View from the Top: Tara Bunch

Alright, thanks. All right, wow! Well, I've had a great morning here already. I spent the morning touring around Jacobs Hall, and seeing all the really cool hands-on design areas. I can tell you, all I wanted to do was be about 40 years younger. And starting my degree program here, because, you guys have some amazing labs, and capabilities, and equipment. For me, it was always about bringing designs to life. That's an environment where you can just imagine incredible things. Very impressive. I'm gonna talk a little bit about kinda my career journey. And it's definitely a road less traveled. You're gonna see pretty quickly that no one would have planned a career that I, journey that I've been on. It was definitely not a straight line. But, it's been an exciting process for me, and definitely an opportunity where I've learned a lot of different things along the way. For what it's worth, I'll share some of those with you, and some it will be good advice, and some of it I would encourage you to throw away pretty quickly. So this should only take a few hours. We're gonna start from the very, very beginning. That is me. I don't look anything like that anymore. It's frightening when your children look like you. And then you look in the mirror, and you're like, oh, wow, I'm really sorry. Because, as you age, you're gonna more and more like me, and that was cute, and this is not.

Like most people, my early influences were my parents. I didn't realize how really different they were, when I was growing up with them. But, my Dad was an engineer, and so, routinely in our home he had big pieces of paper out. All these, you know, different things to draw with, and he was, you know, editing his designs, and working on things, and measuring things. He had a pocket protector, and all of that stuff that, you know, he was kind of Dilbert in real life. And my Mom, I picked this picture because I love that scarf. I don't think I've ever seen her wear a scarf. But, it's just so like, you know, 1960s. She actually had a business degree, and then decided, when computers were just, you know, sort of starting to become consumer electronics, really got into computers. And so, she and my Dad would go and take programming classes together at the community college at night. And I just thought that's what everybody's parents does on date night, they go and program together. And so, they had a whole house kinda setup with like, we had computers in every room. They were building more computers in the garage. They were copying software on big floppy drive, probably something they shouldn't have been doing, but, there wasn't quite the copyright stuff that there is now. And they were, they were doing this like trading software with friends and, like, I just thought everybody's family had like, you know, computer parts everywhere, and computers everywhere, and these giant modems. And it was just one of those things in the background that I kinda took for granted, but, it kinda stuck with me. And it obviously influenced kind of what I ended up doing long-term, in terms of tech. But, before I got into tech, I decided to try a couple of other things. So I started, I tried dancing. And then, decided to move into more of like professional drumming. And part of the issue that I learned early on, is as you notice the admission is free here. Picking a career where things are free is a significantly limiting factor, in terms of kind of, you know, putting food on the table. So I decided I needed a backup plan. So the backup plan was Berkeley. A funny story about Berkeley is, I didn't have, so remember my parents were off programming and building computers in the garage, I didn't have the helicopter parents that help you fill out your college application, that hire tutors years in advance to get you through the whole process. I don't think they even knew I applied to college. Like, they were so, so unaware of what was going on. I was their first kid, so they didn't have a lot of, you know, practice with this process. I applied to Berkeley, and only Berkeley. Like, I literally just sent my application in. And that was the only college I applied to. This is one of the strategies I would recommend not copying. But, none the less, they let me in, and I graduated from Berkeley, as you know, in 1985.

So while I was at Berkeley, my first career experience was actually my internship. I'm sure many of you probably are thinking about internships. It made a pretty big impact on me. And it's something I highly recommend. Because, as you're thinking about what you want to do, it's important to have done something that you can kind of compare it to. And so, I worked at Procter & Gamble. And this was my job. I actually designed automation for the Luvs and Pampers manufacturing line. I think that's the Cookie Monster. It was really cool, because, I had an opportunity to work in an environment where, you know, I could see the things I was designing actually doing something. And that I really loved. I immediately realized I like designing things, and then, getting to see how they impact either the work environment, or the manufacturing line, or they make something simpler, or make something better. So I loved that part, I love the automation. I didn't like the diapers. That I decided was like gonna be short-lived, I needed to move on to something else. Diapers would come back to haunt me later, and we'll get into that a little bit later in the presentation.

So the next decision I made, was I really wanted to go to HP. They were recruiting on campus, and I just, HP was like, you know, at that point, it was like the pinnacle tech company to go and join. And it was located right here in Cupertino, it's kinda bordered by Wolfe, and Tantau, and Pruneridge. And I started right here and worked for a number of years on this site. And just as kind of a funny aside. There's something else there now. And it's Apple Headquarters. I don't know that I'd recommend this, but what I did is decided I wanted to work in particular place. And then, whatever comes there, that's who I work for. You know, not necessarily something that everybody does, but, it worked out pretty good for me. Let's go back to HP for a minute. What I loved about HP is, it was a company that, it was a global company. It had a lot of different business units. I could be, you know, in a job in manufacturing operations one year, and then move into, say, research and development a few years down the road. I could work on one product line, then move to another product line. And at this point, and, you know, there's kind of a theme here. I didn't really completely know what I wanted to do. I just wanted to do cool things, and see where it led. HP was a perfect pallet for me, because, it had so many options, I figured something was gonna work out, something was gonna be the perfect job. And so, I started in manufacturing engineering. And then moved into kind of a R&D/manufacturing engineering combo role. As it turns out, was working in a lab in Deer Creek when the 1989 earthquake hit. My entire lab was destroyed. This is kinda the road less traveled, you don't get to decide every turn in the road. My entire team was picked up, moved from that little area that I loved so well between Pruneridge and Tantau, and dropped in the middle of Fort Collins, Colorado, where there was similar lab, where we would finish our project there. And so, that brought me to Colorado. And then, after finishing that project, I decided I wanted to stay. So there was skiing, there were mountains, it was like a cool place to hang out. And I ended up working, again, on kind of a robotics is kind of a theme in my career, as well, these robotic devices. I feel like I'm explaining a stagecoach to, to people in their 20s right now. But, these things, it works like this, I'll show ya. This one was called Jaws. And it would go up and down, and take out optical drives or tape drives, and insert them into a reader. And they were used for kind of secondary storage on big computer systems. What I loved about it, is that it went up and down. Which was one of my top criterias for anything, something has to move. But, what's hilarious about this, is that with all this movement and all this stuff, this thing has like less capacity than an iPhone today. It was a little ahead of its time, I guess.

The next thing that I did at HP, was I moved, this was the first time I moved into a consumer, really, a consumer electronics role. And I was super-excited about it, because, when I would come home from work and talk about what I was doing, it had something to do with some robot called Jaws, that moved optical things in and out, and tapes in and out, everyone's eyes would just, you know, glaze over. This was the first job where I thought what I was doing was like cool to other people, not just me. It was digital cameras, it was printers, photo printers, scanners, all-in-ones. And I would go home and talk about what I did, and people were like, "Oh, yeah, I have one of those, and I love it." And so, I thought, I really like this consumer stuff, because, people really relate to the products. During this period of time, again, I moved back and forth from say like a manufacturing operations role, into a product design role. Did several rotations in there. I started managing bigger and bigger teams. One of those roles was managing research and development for the scanner product line. It was about that time that I had kind of, I'd done a lot of manufacturing roles, I'd done a lot of R&D roles, I'd done software, I'd done hardware, I'd done enterprise products, and consumer products. And what I really, really wanted to do more than anything, was to be a general manager. Because, when you're at HP, the way that HP was organized, it was organized around business units. Which is a little different than, say, like how Apple's organized. And, really, kind of that point in your career where you had enough experience doing enough different things, and you got to run a whole P&L. It was like owning your own company. You would manage all the financials. You would be in charge of the group that would develop the product. You would decide on the roadmap, the sales, the marketing, the manufacturing. And I was like, this is, it's gonna bring it all together, this is what I want to do. And I really believed at that point in time this is all I would ever want to do, I want to be a GM.

So when you wish for something, sometimes, it happens. And the funny story with this particular opportunity is, it was the general manager of that digital camera business, those little digital cameras, that have all been replaced by iPhones now. Those were a big deal then. HP got into that business in an effort to drive photography, digital photography. And by driving digital photography, they hoped that people would print photos. And that was kind of the business model. So I applied for the role. Several months went by. Crickets, nothing. You can kind of assume, when you apply for a role and nobody every calls you back, that it's, you probably didn't get the job. But, it turns out, I didn't hear anybody else got the job either, which I though was sort of strange. And I'd heard rumors that they were thinking about shutting down the business. That it was, the P&L was pretty upside-down, meaning it was losing a lot of money. And there was sort of a belief that maybe we couldn't sustain this business inside the company, and we had to do something about it. So I ran into the hiring manager about three months later, and I walked up to him and I said, "Hey, Larry, so did you guys ever fill that digital camera job?" And he spun around and he looked at me, he goes, "Do you still want it?" And I said, "Yeah." I said, "Am I the only applicant?" And he said, "Yeah!" "You are." And so, I was like, "All right, I'll take it." Here's the deal that I thought was so cool about this job, is that nobody else wanted it. Everybody else was afraid of it, because, you don't want to be the general manager of a, you know, most people didn't want to be the general manager of a division that was in so much trouble, and where the job may not last very long. I mean, I knew that going in, like my job might be actually shutting this business down. And so, I learned some of the best leadership kind of experiences, and rules, and approaches in this role, because, my first general manager role was one of the toughest roles I'd ever been in. A, I'd never been a general manager before, and I have a business that's completely torpedoing. And so, I'll talk a little bit about what we did to turn this business around, we ultimately did. One of my first meetings with Mark Hurd, he had just taken over as the CEO, and he walked in to meet with me within the first couple of weeks I was in the role, and he said, "Give me one reason not to fire you right now." And I said, "I've been in the role 10 days." Which was about three more days than he'd been in the role. He looked at me and he goes "Well, that's a good reason." From that point on it really became about engaging a lot of really great leaders across the company and saying, "I know I took this role on, but, we need to collectively solve it." And so, we went about a process of, of working with the teams, moving a lot of the R&D offshore. Not a particularly new approach when you have a product line that's struggling. They were doing all the design in San Diego, and all of the manufacturing in, in San Diego, not a super cheap place to build a digital camera. So we ended up moving a lot of it to Singapore, and to China.

Some of the things that I learned through this process, was to have a really super clear set of values. And this applied to every role I've taken since. Even if you don't know how you're gonna do something, what a clear set of values gives you, is what you're going to do. And so, the how comes later, but, at least you're clear about what. And then maybe what you're not going to do. The other thing that I decided early on, was to be completely transparent to the team, is to tell them the business was in trouble. It might get shutdown. We might all lose our jobs, including me. And I needed their help to transition this business, to get it to a place where it was viable. So we engaged the entire team in the process. We told them how many jobs we thought would likely move, and no longer be in San Diego, or in Colorado. And we allowed people to self-select whether they wanted to stay until the end, and help with the transition. We had to incentive packages, and placement packages. Or if they wanted, they felt like, you know, "I'm out, I'm wann go find a job right now, this kinda stuff makes me really nervous." So we were completely honest with everybody. The outcome of that was that, as a team, even up until the end we were solving problems collaboratively. Everybody was bringing their best work to this. I fundamentally believed that the business probably would have failed if we hadn't taken this approach. We would have lost too many people. The rumor mill would have gone crazy. People would have gotten nervous. The best people would have left. And, instead, a lot of our, you know, top talent stayed to the very, very end, fully committed to transitioning the business. The other thing I did, is I walked around, I talked to a lot of people in the company that had been GMs for a long time. They had, you know, they weren't a brand new GM. They had seen a lot of different businesses, and a lot of different situations, and I went around and I asked them what they would do. I laid out the entire problem, and said "What would you do? "What's your counsel to me?" And tried to get the thought leaders in the company really engaged in helping me chart a path forward. And then, it was about being humble. I think there's kind of a tendency when you become the person in charge, to think, well, I have to be the smartest person in the room. Nothing could be further from the truth. You have to be surrounded by the smartest people. But, you don't have to be the smartest person in the room. And, in fact, as soon as you think you are the smartest person in the room, your IQ drops about 100 points. Because, you quit listening, which is the most important part of your brain. And then, don't take things personally. When they didn't call me back, I didn't sit in my office and brood and think, well, you know, I'm a failure, I didn't get my first GM job. When people didn't like my ideas, I don't take them personally. This was something I learned a little bit later in my career. I tended to get, I think, overly invested in either a design, or an idea, and get really excited about it. And then I couldn't listen to criticism objectively anymore. And so, one thing I will tell you that has come in handy throughout my entire career, it's probably the most important piece of information on here, is don't take things personally. In fact, when people criticize your idea, it's a gift. When people don't, you know, they have an alternative viewpoint on something, it's a gift. And seek it out, and draw it out, and use it, because, it will actually make whatever you're doing better. And if you fail and you're criticized for it, just absorb it, learn it, and apply it differently next time. But, not letting your emotions get in the way, and staying calm, and just taking all that in as information, as data, as opposed to emotionally electrifying it, will really serve you well in life. It's helped me get through some really tough situations, and realized if I'd gotten, let my emotions get involved, I probably couldn't have fought through it quite as well. And wouldn't have ended up as, as good as it did in the end.

All right, so let's go back to my career. So those are my leadership lessons. I talked about Mark Hurd. Some of you were kind of wondering, like, how did I end up in service and support? So I was on this journey, manufacturing, engineering, R&D, general management. I can tell you, there was not a single day of my life, prior to this, that I got up and thought, what I really want to do is lead service and support. I had never called a service and support line in my entire life. I considered that a personal failure, that I couldn't figure it out on my own. But, Mark put this process together inside of HP about two years after he joined. And pulled together, it was some number like maybe 75 to 100 VPs across the company, and put us in this kind of executive boot camp, where we were kind of poked and prodded, and evaluated, and given assignments, and we lived in a hotel in Palo Alto, we were like taken from our homes, and our jobs, and it really was like a bootcamp. And with the goal of sort of understanding what each of us were really good at. But, then, what did we need to really round us out as a leader? What were we missing? It turns out, in my case, apparently, what I was missing was customer facing experience. So really running an organization that interacts with customers on a daily basis. And so, Mark asked me to take over HP's service and support organization. Like I said, I didn't even know we had a 1-800 number. It's the epitome of taking a job where you have zero competence. Like, I didn't know anything about our service and support structure, I didn't know what the current organization structure looked like. I'd never used our service and support before. So I was just coming in totally cold. It turned out to be one of those moments where you accidentally make a career change that you didn't plan, and you didn't think would happen. I actually thought it would just be like a maybe one year rotation. And I fell in love with it. It's been one of the most challenging, interesting, eclectic areas. There's never a dull moment. And it led to, to this role that I'm in today. And it led to it in a very interesting way. Not only did I get the opportunity to join Apple, which is my dream job. But, what they were looking for when I, when I came into this role, was Apple wanted somebody that had operations background, had engineering background, ideally, like an MBA or business background, maybe had run a P&L before, and also had service and support experience. That's a pretty broad range. It might be another example where I was the only applicant. Which kinda seems like a theme with me, is I get jobs where I'm the only who applies. But, I know they had a lot of great folks that applied for this role. And I was the lucky one that had meandered through my career, doing so many different things, that it made me kind of uniquely qualified for this very special role. And that's the role I'm been in since 2012. It's been probably one of the most exciting times in my life, being part of Apple. If you don't know what AppleCare does, we have everything from when you go out to our support website, my team runs that website. If you tweet us, my team is the one responding to that. iTunes, Apple TV, iCloud, iPhone, iPad, any product support question, our teams answer. We have a sales group that works with all the sales teams across Apple, and sell our AppleCare Insurance programs, and the extended warranties as part of the product. We have a team of engineers that design fixtures, and tooling, and processes, and software, and diagnostics, and analytics. So that we can evaluate a product anywhere in the world in any one of our service channels, and figure out what's wrong with that product, and what repair needs to be done. And track the product. We have teams that work with all the Genius Bars globally, all of our ASPs globally. So I have everything from like procurement and supply chain, web design, contact centers, engineering, quality. It's such a huge, broad job. And having done it for now several years, coming up on eight, I'm realizing why they needed all those skills. Because, it's such a diverse group. If I had just taken this kind of straight line through my career, I would have missed out on this. And so, you know, the other thing that kinda happened along the way, another unplanned thing is six kids. Nobody plans six kids. So this is my family. The oldest is actually this one here in the middle, she's almost 19. The youngest is six, and she'll be seven in March. So she's almost seven. She keeps reminding us of that. And then, the four boys, including a set of twins in the middle. So six to 18, 19, somewhere in that range. I will tell you that, in terms of leadership, this has probably been the toughest leadership role I've ever had in my life. Because, unlike folks that work for you, they actually don't seem to think they have to listen. Everything's like this negotiation. It is also, I don't know about you, but I'll be downstairs and they will literally text me "What's for dinner?" It's like, really? Okay. And it's also been a learning for me. When I joined Apple, it was, I would say, mostly call centers, in terms of how we supported customers. And watching them, and the fact that I've never actually seen them... They think it's funny we call the iPhone a phone. Because, they don't actually use the phone part. They don't pick up the phone, they don't call 1-800 numbers, they do everything online, through social on the device. And, for me, it's been part of what's inspired some of the journey that I've been on in my role at Apple, was really enabling that next generation to interact with us in the ways that they like to interact with us. So there are inspiring things about kids. There's other things, too, but, there are some inspiring things, too.

So here kind of, like, you know, you can use as many of these as you want, or none of them, but, here's kind of some of my little like ah-hahs through life. Follow your passion. At least for me, it wasn't about setting this like straight line, and, you know, taking a job because, it was supposed to be the next job I should take. It was really taking jobs that, in some cases, they weren't obvious, or they were the job everybody else was afraid to take, or maybe it wasn't the cool, glamorous job. But, it was a job where I was gonna learn a lot. So follow your passion, do something that you enjoy doing, because, you're gonna be the best version of yourself when you're doing something you love doing. Be curious. I would have missed a lot of opportunities if I hadn't sort of opened myself up to what's new and different that I don't know about, and ideas. So be curious, ask questions. I'm, you know, obviously, a little older than you, and I'm still learning. Just constantly be curious. Select roles that stretch you, take risks. I think if you take a role and you're not a little bit scared, you're not pushing yourself hard enough. You should be a little scared. And this is my personal favorite, apply for jobs no one else really wants. It increases your odds significantly that you'll get the role. And that no one's gonna steal it from you, either. But it also sort of is usually an indication that, that something, they really need someone to come in there and either turn it around, or rebuild it. And it's a huge opportunity to not only learn, but to demonstrate yourself in a really unique way. While I say it kind of laughingly, it actually has proven out to be a pretty good, a pretty good approach. Make time for yourself and your family. You know, no career is ultimately worthwhile if you don't make time for the things you love outside of work. Although, I mean, I think there about six kids in that picture. But, I know you cannot fit them all into that little tiny VW. And then, have fun. You know, I've, I think I'm 35 plus years into my career now. And I can't imagine spending this time doing something I didn't enjoy. So have fun, have as much fun as possible. This is one of my favorite quotes. I love this. It kinda wraps up kind of my road less traveled approach to life. But, "I get up every morning determined to both change the world and have one hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning my day a little difficult." I love that. I get up every day with kinda that approach. Like, don't over plan, be open to the moment. Be willing to take a turn you didn't predict, or you didn't plan. And have a great time along the way. And just to be consistent, my preferred pronouns are she, her, and hers. So thank you, and now we can do some questions, right?

Yeah, so, initially, enough. I was actually working at HP when I got my MBA. So, I started HP right out of Berkeley. So I had an offer from Procter & Gamble. I had an offer from HP. I think it was Quantum, the hard disk drive company, and Apple. And so, I took the HP role, because, at that point and time in 1985, if you remember, a lot of companies were, for the very first time in tech, were laying people off. In fact, there was a hiring freeze at HP. And I snuck in like right under the wire. And I, you know, again, I wasn't really totally sure what I wanted to do. And I thought HP had enough different roles that I'd find something that was interesting, and, the other companies tended to be a little bit more narrow. It was like Apple was doing Macs, and hard drives at Quantum, and diapers at Procter & Gamble. It seemed like a good opportunity.

Yeah, I didn't come back, so the six kids are the diaper story. So we did, what did we say, 40,000 something diapers that I've consumed? Yeah. We were just doing kind of the average diaper per kid, for a year, you know, and I think it's about 40,000 diapers I've consumed.

I had a very, I mean, this is really like kind of a funny thing, I had really like clear, like, what I was looking for in a diaper design, when I picked diapers out for my kids. Like, I liked the little, like, the ruffles at the edges, because, it kind of traps everything in. for our young people in the audience today.

At least for me, one of the things that was really important to me was to actually travel a lot. I think there's a, you know, a tendency, when you have a global company, or a global organization, and maybe the headquarters are in one place, to sort of make everyone come to you. To make decisions, and to fly in, and to be at headquarters, and to have big meetings. And I found that just the opposite's really important. That you need to get on a plane and go there. You'll understand the teams, and the environment, and the markets, and the culture much better if you go there. And so, I've spent my entire career, including when I was HP, traveling quite a bit. It's just remarkable to me, to watch countries like India, that have evolved so much over the last 20-30 years, and China. I remember when there was only like one big hotel in Shanghai. And now there's like hotels everywhere, and cranes everywhere, and buildings everywhere. And so, just immersing yourself in the different cultures, different markets, different communities. Getting to know your team by being in their environment, and coming to them. For me, it created not only engagement within the team, so people really, you know, felt like they knew me, and I was approachable, and they could talk to me about things. But, I understood, you know, their challenges a lot better, as well. So that's one thing is, you know, and you can't, you know, do it from, you can't manage a global team from a videoconference. Get out on the road and go see 'em.

Right, right. And once you've done that, then you can do, you can do some of that. But, like, for example, I think I traveled 250,000 miles last year.

Yeah, they don't seem very bothered by it, which is kind of a little concerning.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah. I'll kinda go back to Jacobs Hall, and some of the things that I saw there that I think are just really critical and important. One of the things I noticed right away, is that it was an environment where you could have a lot of different disciplines working together. Artists, and electrical engineers, computer scientists, mechanical engineers, industrial engineers, environmental engineers. A lot of different disciplines, both technical and liberal arts. The real world, is that you're never, there's gonna be very few problems that you're gonna be able to solve all by yourself. That don't require multiple disciplines. That don't require folks that have completely different backgrounds than yours. And so, being involved in either projects, or classes, or the design center, where you have an opportunity to work with people that have very, very different backgrounds, and to design something or create something together, that's where you'll really, I think, get a sense of what do you love doing. And then, how do you bring your own expertise, but then leverage somebody else's expertise, to create something that's even better than anything you could have done by yourself? It's just so exciting to see that work. Because, that looks like, you know, what work looks like at Apple, or at HP, or at other companies. It's not sitting in the classroom, you know, with wood chairs that are all lined up facing the front. It's standing in groups, it's working on projects, it's, you know, getting your hands into things, it's debating, it's experimenting. And to the degree that you can expose yourself to those types of opportunities, and classes, and educational experiences, it'll make a huge difference in how comfortable you feel in your first role. And also, just your kind of sense of self, and what you really love to do.

Yeah, that's a good question. You know, it was kind of a journey for me, I started in the Bay Area, for HP. HP had a super diverse workforce here in the Bay Area. They had an active pride group. I went to Berkeley, again, a very diverse and liberal environment. And so, to be honest with you, my first like four or five years at HP, I was completely unaware that there was even a challenge there. I was in this little bubble of the Bay Area, where, you know, diversity is wonderful, and everyone's great about it. I didn't sense any, any issues, or discrimination. But, where I got dropped on my head, it was when I was moved to Colorado in 1989. If you remember, the political environment in Colorado then, there was a proposition that was passed a few years later that allowed people to discriminate, based on sexual orientation, or gender identity. And things,the politics in Colorado got very interesting. It was the first time that I was in an environment where it was like you really do have to be visible as a leader. It's not that I was not out. I just didn't think I had to talk about it at work, or, you know, it was just like, okay, like, whatever? But, once I got to Colorado and I could see the stress in our employee groups, and the fact that they felt almost under attack from the politics in the state, I felt it was really important as a leader that I was really visible and available. And that's when I really got involved, that's actually how I got involved with Out & Equal, was our pride group in Colorado. Wanted to bring that organization to Colorado, for their annual summit. And I agreed to sponsor it, and be a part of it. And I then ended up joining the board at Out & Equal. And so, for me, it's been about being visible, and being just my true self at work. Certain, you know, I guess, work environments are like, you know, you go to work and it's all... I'm kind from the generation where you go to work and you work. And you go home, and like those two things don't blend. And I really had to make a conscious decision that I'm gonna bring my whole self to work. I had Emily, I was pregnant with Emily about that time, about two years after I joined the Out & Equal board I became pregnant with Emily. If you're, you know, a same-sex couple, and you're pregnant, you're out, right? Like, it's all over with at that point. You know, people would just come up and ask me about it, and I would just be really honest, and tell them, you know, about my family. And then the other thing is, that once you become a parent, you realize that it's not just about you anymore. You know, you're a same-sex couple and you take your kid to preschool. Well, they're gonna interview you. And they're gonna ask you about your family. And the other parents there are gonna ask you about your family, and the other kids are gonna talk to your kid about your family. And one thing you figure out, is that, you know, if you don't show up in front of your kid 100% confident about who you are, they won't be confident about who they are. And so, that becomes kind of a big responsibility that you have as a parent. So once I crossed that bridge, it was like, I've just been kinda out my whole life. And hopefully, you know, set a good example for them.

Wow! I would say that it's not really a specific thing. But, some of the most enjoyable and triumphant, I guess, periods of time, and experiences for me have been around seeing people that were part of my team, or that reported to me, seeing their careers grow, and feeling like that I played some role in helping them along the way. There's nothing like seeing people that you hired, and groomed, and developed, and supported, seeing them succeed. For me, that's really where it kinda comes together. Yeah, seeing them promoted, and seeing them succeed. There were lots of projects that were super-exciting, but, the people side of the business, for me, is some of the most rewarding. We get a lot of customer letters from people who either something about our product changed their lives. With some of our health products now, we have people that send us letters and tell us how we saved their lives. And those things, you know, they just kind of, they hit you in a way where you realize what I'm doing is mattering. It's making people's lives better. It's not just a job. It's not just a career. It's having an impact in the world in a really positive way. For me, that's just incredibly motivating, is when you're impacting peoples' lives, both your teams', and their development, and wellbeing, but, also your customers.

Yeah. Some of them you saw a little bit. I really believe in transparency. During the period of time where we were sort of trying to figure out how to deal with the digital camera business, there was a lot of secrecy around it at the time. People were going in rooms and having conversations about, you know, impacting people's jobs. Impacting where their jobs were. And it would turn out that, over the course of my career, you're faced with, sometimes, really hard decisions. Decisions that impact routines, and impact, you know, other people, their wellbeing, their careers. And I found, through that process, by just standing up in front of my team and telling 'em the truth, even if it meant all of 'em were gonna run for the hills, and I'd be the only one left running this business, that turned out to be such an impactful decision, in terms of establishing with my team trust very early on, as a new GM. They believed that I would tell them if something changed. They believed if there was some piece of information they needed to know about, I would tell them. That level of trust, when you have trust in a team, you can do incredible things. When people aren't spinning on what do they really mean, or what are they not telling me, or, you know, rumors and other things that might be happening, it takes a lot of politics out of decision making when you say, you know, I'm always gonna be incredibly transparent. So you don't have to second guess, you don't have to spend a lot of time figuring out who likes who, or is there some sort of favoritism. It takes just a lot of noise out the system. So, for me, honesty and transparency is really, really critical. That's kind of a fundamental value for me. And there's a lot of other important values, but that one's kind of my North Star, is truth and honesty and trust.

Toughest decisions. You know, I think some of the toughest decisions I've had to make have been where I had to, I had somebody that wasn't the right person for a role. They weren't necessarily that they weren't smart, or maybe not, not capable of doing something else really great. But, they weren't the right person for that role. Having those conversations, they can go a couple of different ways. Again, it was kinda the approach that I've taken around truth, and honesty, and transparency, it's sitting down and having that conversation with a person and saying, this isn't working, and not making it personal. It's like it's just not working, and here's why it's not working. And here are the things I'm hearing, and the things I'm seeing. And just being honest about it. Those are some of the toughest conversations, because, people, people, obviously, a lot of their identity is wrapped up in what they're doing. And it can, you can kind of get into this mode where you feel like giving somebody honest feedback is a mean thing to do. But, if you do it right, it's a gift. The only thing I've ever felt guilty about, is sometimes you come along and someone's been in a role for awhile, and everybody's had this feedback for them, but, they've never received it. And you become the first person that tells them the truth. And so, the thing that I learned along the way, is it's more important to give people regular, honest feedback, so they can adjust, and grow, and develop. So you're not having that conversation in two years, where it's stacked up and it's so bad that people have lost confidence in them. And so, I guess I would say some of the toughest conversations could be avoided, by having the right conversations much, much earlier. But, those have been some of the... Any time it affects people, it's a, those are much more impactful. I mean, you can make hard decisions about things all the time. But, the people decisions are the ones that, that always kind of, you know, your stomach churns a lot. You know, a lump in your throat. And so, those are the ones that are the hardest, for sure.

Well, it's still a journey I'm probably on. I'm hoping that there's gonna be some more self-discovery in retirement. We'll see, right? You know, my favorite thing to do is to go running. It's not like, you know, a super-inspiring hobby, necessarily, but, I love to run. Everywhere that I travel in the world, I try to go out running, because, you see a part of the world that you don't see when you're driving in a car. Or you're sitting inside a hotel looking out the windows. And so, I run cities. I can go decent, it's not fast. That's why I can see a lot of things. It's a slow run. But, I can do six to eight miles a day pretty easily. And so, I'm just kind of clunking along like a little billy goat, looking around and checking things out. But, it's a time where I'm like observing. I can kinda get in my head, I can block everything out, I can just kinda think. In some of my most creative times, I'll come back from a run and have solved a problem that I couldn't figure out before I left. And so, that's kinda my me time. In terms of kind of finding myself, I think I'm still, I'm still discovering who that is. My life is pretty consumed with work and family. But, back to like, you now, follow your passions. Work, and family, and life, they don't feel like three different things. Like, I am like so excited when I'm at work every day. I love what I do, I love the people I work with, they're like my family. They see me more than my family, it turns out. And my kids are, they're very independent. They're all very unique. I'm not a helicopter parent either. I can't afford to be, because, I'm practically, you know, in airplanes and helicopters constantly. But, you know, they're really independent, and independent thinkers. And I think maybe, I don't know, there's a part me that sort of thinks if I hovered around 'em more, that, you know, maybe they would be more in my shadow. And they're not, they're very, very unique, each one of them. And then, fun is, you know, traveling around doing my job, and going for runs in new cities every day. I kind of blend the two together, it works for me. I'm sure there'll be another chapter at some point. Hopefully. Maybe I'll take up a hobby like, I don't know, like, what is that, curling? That seems like a really... It's like an Olympic sport, it seems good.

No, thank you. Thank you.