Ursula Burns: Are Leaders Born or Made?

we have the pleasure of having this event being moderated by Professor Madhu pay a canola Madhu Pocono is an assistant professor management at Columbia Business School prior to pursuing a career in academia professor al Cannella worked in professional professional services at Bain & Company and Merrill Lynch professor our canola examines how organizational environments characterized by deadlines multitasking and other attributes such as having low status can engender stress and how this stress can have a spillover effect on performance in addition professor granola examines the strategies organizations employ to increase the diversity of their talent pool and the biases that affect the recruitment and retention of minorities and organizations professor Hawkins earned a BA an MA in Social Psychology from Harvard University she also holds an MBA and PhD in organizational behavior from Harvard Business School so I think let's thank professor rocky no way I have the distinct honor of introducing our guest speaker for today mrs. Ursula burns chairman and chief executive officer of Xerox an individual who overcame the obstacles of race gender and class to become the leader of a great company Ursula grew up in the rough public housing projects on the Lower East Side of New York City went to NYU Polytech to become a mechanical engineer and received master the Masters and mechanical engineering from Columbia University she joins e laughs as a summer intern and never left obviously I will detail the complete rise at Xerox except to say that she has worked in just about every area of the business product development and manufacturing supply chain operations and research and development marketing distribution both domestically and globally she's currently leading a major transformation of Xerox long known for its success in document technology Ursula is now leading the charge in a transformative effort to expand the firms focus to business process management these efforts include the successful acquisition of ACS a leading business outsourcing firm in researching the full capabilities of the new Xerox I came to be amazed at both the depth and breadth of business processes Xerox designs and operates customer call centers accounts payables and receivables HR benefits programming IT infrastructure and networks health integration information exchanges and so much more it should be a note that as a result of the successful integration Xerox revenues and Business Process Outsourcing and information technology are now larger than those from its document technology business also has a well-earned reputation of being a fearless and charismatic leader an open and candid communicator and an individual who always speaks her mind particularly to those in power I believe that we are in for quite a discussion I hope you're joining me in welcoming miss burns it really is a pleasure to have you here in the privilege I think we have to use yours can you hear us yeah okay unfortunately can you hear us now is this better okay so it really is a privilege and an honor to have you here and I think some of the students chose me to do this interview because they know in the classroom I like to keep it real so I want to prepare you that I'm gonna keep it real and one of the first questions I have for you is statistically speaking there's probably a less than 1% chance given some of the things we talked about African American women whatever that you'd rise to the position that she rose to I want you to take us to the moment where you felt like huh I maybe could be CEO of this company one day well the two moments one was a ridiculously stupid moment and the other one was the real moment when I joined the company I actually said yeah I could run this place one day but after about five or 10 years I realized that it was probably that that was a ridiculous statement to have made at the time that I made it I had no idea what running the company meant I didn't even know what the structure of a company was now you guys have that you can google it and you know see everything about company structures etcetera when I was growing up and when I entered the work environment we didn't have these social media sites or any kind of a real structured internet system that kind of stuff so if I wanted to know anything about a company I had to go to the library and kind of dig up dig up things and I wasn't really too into that so I actually just thought that I was smart I knew that was smart and I thought that I was different enough to make a difference and what I wanted to do after coming off the perch and saying I wanted to run the place what I want to do is just do a good job and I say this a lot and people say I can't be what you wanted to do and what I wanted to do was do a good job I was a very well trained engineer for Brooklyn poly and then here and I was really precise and good at that field of what I was doing and I and I wanted to just do that really really well and come known for that without understanding that somewhere else in the company with other people were doing other things they were you know selling things and financing etc I really didn't get interested in that until probably 10 years after I walked in the door and realized somebody told me actually my husband now said you know you you should probably get out of this lab because there's more happening in the company than that and the second time was after I was chosen to be the executive assistant to the CEO of the company now the executive assistant when I was asked to be the executive assistant I thought was a job that was beneath me so my response was that do you understand that I have a master's degree in mechanical engineering don't you understand Who I am and his response was I understand totally who you are and you should probably consider this job so when I took the job working for him I realized what his job was I got to see a lot of the leadership team of the company and that was the second time and in a real time when I said yeah I could definitely do this now whether it would work out or not whether because it's all its timing it's there's so many things that have to do out they have little to do with how well you do and whether or not you actually can sit in the seat I just said okay I don't know I can't fix any of those things but I can make sure that I'm prepared in the broadest sense and I was fortunate enough to just follow directions very well they said go here I said okay I'll go they said do this I said okay I'll do that and every time I engaged I just engaged assuming that this was the most important thing I had to do at the time it's actually something that's changed quite a bit in in companies I think we're getting it back a little bit when you hire you guys highfalutin engineers and any kind of an MBA student the first thing I do if I hire if somebody comes into my company who's what we call a band a they must talk to me and if the discussion is about getting real and you said which is no you're not gonna come here and run the place when you walk in the door no yeah so I want to hear your opinion we want to hear your opinion you want to engage but you have to do something and are in a position to have a voice before you can have a voice and your pedigree your school agree or whatever the heck it is the papers that you wrote don't really carry a whole lot past getting you in the door and then in the door you have to kind of start all over again and start playing a different a whole different game all over again and and when I say game I don't mean a game to try to position yourself I mean the game to do your job and and so I actually ended up lucky I ended up lucky a good guy good guys generically men and women good positions and justice ability that I had to work disability to work really hard and stay really focused they actually say that luck favors our prepares you were prepared lucky and really smart to be able to make it this far and you were groomed you had these great mentors and so certainly there are some moments close to when you were you know being appointed CEO that you might have had some doubts or some fears or some concerns fears yeah to this day I'm wake up most days unsettled sure never doubt very really very rarely doesn't most of my doubts were around my family my kids around my life like close family my niece is here so she's a she's a boy not a student so there's a you know I have a circle of people that I care immensely about that are my responsibility and that's my brother and my sister their families and my kids and my husband and our dog so most of the time I have doubts is about them and whether or not I'm doing the best for them or they're being prepared the lessons are right etc the rest of at work is very rarely doubt it's more stress and nervousness and unsettled and I never wake up ever I do go to sleep sometimes feeling as though I did a reasonably good job but most of time by the time I wake up that all of that assurance is going out the window and I start again saying oh my goodness there's so much to do so many decisions to be made so much possibility for succeeding so much possibility for therefore screwing up and so you know it's just this cycle that's pretty wearing on you how do you manage that you know I mean he I'd take every day at the time I was speaking to some students earlier to some people earlier and I was talking about what I care about and how I actually managed my life and day and I said not everybody can do this obviously you can't do this I've actually I'm 53 so I think I've earned my way to the point where I can dismiss certain things and how I manage my life is I actually have a box the size of this table of things that I that are in and that is managed very tightly and everything that's out if I can get a moment to think about it fine if not fine if somebody else is it's somebody else's problem I'm the box is big by the way this is not you know just you know my little box it's a big box it's the world it's you know the economy it's energy there's a lot of things like that I worry about but there's a whole bunch of stuff that I don't worry about you know I don't worry about you know somebody's crazy life's that people have I they're entertaining but I don't it's fine if they want to do that I don't worry about beliefs that are odd to me i I think people have the right to have those beliefs but you know I try to keep it real and keep it close to home and that that's my way of dealing with the just unbelievable unbelievably large amount of information overwhelming information that you can get I do not have a Facebook account of people you know how can you not have a Facebook account because I think it's nobody's damn business most of what I do I don't Twitter or tweet or whatever you call it by the way I'm technically I think pretty savvy I do everything else that you could possibly imagine but there's there's and and this is not necessarily for everyone I just think it is so way did I protect myself from huge distractions and from noise signals and that the way that I this may not like I said this is nothing real is the most real way to live but this duality I just decide that there are things that are important to me and it's not it's kind of somebody else to handle it now you mentioned the economy is one of the things in your big box and you are an advisor to the president you talk to him about issues related to the economy and other things what do you think is going well what do you think could be improved what are some of the things that we need to do better in this administration yeah I'm going to actually separate the discussion from this administration because I actually am I don't think I'm an adviser to the president I think the president uses me I think he actually does have advisors and I'm not one of them but I mean that in a very positive way I mean he he has people who are expert at things that he actually calls advisors he uses me to get insight on things that I care about that happened to be aligned with things that are important to him and that happens to be trade and education a big big deal on that energy is nothing but other areas like he doesn't call me what are you doing his real or and that stuff I don't have any opinion about that so what I think is going well in the economy and in the world and then the reason why I'm separating it is that the president as great as any president is as powerful as they are they have eight years if they're lucky for years if they're not to effect a economic and ecological and system that is centuries in the making and centuries to go so he's just a point in time and so I'm going to talk about the sum of all the times up to now particularly in America but it's actually playing out more more loudly around the world and it's going to hit America soon and starting to hit we have a system in this country that prepared us for greatness we raised our kids set up our institutions set by financial structure for greatness and for leading and for habit and for having people serve us we have a structure that for that so we and we separate by the way some of the people who serve are in this country you have large number of people who solver in this country some of them come from other countries to this country to serve but some of them others born in an economic situation that puts them in a serving in a serving way and generally that's balanced fairly well for the people who are served so the people who are serving will probably think that they're being screwed all the time right but so this this this balance works pretty well everybody's pretty happy and you know the stock market goes up and everybody goes to school or you know the people who count and vote the 20% of the population who actually participate in that part of the system what's happened is that's been disrupted it's been disrupted because the world didn't stand still the world said I like the way that these people live in this other place it's pretty cool they have roads the lights a little you know it's looked I call it the rule of law and paved roads we have them we have running water generally and we have a system that actually works fairly well and people look at it and say this is a good idea there's a lot of stuff that's bad about it right away but it's a good idea and we have and people have worked hard to try to get there and in 7 billion people in the world billions of them half a billion of them are getting there they're not all here and what happens now is that we have places in the world that you can actually get the great things from either talent or energy or ideas whatever technology that are not here and that's disrupting the economic system that we have and as it disrupts that system we are putting more and more people into the buckets that were already already here but they were not the most pleasant buckets you know the buckets back and if you were ever up up front and now you have to go back it's horrible if you're back trying to come up you got it right so that's what I started you started poor and you're working up and ii do it a little bit anything that is a little bit better than where you were before if you were there and now you're back it's a hateful place to be so we have an entire infrastructure to build around a certain pay structure a living structure that you can arbitrage around the world pretty easily and we've disrupted the entire system in this country and in most of the developed countries around the world and now the question is so now what so one discussion is government please fix it I need Social Security unemployment education all of the stuff health care that you need that was like it was before and I really can't pay much more for it and the government that says I understand it depends who's in government I understand that you need that the current government I understand that you need that and we're gonna figure out a way to get it and the rhetoric today is we're gonna get it from all the people who have it and we're gonna give it to now the good news about it is that if you took it all from all the people who have it in this country who still couldn't solve the problem but but that's the bad news but this dicot this problem is a real one it's a real one we're gonna have to actually step back and understand what what do we trade off do we do we allow people to live until they're 100 years old and can't be kept alive for that long with medical technology that we can't afford that do we allow that and that it sounds like a horrible thing to say in the country like this we never have discussions like that do you allow people do you fix the schools do you fix the public schools and tax to fix them and people say well yeah you should pick the fix to public schools but you can't raise my taxes so there's a whole cycle that we're gonna have to go through the reset ourselves for greatness because we were great before and if we want to be great again we're gonna have to invest like we did before like we were when we were a developing nation this is my opinion right so there is a huge push that we're gonna have to do a significant amount of rebalancing that we're gonna have to do the people who have you guys me are gonna have to give significantly more then you ever thought it would you would have to give and that you think it's fair to help balance it again and the people who don't have we're going to have to actually not get as much as they want for us to balance it again and the only way for it to work is us too literally I think recognized and it you just can't continue to scream at each other and say you guys give more you guys want less which is what we're doing today and if we do that then fine you know it'll be fine what I say to my kids and my niece is all the time is all the time is I'll be dead well before this blows up and this is why you guys have to worry about it because we I mean I'm 53 20 years we're gonna be fine 25 um it's gonna get hot crowded and it's already flat right hot crowded and more dirty in the next couple of years if we don't actually face the problems that we have and I think part of the challenge is that some of the leaders political and business are counting on the fact that they'll be gone well before the problem actually blows up and I I just can't I have kids and they'll have kids and I'm actually worried about them screeching leaders that you admire that you've learned the most from yeah my mother was probably the person I learned the most from and she would not be considered a leader by most of the people in the world but she was amazing amazing just an amazing woman very focused extremely balanced extremely clear and she was as she actually believed that there were rules that were black and white nowadays you can't ever say that to kids everything is gray they have any options you should think about things now her approach was pretty clear if he's you know you shouldn't steal it shouldn't lie you shouldn't cheat and you could say but there were circumstances and she said that secondary to the point which is that you shouldn't use you nishan she was very very clear she actually set priorities that were amazing and her priorities were not about her personal success it was all about her kids and about the circle of things that she held dear to her she she didn't just speak it she actually invested that way you know she sent my brother and my sister and I to school to Catholic schools and that pay that were six hundred and fifty dollars a year and she made four thousand dollars a year and that's that's the most she ever made was four thousand four hundred bucks and my brother my sister and I went to schools that way it's kind of like sending us to Harvard right and making 75,000 it was amazing and she was very clear on what our jobs were and how we should live and she never spoke to us about money ever ever her thing was you have to go to college I was a grad to college and didn't have an idea about how to pay for it I don't even think about paying for because she never talked about that work out actually it ended up working on but her her thing was you have to be a good person and her thing to me was she says this to all of us a couple of statement she would say one was you have to live you in life and give back more than you take away that's her definition of success give back you have to leave in the world more than you take away this is a burden that's amazing I mean that was raised to the Catholic girl and so I actually think about this a lot it's kind of be easy if I didn't think about it a lot more fun so that was one of the other things she always said to me was this joy you feel his life I have a plaque made for and what she meant by that is this is this is it there is no other this is it there's no other place to go that's better you make it here you do it you know so this place that you are make the best of it and then you go to the next place make the best of it don't look for don't keep looking for the greener grass I strive for it work for it but don't minimize the things that you can learn from where you are today so she was she was amazing and absolutely amazing she died many many many years ago well before any of our kids were born and so she didn't get to see when it well before we were successful which is unfortunate the next person I can say who is still a really big impact on my life is my husband and he is odd in that he is a he's a researcher and he's a physicist and a researcher but he's he's has the ultimate good soul he's just just a really nice guy and you know mourns for the right things and boots for the right things it's just a really good guy he's also smart and all that stuff but he's it's the softest heart that I that I have ever seen and then the next person is Vernon Jordan has been a godfather of mine for a long time and in the in the time since I've become an executive in the company he's been probably the most consistent professional watcher of me and therefore the most consistent professional teacher of mine and he's pretty pretty built pretty clear and he's you know he's enough people know Vernon Johnny's a really big black guy and he's known for being extremely blunt and he he calls me on the carpet positively and negatively like nobody else can and does it does it exactly in the right way the right timing and it's just perfect he's really good and another person who I spend a lot of time with I was speaking to somebody earlier it was Ken Chenault and Ken I actually don't know him as well person I know I'm feeling well personally but I don't know him as well personally as the previous three but I'm on his board on the American Express board and I watch I've been able to watch for seven years this guy run a company in a way that I go to the board meetings and I'm supposed to help him but I actually spend most of my time take learning from such a solid manager of the board manager of his team leader of the company he's very calm extremely consistent he's just he's really a solid leader and you know I keep trying to find some big floor and it's not really one there so I actually study him a lot he's so much unlike me I'm and you know well on the edge I'm always kind of bouncing back and forth I'm a really type ten you know a type person my team sees me sweat I tell them what I'm worried about I tell them when I'm he's yeah it's hard you you look at them in the same and things are going great things must be going great things are always going great because ken is always great so there's a good balance there that I think we have to so I actually like him there's a lot of other people as well I can't well it sounds like you've learned from Ken Vernon Jordan your husband your mother and we have in this idea the people who are here who are at Columbia Business School to learn to learn how to be on the and eventually of American Express if you were on the faculty of Columbia Business School what do you think the critical skills are that we need to be teaching our MBA so that they can be more effective and achieve the many things that you have the many things that they aspire to achieve yeah one thing I mean the subjects you have to learn right so I always say the people who walk into my office who said they want to be me is that you got to be good at something well before you good at every you know you're well before your average and everything because that's what the CEO is and a little bit above average and everything but you have to be good really really good at something so whatever it is that you do you literally have to get comfortable with it you have to become really good at it and for me it was engineering I was I'm really good at this so if I walk in today to a line of business that is into a lab or into a manufacturing site I can relax and I can actually just hang out there not a lot of you know you need at least one place in the company that you can do that if I go into a bond rating meeting I'm not relaxed you know because I just didn't I didn't do that that stuff and so I'm I'm I'm pretty good at it now but it's not my home so first is be good at something so whatever they teach you here whatever your turn learning marketing or finance or business this big thing be good at that and find someplace to to make your to make your mark but then everything else has nothing to do with what people generally teaching courses everything you know one of the things that I will tell you humility one of the most amazing things that you could learn in life but definitely in business is humility and it is totally counter to the titles that they give us chief executive officer the chief I'm the chief I have security I have people who travel with me I have a plane you know everything that that's you get when you get to this position actually pushes you away from the one thing that you have to have and that's humility and I and this ability to understand that you have to learn something every single day and that nothing gets done this is another without people and if you can't get them to buy I tell you what people are are manipulative mean think I'm telling if you pissed them off they will figure out a way to make you fail and by the way you deserve it now unfortunately most people don't really connect and it takes a long time right so by the time the people kind of rise up against you in a way that workers can not unionizing but just not working really hard not following the direction or not buying into the strategy by the time that happens you're generally going right so you've never really very rarely catch a bad CEO in their time it usually comes in a guy after it but if you can't figure out a way to understand that people have lives that they come into work every day they have doubts they have families they have passions that they are just like you or vice versa and you can engage them in some way then you're gonna there's no doubt about it your job will be really hard it'd be really hard you may succeed in this short term but in the long term you're gonna you're gonna die so the second thing is this whole idea about understanding that people should talk people should have an opinion people should should you want that that's what you want you and you count on that to make the enterprise great so humility and the fact that it's all about them it's not about you and it's all about them the customers it's all about them the clients all about them their shareholders it's really not about you the individual you just happen to be the orchestrator for for the next ten years and then there's another echo say to another one another one another one anything is together and then the third thing is that the world we you do business in the world you don't do business in the United States and this is a big thing for US companies and students to learn and it's interesting that the world is so much different in view in emphasis and everything then than here and we're kind of a small 300 million people a big economic power but 300 million people on in the and most people have lived in in London I traveled all over the world continuously most people approach their day differently than we do and and it's really I mean when you try to design products or sell marketing campaigns something simple you know simple things like you know it's how you're gonna package something things that we would consider are just normal of course they would do that the answer is they would never do that because because they don't have what they do have or whatever so this idea that the world is is big and different captured while you're here in a lot of ways now in a lot of different ways people here are not in a lot of different ways many are trying to figure out what next they're here at Columbia Business School looking for jobs wine to know what what should we follow what is the path and it's interesting because about 50 percent of first years at least you know go for your traditional consulting or banking or things like that in terms of jobs and where you see the most growth what what is one of those areas that you think is an underappreciated area that people should be thinking about engineering and making things said the engineer by the way I actually think that there is huge opportunity in law and business and banking and consulting I think it's all fine but did you think about this I this great guy who I know his name is Dean Kaman who did the I you know he did the Segway and portable dialysis machine in a client you know it's an amazing guy first and he says he said them if we don't watch it we're gonna have all these masters but no business to businesses to administer and it's really important that we understand that in order to that we have to create value somewhere doesn't have to be like making really a table for this stand but something has to be created before we can actually law it or manage it or something so I think we have to get back to some of the basic things if you think about the biggest problems that we have in the old portable water distribution of energy and food the sustainability of the Earth's you think I just you need a scientist and engineer or technologist a mathematician somebody to start working on these problems as much and it has valuable as the Masters in Business Administration is they can think of the idea they can't implement the damn thing so we need some people who can work on that so I actually think is a is a huge pull in the world for I mean we know it right and 150,000 jobs every six months go unfilled paying seventy thousand dollars a year in this country primarily because primarily totally because we have absolutely no source for the people we just can't find them and the government has closed the door and said if you get your master's degree or PhD in these fields we're gonna send you home thank you very much I'm gonna send you home so we are you know we shop around we shipped the jobs all over the place to get the problem solved there's a lot of work to try to fix that problem so that's one area that I think outside of that I say to everybody I don't care what you do make sure you love it study what you love and I have two examples I have a son who is the he's the bean burns child my husband is a physicist I'm an engineer my son is an engineer he went to MIT he did exactly what we would all say we love you child you know I have a daughter who is she's also a bean burns child and two nieces who were burns burns child burned soils children these kids are brilliant my daughter's brilliant in math and brilliant none of them want to be engineers but they're gonna pursue things that they really love and if you do that and I tell you it's a big deal if you do that then I think you can make a difference in the world mmm-hmm in the world and in the world maybe like to your family you could be a community but make a difference so first find something to I think that for people coming out of schools like this finding a job is not gonna be your problem it's gonna be finding the right job over time I mean it may take you like a month but you'll find a job and you'll all go to the traditional places you go to the veins and the Mackenzies and to the banks and some of you will come to companies and we're concerned you know basic tech companies and working strategy you will do startups or venture capital and those kinds of things and that will be the start of your journey because inside out seriously particularly for MBA students that you're gonna and go to a place and end up there very very likely technologists actually do it more than they stick more than more than the MBA students so find a place that you can actually kind of spread your wings that you can practice being a human being mm-hmm but you have to you can have an opinion that you can say stuff stick that you can you can practice being in the movie you can have a life and that you can actually contribute to the company as well and if you love it stay if you don't love it then you go find another job in another field the xxx Thatcher now you've clearly found something that you love and you've had the support of your family of which you've mentioned a couple of times to to make it happen but it I'm sure it's been tough and there have been some challenges and so we want to understand how you've made it work this idea of work-life balance family getting it right how have you made it work what would you have done differently oh yeah I mean first thing I would have done differently we've had more kids two children and I would have had probably two more yeah I know I agree they're good at this age yeah it's the it's perfect I mean they're they're you know I'm sure they're people who don't have perfect kids but it's good they actually you know you keep them close they you know don't get too confused with you you don't get too confused with them and at the end of the day they turn out to be okay people and this is it's a perfect time in with them because they actually when you hear the statement keep you young it's not about like keep you young like you know laughing it's just about perspective and just feeling like energetic about life than the future etc so I would have no kids but when it comes to work I you know how do I keep it I have first of all I have a support system that's amazing I have a sister that is amazing she my sister her whole family is our family you know my brother in high status okay she kind of takes care of us make sure that we have she's had she's had her own troubles and she's I mean my sister's was a while kid but she grew up to be a really good supporter of our family and when I lived in Rochester which Ida lived for a long time I travel incessantly and between her and my husband we raised our kids and it was it was really good that we had this ability to that had this person who I trusted in help just because she was next to me all the time and that could help with raising my kids that was really good and the other thing is I have a great husband and four women who don't have great husbands find another one a woman who are looking for husbands find and find a good husband and vice versa if your spouse if you're male and you know I don't mean that he's like this it doesn't my husband it's really odd he's a scientist he's a great guy he's just different you know his rhythm is different but he he's very good he under things that are important to me you know the the values that I have are the values that he has and vice versa we would go about things very differently but we never we don't stray that far apart so that makes it really easy and comfortable and I work for a phenomenal company I work for a phenomenal company this company has gone through good bad good bad at the end of the day there are certain things that never change it Xerox and one is that they value me for me and I value you for you and I'll value you for you and by the way you don't look anything like me or act anything like me it's there for a very difficult place to manage right because you know we have my management team my CFO is an Italian from Italy my the head of my technology business is a Portuguese guy from Portugal the head of my services business is a Mormon we have it all my CFO is my CTO is a Belgian woman we have it all different languages different ages different Cadence's but we have over since 1906 since the time this company was we operated with difference and difference now is the way that we operate so we have it's really easy to kind of enter our company so I benefited from the fact that I could enter when I joined Xerox if you look back at my pictures you would not have hired me I was an unhireable person I dressed like they did in that time I had huge amount of hair you know just it was I spoke faster than I do today with more of a dialect than I do too it was it was and they all they cared about was the fact that I was a good engineer they kept me out of the public for a long take a couple of years before they let you have the lab but it is your good engineer and we have this really big problem so I'm gonna give you this big problem I was absolutely amazed technician working for me and I would go in every day that sometimes I look around I say is anybody gonna kind of manage me and they did manage to me but it was like I'm not gonna manage your engineering we hired you to do that I got kind of rounded out and on the edges but I have a great company and it allowed me to kind of settle in to a grown-up Ursula in a way that I didn't have to shed everything I didn't have to kind of you know transform myself into a white male I didn't have to like country music I didn't have to you know do all of the things that I just didn't want to do so I actually was able to be me and that was the most amazing thing the biggest and I got opportunity after opportunity after opportunity I was always be amazed I was like he said go to Europe and run the European mid-range business for me and I said go to me they said yeah pack up your family and go so I packed up my family and we found a house and we live there and I would call back and say guys I'm here except we know you're here we know you're there we see the results we're watching the results we get reports but it was it's a great place landing in a great company was amazing for me and then I had a lot of people who sponsored me who mentored me people who just took care so I what I did it was just by taking advantage of the fact that I was right I was lucky and I mean lucky in the broadest way the most you know I was lucky I had a great mother I was lucky I had a great company I was lucky but I wasn't obviously only lucky you know you work hard for it so I was good now as you know this session has been sponsored by the black Students Association the BBS a as well as Columbia women in business and I've heard you quoted as saying that you were born with three strikes against you race class and gender and there are many people in here who are in similar situations to I'm not sure what advice would you give in terms of navigating those three strikes you know what's interesting I actually say that to force the discussion first about these things that we call strikes and and Shelly called obstacles because I want to remember you talk about it these are not obstacles this think about it I mean Xerox or the United States has millions of engineers how many black female engineers are there not a lot the N States has 500 fortune 500 CEOs there's only one but so what I mean by this is that it's an obstacle when people look at it and people will categorize it excuse me as a strike obviously I didn't wake up and say oh my god I have a strike I'm a woman I have a strike I'm black means not wrong what I found out that was that it was actually not that much a strike it was structurally a strike obviously but I had all the tools fortunately to make the strike into a home run like a hit and if you could figure out a way to not get kind of wrapped up around the the things that you are as a burden I I love the fact that I'm a black woman I think it's good I was saying to a smaller group earlier that I saw I became the CEO and when I became the CEO I was I took over from a woman who was phenomenal amazing remarkable her name is Anna okay she was great she was a great teacher and she left the company even though we were still struggling in a really good stay for me I mean so I couldn't I didn't have to worry about whether we could make payroll or whether the culture was right she did all the the unglue rias heavy lifting right so that I walk in and I can actually go by ACS and people like oh great great thing I'm like if we didn't have the money to do it I wouldn't been able to do it right and she she did most of that work for us and gave us that flexibility when I walked in i was and i was made to CEO the board had to make me the CEO I remember saying is I said to the earlier group one thing that you do Kenshin all told me this as well he said whatever you're gonna do if it's really kind of crazy do it early because I can't fire you like when you walked in right really a bad thing if the board made you the CEO and then the six months later said we made a really big mistake we're gonna move by the way obviously you don't play the game that way you don't say oh I couldn't actually I can run amok but what you can do is actually people are ready for change when change happens and they're ready for change when things are bad there are two things so when you make a change when we CEO changes they they're people are sitting there going something's gonna happen so don't waste it and make something happen good obviously and then when things are really bad people expect you to change this the hardest time to change is when everything is gone just just fine so at the time at the company when I when I walked into the company as CEO I was able I had a great team that was done by him you know and and then added me at at the end because I knew I was gonna be CEO she knew I was gonna be CEO so we made a lot of decisions together had a really solid board this strategy was pretty good and we knew that we had assets that we were not kind of operating as broadly as we could and so the question was how to for me was I had two years to think about it how do you operate these assets that we have that no one else can claim how do we put them together and make them better in essence when we went into services so early on I was able to kind of step out of the box because people expected me to step out of the box so these obstacles I say use them to your advantage if you're the only one of the thing I tell you I'm not this I was not the smartest person at Xerox but people knew who I wore it was because when I spoke up and because when I stood up I was the only one who looked like me in the audience that I said oh is that woman the deaf person again you know I remember her from the last time and by the way I mean obviously it's getting harder so here's we're we're getting more and more women and more and more African Americans Hispanics all over the place but when you are alone and you're good and fairly confident shame on you if you don't take advantage of it as an advantage not as a disadvantage by the way I didn't think about this when I was growing up I didn't think about it this way but as I got older it was very clear that the reason why they knew who I was was not only because I was smart because there was a lot of smart people but because I was smart and different and so smart and different you said well if that can help you there where else can it help you right now you mentioned Anne Mulcahy and with the smaller group you told us a little bit about a meeting that you had with her discussing how you measure your success or how you think about it only was hoping you'd share that with the larger group because I think it was a really really important point we're talking about balance and how just the burden that I think women in particular but now young more and more young people of any gender go through right so they get money you get a career you first of all you do school you get a career you get money everything is pretty good so you get this job you try to keep fit but you blow that there will be a time when you blow that if kind of goes to hell in a handbasket it starts out really good but then it goes to hell in a handbasket and you have these kids you get married you have a husband and kids or just a husband and this work thing takes up 99% of your mental capacity and 110 percent of your emotional patience everyday it literally sucks everything and the question is how do you stay balanced therefore if you have all of these things this work there's family you know yourself you know interest if you what happened to have interests and Anna and I and was Anne and I were in the company together from the time she's there as long as I was when she was always like a step ahead of me and just about everything she was she was on the sales side I was the engineering side and she was always a management layer above me and we actually never worked for each other until the very end but we'd be like we'll be on panels together women panels or whatever panel and we would always before the panel she said how are things going and she said I didn't see my kids for three days or I've been traveling I missed Melissa's or whatever the heck it is things which you know some presentation or something and my sister had to go horse her father had to go or whatever the heck it is this are you managing the kids remote control right your call in the morning and seven o'clock and say are you dressed did you eat then you get the husband on the phone to you so you managing all control and then there's Sundays when you're at in this in the you know audience of this play that you're saying what the hell am I doing here this is not the most important thing in my life today and you want to be there at work saying you know calling the office did the numbers come in and said so we would say I have an F day or an a day or you know this is an F day and most of our days were sees two F's we didn't we never got above a C and finally she said to me I figured out the solution we are thinking about this in the wrong time span we're trying to do it now which one that actually balanced this thing daily like every day I need to balance my life every day and she said now I've adopted this is my own we're balancing our life over life and so I've I missed a ton of stuff with my kids I miss a ton of stuff with my husband I miss a ton of stuff at work I miss a ton of stuff with me personally there's thousands of books that were stacked up in my house that I haven't read there is a mile that I didn't run there is the you know the I was in Venice and I didn't see anything except for the hotel there's been many places I didn't see but over time it'll be okay over time I'll see more places I'll take a couple of days my kids will be okay work will be okay so the way that I now approach it is I balance it over time and I try not to actually get it perfect and short in short bursts because there's no way to do it because you'll sweat yourself into the ground the other thing I do is starting out where ending up kind of where we started out is I've actually learned to eliminate a lot of crap from my life I just don't you know I just don't care about it anymore there's certain things certain sort of presidential the Republican presidential primaries my son walks into my house and he will turn on the TV and he will watch these things all types of them i watch none of it it's more noise than I can more noise without content yet but I can cross it back so I don't by the way I don't I think that you guys should listen to it don't get me wrong but I know my path is says oh I don't really have to learn a lot about what Rick Santorum thinks or what Gingrich thinks or probably Mitt Romney I would learn what do things but these are other guys Michele Bachmann this is all noise that I actually by the way we have the Democrats have noise too late what I'm saying is that I actually just say okay I'm not gonna be bothered with it and I just can't fit it all in and I try not to and I'm totally finally missing days of stuff my kids will email me and say XYZ died and I said really when I didn't catch it I did but I mean there's a whole bunch of stuff that I actually tried to I try to eliminate because it just really does confuse me and it burdens me now if your son and daughter Melissa Malcolm we're sitting here and I will not put your niece on the spot what would they say about you that might surprise us I mean they were sent me by the way they say they love me better my son said it to me the other day and it actually took me it really shook me for about three months he said to mom you don't meet this person I know I said oh my god this is horrible and I asked him you know I took it in and I thought about it that I asked him and he said to me your we love you madly you're just like I am mean I'm obviously not abusive or what he means is that I actually don't mince words a lot with my kids they'll say or any my niece's my kids Maya they'll say I'd like you to meet Paul and Paul sit down and after Paul leaves he'll say what do you think about Paul say he's a jerk yeah but I think your call today but if you ask me what I thought about and I can tell you this now I'm trying to fix this a little bit by getting better because I don't want to be mean I want to so there is a way to say the same there is a way to say it without you know crushing the people that's what I'm trying to figure out a way to so that's what they'll think they'll also say damn nice okay at the same time pretty generous I have a kind of random question for you I think each of us in our own private time has an alter ego hmm this other person who had she not ascended to be the CEO of Xerox would have done X I would've taught and I would have taught I thought it would have been younger kids but I were taught like mid teenagers you know 13 14 15 16 for sure the other alter ego is I am extremely introverted I prefer so if you give me a chance I will be quiet I'll go to a place and just love the fact that somebody else is talking and somebody else has taken control of the situation and it's just like the best thing in the world you know you need very much so and I that comes out I read a lot and you know these things that I bike a lot I run a lot so these are all things that you do with no one I did promise that I'd open the floor to questions but before we transition it to questions that people have you mentioned your mother and I read something where you said and you actually just mentioned this too that your mother told you that you have to give more than you've taken away from this world and I want to know what do you feel like you have given to this world I think it's not over yet so I think I mean really I think that I right now I'm about even oh I'm a little bit behind the world has given me more than I ever given back right now so I it'll take me 20 years before I can actually balance it out but the reason why I'm not a hundred percent deficit is that I I do believe that I can actually change things and I think that the position that I have allows me who would give a hoot about what I thought about education if I weren't the CEO of Xerox alrightso or about anything really if I didn't have this bully pulpit that's been given to me buddy so I actually take the position and I've gotten more comfortable with this I've gotten because when I first became receipt here I was nervous about over reaching about you know over reaching the position but then I learned that no no no this is part of the Pacific so I actually work hard on understanding education a system of education not higher education the system that we have today and trying to outside of the political infrastructure was when I first got got involved with this you know you I tried to get involved with you know teachers and if this I mean teachers are very important but the structure under which they are hired and managed is a big political quagmire mess so at the end of the day the customers are the students so I try to bypass all of this other stuff and get it directly to the students and we've lined that company up that way my personal time that way really engaged in that and the other thing is I I think that I we have a responsibility to take care of the people closest to us as if no one else can take care of them so I'm very successful my brother is successful my sister financially were very successful financially my sister is not successful financially she's successful in every other way so my sister can want for nothing in her life and that and you know that doesn't mean that she lives in a mansion but literally she should she does a she's a sociologist a social worker mm-hmm and she should be able to do that without worry and our kids should be able to pursue their love positive love without worry my niece's without worry you know there's a circle those are the kinds of and if I can create one more so if I have one and everybody takes one and create a good one then we have shot of actually making the world like a better place so this is this whole idea of people closest to you you can't let them go too far away you know you can't let them kind of mess up and then everybody else who you can help you have to try to help and I don't mean help give it's not like sir it's not this kind of all these people need it's not that at all it's about enabling it with you can enable thank you I know we have more questions so alia will pass the mic for anyone who has any question I don't know I don't know I know Goldman Sachs fairly well by the way it's good institution Lloyd and so I won't I won't speak about what happened specifically at Goldman Sachs but remember I said earlier you've got to watch the people when you get a person or a group of people who actually hate you as much I dislike you or disrespect you so much that they would bring you down the institution pay attention and so I that's all I would say pay attention and I would look deeper at what the heck is happening and I'm sure that this is what's happening look deep at what's happening make sure but but over there always people on the edges by the way I trust me as many people on the edges good side as bad side but most of the time people actually operate those edges really close to home and when you get a disruption like this it's important that you step back and say let's take a cesspit of what the hell is going on and I think that that's what that's what they have to do they have to step back and not dismiss it and say well this is a disgruntled guy and yeah you could he probably was just a disgruntled guy but there's something else going on and I would be suspicious till the end by the way whenever I'm not suspicious I say this whole time your instinct this this you know you have these things you learned all this stuff in school and then there's this thing called your instinct that most of the time goes against what they taught you in school the first you know when you first see it dump the school stuff and follow your instinct whenever I don't do that whenever I don't do it particularly about people I blow it like you wouldn't believe it happens all the time and I sit back and I say to myself you did it again you did again you saw this person there was something that didn't dive right and then you say no no but I looked at it it's all fine and then I called and it was fine yeah and then a year later you say goodness gracious it's right right in front of me all the time so this thing about it the blink instinct is what so I think Goldman's gonna just have to you know take an assessment it's a good firm though so long standing firm so it should be able to correct itself I think this is significantly less about the government but I would like the government to do nothing about this this is whenever the government gets involved in problems like this that have to do directly with with business we get a whole bunch of legislation that ends up being legislation I think this is about leaders and leadership obviously the government can do something I mean there are there is reporting there is structure that the government can put in place but that doesn't mean we've had that for how many years probably 40 years right we still have this big gap I think this is all about you guys and business leaders know business infrastructure so you guys one of the reasons why there's 80 percent twenty percent is go back to high school and then to grade school and then to you know right before grade school we are not encouraging incenting put pulling working with inspiring whatever the heck it is the the women out there so I can get the government to do that their kids aren't going to find all the government at all this follow you they absolutely would follow you so get engaged with programs at first there's national catalysts National Academy Foundation do organizations all over that kids who are eight or nine or ten just won a human being that's not 50 to talk to them about what to do and to show them that it's cool and exciting and they wear t-shirts and I you know I'm a real person a real person is doing this stuff and it's exciting and that and I think that this the biggest thing that we can do is actually excite these people and show them what the possibilities are and by the way it's not only an engineering it could be in teaching it could be in whatever it is that you're passionate about most of the time they spend their time bouncing a ball kicking a ball hitting a ball or watching the television and that's really I mean so we know what's on the television if you watch the television you become a criminal that's what you see most of the time right a criminal or a cop who's catching the criminal and we don't dis not there's not a show I don't all about what it's like to be a positive business person I don't still show my dad on TV I don't think so hmm yeah with that the women of the women would not feel as thrilled about Mad Men and I've never seen them and all I know is that it's a butt so I have to get what what I would say and I this is the this is the back to the problem I don't if you look at the problem like the big you're gonna get so discouraged I mean what the hell what can the government do but you should look at the problem that way you should look at the problem as the small you did a school what school around here the grade school around here have you been to it you should go I'm serious let's go and knock and say to the teacher guess what I have an hour a week what can I do yes that's overtime we're given time respect I'm curious in the CEO of a public company where the board are shareable this their time span is usually a monthly business as you're transitioning a huge well-known company from more of a product sales I'm guessing will still be pasta but into the services arena how do you strike that healthy balance to get me you know short term earnings for Turner results and trying to reverse engineer this great company two three five years and to be there what is communication one two and three is communication if you don't if people don't understand what you're doing they have a lot of shots to ask questions stupid questions right so the big thing here is to explain what you're doing to be very clear very open very transparent about what you know so what the goal is and how do you think the company looks and what the value is at that point and a rough idea of what the path is and stick I mean make sure you have to adjust it but stick with it and and not try to jump ahead and not try to not try to make it easy make your life easier in a short term that will forsake the long term so the first thing I've done is I mean we've spent I spent all my time actually talking talking talking talking talking about what we're doing and telling people what progress is that's one you you said in your thing board and shareholders if you have a good board your board is not thinking about quarters if they are you should fire the damn board I mean that's not what they do they what I do is I think about is what my board does is to think like a little bit more like my longer-term shareholders which is over time we're making a set of transitions and it will pay off over time you know what's interesting about this though something's happened in the last couple of years with the market since 2008 the market used to be a fairly good indicator in the reasonable time two years three years of progress it enterprises progress now it's not at all you know it's interesting if you look at how many share how many longer-term shareholders actually hold an a public company stock it used to be 80 percent now it's 40 or 50 percent traders this I mean the world has turned into computers I mean people who you don't even know so you have to be really careful about how you balance these the customers that you have you have a customer that's the customer who buys you a service of products a set of employees and the community that you live in and shareholders and in 2006 seven we don't want to market went crazy we all started talking about shareholders to the point where we actually thought employees we never thought this I could say very proudly we're totally dis Penda Boleyn those good it doesn't matter you know I'm gonna buy company a Company B I'm gonna put them together and I'm gonna gut company half a company a half a company B and I'ma create this new company that's doing something that's owned only when a and B did and we're gonna do way that I get more money out of this enterprises by firing after employees and by the way when you say that the shares go up Twitter watch it so you're gonna have a layoff and your any company who says I gonna have a lay up this the share price goes up in the next couple of days and that's part of this this this kind of think it's a bad it's the bad side of modern technology what you have to do is balance it balance that I I feel very little pressure and like none in achieving short-term results and delivering the long-term strategy none i I we have to deliver short-term results by the way the short-term results that we put up our short-term results that show that we're a good company or an improving company but I never feel as though my god I gotta take a bunch of money out of orangy because my investors really none of that stuff they understand the business model if they don't really like it they don't invest if they do like it they do invest and we it's all about delivering the results so that they can stay patient enough to in at the in month four month five but I never really feel this oh my god I gotta meet a quarter therefore I have to do you know sell the building or that's not something that we really get into too much even though meeting the quarter is always hard always hard and it's always to the last day never never never I haven't had one yet were in March in January I know that I'm okay in the first quarter if you look at the growth rates of the two lines of business will be at 70/30 in five years not because we're wholly uninterested in technology it's just because technology is growing at a rate slower than the industry that part of the industry is growing at a slower rate than the services business so well we'll definitely be a heavily more heavily weighted services business for a revenue perspective and for a profitability perspective but the margins on our business the operating margins gross margins two completely different business models of them operating margins on our business we should be able to get an operating margin in a tech business that's as high or higher than our services business because as you you know businesses are easy to run in two ways one is two ways that they're big I love one is when they're zooming up and the other one is when they're zooming down when you're zooming down it's all about cost and expense management now our tech business is not zooming down but it's very well-defined you know the game the field is very well defined the competitors are very well defined and the trends are not as well defined but because the rest of it is well defined I can't operate I couldn't change fast and so we'll be able to have a very profitable and segment specific growing service technology business and overall our services business will will expand and grow be sure so it'll be more revenue and more profit from services and technology and therefore more employees as well so how do you respond to skeptics who don't really subscribe to the idea that technology is gonna grow in the range of negative one to one percent yeah then all you can do you know these are this is another thing I just love when you everybody can have a question about everything they all have the right to have a question about everything so I don't respond to skeptics I respond to skeptic the same way I respond to believers this is the strategy this is what we can tell you about the industry and industry trends this is what we can tell you about the competitive marketplace is this what we can tell you and then is if they believe that we can't grow by the way we may not be able to feel at the end of the day all of my assumptions you know after hiring Bain McKenzie and all of the guys that Goldman and JP more all the guys that you guys are going to go work for who were paying millions of dollars to give us all of this insight because you pull it all together and you come up with a with a theory of the case I feel we may be wrong I doubt it by the way but I can't actually respond to somebody says you know I just think I have a feeling that your theory is wrong okay last question let's do two more let's don't go do and then I'll get somebody over there in in the near term if as we acquire will you will use cash primarily because when we acquired acs we issued a huge amount of shares I think a billion shares it was a huge amount of shares I don't think I shareholders right now would be really comfortable with me issuing a whole lot more plus I don't it's not necessary we generate enough cash or operating cash flow base it's more than enough cash to actually do the kind of acquisitions that we want we actually are buying so we're and we're buying back shares as you know we've been buying back shares for the last three years so it would be a little bit odd to issue stock at this price the best thing that we can do with our shares is buy them because they are very undervalued by any metric so we're racing to buy as many as we can back take them off the market place you know I think a lot of companies actually I'm making progress in this area some very very good companies you know I think it's time people so if you're sitting in this chair you don't want to hear this answer right you want it to be fixed tomorrow but you know we have a hundred and thirty thousand people at Xerox before we bought ACS we had sixty thousand people sixty thousand people over fifty five seventy years we kind of obviously all of them weren't here from the beginning honest they would be dead by now we kind of learned we kind of learned how to how we want to live and so it's no longer when we we have quotas for everything so when we hire we have women quotas men quotas black and quotas Hispanic quota state court record for everything very rarely do we hire to a quota we just go out and find a person and then at the end of the day we look at it and say oh my god we screwed up we didn't however know Hispanics or so on and then we have to do so we but we've grown up in this idea that we've grown up there so we're very comfortable the people who recruit a lot of them look just like you look so it's just a natural kind of a thing and the reason why I'm saying this is that in the beginning programs helped you know quotas helped in the beginning people always say to me do you think you should have my said for it for organizations that don't make progress absolutely I mean you go to places they don't have women and you say okay it's a good idea to hire women and come back five years and they're no more women I said okay here's what we're gonna do we're gonna add every single level we're gonna hire women and by the way you can't fire them your success is based on that that works round 1 round 2 that works for a little while it doesn't work structurally if that's what you're going to do structurally it's a disaster so after a while you get this kind of symbiotic relationship between the people and the goals and you have enough of the people who just hire people who look like them generally people hire people who look like them with that comfortable way and so we have enough to balance it out and make it such that we don't have to have a quota by the way there are places that we are Hispanics we are way below where we should be and we have twists still trying so we are you know we're going to probably do the quota thing at some point because we we just don't have enough of a mass to actually make it to have the flywheel start so I say the way the organizations do it is understand it's a journey this is not like on Tuesday we're going to actually fix the diversity problem and and I get this all the time can you give me the program that you use to fix the diversity problem yeah 20 years of many different programs trying really hard not accepting failure you know literally keep pushing keep pushing keep pushing and with all that we're about 40 percent of the way there thank you very much thank you all for joining me and in welcoming the strengths of Chania business school on behalf of all of us here yes good luck to offer you a small small letter about us be according to Columbia Business School okay with technology come on up don't be don't be shy you

Channel: Columbia Business School

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Keywords: Leadership, CEO, Xerox, management, corporate/corporation, bernstein, columbia business school

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Length: 77min 4sec (4624 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 29 2012