OPEN TO INNOVATION: How Engineers Can Lead in Disruptive Change - Fireside Chat with Jim Whitehurst

Yeah, so first off, great to meet you and thank you so much for being here. I have to say the one person who's not here is my daughter. She decided to go have sushi tonight instead of hearing this, but she's heard most of this before, so I'm trying not to take that personally. Also in Jones, by the way. So I think that question is one of the most important for leaders broadly, but certainly for engineering leaders. When I go back to way back in 1989 when I graduated, so much of technology was, I want to say, kind of implementing the known. It was kind of taking processes and basically coding them. But if you look at the transition that started happening really after the internet, but it's really kind of accelerated in the last decade, as President DeRosa said, it really is becoming how companies create value. And what that means is you're going from the work being about delivering against a prescribed known to how do you lead and create in a wholly unknown area. And that's a fundamentally different thing. I have twins. My daughter's here at Rice, she's very techy and she's really good at writing term papers and doing that stuff. My son is at NYU and he's studying film and he's very artsy and can do creative writing. The idea of my daughter trying to do creative writing, head explode. Engineers aren't generally the type who are super creative right off the bat. It's something you have to work on, especially when you get teams and how they work. Just to use a simple example, we talked about this earlier. If you think about an engineering exercise, how do you take 2% of the cost out of making a car? That's relatively valuable. But if you realize the average car is used 90 minutes a day and if you can increase that by 20%, that's a whole lot more valuable. But when you think about how you do that, well, there are a hundred different ways you can do it, whether it's ride share, autonomous driving, co-ownership, and all these things and technology. So all of a sudden you think about how you solve that problem, it's not just what's the engineering solution, it's how do I even imagine what the solution is that I'm going to go try to solve. And so all of a sudden, and we'll get into the leadership aspects in a minute, the role of engineering organizations are becoming less directly about applying technology to known problems to how do I actually create a vision of the future and then how do I get there. And as an individual, there's one thing about an individual and how you go about doing it, but now how as a leader do you do that with a number of people who have to work together to be able to innovate at scale. I'll just promise I'll stop talking in a second here, but this is a little bit the parallel. It first started to dawn on me that it's not just about how do I make individuals creative. When I was at Delta, I thought I knew how to run an organization. Delta was considered a really well-run airline and we did pretty well, went first on time performance. I came to Red Hat and Red Hat felt like chaos. And my first reaction was, oh my God, I gotta clean this thing up. But what I realized pretty quickly is it actually wasn't chaos. It was a different way to manage when you're trying to drive innovation. And what I mean by that, I don't want to say Delta wasn't innovative, but trust me, you do not want anybody innovating on the safety procedures before your flight. You don't want DevOps fail fast going there. It's like, oops, we lost that plane. There is a very different pace for how you think about doing things and the myriad things that have to happen for a plane to leave on time and the crews and the schedules and the safety procedures and all of that. And so how you lead when you're trying to minimize variance, which is by the way what we used to do in computer science when I first graduated. Systems didn't go down, SAP, waterfall, all those things, that looks so different than when you're trying to drive a faster pace of innovation and you actually want to inject variance in. And it's easy to talk about injecting variance in when you start talking about a DevOps process and most of us kind of understand what that means. But think about when you think about it for an organization of let's say you have 10 engineers or 100 engineers or a thousand engineers working for you, how do you drive a pace of innovation in that? And we can come back and talk about parts of that if you want to, but that broadly is the challenge that I think engineers and engineering leadership has, is taking a broader role in solving those problems. I'll give one more example and then promise I'll let you ask another question. We were talking about this earlier, I actually didn't think about it till you were talking about it earlier. There was a time at Delta when the CIO really wanted budget for other purposes, and I won't get into the details of that, but he came up with the idea. The first time, if you go to airports now, everybody has these 42-inch gate displays up there. You have the flat screens that have here's the weather, etc. This was his idea as CIO of Delta. And what he was really trying to do is get budget to do a whole bunch of IT renewal stuff. But what he figured out was in Delta's case, you had two narrow-body agents to board a domestic flight and that was really expensive because we had tens of thousands of agents. And if you could go from two to one, that was worth over 100 million a year. So what he figured out, and this is just using a simple example because everybody flies, it's like, well, why do you have two gate agents? Because a lot of people go up there and ask questions. Well, what do they ask? What's the weather like where I'm going? Where am I on the standby list? Where am I on the upgrade list? Are there any window seats left? When's the plane going to arrive? Is the crew here? And so by putting all that on the screen, we were able to go from two to one gate agent. Now that's a very simple example, but it was him and his team that were proactive saying, hey, technology can do this because the people in the airport weren't thinking about that. So that's a very simple just operational thing. Now you start getting into all the revenue things. So really recognizing engineering organizations need to be leaders in thinking about how do the capabilities of technology change the business models of organizations. And again, that leads to a whole myriad set of leadership both opportunities and challenges for engineering leaders. Well, answer your question, sorry.

Yeah, so in order to really think about making continuous change, you really need to understand the business that you're in broadly. And especially if you're in a startup, you hopefully understand that piece well. Even then though, really understanding how your customers are using the product and what are the potentials, like what are they doing the hour before they use your product and the hour after and how are they using it. So even with that there's value. But especially if you go to a larger organization, really understanding how does the company make money and how do the pieces fit together. Because often it's in the seams between the organization where there's less visibility where all of a sudden you can see a solution. Just an example from Delta, my big thesis which turned out to be right, which is why I ultimately got a couple promotions, was I started to have this theory that connecting travel wasn't as profitable as we thought it was. Airlines back in the 80s built these airline hubs that you connected people and because connecting travel was really, really profitable. But then in the 1990s, this thing called a regional jet was born. And so a regional jet, yeah, they're starting to go away now, people either love them or hate them depending on whether it was replacing a turboprop or mainline plane. But these little 50-seat Bombardier and Embraer regional jets started flying. And so what that ended up doing, if you're going from Savannah, Georgia to Los Angeles, you used to have two ways to go back in the early 90s. You could go over Atlanta on Delta or over Charlotte on whatever the predecessor of US Airways was at the time. But after the birth of the regional jets, Continental was flying it from Houston and American was flying it from Chicago. And so all of a sudden there's six ways to get from all those places. So my hypothesis was that the profitability of the industry around these connecting hubs, connecting travel, was becoming less profitable. All of the airline profitability systems worked on looking at individual routes and not the tos and froms. So I started downloading all this data that you could get from the DOT on passengers and ticket tear samples and all this stuff. By the way, I'll come back to, I had to use Linux to do that because this is the early 2000s. If people remember Windows back then had the FAT file system, the file system which only did 4 gigabytes, and 4 gigabytes wasn't enough. So I started messing around with Linux, which turned out to be transformational in my life later on, we can get to that. But anyway, so I was actually able to prove this out. Now I was doing all this when I was Treasurer. Now Treasurer is the person who kind of manages the dollars, but I was passionate about it, I was interested in it. So I started talking to people in the network and kind of built this thesis which ultimately allowed, I went from being Treasurer to running the network, which is kind of how the planes fly. And it was because of that level of curiosity. And that's just an example, but I'll use one other example of Matt Hicks. So the current CEO of Red Hat is an engineer and Red Hat does a lot of things in infrastructure but doesn't do a lot of stuff in machine learning. And so as a hobby, he has a townhouse now in Boston and he has his gym on the top floor and he can't hear the doorbell. So he could rewire it all, he decided well that's kind of dumb. So he put a microphone on a little computer, actually was a Raspberry Pi I believe, and did a machine learning algorithm for the microphone to recognize the doorbell and then it would ping him on his phone upstairs, just got to send him a DM. And so that sounds really simple, but as he said, a year later when they start talking about well would you want to offer a set of open source tools, it's called the Open Data Hub now, with that set of tooling and what would that look like and is it worth it for developers, his ability to engage in that was so much higher because he toyed around with it and done it himself because he was curious and he understood. He said it was shockingly easy to build a model to recognize the doorbell. You got to give it a whole bunch of sounds and they teach it. And so basic simple things like that sound simple but those little things, you're interested in something, you're curious and you pursue it, either it has a direct impact because in the case of how the airline flew, kind of came to a solution, but in his case he built enough context that he could be more able to have a set of conversations. I think is critical. And so as you go forward, just be curious about how your organizations make money, what are the scams, what are different kind of people in organizations do. Ultimately, I think it's just interesting, it'll make you a better general leader but it will also help you contextualize how the business makes money and how you might be able to impact that over time. Especially if you want to lead, because other people are also going to ask you about things about the business. If you're a leader, the more context you can provide for your people, the more effective leader you are as well.

So being an engineering leader, I will say is tough because engineers in general are very, very logical people, which is good in many, many ways. But at the same time, great leaders, people follow because they want to follow, and want by definition has some degree of emotion in it. So there's a whole set of soft skills around how you get people inspired about what you're doing, want to do what you want them to do. But at the same time you have to also appeal to the logic as well. So you have to do both in terms of building the whole logic story but you also have to work to inspire. And by the way, you're doing it with, on average, engineers are more introverted. We used to have these problems, we're trying to get, so when innovation happens, great innovation typically is not a single individual. It's getting people together to kind of build off of each other's ideas. Well that requires getting people together and we got a lot of introverts. Well you got a lot of work to do. We used to have engineers, you say we want to get together and do this, like, well can I just instant message into these things? It's like, no, you probably need to be there. And so really, really working to build spaces where people feel comfortable and feel comfortable kind of interacting. At the same time, and there's multiple sides of that. So one is building a place where people can be comfortable and being open, but also moderating it so it doesn't become too harsh. One of the other interesting things with engineers is somebody would say, the example used, it's like, that's the dumbest freaking idea I've ever heard. Well in some engineering environments that's considered very collaborative. You're telling somebody that's not a very good idea. Other people, that turns them off. So also recognizing as a leader you're trying to create a context where people feel comfortable saying things and you want people to say if that's a bad idea, but doing it in a way that's respectful enough that it's inclusive. We talk about you don't want to create an environment that is only considered inclusive by people who are willing to withstand withering criticism. So kind of getting that balance right is tough and frankly it's tougher with engineers because engineers are again more likely to be introverts and generally are more okay with some really harsh, that's a horrible idea, you're a moron, which you have to kind of work to try to get the balance right. And so the soft skills around that and recognizing it's too easy I think often for people who don't love interacting and mixing it up with people to say let me just divide out the responsibilities and give them out to people and now come back. But if you don't have people working together you're not going to be as creative. So the soft set of skills of how you engineer getting people to work together and be inspired to do it and get together is key and hard in engineering organizations.

Well, a big part is, and again these are some degree generalizations, I know some very extroverted engineers, but again in general, you're leading a marketing organization or some of these other organizations, you have generally kind of more extroverted people broadly. So your ability to bring people together and kind of feed and build kind of emotion and energy off of each other is just easier. It's just easier. Like when I was at Red Hat, going to a sales office and engaging in strategy and what we're going to do and why and how, very different experience than going to one of our engineering centers where you got a lot more I'd say logical questions but it was harder to necessarily get people like viscerally emotionally attached to here's what we're doing. And we were able to do that more around kind of open source and the mission. But I think there's a lot of heart and head. Leading with head and how do you augment with heart, where in say a sales or marketing organization it's a lot of heart and you add in a little bit of head, if that kind of makes sense in terms of how you're thinking about it. Again, you need people who want to do something but you want them to do it. You don't want people to do something because you told them to do it. You want people to do it because they want to do it. And that's a combination of intellectually understanding why it's important and emotionally kind of being invested in it. And frankly that second part is the one where it's just harder with kind of introverts. And so it's a skill set you have to learn and honestly a lot of it comes with practice. Getting people in a room, kind of working on the tenor of the conversation, make sure it's happening, and you build that over time. I will say, and I mentor several CEOs now that are engineers who've been CEOs, the other thing I would say is think really hard if you want to do it. Like at Red Hat we had, sorry if I'm rambling, but we had these careers of advancement and careers of achievement. And the reason we did that, there's a lot of people who want to have influence in their career and feel like they're continuing to progress but they don't want to manage people. Some people just don't want to hire people, they don't want to fire people, they don't want to give people performance reviews, they don't want to give them their bonus and have them complain and you got to explain why this person's going to get more. All of that mess and the messy people stuff, some people just don't want to do it. Doesn't mean they don't want to have tremendous influence and respect in an organization. And so I've mentored some folks who decided, you know what, I don't want to be a CEO. I know I started this thing and I love it but I want to be on the engineering side and I want to get somebody else who's going to do all that stuff. So the other thing I would say is really think hard about what you want to do and what you love to do. And you're always going to have to do some things you don't love to do but you want 70% of your job, 80% of your job to be stuff you love to do and you put up with the rest because it's necessary. And construct your career around that. And generally over time as you think about, in an individual job you may be stuck in a situation where 70% of the stuff's not what you want to do and then you start thinking about what you want to do next. But over time as you have career choice, try to make sure you kind of get that mix right. So again, we've had some great leaders at Red Hat where you'd be like, we want you to run this organization, like, no I don't want to do that. And I always respect people who really understand kind of what they want to do and what they enjoy doing. And then others, I'll say it's just a journey. It's like, I don't necessarily love this but I love being able to see the impact my technology has and I love focusing on the technology and the customers and I want to frankly hold my nose and put up with the rest and I hire a strong Chief of Staff or whatever to do the stuff I don't like to do. But really thinking hard about what you like to do. The whole point is if you're successful in life, the biggest gift you get is you get to do what you like to do. And so think really, really hard about that and how you craft around that. So is a little off topic.

Well, so one thing I would say is part of it is just keeping a broad aperture. Like I read The Economist cover to cover every week and I have a little more time than a lot of people now. But I mean pick what are the 10 things, go to a16z, they got great blogs on various companies they're investing in and kind of what and why and how. I mean pick whatever the seven or eight sources that you think are things that you find both kind of interesting but meaningful to give you kind of a broad perspective. Just to kind of be curious and understand. I mean spend time doing that. At Delta even when I was Treasurer, I would like go to lunch with the guy who ran maintenance and go to lunch with the person who did the scheduling stuff. And it's kind of one of those things when I got promoted, it was I was really, really young but it was like, well yeah he kind of knows more than anybody else because I just kind of frankly talk to more people and ask questions a lot more. So doing some of that is important. One of the things, I'll state the blindingly obvious, the most interesting thing to 99% of the world is themselves. So just ask somebody about what they're doing, what are their challenges, and they're happy to just gush it all out there. And so seriously, just find people to go to lunch with in a company you work for, in areas that are yours, and then ask about their job and what they're doing. I find it interesting to hear and most people are happy to tell you. And after it's like, that was such a great conversation, just they're just like imparting. And I'm a little bit of a, I'm right on the border between E and I and I've also found for me as a little bit more of an introvert, the best way to have a conversation with someone, you're sitting there, you got to talk to them, ask them about themselves. Ask them about what they do, what are their challenges, they're happy to talk and then you don't have to do that much talking. So I'd say the average conversation is just because I'm not super socially adept, I find just asking people, well we saw this before we were in there chatting, like I just ask everybody what they're doing. And then the conversation kind of emerges from that. But that to me is a great way to get a lot of perspective. But it's also a great way to interact with people that is pretty low stakes because all you're doing is asking about them.

I'll go a little bit out on a limb here. I think that if you look at technology companies today, whether it's market cap or share of GDP, continue to grow and grow and grow. The source of advantage for businesses much more today is owning assets and using those assets effectively. And so the fourth Industrial Revolution to me is a lot around a whole new set of winners basically continuing to take share in the economy. So again, whether that's autonomous driving, advances in healthcare, will it be the HCA, Hospital Corporation of America, that wins in that or will it be technology companies that over time extract more of the value out. And so where technology companies begin and end will get blurry because you'll have things more focused in technologies but there is tons of room for attackers to take share across these categories because innovation becomes important as it's really hard for large established companies necessarily to innovate as quickly. And again, technology becomes the source of advantage. Now that's one perspective. You want to look at it from a societal perspective, the last Industrial Revolution, we are all tremendously better off than we were. If you actually starting at 1870 to like 1950, GDP per capita in the industrialized world doubled every 30 years. That is profound. We went from 0 AD, like birth of Christ, to 1750 and we only went up 50%. And we started every 30 years doubling. I mean so like incredible value creation associated with that. And I think we will see that with a set of technologies that's coming together now which we're calling the fourth Industrial Revolution. And I'll come back in a minute on it, but you also have to remember the Industrial Revolution was marked by a lot of wars, a lot of people dying, communism, socialism, a whole lot of different economic models happening. And so to think we're going to go through something this transformational for the world without a lot of political and social unrest I think is pretty crazy. And so I think there's a lot of goodness that will come out of it but there's going to be a lot of disorder until we figure out how you allocate capital in this new world order. So I mean, this is a little bit of a gross simplification but I don't think it's too far off. So you basically had four or five technologies that really came together in 1870. I always use that, people talk about 1750 for beginning of the Industrial Revolution but it was really when we got best of steel, so we got trains, we got mass manufacturing, so you're able to make stuff and distribute it quickly when we kind of hit this curve. And so I would almost kind of look, if you look at technology, a lot of what we've happened to technology up until recently was kind of like 1750 to 1870. It was like this slow progression. We were making some progress, factories were built, but it was when a set of technologies came together that really exploded. And I do think generative AI which allows more cognition if you want to call it that to happen in computers along with our ability, broadband, high-speed communication in your pocket, etc., all of a sudden what humans can do and what machines can do will change which I think creates enormous value. We'll create new jobs, yes, some jobs will go away, we will have autonomous driving, but jobs will be augmented and new things will be created. The problem is then how do you distribute wealth across to this. A good friend of mine, just because he ran the other software company in Raleigh, North Carolina, is Jim Goodnight at SAS. SAS is really, really good at telling you what to put on a store shelf and how many facings of each of those things to have. And Jim's a billionaire because of that. Well that replaced, so it's now you use that software and somebody making minimum wage is putting exactly that number of facings of these various products there. 100 years ago that was like mom and pop shops which knew their communities and what to put there that got replaced. So it's one billionaire and a lot of people making minimum wage versus a lot of people somewhere in the middle. That problem is going to get worse and worse and worse and worse in the fourth Industrial Revolution, which is why I think there's going to be a lot of social and political upheaval till we find a new way to distribute wealth. If you kind of go back to the Industrial Revolution, sorry this is probably a little off subject, but the whole, when you say all of that was around the fact that massive amounts of capital and massive amounts of labor created enormous efficiency. So how do you divide the wealth created by that between capital and labor? And it started off the capital owners got it and then we got, went through different systems around the world and in the US we have, I think for the Industrial Revolution, by the time we had came out working well, which is a social welfare system and unionization and all these things which kind of ultimately distributed wealth and created a middle class and all those wonderful things. Well how do you do it now? And I'm taking the extreme, Jim Goodnight's a billionaire because he's developed a piece of software that he sells to companies that are now able to have people with minimum wage putting things on the shelves. Well they can't unionize against Jim because he's in a different company. So I don't need to personalize it, but this idea of how as a society do we redistribute wealth, we have not figured out. And so there are so many incredible possibilities, whether it's how we cure diseases to, I actually spend a lot of time on environment, I'm an optimist on environment because I think the advances we'll make in material sciences and other areas, we'll figure out how to capture carbon, etc. So but also all those are the great things but I do think as a society, how wealth will be logically distributed in that environment needs to change. We got a lot to figure out. Sorry that's a long, long answer to your question.

Yeah, so it's funny when I think back on it. So when I graduated computer science, I decided I wanted to go do business, do something in business and get an MBA and be on the business side of technology. And I always thought I'd be on the business side of technology but I got really, really lucky. So I went to the Boston Consulting Group out of college and I thought I'd do that for a couple years. And I'd been there about a year and I got put on this project where we were doing all this evaluation work and they were really complex models. This wasn't like just in a spreadsheet, I mean it was really complex. We had these fading curves in terms of cash flows and how things would change over time that wasn't algebraic, you literally had to run the, now you could do it in Excel pretty easily but this was hard stuff back in the day. And these models ran out of a mainframe. And so I used to have this laptop and it was awful. I mean that's just going back to it had like floppy disk drives and I literally you'd have to run it at night and it would go up and down to the mainframe but then it was writing things in the floppy drive, it was so loud I had to like put it in my closet with an extension cord because I had a studio apartment. I'm right out of college, you know, like this is crazy. So I end up getting all the manuals, I end up rewriting it and it honestly wasn't that hard. I mean it just wasn't something you could do in a spreadsheet at the time. So I rewrote it on the PC. Well frankly once you've written something you know it really, really, really, really, really well because you like really kind of gone through and had to really deeply understand it. So I very quickly rose into leadership in what was called corporate development. So it was how we did valuation which gets into well what are multi-divisional companies worth and how do you assign values and M&A and all that stuff. So I went to business school, I came back, I stayed at BCG, I was loving it, things were going well. One of my big clients was Delta because it was like why are they valued the way they're valued. But anyway, a big part of why I think I was successful there is because I programmed this thing. And I was actually pretty happy there but 9/11 happened and I got a call from the CEO who I knew because I'd been serving them at BCG and he said I need you now to be my Treasurer. And I said, his name was Leo, Leo is like, you're out of your mind, I know nothing about being a Treasurer. He's like, well that's okay, nobody in their right mind would loan us money now so you're smart, you'll figure it out. So that's how I made that first transition. But a lot of that was again because I was so deep in how those models work, it allowed me to build credibility and leadership kind of quickly. And then I started to tell a little bit of the story about how the flight profitability models that we had back then which didn't really do what's called origin to destination, they allocated revenue, was doing all the route stuff. And so I spent a lot of time kind of deeply understanding that which is how I ultimately got promoted to running the network. And then the success out of that and how the changes kind of moved me to be COO. And then when we emerged from bankruptcy was a weird process, so a new board gets created and they want to bring in their own management team. So that's when I left. But because I'd been doing all that work in Linux, I got this call about Red Hat. And I'm like, yeah, I know Red Hat well, I'm using that at home, I've done a lot of work, I've hacked around on this stuff a lot. So had kind of credibility kind of working to go there. So you asked the question about do I have mentors. I'm not sure I'd say mentors but over time I've definitely built what I'll call a team. So there are two partners at BCG who are very good dear friends that, one was on either side, one was a little more senior, one was a little more junior, kind of coming up through. I called them for advice all the time. I know them well, they're good friends, they're good colleagues. A couple friends from business school the same way that I've known forever. Like when I left Delta which was a little bit unexpected because like new management team comes in, they're like okay, yep, yep, see you later, we're taking over now. A friend called me, it's like, okay get on a plane to Minneapolis tomorrow, I'm calling three other people, we're all getting together, we're spending a couple days, we're talking about your life and what you're going to go do. And so I got on a plane to do that. When he left his last job, do the same thing. So over time you build kind of a cadre of people who I think kind of know you deeply and their advice is invaluable and their advice is still invaluable and they know me well. Other people have done really well with mentors. I don't know if I've ever had a quote unquote mentor as much as these people that I've just kind of known and I can call for advice and I trust and they know me and they know a lot about me. Build those now. Like people at Rice, like who do you think kind of knows you there? Actually I have to say there are two other Jones '89 members on the Rice Board of Trustees and it isn't that big by the way. The three of us, if you had like put a lottery in that we would be on the Board of Trustees, people that would be more likely the three of us would be in jail than on the Board of Trustees. But they're both highly successful individuals as well, so who knew. But it's people like that that kept in touch with who I can call. And again there's something about kind of knowing you and kind of knowing what makes you tick that their advice I think is phenomenal. Others, I mean I don't want to say don't go get mentors and over time I think people can help with that. But I found life's long and the friends that you make and the connections that you make are incredibly powerful. I'll tell one other story on that regard. So when Delta was getting in financial trouble, we wanted to sell a regional subsidiary of ours called ASA. They did flying out of Atlanta on regional jets for Atlanta. The problem is when you go into bankruptcy, all of your contracts you can basically reject, you can just say you know what I'm rejecting that contract. So we wanted to sell this business to a partner but we were going to sell it knowing we'd probably file for bankruptcy. And so the contract wasn't worth much. And so I called the CEO of SkyWest at the time and I said look, I know you want to own this thing, we would like to sell it but it's a weird situation because whatever we agree to, in six months if we go bankrupt, which we probably will, we can cancel. So how do we build something where you have enough leverage that you feel like things are going to work out. And so we did a lot of work around that and I ultimately met their board of directors and really spent a lot of time just kind of building a lot of trust there. Well it turns out one of their members of the board of directors was on the board of directors of Red Hat. So when this recruiter who had been hired to find the CEO said I know this is a crazy idea but this guy Jim Whitehurst, he's like I know Jim, I fully trust him, I know how he ticks, blah, blah, blah. You know those kind of relationships are really, really important in life. And so again whether it's people who are friends who can advise you or just the reputation you build over time and people you can ultimately call, to me that's almost more important than mentorship. And life's long, jobs are short, life's long. And people you meet and relationships that you have and what your quote unquote brand is with people in the industry and around you is like the most important thing you have. That everybody goes around, we were talking earlier, it's like you know opinion on do you want to have, do you stay a long time at one place or is it better to kind of bounce around and get a lot of different experiences. And my answer to that was well kind of depends. Some people really get a lot of emotional satisfaction around a deep commitment to one place, etc. Others want to try in different places, get broader sets of experiences. So you can kind of make that decision. I would say if you're going to leave somewhere, leave on really good terms. Be honest about why you're leaving, give whoever it is notice, never burn bridges. You just never know when those things are going to kind of, it's the right thing to do but you never know when you turn around 10 years later and you're on the other side of the table from somebody and you want them to say that person is an honorable person, they've done the right thing. And that is option value that will always serve you well in life.

One piece of advice. Yeah, I'm going to come back to really be deeply, deeply curious. Not only in your area of expertise, you need to often have, we talk T-shaped people, you need to have some depth in one area but you need to be curious and have some breadth. I just amaze the number of people who just really don't understand kind of how their company or their job fits into the whole. And to be successful I think over time and just be a well-rounded person, you kind of need to know that. But at some point to make certain leaps in your career and in life, kind of having a broader perspective is so important. Whether that's not just in business, I mean that can be socially, that can be geopolitically, just kind of making sure that you don't get just so down a rabbit hole and so focused that you don't kind of have a broad perspective which I do think is just absolutely critical. So be curious, toy around. I mean I have a little more time now because I'm mainly doing kind of boards and advisory and other stuff. I've built an iOS application, I've built a website, I studied in Germany a long time ago, I've kind of relearning German, I do a lot of photography. So one can argue okay well why those don't have any direct impact but I don't know, maybe they will at some point. But I do think kind of being curious and open and serendipity is such an important part of life. And frankly if I hadn't been curious about the network thing, I probably would have been COO at Delta. I certainly wouldn't have gotten the job at Red Hat, who knew. And so I mean do things you're interested in but I would just encourage you don't make it as I'm so interested in this I get really, really, really narrow. You want to have some kind of breadth in terms of your perspective again both business and globally. That would probably be the big, that and again I kind of can't hold on, I have twins so I can have two favorites. So that's one piece of advice. The other is again come back, it's do what you love to do and you will be good at it and good things will happen. So be self-aware. As I said, there are several CEOs that I mentor and some have been like wildly billionaire successful and others are somewhere in the middle there. But the ones that are I think best and most successful over time are the ones that are most self-aware. Self-aware, there are two pieces of that. There's what are you good at and what are you not good at. And so you can kind of work to spend more time on what you're good at. And also what do you love to do. There's high correlation there. If you're good at it, good chance you really like to do it. I mean there's some people where that's not true in history but in general what you're good at and what you like to do often overlap. So really understanding that so you can both choose jobs but also structure your jobs, especially as you get leadership roles and you have chances to pick people on teams. I got a lot of flaws but I think that's one thing I know. And the reason Red Hat was so successful isn't that I'm that good but I was smart enough to hire around really smart people with things I didn't like to do and I wasn't good at and they were phenomenal at it. And so it worked out. And again that's not just professional success, I think it's personal success. And I really enjoyed every day at Red Hat and what I did there and the impact we had. But a lot of that's because I did what I liked to do which was what I was good at and got other people to do other things. So really reflect on that. And honestly this is the other place back to mentors versus friends. If you get deep with a mentor where they may be able to help you with that, your friends know what you're like. And so at some point, I know you generally joke around and have, but sometime it's worth as you're thinking about a job or a high stakes decision, have a deep conversation with your friends. You'll be amazed how insightful they are about you. And like, I don't know if you want to do that because frankly I don't think that's your strong suit. Those kind of conversations can actually be really, really helpful. But if you can do what you're good at doing and like doing, that's going to be, you'll be good at it, therefore you will be successful doing it and your career goes from there.

Can I say one other thing? This is the question but I will say, you know, we also talked about school a bit. So I found Rice to be such an extraordinary place to be for the four years that I was at Rice. My wife went to Amherst, which is a great, well-respected school. She loves her high school, right, that's where she really, really fit in. I found I like fit at Rice. I was like a fish in water. But it's the people around you. No offense to the professors, we had great professors too, but I mean it's really kind of the people around you and the culture. And the thing that I would say, the other piece of advice I would give is just really make friends, make contacts. And frankly when you graduate, this is what I think was good, to keep in touch. Because there are people that I fell out of touch with that I got back in touch with like five years later at business school or 10 years later serendipitously would run at each other, whatever. Those are some of the best friendships that I have because they knew you at a formative time, they share obviously your intellect and intelligence so they wouldn't be here, they probably share a lot of values. So kind of savor that while you're here but take it on with you for the rest of your career. I really do think Rice is a truly special place in that regard. And so again just enjoy it but make sure you take it with you when you leave.