[{"_1":2,"_3":-5,"_4":-5},"loaderData",{"_5":6,"_7":8},"actionData","errors","root",{"_137":-5,"_138":-5,"_139":140,"_141":142,"_143":144},"routes/clips.$id.$slug",{"_9":10,"_11":12},"clip",{"_13":14,"_15":16,"_17":-5,"_18":19,"_20":-5,"_21":22,"_23":24,"_25":26,"_27":28,"_29":30,"_31":32,"_33":34,"_35":36,"_37":38,"_39":40,"_41":-5,"_42":-5,"_43":-5,"_44":45,"_46":-5,"_47":48,"_49":50,"_51":-5},"canonicalUrl","https://howleaderslead.com/clips/2147/make-sure-your-business-has-a-soul","id",2147,"title","Make sure your business has a soul","subtitle","transcript","WEBVTT\n\n1\n00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.300\npandemic. I've always believed that business should have a soul, that we have a\n\n2\n00:00:04.300 --> 00:00:05.200\nbroader purpose\n\n3\n00:00:05.200 --> 00:00:10.890\nthan just profits. And in a world where there's a social crisis, a political\n\n4\n00:00:10.890 --> 00:00:12.400\ncrisis, an economic\n\n5\n00:00:12.400 --> 00:00:16.360\ncrisis, you name it, there's some sort of crisis. I think business leaders\n\n6\n00:00:16.360 --> 00:00:18.160\nstepped up, and we try\n\n7\n00:00:18.160 --> 00:00:21.940\nto be that place where at least our employees and our communities could feel\n\n8\n00:00:21.940 --> 00:00:22.800\nlike someone was\n\n9\n00:00:22.800 --> 00:00:27.210\nlooking out for them. And it's leaders like I mentioned before, like Doug McM\n\n10\n00:00:27.210 --> 00:00:28.240\nillan at Walmart\n\n11\n00:00:28.240 --> 00:00:34.200\nor John Donahoe at Nike or Mary Bara at GM or James Gorman at Morgan Stanley. I\n\n12\n00:00:34.200 --> 00:00:34.720\ncan just keep\n\n13\n00:00:34.720 --> 00:00:38.680\ngoing through that list. And they led with a mindset of more than just running\n\n14\n00:00:38.680 --> 00:00:39.360\nthe company,\n\n15\n00:00:39.360 --> 00:00:42.570\nbut being good citizens in this world and taking care of their employees, but\n\n16\n00:00:42.570 --> 00:00:43.120\nalso taking care\n\n17\n00:00:43.120 --> 00:00:46.320\nof their communities. And I think that's the future of business going forward.\n\n18\n00:00:46.320 --> 00:00:46.800\nIt's that whole\n\n19\n00:00:46.800 --> 00:00:50.950\nstakeholder theory discussion we've had for the last 20 years. I think it's\n\n20\n00:00:50.950 --> 00:00:51.760\ntime is here.\n\n21\n00:00:51.760 --> 00:00:56.500\nAnd I know people will say that's really not important to business. Businesses\n\n22\n00:00:56.500 --> 00:00:56.880\nneed to be\n\n23\n00:00:56.880 --> 00:01:01.650\nfocused on profits. But I actually think having a stakeholder approach, stake\n\n24\n00:01:01.650 --> 00:01:02.240\nholder management\n\n25\n00:01:02.240 --> 00:01:06.180\napproach that's multifaceted rather than just shareholders actually leads to a\n\n26\n00:01:06.180 --> 00:01:07.520\nbetter business.\n\n27\n00:01:07.520 --> 00:01:11.360\nBetter attachment to customers, better attachment to the community. Employees\n\n28\n00:01:11.360 --> 00:01:12.160\nthat are far more\n\n29\n00:01:12.160 --> 00:01:15.380\nengaged because they think their company is doing the right thing in the\n\n30\n00:01:15.380 --> 00:01:16.320\ncommunity. I think\n\n31\n00:01:16.320 --> 00:01:20.080\nthose things matter a lot, especially the new generation employees. They want\n\n32\n00:01:20.080 --> 00:01:20.800\nto see how you're\n\n33\n00:01:20.800 --> 00:01:24.850\nmaking the world a better place. So I'm excited about where our business is\n\n34\n00:01:24.850 --> 00:01:25.440\ntoday.\n","pretty_transcript","start_time",1898899,"end_time",1983379,"keywords","profits, community, social, politics, economics, stakeholder management, new generation employees","slug","make-sure-your-business-has-a-soul","origin","cms","mux_playback_id","3P5p3p1GnMuhfl9Zpy4HmzE00JdMEIhIO8CHLkQCxTJc","mux_asset_id","Q4YZnau1LtQ8NkHMfoR9aGEUucDF48g0101nm01UFh4cC00","leader_id",74,"episode_id",223,"updated_at","2025-02-26T19:49:37.000000Z","meta_title","meta_description","og_image_media_id","web_url","https://www.howleaderslead.com/clips/2147/make-sure-your-business-has-a-soul","og_image_url","leader",{"_13":36,"_101":102,"_103":104,"_105":106,"_25":107,"_108":109,"_62":110,"_59":110,"_111":112,"_69":113,"_39":114,"_115":-5,"_41":-5,"_42":-5,"_43":-5,"_116":117,"_89":118,"_44":119,"_120":121,"_122":123,"_46":-5,"_124":125,"_126":127,"_93":128,"_51":-5},"episode",{"_13":38,"_15":52,"_27":53,"_17":54,"_55":56,"_18":57,"_20":58,"_59":60,"_61":-5,"_62":60,"_63":-5,"_64":65,"_66":67,"_68":-5,"_69":-5,"_70":71,"_72":73,"_74":-5,"_35":36,"_39":75,"_41":-5,"_42":-5,"_43":-5,"_76":77,"_78":79,"_80":81,"_82":83,"_84":-5,"_85":-5,"_86":87,"_88":-5,"_89":-5,"_46":-5,"_90":91,"_92":-5,"_93":-5,"_51":-5},"og_image_media","Walk the Talk of Your Core Values","walk-the-talk-of-your-core-values","David and Aneel discuss tech entrepreneurship, Phil Mickelson in Workday ads, and how to build a culture with active core values.","summary","

Today's guest is Aneel Bhusri, the Co-Founder, Co-CEO and Chairman of Workday, an American on‑demand financial management and human capital management software vendor. When Aneel started Workday with David Duffield, they defined a handful of core values for their company. Now this is pretty common practice for business leaders, but here's the problem. A lot of leaders write down the company values and never think about them again. They even laminate them, put them up on the wall, but I’ve got to tell you, all they do is collect dust. But that wasn't the case with Aneel and his Co-Founder Dave Duffield, they decided that investing in their people was going to be the number one value at their company. So how did they live out that value?

Well, believe it or not, they personally interviewed the first 500 team members they hired. Now that's something that says they value people over anything else. The key lesson here is that they aligned their schedules and their priorities with the company's number one value. You see, the great leaders I know walk the talk of their core values. They just don't write them down and forget them. They actually use their core values to dictate how they spend their time, and how they focus their energy. We have a lot to learn from today's conversation, including:

Why Aneel shifted from applying for a job at Apple to join an HR software startup instead
How a hostile takeover led to a new venture
What value system Aneel and Dave built the company around
Why the Co-Founders interviewed the first 500 employees together, regardless of other work and time priorities
Why Aneel looks for “shiny new penny folks” when hiring talent
Why the tech team goes off-site every few years to talk about the future
How to get customers involved in innovation
How to build partnerships between humans and machines that don’t compromise the work value of either
Why Aneel prefers having a Co-CEO
Why Phil Mickelson does Workday advertising
PLUS Aneel’s advice for aspiring leaders

Take your learning further. Get proven leadership advice from these (free!) resources:

The How Leaders Lead App: A vast library of 90-second leadership lessons to stay sharp on the go

Daily Insight Emails: One small (but powerful!) leadership principle to focus on each day

Whichever you choose, you can be sure you’ll get the trusted leadership advice you need to advance your career, develop your team, and grow your business.

","WEBVTT\n\n1\n00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:08.000\nWelcome to How Leaders Lead, where every week you get to listen in while I\n\n2\n00:00:08.000 --> 00:00:08.800\ninterview some\n\n3\n00:00:08.800 --> 00:00:11.000\nof the very best leaders in the world.\n\n4\n00:00:11.000 --> 00:00:14.460\nI break down the key learning so that by the end of the episode, you'll have\n\n5\n00:00:14.460 --> 00:00:15.040\nsomething\n\n6\n00:00:15.040 --> 00:00:19.120\nsimple that you can apply as you develop into a better leader.\n\n7\n00:00:19.120 --> 00:00:21.960\nThat's what this podcast is all about.\n\n8\n00:00:21.960 --> 00:00:28.220\nToday's guest is Anil Bouchery, the co-founder, chairman, and co-CEO of Workday\n\n9\n00:00:28.220 --> 00:00:28.280\n.\n\n10\n00:00:28.280 --> 00:00:32.100\nWhen Anil started Workday with David Duffield, they defined a handful of core\n\n11\n00:00:32.100 --> 00:00:32.760\nvalues for\n\n12\n00:00:32.760 --> 00:00:34.440\ntheir company.\n\n13\n00:00:34.440 --> 00:00:37.640\nThis is a pretty common practice for business leaders.\n\n14\n00:00:37.640 --> 00:00:39.080\nBut here's the problem.\n\n15\n00:00:39.080 --> 00:00:43.620\nA lot of leaders write down the company values and never think about them again\n\n16\n00:00:43.620 --> 00:00:43.920\n.\n\n17\n00:00:43.920 --> 00:00:46.640\nThey even laminate them, put them up on the wall.\n\n18\n00:00:46.640 --> 00:00:49.960\nBut I gotta tell you, all they do is collect dust.\n\n19\n00:00:49.960 --> 00:00:54.360\nBut that wasn't the case with Anil and his co-founder, Dave Duffield.\n\n20\n00:00:54.360 --> 00:00:58.330\nThey decided that investing in their people was going to be the number one\n\n21\n00:00:58.330 --> 00:00:59.200\nvalue at their\n\n22\n00:00:59.200 --> 00:01:00.200\ncompany.\n\n23\n00:01:00.200 --> 00:01:02.160\nSo how did they live out that value?\n\n24\n00:01:02.160 --> 00:01:07.500\nWell, believe it or not, they personally interviewed the first 500 team members\n\n25\n00:01:07.500 --> 00:01:09.280\nthey hired.\n\n26\n00:01:09.280 --> 00:01:13.440\nNow that's something that says they value people over anything else.\n\n27\n00:01:13.440 --> 00:01:17.650\nThe key lesson here is that they align their schedules and their priorities\n\n28\n00:01:17.650 --> 00:01:18.800\nwith the company's\n\n29\n00:01:18.800 --> 00:01:20.880\nnumber one value.\n\n30\n00:01:20.880 --> 00:01:25.720\nYou see, the great leaders I know walk the talk of their core values.\n\n31\n00:01:25.720 --> 00:01:28.040\nThey just don't write them down and forget them.\n\n32\n00:01:28.040 --> 00:01:32.140\nThey actually use their core values to dictate how they spend their time and\n\n33\n00:01:32.140 --> 00:01:33.000\nhow they focus\n\n34\n00:01:33.000 --> 00:01:34.560\ntheir energy.\n\n35\n00:01:34.560 --> 00:01:39.000\nWe have a lot to learn from today's conversation, so let's get right to it.\n\n36\n00:01:39.000 --> 00:01:43.760\nHere's my conversation with my good friend, and soon to be yours, Anil Bouchery\n\n37\n00:01:43.760 --> 00:01:44.840\n, the co-founder\n\n38\n00:01:44.840 --> 00:01:46.520\nand co-founder of Workday.\n\n39\n00:01:46.520 --> 00:01:56.120\nAnil, you're a good friend and I can't thank you enough for taking the time to\n\n40\n00:01:56.120 --> 00:01:57.160\nbe on this\n\n41\n00:01:57.160 --> 00:01:58.160\nshow.\n\n42\n00:01:58.160 --> 00:02:00.640\nIt's always great to be with you, David.\n\n43\n00:02:00.640 --> 00:02:02.800\nAnil, you've built one heck of a company.\n\n44\n00:02:02.800 --> 00:02:05.440\nWorkday is just a fabulous company.\n\n45\n00:02:05.440 --> 00:02:10.240\nCould you start just by giving our listeners a snapshot of the scope of your\n\n46\n00:02:10.240 --> 00:02:11.520\ncompany today?\n\n47\n00:02:11.520 --> 00:02:17.280\nYes, so we started the company in 2005, and what we saw was this opportunity to\n\n48\n00:02:17.280 --> 00:02:17.760\ntake the\n\n49\n00:02:17.760 --> 00:02:23.820\nlegacy HR and ERP applications into this new model called Software as a Service\n\n50\n00:02:23.820 --> 00:02:24.720\n, now called\n\n51\n00:02:24.720 --> 00:02:26.240\nCloud.\n\n52\n00:02:26.240 --> 00:02:31.570\nIt covers the areas of human resources, payroll, talent management, financials,\n\n53\n00:02:31.570 --> 00:02:33.040\nprocurement,\n\n54\n00:02:33.040 --> 00:02:36.640\nand specifically for higher ed, we actually have a student system business.\n\n55\n00:02:36.640 --> 00:02:38.880\nWe really target medium and large companies.\n\n56\n00:02:38.880 --> 00:02:43.520\nHalf of the Fortune 500 actually uses Workday in some way or another.\n\n57\n00:02:43.520 --> 00:02:47.940\nWell I know young brands, when I was CEO, we used you and you did a fantastic\n\n58\n00:02:47.940 --> 00:02:48.440\njob.\n\n59\n00:02:48.440 --> 00:02:50.200\nWe certainly appreciated that.\n\n60\n00:02:50.200 --> 00:02:55.400\nAnil, I can't wait to really dig into how you lead, but first, tell us a story\n\n61\n00:02:55.400 --> 00:02:55.880\nabout\n\n62\n00:02:55.880 --> 00:03:00.040\nyour childhood that really shaped the kind of leader that you've become.\n\n63\n00:03:00.040 --> 00:03:03.160\nWell, I was fortunate to have wonderful parents.\n\n64\n00:03:03.160 --> 00:03:08.380\nYour immigrants from India, they came in the 1960s, my dad with $400 in this\n\n65\n00:03:08.380 --> 00:03:10.200\npocket, and\n\n66\n00:03:10.200 --> 00:03:13.200\nmade a life for himself and for all of us by working hard.\n\n67\n00:03:13.200 --> 00:03:14.640\nHe was an electrical engineer.\n\n68\n00:03:14.640 --> 00:03:17.770\nHe's probably the reason I didn't go into engineering because I wasn't as smart\n\n69\n00:03:17.770 --> 00:03:19.080\nas him,\n\n70\n00:03:19.080 --> 00:03:23.420\nbut I just watched the way he raised our family and the way that he was always\n\n71\n00:03:23.420 --> 00:03:25.680\nabout values.\n\n72\n00:03:25.680 --> 00:03:30.140\nI've always gravitated towards leaders and individuals like you, David, that\n\n73\n00:03:30.140 --> 00:03:30.720\nare values\n\n74\n00:03:30.720 --> 00:03:33.080\ndriven and it starts with my parents.\n\n75\n00:03:33.080 --> 00:03:36.360\nI grew up on the East Coast in New Jersey and Boston and the other defining\n\n76\n00:03:36.360 --> 00:03:37.000\nthing is, I\n\n77\n00:03:37.000 --> 00:03:38.840\nloved sports and I played them all.\n\n78\n00:03:38.840 --> 00:03:40.440\nNot all well, but I played them all.\n\n79\n00:03:40.440 --> 00:03:43.120\nBaseball, basketball, tennis, I stuck with tennis.\n\n80\n00:03:43.120 --> 00:03:48.360\nThat was also a defining experience just to be competitive at a young age.\n\n81\n00:03:48.360 --> 00:03:51.830\nI know you love winning and I know you probably hate losing, but which one\n\n82\n00:03:51.830 --> 00:03:53.200\nreally drives your\n\n83\n00:03:53.200 --> 00:03:57.360\nsuccess and how you go after things?\n\n84\n00:03:57.360 --> 00:04:01.800\nWell I like to win, but I like to win with grace and being a sportsman.\n\n85\n00:04:01.800 --> 00:04:02.800\nI think that's everything.\n\n86\n00:04:02.800 --> 00:04:05.520\nThat's why you and I have this passion for golf.\n\n87\n00:04:05.520 --> 00:04:10.290\nIt's not just about winning, it's the sportsmanship, it's the camaraderie, golf\n\n88\n00:04:10.290 --> 00:04:11.120\n's the one sport\n\n89\n00:04:11.120 --> 00:04:13.000\nwhere you can actually call a penalty on yourself.\n\n90\n00:04:13.000 --> 00:04:16.160\nI just think it's just such a great sport for values.\n\n91\n00:04:16.160 --> 00:04:19.400\nI like to win, but win the right way.\n\n92\n00:04:19.400 --> 00:04:21.760\nAlso thinking business, there's a lot of chances to do win wins.\n\n93\n00:04:21.760 --> 00:04:26.570\nYou don't have to be, win, lose in sports you do, but in business you can be\n\n94\n00:04:26.570 --> 00:04:27.440\nwin-win.\n\n95\n00:04:27.440 --> 00:04:31.290\nYou mentioned earlier your dad was an electrical engineer and I saw you got a\n\n96\n00:04:31.290 --> 00:04:32.400\ndegree in electrical\n\n97\n00:04:32.400 --> 00:04:34.720\nengineering at Brown.\n\n98\n00:04:34.720 --> 00:04:38.680\nHow did you find that that has helped you along in your business career?\n\n99\n00:04:38.680 --> 00:04:42.220\nWell it's a great background for number one understanding technology and back\n\n100\n00:04:42.220 --> 00:04:42.920\nthen electrical\n\n101\n00:04:42.920 --> 00:04:44.760\nengineering included software.\n\n102\n00:04:44.760 --> 00:04:49.350\nI'm old enough where they didn't have a specific software degree, so that was\n\n103\n00:04:49.350 --> 00:04:50.200\njust an emerging\n\n104\n00:04:50.200 --> 00:04:51.200\ncategory.\n\n105\n00:04:51.200 --> 00:04:53.880\nSo I did a lot of software and that has served me well.\n\n106\n00:04:53.880 --> 00:04:57.640\nBut also electrical engineering is a lot about problem solving and in business\n\n107\n00:04:57.640 --> 00:04:58.080\nthere are\n\n108\n00:04:58.080 --> 00:05:01.040\njust problems that come up on a pretty regular basis.\n\n109\n00:05:01.040 --> 00:05:04.240\nYou need to know math really well especially for a public company and with the\n\n110\n00:05:04.240 --> 00:05:04.720\nfinancial\n\n111\n00:05:04.720 --> 00:05:09.470\nstatements and then problem solving and I feel like engineering prepared me for\n\n112\n00:05:09.470 --> 00:05:09.920\nboth.\n\n113\n00:05:09.920 --> 00:05:14.680\nNow I know you got your MBA at Stanford, which is a hotbed for entrepreneurs.\n\n114\n00:05:14.680 --> 00:05:17.600\nDid you always have it in the back of your mind that you wanted to start your\n\n115\n00:05:17.600 --> 00:05:18.200\nown company\n\n116\n00:05:18.200 --> 00:05:19.200\nsomeday?\n\n117\n00:05:19.200 --> 00:05:21.720\nYou know I actually wanted to go work at Apple.\n\n118\n00:05:21.720 --> 00:05:26.010\nSo I was working at Morgan Stanley between college and business school had a\n\n119\n00:05:26.010 --> 00:05:27.160\ngreat experience\n\n120\n00:05:27.160 --> 00:05:31.760\nand I was always lured out west that came out to visit San Francisco once.\n\n121\n00:05:31.760 --> 00:05:34.560\nI thought wow this place is pretty cool.\n\n122\n00:05:34.560 --> 00:05:39.470\nAnd when I got out here my goal was to get a job at Apple upon graduation and I\n\n123\n00:05:39.470 --> 00:05:40.000\nnever\n\n124\n00:05:40.000 --> 00:05:44.200\ndid but I always wanted to work at a cool technology company at that time.\n\n125\n00:05:44.200 --> 00:05:45.960\nThe coolest company was Apple.\n\n126\n00:05:45.960 --> 00:05:49.480\nInstead I veered off into the world of HR and financial software because I met\n\n127\n00:05:49.480 --> 00:05:50.240\nthis amazing\n\n128\n00:05:50.240 --> 00:05:52.040\nguy Dave Duffield.\n\n129\n00:05:52.040 --> 00:05:55.940\nYou know and Dave was the founder of PeopleSoft and he hired you right out of\n\n130\n00:05:55.940 --> 00:05:56.920\nbusiness school\n\n131\n00:05:56.920 --> 00:06:01.240\nas I understand it and you were the company s first planning director.\n\n132\n00:06:01.240 --> 00:06:05.360\nTell us about how you thought about that decision and what made you want to\n\n133\n00:06:05.360 --> 00:06:05.920\nwork for\n\n134\n00:06:05.920 --> 00:06:06.920\nDave.\n\n135\n00:06:06.920 --> 00:06:08.960\nWhy was he somebody you wanted to hook up with?\n\n136\n00:06:08.960 --> 00:06:11.040\nYeah I get goosebumps just thinking about it.\n\n137\n00:06:11.040 --> 00:06:15.650\nSo I was pretty set to go back to the east coast and work at a venture capital\n\n138\n00:06:15.650 --> 00:06:16.280\nfirm.\n\n139\n00:06:16.280 --> 00:06:18.800\nIt would have been a good decision but it wasn t the right decision for me and\n\n140\n00:06:18.800 --> 00:06:19.120\nI kind\n\n141\n00:06:19.120 --> 00:06:23.560\nof knew it and I ran into a mutual friend of ours, George Still who had been my\n\n142\n00:06:23.560 --> 00:06:24.080\nmentor\n\n143\n00:06:24.080 --> 00:06:28.400\nover the summer between years of business school at a Burger King near Costco\n\n144\n00:06:28.400 --> 00:06:28.800\nwhere\n\n145\n00:06:28.800 --> 00:06:33.020\nI was doing the weekly Costco run for my roommate tonight and he convinced me\n\n146\n00:06:33.020 --> 00:06:33.320\nto go\n\n147\n00:06:33.320 --> 00:06:38.350\nsee Dave and so I went to go see Dave and you know here s a guy that s already\n\n148\n00:06:38.350 --> 00:06:38.720\nhad\n\n149\n00:06:38.720 --> 00:06:40.240\nquite a bit of success.\n\n150\n00:06:40.240 --> 00:06:45.400\nPeopleSoft was already a public company and he took me out for a beer and after\n\n151\n00:06:45.400 --> 00:06:46.240\nan hour\n\n152\n00:06:46.240 --> 00:06:50.090\nand an interview he said, you know, I don t know what I m going to do with you\n\n153\n00:06:50.090 --> 00:06:50.560\nbut why\n\n154\n00:06:50.560 --> 00:06:54.640\ndo you take a break for a couple months and you come back and figure it out?\n\n155\n00:06:54.640 --> 00:06:59.250\nAnd you know the rest of his history we ve been together now for almost 30\n\n156\n00:06:59.250 --> 00:06:59.720\nyears and\n\n157\n00:06:59.720 --> 00:07:02.120\nI just thought this guy is an amazing guy.\n\n158\n00:07:02.120 --> 00:07:03.600\nI could learn a lot from him.\n\n159\n00:07:03.600 --> 00:07:05.560\nHe s great entrepreneurs and software.\n\n160\n00:07:05.560 --> 00:07:08.680\nI also thought HR and financial software, not a big market.\n\n161\n00:07:08.680 --> 00:07:11.760\nI ll probably do this for a couple of years and go do something else.\n\n162\n00:07:11.760 --> 00:07:14.760\n30 years later I m still doing HR and financial software.\n\n163\n00:07:14.760 --> 00:07:17.960\nAnd the rest of the story is, you know.\n\n164\n00:07:17.960 --> 00:07:21.920\nSo Dave hires you, you go to PeopleSoft, you re their first planning director\n\n165\n00:07:21.920 --> 00:07:22.360\nand then\n\n166\n00:07:22.360 --> 00:07:28.270\nyou rise within that company, Device Chairman, tell us a story about an event\n\n167\n00:07:28.270 --> 00:07:29.200\nthat really\n\n168\n00:07:29.200 --> 00:07:33.790\naccelerated your trajectory of your career as you were moving up the ladder\n\n169\n00:07:33.790 --> 00:07:34.480\nthere.\n\n170\n00:07:34.480 --> 00:07:41.000\nWell probably the biggest event was actually having that beer with Dave.\n\n171\n00:07:41.000 --> 00:07:45.910\nBut afterwards, less of an event but more I would say a series of conversations\n\n172\n00:07:45.910 --> 00:07:46.280\nwith\n\n173\n00:07:46.280 --> 00:07:47.280\nDave.\n\n174\n00:07:47.280 --> 00:07:52.330\nHe decided to invest in me and so we would go out once a month for a breakfast\n\n175\n00:07:52.330 --> 00:07:52.880\nor a lunch\n\n176\n00:07:52.880 --> 00:07:56.780\nor a dinner and I d ask him any question I could come up with about how he\n\n177\n00:07:56.780 --> 00:07:57.560\nthought about\n\n178\n00:07:57.560 --> 00:07:59.840\nthings and how he built the business.\n\n179\n00:07:59.840 --> 00:08:03.230\nAnd if you know Dave, he s all about building businesses the right way around\n\n180\n00:08:03.230 --> 00:08:03.840\ncore values\n\n181\n00:08:03.840 --> 00:08:06.680\nwhich wasn t the most popular thing in the 90s.\n\n182\n00:08:06.680 --> 00:08:10.160\nIt s now very fashionable but he was always wired that way.\n\n183\n00:08:10.160 --> 00:08:12.440\nAnd over time I just had this great benefit.\n\n184\n00:08:12.440 --> 00:08:16.200\nI accumulated the knowledge of someone that had been around the block.\n\n185\n00:08:16.200 --> 00:08:19.400\nPeopleSoft was his fourth company, Workday s his fifth company.\n\n186\n00:08:19.400 --> 00:08:23.600\nI just got to learn from him and it s just become this amazing friendship and\n\n187\n00:08:23.600 --> 00:08:24.560\nrelationship\n\n188\n00:08:24.560 --> 00:08:26.640\nthat s lasted 30 years.\n\n189\n00:08:26.640 --> 00:08:32.290\nYou know I really want to hear now just the story of how you two teamed up and\n\n190\n00:08:32.290 --> 00:08:33.000\nyou left\n\n191\n00:08:33.000 --> 00:08:35.080\nPeopleSoft and you formed Workday.\n\n192\n00:08:35.080 --> 00:08:36.720\nYou know how did it happen?\n\n193\n00:08:36.720 --> 00:08:40.000\nIt was one of those emotional times where you remember everything right.\n\n194\n00:08:40.000 --> 00:08:42.840\nYour brain always imprints those things that are emotional.\n\n195\n00:08:42.840 --> 00:08:47.580\nSo I had actually left PeopleSoft on a day to day basis and gone off to be a\n\n196\n00:08:47.580 --> 00:08:48.240\nventure\n\n197\n00:08:48.240 --> 00:08:50.240\ncapitalist at a firm called Graylock.\n\n198\n00:08:50.240 --> 00:08:54.360\nDave had retired as chairman and we brought in a new CEO to run the company.\n\n199\n00:08:54.360 --> 00:08:57.370\nI had been passed over for the CEO job at PeopleSoft which was totally the\n\n200\n00:08:57.370 --> 00:08:58.160\nright decision.\n\n201\n00:08:58.160 --> 00:09:00.520\nI wasn t qualified at that time.\n\n202\n00:09:00.520 --> 00:09:04.350\nThen we got into this situation with Oracle where they launched the hostile\n\n203\n00:09:04.350 --> 00:09:05.080\ntakeover on\n\n204\n00:09:05.080 --> 00:09:10.250\nPeopleSoft and after a period of time the board asked Dave and I to come out of\n\n205\n00:09:10.250 --> 00:09:11.160\nretirement\n\n206\n00:09:11.160 --> 00:09:13.560\nto try to save the company.\n\n207\n00:09:13.560 --> 00:09:18.070\nIt was during that time where they asked the previous CEO to go who s still a\n\n208\n00:09:18.070 --> 00:09:18.800\nfriend.\n\n209\n00:09:18.800 --> 00:09:20.080\nAsk Dave and I to come back.\n\n210\n00:09:20.080 --> 00:09:24.770\nDave focused in on the culture being more customer focused like we have been in\n\n211\n00:09:24.770 --> 00:09:25.040\nthe\n\n212\n00:09:25.040 --> 00:09:28.520\nearly days, more employee focused like we have been in the early days.\n\n213\n00:09:28.520 --> 00:09:31.570\nDuring the time we were away we had gotten away from that and I focused in on\n\n214\n00:09:31.570 --> 00:09:31.880\nwhat would\n\n215\n00:09:31.880 --> 00:09:33.800\nhappen with PeopleSoft s products.\n\n216\n00:09:33.800 --> 00:09:38.000\nIt was during that time I came to conclusion that what we were doing at People\n\n217\n00:09:38.000 --> 00:09:38.560\nSoft was\n\n218\n00:09:38.560 --> 00:09:40.640\nnot going to work in the future.\n\n219\n00:09:40.640 --> 00:09:44.910\nThere was a small company salesforce.com that pioneered a new model for sales\n\n220\n00:09:44.910 --> 00:09:45.680\nand customer\n\n221\n00:09:45.680 --> 00:09:49.920\nservices and I thought well, someone s going to do that for HR and finance.\n\n222\n00:09:49.920 --> 00:09:51.280\nMight as well be us.\n\n223\n00:09:51.280 --> 00:09:56.050\nWe actually had a plan in the very early stages to do it at PeopleSoft but\n\n224\n00:09:56.050 --> 00:09:57.000\nOracle prevailed\n\n225\n00:09:57.000 --> 00:09:59.760\ntook over the company and a hostile takeover.\n\n226\n00:09:59.760 --> 00:10:01.720\nDidn t ask Dave and I to stay.\n\n227\n00:10:01.720 --> 00:10:04.320\nDave and I three months later started Workday.\n\n228\n00:10:04.320 --> 00:10:08.570\nThe basic premise was let s take those PeopleSoft applications, start from\n\n229\n00:10:08.570 --> 00:10:09.680\nscratch and rebuild\n\n230\n00:10:09.680 --> 00:10:13.200\nthem for this new model and let s have fun along the way.\n\n231\n00:10:13.200 --> 00:10:17.050\nWe brought our value system with us and that value system continues to be the\n\n232\n00:10:17.050 --> 00:10:17.480\none that\n\n233\n00:10:17.480 --> 00:10:20.160\nwe live by today.\n\n234\n00:10:20.160 --> 00:10:21.960\nTell me about that value system.\n\n235\n00:10:21.960 --> 00:10:23.440\nWhat is that exactly?\n\n236\n00:10:23.440 --> 00:10:27.760\nWell, so I have to give my co-founder Dave just a lot of credit.\n\n237\n00:10:27.760 --> 00:10:32.280\nWe thought about values and created a framework for how to build a company\n\n238\n00:10:32.280 --> 00:10:33.320\naround a course\n\n239\n00:10:33.320 --> 00:10:38.280\nthat of values way before people ran businesses that way.\n\n240\n00:10:38.280 --> 00:10:40.400\nNumber one is employees.\n\n241\n00:10:40.400 --> 00:10:43.880\nThere are a lot of companies that have number one as customers.\n\n242\n00:10:43.880 --> 00:10:46.890\nDave s view was if you don t have happy employees, you re not going to have\n\n243\n00:10:46.890 --> 00:10:47.920\nhappy customers.\n\n244\n00:10:47.920 --> 00:10:49.520\nTo this day, I see that in spades.\n\n245\n00:10:49.520 --> 00:10:52.490\nI ve never seen happy customers and unhappy employees that have appeared\n\n246\n00:10:52.490 --> 00:10:53.080\ntogether.\n\n247\n00:10:53.080 --> 00:10:54.840\nIt just doesn t work.\n\n248\n00:10:54.840 --> 00:10:59.790\nOne, employees, number two, customers and customer success, number three, fun,\n\n249\n00:10:59.790 --> 00:10:59.920\nnumber\n\n250\n00:10:59.920 --> 00:11:04.800\nfour, innovation, number five, integrity, and sixth, not really core value, but\n\n251\n00:11:04.800 --> 00:11:05.480\nimportant\n\n252\n00:11:05.480 --> 00:11:08.520\nto pay for the rest profitability.\n\n253\n00:11:08.520 --> 00:11:10.160\nWe reward those core values.\n\n254\n00:11:10.160 --> 00:11:12.080\nWe measure people against those core values.\n\n255\n00:11:12.080 --> 00:11:13.920\nI think about that all the time.\n\n256\n00:11:13.920 --> 00:11:15.640\nHow are we doing against our core values?\n\n257\n00:11:15.640 --> 00:11:17.160\nHow are we doing the employees?\n\n258\n00:11:17.160 --> 00:11:19.960\nHow are we doing via customers?\n\n259\n00:11:19.960 --> 00:11:23.410\nWhat I m proudest of is we ve been in the top 10 list of great places to work\n\n260\n00:11:23.410 --> 00:11:23.720\nmultiple\n\n261\n00:11:23.720 --> 00:11:24.720\ntimes.\n\n262\n00:11:24.720 --> 00:11:28.480\nIt s because we take that employee core value seriously.\n\n263\n00:11:28.480 --> 00:11:33.110\nOur customer satisfaction levels have always been 95% or higher because our\n\n264\n00:11:33.110 --> 00:11:34.200\nhappy employees\n\n265\n00:11:34.200 --> 00:11:37.160\nknow that taking care of customers is the right thing to do.\n\n266\n00:11:37.160 --> 00:11:39.120\nIt s a virtuous cycle.\n\n267\n00:11:39.120 --> 00:11:42.870\nI was talking with Ryan who s in your communications group a little bit earlier\n\n268\n00:11:42.870 --> 00:11:43.160\n.\n\n269\n00:11:43.160 --> 00:11:49.390\nHe said the thing that really has driven home daily is walking the talk of your\n\n270\n00:11:49.390 --> 00:11:50.360\nvalues.\n\n271\n00:11:50.360 --> 00:11:54.400\nHow do you cascade that to everybody in the company because it just can t be\n\n272\n00:11:54.400 --> 00:11:55.560\nyou and Dave?\n\n273\n00:11:55.560 --> 00:11:56.560\nYeah.\n\n274\n00:11:56.560 --> 00:12:00.990\nWell, so Dave and I interviewed the first 500 people purely for fit with our\n\n275\n00:12:00.990 --> 00:12:01.960\nvalue system.\n\n276\n00:12:01.960 --> 00:12:05.530\nWe assumed that if it was a marketing person or a sales person or an\n\n277\n00:12:05.530 --> 00:12:07.160\nengineering person,\n\n278\n00:12:07.160 --> 00:12:11.040\nthat the managers would have made sure that they were the right level of talent\n\n279\n00:12:11.040 --> 00:12:11.080\n.\n\n280\n00:12:11.080 --> 00:12:14.920\nWe would screen for values and we would look for people that were we, not I.\n\n281\n00:12:14.920 --> 00:12:19.100\nWe looked for people that had committed to their previous company or something\n\n282\n00:12:19.100 --> 00:12:19.640\nin their\n\n283\n00:12:19.640 --> 00:12:22.430\nlife endeavor that showed they would do something for a long time and they\n\n284\n00:12:22.430 --> 00:12:23.320\nwouldn t jump around\n\n285\n00:12:23.320 --> 00:12:24.320\nevery few years.\n\n286\n00:12:24.320 --> 00:12:27.240\nWe would see if they had a sense of humor.\n\n287\n00:12:27.240 --> 00:12:28.720\nDave and I were crack jokes.\n\n288\n00:12:28.720 --> 00:12:32.430\nSometimes they probably weren t funny to the interviewee, but we had fun with\n\n289\n00:12:32.430 --> 00:12:32.800\nit.\n\n290\n00:12:32.800 --> 00:12:36.160\nThen we told those 500 people, you re going to protect the culture and the\n\n291\n00:12:36.160 --> 00:12:37.280\nvalue system.\n\n292\n00:12:37.280 --> 00:12:40.200\nWe need you to be part of interviewing the next 5,000.\n\n293\n00:12:40.200 --> 00:12:44.850\nWe re past that group, but we continually perpetuate the culture carriers and\n\n294\n00:12:44.850 --> 00:12:45.560\nthe people\n\n295\n00:12:45.560 --> 00:12:47.160\nthat really embrace our values.\n\n296\n00:12:47.160 --> 00:12:50.230\nIt has to be one on every interview cycle to make sure that we re getting the\n\n297\n00:12:50.230 --> 00:12:50.840\nright people\n\n298\n00:12:50.840 --> 00:12:51.840\nin the door.\n\n299\n00:12:51.840 --> 00:12:57.080\nI ve never heard of any two leaders interviewing the first 500 team members.\n\n300\n00:12:57.080 --> 00:12:58.960\nThat is such a sensational thing.\n\n301\n00:12:58.960 --> 00:13:00.920\nThat takes a ton of time.\n\n302\n00:13:00.920 --> 00:13:04.270\nHere you are, you ve got this startup, you ve got to get going, you ve got all\n\n303\n00:13:04.270 --> 00:13:04.600\nthese\n\n304\n00:13:04.600 --> 00:13:07.520\nbusiness priorities.\n\n305\n00:13:07.520 --> 00:13:09.680\nHow did you stay true to that?\n\n306\n00:13:09.680 --> 00:13:12.440\nAgain, it comes back to employees being number one.\n\n307\n00:13:12.440 --> 00:13:17.350\nWe re up against two formidable companies in SAP and Oracle and we thought, hey\n\n308\n00:13:17.350 --> 00:13:17.760\n, if we\n\n309\n00:13:17.760 --> 00:13:23.900\nget the first 500 right and they really are the best in our industry, that will\n\n310\n00:13:23.900 --> 00:13:24.440\ngive us\n\n311\n00:13:24.440 --> 00:13:25.440\na shot.\n\n312\n00:13:25.440 --> 00:13:28.300\nWe want a shot, but we re going to need the best people because we re up\n\n313\n00:13:28.300 --> 00:13:29.000\nagainst these\n\n314\n00:13:29.000 --> 00:13:30.160\nreally formidable companies.\n\n315\n00:13:30.160 --> 00:13:31.720\nWe ve got a great idea.\n\n316\n00:13:31.720 --> 00:13:35.800\nWe ve got disruptive technology, but we need the best people.\n\n317\n00:13:35.800 --> 00:13:37.840\nDave and I are passionate about this topic.\n\n318\n00:13:37.840 --> 00:13:40.670\nWe just agreed we didn t review the first 500 and that took precedent over\n\n319\n00:13:40.670 --> 00:13:41.200\neverything\n\n320\n00:13:41.200 --> 00:13:43.000\nelse we had in our schedule.\n\n321\n00:13:43.000 --> 00:13:45.920\nWas there something that changed the way you approached the business because of\n\n322\n00:13:45.920 --> 00:13:47.040\nthese interviews?\n\n323\n00:13:47.040 --> 00:13:49.640\nYou know, I say something that I m not necessarily proud of.\n\n324\n00:13:49.640 --> 00:13:55.220\nI had a bias towards people from the right schools and it turns out talent is\n\n325\n00:13:55.220 --> 00:13:57.320\neverywhere.\n\n326\n00:13:57.320 --> 00:14:01.330\nSometimes you just have to look a little harder and in some cases, some of the\n\n327\n00:14:01.330 --> 00:14:01.760\nright\n\n328\n00:14:01.760 --> 00:14:05.170\nschools didn t actually produce the best employees because there can always be\n\n329\n00:14:05.170 --> 00:14:05.800\na sometimes a\n\n330\n00:14:05.800 --> 00:14:07.480\nsense of entitlement.\n\n331\n00:14:07.480 --> 00:14:10.440\nAnd so I really got to see this attitude of hungry.\n\n332\n00:14:10.440 --> 00:14:13.800\nI ll do whatever it takes to be successful.\n\n333\n00:14:13.800 --> 00:14:14.800\nThat s invigorating.\n\n334\n00:14:14.800 --> 00:14:17.840\nIt s exciting and you just want to hire more people like that.\n\n335\n00:14:17.840 --> 00:14:21.580\nSo less and less about educational history, more about what they d done with\n\n336\n00:14:21.580 --> 00:14:22.160\ntheir lives\n\n337\n00:14:22.160 --> 00:14:24.480\nand what they wanted to do.\n\n338\n00:14:24.480 --> 00:14:29.160\nYou ve got to be one of the most experienced interviewers on the planet.\n\n339\n00:14:29.160 --> 00:14:31.320\nWhat advice can you offer the rest of us?\n\n340\n00:14:31.320 --> 00:14:35.360\nYou know, I think what every CEO or management team wants are dedicated\n\n341\n00:14:35.360 --> 00:14:36.440\nemployees who have\n\n342\n00:14:36.440 --> 00:14:37.440\ngood values.\n\n343\n00:14:37.440 --> 00:14:42.760\nAnd importantly, you want them to stay as a company for a long period of time.\n\n344\n00:14:42.760 --> 00:14:46.670\nPeople that leave every two years, it s really painful and it s very costly,\n\n345\n00:14:46.670 --> 00:14:47.240\nright?\n\n346\n00:14:47.240 --> 00:14:48.480\nYou ve just trained them up.\n\n347\n00:14:48.480 --> 00:14:52.400\nThey now know the company and I call them shiny new penny folks.\n\n348\n00:14:52.400 --> 00:14:54.920\nThey re looking for that next opportunity.\n\n349\n00:14:54.920 --> 00:14:57.750\nIt s really digging into someone s background to get a sense that they ll be\n\n350\n00:14:57.750 --> 00:14:58.520\ncommitted for\n\n351\n00:14:58.520 --> 00:15:03.240\nthe long run because every great company I ve seen or been around, there s a\n\n352\n00:15:03.240 --> 00:15:03.920\nwhole host\n\n353\n00:15:03.920 --> 00:15:07.380\nof employees that have been there from the start or if not from the start for a\n\n354\n00:15:07.380 --> 00:15:07.680\nlong\n\n355\n00:15:07.680 --> 00:15:08.680\nperiod of time.\n\n356\n00:15:08.680 --> 00:15:11.880\nWe have quite a few tenured people in our company that both bring the value\n\n357\n00:15:11.880 --> 00:15:12.440\nsystem to\n\n358\n00:15:12.440 --> 00:15:15.790\nwork every day, but also our folks that have so much expertise now in our\n\n359\n00:15:15.790 --> 00:15:16.520\nproducts and\n\n360\n00:15:16.520 --> 00:15:20.160\ntechnology that it s just invaluable.\n\n361\n00:15:20.160 --> 00:15:23.980\nYou ve had so much success and when you have that kind of success, everybody\n\n362\n00:15:23.980 --> 00:15:24.560\nwants your\n\n363\n00:15:24.560 --> 00:15:29.080\npeople and recruiting people s one thing, retaining them is another.\n\n364\n00:15:29.080 --> 00:15:32.320\nYou know, I really believe recognition was key to retaining people.\n\n365\n00:15:32.320 --> 00:15:36.380\nI mean, what s your belief on how you keep people beyond just having that\n\n366\n00:15:36.380 --> 00:15:37.120\nfantastic\n\n367\n00:15:37.120 --> 00:15:38.560\nculture that you have?\n\n368\n00:15:38.560 --> 00:15:42.400\nWell absolutely, and it s in your book, I think recognition is a huge part of\n\n369\n00:15:42.400 --> 00:15:42.720\nit.\n\n370\n00:15:42.720 --> 00:15:47.200\nAnd what we ve tried was recognize our people around our core values.\n\n371\n00:15:47.200 --> 00:15:51.160\nSo someone that had done a great job around a customer go live or a customer\n\n372\n00:15:51.160 --> 00:15:51.840\nexperience\n\n373\n00:15:51.840 --> 00:15:55.570\nwould be up for an individual, we call them OCA s Outstanding Contributor\n\n374\n00:15:55.570 --> 00:15:56.300\nAwards and we\n\n375\n00:15:56.300 --> 00:15:58.640\ngive out those awards on a quarterly basis.\n\n376\n00:15:58.640 --> 00:16:02.100\nThere s a team award for a group of people, hopefully that was cross-functional\n\n377\n00:16:02.100 --> 00:16:02.400\nthat\n\n378\n00:16:02.400 --> 00:16:07.410\ndid great work on a product, on a sales situation, on a customer, whatever it\n\n379\n00:16:07.410 --> 00:16:07.980\nis they\n\n380\n00:16:07.980 --> 00:16:10.810\nwere together and the more cross-functional the better because that creates\n\n381\n00:16:10.810 --> 00:16:11.440\nthose bridges\n\n382\n00:16:11.440 --> 00:16:13.160\nacross the company.\n\n383\n00:16:13.160 --> 00:16:17.200\nInnovation, we have a quarterly innovation or innovator award.\n\n384\n00:16:17.200 --> 00:16:21.410\nSo we try to just reward behavior around the core values and people take notice\n\n385\n00:16:21.410 --> 00:16:21.720\n.\n\n386\n00:16:21.720 --> 00:16:25.720\nAnd I have to ask you, who came up with the workday name?\n\n387\n00:16:25.720 --> 00:16:32.080\nThe Dame s daughter who was a very talented marketing executive, Amy Duffield.\n\n388\n00:16:32.080 --> 00:16:35.880\nI will just say that Dave came up with a name that I wasn t a fan of.\n\n389\n00:16:35.880 --> 00:16:40.600\nI came up with a name that he wasn t a fan of and named and said, let me go do\n\n390\n00:16:40.600 --> 00:16:41.320\na project\n\n391\n00:16:41.320 --> 00:16:44.000\nand we ll come up with a better name than when we would come up with it.\n\n392\n00:16:44.000 --> 00:16:48.400\nI m not even going to mention our two names because I think they were so bad.\n\n393\n00:16:48.400 --> 00:16:53.350\nAnd when she came up with a list of 10 names working with an outside agency,\n\n394\n00:16:53.350 --> 00:16:53.720\nDave and I\n\n395\n00:16:53.720 --> 00:16:55.880\nboth looked at each other on a workday.\n\n396\n00:16:55.880 --> 00:16:57.800\nThe minute we saw it, we both knew.\n\n397\n00:16:57.800 --> 00:16:59.320\nIt s such a great name.\n\n398\n00:16:59.320 --> 00:17:00.760\nThat s why I had to ask you that.\n\n399\n00:17:00.760 --> 00:17:02.720\nI had a terrible name too.\n\n400\n00:17:02.720 --> 00:17:06.040\nWe actually went with it before we had Yum, it was Tricon.\n\n401\n00:17:06.040 --> 00:17:07.720\nAnd nobody knew what that was.\n\n402\n00:17:07.720 --> 00:17:08.720\nIt was terrible.\n\n403\n00:17:08.720 --> 00:17:11.400\nIt sounded like an industrial cleaning company.\n\n404\n00:17:11.400 --> 00:17:16.680\nBut anyway, I m glad we moved on to something a little bit more upbeat.\n\n405\n00:17:16.680 --> 00:17:20.000\nAnd taking you back again, we talked a little bit about the culture.\n\n406\n00:17:20.000 --> 00:17:25.220\nWhat was the process you and Dave used to lay out the original vision for work\n\n407\n00:17:25.220 --> 00:17:25.800\nday and\n\n408\n00:17:25.800 --> 00:17:27.320\nthe company that you are today?\n\n409\n00:17:27.320 --> 00:17:29.320\nI mean, how did you guys formulate it all?\n\n410\n00:17:29.320 --> 00:17:33.680\nWell, we do the space from our days at PeopleSoft.\n\n411\n00:17:33.680 --> 00:17:40.140\nAnd what we saw was a market that needed a fresh solution, some fresh insight\n\n412\n00:17:40.140 --> 00:17:41.080\nthat had\n\n413\n00:17:41.080 --> 00:17:45.120\nold products that were harder and harder to go from one version to the next.\n\n414\n00:17:45.120 --> 00:17:49.200\nCustomers didn t like running these products on their own premises.\n\n415\n00:17:49.200 --> 00:17:51.800\nAnd as I mentioned, we saw the small company Salesforce.\n\n416\n00:17:51.800 --> 00:17:56.150\nAnd we thought, well, Salesforce is doing it in small, medium sized businesses,\n\n417\n00:17:56.150 --> 00:17:56.440\nbut that\n\n418\n00:17:56.440 --> 00:17:59.320\ns not really my background or Dave s background.\n\n419\n00:17:59.320 --> 00:18:02.080\nSo we said, let s start with HR.\n\n420\n00:18:02.080 --> 00:18:05.080\nEvery company needs a better HR system.\n\n421\n00:18:05.080 --> 00:18:08.650\nAnd an HR system happens to be an application that touches every employee in\n\n422\n00:18:08.650 --> 00:18:09.480\nthe company.\n\n423\n00:18:09.480 --> 00:18:13.770\nAnd so one of our big bets in the transition from the old legacy systems to the\n\n424\n00:18:13.770 --> 00:18:14.440\ncloud systems\n\n425\n00:18:14.440 --> 00:18:17.240\nwas that the user experience had to be much better.\n\n426\n00:18:17.240 --> 00:18:20.680\nAnd so building a great UI was a huge part of what we set out to do at the\n\n427\n00:18:20.680 --> 00:18:22.880\nstart at workday.\n\n428\n00:18:22.880 --> 00:18:26.420\nAnd we started out with medium sized companies, but always with the intent to\n\n429\n00:18:26.420 --> 00:18:27.160\ngrow to larger\n\n430\n00:18:27.160 --> 00:18:28.160\ncompanies.\n\n431\n00:18:28.160 --> 00:18:32.290\nAnd over time, the product line grew from HR to HR and payroll to HR, payroll\n\n432\n00:18:32.290 --> 00:18:33.080\nand talent.\n\n433\n00:18:33.080 --> 00:18:36.910\nWe always knew we would go into finance because that had been a big part of the\n\n434\n00:18:36.910 --> 00:18:37.440\nPeopleSoft\n\n435\n00:18:37.440 --> 00:18:38.440\nvision.\n\n436\n00:18:38.440 --> 00:18:40.960\nReally, if you think about it, for lack of a better term, but the\n\n437\n00:18:40.960 --> 00:18:42.200\nadministrative backbone,\n\n438\n00:18:42.200 --> 00:18:46.630\nHR and finance and procurement, just end up being the administrative backbone\n\n439\n00:18:46.630 --> 00:18:47.160\nand they\n\n440\n00:18:47.160 --> 00:18:48.840\nnaturally work together.\n\n441\n00:18:48.840 --> 00:18:51.120\nSo that really was our vision from day one.\n\n442\n00:18:51.120 --> 00:18:52.760\nAnd I had had that time at Greylock.\n\n443\n00:18:52.760 --> 00:18:56.000\nI had the time running at products at PeopleSoft.\n\n444\n00:18:56.000 --> 00:19:00.720\nMy great moment was convincing David 65 that he had one more left in him.\n\n445\n00:19:00.720 --> 00:19:03.680\nI said, hey, boss, come on, let s just do this.\n\n446\n00:19:03.680 --> 00:19:07.300\nYou got this one more and he did and he moved his family down for a period of\n\n447\n00:19:07.300 --> 00:19:09.160\ntime to California.\n\n448\n00:19:09.160 --> 00:19:11.000\nAnd I see him quite often.\n\n449\n00:19:11.000 --> 00:19:14.510\nHe s an amazing guy, but a big part of the reason work day exists is I\n\n450\n00:19:14.510 --> 00:19:15.480\nconvinced him he had\n\n451\n00:19:15.480 --> 00:19:18.430\none more in him and I come up with the basic outline of what a product idea\n\n452\n00:19:18.430 --> 00:19:18.920\nwould look\n\n453\n00:19:18.920 --> 00:19:19.920\nlike.\n\n454\n00:19:19.920 --> 00:19:22.120\nAnd he said, okay, let s do it.\n\n455\n00:19:22.120 --> 00:19:27.180\nNow as you have made some shifts, how do you go about making strategic shifts\n\n456\n00:19:27.180 --> 00:19:27.720\nto take\n\n457\n00:19:27.720 --> 00:19:29.800\non new product categories?\n\n458\n00:19:29.800 --> 00:19:32.920\nYou know, you ve evolved your core strategy considerable.\n\n459\n00:19:32.920 --> 00:19:36.080\nWell, I think there are two pieces on the technology side.\n\n460\n00:19:36.080 --> 00:19:40.120\nEvery few years, I take the smartest technologists off site for a day or two\n\n461\n00:19:40.120 --> 00:19:40.920\nand we ll just\n\n462\n00:19:40.920 --> 00:19:43.520\ntalk about what would you do today?\n\n463\n00:19:43.520 --> 00:19:47.440\nLike we ve built work day around and you set up technologies in 2005.\n\n464\n00:19:47.440 --> 00:19:48.840\nWhat would you do differently today?\n\n465\n00:19:48.840 --> 00:19:50.840\nAnd something always comes out of that conversation.\n\n466\n00:19:50.840 --> 00:19:52.520\nIn 2010, it was mobile.\n\n467\n00:19:52.520 --> 00:19:55.600\nWell, we built the application for mobile first.\n\n468\n00:19:55.600 --> 00:19:59.120\nIn 2012, 2013, it was all about big data.\n\n469\n00:19:59.120 --> 00:20:01.320\nAnd three or four years ago, it was about machine learning.\n\n470\n00:20:01.320 --> 00:20:05.170\nAnd what we do is we take that insight about what a startup would do and we try\n\n471\n00:20:05.170 --> 00:20:06.080\nto incorporate\n\n472\n00:20:06.080 --> 00:20:07.080\nit.\n\n473\n00:20:07.080 --> 00:20:11.080\nWe rebuild things from scratch and so there s no lines of code from our product\n\n474\n00:20:11.080 --> 00:20:11.880\n15 years\n\n475\n00:20:11.880 --> 00:20:15.470\nago because we re-written everything to take account of these modern\n\n476\n00:20:15.470 --> 00:20:16.480\ntechnologies.\n\n477\n00:20:16.480 --> 00:20:19.720\nOn the expanding the footprint, we just listened to our customers.\n\n478\n00:20:19.720 --> 00:20:23.220\nWe just acquired a company called Pecan just a couple months ago that is all\n\n479\n00:20:23.220 --> 00:20:24.040\nabout employee\n\n480\n00:20:24.040 --> 00:20:28.110\nengagement and measuring how happy your employees are and how engaged they are\n\n481\n00:20:28.110 --> 00:20:28.760\nin a really\n\n482\n00:20:28.760 --> 00:20:30.360\nformulaic machine learning way.\n\n483\n00:20:30.360 --> 00:20:32.560\nIt s a really powerful application.\n\n484\n00:20:32.560 --> 00:20:37.740\nWe were dabbling in that area, but as we talked to CEOs and HR leaders,\n\n485\n00:20:37.740 --> 00:20:38.360\nespecially during\n\n486\n00:20:38.360 --> 00:20:41.380\nthe pandemic, they really wanted to get a sense of the level of engagement of\n\n487\n00:20:41.380 --> 00:20:41.720\ntheir\n\n488\n00:20:41.720 --> 00:20:42.720\nemployees.\n\n489\n00:20:42.720 --> 00:20:44.600\nThey said, what are you doing in this area?\n\n490\n00:20:44.600 --> 00:20:46.280\nAnd we looked at where too far behind.\n\n491\n00:20:46.280 --> 00:20:49.920\nSo we went on, bought this company Pecan to fill that gap.\n\n492\n00:20:49.920 --> 00:20:53.080\nAnd I think it s constantly listening to your customers.\n\n493\n00:20:53.080 --> 00:20:56.170\nThey re not going to be the ones that tell you, hey, build an in-memory\n\n494\n00:20:56.170 --> 00:20:56.920\ndatabase and\n\n495\n00:20:56.920 --> 00:20:59.000\ncome out with a new application.\n\n496\n00:20:59.000 --> 00:21:01.760\nBut if you ask them what they would like next, they ll tell you.\n\n497\n00:21:01.760 --> 00:21:05.200\nIf you re really close to their customers, they ll tell you.\n\n498\n00:21:05.200 --> 00:21:08.910\nNeil, I ve heard you talk in the past just about the importance of listening to\n\n499\n00:21:08.910 --> 00:21:09.240\nyour\n\n500\n00:21:09.240 --> 00:21:12.200\ncustomers and solving their big problems.\n\n501\n00:21:12.200 --> 00:21:16.260\nHow do you go about finding out what the most important problems are so you can\n\n502\n00:21:16.260 --> 00:21:16.960\nbe focused\n\n503\n00:21:16.960 --> 00:21:18.440\non the big ideas?\n\n504\n00:21:18.440 --> 00:21:21.840\nSo we ve got multiple ways of getting feedback from our customers.\n\n505\n00:21:21.840 --> 00:21:26.740\nWe have one called Brainstorm where any customer can log in a request and then\n\n506\n00:21:26.740 --> 00:21:27.600\nthe request\n\n507\n00:21:27.600 --> 00:21:29.200\nwill get voted on by other customers.\n\n508\n00:21:29.200 --> 00:21:33.540\nSo we ll figure out where we have some hotspots or where we might have a whole\n\n509\n00:21:33.540 --> 00:21:34.480\nor an issue.\n\n510\n00:21:34.480 --> 00:21:39.240\nThe next level down would be we have meetings of CHROs and CFOs where they give\n\n511\n00:21:39.240 --> 00:21:40.000\nus general\n\n512\n00:21:40.000 --> 00:21:42.760\nfeedback about whatever you want to move into.\n\n513\n00:21:42.760 --> 00:21:45.960\nBut then when we re designing an actual product or feature, we create design\n\n514\n00:21:45.960 --> 00:21:47.120\ngroups with our\n\n515\n00:21:47.120 --> 00:21:48.120\ncustomers.\n\n516\n00:21:48.120 --> 00:21:49.520\nWe ll look at a new area.\n\n517\n00:21:49.520 --> 00:21:52.770\nWe came out with a new product called Accounting Center which is a high volume\n\n518\n00:21:52.770 --> 00:21:53.520\naccounting engine\n\n519\n00:21:53.520 --> 00:21:55.960\nfor parsing all your accounting transactions.\n\n520\n00:21:55.960 --> 00:21:58.540\nWe looked at the customer and said, okay, we need somebody out of financial\n\n521\n00:21:58.540 --> 00:21:59.000\nservices.\n\n522\n00:21:59.000 --> 00:22:01.640\nWe need somebody out of retail, customers that are passionate about it.\n\n523\n00:22:01.640 --> 00:22:04.860\nWe collected a group of eight customers and they helped us define what they\n\n524\n00:22:04.860 --> 00:22:05.400\nneeded from\n\n525\n00:22:05.400 --> 00:22:06.400\nthe product.\n\n526\n00:22:06.400 --> 00:22:09.590\nSo we ll come out with that kernel of an idea but then we really let the\n\n527\n00:22:09.590 --> 00:22:10.480\ncustomers shape\n\n528\n00:22:10.480 --> 00:22:11.840\nwhat they want in the product.\n\n529\n00:22:11.840 --> 00:22:14.790\nThe great thing after that is if you pick the right customers, they re\n\n530\n00:22:14.790 --> 00:22:15.720\nrepresentative of\n\n531\n00:22:15.720 --> 00:22:19.460\nfuture customers but also they re really bought into it because they were part\n\n532\n00:22:19.460 --> 00:22:20.000\nof creating\n\n533\n00:22:20.000 --> 00:22:23.120\nit and it s great to have advocates like that out when you re trying to sell it\n\n534\n00:22:23.120 --> 00:22:23.400\nto a\n\n535\n00:22:23.400 --> 00:22:24.400\nnew customer.\n\n536\n00:22:24.400 --> 00:22:28.350\nYou know, you just have passed on so much credit to Dave and the partnership\n\n537\n00:22:28.350 --> 00:22:29.080\nthat you ve had\n\n538\n00:22:29.080 --> 00:22:32.640\nwith him and now you re passing on credit to your customers when you have the\n\n539\n00:22:32.640 --> 00:22:33.720\nright customers,\n\n540\n00:22:33.720 --> 00:22:35.440\nyou build your business.\n\n541\n00:22:35.440 --> 00:22:39.830\nWhen did you learn the importance of recognizing other people, celebrating\n\n542\n00:22:39.830 --> 00:22:41.160\nother people s success\n\n543\n00:22:41.160 --> 00:22:42.160\neven more than your own?\n\n544\n00:22:42.160 --> 00:22:46.800\nWell, part of the idea is also Dave.\n\n545\n00:22:46.800 --> 00:22:48.280\nAll roads lead through Dave.\n\n546\n00:22:48.280 --> 00:22:49.360\nI was very fortunate.\n\n547\n00:22:49.360 --> 00:22:55.330\nI went to work for him at 27 and I got to see a CEO who had learned a lot from\n\n548\n00:22:55.330 --> 00:22:56.160\nhis previous\n\n549\n00:22:56.160 --> 00:23:00.340\nexperiences and now he ll come up with a model of what an ideal organization\n\n550\n00:23:00.340 --> 00:23:01.000\nwould look\n\n551\n00:23:01.000 --> 00:23:02.000\nlike.\n\n552\n00:23:02.000 --> 00:23:03.000\nDave s very humble.\n\n553\n00:23:03.000 --> 00:23:06.420\nHe s one of the most humble people you ll ever come across and he s been very\n\n554\n00:23:06.420 --> 00:23:07.120\nsuccessful\n\n555\n00:23:07.120 --> 00:23:11.760\nand so after working with Dave, I would think, well, it s hard to have an ego.\n\n556\n00:23:11.760 --> 00:23:14.440\nHe doesn t have an ego so how can I have one?\n\n557\n00:23:14.440 --> 00:23:19.410\nI watched how people would react to his generosity, his nature about always\n\n558\n00:23:19.410 --> 00:23:21.040\nwanting to pass out\n\n559\n00:23:21.040 --> 00:23:24.880\ncompliments and reward people who had done a good job.\n\n560\n00:23:24.880 --> 00:23:29.630\nAnd again, it was really a forming experience for me to work at PeopleSoft with\n\n561\n00:23:29.630 --> 00:23:30.280\nDave and\n\n562\n00:23:30.280 --> 00:23:34.620\nthen I got to apply it at Workday as CEO and with Dave as my touchstone and my\n\n563\n00:23:34.620 --> 00:23:35.320\nsounding\n\n564\n00:23:35.320 --> 00:23:36.720\nboard on a lot of these decisions.\n\n565\n00:23:36.720 --> 00:23:40.610\nBut I ve just been very fortunate to have great mentors and I mentioned George\n\n566\n00:23:40.610 --> 00:23:40.960\nstill\n\n567\n00:23:40.960 --> 00:23:42.920\nalso one of those kinds of folks.\n\n568\n00:23:42.920 --> 00:23:43.920\nFantastic people.\n\n569\n00:23:43.920 --> 00:23:48.660\nYou know, and Neil, you re such an innovative company but the whole category in\n\n570\n00:23:48.660 --> 00:23:49.120\nwhat s\n\n571\n00:23:49.120 --> 00:23:53.560\ngoing on in business right now is just changing at warp speed.\n\n572\n00:23:53.560 --> 00:23:58.860\nHow do you keep you and your management team into that rat-a-tat-tat of staying\n\n573\n00:23:58.860 --> 00:23:59.360\non top\n\n574\n00:23:59.360 --> 00:24:00.360\nof what s going on?\n\n575\n00:24:00.360 --> 00:24:03.760\nWell, you know, part of it is you just have to stay connected again to your\n\n576\n00:24:03.760 --> 00:24:04.440\ncustomers.\n\n577\n00:24:04.440 --> 00:24:08.810\nAnd in my case, what I try to do is stay connected to a group of CEOs who I\n\n578\n00:24:08.810 --> 00:24:09.520\nthink are\n\n579\n00:24:09.520 --> 00:24:12.200\nat the vanguard of dealing with this change.\n\n580\n00:24:12.200 --> 00:24:15.550\nSo I think about people like Doug McMillan, Wal-Mart s our biggest customer and\n\n581\n00:24:15.550 --> 00:24:16.520\nDoug is\n\n582\n00:24:16.520 --> 00:24:17.520\na fantastic leader.\n\n583\n00:24:17.520 --> 00:24:21.340\nAnd I get a really good sense of what s happening, talking with Doug or Mary\n\n584\n00:24:21.340 --> 00:24:22.920\nBarra, GM.\n\n585\n00:24:22.920 --> 00:24:24.560\nI ve got John Donahoe at Nike.\n\n586\n00:24:24.560 --> 00:24:27.560\nWe ve got all these great folks and I just try to stay in touch with them and\n\n587\n00:24:27.560 --> 00:24:27.880\nlisten\n\n588\n00:24:27.880 --> 00:24:29.680\nbecause that s the way we can keep up with it.\n\n589\n00:24:29.680 --> 00:24:33.600\nAnd then from a technology side, you ve got to be on top of all the startups.\n\n590\n00:24:33.600 --> 00:24:36.760\nThere s so much innovation happening right now.\n\n591\n00:24:36.760 --> 00:24:39.590\nWhat I ask our team to do is, hey, you ve got to focus on what you re doing day\n\n592\n00:24:39.590 --> 00:24:40.560\nto day,\n\n593\n00:24:40.560 --> 00:24:42.880\nbut please pay attention to what s happening in the startup world.\n\n594\n00:24:42.880 --> 00:24:47.460\nAnd so we invest, I think at this point in 50, emerging technology companies\n\n595\n00:24:47.460 --> 00:24:47.920\nthat are\n\n596\n00:24:47.920 --> 00:24:52.310\nrelevant to workday, that are usually partners of some sort, it keeps us fresh\n\n597\n00:24:52.310 --> 00:24:52.920\nand we get\n\n598\n00:24:52.920 --> 00:24:55.650\nto see the new ideas because the new ideas never come from the really big\n\n599\n00:24:55.650 --> 00:24:56.280\ncompanies.\n\n600\n00:24:56.280 --> 00:24:59.080\nThe new ideas come from small startups.\n\n601\n00:24:59.080 --> 00:25:03.000\nIt s always been the case, at least in the business to business area.\n\n602\n00:25:03.000 --> 00:25:06.160\nWhat innovation today are you most excited about at Workday?\n\n603\n00:25:06.160 --> 00:25:07.640\nAnd tell us how it came about?\n\n604\n00:25:07.640 --> 00:25:10.160\nWell, probably the one that I m most excited about is one that we ve been\n\n605\n00:25:10.160 --> 00:25:10.800\nworking on for\n\n606\n00:25:10.800 --> 00:25:12.560\na while around machine learning.\n\n607\n00:25:12.560 --> 00:25:16.910\nAnd I m a big believer that there is a right partnership between humans and\n\n608\n00:25:16.910 --> 00:25:17.720\nmachines, not\n\n609\n00:25:17.720 --> 00:25:21.160\nlike Terminator where the machines are going to take over the world.\n\n610\n00:25:21.160 --> 00:25:24.580\nAnd what it is, is the partnership is built around the fact that machines are\n\n611\n00:25:24.580 --> 00:25:24.960\namazing\n\n612\n00:25:24.960 --> 00:25:29.640\nat analyzing huge amounts of information in seconds, but they have no judgment.\n\n613\n00:25:29.640 --> 00:25:33.710\nA machine now can tell you that it s going to rain in eight minutes and a human\n\n614\n00:25:33.710 --> 00:25:34.200\nknows,\n\n615\n00:25:34.200 --> 00:25:36.080\nokay, that means that you take my umbrella to work.\n\n616\n00:25:36.080 --> 00:25:39.450\nWhen we think about weather forecasts in 20 years ago, we didn t really know\n\n617\n00:25:39.450 --> 00:25:39.840\nwhat we re\n\n618\n00:25:39.840 --> 00:25:42.080\ndoing, but how we actually do.\n\n619\n00:25:42.080 --> 00:25:45.360\nAnd it s that kind of partnership where the machine will say, here s the\n\n620\n00:25:45.360 --> 00:25:46.080\nanalysis and\n\n621\n00:25:46.080 --> 00:25:47.800\nthe human being will make a decision.\n\n622\n00:25:47.800 --> 00:25:51.760\nThe machine will say, hey, your business in Japan is doing poorly.\n\n623\n00:25:51.760 --> 00:25:54.770\nHere are the top three reasons why we think that s the case or the machine\n\n624\n00:25:54.770 --> 00:25:55.400\nthinks that\n\n625\n00:25:55.400 --> 00:25:56.400\ns the case.\n\n626\n00:25:56.400 --> 00:25:58.680\nAnd then the human does the exploration to figure that out.\n\n627\n00:25:58.680 --> 00:26:02.400\nAnd I think the more and more we can get humans to be great at judgment and not\n\n628\n00:26:02.400 --> 00:26:03.120\nhave to worry\n\n629\n00:26:03.120 --> 00:26:05.640\nabout just crunching numbers where machines are good.\n\n630\n00:26:05.640 --> 00:26:07.200\nAnd I think it s really powerful.\n\n631\n00:26:07.200 --> 00:26:09.760\nWe re trying to fuse that across all of our applications.\n\n632\n00:26:09.760 --> 00:26:10.760\nAnd it s a journey.\n\n633\n00:26:10.760 --> 00:26:12.480\nWe ve been at it for four years now.\n\n634\n00:26:12.480 --> 00:26:13.480\nThere s more to do.\n\n635\n00:26:13.480 --> 00:26:17.600\nBut I think it s just part of this trend and road towards humans getting to do\n\n636\n00:26:17.600 --> 00:26:18.000\nmore and\n\n637\n00:26:18.000 --> 00:26:20.440\nmore valued work and not being replaced by machines.\n\n638\n00:26:20.440 --> 00:26:22.520\nI don t see that future.\n\n639\n00:26:22.520 --> 00:26:25.800\nAnd there s a book that s behind me called Prediction Machines.\n\n640\n00:26:25.800 --> 00:26:29.280\nI highly recommend folks read that to really get a sense of how machine\n\n641\n00:26:29.280 --> 00:26:30.080\nlearning can be\n\n642\n00:26:30.080 --> 00:26:34.920\nused in a powerful way and in a safe way and in an ethical way.\n\n643\n00:26:34.920 --> 00:26:38.680\nAnd you have these new products and these new categories that you go after.\n\n644\n00:26:38.680 --> 00:26:41.720\nWhat s absolutely critical when you assess opportunities?\n\n645\n00:26:41.720 --> 00:26:45.720\nWell, I say the number one thing is, is there a real market for it?\n\n646\n00:26:45.720 --> 00:26:48.320\nAnd again, we talked to our customers.\n\n647\n00:26:48.320 --> 00:26:51.000\nNumber two is something that we can do uniquely.\n\n648\n00:26:51.000 --> 00:26:53.930\nIf it s something that 10 other companies can do, why would someone want this\n\n649\n00:26:53.930 --> 00:26:55.440\nfrom Workday?\n\n650\n00:26:55.440 --> 00:26:58.520\nAnd then the third piece is we may be able to build it uniquely, but does it\n\n651\n00:26:58.520 --> 00:26:58.880\nfit into\n\n652\n00:26:58.880 --> 00:27:02.120\nour existing sales and marketing model?\n\n653\n00:27:02.120 --> 00:27:05.610\nAnd if it does, if those three things fit big market, something we can do\n\n654\n00:27:05.610 --> 00:27:06.520\nuniquely and\n\n655\n00:27:06.520 --> 00:27:09.000\nit fits into our sales and marketing model, we get pretty excited about it,\n\n656\n00:27:09.000 --> 00:27:09.360\nwhether we\n\n657\n00:27:09.360 --> 00:27:12.480\nre building it ourselves or whether we re doing an acquisition.\n\n658\n00:27:12.480 --> 00:27:16.010\nNeil, I loved it when you say you get together with your team and you say, what\n\n659\n00:27:16.010 --> 00:27:16.480\nwould we\n\n660\n00:27:16.480 --> 00:27:18.320\ndo if we were a startup?\n\n661\n00:27:18.320 --> 00:27:23.440\nAs you get bigger, is it harder for you to get people to think like a startup?\n\n662\n00:27:23.440 --> 00:27:24.960\nAnd how do you do it?\n\n663\n00:27:24.960 --> 00:27:27.570\nThere s always a group of engineers that want to be on the cutting edge that\n\n664\n00:27:27.570 --> 00:27:28.160\nare thinking\n\n665\n00:27:28.160 --> 00:27:29.160\nthat way.\n\n666\n00:27:29.160 --> 00:27:31.830\nI think it s making sure that you re in touch with them and that you have\n\n667\n00:27:31.830 --> 00:27:32.480\nrelationship\n\n668\n00:27:32.480 --> 00:27:36.840\nwith them and that you give them time to think about those things.\n\n669\n00:27:36.840 --> 00:27:41.360\nMicrosoft, Amazon, Apple, three amazing technology companies, they all have\n\n670\n00:27:41.360 --> 00:27:42.280\npeople who are at\n\n671\n00:27:42.280 --> 00:27:45.440\nthe innovative cutting edge, even though they re huge companies.\n\n672\n00:27:45.440 --> 00:27:47.840\nAnd so, innovators are in all companies.\n\n673\n00:27:47.840 --> 00:27:52.680\nYou just have to find out who they are and how to stay connected to them.\n\n674\n00:27:52.680 --> 00:27:56.850\nWe re definitely in an extremely competitive world and disruption is the buzz\n\n675\n00:27:56.850 --> 00:27:57.680\nword in almost\n\n676\n00:27:57.680 --> 00:27:59.560\nevery category.\n\n677\n00:27:59.560 --> 00:28:01.240\nHow do you look at competition?\n\n678\n00:28:01.240 --> 00:28:05.420\nWell, we have two very traditional competitors in SAP and Oracle and four\n\n679\n00:28:05.420 --> 00:28:06.560\nlittle companies,\n\n680\n00:28:06.560 --> 00:28:09.850\nbut we know a lot about their products and we ve been competing with them\n\n681\n00:28:09.850 --> 00:28:10.440\nacross two\n\n682\n00:28:10.440 --> 00:28:14.000\ncompanies between people so after workday, we have the same competitors.\n\n683\n00:28:14.000 --> 00:28:18.820\nAnd when Dave and I started Workday, I think a lot of folks thought we were\n\n684\n00:28:18.820 --> 00:28:20.400\ncrazy and so\n\n685\n00:28:20.400 --> 00:28:22.600\nnot a lot of startups came into our market.\n\n686\n00:28:22.600 --> 00:28:26.760\nAnd it s a big undertaking, building an ERP system, where you have to worry\n\n687\n00:28:26.760 --> 00:28:27.240\nabout HR and\n\n688\n00:28:27.240 --> 00:28:29.280\nfinancial regulations across the globe.\n\n689\n00:28:29.280 --> 00:28:31.880\nIt s not something you just build with three or four people.\n\n690\n00:28:31.880 --> 00:28:35.830\nIn terms of new competition, it s always looking at those startups and\n\n691\n00:28:35.830 --> 00:28:37.080\nunderstanding what\n\n692\n00:28:37.080 --> 00:28:38.960\nthey would do with that new technology base.\n\n693\n00:28:38.960 --> 00:28:42.340\nAnd so, today, you would start with machine learning as the underlying part of\n\n694\n00:28:42.340 --> 00:28:43.200\nyour platform.\n\n695\n00:28:43.200 --> 00:28:46.600\nYou would never build out your own data centers the way we did.\n\n696\n00:28:46.600 --> 00:28:50.360\nYou would work on Amazon or Microsoft or Google s data centers.\n\n697\n00:28:50.360 --> 00:28:54.850\nAnd so, you constantly looking for those emerging companies that might disrupt\n\n698\n00:28:54.850 --> 00:28:55.960\nyou the way,\n\n699\n00:28:55.960 --> 00:29:01.390\nfrankly, we disrupted SAP and Oracle and learn from them or in some cases,\n\n700\n00:29:01.390 --> 00:29:03.160\nacquire them.\n\n701\n00:29:03.160 --> 00:29:07.200\nYou know, I understand, Anil, that you recently became co-CEO.\n\n702\n00:29:07.200 --> 00:29:11.240\nNow, most experts say this is very difficult to play out.\n\n703\n00:29:11.240 --> 00:29:14.840\nWhy do you have the co-CEO structure?\n\n704\n00:29:14.840 --> 00:29:19.370\nWell, first and foremost, Dave and I had that structure for, I think, four\n\n705\n00:29:19.370 --> 00:29:19.960\nyears, right\n\n706\n00:29:19.960 --> 00:29:23.800\nbefore IPO through, I think, 2014.\n\n707\n00:29:23.800 --> 00:29:25.440\nIt s great having a partner.\n\n708\n00:29:25.440 --> 00:29:26.440\nDave doesn t have an ego.\n\n709\n00:29:26.440 --> 00:29:28.440\nI like to think I don t have an ego.\n\n710\n00:29:28.440 --> 00:29:33.690\nWhen two people can come together and solve problems together, it can be\n\n711\n00:29:33.690 --> 00:29:34.600\nmagical.\n\n712\n00:29:34.600 --> 00:29:39.640\nAnd after seven years of being alone as CEO, I wanted to go back to that model.\n\n713\n00:29:39.640 --> 00:29:43.570\nAnd so, we elevated a gentleman named Chana Fernandez, who was our head of\n\n714\n00:29:43.570 --> 00:29:44.240\nEurope, then\n\n715\n00:29:44.240 --> 00:29:49.520\nour head of worldwide sales, then our head of worldwide operations, co-present,\n\n716\n00:29:49.520 --> 00:29:49.720\nand now\n\n717\n00:29:49.720 --> 00:29:50.720\nhe s my co-CEO.\n\n718\n00:29:50.720 --> 00:29:53.200\nAnd he s phenomenally talented.\n\n719\n00:29:53.200 --> 00:29:57.550\nThe way we carve up the world is he really focuses on sales and customer\n\n720\n00:29:57.550 --> 00:29:58.320\nservices and\n\n721\n00:29:58.320 --> 00:29:59.760\ncustomer facing activities.\n\n722\n00:29:59.760 --> 00:30:02.920\nAnd I focus in on the products, HR and finance.\n\n723\n00:30:02.920 --> 00:30:04.520\nAnd we have a great partnership.\n\n724\n00:30:04.520 --> 00:30:08.870\nAnd I ll frankly say, especially for a B2B company where sales is such a huge\n\n725\n00:30:08.870 --> 00:30:09.360\npart of\n\n726\n00:30:09.360 --> 00:30:13.160\nwhat you do, being able to share the workload is a great thing.\n\n727\n00:30:13.160 --> 00:30:14.160\nIt s a big job.\n\n728\n00:30:14.160 --> 00:30:15.960\nI ve never run a company this big.\n\n729\n00:30:15.960 --> 00:30:18.120\nPeople s off wasn t nearly as big as workday is.\n\n730\n00:30:18.120 --> 00:30:20.770\nAnd so, when people ask me how you get along and how you do, I was like, I m\n\n731\n00:30:20.770 --> 00:30:21.280\nmaking a lot\n\n732\n00:30:21.280 --> 00:30:22.920\nof stuff up as I go.\n\n733\n00:30:22.920 --> 00:30:26.310\nAnd I ve got great mentors like our friends like Sam Palmasano and Dave Dorman,\n\n734\n00:30:26.310 --> 00:30:26.800\nwho have\n\n735\n00:30:26.800 --> 00:30:28.200\nrun companies at scale.\n\n736\n00:30:28.200 --> 00:30:31.300\nBut for me to be able to get back to the product side, which is my passion and\n\n737\n00:30:31.300 --> 00:30:32.200\nhopefully what\n\n738\n00:30:32.200 --> 00:30:35.550\nI m probably best suited for at workday and be able to have a partner in Chana,\n\n739\n00:30:35.550 --> 00:30:36.040\nit just\n\n740\n00:30:36.040 --> 00:30:37.560\nmakes the business run better.\n\n741\n00:30:37.560 --> 00:30:42.190\nYou know, Neil, I understand that you have technology that will help people\n\n742\n00:30:42.190 --> 00:30:42.880\nfigure out\n\n743\n00:30:42.880 --> 00:30:44.800\ntheir next career move.\n\n744\n00:30:44.800 --> 00:30:45.800\nHow s that possible?\n\n745\n00:30:45.800 --> 00:30:50.480\nWell, it s part of our career plan and succession planning efforts where this\n\n746\n00:30:50.480 --> 00:30:51.240\nis machine learning\n\n747\n00:30:51.240 --> 00:30:52.240\nagain at work.\n\n748\n00:30:52.240 --> 00:30:57.940\nIt will look at the person who is looking for a new opportunity and then try to\n\n749\n00:30:57.940 --> 00:30:58.360\nlook at\n\n750\n00:30:58.360 --> 00:31:01.740\npeople who have been like that over the last several years and look at the ones\n\n751\n00:31:01.740 --> 00:31:02.080\nthat have\n\n752\n00:31:02.080 --> 00:31:04.400\nbeen successful and what was their career path.\n\n753\n00:31:04.400 --> 00:31:08.800\nAnd it will then, based on previously successful career paths, make a couple of\n\n754\n00:31:08.800 --> 00:31:09.800\nrecommendations\n\n755\n00:31:09.800 --> 00:31:14.000\nto employ about what they should do next and what training they might need.\n\n756\n00:31:14.000 --> 00:31:17.150\nAnd so, it s like a machine learning based coach that s coaching you through\n\n757\n00:31:17.150 --> 00:31:17.640\nyour career\n\n758\n00:31:17.640 --> 00:31:21.520\nbased on people that have been successful in those roles in the past.\n\n759\n00:31:21.520 --> 00:31:24.960\nHow would you describe the state of the business world today and more\n\n760\n00:31:24.960 --> 00:31:26.280\nimportantly, what s it\n\n761\n00:31:26.280 --> 00:31:30.040\ngoing to take to be a truly great company going forward?\n\n762\n00:31:30.040 --> 00:31:35.530\nWell, I have to say, I am so proud of how some of the biggest companies and\n\n763\n00:31:35.530 --> 00:31:36.400\ntheir CEOs\n\n764\n00:31:36.400 --> 00:31:39.000\nhave led during this pandemic.\n\n765\n00:31:39.000 --> 00:31:42.630\nI ve always believed that business should have a soul, that we have a broader\n\n766\n00:31:42.630 --> 00:31:43.120\npurpose\n\n767\n00:31:43.120 --> 00:31:48.820\nthan just profits and in a world where there s a social crisis, a political\n\n768\n00:31:48.820 --> 00:31:49.840\ncrisis, an\n\n769\n00:31:49.840 --> 00:31:53.640\neconomic crisis, you name it, there s some sort of crisis.\n\n770\n00:31:53.640 --> 00:31:57.340\nI think business leaders stepped up and we try to be that place where at least\n\n771\n00:31:57.340 --> 00:31:58.360\nour employees\n\n772\n00:31:58.360 --> 00:32:02.440\nand our communities could feel like someone was looking out for them.\n\n773\n00:32:02.440 --> 00:32:06.750\nAnd it s leaders like I mentioned before like Doug McMillan at Walmart or John\n\n774\n00:32:06.750 --> 00:32:07.360\nDonahoe\n\n775\n00:32:07.360 --> 00:32:12.080\nat Nike or Merid Bara at GM or James Gorman at Morgan Stanley.\n\n776\n00:32:12.080 --> 00:32:16.190\nI can just keep going through that list and they led with a mindset of more\n\n777\n00:32:16.190 --> 00:32:16.680\nthan just\n\n778\n00:32:16.680 --> 00:32:19.630\nrunning the company but being good citizens in this world and taking care of\n\n779\n00:32:19.630 --> 00:32:20.360\ntheir employees\n\n780\n00:32:20.360 --> 00:32:22.440\nbut also taking care of their communities.\n\n781\n00:32:22.440 --> 00:32:24.440\nAnd I think that s the future of business going forward.\n\n782\n00:32:24.440 --> 00:32:28.220\nIt s that whole stakeholder theory discussion we ve had for the last 20 years\n\n783\n00:32:28.220 --> 00:32:28.840\nand I think\n\n784\n00:32:28.840 --> 00:32:30.000\nit s time is here.\n\n785\n00:32:30.000 --> 00:32:33.800\nAnd I know people will say that s really not important to business.\n\n786\n00:32:33.800 --> 00:32:38.840\nBusinesses needs to be focused on profits by actually having a stakeholder\n\n787\n00:32:38.840 --> 00:32:39.840\napproach, stakeholder\n\n788\n00:32:39.840 --> 00:32:43.820\nmanagement approach that s multifaceted rather than just shareholders actually\n\n789\n00:32:43.820 --> 00:32:44.280\nleads to\n\n790\n00:32:44.280 --> 00:32:45.760\na better business.\n\n791\n00:32:45.760 --> 00:32:49.360\nBetter attachment to customers, better attachment to the community.\n\n792\n00:32:49.360 --> 00:32:52.470\nEmployees that are far more engaged because they think their company is doing\n\n793\n00:32:52.470 --> 00:32:52.920\nthe right\n\n794\n00:32:52.920 --> 00:32:54.120\nthing in the community.\n\n795\n00:32:54.120 --> 00:32:57.880\nI think those things matter a lot, especially the new generation employees.\n\n796\n00:32:57.880 --> 00:33:00.720\nThey want to see how you re making the world a better place.\n\n797\n00:33:00.720 --> 00:33:04.000\nSo I m excited about where a business is today.\n\n798\n00:33:04.000 --> 00:33:10.080\nYou know, a lot of people talk about purpose and you use the word soul.\n\n799\n00:33:10.080 --> 00:33:13.760\nIs there a difference from your perspective?\n\n800\n00:33:13.760 --> 00:33:15.760\nWhy do you use the word soul?\n\n801\n00:33:15.760 --> 00:33:18.480\nBecause I think soul means you ve got a heart, right?\n\n802\n00:33:18.480 --> 00:33:19.760\nLike you ve got to care.\n\n803\n00:33:19.760 --> 00:33:23.970\nIt can t just be I have a purpose about building a certain type of company but\n\n804\n00:33:23.970 --> 00:33:24.480\nyou ve got to\n\n805\n00:33:24.480 --> 00:33:25.480\ncare.\n\n806\n00:33:25.480 --> 00:33:26.480\nYou ve got to care about your employees.\n\n807\n00:33:26.480 --> 00:33:27.480\nYou ve got to care about your customers.\n\n808\n00:33:27.480 --> 00:33:32.140\nAnd I think those all those things mean to me a soul and companies shouldn t be\n\n809\n00:33:32.140 --> 00:33:33.320\nsoulless.\n\n810\n00:33:33.320 --> 00:33:36.790\nThey should care about these things and the management team should care about\n\n811\n00:33:36.790 --> 00:33:37.480\nthese things.\n\n812\n00:33:37.480 --> 00:33:39.360\nAnd I m very proud of our management team.\n\n813\n00:33:39.360 --> 00:33:43.050\nThey care deeply about the topics that we ve been dealing with the last 18\n\n814\n00:33:43.050 --> 00:33:43.680\nmonths.\n\n815\n00:33:43.680 --> 00:33:49.040\nWe have a foundation, the Workday Foundation that s been active well before the\n\n816\n00:33:49.040 --> 00:33:49.720\npandemic\n\n817\n00:33:49.720 --> 00:33:51.720\nin creating opportunities for all.\n\n818\n00:33:51.720 --> 00:33:54.760\nOpportunity on RAMS is a program that we created and we re in HR software\n\n819\n00:33:54.760 --> 00:33:55.400\ncompanies.\n\n820\n00:33:55.400 --> 00:33:59.030\nSo we see that there s all this talent but they don t have opportunities to get\n\n821\n00:33:59.030 --> 00:33:59.520\ninto the\n\n822\n00:33:59.520 --> 00:34:00.520\ncompanies.\n\n823\n00:34:00.520 --> 00:34:04.200\nAnd so it helps vets get opportunities in companies.\n\n824\n00:34:04.200 --> 00:34:07.820\nIt helps homemakers who might not have been in the workforce the last decade\n\n825\n00:34:07.820 --> 00:34:08.360\nget into\n\n826\n00:34:08.360 --> 00:34:09.360\nthe workforce.\n\n827\n00:34:09.360 --> 00:34:12.790\nIt helps underrepresented minorities who might not have the right avenues get\n\n828\n00:34:12.790 --> 00:34:13.880\ninto the workforce.\n\n829\n00:34:13.880 --> 00:34:17.950\nAnd something that I m really proud of and I think we re making a difference\n\n830\n00:34:17.950 --> 00:34:18.560\nbut we re\n\n831\n00:34:18.560 --> 00:34:20.160\nalso helping the economy.\n\n832\n00:34:20.160 --> 00:34:24.680\nI mean it s again it s one of those things you do good but it s good to do.\n\n833\n00:34:24.680 --> 00:34:29.720\nI ve talked to a number of CEOs about Workday and it s preparation for this.\n\n834\n00:34:29.720 --> 00:34:33.930\nAnd you know you get such high marks for helping their companies get back into\n\n835\n00:34:33.930 --> 00:34:34.320\nswing\n\n836\n00:34:34.320 --> 00:34:36.280\nof things post pandemic.\n\n837\n00:34:36.280 --> 00:34:38.880\nWhat are you particularly proud of that Workday s done?\n\n838\n00:34:38.880 --> 00:34:44.110\nWell you know David so many companies, CVS and of course young brands were on\n\n839\n00:34:44.110 --> 00:34:44.720\nthe front\n\n840\n00:34:44.720 --> 00:34:46.640\nlines during this pandemic.\n\n841\n00:34:46.640 --> 00:34:49.080\nWhether they were serving food or being a drug store.\n\n842\n00:34:49.080 --> 00:34:53.610\nAnd what I m proud of is those folks were taking care of all of us and in turn\n\n843\n00:34:53.610 --> 00:34:54.480\nour employees\n\n844\n00:34:54.480 --> 00:34:58.150\nwere keeping their HR and finance operations running so they didn t have to\n\n845\n00:34:58.150 --> 00:34:58.800\nworry about\n\n846\n00:34:58.800 --> 00:35:00.760\nthem so we took care of them.\n\n847\n00:35:00.760 --> 00:35:02.950\nBut it all starts with those people who are on the front lines during this\n\n848\n00:35:02.950 --> 00:35:03.600\nreally difficult\n\n849\n00:35:03.600 --> 00:35:04.600\nperiod of time.\n\n850\n00:35:04.600 --> 00:35:08.680\nAnd I m proud of the way our employees figured it out working from home in many\n\n851\n00:35:08.680 --> 00:35:09.240\ncases to\n\n852\n00:35:09.240 --> 00:35:12.440\nsupport our customers really without missing a beat.\n\n853\n00:35:12.440 --> 00:35:17.170\nShifting gears you know you really do some fun advertising with Phil Mickelson\n\n854\n00:35:17.170 --> 00:35:18.120\nand you\n\n855\n00:35:18.120 --> 00:35:20.120\nve linked up with other golfers as well.\n\n856\n00:35:20.120 --> 00:35:23.000\nWhy Phil and why golf for Workday?\n\n857\n00:35:23.000 --> 00:35:25.400\nThe C-suite pays attention to golf.\n\n858\n00:35:25.400 --> 00:35:32.580\nThere s no better sport to reach CFOs, CHROs, CEOs, maybe F1, maybe at a lower\n\n859\n00:35:32.580 --> 00:35:34.000\nlevel tennis.\n\n860\n00:35:34.000 --> 00:35:36.880\nBut if you want to get to the decision maker, golf is a great way to do it.\n\n861\n00:35:36.880 --> 00:35:38.840\nAnd so we started down the golf program.\n\n862\n00:35:38.840 --> 00:35:42.890\nBrandt Seneca was the first person we worked with who is just a great human\n\n863\n00:35:42.890 --> 00:35:43.160\nbeing.\n\n864\n00:35:43.160 --> 00:35:47.240\nAnd then you know a chance came up with Phil and Phil is a needle mover.\n\n865\n00:35:47.240 --> 00:35:48.240\nHe s iconic.\n\n866\n00:35:48.240 --> 00:35:49.240\nHe goes by one name.\n\n867\n00:35:49.240 --> 00:35:52.440\nI don t know if it s Phil or Lefty, either one works.\n\n868\n00:35:52.440 --> 00:35:57.900\nAnd I would just say as an ambassador for Workday, he works so hard on our\n\n869\n00:35:57.900 --> 00:35:58.840\nbehalf.\n\n870\n00:35:58.840 --> 00:36:00.040\nHe never says Workday.\n\n871\n00:36:00.040 --> 00:36:01.040\nHe says we.\n\n872\n00:36:01.040 --> 00:36:04.440\nHe talks about it as if he s part of the company.\n\n873\n00:36:04.440 --> 00:36:07.180\nAnd you know the other part as you see in the ads which we didn t know when we\n\n874\n00:36:07.180 --> 00:36:07.560\nsigned\n\n875\n00:36:07.560 --> 00:36:08.880\nthem is he s a pretty funny guy.\n\n876\n00:36:08.880 --> 00:36:10.840\nHe s got a great sense of humor.\n\n877\n00:36:10.840 --> 00:36:15.320\nAnd our marketing people you know are very focused on one thing when we do an\n\n878\n00:36:15.320 --> 00:36:15.560\nad.\n\n879\n00:36:15.560 --> 00:36:16.760\nPeople don t want to watch boring ads.\n\n880\n00:36:16.760 --> 00:36:18.560\nThey want to watch something that makes them laugh.\n\n881\n00:36:18.560 --> 00:36:23.080\nHe might leave a good message but makes them laugh and Phil is really good at\n\n882\n00:36:23.080 --> 00:36:23.680\nthat.\n\n883\n00:36:23.680 --> 00:36:27.120\nA lot of his acting on TV is completely ad-libbed by him.\n\n884\n00:36:27.120 --> 00:36:31.080\nThat s great and you know it was so much fun to see him with the PGA CHA.\n\n885\n00:36:31.080 --> 00:36:33.200\nThat was a big deal for us.\n\n886\n00:36:33.200 --> 00:36:34.200\nYeah absolutely.\n\n887\n00:36:34.200 --> 00:36:38.440\nWell you had Workday plastered all around the world for sure.\n\n888\n00:36:38.440 --> 00:36:41.000\nYou know shifting gears another time here.\n\n889\n00:36:41.000 --> 00:36:43.320\nYou know I know you ve been an advisory partner.\n\n890\n00:36:43.320 --> 00:36:46.040\nYou ve mentioned this earlier at Graylock.\n\n891\n00:36:46.040 --> 00:36:49.120\nAnd you have a renowned ability to assess startups.\n\n892\n00:36:49.120 --> 00:36:54.360\nThey have what they call the Forbes Midas list and you ve been on it six times.\n\n893\n00:36:54.360 --> 00:36:57.760\nWhat would be the top three things you look for in a startup?\n\n894\n00:36:57.760 --> 00:36:59.520\nNumber one the entrepreneur.\n\n895\n00:36:59.520 --> 00:37:02.440\nThere s nothing that s going to happen great without a great entrepreneur.\n\n896\n00:37:02.440 --> 00:37:05.790\nAnd I typically like the technical entrepreneurs that are really trying to\n\n897\n00:37:05.790 --> 00:37:06.720\nsolve a problem.\n\n898\n00:37:06.720 --> 00:37:09.760\nNumber two disruptive technology.\n\n899\n00:37:09.760 --> 00:37:14.080\nIf the technology is 10% better it s not going to be enough to convince people\n\n900\n00:37:14.080 --> 00:37:14.960\nto lean SAP\n\n901\n00:37:14.960 --> 00:37:16.840\nor Oracle or IBM or a big company.\n\n902\n00:37:16.840 --> 00:37:21.040\nIt s got to be 50% better, 80% better.\n\n903\n00:37:21.040 --> 00:37:22.440\nNumber three a big market.\n\n904\n00:37:22.440 --> 00:37:26.710\nAnd I think that third part is not always easy because sometimes big markets\n\n905\n00:37:26.710 --> 00:37:27.360\njust don t\n\n906\n00:37:27.360 --> 00:37:30.200\nrepresent themselves as big markets upfront.\n\n907\n00:37:30.200 --> 00:37:33.560\nBut I found if you partner up with the right technical founders network now\n\n908\n00:37:33.560 --> 00:37:34.360\nthere are lots\n\n909\n00:37:34.360 --> 00:37:37.240\nof models that work that just happen to be my model.\n\n910\n00:37:37.240 --> 00:37:40.400\nAnd I in consumers different consumer something gets hot without a lot of\n\n911\n00:37:40.400 --> 00:37:41.280\ntechnology built\n\n912\n00:37:41.280 --> 00:37:42.280\nin it.\n\n913\n00:37:42.280 --> 00:37:43.680\nI don t know much about consumer technology.\n\n914\n00:37:43.680 --> 00:37:47.770\nI m a business to business person and that model of technologists really deep\n\n915\n00:37:47.770 --> 00:37:48.320\ntechnology\n\n916\n00:37:48.320 --> 00:37:51.840\nthat s disruptive to the existing players and a big market.\n\n917\n00:37:51.840 --> 00:37:54.280\nThe big market sounds obvious but it s not always clear.\n\n918\n00:37:54.280 --> 00:37:57.510\nI would say like in the case of Workday maybe the cloud model wasn t going to\n\n919\n00:37:57.510 --> 00:37:58.120\ntake off and\n\n920\n00:37:58.120 --> 00:38:00.120\nit s going to end up being a $100 million market.\n\n921\n00:38:00.120 --> 00:38:03.600\nAt the time we had no idea that the whole market would shift to the cloud.\n\n922\n00:38:03.600 --> 00:38:06.760\nSo you just kind of have to make leaps of faith on the market.\n\n923\n00:38:06.760 --> 00:38:11.910\nNeil, you ve had so much success but almost every leader I know as an epic fail\n\n924\n00:38:11.910 --> 00:38:12.240\nor a\n\n925\n00:38:12.240 --> 00:38:15.440\nhuge personal issue that they have to work through.\n\n926\n00:38:15.440 --> 00:38:18.840\nCould you share yours with us and what did you learn from it?\n\n927\n00:38:18.840 --> 00:38:21.080\nYou ve been outside of my golf career?\n\n928\n00:38:21.080 --> 00:38:26.600\nWell, I know you just lost a tournament in day two but let s put that aside.\n\n929\n00:38:26.600 --> 00:38:30.800\nYou know the biggest one I went through is the loss of people soft to Oracle.\n\n930\n00:38:30.800 --> 00:38:32.600\nThat was very, very personal.\n\n931\n00:38:32.600 --> 00:38:37.290\nI feel like my career and Dave s career intertwining for those seven or eight\n\n932\n00:38:37.290 --> 00:38:38.200\nyears we re working\n\n933\n00:38:38.200 --> 00:38:39.200\ntogether.\n\n934\n00:38:39.200 --> 00:38:41.240\nI didn t need to leave Greylock to go back.\n\n935\n00:38:41.240 --> 00:38:44.900\nI took a leave of absence from Greylock to go be part of the management team\n\n936\n00:38:44.900 --> 00:38:45.360\nrunning\n\n937\n00:38:45.360 --> 00:38:49.560\nPeopleSoft in the middle of a hustle takeover for $1 a year salary.\n\n938\n00:38:49.560 --> 00:38:54.160\nI did it because I love Dave and Dave asked me to go back with them and I\n\n939\n00:38:54.160 --> 00:38:54.640\nthought we d\n\n940\n00:38:54.640 --> 00:38:55.640\nwin.\n\n941\n00:38:55.640 --> 00:38:58.720\nAnd you know we didn t.\n\n942\n00:38:58.720 --> 00:38:59.720\nIt was heart wrenching.\n\n943\n00:38:59.720 --> 00:39:03.250\nPeopleSoft stood for all the core values that you and I have talked about today\n\n944\n00:39:03.250 --> 00:39:03.600\nand to\n\n945\n00:39:03.600 --> 00:39:06.360\nsee the company go was heart wrenching.\n\n946\n00:39:06.360 --> 00:39:08.520\nAnd also you just felt like you lost.\n\n947\n00:39:08.520 --> 00:39:10.160\nYou just right on lost.\n\n948\n00:39:10.160 --> 00:39:14.160\nAnd there was no way to recover.\n\n949\n00:39:14.160 --> 00:39:15.880\nAnd it was a long three months.\n\n950\n00:39:15.880 --> 00:39:17.440\nDave and I both got the flu.\n\n951\n00:39:17.440 --> 00:39:21.360\nI think we re just still run down trying to run a company in the hustle\n\n952\n00:39:21.360 --> 00:39:22.200\ntakeover.\n\n953\n00:39:22.200 --> 00:39:24.520\nBut you know that was the classic Phoenix story.\n\n954\n00:39:24.520 --> 00:39:27.000\nWhat happened was workday rose from the ashes.\n\n955\n00:39:27.000 --> 00:39:32.900\nIf workday hadn t gotten created I would still be living through that last six\n\n956\n00:39:32.900 --> 00:39:33.320\nmonths\n\n957\n00:39:33.320 --> 00:39:34.840\nof people soft because I love that company.\n\n958\n00:39:34.840 --> 00:39:36.560\nI love all the folks that were there.\n\n959\n00:39:36.560 --> 00:39:40.920\nHow did you maintain or get your positive person?\n\n960\n00:39:40.920 --> 00:39:43.680\nDid you lose your positive attitude during that period?\n\n961\n00:39:43.680 --> 00:39:46.240\nHow did you get your positive mindset back?\n\n962\n00:39:46.240 --> 00:39:48.640\nI had moments where I was depressed.\n\n963\n00:39:48.640 --> 00:39:51.400\nI listened to a lot of music that was inspirational and I watched.\n\n964\n00:39:51.400 --> 00:39:55.560\nI like a certain type of movie that is a true story that s inspirational like\n\n965\n00:39:55.560 --> 00:39:56.040\nSeabus\n\n966\n00:39:56.040 --> 00:39:58.560\nget or Greatest Game Ever Played.\n\n967\n00:39:58.560 --> 00:40:02.400\nI just watched those movies that said, hey you know we might have lost the\n\n968\n00:40:02.400 --> 00:40:03.000\nbattle but\n\n969\n00:40:03.000 --> 00:40:04.160\nthe war is just beginning.\n\n970\n00:40:04.160 --> 00:40:05.160\nI hate that.\n\n971\n00:40:05.160 --> 00:40:10.280\nIt s just a chapter and I need to move on from this chapter.\n\n972\n00:40:10.280 --> 00:40:13.830\nMy girlfriend at the time who s now my wife was also very supportive of what I\n\n973\n00:40:13.830 --> 00:40:14.440\nwas going\n\n974\n00:40:14.440 --> 00:40:15.440\nthrough.\n\n975\n00:40:15.440 --> 00:40:18.400\nShe knew it was painful but I tried to exercise a lot and just try to do\n\n976\n00:40:18.400 --> 00:40:19.320\nanything to get my\n\n977\n00:40:19.320 --> 00:40:21.820\nmind off of it because it was just really hard.\n\n978\n00:40:21.820 --> 00:40:24.880\nYeah I can tell it was definitely painful.\n\n979\n00:40:24.880 --> 00:40:27.960\nNeil I m a big believer in self coaching.\n\n980\n00:40:27.960 --> 00:40:32.860\nHow do you build self awareness and determine how to take your game to the next\n\n981\n00:40:32.860 --> 00:40:33.520\nlevel?\n\n982\n00:40:33.520 --> 00:40:36.360\nYou know I think number one you have to have a great relationship with the\n\n983\n00:40:36.360 --> 00:40:37.280\npeople that work\n\n984\n00:40:37.280 --> 00:40:39.240\nfor you and with you.\n\n985\n00:40:39.240 --> 00:40:43.640\nI ask on a regular basis maybe I don t always get great feedback or honest\n\n986\n00:40:43.640 --> 00:40:44.560\nfeedback but I\n\n987\n00:40:44.560 --> 00:40:49.240\nhope to get feedback from the people I work with on a day to day basis.\n\n988\n00:40:49.240 --> 00:40:52.720\nThen I surround myself with mentors who have no problem giving me direct\n\n989\n00:40:52.720 --> 00:40:53.720\nfeedback whether\n\n990\n00:40:53.720 --> 00:40:58.970\nit s George Still, Chairman Payne, Stan Pommesano, you know, Colin Urey said\n\n991\n00:40:58.970 --> 00:41:00.080\nall these people\n\n992\n00:41:00.080 --> 00:41:05.430\nI admire and look up to in some way or another involved with work down and I ll\n\n993\n00:41:05.430 --> 00:41:06.080\njust ask\n\n994\n00:41:06.080 --> 00:41:07.560\nthem how are we doing?\n\n995\n00:41:07.560 --> 00:41:09.280\nHow am I doing?\n\n996\n00:41:09.280 --> 00:41:10.480\nYou saw me in the rack of my team.\n\n997\n00:41:10.480 --> 00:41:11.480\nWhat can I do better?\n\n998\n00:41:11.480 --> 00:41:15.320\nSo I think it s always asking questions and listening.\n\n999\n00:41:15.320 --> 00:41:19.560\nI know you also mentor others and coach others.\n\n1000\n00:41:19.560 --> 00:41:22.200\nWhat s a one on one coaching session like with you?\n\n1001\n00:41:22.200 --> 00:41:24.200\nI just ask a lot of questions.\n\n1002\n00:41:24.200 --> 00:41:27.720\nWhat are you trying to be as a leader or who you re trying to be as a leader?\n\n1003\n00:41:27.720 --> 00:41:28.720\nWhere do you think you re doing well?\n\n1004\n00:41:28.720 --> 00:41:29.720\nWhere do you think you re not doing well?\n\n1005\n00:41:29.720 --> 00:41:33.160\nLet s talk about some recent examples.\n\n1006\n00:41:33.160 --> 00:41:38.140\nWhere is it that you want to be in a year or five years and aspirational kind\n\n1007\n00:41:38.140 --> 00:41:39.200\nof discussion\n\n1008\n00:41:39.200 --> 00:41:43.760\nand let people talk and just out of the conversation, good comes out of it.\n\n1009\n00:41:43.760 --> 00:41:46.720\nThen I try to suggest my books to read.\n\n1010\n00:41:46.720 --> 00:41:51.540\nWorkday is built around the good to great concept that Jim Collins, he wrote\n\n1011\n00:41:51.540 --> 00:41:52.120\nseveral\n\n1012\n00:41:52.120 --> 00:41:56.150\ngreat books and everyone he comes out with is something that Dave and I read\n\n1013\n00:41:56.150 --> 00:41:56.760\nand refer\n\n1014\n00:41:56.760 --> 00:42:00.190\nback to and a lot of good to great is not just about how to build a great\n\n1015\n00:42:00.190 --> 00:42:00.880\ncompany but\n\n1016\n00:42:00.880 --> 00:42:04.980\nhow to be a great manager, how do you be a level five manager, someone that\n\n1017\n00:42:04.980 --> 00:42:05.320\ndeflects\n\n1018\n00:42:05.320 --> 00:42:07.880\ncredit and absorbs blame.\n\n1019\n00:42:07.880 --> 00:42:11.360\nThat s the epitome of a great leader.\n\n1020\n00:42:11.360 --> 00:42:13.720\nSometimes when you read those books, it just reminds you of those principles.\n\n1021\n00:42:13.720 --> 00:42:17.190\nThat s why I always have my three or four books I recommend to someone who is\n\n1022\n00:42:17.190 --> 00:42:17.760\naspiring\n\n1023\n00:42:17.760 --> 00:42:19.240\nto be a great manager.\n\n1024\n00:42:19.240 --> 00:42:22.280\nNeil, I m having so much fun with this conversation.\n\n1025\n00:42:22.280 --> 00:42:24.560\nI d like to have some more here.\n\n1026\n00:42:24.560 --> 00:42:26.960\nYou up for a quick lightning round of questions.\n\n1027\n00:42:26.960 --> 00:42:27.960\nSure.\n\n1028\n00:42:27.960 --> 00:42:33.000\nOkay, three words that best describe you.\n\n1029\n00:42:33.000 --> 00:42:34.000\nOptimistic.\n\n1030\n00:42:34.000 --> 00:42:40.950\nI don t know how to say it in one word, but I ll say family and hopefully\n\n1031\n00:42:40.950 --> 00:42:41.480\neverybody\n\n1032\n00:42:41.480 --> 00:42:43.240\nwill agree fun.\n\n1033\n00:42:43.240 --> 00:42:44.680\nI would agree with that.\n\n1034\n00:42:44.680 --> 00:42:48.840\nIf you could be someone beside yourself for a day, who would it be and why?\n\n1035\n00:42:48.840 --> 00:42:52.080\nI ll look like Phil Mickelson.\n\n1036\n00:42:52.080 --> 00:42:53.080\nAnd I know why.\n\n1037\n00:42:53.080 --> 00:42:57.160\nI m a lefty golfer too.\n\n1038\n00:42:57.160 --> 00:43:02.480\nJust experience hitting the ball like that one time in front of 20,000 people\n\n1039\n00:43:02.480 --> 00:43:03.000\nand the\n\n1040\n00:43:03.000 --> 00:43:04.560\nshot actually worked.\n\n1041\n00:43:04.560 --> 00:43:05.720\nI think that would be pretty cool.\n\n1042\n00:43:05.720 --> 00:43:09.320\nI wouldn t even need to be a day or just be a couple of shots.\n\n1043\n00:43:09.320 --> 00:43:13.720\nWhat s something about you that few people would know?\n\n1044\n00:43:13.720 --> 00:43:16.360\nMy favorite food is pizza.\n\n1045\n00:43:16.360 --> 00:43:20.140\nAs I travel visiting our customers, the first thing that I try to do is find\n\n1046\n00:43:20.140 --> 00:43:20.920\nthe best local\n\n1047\n00:43:20.920 --> 00:43:21.920\npizza joint.\n\n1048\n00:43:21.920 --> 00:43:25.250\nAnd then have a journal from all the pizza joints I ve visited across the\n\n1049\n00:43:25.250 --> 00:43:25.880\ncountry.\n\n1050\n00:43:25.880 --> 00:43:27.720\nSounds like a good book to be.\n\n1051\n00:43:27.720 --> 00:43:30.720\nDo you have any hidden talents?\n\n1052\n00:43:30.720 --> 00:43:32.720\nNot that I know of.\n\n1053\n00:43:32.720 --> 00:43:35.600\nWhat s your biggest pet peeve?\n\n1054\n00:43:35.600 --> 00:43:37.320\nYou know, probably ego.\n\n1055\n00:43:37.320 --> 00:43:42.320\nFor me again, growing up with Dave, I pride myself on being confident and not\n\n1056\n00:43:42.320 --> 00:43:43.320\nhaving ego.\n\n1057\n00:43:43.320 --> 00:43:46.160\nYou can be confident but not have a huge ego.\n\n1058\n00:43:46.160 --> 00:43:48.480\nAnd I think egos are pretty off putting.\n\n1059\n00:43:48.480 --> 00:43:50.520\nA favorite interview question.\n\n1060\n00:43:50.520 --> 00:43:56.520\nWhat s your favorite movie?\n\n1061\n00:43:56.520 --> 00:43:58.920\nAnd funniest thing that ever happened to you?\n\n1062\n00:43:58.920 --> 00:44:01.320\nI ve got so many things.\n\n1063\n00:44:01.320 --> 00:44:05.710\nWell, when I was an electrical engineer, I was always better at the software\n\n1064\n00:44:05.710 --> 00:44:06.120\nside than\n\n1065\n00:44:06.120 --> 00:44:08.600\nI was the chipboard side.\n\n1066\n00:44:08.600 --> 00:44:12.560\nAnd once during an experiment, I actually wired my chipboard properly but I\n\n1067\n00:44:12.560 --> 00:44:13.000\nwired the\n\n1068\n00:44:13.000 --> 00:44:16.120\ncapacitor boot between positive and negative.\n\n1069\n00:44:16.120 --> 00:44:23.120\nAnd a puff of smoke rose off the board and it set off the water sprinklers.\n\n1070\n00:44:23.120 --> 00:44:26.120\nThat s what I thought.\n\n1071\n00:44:26.120 --> 00:44:27.560\nMaybe I should do software.\n\n1072\n00:44:27.560 --> 00:44:29.120\nThat s hard where things don t work out.\n\n1073\n00:44:29.120 --> 00:44:30.960\nI almost set the lab on fire.\n\n1074\n00:44:30.960 --> 00:44:32.120\nThat was fun.\n\n1075\n00:44:32.120 --> 00:44:33.120\nYou know, thanks for that.\n\n1076\n00:44:33.120 --> 00:44:37.500\nNow, what three bits of advice would you give to all the aspiring leaders that\n\n1077\n00:44:37.500 --> 00:44:38.200\nare listening\n\n1078\n00:44:38.200 --> 00:44:40.320\nin right now?\n\n1079\n00:44:40.320 --> 00:44:44.200\nI would start with separate out being a manager from being a leader.\n\n1080\n00:44:44.200 --> 00:44:45.920\nThere are two different things.\n\n1081\n00:44:45.920 --> 00:44:47.480\nYou need to be both.\n\n1082\n00:44:47.480 --> 00:44:49.240\nBut a leader is inspirational.\n\n1083\n00:44:49.240 --> 00:44:51.240\nHow are you going to inspire your team?\n\n1084\n00:44:51.240 --> 00:44:53.080\nHow are you going to set ambitious goals?\n\n1085\n00:44:53.080 --> 00:44:58.400\nAnd the way you get there, number one, is being empathetic.\n\n1086\n00:44:58.400 --> 00:45:00.040\nListen to your employees.\n\n1087\n00:45:00.040 --> 00:45:01.760\nListen to what s important to them.\n\n1088\n00:45:01.760 --> 00:45:03.400\nYou know, understand what s important to work.\n\n1089\n00:45:03.400 --> 00:45:06.560\nWe also understand what s important to them at home.\n\n1090\n00:45:06.560 --> 00:45:10.890\nAnd that will help you get that loyalty and get those folks to be really\n\n1091\n00:45:10.890 --> 00:45:11.760\nfocused on the\n\n1092\n00:45:11.760 --> 00:45:14.120\ninspirational goals that you have in front of you.\n\n1093\n00:45:14.120 --> 00:45:15.480\nSo that would be empathy.\n\n1094\n00:45:15.480 --> 00:45:17.240\nNumber two would be set goals.\n\n1095\n00:45:17.240 --> 00:45:20.090\nTo me organizations that come across the goals are diffused or they are not\n\n1096\n00:45:20.090 --> 00:45:21.160\nreally achievable,\n\n1097\n00:45:21.160 --> 00:45:22.400\nset specific goals.\n\n1098\n00:45:22.400 --> 00:45:25.880\nAnd probably the third part is get a mentor.\n\n1099\n00:45:25.880 --> 00:45:28.440\nAnd there are so many great mentors out there.\n\n1100\n00:45:28.440 --> 00:45:30.480\nI have been a great beneficiary.\n\n1101\n00:45:30.480 --> 00:45:33.820\nI am sometimes known as someone that collects mentors and I will keep\n\n1102\n00:45:33.820 --> 00:45:34.840\ncollecting mentors\n\n1103\n00:45:34.840 --> 00:45:37.600\nbecause I learned something different from all of them.\n\n1104\n00:45:37.600 --> 00:45:41.590\nYou can either go through the world and make mistakes on your own and figure\n\n1105\n00:45:41.590 --> 00:45:42.160\nout after\n\n1106\n00:45:42.160 --> 00:45:45.620\nthe fact or you can learn a lot from the mistakes that other people have made\n\n1107\n00:45:45.620 --> 00:45:46.280\nand focus in\n\n1108\n00:45:46.280 --> 00:45:48.120\non making new mistakes.\n\n1109\n00:45:48.120 --> 00:45:50.440\nBut let s not make the ones that other folks who are already made who are\n\n1110\n00:45:50.440 --> 00:45:50.960\nwilling to be\n\n1111\n00:45:50.960 --> 00:45:54.360\nmentors and can help you be great leaders.\n\n1112\n00:45:54.360 --> 00:46:00.320\nYou mentioned home and you have so many irons in the fire and eels.\n\n1113\n00:46:00.320 --> 00:46:05.560\nHow do you go about balancing work and family at home?\n\n1114\n00:46:05.560 --> 00:46:07.760\nWell I would say before the pandemic it was a challenge.\n\n1115\n00:46:07.760 --> 00:46:13.000\nI was on the road a lot and my wife would schedule a night or two where I would\n\n1116\n00:46:13.000 --> 00:46:13.320\nbe around\n\n1117\n00:46:13.320 --> 00:46:18.920\nfor dinner and then during the pandemic I was around for dinner every day.\n\n1118\n00:46:18.920 --> 00:46:22.900\nIt is finding a balance where I need to travel for work but family is really\n\n1119\n00:46:22.900 --> 00:46:23.720\nimportant so\n\n1120\n00:46:23.720 --> 00:46:26.840\nI try to devote weekends to family.\n\n1121\n00:46:26.840 --> 00:46:31.010\nAnd a big part of having a co-CEO now is I don t have to be on the road through\n\n1122\n00:46:31.010 --> 00:46:31.320\nweeks\n\n1123\n00:46:31.320 --> 00:46:32.320\nout of four.\n\n1124\n00:46:32.320 --> 00:46:37.320\nI can spend time with my wonderful wife Alison and our two kids.\n\n1125\n00:46:37.320 --> 00:46:41.280\nAnd last but not least when you look out into the future what s the unfinished\n\n1126\n00:46:41.280 --> 00:46:41.840\nbusiness\n\n1127\n00:46:41.840 --> 00:46:44.120\nfor you as a leader?\n\n1128\n00:46:44.120 --> 00:46:47.500\nThe tech companies that we measure ourselves just keep getting bigger and\n\n1129\n00:46:47.500 --> 00:46:48.440\nbigger and bigger.\n\n1130\n00:46:48.440 --> 00:46:51.520\nBut I think Workday is this company that does business the right way that takes\n\n1131\n00:46:51.520 --> 00:46:51.760\ncare\n\n1132\n00:46:51.760 --> 00:46:55.080\nof its employees and takes care of its customers and I want to see it have an\n\n1133\n00:46:55.080 --> 00:46:56.800\nindependent future\n\n1134\n00:46:56.800 --> 00:47:01.330\nand we re on that path I think in three or four years we ll get to 10 billion\n\n1135\n00:47:01.330 --> 00:47:02.160\nin revenues\n\n1136\n00:47:02.160 --> 00:47:05.110\nand at that point I think we have secured our future and that s really\n\n1137\n00:47:05.110 --> 00:47:05.840\nimportant to me.\n\n1138\n00:47:05.840 --> 00:47:09.860\nI want to be that independent company the way in today s world of applications\n\n1139\n00:47:09.860 --> 00:47:10.400\ncompany\n\n1140\n00:47:10.400 --> 00:47:16.280\nstill forces now on that path adobe s on that path and I hope we re next.\n\n1141\n00:47:16.280 --> 00:47:20.860\nWell I m sure with you at the leadership as a co-CEO and just the founder that\n\n1142\n00:47:20.860 --> 00:47:21.320\nyou have\n\n1143\n00:47:21.320 --> 00:47:25.930\nbeen Workday s best days are ahead of them and Neil I want to thank you so much\n\n1144\n00:47:25.930 --> 00:47:26.640\nfor taking\n\n1145\n00:47:26.640 --> 00:47:29.880\nthe time and thank you so much for the candor that you ve had in this\n\n1146\n00:47:29.880 --> 00:47:31.360\nconversation of ours.\n\n1147\n00:47:31.360 --> 00:47:32.600\nThat s great to be with you David.\n\n1148\n00:47:32.600 --> 00:47:46.360\nYou know having my conversation with the Neil was like having the conversation\n\n1149\n00:47:46.360 --> 00:47:46.640\nwith\n\n1150\n00:47:46.640 --> 00:47:47.640\nthe brother.\n\n1151\n00:47:47.640 --> 00:47:51.200\nWe are absolutely philosophically aligned.\n\n1152\n00:47:51.200 --> 00:47:55.580\nPeople are absolutely the most important thing you can focus on and the way how\n\n1153\n00:47:55.580 --> 00:47:56.160\nI really\n\n1154\n00:47:56.160 --> 00:48:01.380\nwanted to drive that home was using recognition as our number one behavior, our\n\n1155\n00:48:01.380 --> 00:48:02.120\nnumber one\n\n1156\n00:48:02.120 --> 00:48:05.960\ncore value and I knew that I had to lead the way.\n\n1157\n00:48:05.960 --> 00:48:09.920\nThat s why I created the personal recognition award, my walk the talk teeth and\n\n1158\n00:48:09.920 --> 00:48:10.440\nwhen I would\n\n1159\n00:48:10.440 --> 00:48:13.200\nsee somebody doing something great I would recognize them.\n\n1160\n00:48:13.200 --> 00:48:14.880\nI d take my walk a talk teeth out.\n\n1161\n00:48:14.880 --> 00:48:16.080\nI d ride on top of it.\n\n1162\n00:48:16.080 --> 00:48:17.080\nI d number it.\n\n1163\n00:48:17.080 --> 00:48:20.080\nI d take a picture of the person and say hey I m going to send you a picture.\n\n1164\n00:48:20.080 --> 00:48:23.570\nYou can do whatever you want but I m going to put your picture on my wall in my\n\n1165\n00:48:23.570 --> 00:48:24.080\noffice\n\n1166\n00:48:24.080 --> 00:48:28.080\nbecause what you re doing is what s making our company great.\n\n1167\n00:48:28.080 --> 00:48:32.380\nAnd guess what happened? I filled the walls in my office with people that I\n\n1168\n00:48:32.380 --> 00:48:33.080\nrecognized\n\n1169\n00:48:33.080 --> 00:48:36.980\nall around the world and when I was running out of wall space people said hey\n\n1170\n00:48:36.980 --> 00:48:37.600\nDavid what\n\n1171\n00:48:37.600 --> 00:48:38.600\nare you going to do next?\n\n1172\n00:48:38.600 --> 00:48:42.100\nAnd I said just start looking up because I m going to start putting pictures of\n\n1173\n00:48:42.100 --> 00:48:42.520\npeople\n\n1174\n00:48:42.520 --> 00:48:46.520\nthat I recognize on the ceiling which is exactly what I did.\n\n1175\n00:48:46.520 --> 00:48:47.840\nBut let me tell you something.\n\n1176\n00:48:47.840 --> 00:48:50.520\nPeople love to come into the CEO s office.\n\n1177\n00:48:50.520 --> 00:48:53.640\nThe reason is they kind of want to learn about the person.\n\n1178\n00:48:53.640 --> 00:48:54.760\nWell let me tell you something.\n\n1179\n00:48:54.760 --> 00:48:58.220\nI wanted people to learn about what makes our company tick when they walked\n\n1180\n00:48:58.220 --> 00:48:59.320\ninto my office\n\n1181\n00:48:59.320 --> 00:49:03.920\nand it wasn t me it was the people that we re recognizing all around the world.\n\n1182\n00:49:03.920 --> 00:49:08.830\nNow the good news is I cast a shadow and other people followed and everybody\n\n1183\n00:49:08.830 --> 00:49:09.280\nelse in the\n\n1184\n00:49:09.280 --> 00:49:13.510\ncompany started developing their own individual recognition award and doing\n\n1185\n00:49:13.510 --> 00:49:15.360\nrecognition themselves.\n\n1186\n00:49:15.360 --> 00:49:19.760\nAnd that s how it really became something that young brands actually became\n\n1187\n00:49:19.760 --> 00:49:20.760\nfamous for.\n\n1188\n00:49:20.760 --> 00:49:24.800\nWe got all kinds of accolades, other companies best practiced us because they\n\n1189\n00:49:24.800 --> 00:49:25.800\nwanted to learn\n\n1190\n00:49:25.800 --> 00:49:28.760\nhow we used recognition to drive results.\n\n1191\n00:49:28.760 --> 00:49:31.480\nAnd we got great results at young brands.\n\n1192\n00:49:31.480 --> 00:49:34.680\nNow I don t know about you but I love that quote.\n\n1193\n00:49:34.680 --> 00:49:38.040\nYou cannot be what you cannot see.\n\n1194\n00:49:38.040 --> 00:49:42.440\nThat concept applies to us this week in that you cannot expect your team to do\n\n1195\n00:49:42.440 --> 00:49:43.080\nthings that\n\n1196\n00:49:43.080 --> 00:49:45.240\nyou re not going to do yourself.\n\n1197\n00:49:45.240 --> 00:49:49.480\nYou have to live out your core values if you want anyone to follow you.\n\n1198\n00:49:49.480 --> 00:49:52.280\nDo you want your core values to simply be forgotten?\n\n1199\n00:49:52.280 --> 00:49:54.200\nOf course you don t.\n\n1200\n00:49:54.200 --> 00:49:58.430\nI ve got to tell you it s really up to you as the leader to make sure that\n\n1201\n00:49:58.430 --> 00:49:59.520\ndoesn t happen\n\n1202\n00:49:59.520 --> 00:50:02.880\nby living your core values every single day.\n\n1203\n00:50:02.880 --> 00:50:04.840\nSo here s what I want you to do.\n\n1204\n00:50:04.840 --> 00:50:08.520\nI want you to pull out that list of core values that you have in your company\n\n1205\n00:50:08.520 --> 00:50:08.960\nor you\n\n1206\n00:50:08.960 --> 00:50:10.960\ncreated for your team.\n\n1207\n00:50:10.960 --> 00:50:14.520\nWhich are the one or two that you re going to put time and energy into this\n\n1208\n00:50:14.520 --> 00:50:14.960\nweek?\n\n1209\n00:50:14.960 --> 00:50:18.120\nHow are you going to prioritize these on your calendar?\n\n1210\n00:50:18.120 --> 00:50:22.600\nThis simple exercise really matters because what we learned today is that great\n\n1211\n00:50:22.600 --> 00:50:23.140\nleaders\n\n1212\n00:50:23.140 --> 00:50:25.960\nwalk the talk of their core values.\n\n1213\n00:50:25.960 --> 00:50:29.800\nThanks again for tuning in to another episode of How Leaders Lead where every\n\n1214\n00:50:29.800 --> 00:50:30.600\nThursday you\n\n1215\n00:50:30.600 --> 00:50:34.560\nget to listen in while I interview some of the best leaders in the world.\n\n1216\n00:50:34.560 --> 00:50:38.590\nI make it a point to give you something simple on each episode that you can\n\n1217\n00:50:38.590 --> 00:50:39.440\napply in your\n\n1218\n00:50:39.440 --> 00:50:43.160\nbusiness so that you will become the best leader you can be.\n\n1219\n00:50:43.160 --> 00:50:44.000\nSee you next week.\n\n1220\n00:50:44.000 --> 00:50:54.000\n[BLANK_AUDIO]\n\n1221\n00:50:54.000 --> 00:51:04.000\n[BLANK_AUDIO]","

David Novak 0:04

Welcome to How leaders lead where every week you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world, I break down the key learning so that by the end of the episode, you'll have something simple that you can apply as you develop into a better leader. That's what this podcast is all about. Today's guest is Neil bougie, the co founder and chairman and CO CEO of Workday, with a Neil started workday with David Duffield, they defined a handful of core values for their company. Now, this is pretty common practice for business leaders. But here's the problem. A lot of leaders write down the company values and never think about them again. They even laminate them, put them up on the wall, but I gotta tell you, all they do is collect dust. But that wasn't the case with a Neil and his co founder Dave Duffield, they decided that investing in their people was going to be the number one value at their company. So how did they live out that value? Well, believe it or not, they personally interviewed the first 500 team members they hired. Now that's something that says they value people over anything else. The key lesson here is that they align their schedules and their priorities with the company's number one value. You see, the great leaders I know walk the talk of their core values. They just don't write them down and forget them. They actually use their core values to dictate how they spend their time, and how they focus their energy. We have a lot to learn from today's conversation. So let's get right to it. Here's my conversation with my good friend Han soon to be yours, Anil Versary, the co founder and CEO of Workday.

Neal, you're a good friend, I can't thank you enough for taking the time to be on this show.

Aneel Bhusri 1:56

It's always great to be with you, David.

David Novak 2:00

You've built one heck of a company. I mean, workday is just a fabulous company. Could you start just by giving our listeners a snapshot of the scope of your company today.

Aneel Bhusri 2:11

So we started the company in 2005. And what we saw was this opportunity to take the legacy HR and ERP applications into this new model called Software as a Service, now called Cloud, and it covers the areas of human resources, payroll, talent management, financials procurement. And specifically for higher ed, we actually have a student system business and we really target medium and large companies, half of the Fortune 500 actually uses workday in some way or another.

David Novak 2:43

Well, I know Yum, brands. When I was CEO, we used you and you did a fantastic job. We certainly appreciated that. You know, Neil, I can't wait to really dig into how you lead. But first, tell us a story about your childhood that really shaped the kind of leader that you've become.

Aneel Bhusri 2:59

Well, I was fortunate to have wonderful parents. They were immigrants from India, they came in the 1960s, my dad with $400 in his pocket and made a life for himself. And for all of us by working hard. He was an electrical engineer. Now he's probably the reason I didn't go into engineering because it wasn't the smartest him. But I just watched the way he raised our family and the way that he was always about values. And I've always gravitated towards leaders and individuals like you, David, that are values driven. And it's it starts with my parents. I grew up on the East Coast in New Jersey and Boston. And the other defining thing is, I loved sports. And I played them all. Not all well, but I played them a whole baseball, basketball, tennis I stuck with tennis. That was also a defining experience just to be competitive at a young age.

David Novak 3:47

You'll I know you love winning, and I know you probably hate losing but which one really drives your your success and how you go after things.

Aneel Bhusri 3:57

Well, I like to win by like to win with grace and being a sportsman. I think that's everything. And that's why you and I have this passion for golf. It's not just about winning. It's the sportsmanship. It's the camaraderie, golf, the one sport where you can actually call a penalty on yourself. I just think it's such a great sport for values. So I like to win but when the right way. I also think in business, there's a lot of chances to do win wins. You don't have to be win lose in sports you do but in business, you can be win win.

David Novak 4:27

You know, you mentioned earlier, your dad was a electrical engineer, and I saw where you got a degree in electrical engineering at Brown. You know, how did you find that that has helped you along in your business career? Well, it's

Aneel Bhusri 4:38

a great background for number one understanding technology. And back then electrical engineering included software, I'm old enough where they didn't have a specific software to increase. So that was just an emerging category. So I did a lot of software and that has served me well. But also electrical engineering is a lot about problem solving. And in business, they're just problems that come up on a pretty regular basis. says, you need to know math really well, especially for a public company and with the financial statements and then problem solving. And I feel like engineering prepared me for both.

David Novak 5:09

Now I know you got your MBA at Stanford, you know, which is a hotbed for entrepreneurs. Did you always have it in the back of your mind that you wanted to start your own company someday?

Aneel Bhusri 5:18

You know, I actually wanted to go work at Apple. So I was working at Morgan Stanley, between college and business school had a great experience. And I was always lured out west, I came out to visit San Francisco once I thought, Wow, this place is pretty cool. And when I got out here, my goal was to get a job at Apple upon graduation, and I never did, but I always wanted to work at a cool technology company. At that time, the coolest company was apple. Instead, I veered off into the world of HR and financial software, because I met this amazing guy, Dave Duffield,

David Novak 5:52

you know, and Dave was the founder of PeopleSoft. And he hired you right out of business school, as I understand it, and you were the company's first planning director. Tell us about how you thought about that decision. And what made you want to work for Dave, why was he somebody you wanted to hook up with?

Aneel Bhusri 6:08

I get goosebumps just thinking about it. So I was pretty set to go back to the east coast and work at a venture capital firm, it would have been a good decision. But it wasn't the right decision for me. And I kind of knew it. And I ran into a mutual friend of ours, George Phil, who had been my mentor over the summer between years of business school, at Burger King near a Costco where I was doing the weekly Costco run for my roommates and I, and he convinced me to go see Dave. And so I went to go see Dave. And you know, here's the guy that's already had quite a bit of success. PeopleSoft was already a public company. And he took me out for a beer. And after an hour, in an interview, he said, You know, I don't know what I'm what I'm going to do with you. But why don't you take a break for a couple months, when you come back? I'll figure it out. And you know, the rest is history. We've been together now for almost 30 years. And I just thought, This guy's an amazing guy. I can learn a lot from him. He's great entrepreneurs and software. I also thought HR and financial software, not a big market, I'll probably do this for a couple years and go do something else. 30 years later, I'm still doing a ton financial software. And the rest of the story is

David Novak 7:17

so you, they've hired you, you go to PeopleSoft, you're their first planning director, and then you rise within that company to vice chairman. Tell us a story about an event that really accelerated your trajectory of your career as you were moving up the ladder there.

Aneel Bhusri 7:34

Well, probably the biggest event was actually having that beer with Dave. But afterwards, less of an event, but more I would say, a series of conversations with Dave, he decided to invest in me. And so we would go out once a month for a breakfast or lunch or a dinner. And I'd ask him any question I could come up with about how we thought about things and how we built the business. And if you know Dave, he's all about building businesses the right way around core values, which wasn't the most popular thing in the 90s. It's now very fashionable, but he was always wired that way. And over time, I just I had this great benefit. I accumulated the knowledge of someone that had been around the block PeopleSoft was his fourth company workdays, his fifth company, I just got to learn from him. And it's just become this amazing friendship and relationship that's lasted 30 years.

David Novak 8:26

You know, I really want to hear now just the story of how you two teamed up. And you left PeopleSoft and you've formed workday. How did that happen?

Aneel Bhusri 8:36

It was one of those emotional times where you remember everything right? Your brain was imprints those things that are emotional. So I had actually left PeopleSoft on a day to day basis and gone off to be a venture capitalist at a firm called Greylock teams had retired as chairman. And we brought in a new CEO to run the company had been passed over for the CEO job at PeopleSoft, which was totally the right decision. I wasn't qualified at that time. Then we got into this situation with Oracle where they launched the hostile takeover on PeopleSoft. And after a period of time, the board asked David knight to come out of retirement to try to save the company. And it was during that time where they asked the previous CEO to go who's still a friend, as David had to come back day focused in on the culture being more customer focused, like we had been in the early days more employee focused like we had been in the early days. During the time we were away. We had gotten away from that. And I focused in on what would happen with PeopleSoft products. And it was during that time, I came to conclusion that what we were doing at PeopleSoft was not going to work in the future. There was a small company salesforce.com that had pioneered a new model for sales and customer services. And I thought, well, someone's gonna do that for HR and finance. Miles will be us and so we actually had a plan in the very early stages to do it at PeopleSoft. But Oracle prevailed took over the company and a hostile takeover. Didn't matter Ask David I'd state and so Dave and I three months later started workday, the basic premise was, let's take those PeopleSoft applications start from scratch, and rebuild them for this new model. And let's have fun along the way. And we brought our value system with us. And that value system continues to be the one that we live by today.

David Novak 10:19

You know, tell me about that value system. What is that? Exactly?

Aneel Bhusri 10:23

Well, so I have to give my co founder, Dave, you know, just a lot of credit, he thought about values and created a framework for how to build a company around a core set of values way before people ran businesses that way. So number one, is employees. And you know, there are a lot of companies that have number one is customers days view was, if you don't have happy employees, you're not going to have happy customers. And to this day, I see that in spades. I've never seen happy customers and unhappy employees that appeared together, it just doesn't work. So number one, employees, number two, customers and customer success. Number three, fun. Number four, innovation, number five, integrity, and six, not really core value, but important to pay for the rest profitability. And we reward those core values, we measure people against those core values, I think about that all the time, like, how are we doing against our core values? How are we doing VA employees? How are we doing via customers? And so, you know, what I'm proudest of is we've been in the top 10 list of great places to work multiple times. And it's because we take that employee core value seriously. And our customer satisfaction levels have always been, you know, 95% or higher, because our happy employees know that taking care of customers is the right thing to do. And so it's a virtuous cycle.

David Novak 11:39

I was talking with Ryan, who's in your communications group a little bit earlier. And he and he said, the thing that really is driven home daily is walking the talk of your values. Now, how do you cascade that to everybody in the company? Because this just can't be you and Dave?

Aneel Bhusri 11:55

Yeah, well, so David, I interviewed the first 500 People purely for fit with our value system, We assumed that if it was a marketing person, or a salesperson or an engineering person, that the managers would have made sure that they were the right level of talent, we would screen for values, and we would look for people that were we not, we'd looked for people that had committed to their previous company or something in their life endeavor that show they would do something for a long time. And they wouldn't jump around every few years. Who would see if they had a sense of humor. They even have a crack jokes. Sometimes they probably weren't funny to the to the interviewee, but we had fun with it. And then we told those 500 people, you're going to protect the culture and the value system. And so we need you to be part of interviewing the next 5000. So we're past that group, but we've continually perpetuate the culture carriers and the people that really embrace our values, there has to be one on every interview cycle to make sure that, you know, we're getting the right people in the door.

David Novak 12:51

You know, I've never heard of any two leaders interviewing that first 500 team members, I mean, that is such a sensational thing. That takes a ton of time, you know, and here you are, you've got this startup, you got to get going, you know, you've got all these business priorities. You know, how did you stay true to that?

Aneel Bhusri 13:09

Well, again, it comes back to employees being number one, and you know, we're up against two formidable companies and SAP and Oracle. And we thought, hey, if we get the first 500, right, and they really are the best in our industry, that will give us a shot, we want a shot, but we're gonna need the best people. Because we're up against these really formidable companies, we got a great idea. We've got disruptive technology, but we need the best people. And you know, Dave and I are passionate about this topic. And so we just agreed we'd interview the first 500. And that took precedent over everything else we had in our schedule.

David Novak 13:42

Was there something that changed the way how you approach the business, because of these interviews, you know, I'd

Aneel Bhusri 13:47

say something that I'm not necessarily proud of, I had a bias towards people from the right schools. And it turns out, talent is everywhere. And sometimes you just have to look a little harder. And in some cases, some of the right schools didn't actually produce the best employees, because there can always be at sometimes a sense of entitlement. And so I really got to see this attitude of hungry, I'll do whatever it takes to be successful. And, you know, that's invigorating, it's exciting. And you want you just want to hire more people like that. So less and less about, you know, educational history more about what they've done with their lives and what they wanted to do.

David Novak 14:24

You know, you've got to be one of the most experienced interviewers on the planet. What advice can you offer the rest of this?

Aneel Bhusri 14:31

You know, I think what every CEO or management team wants are dedicated employees who have good values. And importantly, you want them to stay as a company for a long period of time. People that leave every two years, it's really painful. It's very, very costly, right? You've just trained them up, they will now know the company and I call them shiny new Penny folks are looking for that next opportunity. It's really digging into someone's background to get a sense that they'll be committed for the long run because Every great company I've seen or been around, there's a whole host of employees that had been there from the start, or if not from the start for a long period of time, we have quite a few tenured people in our company that both bring the value system to work everyday, but also our folks that have so much expertise now in our products and technology, that it's just invaluable.

David Novak 15:19

You've had so much success, and when you have that kind of success, everybody wants your people and you know, recruiting people's one thing retaining them is another, you know, I really believe recognition was key to retaining people. I mean, what's your belief on how you keep people beyond just having that fantastic culture that you have?

Aneel Bhusri 15:38

Well, absolutely, it's in your book. I think recognition is a huge part of it. And what we've tried was recognize our people around our core values. So someone that had done a great job around a customer go live or a customer experience would be up for an individual we call them OCA is outstanding contributor awards. And we give out those words on a quarterly basis. There's a team award for a group of people, hopefully, that was cross functional, that did great work on a product on a sales situation on a customer, whatever it is, they weren't together and the more cross functional, the better because that creates those bridges across the company. Innovation, we have a quarterly innovation or Innovator Award. So we try to just reward behavior around the core values and people take notice.

David Novak 16:22

And I have to ask you who came up with the workday name?

Aneel Bhusri 16:26

James daughter, who, who is a very talented marketing executive Amy Duffield, I will just say that Dave came up with a name. I wasn't a fan of I came up with a name that he wasn't a fan of. And Damien said, let me go do a project. And we'll come up with a better name that when we would come up with and I'm not going to mention our two names, because they're there. I think they were so bad. And when she came up with a list of 10 names, working with an outside agency, Dave and I both looked at each workday. I mean, the minute we saw it, we both knew

David Novak 16:58

it's such a great day. That's why I had to ask you that I had a terrible name, too. We actually went with it with before we had Yum, it was tricon. And nobody knew what that was. It was terrible. Sounded like an industrial cleaning company, you know. But anyway, I'm glad we moved on to something a little bit more upbeat. You know, and taking you back again, we talked a little bit about the culture. What was the process you and Dave used to lay out the original vision for workday? And the company that you are today? I mean, how did you guys formulate it all?

Aneel Bhusri 17:29

Well, we knew the space from our days that PeopleSoft. And what we saw was a market that needed a fresh solution, from fresh insight that had old products that were harder and harder to go from one version to the next. Customers didn't like running these products on their own premises. And as I mentioned, we saw the small company, Salesforce, and we thought, well, Salesforce is doing it in small and medium sized businesses. But that's not really my background, or Dave's background. So we said, let's start with HR. Every company needs a better HR system. And an HR system happens to be an application that touches every employee in the company. And so one of our big bets in the transition from the old legacy systems to the cloud systems was that the user experience had to be much better. And so building a great UI was a huge part of what we set out to do at the start at workday. And we started out with medium sized companies, but always with the intent to grow to larger companies. And over time, the product line grew from HR to HR and payroll to HR, payroll and talent. And we always knew we'd go into finance, because that had been a big part of the PeopleSoft vision, really, if you think about it, for lack of a better term, but the administrative backbone, HR and finance and procurement just end up being the administrative backbone, and they naturally work together. And so that really was our vision from day one. And I'd had that time at Greylock. I'd had the time running products that PeopleSoft. You know, my great moment was convincing Dave at 65, that he had one more left in him. I said, Hey, Boss, come on, let's just do this. You got this one more. And he did. And he moved his family down for a period of time to California. And I see him quite often. He's an amazing guy. But a big part of the reason workday exists is I convinced him he had one more in him and I come up with the basic outline of what a product idea would look like. And he said, Okay, let's do it.

David Novak 19:21

Now, as you have made some shifts, how do you go about making strategic shifts to take on new product categories? You've evolved your core strategy considerably?

Aneel Bhusri 19:33

Well, I think there are two pieces on the technology side, every few years, I take the smartest technologists off site for a day or two. And we'll just talk about what would you do today? Like we built workday around the set of technologies in 2005. What would you do differently today? And something always comes out of that conversation in 2010. He was mobile while we build the application for mobile first, and 2012 13. He was all about big data in three or four years ago. was about machine learning. And what we do is we take that insight about what a startup would do. And we try to incorporate it. And in some cases, we rebuild things from scratch. And so there's no lines of code from our product 15 years ago, because we rewritten everything to take account of these modern technologies. On the expanding the footprint, we just listen to our customers, we just acquired a company called pecan, just a couple of months ago, that is all about employee engagement, and measuring how happy your employees are, and how engaged they are in a really formulaic machine learning way. It's a really powerful application. We were dabbling in that area. But as we talked to CEOs and HR leaders, especially during the pandemic, they really wanted to get a sense of the level of engagement of their employees. They said, you know, what are you doing in this area, and we looked at were too far behind. So went on bought this company, pecan to fill that gap. And I think it's constantly listening to your customers, they're not going to be the ones that tell you, hey, build an in memory database and come out with a new application. But if you ask them what they would like next, they'll tell you, if you're really close to their customers, they'll tell you,

David Novak 21:04

you and Neil, I've heard you talked in the past just about the importance of listening your customers and solving their big problems. How do you go about finding out what the most important problems are, so you can be focused on the big ideas.

Aneel Bhusri 21:18

So we've got multiple ways of getting feedback from our customers, we have one called brainstorm where any customer can log in a request, and then the requests will get voted on by other customers. And so we'll figure out where we have some hotspots or we have where we might have a hole or an issue. The next level down would be, we have meetings of CHR, OHS and CFOs, where they give us general feedback about what areas you want to move into. But then when we're designing an actual product or feature, we create design groups with our customers, we'll look at a new area, we came out with a new product called accounting Center, which is a high volume accounting engine for parsing all your accounting transactions, we looked at the customer and said, Okay, we need somebody out of financial services, we need somebody out to retail customers that are passionate about and we collected a group of eight customers, and they helped us define what they needed from the product. So we'll come out with that kernel of an idea. But then we really let the customers shape what they want in the product. And the great thing after that is, if you pick the right customers, they're representative of future customers. But also, they're really bought into it because they were part of creating it. And it's great to have advocates like that out when you're trying to sell it to a new customer.

David Novak 22:24

You know, you just have passed on so much credit to Dave, in the partnership that you've had with him. And then now you're passing on credit to your customers, when you have the right customers, you build your business? When did you learn the importance of recognizing other people celebrating other people's success? Even more than your own,

Aneel Bhusri 22:42

are probably not gonna love the answer. It's also Dave. All roads lead through Dave, I was very fortunate, I went to work for him at 27. And I got to see a CEO who had learned a lot from his previous experiences, and now had come up with a model of what an ideal organization would look like, Dave, he's very humble. He's one of the most humble people you'll ever come across. And he's been very successful. And so after working with Dave, I would think, well, it's hard to have an ego, he doesn't have an ego. So how can I have one, but I watch how people would react to his generosity, his nature, about always wanting to pass out compliments and reward people with done a good job. And, you know, again, it was really a formative experience for me to work at PeopleSoft with Dave. And then I got to apply it at workday as CEO and with Dave as my touchstone, and my sounding board on a lot of these decisions. But I've just been very fortunate to have great mentors. And I mentioned George is also one of those kinds of folks,

David Novak 23:42

fantastic people, you know, and Neil, you're such an innovative company and put your whole category in what's going on in business right now. It's just changing at warp speed. How do you keep you and your management team into that rat a tat tat of staying on top of what's going on?

Aneel Bhusri 24:00

Well, you know, part of it is you just have to stay connected again to your customers. In my case, what I tried to do is stay connected to a group of CEOs who I think are, you know, at the vanguard of of dealing with this change. So I think about people like Doug McMillon, Walmart's our biggest customer and Doug is a fantastic leader. And I get a really good sense of what's happening talking with Doug or Mary Barra and GM. I've got John Donahoe at Nike, we've got all these great folks, and I just tried to stay in touch with them and listen, because that's the way we can keep up with it. And then, from a technology side, you got to be on top of all the startups. There's so much innovation happening right now. What I ask our team to do is, hey, you got to focus in on what you're doing day to day. But please pay attention to what's happening in the startup world. And so we invest, I think, at this point in 50, emerging technology companies that are relevant to work day that are usually partners of some sort that keeps us fresh, and we get to see the new ideas because the new ideas never come from the really big companies that new ideas come from small startups. It's always been the case At least from the business to business area,

David Novak 25:02

what innovation today are you most excited about at workday and tell us how it came about?

Aneel Bhusri 25:07

Well, probably the one that I'm most excited about is one that we've been working on for a while around machine learning. And I'm a big believer that there is a right partnership between humans and machines, not like Terminator where the machines are going to take over the world. And what it is, is the partnership is built around the fact that machines are amazing at analyzing huge amounts of information in seconds, but they have no judgment. You know, a machine now can tell you that it's going to rain in eight minutes. And human knows, okay, that means I should take my umbrella to work. When we think about weather forecasting. 20 years ago, we didn't really know what we're doing. But now we actually do. And it's that kind of partnership where the machine will say, here's the analysis and the human being will make a decision. And the machine will say, Hey, your business in Japan is doing poorly. Here are the top three reasons why we think that's the case where the machine thinks that's the case. And then the human does the exploration to figure that out. And I think the more and more we can get humans to be great at judgment and not have to worry about just crunching numbers where machines are good. I think it's really powerful. We're trying to fuse that across all of our applications. And it's a journey, we've been at it for four years. Now. There's more to do. But I think it's just part of this trend and road towards humans getting to do more and more valued work and not being replaced by machines. I don't see that future. And there's a book that's behind me called prediction machines, I highly recommend folks read that to really get a sense of how machine learning can be using them in a powerful way and a safe way and in an ethical way. When you have these

David Novak 26:35

new products and these new categories that you go after what's absolutely critical when you assess opportunities.

Aneel Bhusri 26:42

Well, I'd say the number one thing is is there a real market for it? And again, we talked to our customers. Number two, is there something that we can do uniquely, if it's something that 10 Other companies can do, why would someone want this from workday? And then the third piece is we might be able to build it uniquely. But does it fit into our existing sales and marketing model. And if it does, if those three things fit, big market, something we can do uniquely, and it fits into our sales and marketing model, we get pretty excited about it, whether we're building it ourselves, or whether we're doing an acquisition.

David Novak 27:12

Neil, I love it. When you say you get together with your team and you say what would we do if we were a startup? As you get bigger? Is it harder for you to get people to think like a startup? And how do you do it,

Aneel Bhusri 27:24

there's always a group of engineers that want to be on the cutting edge that are thinking that way. And I think it's making sure that you're in touch with them, and that you have relationship with them. And that you give them time to think about those things. You know, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, three amazing technology companies, they all have people who are at the innovative cutting edge, even though they're huge companies. And so innovators are in all companies, you just have to find out who they are and how to how to stay connected to them.

David Novak 27:52

We're definitely in a extremely competitive world. And disruption is the buzzword in almost every category. How do you look at competition?

Aneel Bhusri 28:01

Well, we have two very traditional competitors in SAP and Oracle and formula companies. But we know a lot about their products. And we've been competing with them across two companies between PeopleSoft at workday, we have the same competitors. And when Dave and I started workday, I think a lot of folks thought we were crazy. And so not a lot of startups came into our market. And it's a big undertaking, building an ERP system, where you have to worry about HR and financial regulations across the globe. It's not something you just build with three or four people in terms of new competition. It's always looking at those startups and understanding what they would do with that new technology base. And so today, you would start with machine learning as the underlying part of your platform, you would never build out your own data centers the way we did, you'd work on Amazon, or Microsoft or Google's data centers. And so you're constantly looking for those emerging companies that might disrupt you the way, frankly, we disrupted SAP and Oracle, and learn from them, or in some cases, you know, acquire them.

David Novak 29:03

You know, I understand and Neil, that you recently became co CEO. Now, most experts say this is very difficult to play out. Why do you have the CO CEO structure?

Aneel Bhusri 29:14

Well, first and foremost, Dave, and I had that structure for, I think four years, right before IPO through 2014. It's great having a partner, Dave doesn't have an ego. I like to think I don't have an ego. When two people can come together and solve problems together. It can be magical. And after seven years of being alone as CEO, I wanted to go back to that model. And so we elevated a gentleman named Chantel Fernandez, who was our head of Europe than our head of worldwide sales and our head of worldwide operations, co president, and now he's my co CEO, and he's phenomenally talented. And the way we carve up the world is he really focuses on sales and customer services, and customer facing activities and I feel focusing on the products, HR and finance and we have a great partnership. I'll frankly say especially for a b2b company where sales is such a huge part of what you do. Being able to share the workload is a great thing. It's a big job. I've never run a company this big PeopleSoft wasn't nearly as big as workday is. And so when people ask me how you get along hygiene, I was like, I'm making a lot of stuff up as I go. And I've got great mentors, like our friends like Sam Palmisano, and Dave Dorman, who have run companies at scale, for me to be able to get back to the product side, which is my passion, and hopefully what I'm probably best suited for workday and be able to have a partner in China, it just, it just makes the business run better.

David Novak 30:38

Neil, I understand that you have technology that will help people figure out their next career move. How's that possible?

Aneel Bhusri 30:45

Well, it's part of our career plan and succession planning efforts where this is machine learning, again, at work, look at the person who is looking for a new opportunity, they'll then try to look at people who had been like that over the last several years and look at the ones that have been successful and what was their career path. And it will then based on previously successful career paths, make a couple recommendations to employee about what they should do next, and what training they might need. And so it's like a machine learning based coach that's coaching you through your career based on people that have been successful in those roles in the past.

David Novak 31:21

How would you describe the state of the business world today? And more importantly, what's it going to take to be a truly great company going forward?

Aneel Bhusri 31:31

Well, I have to say, I am so proud of how some of the biggest companies and their CEOs have led during this pandemic, I've always believed that business should have a soul that we have a broader purpose than just profits. And in a world where there's a social crisis, a political crisis, and economic crisis, you name it, there's some sort of crisis, I think business leaders stepped up. And we try to be that place where at least our employees and our communities could feel like someone was looking out for them. And it's leaders, like I mentioned before, like Doug McMillon, at Walmart, or or John Donahoe, at Nike or Mary Barra at GM, or James Gorman at at Morgan Stanley, I can just keep going through that list. And they lead with a mindset of more than just running the company, but being good citizens in this world and taking care of their employees, but also take care of their communities. And I think that's the future of business going forward. It's that whole stakeholder theory discussion we've had for the last 20 years, I think it's time is here. And I know people will say that's really not important to business, businesses need to be focused on profits. But I actually think having a stakeholder approach stakeholder management approach that's multifaceted rather than just shareholders actually leads to a better business, better attachment to customers better attachment to the community, employees that are far more engaged, because they think their company is doing the right thing in the community. I think those things matter a lot, especially the new generation employees, they want to see how you're making the world a better place. So I'm excited about where businesses today,

David Novak 33:03

you know, a lot of people talk about purpose, and you use the word soul. Is there a difference? From your perspective? And why do you use the word soul?

Aneel Bhusri 33:15

Because I think the soul means you've got a heart, right? Like you got to care. It can't just be I have a purpose about building a certain type of company. But you got to care, you got to care about your employees, you got to care about your customers. And I think those all those things mean to me, a soul and company shouldn't be soulless, they should care about these things. And the management team should care about these things. And I'm very proud of our management team. They care deeply about the topics that we've been dealing with the last 18 months, we have a foundation, the workday foundation that's been active well before the pandemic, and creating opportunities for all opportunity. OnRamps is a program that we created, and we're an HR software company. So we see that there's all this talent, but they don't have opportunities to get into the companies. And so it helps vets get opportunities in companies, it helps homemakers who might not have been in the workforce, the last decade, get into the workforce, it helps underrepresented minorities who might not have the right avenues get into the workforce and something that I'm really proud of. And I think, you know, we're making a difference. But we're also helping the economy. I mean, it's, again, it's one of the things you do good, but also it's good to do.

David Novak 34:24

I've talked to a number of CEOs about workday and just preparation for this and you know, you get such high marks for helping their companies get back in the swing of things post pandemic. What are you particularly proud of that workdays done?

Aneel Bhusri 34:38

Well, you know, David, so many companies, CVS and of course, yum brands, were on the frontlines during this pandemic, whether it was serving food or being a drug store. What I'm proudest of is those folks were taking care of all of us. And in turn, our employees were keeping their HR and finance operations running so they didn't have to worry about that. And so we took care of that. But it all starts with those people who are on the frontlines during this really difficult period of time. And I'm proud of the way our employees figure it out working from home, in many cases to support our customers really without missing a beat.

David Novak 35:11

Shifting gears, you really do some fun advertising with Phil Mickelson, and you've linked up with other golfers as well, why Phil, and why golf or workday,

Aneel Bhusri 35:22

the C suite pays attention to golf, there's no better sport to reach CFOs, CHR, OHS CEOs, maybe f1 Maybe at a lower level tennis, but if you want to get to the decision makers, Golf is a great way to do it. And so we started on the golf program brand, Seneca was the first person we work with who is just a great human being. And then, you know, a chance came up with Phil and and Phil's a needle mover. He's iconic. He goes by one name. I don't know if it's Phil or lefty. Either one works. And I would just say as an ambassador for workday. He works so hard on our behalf. He never says workday. He says we he talks about it as if he's part of the company. And, you know, the other part is you see in the ads, which we didn't know, we signed him if he's a pretty funny guy. He's got a great sense of humor, and our marketing people. You know, we're very focused on one thing when we do an ad, people don't want to watch boring games. They want to watch something that makes them laugh, leave a good message, but makes them laugh. And Phil is really good at that. A lot of his acting on TV is completely ad libbed by him.

David Novak 36:27

And that's great. And it was so much fun to see him win the PGA championship

Aneel Bhusri 36:31

that was that was a big deal for us. Yeah, absolutely.

David Novak 36:33

Well, you had workday plastered all around the world for sure. You know, shifting gears another time here. You know, I know you've been an advisory partner. You mentioned this earlier, at Greylock. And you have a renowned ability to assess startups, they have what they call the Forbes Midas list, and you've been on it six times, what would be the top three things you look for in a startup?

Aneel Bhusri 36:57

Number one, be entrepreneur, there's nothing that's going to happen great without a great entrepreneur. And I typically like the technical entrepreneurs that are really trying to solve a problem number two, disruptive technology. If the technology is 10% better, it's not going to be enough to convince people to leave SAP Oracle and IBM are a big company, it's got to be 50%, better 80% Better. Number three, a big market. And I think that third part is not always easy, because sometimes big markets system represent themselves as big markets upfront. But I found if you partner up with the right, technical founders that work now, there are lots of models that work that just happened to be my model. And I in consumers, different consumers, something gets hot without a lot of technology built in it. I don't know much about consumer technology. I'm a business to business person. And that model of technologists really deep technology that's disruptive to the existing players and a big market. The big market sounds obvious, but it's not always clear. I always say like, in the case of Workday, maybe the cloud model wasn't going to take off and there's gonna end up being $100 million market. But at the time, we had no idea that the whole market would shift to the cloud. Suddenly, you just kind of have to make leaps of faith on the market.

David Novak 38:07

You Anil, you've had so much success, but almost every leader I know as an epic fail or a huge personal issue that they have to work through. Could you share yours with us? And what did you learn from it?

Aneel Bhusri 38:18

I mean, outside of my golf career.

David Novak 38:21

I know, I know, you just lost a tournament in day two. But let's put that aside. You know,

Aneel Bhusri 38:26

the biggest one I went through is the loss of PeopleSoft to Oracle. That was very, very personal. I feel like my career and Dave's career you know intertwine for those seven or eight years we're working together. I didn't need to leave Greylock to go back. I took a leave of absence from Greylock to go be part of the management team running PeopleSoft in the middle of a hostile takeover for $1 a year salary. I did it because I love Dave. And Dave asked me to go back with them. And I thought we'd win. And, you know, we didn't it was heart wrenching PeopleSoft stood for all the core values that you and I have talked about today. And to see the company go was was heart wrenching. And also you just felt like you lost you just lost like, and there was no way to there's no way to recover. And it was a long three months. Dave and I both got the flu. I think we're just so rundown trying to run the company and the hostile takeover. But you know, that was the classic Phoenix story. What what happened was workday rose from the ashes. If workday hadn't gotten created, I would still I would still be living through that last six months that people talk because I love that company. I loved all the folks that were there. How did

David Novak 39:36

you maintain or get your pot your positive person? How did did you lose your positive attitude during that period? How did you get your positive mindset back?

Aneel Bhusri 39:46

I had moments where I was I was depressed. I listen to a lot of music that was inspirational and I watched I like a certain type of movie that is a true story that's inspirational like like Seabiscuit, or greatest game ever played. I just watched those movies at said, hey, you know, we might have lost the battle but the war is just beginning. I hate that that's a terrible analogy but, but that it's just a chapter and I need to move on from this chapter. My girlfriend at the time he's now my wife was also very supportive of what I was going through. She knew it was, it was painful, but I tried to exercise a lot. I just tried to do anything to get my mind off of it, because it was it was just really hard.

David Novak 40:21

Yeah, I can tell it was definitely painful, you know? And, Neil, I'm a big believer and self coaching, how do you build self awareness and determine how to take your game to the next level?

Aneel Bhusri 40:33

You know, I think number one, you have to have a great relationship with the people that work for you. And with you. And I asked on a regular basis, maybe I don't always get great feedback, or honest feedback, but I hope to get feedback from the people I work with on a day to day basis. And then I surround myself with mentors, who have no problem giving me direct feedback, whether it's George still, Chairman Payne, Sam Palmisano, you know, Condi Rice, I have all these people who I admire and look up to, you know, who are in some way or another involved with work to help? And I'll just ask them, you know, how are we doing? How am I doing? You saw me in the rack my team, what could I do better? So I think it's it's always asking questions and listening.

David Novak 41:14

You know, I, I know you also mentor others and coach others. What's a one on one coaching session like with you?

Aneel Bhusri 41:22

I just asked a lot of questions. What are you trying to be as a leader who you're trying to be as a leader? Where do you think you're doing? Well, what do you think you're not doing? Well, let's talk about some recent examples. And where is it that you want to be you know, in a year or five years and aspirational kind of discussion, and let let people talk and just out of the conversation, good comes out of it. And then I tried to suggest my books to read, you know, workday is built around the Good to Great concept that Jim Collins, he wrote several great books and every one he comes out with, there's something that we that Dave and I read and refer back to and a lot of good to great is not just about how to build a great company, but how to be a great manager how to be a level five manager, someone that deflects credit and absorbs blame, right? That's the that's the epitome of a great leader. And sometimes you when you read those books, it just reminds you those principles. And so I always have my three or four books that I recommend to someone who's aspiring to be a great manager.

David Novak 42:19

And the alum I'm having so much fun with this conversation, I'd like to have some more here. You up for a quick lightning round of questions. Sure. Okay, three words that best describe you.

Aneel Bhusri 42:32

optimistic? I don't know how to say the one word I'll say family. And hopefully everybody agree fun.

David Novak 42:43

I would agree with that. If you could be someone beside yourself for a day, who would it be and why?

Aneel Bhusri 42:48

I'll be so Mickelson and I know why. I'm a lefty golfer too. And just to just experience hitting the ball like that. One time in front of 20,000 people and the shot actually work. I think that'd be pretty cool. I would even need to be a day would just be a couple of shots.

David Novak 43:09

What's something about you that few people would know?

Aneel Bhusri 43:13

My favorite food is pizza. And as I travel, visiting our customers, the first thing that I tried to do is find the best local pizza joint and then have a journal from all the pizza joints that visited across the country.

David Novak 43:25

Sounds like a good book to be Do you have any hidden talents?

Aneel Bhusri 43:29

Not that I know.

David Novak 43:32

What's your biggest pet peeve?

Aneel Bhusri 43:35

You know probably ego. For me again growing up with Dave I pride myself on being confident and not having ego you can be confident but not have a huge ego. And I think egos are pretty off putting

David Novak 43:48

favorite interview question.

Aneel Bhusri 43:51

Favorite interview question. What's your favorite movie?

David Novak 43:56

And funniest thing that ever happened to you got so

Aneel Bhusri 43:59

many things? Well, so when I was an electrical engineer, I was always better at the software side than I was the chipboard side. And once during an experiment I actually wired my chipboard properly but I wired the capacitor boards between positive and negative and a puff of smoke rose off the board and it set off the water sprinklers. That's That's what I thought, you know, maybe I should maybe I should do software. That's hardware things that work now. That was set the lab on fire.

David Novak 44:31

That was but you know, thanks for that now, what three bits of advice would you give to all the aspiring leaders that are listening in right now?

Aneel Bhusri 44:40

I would start with separate out being a manager from being a leader. There are two different things you need to be both. But a leader is inspirational. How are you going to inspire your team? How are you going to set ambitious goals and the way you get there? Number one is being empathetic. Listen to your employees. Listen to what's important to them, you know, understand what's what's important at work, but also understand what's important to them at home. And that will help you get that loyalty and get those folks to be really focused on the inspirational goals that you have in front of you. So that'd be empathy. Number two, it'd be cycles. To me, organizations I come across the goals are diffused, or they're not really achievable, set specific goals. And probably the third part is get a mentor. And there's so many great mentors out there. I've been a great beneficiary, I'm sometimes known as someone that collects mentors, and I will keep collecting mentors, because I learned something different from all of them. You can either go through the world and make mistakes on your own and figure it out after the fact. Or you can learn a lot from the mistakes that other people have made, and focusing on making new mistakes. But let's not make the ones that other folks have already made, who are willing to be mentors that can help you be great leaders.

David Novak 45:53

You mentioned home, and you have so many irons in the fire and deals. How do you go about balancing work and family at home?

Aneel Bhusri 46:05

Well, I would say before the pandemic, it was a challenge, I was on the road a lot. And my wife would schedule a night or two where I'd be around for dinner. And then during the pandemic, I was around for dinner every day. It's finding a balance where I need to travel for work, but family is really important. So I tried to devote weekends to family. And a big part of having a co CEO now was I don't have to be on the road. Three weeks out of four I can I can spend time with my wonderful wife, Alison, and our and our two kids.

David Novak 46:37

And last but not least, we when you look out into the future, what's the unfinished business for you as a leader,

Aneel Bhusri 46:43

the tech companies that we measure ourselves just keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger. But I think workday is this company that does business the right way that takes care of its employees and takes care of its customers. And I want to see it have an independent future. And we're on that path. I think in three or four years, we'll get to 10 billion in revenues. And at that point, I think we have secured our future. And that's really important to me, I want to be that independent company the way in today's world of applications company, Salesforce is now on that on that path. Adobe is on that path. And I hope I hope we're next.

David Novak 47:16

Well, I'm sure with you at the leadership as CO CEO, and just the founder that you have been workdays best days are ahead of them. And Al I want to thank you so much for taking the time. And thank you so much for the candor that you've had in this conversation of ours. That was great to be with you do.

You don't have my conversation with the Neo was like having a conversation with the brother, we are absolutely philosophically aligned, people are absolutely the most important thing you can focus on. And the way I really wanted to drive that home was using recognition as our number one behavior, our number one core value. And I knew that I had to lead the way. That's why I created the personal recognition, award my walk the talk teeth, and when I would see somebody doing something great, I would recognize them, I'd take my walk and talk teeth out I'd write on top of and I'd number it, I take a picture of the person say, Hey, I'm gonna send you a picture, you can do whatever you want. But I'm going to put your picture on my wall in my office, because what you're doing is what's making our company great. And guess what happened. I filled the walls in my office with people that I recognized all around the world. And when I was running out of wall space, people said, Hey, David, what are you going to do next? And I said, just start looking up, because I'm going to start putting pictures of people that I recognize on the ceiling, which is exactly what I did. But let me tell you something, people love to come into the CEOs office. The reason is, is they kind of want to learn about the person. Well, let me tell you something, I want people to learn about what makes our company tick when they walked into my office. And it wasn't me it was the people that we were recognizing all around the world. Now the good news is I cast a shadow and other people followed in everybody else in the company started developing their own individual recognition award and doing recognition themselves. And that's how it really became something that yum brands actually became famous for. We got all kinds of accolades, other companies best practices, because they wanted to learn how we use recognition to drive results. And we got great results at yum brands. Now, I don't know about you, but I love that quote, you cannot be what you cannot see. That concept applies to us this week, and that you cannot expect your team to do things that you're not going to do yourself. You have to live out your core values. If you want anyone to follow you. Do you want your core values to simply be forgotten? Of course you don't. I've got to tell you it's really up to you as the leader to make sure that doesn't happen by live In your core values every single day. So here's what I want you to do. I want you to pull out that list of core values that you have in your company or that you created for your team, which are the one or two that you're going to put time and energy into this week. How are you going to prioritize these on your calendar? This simple exercise really matters because what we learned today is that great leaders walk the talk of their core values. Thanks again for tuning in to another episode of how leaders lead where every Thursday you get to listen in while I interview some of the best leaders in the world. I make it a point to give you something simple on each episode that you can apply in your business so that you will become the best leader you can be. See you next week.

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