Winning in Business

An unlikely classroom is the setting for a Texas Executive Education course debuting this summer: Austin’s Formula 1 racetrack. 

For Don Ruse, the director of the new McCombs program — “Winning! What Auto Racing Teaches Us About Success in Business” — the track at the Circuit of the Americas is a natural choice. Ruse is a race car aficionado, an assistant professor of instruction at McCombs, and the founder of a management advisory firm that specializes in helping companies scale and grow. He also has been a manager at several international companies but has never forgotten the business lessons he witnessed during decades of going to the track. 

Ruse and his late father, Richard, shared a passion for fast cars and were inspired by what they knew of Roger Penske, who was not only a race car driving legend, but also an entrepreneurial businessman with a Midas touch. Ruse’s childhood playground became Penske’s Michigan International Speedway, about 45 minutes from home. 

“At age 7, I was hoisted into the winner’s car, and I got to turn the key,” Ruse recalls. “That was it for me.”  

He believes C-suite leaders and rising executives can learn new approaches to running their businesses — and taste some excitement — at the track. 

“I’m either going to scare the heck out of you or excite the heck out of you,” says Ruse. “I hope it’s the latter.” 

He believes executives can learn from auto racing how to create winning strategies, build effective teams, strengthen their organizations, and improve their decision-making by learning better ways to cope with uncertainty and risk. In a fast-changing workplace, business leaders need to be agile and innovative deciders and talent spotters, he says. For example, the F1 pit-stop challenge is designed to show how to apply insights on talent, culture, and team dynamics to ratchet up the team’s performance. 

“What I found with Penske was a level of excellence that transcended everything he did,” Ruse says. “His businesses were extremely well run.” He could take a failed automative business and make it a success, he adds. 

Learners will be at COTA and in McCombs classrooms for three intensive days, guided and taught by race car industry professionals and speakers, McCombs and Cockrell School of Engineering faculty members, and successful C-suite executives who are also passionate racers. 

The philosophy behind the program is that winning in professional auto racing and in business requires leaders to execute their plans with precision. “That agility and adaptability is a critical competency companies need, and we can learn a lot from auto racing on those two areas alone,” Ruse says. 

He believes the program is coming at the right time for business leaders to learn how to pivot with grace and speed. 

“We’re living in a period of time that’s extremely volatile and uncertain as well as complex and ambiguous,” Ruse says. “What that requires us to do is move with a level of speed and adaptability and resilience that, in my 40 years in business, I’ve never seen required.” 

Hands-on learning has a way of sticking, especially when the experience is as adrenaline-producing, emotionally riveting, and unusual as this, says Ruse. 

Gaylen Paulson, McCombs associate dean and executive director of Texas Executive Education, says the new course will give leaders a unique opportunity to learn from several of McCombs’ world-class faculty members, including Ruse. “Don Ruse is a boundary spanner, bringing great business and faculty experience, along with a passion for racing. And his enthusiasm is contagious. You can’t help but get excited about what he’s built with the Winning! program.” 

The program is being capped at 20 business executives. “We can learn great things by looking at people who are performing at the highest levels, especially if it’s outside our own industry or area of expertise. Winning! does just that, looking at the amazing competitive landscape of the USGP (United States Grand Prix) and its teams,” he says. 

Tuition will be $14,500 per student and will cover the expense of on-track driving in an exotic supercar and operating at the COTA, including staffing and access to specialized equipment and services.