Tell me about a time you had to work without clear direction.

In my second year I was vice president of my university's entrepreneurship society. The dean's office gave us $15,000 with one sentence of direction, which was to do something for first-generation students. The president handed it to me, and our contact in the dean's office went on leave the same week. My first instinct was to run a conference, because that's what the society knew how to do. I stopped because I didn't know what those students wanted, and nobody could tell me. So I talked to a number of first-generation students and asked each one what had been hardest to get. Most of them said they couldn't afford to take unpaid summer work at a startup. That gave me a goal I could write down. I decided to spend the money on summer stipends at local startups instead of an event, and I sent the dean's office a short plan before I started. The program went really well, and the dean's office funded it again the next year. I learned that when there's no direction, I should write down my own version of the goal.

In my second year I was vice president of my university's entrepreneurship society. The dean's office gave us $15,000 with one sentence of direction, which was to do something for first-generation students. The president handed it to me, and our contact in the dean's office went on leave the same week. My first instinct was to run a conference, because that's what the society knew how to do. I stopped because I didn't know what those students wanted, and nobody could tell me. So I interviewed 18 first-generation students in two weeks and asked each one what had been hardest to get. Fourteen of them said they couldn't afford to take unpaid summer work at a startup. That gave me a goal I could write down. I decided to spend the money on six summer stipends of $2,500 at local startups instead of an event. I wasn't sure the dean's office would accept that, and I didn't want to wait a month to find out. So I sent a one-page plan with the goal, the budget and how I'd measure it. I wrote that I'd start recruiting startups on the 15th unless they wanted something different. They replied with one question and a yes. I signed up nine startups and placed six students that summer. Four of the six were offered paid work afterward, and the dean's office doubled the grant to $30,000 the next year. I learned that when there's no direction, I should write down my own version of the goal, test it with the people it's for, and tell whoever's in charge what I'll do and by when.