The Values and Ethics of Texas Instruments via Richard Templeton

Well, good news was we had great leaders that set the company up. And if you don't have the right values and the right foundation, I don't care if you're selling calculators like we do or semiconductor chips or whatever you're in. If you don't have the right values in terms of how you expect to treat people, how you want to be treated, how you should operate ethically out in the community and around the world, the importance of innovation, you'll get lost. And you know the list of companies that have gotten lost because they lack that foundation underneath. So I think that has been probably the greatest. You know, we're a 90-year-old company and we've done a lot of different things, but that is a standard that remains unchanged on that front.

It's one and the same. You know, the way that I've tended to develop it, we talked about it quite openly and externally, is great companies build great communities and great communities build great companies. So they're actually one and the same. It's not 'I invest because I have to' or 'I want to look good.' You know, take some challenging cities like Rochester, New York, where someone like Kodak and Xerox were so great, and without those great companies, it's a struggling city. And so you just look at that and you're like, boy, this is an important responsibility. You need to invest in the communities you're in, and they in turn help build you stronger. We also find a really interesting thing that when you prioritize community giving and involvement, your employees tend to feel that there's a greater sense of purpose than just what do I do at work. And that tends to be pretty powerful. In some ways, you can think of it, it just balances out life a little better, I think, for everybody. And so we've been lucky. We've had a strong tradition and we've been able to maintain that and keep it going.

Oh, probably the most important thing is to, in our business, not be afraid to change. You know, if you go back seven or eight years ago, at TI we were powering half the cell phones in the world. And we looked out at that business and what it was going to do for the next ten years, and we said that movie's not going to end well. So don't sit around and wait for the movie to end and clean up the problem. Go inject change and get your people moving out in a new direction. And we're fortunate that even though we're a large company, we're used to change. And you know, when properly organized and shaped, people can say, 'Let's go, it's a new future we're going to go create.' So I give our team a lot of credit. They've been willing to go on those journeys and make those changes. And fortunately, we've made some of those calls correctly and we've been rewarded for it.

You know, it's probably twofold. That is, stay connected and innovative, which means you got to be out with your customers. If you want to know what's happening inside a big company, spend the time outside because of the issues that you have. And then the second aspect is make sure you're bringing great people, and witness those that are in the audience, because you know, five years from now and ten years from now, you're going to need tomorrow's leaders and the next generation of leaders. And you know, that rejuvenation of an organization is really very powerful. It's what makes visits like this so enjoyable.

Curiosity. Curiosity is one of the simplest words, but people use fancy ones, lifelong learning or whatever you want. And you know, just be curious. What makes stuff tick? And if you're curious about how things work, what new problems are going on, you'll study them and you'll stay very, very current with what's state of the art. And so it really is all of us, everyone in the audience, possess that ability to stay refreshed and they'll be able to do that. But you know, we're really fortunate. We had an ethics office and an ethics hotline and an ethics manual. And not that those things in and of themselves are important, but they embody a belief that this is how we intend to operate. And we had them back really starting in the early 70s, and as you know, it probably didn't become popular until maybe 10, 15 years ago in terms of getting that set up. So it has always been, as I commented before, a foundation of how we've operated. And what we tend to find is the best way to keep an organization policed is enroll everybody. Because if you have everybody, all 30-odd thousand employees, enrolled and knowing what right is and what wrong is, and if something looks wrong, tell somebody. Okay, it's just that simple. It's a very powerful approach when you really get every employee, because in the end it is our company. And if we let something go wrong, it will hurt us. And we're fortunate that we've got that culture, we've got the structure, we keep it reinforced. And it takes acting when the problem comes up. You better handle it correctly or people will stop telling you about problems. But fortunately, we're on the right side of that, and that's the best way to make sure it's really lasting.