Oriet Gadish - Ceo of Bain & Co

ORIT GADIESH The Early Years I was born in Israel and grew up there. My father was born in Berlin. My mother was born in Kiev. They came to Israel because of World War II. When I was born, my father was in the military. He decided that the army should be well organized and well run, so he went to business school when he was still in the army and then came back and reorganized the army. He then left and became a CEO. He was actually considered the first professional CEO in Israel. I went into the army like everybody does. I ended up working for the number two person in the military after the chief of staff. It was a pretty exciting place to be because all of the information—everything actually—was coordinated through there. I learned to deal with an awful lot of information, to be very responsible, and to work long hours. But also, when there were events going on, I was in the war room, which is a pretty confined space, and I learned to have respect for other people but also not to be intimidated by them, because they’re people. I think that really helped me later on throughout my career. I also saw people making really important decisions, life and death decisions, and I realized that you can’t always afford to have perfect information, 100 percent of what you need, in order to make a decision. Later on, when I think about the way we do business at Bain, where we emphasize providing clients with solutions that are practical rather than perfect and where we often have to make decisions based on imperfect information, I think back to those days. And it just reinforces the idea that you can’t always have perfect information in order to make a decision. I think I was too young to understand that fully at the time but it has certainly influenced me. The army also exposed me to all different kinds of people. The Israeli army brings together people from many different cultures because Israel is very much an immigrant country; it still is. The Israeli is a little bit