Copy of How One Rock Star B-School Dean Built an Awesome Culture (TPL Insights #293)

By Rob Andrews

In today’s fast-paced world, gratitude and recognition can often be overlooked, yet they play a crucial role in motivation, especially when praise is individualized to each person’s contributions and efforts. In this context, the concepts of gratitude, recognition, and praise, when gratitude recognition and praise are individualized for maximum impact, become even more impactful. The importance of gratitude, recognition, and praise being individualized cannot be overstated.

Most business schools crank out MBAs, cranky faculty, and glossy brochures full of smiling students posed in front of brick buildings. The McCombs School of Business at UT Austin has all of that, sure, but it also has Dean Lillian Mills. And Lillian does not just run a business school. She builds culture the way Willie Nelson builds playlists, with variety, heart, and a few surprises that make you wonder why everybody else does not do it that way.

I had the pleasure of sitting down with her, and what I found was a leadership master class wrapped in burnt orange. This is not a theory. This is gratitude in action, the kind of intentional culture-shaping most CEOs would pay a small fortune to learn.

Gratitude as Rocket Fuel

Dean Mills has a system that puts every employee of the month program you have ever seen to shame. Once a month, her senior leaders report kudos. She does not just pass them along. She copies the employee and their boss. That tiny CC line is where the magic lives.

Why? Because when the boss sees someone else praising their employee, it cuts through politics, resentment, and paperwork. The boss does not have to worry about who filled out what form. Instead, everyone wins. The employee feels appreciated, the boss looks good for hiring a rock star, and Lillian quietly engineers a culture where gratitude flows up, down, and sideways.

She calls gratitude the lubricant that makes the big machine of UT move more smoothly. I call it genius. She has figured out that appreciation is cheaper than a raise and often more powerful.

Praise in Public, Coach in Private

Lillian lives by a simple mantra: praise in public, coach in private. If something goes wrong, she meets with the person individually. No blasting emails, no public scoldings, no reply-all disasters. She reserves the group emails for compliments.

Think about how rare that is. Most organizations reverse the formula. They criticize in public and whisper a half-hearted good job in private. McCombs flips that script, and it shows.

The Dawn Patrol Dean

You want to know how serious this woman is about culture? She patrols the UT campus at 5 a.m. She is in bed by 8:30 p.m. and prowling the grounds before sunrise. That is when she discovered what she calls her secret garden, a landscaped corner near the old gym, complete with benches and curved walkways.

She did not keep it to herself. She snapped a photo, sent it to the facilities team, and thanked them for their work. And here is the kicker. She intentionally sent it to a broad distribution list. Why? Because she knows that by the time it filters down to the right person, ten other people have read it and felt seen.

That is not a dean doing rounds. That is a culture architect.

A Dean Who Reads the Research

Every month, McCombs publishes a research newsletter. Most deans would skim it, if that. Lillian takes half a day, clicks through every link, reads the abstract, sometimes the intro, occasionally the whole paper. Then she emails the author with questions, copying their department chair and the dean for research.

She does not stop there. If she sees research with real-world applications, she connects faculty with industry leaders. Imagine publishing a paper on grocery store pricing and suddenly getting an intro to the COO of H-E-B. That is not just support. It is jet fuel for young scholars’ careers.

And the message to faculty? Your work matters. Your dean notices. Keep going.

The Birthday Bevo

Culture is not just about emails and research. It is about personal touches. Lillian’s head of development set 250 alarms on her phone, birthdays for faculty, staff, and key stakeholders. On January 1, she draws that year’s Birthday Bevo, a hand-sketched longhorn mascot that makes its way into every birthday message and thank-you note.

Hand-drawn Bevo’s. From the dean. Let that sink in.

You think people forget a form letter? Sure. Do they forget the dean of one of the nation’s top business schools sketching a cartoon longhorn in their honor? Not a chance.

Too Many Thank Yous? Not Possible

When Lillian walks past a donor plaque in Rowling Hall, she takes a photo and sends a thank-you text, even if the gift was made a decade ago. “There is no such thing as too many thank yous,” she told me. And she is right.

Donors do not just give money. They give belief, trust, and time. By keeping gratitude fresh, she makes sure they never feel like yesterday’s news. CEOs could learn a lot from this. Employees who feel forgotten might as well be gone.

Stepping Away

After six years as dean, Lillian is stepping away to return to the classroom. Her term was not capped, and she is not being pushed. She simply loves teaching and feels the pull back to the work that first brought her to academia. That alone says something about her leadership style. She leads by choice, not compulsion. She chooses culture over ego.

Some of her cultural practices may survive. Some may not. She knows the next dean might not send Birthday Bevo’s or 5 a.m. landscape compliments. But the bar has been raised. People will notice if those touches disappear.

Why It Matters Beyond Austin

Now, you might be thinking, “This is all very heartwarming, Rob, but what does a business school dean have to do with my company?” Everything.

What Lillian has built is a case study in culture. Gratitude as strategy. Touchpoints as leverage. Personalization as retention. This is not higher ed fluff. It is leadership fundamentals, practiced daily by a woman who treats culture like the bottom line it is.

Every CEO, every board chair, every HR leader should pay attention. Because if you can create a culture where people feel seen and appreciated even when the money is tight, imagine what you can do when the resources flow.

Final Thought

I walked away from my conversation with Dean Mills, thinking less about academia and more about what it means to lead. Leadership is not about corner offices, strategic plans, or glossy reports. It is about small, intentional acts of humanity repeated consistently until they change the air everyone breathes.

That is what Lillian Mills has done at McCombs. She is not just a dean. She is a culture rock star with a sketchpad, an iPhone full of alarms, and a sunrise walking habit. And in the process, she has taught us all that gratitude is not soft. It is the hardest currency there is.

Warmest,

Rob Andrews

Chairman & Chief Executive Officer

Celebrating 28 years of Executive Search, Leadership Advisory, and Interim Executive Excellence

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