Ginni Rometty Interview w/ Adam Grant on "Good Power" Book — Authors@Wharton Event

Good evening.

Thank you.

[LAUGHS]

Thank you. I'm excited to be here. I love the energy.

I'm so happy to see so much energy, people walking around, people in class. Maybe you don't want to be in class, but I saw you in class before. So it'll be great.

Oh, come on, no. Nope, I am sad to tell you I had no vision. I had only hoped at one point that I could be independent, make enough money to support myself, and maybe I thought about being a doctor, until I could not pass human reproduction. And then that's, unfortunately, a true story. I'm like, all these colored pencils? Like, where is this going? After that, I said, no, not medicine. But actually, nope, I just thought, I want to be independent. I hope to do OK. I hope if I do a job OK, I'll get another job. And that was where it started.

You know, when did you think you'd be a best-selling author? That is exactly, honestly, how I felt. I know a lot of people have them say, no, I wanted to be this from the very beginning. And I even deal with lots of people that worked for me. They're like, no, you don't want to be this? And I always tell them, please, don't say what you don't want to be yet and just let life unfold. Because I never felt that way either, and I probably even didn't realize I could do it till I was well into my 40s. And then I thought, oh, maybe I could scale to do something. After I'd done some super hard stuff, then I thought, OK, maybe I could do this. But never where it started. And I don't know if I'm a part of a generation that works that way. That was just, look, I just want to if I do a good job, it's my ticket to do another thing. So I don't have a very exciting answer to that, because it was nothing I ever like, yes, CEO or bust.

How many want to be CEO, know already of something? But that's interesting.

OK, shut your eyes so just Adam and I can see you.

Oh, they're already closed.

Yeah.

Yeah. Exactly. So this is like maybe a third that had their hands up. So that's I think that's kind of good, because let life unfold.

This is one of my greatest worries. Actually, my husband and I were both talking about this. Someone said, what advice would you give a graduating class or something? So I decided to ask him that question. What would he give? He goes, I would tell them to just let life unfold. They're too impatient. And he said I honestly do worry. I really worry about all of you in the sense of, I could never get into your school now. I could never get into Northwestern, probably, now, either, to be honest. And the pressure and the intensity in the competition that is so high. So I worry about a generation that feels like, my god, I'm already losing before I've even started, right? And maybe you don't want anybody to worry about you, but that is a little bit how I feel. And I feel like that idea of, if you just keep learning my advice to that question would have been, ask more questions than you have answers. That's my advice when you leave. And if you do, I guarantee you'll go somewhere you want to go at the end.

Yeah, OK, that's a fair question. Because I think we all use a barometer of what's around us. I have to say OK, I'm lying to say I just sat there and said, oh, look at all these people getting promoted. Isn't that nice, not me. That would not have been the answer to that. So this, my kind of philosophy, though, had been and it stems back to where I started from, like where I grew up, which Adam knows because he looked at the book, read the book, sat on it? I don't know. Because my father abandoned our family when I was young. So I was 16. My brothers and sisters were younger. And I happened to walk into the garage, and I heard the conversation just a coincidence. I heard him tell my mother he could care less what happened to her or any of us, and she could work out on the street for all he cared. And in that moment, it'll answer back to your question about, now, how does what do you think about a career, and how do you measure yourself? My mom didn't cry, but she was 34 years old. She had four kids. She had not a day of education past high school, never worked a day outside the home. We immediately were on financial aid, food stamps, going to lose our house. And she was just really determined that's not how this story could end. And I would take care of the family. She would go back, get a little bit of education, get a job. A little more, a little better job never did get a degree. But that, when you say, how do you judge where you're going? For me in my life, that set the bar for bad, that nothing could ever be that bad again. So anything from here now looks really good to me. And that feeling is really freeing and liberating because I would go on in life to do really hard things and, in the moment, think, my god, if this doesn't work, I would always remember it's never as bad as that was. And so I would then learn to judge part of my shield would be, we could never cause my mom trouble, so we had to study. It's like, we can't cause her problems. Do your homework because she's got enough. And my brothers and sisters are all very successful as well. My mom would go, what did I ever do? And we just observed that and to us, and my great grandma and grandma who all had tragedies, we learned hard work took you to a better place. That was like I know that maybe sounds so simple, that there was always a way forward and hard work would make that happen. And so as life would go on, and you go to school and work and everything else, I think buried deep down was that thought that, look, hard work usually leads to another better place. However, I would say that's completely naive if that's the only thing you think about. So you write a lot, and I would say, as time would go on, I would start to say, well, now wait a second. If I was just as good as that person, why did this not happen, or that? And I learned to be an advocate for myself. Like, what was I worth on the outside? Before my boss ever did your increase, I'm like, just in case you're wondering what people like this make out here, here's your input. And in a nice way, know that kind of thing. I think that's the one part I would say to people, you do have to be your own advocate. And then in my way it is in a good way, though.

Yeah.

I know.

Uh-oh.

If you said he or she, that would narrow it down.

Ready, quote.

I would say I hope I never have to work for them, because I do not believe that is what the normal person out there on anybody's team looks like. Not in 100 years do I believe that. I don't believe it was the past, I don't believe it is this moment. I do believe you guys will be the judge you know Paul Polman. Did you ever interview him about any of his books? And after he left Unilever, he wrote this book, Net Positive. He's very much into the environment. I have my set of movements I'm after. His are just a little different. And he published a survey about interviewed maybe 5,000 to 10,000 people about, what does another generation look for in their leadership? And the order was authenticity. It was a sense of fairness. It was about doing something that had a purpose. You may only get to do that 20% of your time, but at least you're contributing to something that goes down in that direction. And so that, to me, was what people really that is not what motivates people. And it's a big point. I did not intend to write a book. I was telling Adam, this was the last thing on my mind. And I know you probably think, oh, yeah, sure. Most people go, oh, see, books are vanity projects, right? I had to go look up what that meant. And I was like, oh, man, if that would be the reaction to my book, honest to god, it would break my heart. And so when I was stepping down I'll come back to the what's good, what's power. What do you want? Do you want to be that? People say, hey, you should write about your journey know where you came from, you would like to lead IBM, be the ninth leader of IBM in the most tumultuous time it would ever experience in its history. And you would also then now I would do a lot of work on something called Skills First. I hope we get to talk about.

And I cochair an organization called OneTen, with an alum not too far from here, Ken Frazier, who ran Merck, to place a million Black employees into family-sustaining jobs without college degrees. And we're year three into that. So they said, you should write a book. I was like, ooh. And I started. I was telling him briefly about, so I was like, I started wanting to write all about this movement about Skills First, and why it's important to democracy, and all my data to prove this, and my experience at IBM why you have to promote people for their skills. We're going to talk. And I started on that path. You were like, oh, that's so boring. There's nothing personal. You have to be vulnerable. And this was super duper hard for me to do. And it backed into this title of good power. So it ended up becoming a memoir with a purpose. So I do not say everything on my life, nor do I say everything of IBM's life, or any but it was I was there 40 years, so it's a little hard to ignore it. But to Ann's question, I feel in the moment and it's what I've observed and learned from people about leadership it's all revisionist history. It was that, in this moment in time, particularly, I think I'm going to ask you, then your definition my view of leadership is that people want someone who is going to, as I say, embrace tension of different opinions. Don't run from it, and don't push people to two corners. Embrace those differences that's like my first part of the definition. The second part is, be respectful of it. That's not respectful, no offense. Be respectful in leadership. Do not govern by fear. I've lived through many times when it was fear. It's not sustainable. And this idea, if you would celebrate progress, there are so many big problems that we have to solve, if you would just focus on taking a step forward instead of solving the whole thing, you'd be surprised when you turn back how far you'll get. Otherwise, you polarize. It's like, all here, or, all here. So in this moment, I ended up back into this thought of those premises, and particularly tension, like, yes, conflict go for conflict. Just get it somewhere more just take another step with the person, somewhere, if you would just listen. And I back into them talking about, we all have that power, and it ends up being the power of me, we, and us. Because I kind of learned in my life, my mom had power when she had nothing else. She had power. I mean, to me, I hope I can inspire people to believe that they had some power. You have something when you have nothing else. And then you start to impact people, and then, eventually, you might be able to impact society. So to your point, I don't think that's what do you guys want to work for the person who wrote that email, hands up? The ones who wanted to be CEO do, or is the.

But seriously, what do you think of that answer? Do you believe that?

Like what do you think of it?

OK, that's a very good answer. You should be an author or a professor. No, seriously, that is a good answer, because I think the most valuable things I learn from good people I worked from was to make decisions based on values and treat people that way. I hope one day, you either create a company or you are lucky enough to work in one that is really steeped in values. Because I think some of the issues we see today are companies that their values aren't too deep. And just like when the wind blows on a tree without deep roots, they sway with the wind. And I can remember, one of my very first bosses, I was a first time now managing people. And he says to me, I came in and I said, hey, I have a guy that's telling really bad jokes, misogynistic jokes, and people are starting to complain. And he's a top performer. And he said to me, well, this is unequivocal. He said, you tell them to stop, or you fire him right now. It's like, I don't even understand this conversation. And it's such a simple example, but it taught me in a moment I mean, go back 40 years now taught me in a moment that leadership by values and creating followership that way says a whole lot more than what you just described, manage by process.

Yeah, right?

Yeah, I agree with you. I couldn't agree more. Oh, that's so sad. Is there any other notes on there that somebody wrote you that are better? Let's get this uplifting now!

Yeah, so the other part of writing it was, I don't know, you don't have to look very far to find negative I think, how many of you think there's a lot of negative examples of power out there? OK, a lot more than and this was what was starting to bother me, that people I would talk to a lot of people, and I'd say, would you like to be powerful? And the answer would be, no, but no, I would rather work on really important things. This is why I ended up with the book. The irony is you need power to work on really important things. That was, to me, the crux of why I finally did it because I'm like, ah. But I really want people to believe I wasn't comfortable leading those other ways. And I learned these other ways from lots of people that I became a mosaic of. And I was like, yeah. And I really feel like we're changing society, too, now, using working in that way in such a divided world. So to me, in this moment in time, it was why I thought maybe I could persuade a few more people that it's OK to lead this way.

OK, so thank you for asking because most time, everybody wants to talk about all the personal stories which I ended up that was really super hard for me to write vulnerable stories because I spent a whole life trying not to be. And then I had to now sit back and people say, the only way they're going to learn from you is if you tell them about how you feel and what you thought behind all of this, not just you can't just tell them stuff. You have to be able to show stuff. So I backed into in the middle part of the book. So I have a lot of tips in the first part about, they would be, I felt like, the habits I got taught that made me feel like I had some power. The middle part of the book, though, is about once you start caring about other people. And it just kind of happens. I mean, you get some roles. All of a sudden, it's not about you anymore. And so the five principles in the middle and again, they are revisionist history. People go like, oh, how did you lead with those? I'm like, no, I didn't even know them. But it's like now, when I look back in time, I hope I can share that. And the first one is, if you really want to do something hard in a good way which is what the book's about the first one is, can you be in service of something? Can you decide what you are in service of? And most of all, yeah, I provide service. I'm like, no, I said, what are you in service of? You had Danny Meyer, who's a good friend. So I think he's a great example of being in service of. And if you've ever gone to any of his restaurants, and if you go in and just have good food, would you think that's a good night?

Of course not, right? I mean, you're like, no. But if the wait person really cares that you have a good time, you would say they're in service of you, more than just delivering your food. And the wait person, if they know you have a good evening, they're taking it on faith you'll give them a better tip. Now, he has his whole tipping philosophy. So put that aside, but with Danny. But this idea what are you in service of is a super important point. Because I learned really early on that if you can trust that and it is trust, because these don't happen synchronously if you trust, if I trust that I need to try to I want Adam's broadcast to be successful because I want him to be able to feel like he taught people something, right? I don't need to tell you everything in the book. I need that to happen. And I trust that over time, that comes back to me in a good way in some way. And so it does involve trust. That's the first principle be in service of something. It's the fundamental reason why you would work somewhere. And a lot of places aren't clear about that. The second thing is, if you want to do something hard, then you've got to realize you've got to build belief constantly. And that is a job of head and heart. I've got to convince you to go somewhere. You're not necessarily wanting to go voluntarily. So that head-to-heart thing I had to learn about how to appeal to people's heads and their hearts at the same time. And it can mean you have to be brutally honest bad stuff. But you also I'm talking to your heart, and I understand at the same time what I'm doing. And it never ends. And it is so tiring. And I just can't explain enough over some of the things, that this idea of building belief is never-ending of a mission in your head. And then the third thing is know what must change and what must endure. Most people are really in a hurry to change everything. And I don't mean endure means you don't modernize it, but I've made big mistakes when I didn't think about what should endure. And I didn't work on how work got done, versus what work got done a super big lesson which we can come back to. Super, especially in this day and age. People are like, I built this. I made this. I did this. But back to that guy and those people working, Adam, how they work has got so much more to do with what comes out the other end. And then the last two are going to sound asynchronous. And I wrote this way before ChatGPT. It was, you need to steward good tech. Put bluntly, you need to manage the upsides and the downsides of technology at the same time. We do not do that. And the fifth one is, be resilient. Because I guarantee, if you go work on something hard, let me tell you what, there is no straight line to heaven. And the critics are at every bend and all over you. I had a lifetime of them. And that ability and I have, what did I learn about a way to handle it? And there's two aspects that I talk about. So those are the principles. Be in service of, build belief, know what must change and endure, steward good tech everybody's a tech company and then empower yourself with resilience.

Maybe that's boring. Is that boring?

Do you guys think that's boring? A little bit? The first three rows are very attentive. The rest are very uncertain. OK.

I know, but you and I like principles. And that's why then the rest is all stories to try to make it come alive.

Yeah.

Yeah, you should have wrote my chapter maybe shorter than I did, because go back and picture, if you would, with me in 2012 when I took over. Look, IBM had done great in its past, but now, it walked into an era and it would be my era that I mean, the moment I would be blessed. But it would be a moment when there was cloud, there was social, there was mobile, there was data, all at once. Usually, tech has got one big thing happening and it can go a decade. No, no, no, all at once. And we were really taking the benefit of a past model and not prepared for a future model. So that is my moment to start in that. And therefore, the pressure of become something else is so high. I can remember the very first and we can talk about whether or not, I mean, people are like, don't do an interview with media. Don't do anything. And then the very first cover comes out on me. It says, will IBM ever be cool again? And so oh, welcome. And the pressure is so intense to be all these other things. I would come to call it "chasing shiny objects." And so what would be an example of that? To Adam's point, this idea of know what you are at your core. And particularly, you have to change that idea that people can hang on to something they know while the winds will whip. And I learned it because here, we would go start in I mean, yes, of course, we were doing data, AI, cloud. But I'll just pick cloud. Practical example. All right, Amazon and Microsoft had a decade on us ahead already. And so here we go running off. And of course, everyone's like, well, you've got to be just like a consumer cloud. And OK, you're running off, and tons of money, and trying to go there until we're 10 years behind on that. And you realize that, wait a second, what are we? We are an enterprise company. I'm not a consumer-facing company. I no longer even had consumer products. And so to realize, no, no, no, what are we? What are we? And it would take us down the path to understand not that you have to understand cloud or technology we were a hybrid cloud. We understood big companies. We knew the journey they would take. No, we were not that consumer cloud; we were this. That is what we were and to be comfortable in that. And/or the advent of Facebook. Everything, big marketing projects a story that I'll always remember him, if you ever no, you wouldn't have. He's passed away, but Arne Sorenson ran Marriott. Arnie and I grew up as being tykes through our companies. And he becomes CEO, and we're bidding on a marketing project there. OK, so because we had assembled all this hey, marketing was really big. Everybody was changing marketing. And I call him Arne. And I'm like, I was always taking very good care. I was very customer-focused. I was like, all the reasons why I should win this marketing. He's like, Ginni, just be the best IBM you can be. And I was like he's like, why do you care about marketing? You run my loyalty systems, my property management systems, the most important things I do. Why do you care? OK, I would go off to sell all that stuff after, I mean, not just one conversation. But I was like, it will always stick with me. It's so visceral to me, I can feel it in this moment. And I was like, yeah, I've got to get them back to their roots, and all this other stuff becomes a distraction. Yes, we had to do big things of change, but it's like these were ornaments hanging on a tree. They weren't the tree. And that, to me, is what I'm trying to convey and change and endure along with, I would then learn this lesson of speed, man. The whole world was moving fast. And look, there's a lot of tech companies who are now going to begin chapter 2. Like, I was in chapter 10 of us. But, speed, speed, speed, consumerism, easy to use. Our stuff was not easy to use because we were like, hey, we can take care of all 8 million scenarios here. And let me unveil that all to you at one time when you open this up. And that's what engineers do. And I was so focused on speed, I'd be like telling everyone, come on, guys, we've got to go faster. We've got to go faster. We've got to change. We've got to change, come on. I mean, people, our middle name is speed, speed, speed. And I would be like, OK, I'm saying, go faster. It's not going faster. I was a couple years in. I'm like, OK, I was very apologetic. I was like, I had this epiphany. I was like, OK, why is it not going faster? And it would become really clear to me. And I have a big company, half a million people, right? So I'm like, if I don't do something to change how work gets done and that's what leadership determines. I'm like, they're not saying, let's be slow. Please, let's be slow. Back to your guy writing this stuff, no way. The teams know they want to go faster. But who puts these processes in place about how stuff gets done, or what they have to check, or no clear decisions, or I feel so bad. And I apologized to the workforce. I was like, man, I realized, this is leadership's job to get stuff out of your way, all right? And that means new tools. That means new ways of working. That means design thinking, agile. That means small teams. That means, this is our job, not yours. And that, to me, I hope one day you always remember that lesson about how work got done. And that would take me down a whole big old journey of agile, design thinking, net promoter scores, focus on skills. That would end up being, probably, my most enduring legacy of what I would leave behind, was a foundation that could weather change.

I know.

Yeah, that was a problem. Because look, again, but well-intended, because people really believed in their products. And if you do mission-critical work, you really do care stuff doesn't break, and it's secure as could be. And so you start building from the inside I was talking to Laura earlier and you move outward from there, because you get this very complex thing, and you move out, and the last person to touch your product is the consumer who's buying it, because you build outward. That's how engineers think. And so this was a world where, uh-uh, you've got to start on the outside and come in. And that's how I would describe it, simply put. There's, now, many people, but nobody did design on that scale. And I remember we hired a fellow and I said to him, I just happened to see him the other day, by the way, at South by Southwest. He's one of the foremost design thinkers in the enterprise setting now. And but I said to him, we'd hired him, and I was like, OK I believe this thing about design thinking, in that all these it doesn't matter if we get all this great stuff out if nobody can ever use it or want it. So we've got to get this in. And I said, what do you think we need to get started? Because if you think you're going to be able to do this with a couple of people, you're nuts. I said, well, what do you think I need? He said, I think I need 1,000 or 2,000 to start. And I think I am positive he told me, no. I mean, I was going to tell him, no. I said, OK, go ahead. And, of course, then I told his boss, hey, you find out how to cover it. So and to that guy's credit, he did. And that started in what would then be a journey. One, we brought these you say, how did we get it? My god, we did these pilgrimages, started with teams of multidisciplinary, 5 and 10 at a time, did this kind of a religious experience about design thinking. But it would take a year. He thought it would take more, but in a year, we got to 2,000. And then in two and three years, we were at 10 and 20,000. And soon, we'd trained 100,000. And every team it was like brick at a time of teaching. And they'd have to go in. They'd get homework. They'd have to come back. It is hard work to do change. I think that was the part I was trying to convey. It's science to get people to embrace and change and believe. But then they started to see it, and they saw customer reactions. And that's how you do it. I don't know, does anybody else in here think about how you do your work, not just what you do? A few people, or is that a foreign concept? Or do you ever think of it, or do you just think products hop out of a bag or something?

No.

No, no, no, I mean, but leadership about this idea that it's our job to kind of I don't want to say you're demanding a process and follow it. That's not it. It's like you're trying to get figuring out, how does the work have to change so people can use their own brains and get stuff done?

I would learn, at the end of the day, I felt like I'd not done that. That's why I end the book in a personal letter. And I say, always remember that how you do your work just might be remembered more than what you do. And I really felt it wasn't fair to people otherwise. So anyways, that was one of my learnings, at least.

Yeah.

Actually, I am not frightened of the technology. I am more frightened if we will learn from the past and if we can build trust in the technology. So this is, I'm really trying a lot like good timing.

Again, I didn't know this was going to come out. And so this is great timing. Especially as you guys think about this, some of this you wouldn't even know about Adam's referencing, like Watson back in the very first. I mean, AI's been around decades. Those of you—anybody, tech guys in the room? OK, you and me, the two of us. I can say anything, then! I mean, AI has been in and out of its winters for decades, right? You would know this, too. It's going to be, not going to be. It'll be here, yes, this is it. This is the moment. This is it. And I thought, too, by the way, in 2012-13, this was the moment. But I really learned some hard lessons that we're going to learn again. And this is why I'm so focused on this idea of managing the upside and downside of technology at once. Our job is to usher it safely into the world, not just build it. And those of us who build it have a bigger responsibility. But everybody uses it now, right? I'm on some big bank boards and all, and I'm like, OK, you're in a hurry to put it out there. Trust is your premium. What are we going to do to make sure people understand how to use this stuff? So I learned something super—so to me, this moment in time, the question is not the technology. The question is around people and trust, is how I feel so strongly. And what I learned, when Watson was—it is still IBM's AI technology, but we chose to try it in one of the most difficult areas first. Then back to DNA, good or bad, probably, we always go for the hard problem. Not always good, but we always did. And we went into oncology and medical first. And I write about my big lesson learning here, because what I learned was this wasn't an issue, that the technology wasn't really ready. Because by the way, doctors make mistakes. It could be 5%, 20%, 30% of the time. Your tolerance for technology in a really important area like health care is way different. You expect 0 problems. And even though you try to say, hey, your doc's wrong 30%. This is only wrong 10%. You're like, really? No way. And so I also learned doctors, A, the country is fee-for-service, doesn't pay for outcomes. So there's nothing in the system that would embrace you to want to change how you worked. And then a doctor works around the clock. He's like, OK, this is like one more thing I have to add to my work, is technology? And then this is a different skill. Just when am I supposed to learn this, between 2:00 and 3:00 AM? And so I would start to see all these issues that had nothing to do with technology. And then how it's trained is what you're seeing in chat very well in this kind of AI, because there's a wide range of AI. It's trained by humanity. It's good and it's bad. And then who owns the data? It should benefit—there are all those issues in social media. We took all the upside till we realized there was downside. And I feel like, with chat, these downsides are very evident right now. So great, let's work on the positive, and let's please work on the negative at the same time. And I think for your guys' business education, OK, I have an answer, but I'm kind of curious of yours first. How do you think technology, like chat and generative AI, will change education? And what you fear, and what you hope.

True.

So could you decide, when you're teaching, how you would change how you teach because of it?

No, but when you come back?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, I have an idea, a little bit of a view, because I understand what you're saying. So my first reaction—because the first big reaction to Chat, a lot of it was around the education, right? Everybody can cheat and get this done. And I did—my first reaction is going to sound so simple because I thought, god, I wished at the very same moment they would have released something that said, hey, run this, and it can give you the level of confidence that was created with chat—just to show that, hey, person, like there is downside here. It would have just been symbolic as something. There are a lot of people building that stuff and coming out. But it would have just like, in the moment, how it's introduced is going to matter. Then I thought to myself—but you know what? The positive would be, take what Chat gives you. Instead of, when I went to school, I had to memorize a lot of stuff and come back with it, well, maybe now, it's really going to go back to teaching critical thinking. You're going to take something, and your job is going to be pull it apart, find the argument in it. Is it right? Is it wrong? How would you improve it? Just like you were saying, I hate what was written. And so maybe, like my positive side says, OK, does this mean now we're going to move from an era of education of facts to critical thinking? And their time in history was a lot of critical thinking. So maybe that's a good thing that can come out. But we've got to manage that process to have it happen that way. And I super worry about other governments—or not the governments, but other bad actors around the world—feeding this thing with non-factual data to get it to do bad things. That's happening as we speak, big time. So I really want to—I really hope, as much airtime would be dedicated to not a search war, but to, OK, this thing can do really great things. I thought AI in medicine could do really great things. But I watched Henry Kissinger wrote a great—it was a complex article, but a great. And it says, history teaches us that what—he says "man," but what "humanity," if humanity doesn't understand something, they fear it, or they revolt. And I think we have that moment. I don't think it's overstating it, really, that much with AI now because I think it could help, I agree, co-pilot. Or if some say, Chat could be—the new language of programming is English. Just say "English," and it'll write the code. Tell it what to do. I think there's truth in all that. So it could be a great co-pilot, as some people have called that. But we had better do something to actively—like I worked on AI ethics, guys, for a decade, and nobody will listen to me on AI ethics. I'm so sad about my non-persuasive capabilities. And maybe now, though, is the moment. I mean, by the way, Europe's ahead on this topic, just like they were on GDPR and data privacy.

I think there was no—A, I think understanding technology. B, I think part of who you're talking to write AI ethics to is governments, who don't understand. So you do a lot of education, a lot of education. And it's a bit, when you say "ethics," you're like, wait, look, we have to make these technologies explainable. I think they're super hard to control. So I've tried to control technologies. Like when I'm like, oh my god, that one is ahead of us. Slow it down—impossible. What I have learned, though, is maybe what you should regulate is how it's used—not in itself, but how it's used. And that would be a value I would learn even in the company—that a lot of these technologies, other companies people would protest, I don't want these used in the military. No, no—our view was, if it was used in defense, it was OK. I wasn't going to make killing machines, but if it was used in defense—I mean, that's—so the use. If you had your phone on you, you would probably use your face to open it. Maybe you do, maybe you don't trust it. You don't.

Interesting. Is it because you don't trust them to have your face?

Is that what? OK. OK, well, all right, no, I don't feel that way. So I was like, I'm like, so much easier, right? But I don't think it should be used for racial profiling, right? So it's, I'm regulating the use already in my head of how this should happen. So why has it not been successful to date, all these attempts? I think what I learned, everything's got its moment, you know what I mean? I thought AI's moment would have been a decade ago. Well, now, it's here. So now I think we'll come to terms with it and that we should learn from all these other technologies.

Yeah.

Fair enough.

Yeah, excellent point. Can I revise my second version of the book?

I think that's a very, very good point because it's more of like—I call them principles of trust and transparency, was what I actually call it in the book, yeah.

I think not in the foreseeable future. I really—look, every new technology comes along, it replaces some jobs. I think more likely than not, you'll be working with some kind of technology. Honestly, that's what I watched. I mean, I watched in France—this is going back a number of years—bank tellers, bank employees. I mean, look, I feel bad for these guys. You ever see how many financial products are in a bank? Every one of us wants to do a good job at what we do. The fact that you should know every one of them and know the financial regulatory details? Impossible. And so if you had that—in our watch, we introduced it to help them answer questions. Even the union voted for it. I mean, because people want to do a good job in their hearts. And so I'm more in that lane.

Yeah, definitely.

Yeah, I still believe that's where this heads, if we manage the downside.

Oh, thank you for reminding me. So you're flashing your number sign of, like, OK, you're out of time. So can I—

I know, here I am. I am very cognizant I am in Wharton, one of the most esteemed or—educational places in the world.

Excuse me, well—

I am vice chair at Northwestern, so I have a little bit of a problem.

I get killed on one end or the other here.

OK, so this—guys, I am—OK. Thank you for letting—I said to him—

—let me—in your lives, this, I really believe, matters. And I did mean it when I said it's a point to preserve democracy. Again, I learned from my mom. And her experience, one point I didn't mention then was access and aptitude, two different things. My mom had aptitude. She had no access. That will be forever in my brain. Time ago, I had no access as a kid. I would, by the thanks of neighbors, and communities, and teachers end up at a place like Northwestern. I couldn't afford to be there. I mean, it was by the grace of god of a scholarship in a school that said, if you get in academically, we'll find you the money somehow—because I had no money. So time would go on. I'd then become CEO. It just wasn't the next thing, but many decades would go by. And we can talk about all those learnings. But it's 2012, and I'm trying to hire cyber people. And unemployment in this country is 10%, and we can't find people. I say, this is odd. What's that mean? Skill mismatch in the education system. So I go to a next meeting. Honest to god, it's how it happens. I go to the next meeting. It's corporate social responsibility. And they're like, hey, we got this one little school in Brooklyn, and it's a very poor neighborhood, Ginni. And community college, we're giving them a curriculum. They get an internship, and we had a few jobs they could get in line for. We give them first stab at a few jobs if they come through and they get associate degree—no cost while they're in high school. Secure high school—think of it. I said, oh, interesting. We'll hire some people, works out. Next year, I come back. I say, OK, how many do we hire? They're like, well, eight. I'm like, eight? They're doing so good! Well, 95% of our jobs require a PhD or college degree. I say, that's interesting, yet these guys are doing super, super good. This would be—I'll fast-forward you to the journey of my 10, 15 years on this. And that, I say, let's start looking. First, I think I look more at the kids—and they were kids at this point, still, really. And we know now—because the company thinks, wait, my workforce is like, if you let a lot of people like this in, you're going to dumb down this whole workforce. I said, hmm, we'd better start studying this. We proved, after one year, same results as my team with degrees. And then we find, oh, more loyal, more retentive, and they're taking more follow-on education. Oh, by the way, 75% have now gone on to get degrees. And by the way, we have our first PhD. And 95% are Black and Hispanic. I said, this is so interesting. I thought, I have discovered a new talent pool in this country, when there are not enough people in these jobs. And it would take me down a decade journey of asking—we would, and thank god I had a team that believed it then—and check every job and say, let's rewrite our jobs for the skill, not the degree. America has become lazy—check, degree. And what we would find—and look, I have a big enough sample, not as good of way you do your work, of every—I can't say I am statistically correct from every angle. I've now worked with 100 of the biggest companies in the country, and of all good jobs, I would tell you, 50% are over-credentialed, that you don't need a college degree to start if you wrote it for skill. And it's a strong belief that where you start should not determine where you end. And I believe it so deeply. I've worked on this now so long. And there would be another moment in time that would happen, which would be George Floyd's murder. And my colleagues—and everybody wanted to do something. And two of my very good friends—Kenneth Chenault, who ran American Express, Ken Frazier who ran Merck—not too far, right? Two of the most senior Black leaders in this country said, no, no, no, we should do what we do best, is jobs. So they had this vision. And I was like, I call them one day and go, OK, you've got the vision. I've got the how—skills first. Because 80% of Blacks do not have a college degree. I mean, we will never—you're going to wait for a college degree? And by the way, you'll be shocked—65% of Americans don't have a college degree. So forget about this American dream. And so it took—and we, in that moment, were able to catalyze the whole big business community, because everybody's going through that process. Delta Airlines, Ed removed it from pilots. Now, this does not mean you're going to have a pilot that doesn't know how to fly. He got it a different way. And they got a thousand applications. They removed that requirement. And it changes HR. It's a thing that, instead of just buying talent, you've got to build it. By the way, I would come to learn, this is good for everybody in the whole company. Who doesn't want to be paid for skill and promoted for skill? And their whole life.

I hope you do too!

Yeah, well, they did. I learned the definition of privilege writing a book. And so I have come so full circle. Thank you for letting me—I sound like I'm giving a speech. I'm so convinced that, if more people don't feel they have a better future in our country—and this is my biggest thing I worry about—they're like, let's look for an alternative to democracy because this is not producing the right outcome for all of us, or financial debt for college for everyone. And the fact that, if you're in tech like me and the other guy up here, just the two of us, your skills have to change every three to five years. And like, OK, this is going to be a lifelong learning problem. So people have got to be able to go back to school. And there's policy changes that are easy. Not easy—nothing in government is easy. But I've witnessed perseverance. You can make these changes. So I'm really, really—this is my movement. I use it as an illustrative point of how you can get your power to go from yourself, to your team, to the world. And sometimes you don't even realize it you can do it, and you can. And so I think this is now turning into a movement for the country. And by the way, those schools I told you about? I've become a mission on this around the world. There are now 300 of them around the world in 30 countries. And New York is going to do another 60, I think. Texas is going to want to get them all this way. I just was in DC with a bunch of governors, Secretary of Commerce, Secretary of Education. I think this is going to happen in this country, that it's going to be a full onslaught. Does not mean, college is bad. You just may start a little later. No, no, no, please don't. I will say this.

It's kind of good. I am a vice chair at a university. I fully—but it's not the only route. And it's like everybody gets a different entry point onto the highway, and that's all. Some of our entryways are later in life. And I'm so passionate about it. I will stop. That's all.

Yeah.

It will be.

All right.

Thank you for getting the message out. So I just—but you know what? In the book, when I do it, yes I hope you join the movement and think of it, like you say. But I also am trying to say to people, hey, your passion may be different than mine, but I just really don't want you to give up on it because you might look at the world and go, oh, the political system's intractable. Nothing can get done. And I have just found, OK, yeah, it's hard, but it is all changeable. So I am an optimist. I know that's—maybe people aren't. But I am an optimist about how to get this. And I found that around the world, jobs are the greatest currency. So as you all go into—I mean, there isn't a leader of a country I couldn't see, something I couldn't—if I could talk jobs, this is what everyone wants for their country. It's what you want for your children. It's an interesting way to look at life that way. So you teach a crowd to be ready for this.

Yes.

I do think teachers are highly underrated and underappreciated. I actually—I give them one of our most important assets, our children. And I think this is—that is another part of the book that I talk about, because they're an important part of this equation.

Lightning round or something else?

You just have to run preparation, and you'll know why.

It's a disease.

Ooh, I got lots. Probably the worst one was that—when someone told me, just do a good job, and the rest will happen. Yeah, you do have to advocate for yourself in the way you're comfortable doing that.

I have—I'm trying, OK? So I have to preface this. I'm trying to spend—although I believe in quality is the real answer to this question—more time with my family, my husband. Yeah, someone once told me, you're far from retiring, you guys. They're writing a book that, when people retire, the name of the book would be called—I don't know if they're ever writing it or not—20 summers, that you have about 20 summers left. And that, if you did, what would you do with your life, if you really thought of it that way? Now, you're far from that, most of you. But that thought, so what am I doing? It's like, work on things that are most important. So that's what I've rethought. As I was retiring, like what, my bull's-eye, I got the pleasure to work with Lou Gerstner. You may know him if you've ever read the histories of IBM or great leaders in this country. And he is one of the greatest. He's remained my friend to this day. He's in his 80s. And as I was going to retire, he said, OK, now we have to have—you have to come in for your counseling sessions on retirement. And I would come. He's like, tell me what you're thinking of doing. And I would tell him, well, this person suggested this, and private equity, and this, and that, and the other. He's like, well, you get an F. And I'm like, oh, that's not good. He's like, I want you to go back again and think harder. After all the skills you've accumulated, think of a bull's eye, and what is that center of that bull's eye going to be? And then the next ring you have to put your husband in. And he's like—well, he didn't mean like don't make him important, but—

—he was afraid he'd be in no ring, right? So he was like, put him in the ring, but he meant, what is that? And so to rethink that set of priorities when your whole life has been one mission, for the most part—40 years at IBM. So I have rethought that, both him and that. That's what led me to this focus on, like you said, maybe it will. I hope to God it is the most important legacy I leave behind, is this other work.

Shorter? Yeah, sorry.

No, don't give me such—the kind you've got to think hard.

Do you know Shirley Jackson? She just stepped down as the leader, sorry, of RPI, but she was the first Black woman to ever get a PhD out of MIT. She is a force of nature.

OK, now both of you? I felt the book—one of the books Pope Francis wrote was a very good book. So that, there's something different. The point is to see the view from an entirely different perspective of, what is leadership.

No, seriously, it teaches you how to problem-solve. And no matter what you do in life, you will have a problem. And if you do something meaningful, there will be a problem to solve. I wish I could get more people to go into tech and engineering for that reason. I felt that's what it taught me to do, was problem-solve. And that would apply to any career. It's really an issue—again, I'm only going on only because you allow me a little more time there. But the point that so many young women who don't want to go into engineering, or feel a stereotype about it, I'm like, look, you don't have to think of yourself as a practicing electrical engineer or something like that. It is about, you will be never frightened of a problem because you learn how to break it down. And by the way, the biggest problems in the world, I say, it requires systems thinking to solve them because they're so interrelated. All these things that are influencing something else, and you need to be able to step back and understand that, that's what engineers do. They break big things into—big complex things into digestible things.

Well, the first one is, I was—we were doing our interview earlier. I was talking about this idea that growth and comfort never coexist. That idea, to me, as a woman—and I don't know why. I can't put my finger on this, right? But there are studies done—you probably can tell them to me—of every time there's an opportunity, women will give you the five reasons they can't do something, and a man might give you the five reasons he can do something. And that would finally come to roost with me, when I would get offered a job and tell my boss, like I said, I have to go back and talk to my husband about it—a big, big job. And my husband said to me, do you think a man would answer the question that way, that I had to go back and talk to my husband? And he was right. And it wasn't just making a gender point. But this point that—the biggest thing I could leave you with is that thought of, embrace discomfort because it means you're learning something. So I would be hungry to get on more and more complex and difficult projects. It would become a sign of, yes, the more nervous I get, that's so good because at the other end, something good comes out of it. And so it's what led me to all my preparation in life. It's all because I'm like, god, if it's something I didn't know and now I know something, I'm better each time. And so I would go from being afraid of change to looking for change, in that when I wasn't nervous, I'd be starting to get, uh-oh, this is not good. This means I'm learning nothing. And it would be time to change. And that would be my biggest—around the world, I would talk to women about this. People thought I should have named the book that—growth and comfort will never coexist. And that would be my biggest piece of advice.

That is.

Yes, it is true. But I don't know. You think about, when have you ever learned the most? How did you feel?

I know, it sounds basic when I ask it that way, right? You're like, yeah, it was probably true, right? I was at risk. Something happened. And so if you can do that, you will be surprised. You will go where it'll take you.

Oh, well, I learned that it has nothing to do with my golf skills. That is one thing I say to everyone. I have got the worst ROI. Any golfers in the room? I mean, no, it isn't that interesting, right? So it is a skill I first started with my husband, who loves it. And I started many, many years ago. And I always say, though, for the amount of effort, it is the poorest—my abilities are not matched by my effort by any stretch. So but—

Well, when you guys run something, I think the case is, I would say to people, hey, I have to earn your decision to stay here every time, as a company. And I stayed in one place because I pivoted so many times, after I could get used to that discomfort thing. I felt I did work 12 places. I went from being an engineer, I then was into marketing. I then built a consulting group. I then worked in software. I mean, I had all these careers, but I had the benefit of the same network around me. So I felt I could do that. So I would say to people, yeah, there is benefit, but the company has to earn your desire to stay there. And the other thing I would say is, some of you look at what your next step is. Every time, even when I ever thought of leaving, I always asked myself the question, am I running from something, or am I running to something? And so many times, the answer is, you're running from something. That can be fixed. It might be time. It could be a situation. And I just feel like the most important thing to ever ask yourself, are you running to something? And so when you think about where you'll work, you'll answer those questions. And it'll have to be something aligned. I always wanted to do something that would do something important, and have meaning, and impact something. It doesn't mean it had to be a big company. For me, it was technology to do that, because I did go work at General Motors for a while after because I've been—I felt so loyal after they helped me pay my education. It was such a big number. And I say to Mary, who's my friend—and I said, Mary, I tried. But I learned at a really tender age, there was a difference between a career and a job. And this was a job to me because I wasn't in love with cars. I was working on buses, by the way. And I was like, this is—I mean, not driving. I mean, I was having to build the engines. I'm like, whoa! And so I learned that. And so that idea, that you get to do something at some point that you are really got some strong passion about, is so important. That's why you'll stay one place. I had passion that technology, could it make in my life better? I didn't get to work on that every minute, by the way. That's not how life is. That's unrealistic. But I did a lot at the time.

Well—

Thank you.

No, that's it, cut. Thank you, guys.