, businesses need to thoroughly map the local landscape of actors. This requires stepping out of information silos and talking and listening to all sorts of people - businesses, NGOs, and even the general citizenry - and then building relationships with such non-traditional partners.
Adam: How can leaders and aspiring leaders take their leadership skills to the next level?
Viva: As external partnerships become increasingly important for business success, leaders must exhibit the moral imagination to envision a world for its possibilities and then build common ground with others to create that world. Common ground is not something that simply exists. Nor is it or something that manifests automatically from shared ideas and experience. Leaders must imagine it, create it, and then continuously work to maintain it. With commitment and a strong shared vision, even groups who are typically adversaries can use this process to partner toward greater ends. Unfortunately, today it seems that members of our society do not easily interact with those with different values.
To be successful at the next level, it is essential to rediscover the value of dialogue. Leaders must be willing to engage in conversation with those whose perspectives, life experiences, and opinions are different from our own. This must be done with curiosity but without judgment. St. Augustine of Hippo guides us on this path, “Let us, on both sides, lay aside all arrogance. Let us not, on either side, claim that we have already discovered the truth. Let us seek it together as something which is known to neither of us. For only then may we seek the truth, lovingly and tranquilly, if there be no bold presumption that it is already discovered and possessed.”
Adam: What are your best tips applicable to entrepreneurs, executives, and civic leaders?
Viva: As President Dwight D. Eisenhower once observed, “Plowing looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you’re a thousand miles from the corn field.” Reading this interview, you might be 1,000 miles from the frontlines. No amount of reading analyst reports, World Bank and national statistics, or even National Geographic magazines can replace first-hand experience. In our shorthand, we call it “getting your boots dirty.” Immerse yourself in the day-to-day lives of those your company may consider as future customers, suppliers or employees. These experiences lay the foundation not only for critical data collection but also subsequent understanding and shared empathy. Getting your boots dirty requires two important skills: learning to open your heart to the experience and being sensitive to avoid perpetuating the historical power dynamics that are often a legacy of imperialism and colonization in many parts of the world.
A few guidelines toward these ends: to begin with, breaking down the barriers that prevent interactions at a human level depends on reducing power distances. For example, in academic or professional settings, I am always introduced as “Dr. Viva Bartkus,” but on the frontlines, I am simply “Viva” - a fellow mother, friend, and sibling. I dress in modest clothing, eschewing visible brands. My general rule is never pack more belongings than most of the frontline families I am visiting actually own. If you cannot pack it in a carry-on backpack, you probably do not need it in the frontlines.
Try to encourage conversation by doing activities with others when invited - like cooking, walking, playing. I try to use silence strategically; those you are visiting will inevitably fill it with stories or questions if you wait long enough in companionable silence. Furthermore, if the conversation turns away from your direct data-gathering topics, because the person you are with is telling you something that is important to them, put aside your interview guide. Embrace the moment. The sharing of one’s story is a gift in itself.
The final guideline is to stay long enough to see the kids run around and play – to see real life emerge around you. Those in the frontlines will be curious about you, your life, your experiences. Return the compliment.
Adam: What is your best advice on building, leading, and managing teams?
Viva: The best advice on building teams lies in embracing the obligation to dissent. You will need to foster sufficient trust among your teammates through shared activities to enable that dissent during problem-solving sessions, particularly under the uncertainty found on the frontlines. It is vital that teams not only go where the data takes them but specifically seek out disconfirming data. Being prepared to readjust quickly— to fail fast - gets you closer to a workable solution. Without bringing that humility to learn and change preconceived ideas in the face of conditions on the ground, it really is impossible for teams to innovate enough, or earn enough trust, to work in the frontlines.
In order to reward dissent, try to adopt a rule of “three points for bad news.” Although this does not mean actually keeping score, this team norm encourages dissent by points; any good news gets one point, but any bad news gets three. If anyone on the team senses something amiss, like missing data, analytical flaws, overlooked questions, or even mistaken directions, it is their duty to bring it to the team’s attention. If any team member gets a sinking feeling regarding the opportunity, the community, or the problem they should honor that feeling and bring it forward to the team. That intuition most likely indicates an as-of-yet neglected issue. I cannot tell you how often a teammate, their voice trembling, begins a team meeting by saying, “I think I’m going to get 3 points here…” and then everyone begins to cheer to relieve the stress.
Adam: What are your best tips on the topics of sales, marketing, and branding?
Viva: The words of cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead act as a guide: “Never doubt that a small group of committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” Nothing beats building commitment among your employees, suppliers, stakeholders, customers, and community to a mission bigger than yourself.
Adam: What is the single best piece of advice you have ever received?
Viva: “You only get one shot to make a good first impression.”
Adam: Is there anything else you would like to share?
Viva: If this interview triggers discussion and debate, then it will be a success. Should you be interested in further insights, please turn to Business on the Edge: How to Turn a Profit and Improve Lives in the World’s Toughest Places (Basic Books, 2024), as a roadmap for how business can grow and make money while reducing poverty and conflict in some of the world’s most challenging environments.
Adam Mendler is an entrepreneur, writer, speaker, educator, and nationally recognized authority on leadership. Adam is the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one-on-one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal-winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities, and non-profit organizations. Adam has written extensively on leadership and related topics, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. Adam teaches graduate-level courses on leadership at UCLA and is an advisor to numerous companies and leaders. A Los Angeles native, Adam is a lifelong Angels fan and an avid backgammon player.
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