Morgan Stanley Chair and CEO: Succession, culture, stress, and leadership
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games. You are one of most influential people in global finance, and now you are stepping down after four in very successful years. And it's it's not want to be here with you are now that you are stepping down, you can tell us what you really, really think.

Oh, let's see how we do.

Starting with the beginning, you grew up in melbourne. You are kind of the opposite of a alone only child. You you grew up at the begin with eleven and sync. Ah what what did that do? Do we had .

I really grow with nine ah two died early as Young children. So my mother had twelve children, but I really had had nine. I think that teaches you um everybody has some deficit and never everybody has some special things to give and it's a very Normalizing environment.

You can't be too egotistical. You get pushed down by your siblings. Um you find that there are others who are very good at certain things that you're not good at and buy service. It's just it's a very humbling environment.

a very warm environment.

Are you in the middle?

Exactly in the middle. Diplomat kills.

Yeah I think you just sort of the Youngest of the first half of the family now is the mini dead of the second half. So you get to do a little of lady ships .

stuff now before you will need to banking you spend some time at colombia um and make can see and on um some people say that didn't we can see the higher insecure over cheever s was that when you were .

at the time no now is a pretty secure under .

gy is probably the off .

I must have been innovation. Um i've been a lawyer in melbourne, australia for four years before I went to business school. I wasn't n't very good lawyer and two sisters who are very good lawyers and one became a top judging so in the in the family iraqi of achievement yeah I did I did find but I was I was not there. There was some people at machines e who are extraordinary gifted intellect um not all of them gifted into personally um and I found in business you really needed a mix of having enough intellect to do with complex problems and enough personality to deal with complex people. And my upbringing help bring that forward。

When you look at the defining moments in your career, what have they been?

I think first was the decision to come to america. IT was most uncommon. Uh, australians who go to study typically went to england.

Um i'd trying go to the great universities in the U。 K. Um there is my cheesy to get a VISA.

And new york was a long way, way IT was very so. The first was that decision. Then I had to borrow to come to universe in the interest rate.

The bank charged me was twenty four percent. yeah. So I was considered by many to be extremely risky decision by me. IT wasn't risk y at all, because I thought I got to go on live in new york for two years.

I got a business school education, and I had some debt that at some point my life, i'd figured how to pay off. So I think that was the most defining thing, was taking myself out of a very clear track to be a career lawyer, which I would have done. And you know, they were.

I was working a great low firm and I got I got a wonderful job down there. So I clearly had a path to a successful crew as an attorney. But I didn't IT didn't excite me IT wasn't IT wasn't in my stomach.

Um I think the second most pivotal decision was leaving mckinsey. I had risen through the ranks to be a senior partner um at a pretty Young age and I was being given more and more responsibility. I S and I had bigger and bigger clients and and but again in my heart, while I really enjoyed my consulting time and I had many wonderful colleagues there, and I think we did some great work for some clients for sure.

I Normally wanted to be where the decisions were being made, not advising on how to make decisions, but actually doing that to me, you know, bearing the consequence, the good and the bad. So why you left them exactly to be, to be where the action was? I, I always wanted to be.

I was happy taking decisions. A lot of consultants or advisers, or lawyers or bankers, a graded advising, but Nicholases, you know, owning a decision and being responsible for the outcome, whether you're it's an investor as a good example of somebody where decisions that's a different level of stress. And that's not fair, everybody.

But IT was for me talking my decision. So you are one of the few CEO is laid out to really clear strategy and then just executed properly. Now first of all, what what's the key to a successful strategy?

Well, I think you have to have a vision for what successful look like. I mean, you can't you can't have strategic parts without knowing what the instate is you trying to achieve. So i've always had a very clear sense where i'm trying to go.

Then the pathway is how you get there is sometimes your opportunistic due by this company. You'll sell this division. Sometimes you are driven by the markets are CoOperative.

They are not CoOperative. Sometimes you're driven by the talent you have around you. So there are many different pathways. But the the hard of establishing a strategy is understanding what IT is you're trying to arrive at.

But how did you go up with the goal of becoming big asset management? Because that wasn't so obvious at the time.

Well, IT was really wealth management, wealth and test management commanding. Guess no, wall street. If you looked at the history of wall street firms of a pure trading banking markets businesses, uh, IT was disastrous.

Um k dop body E F happened. Dl land bear, diller basterds, lemon brothers. So gone.

right.

done. Look like how many industries can you look at. And over twenty year periods, c, seventy percent of the participants credit tweet, seventy percent of the participants disappear.

So that's pretty good evidence that there's something structure unsound. IT doesn't mean you can be successful. Some companies like golbin sets have managed to to pursue a throughout.

But the odds clearly were against you in the market was rewarding over the multiple of about nine times earnings, pretty mediocre because the market sound stupid at 3g in your industry， people seem to fail, loss and we lose everything. So why would we pay you fifteen times earnings? But everybody .

could come up with that strategy right now. You did IT. You know, you were even ridiculous the time for wanting to grow your real wealth of business. So I mean.

I I can't speak brothers have never i've never Operated from mb in and hopefully in life, but certainly corporate life. I regard, you know we have certain asset, certain D A, certain capabilities, and I think you've geran strength.

But others, interestingly, in the last five years, almost everybody has started trying to pursue our strategy in some form, another in the early years that was deeply unpopular, both internally, more standing next gently, and you're ride. A lot of people called for me to be fight. They felt as misguided and naive and a consultation and and I said, no, the evidence of facts, of the facts, you can have an opinion, but you can't escape the facts.

The facts are, Solomon n. Brothers does not exist. God consumed.

Drexel does not exist. Lemon does not exist. These effects.

why? Why is wealth management so such a good business?

Because it's so stable. We've got eighteen million clients, and they don't all behave in the same way each day. The day somebody's buying a bond, somebody else is selling.

On the day somebody who's buying a stark, somebody else selling a mutant d, the day somebody else is buying up, you know, investing in private, I could fund somebody else investing in infrastructure fund. So the the human need for different investment profiles guarantees you have a very diversified set of outcomes. And sure, if one client goes broke and takes their money at all, one financial advice, at least for a competitive one hundred leave.

And you know you wish I didn't happen, but we've got fifteen thousand. So the the sort of catastrophic risk issues in that business were very small. There was much more around Operating things, having strong compliance, having, uh, great uh, technology systems, having great cyber security IT was more things like that, that you had much more control over than well having three traders who make a multi billion dollar bit on something.

And that's the problem with the trading site. Now we controlled LED that and we've managed IT and we've reshaped IT and put much more disciple around IT. But I just felt wealth management, you know it's it's a wonderful business because it's a markets business.

At the end of the day, markets are about um moving capital from people who have IT to be related from savers to borrows, from uh investors to issues and same thing whether it's nor dous or whether it's James going on as an individual or whether it's a the U S. Government or whether it's uh you know um a major CoOperation, they're all doing the same thing. They just moving capital back and forth.

So I saw our role as being in the middle that flow of capital. And if we could do IT for nor gest, we could do IT for G, I, C. We could do IT for, uh, Thomas's. We could do for James.

Government is the same concept. What's the key to communicating such a strategy? Your shake lers and to get them to buy into your vision?

Simplistic, don't overcomplicated make IT. I tried to articulated in a way that everybody would understand what we're trying to do. And I started seeing in the media of the other words which I used deliberately use, come back at us, baLance and speed of the baLance.

Tuban aircraft Carried, but the speed of the engine, baLance being wealth ness and management, speed being trading and banking. And these words started playing back to us, getting to the sga back was fun. Catastrophe risk, ensure against the hedgie, against that salad off distributed, do something, get rid of pedestrians hic risk. Um so I think consistently message, clarity of message, you don't have to show off of how clever you are or not. That's not important.

What investors care about is do you have a plan? Can you define success and where you give me guide post saw stones like you know crums down the road to show me you're generally headed in the right direction, the slope of the gradient in other words, can you achieve, let's say, uh, pretext, margin goals and wealth management business? I said, when our margins were about two percent, I said, I thought we could quickly get to fifteen percent.

Nobody believe that, and we quickly got to fifteen, and no word about twenty seven or something. Then I said we do IT and now I i've said we will get to thirty percent. We haven't done IT, but we will do.

But along the way, if you show investors is what we said we do. Now let me give you and it's a long track d fourteen years of events and every year, bom boom b and every now then a slight dip. But the scope of the curve, it's it's pretty clear you going from the bottom left to the top right.

And in all of our efforts, we try to. Communicate the vision for where we're going, the rationality behind IT, that IT wasn't from envy, the leverage, our strength and we would give you evidence, and IT would be imperfect. Sometimes you missed a little bit, but generally you come away from. I wanted diverses come away saying, you know what they totally what they're going to do and they've kind of done IT.

But you also rebuild the fixing on business. yes. And at some stage you said, listen, we are going to kind of uh, retrace or you know bit down. Instead, you did the opposite. We came back with the venture.

no, but we took out twenty five percent of baLances, twenty five percent of risk days. It's twenty five percent of the people. And at that point, the fixed in business was generating about five hundred to six hundred million in revenue per quarter.

So two or three being in a year called, I told them, which didn't make me very popular. Sometimes I can maybe say things that are two direct. Maybe I have some scan moving in me to say, or northern european, but I said my aspiration for fixed income is to be mediocre.

They didn't like that. I said. The reason i'm telling you that is because we've been terrible. now. If we can go from terrible to mediocre, then we can set talking about going from media could a decent, then we can talk about decent to good. Then we can talk about good to great.

And where are you now?

Um I think we're in the we're in the good bucket. We generate roughly to be in a revenue quarter.

When are you going to be great?

I'm not sure we want to be great because to be great, you'd have to put a lot more capital at work in IT. You'd have to be, for example, in foregone exchange in emerging market size and not sure we want to do that. Um I don't think we will ever compete with city group or die H S B C in the big foreign change markets in the in all the emerging markets around the world.

We could do IT. But the cost of doing IT um and the amount of capital involve, I think we have Better uses of capital. So i'm very come to us being good in the business.

We've taken our market chair. I mean, it's stabilized ed, around six percent over a bunch of years. Now it's it's ten some years eleven percent that's probably about right.

You acquired a few companies um during the years as well. What's the key to a successful integration of companies?

Oh, uh, you've got ta be clear, right? I mean, nothing nothing gets done on time at budget with the right functionality. So there's you've got ta be clearly that not everything is gonna well, but you have we have a fighting force of people have now done all these deals and they're very, very good at IT. And we put to ministry resources against the um I think but IT starts culturally getting the management of the quiet company to embrace what you're doing and getting them to trust you because if they're not trust you, yes, they're being bored and their shareholder made a lot of money, but they don't trust you, they don't respect you, then the whole organizations will fight against each other.

You are trying to integrate different times. So cultures right to I mean allowed .

we've allowed certain businesses like you trade to keep their name. Ah kelvar has kept its name. Parametric kept its name, so honor their roots, but they are part of the Morgan sani family and the Morgan sani family has five core values.

Um we want them to embrace those same buyers. One one is do the right thing, have choices, how you conduct your self, do the right thing. Second is kind always come first. The third is lead with exceptional thinking. The fourth is give back to communities and the fifth is which reverted in the last couple, who is a commitment .

to diversity and inclusion. Do the right thing. Um no offence but is not a little of this.

You're exactly right. And I debated this with the group and with myself when we laid out these, and I decided, in the end, it's obvious, but the sad history of the financial sector suggest people don't do the right thing so often that I needed to be put on the front wall of every building we have.

And why do you need to do that in the financial sector? Because you don't there. A lot of auto sector .

is where you don't need to do because the scale of what you dealing with in terms of financial risk, what an individual can do to damage themselves, the market of their company is way disproportion than if you're a coca cola distributor or your you know manufacturing carpets provide demonstrate .

dee's bins or volvo someone so your kind of handling .

handle and adds yeah and you know Nicholas n at barring I think uh geum carava society general our own people we had eleven traders who ran a fix income h prop desk that lost ten billion dollars of capital. They lost a third of that couple that we'd spent eighty five years building eleven people. Now why did they do? Because they were greedy.

They thought they could make more money. They get paid more. Ec, so that I said, okay, we know.

And we've got now eighty three thousand people work for now. I can't control human behavior. If you've got members of congress in the united states, some of them end up in jail.

Members of the police force end up in jail. Are members of religious orders end up in jail, right? It's it's not human beings.

And human beings doesn't meet of what clock they're wearing. Some of them are just evil and some of the ingredient summer stupid and summer reckless. And our job is to let people know in no uncertain terms that you're obligated to do the right thing here. And if we find you doing things like talking to the media when you're not authorize, we find you biased against an employee because of their background or or some form of diversity that they have anything that suggests you're not doing the right thing. You're done, you're out of you are you .

talk to about all the bad guys. How do you make sure you? How are the good guys?

Because good guys respect that kind of culture. Good guys are drowned or place where they know its values driven. Um we've had no problem with of the new co has been here over thirty years and one of his two lutts coprecipation stand simps has been here over thirty years and any sustain the other one came with me seventeen years ago the the length of uh ten years of our Operating management ties is extraordinary.

but let's look about that. So you recently in tepic as your uc o why him?

We had an embarrassment of Richard. We had three people who could be seo um each of them neatly. We're great in running their own businesses, but the job of A C, E O, you know, this is as investors, is not how good are you running a business is how good are you dealing with what a CEO has to deal with?

You deal with governments, you deal with regulators, you do with media, you do with investors. You, you are the face of the company. Your personal judgment really met is your willingness to own decisions really matters. You don't have a boss mean, you have a board of directors, olly fire ohio, you but day to day, you don't have a boss to .

picked up more instantly. S in uco, what is that? What is IT entailed? How long is the process? Oh.

I I started working on this in my first board meeting in two thousand ten in january, right? I gave the board a list of people who I thought could succeed me if, if you know, the nights are scenario on list. No, no, he wasn't on that list.

And then after five years, I changed that list, the number of I retired, and the new group started coming in, which included IT. And then three years ago, we started actively evaluating them. We, we, we ask them for health chicks.

We ask them for to tell us that there's something that we should know about their lives that we we test to them. And we gave them we gave ted and one of the others strategy to run. We gave ted all the global technology to run. We took them to forms and situations and put them on TV and and show them what the job of a CEO is really like, and saw how they move towards the flame. Some people retreat from the flame or the fight, and some people move towards IT ted rose .

education on beautifully. I seems to be a class act, but you have also paid the rest of them twenty million dollars to stay on.

right?

Tell me.

well, at that was my decision or my recommendation to the board. Um firstly, these people make a lot of money, so it's not life. It's to change their life.

I wanted to do something from the board that showed how excited the board was for them. So they paid in performance units and we don't perform. It's not worth anything.

And this is something which I felt was not life changing, but was a meaningful statement. And I didn't want to give IT to the two who didn't become C. O.

Was sort of like, oh, i'm sorry, is a little reward to keep you happy? No, I want to give IT all three equal to show their a team at the top of the company. And some shadow is one like I think for a company of our size, we've taken out uh market capitalization up.

You know in in eighteen years, ots gone up eighty ninety billion dollars. Uh, we've had several commenters have gone up at all when we started. I give you a fun fact.

When we started this journey, we were smaller than credit, swiss ubs backlogs and daughter. Five years ago, we were bigger than each of them. We were currently bigger than all of them can.

So the team that made that happen was not just me. IT was a team and the most important members of that team with these three leaders. So this is the way of saying from the board, we think you guys are fantastic.

Now you've got to perform to get this, but this is our wave showing the three of you. We think you're fantastic. I thought that was an Opera.

I mean, market. He has shift in a lot of industries, but wow, do they shift in the financial sector? And you know, you say that is all about the people, but i'm in it's amazing. Well, no.

it's what kind of reflections do.

How do you reflect on that?

I haven't had time to reflect. I am still working my system, said me, yeah, he said you're working so hard.

but you will have time because now you're going to move on to be the Cherry. Now some people say that the important thing of being a Cherry remember that you're not the CEO. Do you think .

that's going to be difficult? Not at all. why? Why it's not my person. I didn't I didn't want I didn't try to be a CEO. I'm not a corporate guy.

I'm an australian guy who grew up in the suburbs of melbourn who you know was gonna a lawyer and you know work as a barrister like an advocate in court. I'm not sure what they call IT in in a your part world, but that's what I was going to. And I joined mckinsey and I thought i'd be consulted my whole life and ended up being high by clients.

And IT happened to be to run a wealth management echos, to run marketing at mary linch. And then they put me into run wealth management, and I was in a wealth management guy, and then suddenly hired by Morgan Stanley to come and fixed their wealth manager from business. And financial crisis comes in on the CEO. So you make .

a sound of IT random, but I I suspect you pretty, pretty damn good. Well.

no, I already I very good at what I did. I know that and I know i'm a good CEO. I'm just objectively and honestly that that I believe that and you have to have that kind of self confidence.

What makes you a good CEO? What is IT that? What is the key to that?

I think there are firstly, there are different models for good ceos. So it's not like eight. This is what a good CEO is.

But some of the things that I think have matted in my dangerous, first and foremost, you have to be very comfortable owning decisions, and you have to accept that if you're gone to make a lot of decisions, you get some wrong. So I embrace fail. I say, well, of course we got those wrong.

We had to get something wrong. We've done hundred things. So rather than saying why did that happen? How could that possibly happen? So it's part of moving a complicated organization forward.

So owning decisions and consequences is critical, I think being able to articulate in clear, simple language so everybody from, uh, the foxes serve me coffee upstairs to the most open istis ted traders in in london or Frankfort, whether they understand you, I think, consistently of message, clarity of message, ownership of decisions and then a temperament. The does not get wildly buffed in what is a very wild ocean. There are constant waves washing over the top of you.

And if you let that get to you, I see, I almost see. My job is taking the stress of the organization that I feel in my executes when they come into me with problems into my body. Almost physically draw in processed and bring IT back out to the organization with a solution and focused on not what the problem is, will deal with that later. It's what's the pathways to solutions and get people focused on forward looking.

Does that stress remain inside your body of probably? And how do you get IT out? Uh.

it's a great question. I in my early years, I found myself, and you know, to be really canted up is throwing up lot vomica out of the blue.

Just was stand .

walking down the street during the earliest, when I was incredibly stressful and nervous, was working constantly, and I went to see doctors. I said, there's nothing wrong with you. You then IT access to me.

Uh, my head was saying, everything's great, that you're on top of this. We've got this. We've got a plan.

We're gona beat them. And my stomach, my god, was saying you might think you great up there. We're not great down here because all of its going summer is coming down and hitting us.

So we are rejecting IT. And at that point, I decided to get much fitter. And I started growing on a rowing machine and I became extremely fit and they look like IT just but well, I was thank you. I was really fit back then. And I just I just decided to I never really knew about meditation and i've never very really practice yoga um but I think I am a very close friend who meditates all the time told me he said you you you're meditating a lot you know you're closing your mind to the world around you and just I often just look out my window in the office and watch the hawks on the pigeons flying around manhattan and you're stealing the world around you to give you a brain a chance to regroup so I think a combination of self awareness that th Epace o f u s o n w as u nsustainable f itness a nd a nd t hen a f it m ind w hen y ou h ave t hese m.

oments i n y our o ffice, when you look at the birds, how long do you do IT for?

Be fifty .

minutes and every .

day oh yeah yeah couple just when I feels like and I often I play music A I play music every morning in the office, which I blast on speakers across the executive floor.

What you play, whatever I walked to.

woke the way every morning and put the way home. And it's whatever I feel coming in. So like .

classical are looking all, oh.

I mean, the day we're announcing I was stepping down a CEO as a sort of a pm a joke of myself um I played um I think he was amy wine houses, you know you forget the exchange uh, you're not so good or you're no good is a leg, you know just a reminder and then I played her about but the t one of brass uh which is fabulous.

You know horns and trumpets, A T on the taxi, very uplifting and then I played um a song by the band, a fun because I thought what you know gonna pick and I was Carry on so it's kind of like first a little humbling followed by a very uplifting song that we actually played in my father's funeral. This t on a bras followed by carreon move ford so so IT can be Opera. Um I played some jazz uh, last week. Um i'll play anything hip up some australian music, you know.

This processing of the stress in the organization and kind of you internalize that then away on behalf of the organizing um was that um may be during the financial crisis or no is is all I I, I, I, I have to build sometimes during the financial crisis to there. Do you think people unrested mate the stress of having .

these positions? Oh yeah, that people have no idea, and it's not default. I had no idea because analogy are used few times when I was a kid growing in austral, we go to the beach every summer for three weeks, and I was fantastic.

And I remember standing there once and asking my dad, why do the waves never stop? And he started explaining, title is an engineer. And, and, and I realized the job was like, the waves always coming at you.

They never stop because it's global. And uh you know it's twenty four out seven days. The only time business really stops for me, IT, is from sort of noon saturday to noon sunday because pretty much everywhere around the world is closed in that time time.

And what do you do them? Uh, well, I I, I swim a lot. I play golf for, you know, I used to play love ten is, say, royan machine.

I read books, said, I see friends. I go out to dinners. You know, i'm not a sort of york's social personality, but I occasionally have to go into stuff like adam.

But pretty okay. I mean, a lot of walking, a lot of hiking and just pretty out in nature. But the way to stop the ocean, you can never stop the ocean.

So the way to stop the ocean, constantly being at you is to turn your back to, if you stand there watching the ocean coming in and feel this is analysts and physically turn around so you can't see IT anymore. You see the field changes your mind set. IT comes to you.

And that was my metaphor for how I had to treat this job. I had to be able to turn my back to IT now had shut up my mind. And I have a little ponder the back of my beach chance, which has different birds at different times of year, come and make their home.

And right now we have family of swans, you for with a about seventeen ducks. And IT is absolutely glorious to get up in the morning, open the big cotton from my bedroom, which looks over the pn, and see these elegant swans floating around. And that's me turning my back on work. I'm not looking in emails .

talking about these waves. Uh um now we have wave off the wave of the wave of geopolitical tension. How do you read the geopolitical landscape? You you happen to be a member of the councillor n foreign .

relations so inside there um i've been more positive, I just with different regions more positive on china U S. Relations because I think china, having made arguably the biggest policy mistake since the ma war, since germany's decision to engage in hostile conflict, um china's policy mistake is, uh the one child policy guaranteed shrink the labor force, right when they have been nagging labor force so that that is a terrible has been a terrible decision that they rapidly trying reverse but you can't change birth rates overnight and unless china can change its immigration, which are things improbable hits going to be really chAllenge without having strong global trade? IT needs to be the market of the consumers that aren't its consumers because I won't have enough for them to fund china.

So so you think that tri want to pick up.

I think that I think they have to work together with you as much more than politics would suggest how you are in european. You know, we have our first landmark in europe, and seventy years, I means absolutely unfathered that somebody would think you drive tanks across from one country border to another. Yet suddenly IT happened, we knew was coming with the crime er in two thousand and four teen um we effectively shut our business in russia two thousand important because soon as I said that saw that I said they can take the criminal, they can move further into ukraine and god else wear um I didn't I wasn't you know some great uh predicted. I just thought the russians had betrayed their intentions pretty clearly so we had to act on IT.

Uh, I think .

it's it's it's a tragedy at every level. Geopolitically, it's not meaningful in the sense of the russian economy is not big enough. The ukrainians have done an extraordinary job in resisting and the rest the world has largely lined around their resistance. The most recent turbulence in the middle st with you know the terrorists from our mass um simply going through the ends and killing people is a reminder that terrorism is only present, particularly that part of the world. Uh unfortunately, what look like we might be ginning towards some sort of treaties between israel and sadi IT will either accelerated or put a back decades and i'm not sure which right .

now how do you be the A I race, the A I race between the .

superpowers? Um I think out of facial intelligence, I don't think that so much to race between the superpower. I think if there's nobody who will win, nobody will create enough to think of technology to damage somebody else. I think within corporations in industries, you'll see much more specification performance in you will governments in the same way that national security in cybersecurity reach a level of parody among the more ophth ticad countries? The same thing will happen with A I.

Can we spend a bit more time on the on the cup of culture of Morgan stanly? We talked about to doing the right things. But how do you build talent in Morgan?

First, I have a twenty of you. If you want to build senior executive, you have to start with them twenty years before. So you've gotta look through a pipeline of telling too many organizations focus on the level below the C E.

O. That's bate. They're already pretty fully developed for Better or for worse. I'm focused on two levels below that.

And so so no, i'm two levels below. I apply for job here and I managed to get a interview with, and what are you looking for .

in city? And how do you how do you see that I sing a resume? Or i'm seeing the real human being is going to be working here. Everybody.

how are you going .

to figure out out a lot of questions?

People give me, give me go.

give me the five words that people would use to describe you, whether your mother, your next door neighbor, a work colleague, your child, your best friend, go. Don't think even good time to think, right? People can't lie.

You've got if you've got no time to think you say the truth, okay? If you're smart, you're smart. You're funny, you're funny. You shy, you shy. It's like so immediately get a Better sense of who the person really is.

Just from that one question, tell me one thing about you that you are actually distinctive compared most people you come across in your world. Now tell me one thing that you're actually not compared to most people. And we've all got one thing on both sides of those are just so they wouldn't be in the interview.

So things i'm trying to get up, what is the real person? I can see their academic record. I can see their employment record. What I can see is who IT is that we're going to be dealing with, who went thrown in a team room, who has to navigate a delicate or sensitive or nuance issue, will have the skills to do IT. And the people who are most likely do that of people are thinking the trader themselves.

And so now you hire me what you do with me. Well.

we have programs of development where we ride up reviews for your va that are very thorough. We have also some training programs to help you get invocation with our culture. Uh, you participate in things like every june, we have global volunteer month where we all all give time, not as money, volunteering activities.

You participate in that if you want international mobility, we provide opportunities for you to interview for those jobs. We have a whole machine, uh, you need mental health care for your children. We have we have ways to uh you to participate in programs we have set up for that. Um we have a whole thing that gets at your sort of mind, body and work spirit to make you um the the best employee you can be doing mean you be the best employee in your group but the best you can be that our aspiration.

So who succeeds in this company?

People with good values. I've thrown out a lot of people whose values, I just, they were talented. What do you.

what do you have to sacrifice to get to the top? I think you've said some time that you've sacrified friends.

Well, you've it's hard to maintain a Normal family and relationship life with the demands of the jobs. So you've got over investing that A I think I did a great job with my children. I think I did a much less good job with my friends. You'll lose your friends for while i'd call out my friends sometimes and say where you have me back when it's over and .

you think they will. Yeah, I have.

I've been a good friend to them. I just could. I couldn't give .

them the time. Yeah, you hear a few more people .

and them work. A we have a lot of people who work very baLanced lives, but we have a lot of people are very driven. I don't, i've never thought, constantly telling people around me to workless.

I give you me about that, you say, but do you minutes give really minute.

of course, minutes. I care about duration of careers such a sprint. That's why we've got people here thirty years.

I tell you true story, can't kill her. Who is now the chain of ubs? He was at president. He worked for me the week I became CEO my first weekend he called me um and left a message on my answer machines at my place out of new k .

outside new ork city .

on sunday late morning. I think of us is that there's an issue. I think you're where it's this topic and I love to catch up with you on. And I thought I knew what the issue was, could wait. Nothing was gonna en between sunday at ten in the morning, on monday at seven in the morning, nothing.

So I didn't call him back and when injuries after on monday morning at seven o'clock and I said, colon, I got your message I said, yes, i'd left a message you I did said I, but I decided you would want to be disturbed with your family on the sunday night. And I knew I didn't have to be solved last night. So let's talk about IT now. He very rarely called me on a weekend. After that, I was setting boundaries for him and for me.

but took my calling people. So are one of the things I hear from some of the CEO is that you are very generous with your time. And you reach out to people who become cees of companies always.

I've called, what do you have every major C. O in the U. S, most in the world, within a month, or tell them getting their job.

Do you say, hey, it's the top dude that smoggy .

stand and so I thought i'd introduced myself to you if we haven't met and um i've been doing this a long time and I hope you know you settling in and you know if you ever wanted talk with i'm not trying to show you banking services.

I'm not here about business i'm here about is a fellow CEO and then some of them will say, well, hala, some how you bored that will lead to questions is your success is staying around? Has your relationship with that person so we have a conversation. Some are very short, you know five, seven minutes, some of thirty, forty minutes and a number of them them have come back to me multiple times and ask advice on different things.

You know i'm now dealing with a very difficult director or how did you set up succession? Um uh you know how do you do with the stress? Or a lot of ceos are very lonely and they don't want to peer back to your of as a insecure achieve s most cees are insecure over achiever s you .

think so .

how you and they don't want to admit to the fact maybe they're not as sad as people think they're gonna be. Maybe they don't know everything that people think they should know, so they feel compelled to be constantly wise from day one. ridiculous. You're not. There's a lot you don't know.

So you think also the CEO are got this imposed system.

I think a lot of them worry how they'll be judged. And part of the conversation I have with them is phenomenal. That's why you have been selected. But that doesn't mean you're perfect. And let's talk about how you can manage your life so you can keep growing, rather just get exhausted and get spat out in three years.

And having done IT, you know, for nearly fourteen years, I have I have some credibility for managing to had enough, survive the right word, but do the job under extreme stress for this long. And you can only do that if you figured that had to manage your stress, otherwise you don't survive. Lot of ceos tell me they just apply exhausted that when it's done.

I'm full of energy. I'm ready here to go. I does something I should be see more in saying.

what would you do next? After having been in german?

I am probably gonna join one board, something on the west coast, because part of my life is now on the west coast. And something I want something that is complicated, like I like solving problems. I'm not interested in joining board, so I can attend board meetings and get paid for.

Its not about status. So finance or it's more about give me a problem in a different industry I can work on. I'd like to do that and now teach a little bit. I'm involved. I have a business school at combe university and um my universe in australia, IT calls me the enterprise professor which is the play way of flattering me but that means I can teach down there I can teach a columbia. So on the sides i'll still be executive chair, but on the ages, something that keeps your mind working a new industry and something that keeps you around Young people and teach my son said i'm not i'm not intellectual enough to be a professor and I said i'm not a professor from a teacher not generating original you know uh research uh but you've accumulated a lot of experiences and judgments that I think I can share with others.

Well, I wish I could take one of your closes um what would be your advice to Young people?

Never pick jobs simply because you're impressing somebody else. Don't worry about what you're being paid or trying negotiate what you're being paid unless it's grossly unfair. If is grossly unfair, you shouldn't be working in that place do things because in your core, you know you're interested in them.

You have somebody i've had some in the last few months, a number of approaches to go on boards and there a lot of industry. I respect them, but I just not that interested, just don't get out a bit when I read the newspaper. There's something about that industry are not reading that uh IT sound like a curiose is just like a interest.

So pick things that really a line with what you're in trsa and then don't try and always so many these kids are trying to be get to the next level. The best way to get to the next level is do your level so well with the people around you say a boy, you know, James is great. We should give him more to do rather than James came to see us and said, you know, he wants a promotion.

God, I don't know that he's ready. That's like that. Always pushing for yourself to be put ahead rather than others. Recognize you the best way .

to succeed. Do the job you paid to do really well. That's what I told these kids. All I can say you for sure, A B, really.

thank you.