Ursula Burns, it is great to see you. Thank you for joining a giant group of your fans today on Zoom. Where are you? Where are we catching you?
I am actually in New York City. I was supposed to be on this day until the end of next week in London, but I flew back for the funeral of Vernon Jordan earlier this month, and it's just hard to go back and forth for lots of reasons which we'll talk about, but so I decided to stay until another week and then I fly back to London.
Well, we appreciate while you're stateside you're making the time, although I suppose you could in theory have done it late in the afternoon in London too. That was the plan, guy, that was the plan.
Well, as you know, your colleague Antoinette is a total rock star, and thanks to her, which I will express separately and elsewhere, but in 18 years of working with the Technology CEO Council, there is no CEO I more admired, enjoyed, thought was high impact, and was a little bit frightened of, certainly frightened of disappointing, than you. And when I learned that you had a book coming out, and we've been doing a lot of these discussions with people like Adam Grant, I reached out hoping that we could have a conversation. So I'd love to start with your book 'Where You Are Is Not Who You Are.' I have pre-ordered. Anybody else, it's available on Amazon and other bookstores for pre-order. I'd love you to tell us what inspired you to write it and who you hope to inspire in writing it.
So the book turned out to be a lot more accidental than you would think. I actually had never planned to write a book. That's not where my skill set is; all my interest is, I'm a very voracious reader, but I just don't write well. I'm an engineer, so complete sentences are hard for us guys. But whenever I spoke, I spoke a lot throughout my career in the early part of my life to students, to big groups, whatever, wherever I went. And at the end of a large number of these speeches, people say you have to write a book, you have to write a book. I say yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I was speaking to a large group of CEOs in Europe after I moved there, and Vernon happened to be there, Vernon Jordan was there. At the end of that, one of the CEOs, we were in a group chatting at the end of the speech, and he said you have to write a book. And I said, and Vernon said yeah, you have to write a book. And I said okay fine. And basically from that okay fine came an editor, which somebody had an audience that connected to me, and a writer, etc. So it came about by accident, and it's a really hard thing to do, Bruce. It's a really hard thing to write a book. My book is a memoir of my life, and as I say in the book, it's very difficult to write about your life because your life happens a day at a time in a very boring pace. It happens at the time, you don't start your life and say well we're going to put this scene together that's worthy of telling people in some kind of a story. So you live your life and people say well it's worthy to tell a story about you, and you go no, it's just a whole bunch of days. What you have to do when you write a book is think about it from the end point back, not the way you live it. For me it was so difficult to do, to think about my life from where I am backwards in a sense that would make it exciting for people to read and engrossing for people to stay involved. So it was very difficult, and then it's boring as well because you're talking about yourself, you did it already, you lived it already, so what's the point of building up a big story about it? So it took a long time, it took me probably 50% longer than they wanted it to take. And because of that, the pandemic happened, so you have to go back. George Floyd happens, Donald Trump had already happened, but we were at the throes of the end of this, so I had to incorporate all of that back into the book. And I'm hoping that it's at least readable, that's what, at least readable for you guys out there.
Well, I already bought it, but I'll see. I'm going to keep my purchase, my scheduled purchase, because I know enough about your life and I know you're a humble person, but it's a pretty fascinating story. Something you said there made me wonder: if I were writing a book and my target audience were students, I feel like I'd use a different voice and highlight different things; by contrast, if I'm speaking to CEOs, it's a whole different set of what matters and what was relevant. And I know you are eagerly sought out by both groups. How do you bridge?
The core is the same, Bruce. The core is the same. You know, most of my management style, how I raise my kids, how I live my life, is in these little blurbs that my mother used to tell me over and over again that I talk about consistently. It doesn't matter if I'm speaking to CEO groups, to groups of employees who work for me, students. One of them is: you know who you are, where you are is not who you are. She used to say: where you are is not who you are, and remember that when you're rich and famous. Because the context that she was saying it in, we were not rich or famous, she didn't even know what rich and famous meant. We were living in the worst conditions that you could possibly imagine in New York City, very little money. My mother worked as hard as she could but she had to always supplement her income with welfare or handouts or whatever it is. And we lived in a tough place, and we would walk, she would say: this is not who you are, this happens to be where you are. That was one of her things. Another one of her statements was: you have to leave behind more than you take away. That's going to be how you're going to be judged at the end of your life, when you walk to the gates of heaven. So make sure that you do that. And lots of other statements and sayings. The book is about how that permeates in your life, and how the message at least for me didn't change. If I'm speaking to young people who don't know a thing, to CEOs who know everything, to business leaders, the soul of who I am and the approach that my mother taught me about life is consistent. That's what the book is about. So I don't really change message often, I change examples, but not message.
Do you think if you were starting out today, how would you attack the world differently if you were starting out today?
Faster, faster, faster, faster, faster. And I would take significantly more risks. So do it faster, take more risk, and I would actually be a little bit more selfish and have more fun. Let me start with the last one. One of the things that I kind of happened my way into was having two children. I only had one but I ended up raising two children, and that was a mistake. If I would have thought about it more, or if I would have known when I was making the decision about family, if I would have known then what I know now, I would have had six children, seven children, I would have had a lot more children. Because it turns out that most of the joy, and some of the sorrow, but most of the joy in my life has come out of these two people. I don't want to get too emotional, but it's not spectacular every day, it's just great most of the time. If I think that, it probably would have been better to have not two but three or four or five. That's one I would have done that. Second is I would have taken a little bit more risk. I took a lot of risk, but it turns out the downside of making a mistake, particularly early in your life, is not that great. I was so cautious when I was launching my life, picking a college, picking a career, where I would live. I was so cautious that things ended up okay, but I would have been, I think, seen more, done more, had more fun if I would have taken more risks. If I would know now how in the early parts of your life how unimpactful some of the things you do are, and how in a later part of your life how impactful they can be, and then you have a lot less flexibility. And then having more fun. This is something that for sure: I was so serious when I was growing up, so focused, so intent on things, so critical of myself and making things perfect, making good choices, always wrapped up in my head about what's going on to try to plan. So I did so little living. I did a lot of living, guys, it's not like I was a total dum-dum, but what I know now is I would have just kind of let loose earlier and had a lot more fun and been more impactful.
Well, first I wouldn't be too hard on myself if I were you. What you described, I think, is a pretty common progression where people are heads down and in a hurry and super serious, and then look back. But something you just said is really interesting. I assume you knew Clayton Christensen and you read his book How Will You Measure Your Life?
Absolutely. And he came to speak to us at Xerox more than once. Well, so I mean, am I wrong? What you're describing is very much people go from focused on the currency of accomplishment to the currency of purpose. Particularly you see this with CEOs perhaps who make it through their very first tour. It's unfortunate that we have to become a CEO; hopefully we can enjoy it. But it's exactly Clay Christensen's mantra. By the way, I had it before I read Clay, but he was so perfect in stating it. This idea of purpose nowadays, one of the things that I love so much about the life that I'm living right now is that I don't give a damn about what people think. So it doesn't really matter that much. I mean, my kids, I care about what they think, my brother, my sister, maybe, you know, Vernon I would have cared, but the rest of the world out there, it really doesn't make that much of a difference. Obviously you earn your way to that; you can't start out in the world and say I don't give a hoot. But I was there sooner than I thought, and I was still cautious. I think for years after, I could have been, I mean I was still cautious. And it's just now I know that I'm not dumb, that I have valuable things to say about a lot of things, not just about running a company, not just about the things that you would think I should be expert in. I have valuable things to say, and at least I'll start a conversation. So I'm now a lot more free and confident. I understand the downside and that it's not going to be that big a deal on the downside.
Well, look, I think there's a word for after a career and years and decades of absorbing and learning and having these kind of insights: it's called wisdom. And it's hard to get in your 20s, but like you said, as a voracious reader and as somebody who listens, and you were one of the best listeners I've ever worked with. Not to me, but you often would observe something that I was too busy trying to control the situation and I missed what actually happened, and you were always great at helping to fill me in on what should have been my job. Let me ask you if I can, because you do talk to lots of CEOs and they're smart for seeking you out. Increasingly, CEOs believe they need to engage on policy, on social issues, in societal issues. Some of that is maybe that they're trying to have purpose and impact, some of that is frustration that the policy-making world, the elected officials, are screwing things up. They're not dealing with climate, they're not dealing with cyber, they're not dealing with systemic racism. Some of that is that in 1975, 17% of a public company's value was intangible; now it's 90%. That's your people, that's your data, that's your software, that's your brand. As you take a look at this environment where CEOs are sort of the new fifth estate, do you advise CEOs to do it because that's the way to attract and retain employees, because that's the way to have a brand that customers want to associate with, or because they're going to get to a point in life and this would be a regret if they failed to lead?
