Former Playboy CEO's 7 Tips for College Students

Nov. 9, 2009— -- Students lined up across the Joyce Hergenhan Auditorium at Syracuse University last Wednesday waiting to get their notebook's autographed and pictures taken with a Playboy icon: Christie Hefner.

Hefner, 57, is the daughter of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner. She served as CEO of Playboy Enterprises from 1988 until early 2009, when she stepped down, making her the longest-serving woman CEO of any major media company. In 2006 Forbes magazine listed her among the "100 Most Powerful Women."

"I never thought I was going to go to work for my father's company," Hefner said. "I never thought I was going to work for any business."

Flash-forward to today and Hefner now has a hand in shaping a variety of organizations. She does public policy outreach with liberal think tank the Center for American Progress, and says she declined an offer to become publisher of the Columbia Journalism Review in favor of advising them on how to improve their business model. She also works with Canyon Ranch, a resort spa, to help expand the company.

Hefner came to Syracuse to share what she's learned via her journey at Playboy, and reflect on two decades of leading a multi-billion dollar international company.

Here are few pieces of advice Hefner offered to the packed auditorium of Syracuse University students:

Lose the jargon. "Try not to be either intimidated by or a captive of jargon. Even though it's language, and language is about communication, it often exists actually to obfuscate, and to control power, and not to communicate."

Don't ever stop meeting people. "I don't think you can know too many smart people. I don't think you should ever stop meeting people. In the course of constantly trying to meet people, and constantly expanding my network, I met a person named Jim Clark who was the original founder of a company called Mosaic, which became Netscape, which is what turned the Internet into what we know as the Internet. And because I met him I was able to have a conversation about whether it was possible to take Playboy online, without simply turning the brand and the content over to a CompuServe and losing control of the brand and losing control of the creative commercial applications. And he said, because of his rich knowledge, 'Why yes it is. I can build an infrastructure for you where people can simply type in 'Playboy.com' and they will be at your site.'"

Don't ever stop trying to learn. "If you ever get to a point where you stop learning you will find your professional options and your personal satisfaction severely curtailed. Because this world is changing much too quickly."

Read history. "If you do wind up in a position of leadership I would urge not to spend a lot of time reading books about leadership, which I find, in the main, a waste of time, and for sure if it's got a number in the title. You can definitely skip those. Read history. I learned more about leadership reading about Abraham Lincoln than I ever learned reading The One-Minute Manager."