GRIT Talks - Episode 4: Rod Ward III - President & CEO, CSC.

Talk, my name is Rod Ward and I'm here to answer seven questions.

So what have you not done yet that you would like to be part of your story included in your eulogy? So I work at CSC, we're headquartered here in Delaware, and part of our mission, values, purpose, the component of that is that we would like to create an environment where we all are better off tomorrow than we are today. And when we talk about all of us at CSC, we talk about employees, customers, we talk about the communities in which we live and work. And this really resonates with me, this idea of continual improvement, making things better, and that's something that I try to strive to do in my daily life. So if there's a eulogy, hopefully it's years away, but there would be four components: something like 'He tried, sometimes he was successful, to make things better.' And especially in Delaware, I have strong feelings for our first state. Today, as Bill said, the proceeds are going to East Side Charter School, which is a wonderful school, as the crow flies a mile and a half from here. I noticed that Aaron Bass, the head of school, was here this morning, which is great. If you want an example of living up to that making things better in Delaware, it's just a wonderful school doing great things. So it's something I'm very passionate about: Delaware public school education. So exciting, really excited about that.

How has failure or apparent failure set you up for later success? Do you have a favorite failure? Well, there's a long list to choose from. I started my career in New York City working in finance, and I wanted to work for a company that made something and get involved in manufacturing. So I went back to graduate school and a few years later ended up in my first real assignment attached to a manufacturing operation in Conway, Arkansas. I was very excited, but then a stark reality hit. I learned that I was really uncomfortable on the manufacturing floor, down on the shop floor. It was completely in my head, I couldn't relate to the people working there. Instead of stepping forward, I stepped back and avoided it. That was not a good plan if your ambition is to be a general manager of a manufacturing operation. A couple of years later, I was working in Germany in the town of Fongshtad, south of Frankfurt, again in a manufacturing operation. The shop floor was across the street, and again I avoided it, chalking it up to being a foreigner with poor German skills. It really limited my ability to grow. Fortunately, I got a third chance. When I moved back to the United States to work at the Speakman Company, I was determined to overcome that challenge. From day one, I parked in back, walked directly through, engaged with all the people on the shop floor. I got to know them and their processes, and it made a huge difference. One funny story: early in my tenure at Speakman, on a spring Saturday, we had a special order to get out. I drove down, parked in back, and came up to the plant unexpectedly. There was Tim washing his car. He was doing a great job, but Speakman was paying him time and a half to wash his car. We resolved that and went on to be very successful. The lesson is that you have to engage, step forward, put yourself out there, meet people where they are, and it works. It took a while to learn that lesson, but it's a very important one.

In the last five years, what new belief, behavior, or habit has most improved your life? At my age, let's call it early middle age, I'm very aware that a lot of folks are dependent on me. My wife and I, our kids as they become adults, my siblings, my parents as they age, and about 3,100 folks at CSC who expect me to do my job every day. That recognition has made me think about the airplane safety instruction: put your own mask on first before assisting others. So I've focused a lot of time and attention on physical and mental health, my own oxygen mask. I've developed simple habits about taking care of myself: exercising, being more careful about what I eat. I realized that forming a new habit takes about 200 days, but breaking an old habit takes much longer. It's a constant struggle, but overall, recognizing that you're doing that for yourself and for those you care about and are responsible for is key.

What activities make you lose track of time? Anytime you're learning a new skill or studying new information, we can all lose track of time. For example, during COVID, I got very interested in learning more about the U.S. Civil War. They announced that more people had died from COVID than soldiers killed in the Civil War, about 620,000. Then January 6th happened, and I thought about testing democracy. I watched Ken Burns' PBS series from 1990, read Chernow's biography of Ulysses S. Grant, and listened to Shelby Foote's three-volume epic on the Civil War. That opened up new paths: I became interested in Abraham Lincoln's leadership, the Emancipation Proclamation, and understanding the history of slavery. I just finished a biography of Frederick Douglass by Professor Blight at Yale. An interesting fact: when Frederick Douglass escaped slavery in 1838 from the Eastern Shore of Maryland, he came by train into Wilmington, Delaware. If he had been captured, he would have been sent back. Fortunately, he got a steamship to Philadelphia, then to Boston and eventual freedom.

What book do you most often give or recommend, and how has that book influenced you? This is rather easy. If you know me, I don't recommend a book; I always recommend the Great Courses series from The Teaching Company. Today you can find them streaming or as a podcast. They take the best professors from different schools to teach their course subjects, broken into 30 lectures. It's remarkable. During COVID, I've been listening to a course on great utopian and dystopian literature from a professor at the University of Connecticut. They talk about the big three dystopias from World War I to World War II: George Orwell's 1984, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, and Yevgeny Zamyatin's We, which was actually the first in 1922. What I took away was that they were writing between two world wars, and dystopia is scary. Things can be a lot worse than they are now, and it's up to all of us to stay engaged to make sure that doesn't happen. Also, if you can't fall asleep, they're great for that.

What have you purchased or been given in the last year valued at under $200 that has most positively impacted your life? For me, it was a $10 pair of work gloves. During COVID, we're all spending more time at home and doing more things around the house. In August 2020, a tornado touched down near where I live, knocking down hundreds of trees next to Valley Garden Park. Fortunately no structural damage, but a lot of cleanup. That prompted the purchase of these work gloves. Three great things about that purchase: First, we're fortunate in Delaware to have four seasons, and spending more time outside lets you really watch those seasons. Second, the only way to beat the COVID blues is to get out and do something. But the priceless point is that my children are spending more time home, and I can create unbearable embarrassment for them by walking around saying, 'Oh, it's time to go out and work, these gloves sure will come in handy.' Even better if they have a friend over. That made them priceless.

If you could broadcast a message to everyone in the world knowing it would be received and remembered, what would it be? The message would be: stay curious. A very simple message. If I get to send this message to everyone in the world and they'll remember it, I have to go with a great philosopher. One of the great ironies of history is that we don't remember history. So I'll go with Socrates. Socrates said, 'I know that I know nothing.' I know that if you want to lose track of time, try to unpack that one. But 'I know that I know nothing' means to me that we're on this journey to learn and understand, and the longer we're on that journey, we realize it's a bigger journey. There's more out there, more complication, things are always changing. You can't let that turn you into a cynic. You have to step forward and say, 'I understand that it's overwhelming and I know nothing, but I'm going to keep going, I'm going to learn, I'm going to stay curious through my life.' So with that, thank you very much, and I've really enjoyed this Grit Talk.