[{"_1":2,"_3":-5,"_4":-5},"loaderData",{"_5":6,"_7":8},"actionData","errors","root",{"_139":-5,"_140":-5,"_141":142,"_143":144,"_145":146},"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/3393/temper-your-enthusiasm-with-pragmatism","id",3393,"title","Temper your enthusiasm with pragmatism","subtitle","transcript","WEBVTT\n\n1\n00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.000\nSometimes you get so bought into a strategy and you're so trained to put on a\n\n2\n00:00:06.000 --> 00:00:06.480\npositive\n\n3\n00:00:06.480 --> 00:00:13.280\nface and be a exuberant leader and a effective cheerleader that you sometimes\n\n4\n00:00:13.280 --> 00:00:15.560\nmaybe get ahead\n\n5\n00:00:15.560 --> 00:00:17.160\nof the situation.\n\n6\n00:00:17.160 --> 00:00:19.360\nSo I think you got to balance it.\n\n7\n00:00:19.360 --> 00:00:24.140\nAnd I think some people, as you suggest, who get too far out there and don't\n\n8\n00:00:24.140 --> 00:00:26.000\ncome back.\n\n9\n00:00:26.000 --> 00:00:30.780\nThey're either embarrassed or in a state of shock and so it's hard for them to\n\n10\n00:00:30.780 --> 00:00:31.120\nsort of\n\n11\n00:00:31.120 --> 00:00:35.120\nrepot themselves and come back as a different person.\n\n12\n00:00:35.120 --> 00:00:40.400\nI think the pragmatists are the ones that go, hmm, didn't get that right.\n\n13\n00:00:40.400 --> 00:00:41.920\nWhat did I miss?\n\n14\n00:00:41.920 --> 00:00:44.400\nProbably got out over my skis a little bit.\n\n15\n00:00:44.400 --> 00:00:46.680\nI maybe have been better to go a little bit slower.\n","pretty_transcript","start_time",2994269,"end_time",3040919,"keywords","Enthusiasm, pragmatism, self awareness, mistake, vulnerable","slug","temper-your-enthusiasm-with-pragmatism","origin","cms","mux_playback_id","msqJGhZa5p1zuRNCTol7bAJtvIuthpF00YsdRfBzpwY00","mux_asset_id","qsUO5ze897acblkNPwsy00QQpbk700JeXFkRF01BIdiHHc","leader_id",288,"episode_id",437,"updated_at","2026-07-09T16:55:55.000000Z","meta_title","meta_description","og_image_media_id","web_url","https://www.howleaderslead.com/clips/3393/temper-your-enthusiasm-with-pragmatism","og_image_url","leader",{"_13":36,"_103":104,"_105":106,"_107":108,"_25":109,"_110":111,"_61":112,"_58":112,"_113":114,"_68":115,"_39":116,"_117":-5,"_41":-5,"_42":-5,"_43":-5,"_118":119,"_91":120,"_44":121,"_122":123,"_124":125,"_46":-5,"_126":127,"_128":129,"_95":130,"_51":-5},"episode",{"_13":38,"_15":52,"_27":53,"_17":54,"_55":56,"_18":57,"_20":-5,"_58":59,"_60":-5,"_61":59,"_62":-5,"_63":64,"_65":66,"_67":-5,"_68":-5,"_69":70,"_71":72,"_73":74,"_35":36,"_39":75,"_41":-5,"_42":76,"_43":-5,"_77":78,"_79":80,"_81":82,"_83":84,"_85":-5,"_86":-5,"_87":88,"_89":90,"_91":-5,"_46":-5,"_92":93,"_94":-5,"_95":-5,"_51":-5},"og_image_media","See around corners","see-around-corners","Today's problems are important, but don't let them keep you from focusing on the future, too. Be intentional about looking ahead so you don't get caught flat-footed when big changes happen.","summary","

What separates leaders who survive massive change from the ones who get blindsided by it?

David Dorman has had a front row seat to disruption throughout his career, both as the former CEO of AT&T and as a board member for PayPal, Motorola, CVS, and Dell.

In this conversation, he talks about how he “sees around corners” – not only preparing for industry shifts before they happen but also becoming the kind of leader people trust to guide them through it.

This episode is for you if:

You spend more time thinking about the current reality of your business than its future
You want insight into how AI might disrupt your business
You want to build a deep leadership bench
You’re interested in market trends and analysis (because David knows this stuff cold!)

","WEBVTT\n\n1\n00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.190\nHello, friends, and welcome to another episode of How Leaders Lead with David\n\n2\n00:00:04.190 --> 00:00:05.120\nNovak. Today,\n\n3\n00:00:05.120 --> 00:00:10.090\nwe have David Dorman on the show. He's a former CEO of AT&T, and in this\n\n4\n00:00:10.090 --> 00:00:10.880\nconversation, David talks\n\n5\n00:00:10.880 --> 00:00:15.850\nabout how he sees around corners, not only preparing for industry shifts before\n\n6\n00:00:15.850 --> 00:00:17.040\nthey happen, but also\n\n7\n00:00:17.040 --> 00:00:20.950\nbecoming the type of leader people trust to guide them through it. So if you\n\n8\n00:00:20.950 --> 00:00:22.000\nfind yourself thinking\n\n9\n00:00:22.000 --> 00:00:25.410\nmore about the current reality of your business than the future of your\n\n10\n00:00:25.410 --> 00:00:27.360\nbusiness, this episode is\n\n11\n00:00:27.360 --> 00:00:30.960\nfor you. Enjoy this conversation and I'll see you at the debrief.\n\n12\n00:00:30.960 --> 00:00:40.160\nYou know, we're making some history here, Dave, because this is the first time\n\n13\n00:00:40.160 --> 00:00:47.040\nthat I've ever had both a father and a daughter as guests on How Leaders Lead.\n\n14\n00:00:47.040 --> 00:00:48.160\nNow, how about that?\n\n15\n00:00:49.680 --> 00:00:55.620\nProud father. Well, your daughter, Lindsay, founded Wheezy Tows and your son\n\n16\n00:00:55.620 --> 00:00:58.080\nAndrew is general partner\n\n17\n00:00:58.080 --> 00:01:03.260\nat Noel Ventures, which he also found founded. And then your son Tyler, he's\n\n18\n00:01:03.260 --> 00:01:04.400\nlike a real estate\n\n19\n00:01:04.400 --> 00:01:10.090\nmogul. How is the way you mentor your kids different from how you mentor CEOs\n\n20\n00:01:10.090 --> 00:01:11.760\nwhose boards you sit on?\n\n21\n00:01:11.760 --> 00:01:16.300\nWell, honestly, I'm deeply emotionally involved with my children. And, you know\n\n22\n00:01:16.300 --> 00:01:17.680\n, I try not to be\n\n23\n00:01:17.680 --> 00:01:23.170\nwith CEOs, but each, each of them, I'll say the similarity is each of them is\n\n24\n00:01:23.170 --> 00:01:24.320\ntheir own person.\n\n25\n00:01:24.320 --> 00:01:30.070\nYou know, CEOs have idiosyncratic behavior that you have to know about kids do\n\n26\n00:01:30.070 --> 00:01:31.600\ntoo. In each of my\n\n27\n00:01:31.600 --> 00:01:36.960\nkids, you know, what makes them tick is very different. Yeah. And you look for\n\n28\n00:01:36.960 --> 00:01:37.760\nleaders who see\n\n29\n00:01:37.760 --> 00:01:42.060\naround corners. Explain what you mean by that. Well, I think it's always, to me\n\n30\n00:01:42.060 --> 00:01:43.840\n, a hallmark of a\n\n31\n00:01:43.840 --> 00:01:49.600\ngreat leader who, yes, they enjoy accomplishment and the success of the day,\n\n32\n00:01:49.600 --> 00:01:50.320\nbut they're thinking\n\n33\n00:01:50.320 --> 00:01:54.740\nabout where we go from here. What can go wrong? What can go right? And I've\n\n34\n00:01:54.740 --> 00:01:56.240\noften said you learn more\n\n35\n00:01:56.240 --> 00:02:01.210\nsometimes for the bad times that follow good times sometimes. You hope that\n\n36\n00:02:01.210 --> 00:02:01.680\nnever happens.\n\n37\n00:02:01.680 --> 00:02:05.410\nBut you ask yourself, well, how did we, how did we let this happen? How do we\n\n38\n00:02:05.410 --> 00:02:06.160\nget there?\n\n39\n00:02:06.160 --> 00:02:11.550\nGenerally speaking, it's spending too much time, you know, counting today's\n\n40\n00:02:11.550 --> 00:02:12.960\nmoney versus tomorrow's.\n\n41\n00:02:13.680 --> 00:02:17.040\nYou know, when you look back on your career, when, when is there a time where\n\n42\n00:02:17.040 --> 00:02:17.840\nyou looked around the\n\n43\n00:02:17.840 --> 00:02:22.490\ncorner and you saw where things were headed? Well, what comes from mine first\n\n44\n00:02:22.490 --> 00:02:23.440\nis that, you know,\n\n45\n00:02:23.440 --> 00:02:28.560\ntaking over as CEO of AT&T at a moment when wireless services were beginning to\n\n46\n00:02:28.560 --> 00:02:29.280\nreally grow\n\n47\n00:02:29.280 --> 00:02:34.250\ndramatically and historical services that had sort of built AT&T, primarily\n\n48\n00:02:34.250 --> 00:02:35.440\nlong distance calling\n\n49\n00:02:35.440 --> 00:02:40.390\nand long distance data services, were beginning to retrench. And it's because\n\n50\n00:02:40.390 --> 00:02:41.280\nthey were substitutes.\n\n51\n00:02:41.280 --> 00:02:47.040\nEmail, for example, what would you say? Probably in the late '90s, you know,\n\n52\n00:02:47.040 --> 00:02:48.000\nemail became a\n\n53\n00:02:48.000 --> 00:02:52.390\nsubstitute. And now we live with it every day, or most people do. And then you\n\n54\n00:02:52.390 --> 00:02:53.600\nadd on text messaging.\n\n55\n00:02:53.600 --> 00:02:58.570\nSo the fundamental methods of communication began to change and AT&T's core\n\n56\n00:02:58.570 --> 00:02:59.040\nbusinesses\n\n57\n00:02:59.040 --> 00:03:04.040\nwere threatened. And I was convinced we had to change and change really quickly\n\n58\n00:03:04.040 --> 00:03:04.720\nor die.\n\n59\n00:03:05.440 --> 00:03:10.410\nYeah. And you made a lot of changes. And, you know, for a leader who doesn't\n\n60\n00:03:10.410 --> 00:03:11.440\nhave that ability\n\n61\n00:03:11.440 --> 00:03:16.410\ntoday to look around the corners, how would you coach them? What should they do\n\n62\n00:03:16.410 --> 00:03:16.480\n?\n\n63\n00:03:16.480 --> 00:03:21.600\nWell, I think that you can certainly look at where you are, your environment.\n\n64\n00:03:21.600 --> 00:03:22.240\nOne of the things\n\n65\n00:03:22.240 --> 00:03:26.560\nthat we used to do with our board, every meeting, and they sometimes a board\n\n66\n00:03:26.560 --> 00:03:27.600\nwould look at me like,\n\n67\n00:03:27.600 --> 00:03:32.320\n\"Why are you doing this again?\" We would use a Michael Porter bubble chart. You\n\n68\n00:03:32.320 --> 00:03:32.480\nknow,\n\n69\n00:03:32.480 --> 00:03:35.840\nwhat part of the industry is growing? What part of the industry is shrinking?\n\n70\n00:03:35.840 --> 00:03:42.000\nAnd are we participating in those pools of growth? And it was pretty obvious\n\n71\n00:03:42.000 --> 00:03:42.880\nafter\n\n72\n00:03:42.880 --> 00:03:47.120\ngoing through it that there was distinct patterns emerging where growth was\n\n73\n00:03:47.120 --> 00:03:47.440\ncoming,\n\n74\n00:03:47.440 --> 00:03:51.010\nas I mentioned, to wireless services. If you weren't wireless, you know, you\n\n75\n00:03:51.010 --> 00:03:51.600\nwere going to be\n\n76\n00:03:51.600 --> 00:03:57.150\nreally threatened. So I think it's both with leaders and even your own board\n\n77\n00:03:57.150 --> 00:03:57.680\nmembers\n\n78\n00:03:58.640 --> 00:04:03.110\nsometimes are not synced up with, they're looking at the past even more than\n\n79\n00:04:03.110 --> 00:04:03.600\nyou are.\n\n80\n00:04:03.600 --> 00:04:09.480\nYou know, you're now the independent board chair of PayPal who went from a peak\n\n81\n00:04:09.480 --> 00:04:10.560\nmarket cap of over\n\n82\n00:04:10.560 --> 00:04:19.120\n$350 billion to roughly $39 billion today. How do you lead an influence and\n\n83\n00:04:19.120 --> 00:04:20.640\nenvironment like that?\n\n84\n00:04:20.640 --> 00:04:25.940\nWell, first of all, nobody loves you when that happens. The employees don't\n\n85\n00:04:25.940 --> 00:04:26.800\nlove you. You're,\n\n86\n00:04:26.800 --> 00:04:31.760\nyou know, the investor sure as hell don't love you. But you ask yourself how it\n\n87\n00:04:31.760 --> 00:04:31.760\nhappened.\n\n88\n00:04:31.760 --> 00:04:36.320\nAnd it was in some ways a perfect storm of having an unbelievable growth during\n\n89\n00:04:36.320 --> 00:04:37.120\nthe pandemic.\n\n90\n00:04:37.120 --> 00:04:40.480\nWe were already growing, but the pandemic, because people couldn't leave\n\n91\n00:04:40.480 --> 00:04:41.200\nshopping at home,\n\n92\n00:04:41.200 --> 00:04:46.170\nPayPal was a huge beneficiary of that. So we had massive growth during the pand\n\n93\n00:04:46.170 --> 00:04:46.800\nemic period.\n\n94\n00:04:46.800 --> 00:04:52.160\nYou know, I think the shame on us is that we didn't recognize that that's a\n\n95\n00:04:52.160 --> 00:04:52.560\nwave,\n\n96\n00:04:52.560 --> 00:04:56.800\nit's going to crest what happens after that. And we had some strategic choices\n\n97\n00:04:56.800 --> 00:05:02.080\nthat we didn't pursue because we kind of thought we can do this organically. We\n\n98\n00:05:02.080 --> 00:05:03.440\ndon't have to add\n\n99\n00:05:03.440 --> 00:05:08.760\nto it. And looking back on it, you know, pretty clear that we were just miss\n\n100\n00:05:08.760 --> 00:05:10.320\ncalling, you know,\n\n101\n00:05:10.320 --> 00:05:15.750\nwhen the wave was going to crest. And the market punishes, you know, if you've\n\n102\n00:05:15.750 --> 00:05:17.200\nbeen growing robustly,\n\n103\n00:05:17.200 --> 00:05:23.910\n30, 40% on revenues of 15, 18, 20 billion, they price you way out into the\n\n104\n00:05:23.910 --> 00:05:25.120\nfuture, which is what\n\n105\n00:05:25.120 --> 00:05:30.090\nthe 350 billion represented. And then when you start growing at a more\n\n106\n00:05:30.090 --> 00:05:31.040\npedestrian, two, three,\n\n107\n00:05:31.040 --> 00:05:36.530\nfour, five percent, even 10%, they basically re-rate you. And that's what\n\n108\n00:05:36.530 --> 00:05:37.760\nhappened with PayPal. It was\n\n109\n00:05:37.760 --> 00:05:42.730\nre-rated to a much slower grower. And how do you, how do you assess the\n\n110\n00:05:42.730 --> 00:05:43.760\nopportunity now, Dave?\n\n111\n00:05:43.760 --> 00:05:49.040\nWell, payments, you know, I think the world's payment market, a total available\n\n112\n00:05:49.040 --> 00:05:49.680\nmarket's like\n\n113\n00:05:49.680 --> 00:05:54.860\n29 trillion dollars. And that's, you know, checks and credit cards and all\n\n114\n00:05:54.860 --> 00:05:56.400\nkinds of electronic\n\n115\n00:05:56.400 --> 00:06:00.560\npayments. So it's very robust. But there's a lot of concentration. You know,\n\n116\n00:06:00.560 --> 00:06:01.280\nthe very biggest\n\n117\n00:06:01.280 --> 00:06:05.440\nmerchants like Walmart and Amazon are growing faster than the market for\n\n118\n00:06:05.440 --> 00:06:06.960\nelectronic commerce.\n\n119\n00:06:06.960 --> 00:06:11.520\nSo they're huge and growing. Well, they basically dictate how payment terms are\n\n120\n00:06:11.520 --> 00:06:12.400\ngoing to be made.\n\n121\n00:06:12.400 --> 00:06:16.790\nSo that's a market in itself. And then with consumers, consumers are looking\n\n122\n00:06:16.790 --> 00:06:17.840\nfor the best deal and they\n\n123\n00:06:17.840 --> 00:06:22.860\nwant to be secure and safe. You know, that's the thing we hear over and over. I\n\n124\n00:06:22.860 --> 00:06:23.360\nthink the\n\n125\n00:06:23.360 --> 00:06:27.040\nopportunity still exists to differentiate, you know, in the minds of the\n\n126\n00:06:27.040 --> 00:06:27.920\nconsumer, you know,\n\n127\n00:06:27.920 --> 00:06:31.600\nwe've heard about electronic wallet or digital wallet for a really long time.\n\n128\n00:06:31.600 --> 00:06:33.200\nSo it's not a new\n\n129\n00:06:33.200 --> 00:06:38.170\nconcept, but making it come alive so that you can, on a transaction by\n\n130\n00:06:38.170 --> 00:06:39.760\ntransaction basis, say,\n\n131\n00:06:39.760 --> 00:06:42.790\nI want to use debit for this. I want to use credit for this. And I want to use\n\n132\n00:06:42.790 --> 00:06:44.480\nmy visa card on this\n\n133\n00:06:44.480 --> 00:06:50.160\ntransaction. I want to use my master card and have the rewards that follow that\n\n134\n00:06:50.160 --> 00:06:51.360\n, you know,\n\n135\n00:06:51.360 --> 00:06:57.120\naccrue to you no matter where you are. So we're today looking at the\n\n136\n00:06:57.120 --> 00:06:58.800\nopportunity to really be a\n\n137\n00:06:58.800 --> 00:07:04.400\ndigital bank. That's also not a new concept, but get beyond basic PayPal or\n\n138\n00:07:04.400 --> 00:07:06.000\nbasic Venmo to offer\n\n139\n00:07:06.000 --> 00:07:10.970\nan array of digital services. So when you when you think about, you know, these\n\n140\n00:07:10.970 --> 00:07:11.200\nconcepts that\n\n141\n00:07:11.200 --> 00:07:15.620\naren't necessarily new concepts, how do you how do you differentiate in that\n\n142\n00:07:15.620 --> 00:07:16.560\nkind of world if\n\n143\n00:07:16.560 --> 00:07:21.790\nyou're a PayPal? Oh, it's really tough. For at the beginning of our company, we\n\n144\n00:07:21.790 --> 00:07:22.720\ntalked about having\n\n145\n00:07:22.720 --> 00:07:27.650\na two sided network, meaning we did things for merchants that used our services\n\n146\n00:07:27.650 --> 00:07:28.400\nto collect from\n\n147\n00:07:28.400 --> 00:07:33.370\ncustomers. And we did things for consumers to make their experiences, I said,\n\n148\n00:07:33.370 --> 00:07:35.520\nsafe and rewarding.\n\n149\n00:07:35.520 --> 00:07:39.760\nSo we the power of that two sided network really served us well for the first\n\n150\n00:07:39.760 --> 00:07:41.120\n20 years of our\n\n151\n00:07:41.120 --> 00:07:46.580\nexistence. Well, now that's kind of a basic anti. You've got to be secure. You\n\n152\n00:07:46.580 --> 00:07:47.200\n've got to be able\n\n153\n00:07:47.200 --> 00:07:52.170\nto do things for merchants. And you know, I know from my time at CVS, the\n\n154\n00:07:52.170 --> 00:07:53.120\nmerchant fee for credit\n\n155\n00:07:53.120 --> 00:07:56.900\ncards, you know, was a was a billion and a half dollars a year for CVS. And\n\n156\n00:07:56.900 --> 00:07:58.160\nthat's, you know,\n\n157\n00:07:58.160 --> 00:08:02.240\ngoing back probably 10 years is probably more than I think Walmart's is in the\n\n158\n00:08:02.240 --> 00:08:03.440\nbillions. So are you\n\n159\n00:08:03.440 --> 00:08:08.920\ngoing to try as a merchant to minimize the expense that you go to to accept\n\n160\n00:08:08.920 --> 00:08:10.480\ncredit cards? And are you\n\n161\n00:08:10.480 --> 00:08:14.960\ngoing to use that information for the benefit of you and your customer? Because\n\n162\n00:08:14.960 --> 00:08:16.560\nas you know today,\n\n163\n00:08:16.560 --> 00:08:20.340\ncredit card companies keep the charge data. It's not owned by the merchant. You\n\n164\n00:08:20.340 --> 00:08:20.560\nknow,\n\n165\n00:08:20.560 --> 00:08:24.000\nfrom your young brands day, you couldn't go track how many guys were using you\n\n166\n00:08:24.000 --> 00:08:25.040\nthrough credit card\n\n167\n00:08:25.040 --> 00:08:29.670\nuses. Well, that's changing. And I think that's going to be a big big influence\n\n168\n00:08:29.670 --> 00:08:31.840\non on merchants.\n\n169\n00:08:31.840 --> 00:08:37.390\nYou know, you led the search for a new CEO at Paypal. What was the most\n\n170\n00:08:37.390 --> 00:08:38.560\nimportant characteristic\n\n171\n00:08:38.560 --> 00:08:41.580\nyou're looking for? And you've worked in so many different companies. So you\n\n172\n00:08:41.580 --> 00:08:42.720\ngot to go find a new\n\n173\n00:08:42.720 --> 00:08:47.690\nCEO. What was most important to you? Well, you know, it's like a batter. If you\n\n174\n00:08:47.690 --> 00:08:48.720\nstrike out against\n\n175\n00:08:48.720 --> 00:08:52.290\na pitcher, you go up against him again, you say, I'm not going to fall for the\n\n176\n00:08:52.290 --> 00:08:53.120\nsinker this time.\n\n177\n00:08:53.120 --> 00:08:57.070\nI'm going to be I'm going to be more vigilant. Well, we had a CEO that we put\n\n178\n00:08:57.070 --> 00:08:58.160\nin three years ago\n\n179\n00:08:58.880 --> 00:09:02.600\nwhen Dan Schulman retired. And our objective was to get someone who was a\n\n180\n00:09:02.600 --> 00:09:04.160\nskilled product\n\n181\n00:09:04.160 --> 00:09:11.320\nleader, whose depth was technical, but also in product. And we made a hire and\n\n182\n00:09:11.320 --> 00:09:12.560\nit didn't work out.\n\n183\n00:09:12.560 --> 00:09:18.440\nAnd we realized that, you know, the company was in more significant turmoil\n\n184\n00:09:18.440 --> 00:09:19.840\nthan maybe we realized\n\n185\n00:09:19.840 --> 00:09:23.300\nas directors. And so we were basically bringing in a first time CEO for a\n\n186\n00:09:23.300 --> 00:09:24.480\nturnaround situation.\n\n187\n00:09:25.600 --> 00:09:30.800\nAnd that didn't work. The second time around, we said, we've got to get someone\n\n188\n00:09:30.800 --> 00:09:32.240\nwith serious\n\n189\n00:09:32.240 --> 00:09:38.590\nCEO chops, been here before mature, a tech background for sure is important in\n\n190\n00:09:38.590 --> 00:09:39.840\nthis business.\n\n191\n00:09:39.840 --> 00:09:43.100\nAnd international is important in this business because, you know, half of our\n\n192\n00:09:43.100 --> 00:09:44.400\nprofits come from\n\n193\n00:09:44.400 --> 00:09:50.470\noutside the US. So that made Enrique Loras, the choice to be made a really good\n\n194\n00:09:50.470 --> 00:09:51.120\nchoice\n\n195\n00:09:51.120 --> 00:09:57.840\nafter six years as CEO at HP and 35 overall. What advice, Dave, would you give\n\n196\n00:09:57.840 --> 00:09:58.480\nothers about\n\n197\n00:09:58.480 --> 00:10:03.680\nthe process that they should go through to identify a new leader at any level\n\n198\n00:10:03.680 --> 00:10:04.720\nof their company?\n\n199\n00:10:04.720 --> 00:10:08.720\nYou know, the best situation possible is to groom a leader from within, you\n\n200\n00:10:08.720 --> 00:10:08.800\nknow,\n\n201\n00:10:08.800 --> 00:10:12.960\nwhich you did. And you actually did that over, you know, a couple of successive\n\n202\n00:10:12.960 --> 00:10:13.840\nmoves by having\n\n203\n00:10:13.840 --> 00:10:19.280\na deep bench. PayPal did not have a deep bench. So we were forced to go outside\n\n204\n00:10:20.080 --> 00:10:25.050\nto find the next CEO. And I always, I don't know how to handicap it, but it's\n\n205\n00:10:25.050 --> 00:10:25.920\nsignificantly riskier\n\n206\n00:10:25.920 --> 00:10:32.060\nto find someone on the outside. It's a fit with your culture, fit with your\n\n207\n00:10:32.060 --> 00:10:33.040\nteam, fit with your\n\n208\n00:10:33.040 --> 00:10:38.920\nindustry and have it all work. There's always some sets of compromises and you\n\n209\n00:10:38.920 --> 00:10:40.160\n're rarely lucky\n\n210\n00:10:40.160 --> 00:10:45.830\nenough to say, gee, this person hits our spec in every possible way. You're\n\n211\n00:10:45.830 --> 00:10:47.120\ncompromising on\n\n212\n00:10:47.120 --> 00:10:51.980\nsomething and we clearly try to minimize and mitigate that, but you know, we\n\n213\n00:10:51.980 --> 00:10:52.640\ndidn't get it right.\n\n214\n00:10:52.640 --> 00:10:59.360\nYou know, you've said on the boards of AT&T, Motorola, CVS, Young Brands, eBay,\n\n215\n00:10:59.360 --> 00:11:01.600\nPayPal, and Dell.\n\n216\n00:11:01.600 --> 00:11:06.880\nNow, these are some of the most consequential companies in the last 25 years,\n\n217\n00:11:06.880 --> 00:11:07.520\none way or the\n\n218\n00:11:07.520 --> 00:11:12.490\nother. What's the most common leadership mistake you see, even in the most\n\n219\n00:11:12.490 --> 00:11:13.600\nsuccessful companies?\n\n220\n00:11:14.320 --> 00:11:19.200\nI have to say it's in the development of people. You know, when things are good\n\n221\n00:11:19.200 --> 00:11:19.200\n,\n\n222\n00:11:19.200 --> 00:11:23.280\nit's easy not to have it or check the box programs and say, okay, we're doing\n\n223\n00:11:23.280 --> 00:11:24.880\nexecutive development.\n\n224\n00:11:24.880 --> 00:11:30.160\nYou know, where's this pro person on his program for further development? And I\n\n225\n00:11:30.160 --> 00:11:31.520\nfind too many times\n\n226\n00:11:31.520 --> 00:11:36.490\nit's lip service. It's not really in depth. And you know, I remember Jack Welch\n\n227\n00:11:36.490 --> 00:11:37.440\nused to talk about\n\n228\n00:11:37.440 --> 00:11:43.360\nthis, you know, incessantly in the heyday of GE, you know, being candid about\n\n229\n00:11:43.360 --> 00:11:44.320\npeople and their\n\n230\n00:11:44.320 --> 00:11:48.790\nshortcomings and their strengths and being candid with them instead of leading\n\n231\n00:11:48.790 --> 00:11:50.160\nthem on to say, okay,\n\n232\n00:11:50.160 --> 00:11:53.910\nwell, gee, you're good enough for now, but you're probably not going to go all\n\n233\n00:11:53.910 --> 00:11:55.040\nthe way. People didn't\n\n234\n00:11:55.040 --> 00:11:58.750\nsay that. They just kept patting them on the back and doing the job because it\n\n235\n00:11:58.750 --> 00:12:00.720\n's disruptive to make\n\n236\n00:12:00.720 --> 00:12:04.920\nchange, especially if someone is performing at level. And I'm not saying you\n\n237\n00:12:04.920 --> 00:12:06.000\ndon't have room for\n\n238\n00:12:06.000 --> 00:12:09.920\npeople like that, but it's not going to help you develop tomorrow's bench.\n\n239\n00:12:09.920 --> 00:12:15.320\nYou know, you've you've led when things have gone swimmingly well and and you\n\n240\n00:12:15.320 --> 00:12:16.320\n've led businesses\n\n241\n00:12:16.320 --> 00:12:22.720\nthat were were in a mess. Tell a story about which which one taught you the\n\n242\n00:12:22.720 --> 00:12:24.320\nmost about leadership\n\n243\n00:12:24.320 --> 00:12:30.790\nand why? When I became CEO of AT&T, it was obvious that the grand strategy of\n\n244\n00:12:30.790 --> 00:12:31.920\nmy predecessor was\n\n245\n00:12:31.920 --> 00:12:36.820\ngoing to have to be unwound. You know, we had had a, you know, a rapid increase\n\n246\n00:12:36.820 --> 00:12:38.080\nin the amount of debt\n\n247\n00:12:38.080 --> 00:12:43.050\nwe'd used to acquire other companies, mostly cable assets, you know, from your\n\n248\n00:12:43.050 --> 00:12:43.840\nComcast days,\n\n249\n00:12:43.840 --> 00:12:49.990\na big part of Comcast network came from AT&T broadband. We had to decide to\n\n250\n00:12:49.990 --> 00:12:51.600\nbasically give up\n\n251\n00:12:51.600 --> 00:12:56.600\nthe strategy or risk the company. And the conclusion was we give up the\n\n252\n00:12:56.600 --> 00:12:57.360\nstrategy,\n\n253\n00:12:57.360 --> 00:13:01.760\nwhich meant we're going to sell off the cable assets we just bought and we're\n\n254\n00:13:01.760 --> 00:13:02.320\ngoing to double\n\n255\n00:13:02.320 --> 00:13:08.110\ndown on communications. Now, unbeknownst to me, I didn't realize that the\n\n256\n00:13:08.110 --> 00:13:09.680\nwireless business we had,\n\n257\n00:13:09.680 --> 00:13:13.620\nwhich was kind of the future. That's the jewel. You know, once you passed on\n\n258\n00:13:13.620 --> 00:13:14.960\nbroadband, had been\n\n259\n00:13:14.960 --> 00:13:22.450\nbasically mortgaged with an irrevocable requirement to spin it off from AT&T\n\n260\n00:13:22.450 --> 00:13:24.240\nwithin a few years.\n\n261\n00:13:24.240 --> 00:13:29.280\nWell, that was the growth business. And that sort of for me said, \"Okay, if\n\n262\n00:13:29.280 --> 00:13:30.240\nthis is true,\n\n263\n00:13:30.240 --> 00:13:35.210\nI like it. I have to deal with it. So we need to optimize the value of the\n\n264\n00:13:35.210 --> 00:13:36.000\nremaining business\n\n265\n00:13:36.000 --> 00:13:41.440\nand find a partner who needs business services.\" And so we said about, you know\n\n266\n00:13:41.440 --> 00:13:42.320\n, doing what we needed\n\n267\n00:13:42.320 --> 00:13:46.320\nto do to strengthen the balance sheet, pay down debt as quickly as we could,\n\n268\n00:13:46.320 --> 00:13:47.760\nand then merge with\n\n269\n00:13:47.760 --> 00:13:52.730\na larger player who was focused on a broader set of offerings and had wireless\n\n270\n00:13:52.730 --> 00:13:53.920\nin their portfolio.\n\n271\n00:13:53.920 --> 00:13:59.980\nThat's where Southwestern Bell came in and Ed Whitaker. And I often think, had\n\n272\n00:13:59.980 --> 00:14:01.280\nwe not done that,\n\n273\n00:14:01.280 --> 00:14:05.280\nif we had tried to say we're going to soldier on and fight to the last person,\n\n274\n00:14:05.280 --> 00:14:06.960\nwe probably would\n\n275\n00:14:06.960 --> 00:14:11.930\nhave blown the company up. And you don't get a lot of credit when people say,\n\n276\n00:14:11.930 --> 00:14:12.720\nwell, they saved the\n\n277\n00:14:12.720 --> 00:14:17.720\ncompany. I know what happened. A lot of people in the industry, on the inside,\n\n278\n00:14:17.720 --> 00:14:19.200\nknow what happened.\n\n279\n00:14:19.200 --> 00:14:24.880\nI'd much rather have said, hey, we grew the thing three times over and tripled\n\n280\n00:14:24.880 --> 00:14:25.680\nthe stock price,\n\n281\n00:14:25.680 --> 00:14:31.040\nbut that wasn't to be. So that's a great point, because, you know, you didn't\n\n282\n00:14:31.040 --> 00:14:31.840\nhave the story you'd\n\n283\n00:14:31.840 --> 00:14:37.610\nmuch rather have, and you had to take a different path. And one that was not\n\n284\n00:14:37.610 --> 00:14:40.400\nexactly ideal, you know,\n\n285\n00:14:40.400 --> 00:14:44.080\nhow do you as a leader get yourself juiced up every day going into an\n\n286\n00:14:44.080 --> 00:14:45.440\nenvironment like that?\n\n287\n00:14:45.440 --> 00:14:50.410\nHow hard was it on you knowing what had transpired in the past and your\n\n288\n00:14:50.410 --> 00:14:51.920\ninability to do what you\n\n289\n00:14:51.920 --> 00:14:56.390\nreally wanted to do? Well, there was no time for woe as me. I can tell you that\n\n290\n00:14:56.390 --> 00:14:57.760\n, but I had a great\n\n291\n00:14:57.760 --> 00:15:03.340\nteam, Tom Horton, our CFO, who went on to be CEO of American Airlines, and is\n\n292\n00:15:03.340 --> 00:15:04.400\nhimself a great\n\n293\n00:15:04.400 --> 00:15:08.260\ndirector of being on GE and Walmart and Qualcomm's boards. We talked a lot\n\n294\n00:15:08.260 --> 00:15:10.640\nabout it. We got the cards\n\n295\n00:15:10.640 --> 00:15:16.720\ndealt to us. And we looked at the cards and said, oh, my, here's what we have\n\n296\n00:15:16.720 --> 00:15:17.440\nto go do.\n\n297\n00:15:17.440 --> 00:15:24.150\nAnd we said about doing it. And I'd have said, if I graded us on playing a hand\n\n298\n00:15:24.150 --> 00:15:24.800\nthat was really\n\n299\n00:15:24.800 --> 00:15:30.510\ntough to play, I think we did really well. But you do. I said to someone, you\n\n300\n00:15:30.510 --> 00:15:31.680\nhave a dream job,\n\n301\n00:15:31.680 --> 00:15:37.040\nand growing up in telecom being the CEO of AT&T was a dream job. The problem is\n\n302\n00:15:37.040 --> 00:15:37.840\nwhen I got the\n\n303\n00:15:37.840 --> 00:15:43.760\ndream dream job was not the right time. If I've been five years earlier, it\n\n304\n00:15:43.760 --> 00:15:44.800\ncould have determined\n\n305\n00:15:44.800 --> 00:15:49.220\nthe outcome differently. I like to think I could have played the cards a little\n\n306\n00:15:49.220 --> 00:15:50.320\nbetter. But for\n\n307\n00:15:50.320 --> 00:15:55.320\nthe hand that I had, I think we played it pretty well. I remember you telling\n\n308\n00:15:55.320 --> 00:15:56.240\nme a conversation\n\n309\n00:15:56.240 --> 00:16:01.240\nyou had with Warren Buffett, where he talked about that comparing the talent of\n\n310\n00:16:01.240 --> 00:16:02.160\na CEO versus the\n\n311\n00:16:02.160 --> 00:16:07.600\nreality of a crappy business. I think he said something to the fact that in the\n\n312\n00:16:07.600 --> 00:16:08.720\nTitanic struggle\n\n313\n00:16:08.720 --> 00:16:13.690\nbetween the world class CEO and the awful business, the awful business will\n\n314\n00:16:13.690 --> 00:16:14.480\nusually win.\n\n315\n00:16:14.480 --> 00:16:21.970\nLove that. You know, one of the things I've always admired about you, David,\n\n316\n00:16:21.970 --> 00:16:22.720\nand I've seen you do\n\n317\n00:16:22.720 --> 00:16:28.970\nthis, you know, not only with me, but with other leaders, you have an uncanny\n\n318\n00:16:28.970 --> 00:16:30.960\nability to basically,\n\n319\n00:16:30.960 --> 00:16:37.360\nyou know, deliver a pretty tough message or a tough challenge, and have the\n\n320\n00:16:37.360 --> 00:16:38.560\nother person come out\n\n321\n00:16:38.560 --> 00:16:45.050\nreally feeling whole in the conversation. Can you give me an example when you\n\n322\n00:16:45.050 --> 00:16:45.760\n've done that,\n\n323\n00:16:45.760 --> 00:16:52.740\nand how you think about it? You know, having been on the Motorola board at a\n\n324\n00:16:52.740 --> 00:16:53.440\nreally interested\n\n325\n00:16:53.440 --> 00:16:57.360\ntime that, you know, the Chris Galvin, who was the grandson of the founder, I\n\n326\n00:16:57.360 --> 00:16:58.320\nwas not on the board\n\n327\n00:16:58.320 --> 00:17:03.290\nat the time, was asked to leave. I mean, that was very difficult, if you can\n\n328\n00:17:03.290 --> 00:17:03.760\nimagine,\n\n329\n00:17:03.760 --> 00:17:09.960\nbeing a third generation family member. They went outside, hired Ed Zander as\n\n330\n00:17:09.960 --> 00:17:10.320\nCEO,\n\n331\n00:17:10.320 --> 00:17:15.800\nand he came in and the razor, if you remember the Motorola razor was the first\n\n332\n00:17:15.800 --> 00:17:16.480\nflip phone,\n\n333\n00:17:16.480 --> 00:17:21.440\ntiny form factor with red hot product. They ended up selling hundreds of\n\n334\n00:17:21.440 --> 00:17:22.080\nmillions of the things,\n\n335\n00:17:22.080 --> 00:17:27.050\nand it dominated that single product, dominated the revenue growth of the\n\n336\n00:17:27.050 --> 00:17:27.360\ncompany,\n\n337\n00:17:27.360 --> 00:17:30.700\nand Ed Zander got a lot of credit for that. And I'm going to say he didn't\n\n338\n00:17:30.700 --> 00:17:32.000\ndeserve some, but\n\n339\n00:17:32.000 --> 00:17:35.720\nthe product was already on the books when Chris was there. You know, it took\n\n340\n00:17:35.720 --> 00:17:36.560\noff like a rocket.\n\n341\n00:17:36.560 --> 00:17:41.760\nHe was getting a lot of adulation. The company's stock responded, and you know,\n\n342\n00:17:41.760 --> 00:17:46.150\nmedia does what media does saying, \"Oh, look, he's made this huge turnaround.\n\n343\n00:17:46.150 --> 00:17:46.880\nIt's fantastic.\"\n\n344\n00:17:46.880 --> 00:17:54.480\nAnd then things kind of hit a flat spot. There was this device coming out of a\n\n345\n00:17:54.480 --> 00:17:55.840\ncompany in Cupertino,\n\n346\n00:17:55.840 --> 00:18:01.040\nCalifornia, I think called the iPhone, which there's a story I'll tell you\n\n347\n00:18:01.040 --> 00:18:02.640\nabout how that came to be\n\n348\n00:18:02.640 --> 00:18:09.110\nseparately. But, you know, it began to eat into Motorola sales, and the iPhone\n\n349\n00:18:09.110 --> 00:18:10.080\nwas a more capable\n\n350\n00:18:10.080 --> 00:18:15.760\ndevice. The Motorola razor was a great phone, but that's really all it did. It\n\n351\n00:18:15.760 --> 00:18:16.240\ndidn't have an\n\n352\n00:18:16.240 --> 00:18:21.330\noperating system to do further things. And Ed had a moment, I mean, and this is\n\n353\n00:18:21.330 --> 00:18:22.720\n, I admire him for this,\n\n354\n00:18:23.360 --> 00:18:28.340\nwhere he basically said, \"You know, I just had a really dear friend get really\n\n355\n00:18:28.340 --> 00:18:28.720\nsick,\n\n356\n00:18:28.720 --> 00:18:33.690\nand it made me really think about life, and I don't want to do this anymore.\"\n\n357\n00:18:33.690 --> 00:18:34.560\nAnd this is before\n\n358\n00:18:34.560 --> 00:18:39.530\nthings really turned into a bucket of, you know what, he basically resigned.\n\n359\n00:18:39.530 --> 00:18:41.280\nAnd, you know,\n\n360\n00:18:41.280 --> 00:18:45.040\nthe board, I'd never seen anything like this, and serious other board members\n\n361\n00:18:45.040 --> 00:18:45.440\nlooked at each\n\n362\n00:18:45.440 --> 00:18:50.750\nother and said, \"Well, now what do we do?\" Yeah, we don't really have a CEO to\n\n363\n00:18:50.750 --> 00:18:52.880\nreplace him. We kind\n\n364\n00:18:52.880 --> 00:18:55.970\nof looked around the room, and I think I said something like, \"Don't look at me\n\n365\n00:18:55.970 --> 00:18:58.080\n. I'm not doing\n\n366\n00:18:58.080 --> 00:19:02.630\nthis,\" and there are various other people in the room. And so, we promoted the\n\n367\n00:19:02.630 --> 00:19:04.400\nonly guy, you know,\n\n368\n00:19:04.400 --> 00:19:07.490\nwho was kind of still standing in management, who had not been there that long\n\n369\n00:19:07.490 --> 00:19:08.640\nand was running as,\n\n370\n00:19:08.640 --> 00:19:12.800\nyou know, a relatively smaller part of the business by the name of Greg Brown.\n\n371\n00:19:12.800 --> 00:19:14.640\nAnd we said, \"Okay,\n\n372\n00:19:14.640 --> 00:19:19.180\nGreg's, you know, we're going to give him a shot.\" Well, that was, I think, 18\n\n373\n00:19:19.180 --> 00:19:21.200\nyears ago. And since\n\n374\n00:19:21.200 --> 00:19:26.260\nthat time, Greg has grown the stock from like 40 bucks a share to 450 bucks a\n\n375\n00:19:26.260 --> 00:19:26.880\nshare,\n\n376\n00:19:26.880 --> 00:19:31.850\nthey got rid of businesses that were distractions focused on the, you know,\n\n377\n00:19:31.850 --> 00:19:32.160\nhistorical,\n\n378\n00:19:32.160 --> 00:19:38.400\ncore public safety radio business, boring but beautiful, where they have 65%\n\n379\n00:19:38.400 --> 00:19:39.120\nmarket share.\n\n380\n00:19:39.120 --> 00:19:45.590\nI think you'd have to count Greg as one of the top 10 CEOs of the last 15, 20\n\n381\n00:19:45.590 --> 00:19:47.360\nyears. And it was,\n\n382\n00:19:47.360 --> 00:19:50.720\nit was from like desperation, we don't know what the hell we're going to do,\n\n383\n00:19:50.720 --> 00:19:57.060\nthat we got lucky enough to pick the right guy, which, you know, that really\n\n384\n00:19:57.060 --> 00:19:58.720\nwasn't what we expected\n\n385\n00:19:58.720 --> 00:20:03.690\nto happen. So what was the tough conversation you had back then, you know, that\n\n386\n00:20:03.690 --> 00:20:04.400\nled to that?\n\n387\n00:20:04.400 --> 00:20:08.560\nI don't want to say it quite this way, because I wasn't the one delivering this\n\n388\n00:20:08.560 --> 00:20:09.440\nparticular message,\n\n389\n00:20:09.440 --> 00:20:12.570\nwhich was, \"We're not sure you can do this, but we're going to give you a\n\n390\n00:20:12.570 --> 00:20:13.200\nchance.\"\n\n391\n00:20:15.280 --> 00:20:18.850\nThat was kind of good. You know, you're the best we can do right now. And all\n\n392\n00:20:18.850 --> 00:20:19.840\nhe did was just blow\n\n393\n00:20:19.840 --> 00:20:26.080\nthe, you know, blow the doors off of it. Do you recall a tough conversation\n\n394\n00:20:26.080 --> 00:20:27.760\nthat you avoided too long\n\n395\n00:20:27.760 --> 00:20:34.640\nthat you ended up paying for later? I have lots of recollection of wishing I\n\n396\n00:20:34.640 --> 00:20:35.760\nhad taken action\n\n397\n00:20:35.760 --> 00:20:41.040\nwhen I knew something was not going to work out. But it was kind of, as I was\n\n398\n00:20:41.040 --> 00:20:42.080\nsaying earlier,\n\n399\n00:20:42.080 --> 00:20:45.440\nit wasn't so bad that the guy was burning the building down,\n\n400\n00:20:45.440 --> 00:20:51.840\nbut you just knew that they weren't the right person. And actually, I ended up\n\n401\n00:20:51.840 --> 00:20:52.720\navoiding that\n\n402\n00:20:52.720 --> 00:20:58.410\nconflict by, you know, merging the business with someone else. So I didn't have\n\n403\n00:20:58.410 --> 00:20:58.960\nto deal with it.\n\n404\n00:20:58.960 --> 00:21:05.600\nAnd it wasn't that I was totally conflict aboard. There was a clock ticking.\n\n405\n00:21:05.600 --> 00:21:06.960\nAnd if I didn't come\n\n406\n00:21:06.960 --> 00:21:10.080\nup with another solution that I was going to have to take this guy, take this\n\n407\n00:21:10.080 --> 00:21:10.800\nguy out.\n\n408\n00:21:10.800 --> 00:21:15.770\nYou know, you mentioned the clock ticking. You just talked about the AT&T, you\n\n409\n00:21:15.770 --> 00:21:16.080\nknow,\n\n410\n00:21:16.080 --> 00:21:22.400\nthe cards that you were dealt and how you played it. You have a real pragmatic\n\n411\n00:21:22.400 --> 00:21:23.440\nbone in your body,\n\n412\n00:21:23.440 --> 00:21:28.000\nyet you're a big dreamer. I mean, how do you balance the two of those things?\n\n413\n00:21:28.000 --> 00:21:32.910\nWell, you know, I think I'm too conservative. I look back at my track record as\n\n414\n00:21:32.910 --> 00:21:33.520\nan investor\n\n415\n00:21:33.520 --> 00:21:39.070\nover the last 20 years and having, you know, participated in the great growth\n\n416\n00:21:39.070 --> 00:21:39.920\nat young brands\n\n417\n00:21:39.920 --> 00:21:44.560\nin young China, you know, I probably sold the stock too early. I have the guy\n\n418\n00:21:44.560 --> 00:21:45.120\nthat rides\n\n419\n00:21:45.120 --> 00:21:50.320\nwinners, but only so far. And I have to say in the markets, we've had the last\n\n420\n00:21:50.320 --> 00:21:52.320\n15 years across it,\n\n421\n00:21:52.320 --> 00:21:57.280\nyou know, buying and holding has not been a bad strategy for a lot of stuff.\n\n422\n00:21:57.280 --> 00:21:59.600\nRight. And I have to\n\n423\n00:21:59.600 --> 00:22:04.960\nsay that my natural conservatism, conservatism, I don't know if it's being the\n\n424\n00:22:04.960 --> 00:22:05.840\nchild of two\n\n425\n00:22:05.840 --> 00:22:10.560\ndepression babies who didn't have two nickels to rub together and saying, hey,\n\n426\n00:22:10.560 --> 00:22:11.120\nI'm not going to\n\n427\n00:22:11.120 --> 00:22:15.760\nget stuck. But I mean, like right now, you read all the same things I'm doing.\n\n428\n00:22:15.760 --> 00:22:16.400\nI mean,\n\n429\n00:22:16.400 --> 00:22:22.400\nthe number of new billionaires being created by AI is stunning, staggering. And\n\n430\n00:22:22.400 --> 00:22:23.600\nwhat people do\n\n431\n00:22:23.600 --> 00:22:27.670\nwith newfound wealth is also stunning and staggering on the one hand. But on\n\n432\n00:22:27.670 --> 00:22:28.480\nthe other hand,\n\n433\n00:22:28.480 --> 00:22:33.450\nwhat do people do? They buy a house if they haven't had one or a bigger house\n\n434\n00:22:33.450 --> 00:22:34.320\nor a second house or\n\n435\n00:22:34.320 --> 00:22:38.790\nthey rent an airplane or they buy an airplane, you know, but there's there's a\n\n436\n00:22:38.790 --> 00:22:40.800\nset of conspicuous\n\n437\n00:22:40.800 --> 00:22:45.770\nconsumption things that people do when they create wealth. And then you kind of\n\n438\n00:22:45.770 --> 00:22:46.240\nrealize,\n\n439\n00:22:46.240 --> 00:22:50.000\nthere's nothing else to buy. I don't really need anything else. I'm not being\n\n440\n00:22:50.000 --> 00:22:51.120\nmade any happier by\n\n441\n00:22:51.120 --> 00:22:57.230\nthen you're sort of tasked with the challenge of giving it away. And I've found\n\n442\n00:22:57.230 --> 00:22:59.120\njoy in giving\n\n443\n00:22:59.120 --> 00:23:03.370\nmoney away, enabling other people to be able to find their dreams. So that's\n\n444\n00:23:03.370 --> 00:23:05.040\nsomething I'm enjoying.\n\n445\n00:23:05.040 --> 00:23:10.320\nAnd my natural conservatism is somehow allowed me to stumble into enough money\n\n446\n00:23:10.320 --> 00:23:11.120\nto give away.\n\n447\n00:23:11.120 --> 00:23:17.120\nWell, you're definitely a good man for sure. And you're also known for being\n\n448\n00:23:17.120 --> 00:23:18.240\none of the best\n\n449\n00:23:18.240 --> 00:23:22.320\ndirectors that could be on any board. And I can certainly attest to that fact\n\n450\n00:23:22.320 --> 00:23:22.800\nwhen you were a\n\n451\n00:23:22.800 --> 00:23:28.940\ngreat director on on on young brands. And you've seen a lot happen on boards.\n\n452\n00:23:28.940 --> 00:23:29.840\nWhat do you think is\n\n453\n00:23:29.840 --> 00:23:36.000\nthe most dangerous thing a board can do to a CEO? First of all, boards have to\n\n454\n00:23:36.000 --> 00:23:36.960\nrealize they're\n\n455\n00:23:36.960 --> 00:23:41.260\nnot running the company. You know, they're the shareholders representative and\n\n456\n00:23:41.260 --> 00:23:42.160\nthey've elected\n\n457\n00:23:42.160 --> 00:23:47.550\na CEO to run the company and they're duty bound to support them. Now, do they\n\n458\n00:23:47.550 --> 00:23:49.440\nhold the CEO accountable?\n\n459\n00:23:49.440 --> 00:23:54.420\nYes, should they have frank and candid conversations about the business? Yes.\n\n460\n00:23:54.420 --> 00:23:56.000\nBut they're not there\n\n461\n00:23:56.000 --> 00:24:00.970\nto do management work. And I think it's particularly hard for guys like me who\n\n462\n00:24:00.970 --> 00:24:02.880\n've been CEOs to avoid\n\n463\n00:24:02.880 --> 00:24:07.850\nthe pitfalls of, you know, sort of asserting yourself in a way that sort of\n\n464\n00:24:07.850 --> 00:24:08.480\nsaying you're\n\n465\n00:24:08.480 --> 00:24:11.740\nquestioning the judgment of management. I would do it this way. I'd do it that\n\n466\n00:24:11.740 --> 00:24:13.040\nway. You're a colleague\n\n467\n00:24:14.080 --> 00:24:19.050\nin a room. And when the CEO's not there, you're having frank conversations\n\n468\n00:24:19.050 --> 00:24:19.920\nabout performance,\n\n469\n00:24:19.920 --> 00:24:24.140\nabout direction, about people. And that's really important, which are not\n\n470\n00:24:24.140 --> 00:24:25.760\nrunning the company.\n\n471\n00:24:25.760 --> 00:24:31.440\nI've been the non-executive chairman now for Motorola, CVS, PayPal. I was chair\n\n472\n00:24:31.440 --> 00:24:32.640\nand CEO at AT&T\n\n473\n00:24:32.640 --> 00:24:39.090\nand Pacific Bell. And being a chairman, I, I analogize. It's like being a\n\n474\n00:24:39.090 --> 00:24:40.320\ngrandfather.\n\n475\n00:24:40.320 --> 00:24:44.080\nYou really do love the kids and you enjoy it being around them and you like\n\n476\n00:24:44.080 --> 00:24:45.200\ngoing to meetings and\n\n477\n00:24:45.200 --> 00:24:50.400\nhaving the intellectual stimulation. But when that's over, you go home, right?\n\n478\n00:24:50.400 --> 00:24:51.520\nAnd the CEO is,\n\n479\n00:24:51.520 --> 00:24:56.490\nis there running the business. And so you got to stay in your lane. As a\n\n480\n00:24:56.490 --> 00:24:58.960\nchairman, I tried to be\n\n481\n00:24:58.960 --> 00:25:03.930\nthe counselor for the CEO to say, hey, if there are things you want to talk\n\n482\n00:25:03.930 --> 00:25:04.240\nabout,\n\n483\n00:25:04.240 --> 00:25:08.230\nyou just want to bounce ideas off of it, you know, I'm not going to think less\n\n484\n00:25:08.230 --> 00:25:09.680\nof you for sharing\n\n485\n00:25:09.680 --> 00:25:12.960\nbecause some guys are like, well, gee, I don't know if I want to admit this to\n\n486\n00:25:12.960 --> 00:25:13.520\nthem.\n\n487\n00:25:13.520 --> 00:25:18.800\nYou got to develop a trusting relationship. Now, Larry Merlow and I, the CEO at\n\n488\n00:25:18.800 --> 00:25:20.000\nCVS for the 11\n\n489\n00:25:20.000 --> 00:25:24.970\nyears that I was chairman, Larry was the CEO. He succeeded Tom Ryan, who was\n\n490\n00:25:24.970 --> 00:25:25.520\nchair and CEO,\n\n491\n00:25:25.520 --> 00:25:30.490\ncreated these two. We basically separated the chair and the CEO job. He and I\n\n492\n00:25:30.490 --> 00:25:31.360\nhad, I think,\n\n493\n00:25:31.360 --> 00:25:35.390\na fabulous relationship. You know, he'd call me with, you know, you're not\n\n494\n00:25:35.390 --> 00:25:36.640\ngoing to believe this.\n\n495\n00:25:36.640 --> 00:25:43.520\nWe, you know, we were, we were communicating freely and candidly and frankly\n\n496\n00:25:43.520 --> 00:25:44.640\nand occasionally,\n\n497\n00:25:44.640 --> 00:25:50.190\nLarry's Italian. He'd get a little out there and get, you know, after during\n\n498\n00:25:50.190 --> 00:25:51.920\nthe pandemic,\n\n499\n00:25:51.920 --> 00:25:55.920\nfor example, you know, our government was not the most efficient thing to deal\n\n500\n00:25:55.920 --> 00:25:56.800\nwith with respect\n\n501\n00:25:56.800 --> 00:26:00.820\nto distributing vaccinations for people who were trying their best to give them\n\n502\n00:26:00.820 --> 00:26:01.680\nto as many people\n\n503\n00:26:01.680 --> 00:26:07.250\nas possible. And I remember after a meeting, I had to say, Larry, I don't blame\n\n504\n00:26:07.250 --> 00:26:08.480\nyou. I would be\n\n505\n00:26:08.480 --> 00:26:13.940\nreally pissed off as well. But you're not, you're not going to make it any\n\n506\n00:26:13.940 --> 00:26:15.200\nbetter by yelling,\n\n507\n00:26:15.200 --> 00:26:20.170\nyelling at the government guys. We got to find another way, you know, to get\n\n508\n00:26:20.170 --> 00:26:21.360\nour point across.\n\n509\n00:26:21.360 --> 00:26:26.960\nBut that, that was a really rare instance. And you, you know, you talk about\n\n510\n00:26:26.960 --> 00:26:27.680\nthe importance of\n\n511\n00:26:27.680 --> 00:26:31.640\nbuilding trust to have these conversations, to get the telephone calls, to\n\n512\n00:26:31.640 --> 00:26:32.880\nadmit that, you know,\n\n513\n00:26:32.880 --> 00:26:37.270\nyou don't know something that maybe someone might think you should know. I mean\n\n514\n00:26:37.270 --> 00:26:37.760\n, you know,\n\n515\n00:26:37.760 --> 00:26:42.880\ndo you have a secret sauce for, for developing that kind of trust?\n\n516\n00:26:42.880 --> 00:26:46.060\nI'd like to think that I, I have a personality that allows me to get along with\n\n517\n00:26:46.060 --> 00:26:46.640\nmost people,\n\n518\n00:26:46.640 --> 00:26:50.500\nespecially when I'm focused on it. I'm at my worst when I'm not paying\n\n519\n00:26:50.500 --> 00:26:51.200\nattention.\n\n520\n00:26:51.200 --> 00:26:56.170\nMy wife reminds me of that, you know, frequently because I'm off on some other\n\n521\n00:26:56.170 --> 00:26:56.720\nplanet thinking\n\n522\n00:26:56.720 --> 00:27:00.880\nabout AI or whatever it is. But I think when you're focused and you're\n\n523\n00:27:00.880 --> 00:27:01.840\nobjective is, you know,\n\n524\n00:27:01.840 --> 00:27:06.810\nto make sure you hear every word and you're communicating, but there's a trust\n\n525\n00:27:06.810 --> 00:27:08.320\nbetween you\n\n526\n00:27:08.320 --> 00:27:12.720\nthat the person knows I got their back. That's the most important thing that I,\n\n527\n00:27:12.720 --> 00:27:13.120\nI can tell\n\n528\n00:27:13.120 --> 00:27:18.240\nus he goes, I got your back. I'll be there. And if there are things, you know,\n\n529\n00:27:18.240 --> 00:27:18.720\nlet's just say\n\n530\n00:27:18.720 --> 00:27:23.340\nthere's some event, the company needs to be represented in, and he can't be in\n\n531\n00:27:23.340 --> 00:27:24.800\ntwo places at once.\n\n532\n00:27:24.800 --> 00:27:28.400\nYou know, go trot the chairman out and he can, you know, not going to embarrass\n\n533\n00:27:28.400 --> 00:27:28.960\nyou and say\n\n534\n00:27:28.960 --> 00:27:32.380\na few words. And, you know, after being on the board 16 years, I learned a\n\n535\n00:27:32.380 --> 00:27:33.120\nlittle something\n\n536\n00:27:33.120 --> 00:27:38.090\nabout healthcare. So that was helpful. How long does it take you in a new\n\n537\n00:27:38.090 --> 00:27:39.280\nsituation\n\n538\n00:27:39.280 --> 00:27:45.840\nto say I got your back? It depends on the relationship. And like I said before,\n\n539\n00:27:45.840 --> 00:27:46.720\nthey're all different.\n\n540\n00:27:46.720 --> 00:27:53.870\nI mean, some people are suspicious and trust is really hard to build. Karen\n\n541\n00:27:53.870 --> 00:27:55.440\nLynch, who succeeded\n\n542\n00:27:55.440 --> 00:28:02.650\nLarry at CVS, was, you know, I don't think I ever got there with her in two\n\n543\n00:28:02.650 --> 00:28:04.560\nyears that I was\n\n544\n00:28:04.560 --> 00:28:08.720\nchairman before, you know, leaving the board. I'd been on a very long time. And\n\n545\n00:28:08.720 --> 00:28:10.000\nI think that was to\n\n546\n00:28:10.000 --> 00:28:16.160\nher detriment that, you know, she wasn't willing to kind of let me in and say,\n\n547\n00:28:16.160 --> 00:28:17.520\ngee, there's some\n\n548\n00:28:17.520 --> 00:28:21.250\nthings here I could have done better. You know, where do we go from here? She\n\n549\n00:28:21.250 --> 00:28:22.880\nrather kept it to\n\n550\n00:28:22.880 --> 00:28:28.080\nherself. And I think it ended up affecting her her ability to be effective.\n\n551\n00:28:28.080 --> 00:28:30.240\nHello, friends. I\n\n552\n00:28:30.240 --> 00:28:33.730\nhope you're loving this conversation. Be sure to stay tuned to the very end of\n\n553\n00:28:33.730 --> 00:28:34.800\nthe episode. As\n\n554\n00:28:34.800 --> 00:28:38.260\nalways, David and I are going to debrief some of the concepts that he talks\n\n555\n00:28:38.260 --> 00:28:39.600\nabout with this week's\n\n556\n00:28:39.600 --> 00:28:43.120\nguests. So stay tuned to the very end. And I will see you soon.\n\n557\n00:28:43.120 --> 00:28:49.200\nYou know, I want to shift gears for a second and take you back, Dave. What's\n\n558\n00:28:49.200 --> 00:28:50.480\nthe story from your\n\n559\n00:28:50.480 --> 00:28:54.880\nchildhood that shaped the kind of leader you are today? I enjoyed getting\n\n560\n00:28:54.880 --> 00:29:02.960\nrecognition for whatever it may be, whether it was doing well on a test,\n\n561\n00:29:02.960 --> 00:29:04.080\nperforming an athletic\n\n562\n00:29:04.080 --> 00:29:10.320\nskill of some kind. But I realized I really was a recognition junkie. I needed\n\n563\n00:29:10.320 --> 00:29:10.960\nit. I needed to\n\n564\n00:29:10.960 --> 00:29:18.000\nbe reinforced that I'm okay. I was this goofy little country boy, kind of gawky\n\n565\n00:29:18.000 --> 00:29:19.920\n. But, you know,\n\n566\n00:29:19.920 --> 00:29:26.480\nas bright enough to kind of get ahead. And I have to say that was learning that\n\n567\n00:29:26.480 --> 00:29:26.800\nyou're not\n\n568\n00:29:26.800 --> 00:29:30.780\nalways going to get a trophy. You're not going to get a pat on the head. And\n\n569\n00:29:30.780 --> 00:29:31.840\nyou shouldn't expect\n\n570\n00:29:31.840 --> 00:29:37.580\nit. You know, do your job. And doing your job, you know, meant something. It\n\n571\n00:29:37.580 --> 00:29:38.800\nwasn't like,\n\n572\n00:29:38.800 --> 00:29:42.240\nlike the soccer kids, you know, like, Oh, we're giving a participation trophy.\n\n573\n00:29:42.240 --> 00:29:43.200\nYou know, that's\n\n574\n00:29:43.200 --> 00:29:48.320\nnot reality. So was there something in your childhood that happened that that\n\n575\n00:29:48.320 --> 00:29:50.960\nthat that forced that\n\n576\n00:29:50.960 --> 00:29:56.840\nrecognition or desire for it or this? Uh huh. Well, you like your father had a\n\n577\n00:29:56.840 --> 00:29:58.000\nunique job. My dad\n\n578\n00:29:58.640 --> 00:30:06.480\nas well for the first 12 years of my life, he was gone six weeks at a time and\n\n579\n00:30:06.480 --> 00:30:07.120\nthen would get a\n\n580\n00:30:07.120 --> 00:30:12.090\nweek off every six weeks. So my exposure to my dad was this, you know, every,\n\n581\n00:30:12.090 --> 00:30:14.160\nyou know, six weeks,\n\n582\n00:30:14.160 --> 00:30:18.120\nI'd see him and, you know, he tried very hard. We'd go fishing and we'd throw\n\n583\n00:30:18.120 --> 00:30:18.720\nball in the first\n\n584\n00:30:18.720 --> 00:30:23.690\nyard, but then he's gone. And I was left with this kind of a void. And my\n\n585\n00:30:23.690 --> 00:30:24.640\nmother, no matter how\n\n586\n00:30:24.640 --> 00:30:28.750\nhard she worked and she was terrific, you know, couldn't fill that void. So I\n\n587\n00:30:28.750 --> 00:30:30.160\nlooked for that,\n\n588\n00:30:30.160 --> 00:30:35.730\nyou know, sort of father's influence from others. And as a consequence, when I\n\n589\n00:30:35.730 --> 00:30:36.160\ngot to be\n\n590\n00:30:36.160 --> 00:30:41.710\n17, 18 years old, I, you know, my dad hadn't been around until I was probably a\n\n591\n00:30:41.710 --> 00:30:42.960\nlate teenager.\n\n592\n00:30:42.960 --> 00:30:46.530\nAnd of course, at that level, I was ready to get out of the house and go do my\n\n593\n00:30:46.530 --> 00:30:47.440\nown thing it.\n\n594\n00:30:47.440 --> 00:30:51.440\nAnd I would say it, as I look back on it, I went through undergraduate school\n\n595\n00:30:51.440 --> 00:30:52.240\nat Georgia Tech in\n\n596\n00:30:52.240 --> 00:30:59.520\nthree years, graduated with honors. And, you know, basically, I can't tell you\n\n597\n00:30:59.520 --> 00:31:01.280\ntoday why I did that.\n\n598\n00:31:01.280 --> 00:31:06.480\nMy friends stayed five years. They had a great time. And I was out of there and\n\n599\n00:31:06.480 --> 00:31:07.600\nworking because\n\n600\n00:31:07.600 --> 00:31:13.520\nI wanted to get on with my life. You know, you mentioned earlier, the motorola\n\n601\n00:31:13.520 --> 00:31:14.800\nstory, the razor\n\n602\n00:31:14.800 --> 00:31:20.560\nand then Apple iPhone coming in, you know, what's the leadership lesson there\n\n603\n00:31:20.560 --> 00:31:21.360\nfor how\n\n604\n00:31:21.360 --> 00:31:28.230\nlet's just say an iconic company like motorola should should handle disruption.\n\n605\n00:31:28.230 --> 00:31:29.440\nAnd what happened?\n\n606\n00:31:29.440 --> 00:31:35.200\nI think that the it wasn't that Motorola didn't understand that not having a\n\n607\n00:31:35.200 --> 00:31:36.240\nuser interface,\n\n608\n00:31:36.240 --> 00:31:42.250\nwhich the iPhone had, you know, the very first visual user interface or UI, as\n\n609\n00:31:42.250 --> 00:31:42.720\nthey say.\n\n610\n00:31:43.360 --> 00:31:47.130\nAnd we had this, I mean, even to be able to text on the thing, you had to hit,\n\n611\n00:31:47.130 --> 00:31:47.600\nyou know,\n\n612\n00:31:47.600 --> 00:31:53.410\na number key three times to find the letter B or whatever. It was so clunky.\n\n613\n00:31:53.410 --> 00:31:54.640\nThe radio,\n\n614\n00:31:54.640 --> 00:32:01.280\nMotorola knew how to do is make great radios. So the phone function was superb.\n\n615\n00:32:01.280 --> 00:32:01.920\nIt was, you know,\n\n616\n00:32:01.920 --> 00:32:06.100\nindustry leading at work in the basement. We used to laugh. It could work\n\n617\n00:32:06.100 --> 00:32:07.040\nunderwater.\n\n618\n00:32:07.040 --> 00:32:11.680\nBut it didn't have user interface, which became, as you know, we talked earlier\n\n619\n00:32:11.680 --> 00:32:12.800\nwith text and then\n\n620\n00:32:12.800 --> 00:32:18.080\nemail and now streaming, you know, it was way, way more important. So Motorola\n\n621\n00:32:18.080 --> 00:32:19.280\ndid not invest\n\n622\n00:32:19.280 --> 00:32:25.680\nenough in the operating system and chose to partner. Just a quick vignette.\n\n623\n00:32:25.680 --> 00:32:29.440\nI wasn't in this meeting, but I had, you know, firsthand players who were there\n\n624\n00:32:29.440 --> 00:32:30.160\non both sides\n\n625\n00:32:30.160 --> 00:32:35.130\nwhen Apple met with Ed Zander and his team to look at something they called the\n\n626\n00:32:35.130 --> 00:32:36.480\nrocker ROKR.\n\n627\n00:32:36.480 --> 00:32:41.340\nSo it was a candy bar shaped phone, not a flip phone, and that Steve Jobs was\n\n628\n00:32:41.340 --> 00:32:41.440\nin the\n\n629\n00:32:41.440 --> 00:32:46.480\nmeeting with his people. And they said, they had a partnership to put Apple's,\n\n630\n00:32:46.480 --> 00:32:53.840\nbasically music player, MP3 player, that what do they call that thing, the iPod\n\n631\n00:32:53.840 --> 00:32:53.840\n.\n\n632\n00:32:53.840 --> 00:32:59.200\nAnd so you were going to take the iPods software, put it in a Motorola phone,\n\n633\n00:32:59.200 --> 00:33:02.900\ncreate this thing, call the rocker, you know, Apple would love it. Motorola\n\n634\n00:33:02.900 --> 00:33:03.520\nwould love it.\n\n635\n00:33:03.520 --> 00:33:10.480\nAfter the meeting was over, reportedly Steve Jobs picked up the mock up that\n\n636\n00:33:10.480 --> 00:33:16.240\nEd Zander brought in and looked at it and he said, well, if you can put an iPod\n\n637\n00:33:16.240 --> 00:33:16.960\nin a phone,\n\n638\n00:33:16.960 --> 00:33:22.510\nwhy can't you put a phone in an iPod? And they all kind of looked at him and\n\n639\n00:33:22.510 --> 00:33:22.800\nsaid,\n\n640\n00:33:22.800 --> 00:33:27.770\nwell, you probably could. So we'll go work on that. Well, that was the seed\n\n641\n00:33:27.770 --> 00:33:28.000\ncorn\n\n642\n00:33:28.000 --> 00:33:34.560\nfor what has become the greatest selling product of all time, you know, with\n\n643\n00:33:34.560 --> 00:33:35.760\nhundreds of billions\n\n644\n00:33:35.760 --> 00:33:41.680\nof sales and an unbelievable ecosystem. But it was that question. Steve looking\n\n645\n00:33:41.680 --> 00:33:42.960\nat it differently\n\n646\n00:33:42.960 --> 00:33:48.080\nand asking that question. You know, people say today in the world of AI, you\n\n647\n00:33:48.080 --> 00:33:49.120\nknow, the really\n\n648\n00:33:49.120 --> 00:33:53.190\nsmart companies are going to teach their people how to ask really insightful\n\n649\n00:33:53.190 --> 00:33:54.320\nquestions so you can\n\n650\n00:33:54.320 --> 00:33:58.710\nget the best out of AI. What's your thinking on that? Well, we were talking a\n\n651\n00:33:58.710 --> 00:33:59.600\nlittle bit before\n\n652\n00:33:59.600 --> 00:34:04.570\nyou came on. I think there's this thing is going, it's almost like throwing a,\n\n653\n00:34:04.570 --> 00:34:05.840\nyou know, a squirt of\n\n654\n00:34:05.840 --> 00:34:10.810\nolive oil on a hot skillet. It's going in every direction all at once. And I\n\n655\n00:34:10.810 --> 00:34:12.080\nthink that I'm watching\n\n656\n00:34:12.080 --> 00:34:16.470\nsome companies very thoughtfully approach it and say, we're going to do this in\n\n657\n00:34:16.470 --> 00:34:17.280\na controlled way,\n\n658\n00:34:17.280 --> 00:34:20.220\nwe understand there's a lot of power here. And there are some who are just\n\n659\n00:34:20.220 --> 00:34:21.360\njumping into the deep\n\n660\n00:34:21.360 --> 00:34:24.850\nend and saying, you know, we're going to rip out, you know, work day tomorrow\n\n661\n00:34:24.850 --> 00:34:26.000\nand put in, you know,\n\n662\n00:34:26.000 --> 00:34:32.560\nan energetic AI, HR system or whatever. And I actually think, David, there is a\n\n663\n00:34:32.560 --> 00:34:34.960\nrange of things\n\n664\n00:34:34.960 --> 00:34:40.400\nthat we're just learning to do. And it's, and basically, I don't know if you\n\n665\n00:34:40.400 --> 00:34:41.440\npersonally use AI.\n\n666\n00:34:41.440 --> 00:34:47.320\nI use it all the time. I use it every day. And I'm willing to ask myself stuff.\n\n667\n00:34:47.320 --> 00:34:47.520\nI mean,\n\n668\n00:34:48.320 --> 00:34:54.320\nrecently, we have a mutual friend that you know, who was being proposed for a\n\n669\n00:34:54.320 --> 00:34:56.640\ngolf hall of fame.\n\n670\n00:34:56.640 --> 00:35:01.030\nI said, I need a resume for this person going back to college emphasis on\n\n671\n00:35:01.030 --> 00:35:02.160\nathletic accomplishments\n\n672\n00:35:02.160 --> 00:35:05.840\nand business accomplishments. Well, I got this incredible dossier. That's kind\n\n673\n00:35:05.840 --> 00:35:06.640\nof child's play,\n\n674\n00:35:06.640 --> 00:35:10.320\nbut when I shared it with the person goes, which, how did you know this? Well,\n\n675\n00:35:10.320 --> 00:35:11.200\nI didn't. I just,\n\n676\n00:35:11.200 --> 00:35:15.060\nI asked chat GPT for an answer. And he says, well, I don't understand what that\n\n677\n00:35:15.060 --> 00:35:15.760\nis. So I said,\n\n678\n00:35:15.760 --> 00:35:19.020\nwell, you can do anything. I said, let's, let's turn this into a poem about\n\n679\n00:35:19.020 --> 00:35:20.080\nyour life.\n\n680\n00:35:20.080 --> 00:35:25.890\nHow does it do that? You know, within 20 seconds, we had a poem. And watching\n\n681\n00:35:25.890 --> 00:35:27.760\npeople wake up,\n\n682\n00:35:27.760 --> 00:35:33.640\nyou know, to what the power of this is today is pretty marvelous. And in\n\n683\n00:35:33.640 --> 00:35:34.000\nbusiness,\n\n684\n00:35:34.000 --> 00:35:39.630\nI just saw what I consider to be a pretty significant tell, the earnings\n\n685\n00:35:39.630 --> 00:35:40.640\nannouncement\n\n686\n00:35:40.640 --> 00:35:45.840\nof Shopify, they missed their expense budget for the quarter really badly. And\n\n687\n00:35:45.840 --> 00:35:46.800\ntheir explanation is\n\n688\n00:35:46.800 --> 00:35:51.770\nwe spent too much on AI. You know, we've, we've lost control. We got all these\n\n689\n00:35:51.770 --> 00:35:52.560\nprompts and people\n\n690\n00:35:52.560 --> 00:35:55.370\nare doing what they want to. And there's a lot of experimenting, but we're\n\n691\n00:35:55.370 --> 00:35:56.400\ngoing to get control\n\n692\n00:35:56.400 --> 00:36:02.180\nof it in the next quarter. I think that's going to be a many times repeated\n\n693\n00:36:02.180 --> 00:36:04.080\nstory as people,\n\n694\n00:36:04.080 --> 00:36:07.280\nyou know, follow this journey to where AI is going to take them. And there'll\n\n695\n00:36:07.280 --> 00:36:08.160\nbe some huge success\n\n696\n00:36:08.160 --> 00:36:11.620\nstory. Right now it's about infrastructure. People are getting rewarded for\n\n697\n00:36:11.620 --> 00:36:12.240\nbuildings,\n\n698\n00:36:12.240 --> 00:36:17.570\nyou know, the fundamental building blocks, the data centers. I think the next\n\n699\n00:36:17.570 --> 00:36:18.720\nwave is what you\n\n700\n00:36:18.720 --> 00:36:26.320\ncan do with it. When you were at Motorola, you worked alongside Carl Icahn, the\n\n701\n00:36:26.320 --> 00:36:28.000\nfamous activist.\n\n702\n00:36:28.000 --> 00:36:34.400\nWhat's something about working with Carl, you'd only learn if you're actually\n\n703\n00:36:34.400 --> 00:36:35.200\nsitting across the\n\n704\n00:36:35.200 --> 00:36:41.200\ntable with him? Carl's kind of a disagreeable cuss. And he, and to him,\n\n705\n00:36:41.200 --> 00:36:44.720\ninvesting is, it's sport,\n\n706\n00:36:44.720 --> 00:36:48.760\nright? And I think he really does see it as a blood sport and it's how he gets\n\n707\n00:36:48.760 --> 00:36:50.160\nhis jollies,\n\n708\n00:36:50.160 --> 00:36:54.720\nis engaging with people and trying to intimidate him. I think we have a\n\n709\n00:36:54.720 --> 00:36:59.690\npresident who's like that to a degree as well to see if people, what their\n\n710\n00:36:59.690 --> 00:37:00.240\nbreaking point is,\n\n711\n00:37:00.240 --> 00:37:06.720\nand how have they been. So, but what I learned about Carl, if you're arguing\n\n712\n00:37:06.720 --> 00:37:07.600\nabout something\n\n713\n00:37:07.600 --> 00:37:11.460\nand you're pretty much saying the same thing, if you call time out and say,\n\n714\n00:37:11.460 --> 00:37:12.800\nwell, Carl, what do you\n\n715\n00:37:12.800 --> 00:37:17.280\nwant? What do you want? Well, you want the stock to go up. Well, we want the\n\n716\n00:37:17.280 --> 00:37:18.960\nstock to go up. So,\n\n717\n00:37:18.960 --> 00:37:23.820\nwhat we're arguing about is how do we get that done? And I tried to put myself\n\n718\n00:37:23.820 --> 00:37:24.560\non the same side\n\n719\n00:37:24.560 --> 00:37:30.050\nof the table with Carl to say we're trying to get to the same place. We may\n\n720\n00:37:30.050 --> 00:37:31.760\ndisagree on tactics or\n\n721\n00:37:31.760 --> 00:37:37.240\na person or something. We're trying to get to the same place. So, help me help\n\n722\n00:37:37.240 --> 00:37:38.960\nyou get where you're\n\n723\n00:37:38.960 --> 00:37:43.350\ngoing. I don't know. I mean, as I said to someone, it helped that we happen to\n\n724\n00:37:43.350 --> 00:37:44.560\nagree in Motorola and\n\n725\n00:37:44.560 --> 00:37:50.140\nwe happen to agree at eBay that separating PayPal from eBay and separating\n\n726\n00:37:50.140 --> 00:37:52.000\nMotorola mobility from\n\n727\n00:37:52.000 --> 00:37:57.280\nMotorola was a good path forward. So, then it became about how quickly can we\n\n728\n00:37:57.280 --> 00:37:58.400\nget there\n\n729\n00:37:58.400 --> 00:38:03.840\nversus arguing about, you know, is that the right answer or not? So, that's why\n\n730\n00:38:03.840 --> 00:38:05.920\nJohn Donahoe called me\n\n731\n00:38:05.920 --> 00:38:12.080\nthe icon whisper, which not necessarily a title that I was seeking.\n\n732\n00:38:12.080 --> 00:38:19.400\nWhen we spun off Yum China in 2016, you helped recruit a Chinese sport from\n\n733\n00:38:19.400 --> 00:38:20.000\nscratch.\n\n734\n00:38:21.200 --> 00:38:24.320\nWhat leadership lessened you to take away from that experience?\n\n735\n00:38:24.320 --> 00:38:28.720\nWell, we had two things. You know, we had to appoint a CEO. Mickey Pant was the\n\n736\n00:38:28.720 --> 00:38:29.520\nchoice for that.\n\n737\n00:38:29.520 --> 00:38:34.800\nAnd then we had to get a Chinese investor to buy at least 5% of the company and\n\n738\n00:38:34.800 --> 00:38:36.080\nFred Hu and Primavera\n\n739\n00:38:36.080 --> 00:38:41.770\ncapital were, you know, stand out, stand out people. Well, then it came to who\n\n740\n00:38:41.770 --> 00:38:42.960\nhas experience\n\n741\n00:38:42.960 --> 00:38:49.840\nin China with a consumer brand and who are they? You know, we, to my surprise,\n\n742\n00:38:49.840 --> 00:38:50.480\nthere were quite a\n\n743\n00:38:50.480 --> 00:38:55.910\nfew people at that time. We were able to avail ourselves of skill sets. And it\n\n744\n00:38:55.910 --> 00:38:56.800\nwas a real diverse\n\n745\n00:38:56.800 --> 00:39:01.930\nboard. So, we had to, as you know, the special committee was empowered to go\n\n746\n00:39:01.930 --> 00:39:02.880\nget this done.\n\n747\n00:39:02.880 --> 00:39:07.850\nBut the problem is you don't know these folks. They've come from a different\n\n748\n00:39:07.850 --> 00:39:08.720\nwalk of life. Maybe\n\n749\n00:39:08.720 --> 00:39:12.210\nthey've been in a different country. You only know what's there. It's the\n\n750\n00:39:12.210 --> 00:39:13.280\nsearch firm has given\n\n751\n00:39:13.280 --> 00:39:18.770\nyou, I think, back to AI. AI is making a lot easier to vet people and a lot\n\n752\n00:39:18.770 --> 00:39:20.320\nharder for people to\n\n753\n00:39:20.320 --> 00:39:26.400\npretend they're something they're not. You know, you were, as you mentioned\n\n754\n00:39:26.400 --> 00:39:27.040\nearlier, you're out\n\n755\n00:39:27.040 --> 00:39:34.560\nthe CVS chairman for 16 years. 11 years is chairman 16 on the board, right? And\n\n756\n00:39:34.560 --> 00:39:35.680\nwhat was\n\n757\n00:39:35.680 --> 00:39:40.100\nthe biggest challenge you had to work through? Tom Ryan, I always call Tom the\n\n758\n00:39:40.100 --> 00:39:41.040\nCEO from central\n\n759\n00:39:41.040 --> 00:39:44.830\ncasting. You know, he looks good. He talks good. He knew his business. He\n\n760\n00:39:44.830 --> 00:39:46.640\nstarted as a pharmacist.\n\n761\n00:39:46.640 --> 00:39:53.190\nHe was a guy that could basically do it all. He made a very successful strategy\n\n762\n00:39:53.190 --> 00:39:54.160\nabout acquiring\n\n763\n00:39:54.160 --> 00:39:58.700\nregional drugstore companies taking CVS. You know, up to, I think, it's peak 10\n\n764\n00:39:58.700 --> 00:39:59.920\n,000 stores buying\n\n765\n00:39:59.920 --> 00:40:04.960\ncaremark. So, Tom had had a, you know, 17-year run that was pretty darn good.\n\n766\n00:40:04.960 --> 00:40:06.240\nHis number two\n\n767\n00:40:06.240 --> 00:40:10.500\nguy for most of that time was Larry Merlow, who was a pretty quiet operator.\n\n768\n00:40:10.500 --> 00:40:11.520\nWent and got it done.\n\n769\n00:40:11.520 --> 00:40:16.640\nHe'd never, by that when we made Larry's CEO, he'd never been on a board. He\n\n770\n00:40:16.640 --> 00:40:17.360\nattended board\n\n771\n00:40:17.360 --> 00:40:22.330\nmeetings, obviously, at CVS. And he was much more of a quiet, you know,\n\n772\n00:40:22.330 --> 00:40:23.600\noperator, get it done,\n\n773\n00:40:23.600 --> 00:40:28.720\nkind of guy. They had very different personalities, right? So, Larry, Larry had\n\n774\n00:40:28.720 --> 00:40:29.920\nto get used to,\n\n775\n00:40:29.920 --> 00:40:34.160\nyou know, not only just the Wall Street interactions, but going to represent\n\n776\n00:40:34.160 --> 00:40:35.280\nthe company and being on\n\n777\n00:40:35.280 --> 00:40:42.500\nCNBC. And I have to say, in those 11 years, Larry grew remarkably. And I'd like\n\n778\n00:40:42.500 --> 00:40:42.880\nto think,\n\n779\n00:40:42.880 --> 00:40:47.840\nyou know, he had somebody he could bounce stuff off of, which was me.\n\n780\n00:40:47.840 --> 00:40:53.780\nSo, we were, we were, as I said earlier, simpatico, but it was getting Larry to\n\n781\n00:40:53.780 --> 00:40:54.000\nsay,\n\n782\n00:40:54.000 --> 00:40:57.890\nyou can do this. In fact, this is a hell of a lot easier than doing what you've\n\n783\n00:40:57.890 --> 00:40:58.400\nbeen doing,\n\n784\n00:40:58.400 --> 00:41:02.790\nwhich is making the trains run on time. You just got to find another guy like\n\n785\n00:41:02.790 --> 00:41:04.240\nyou to do that part\n\n786\n00:41:04.240 --> 00:41:08.710\nof the job that you shouldn't be doing anymore. What was the toughest error\n\n787\n00:41:08.710 --> 00:41:09.680\nduring that tenure\n\n788\n00:41:09.680 --> 00:41:14.070\nthat you had to work through? I think when we, we bought Caremark before Tom\n\n789\n00:41:14.070 --> 00:41:14.720\nhad left,\n\n790\n00:41:14.720 --> 00:41:20.400\nyou know, it was a very competitive industry. And they had some issues. And I\n\n791\n00:41:20.400 --> 00:41:20.960\nthink that we\n\n792\n00:41:20.960 --> 00:41:26.640\nprobably stayed with the Caremark team that was there a little bit too long.\n\n793\n00:41:26.640 --> 00:41:27.760\nAnd, you know,\n\n794\n00:41:27.760 --> 00:41:33.690\nwe kind of got talked, talked down a bit of a rabbit trail. Once we figured it\n\n795\n00:41:33.690 --> 00:41:34.480\nout, and I think\n\n796\n00:41:34.480 --> 00:41:38.340\nthis was kind of during the transition with Tom and Larry, you know, we made\n\n797\n00:41:38.340 --> 00:41:39.440\nchanges. And, you know,\n\n798\n00:41:39.440 --> 00:41:45.080\nwe went out and found basically the guy who invented the PBM business, a guy\n\n799\n00:41:45.080 --> 00:41:45.520\nnamed Perry\n\n800\n00:41:45.520 --> 00:41:50.800\nLoffberg, who had been at MedCo. And he did a terrific job. He knew exactly\n\n801\n00:41:50.800 --> 00:41:51.520\nwhat buttons to\n\n802\n00:41:51.520 --> 00:41:57.620\npush, making that critical, really knowledgeable hire, who's done it before.\n\n803\n00:41:57.620 --> 00:41:59.200\nAnd, you know,\n\n804\n00:41:59.200 --> 00:42:05.840\nPerry's being a, what I'd consider to be, task return, few words, Swedish guy,\n\n805\n00:42:05.840 --> 00:42:06.480\nno BS,\n\n806\n00:42:06.480 --> 00:42:12.030\nlet's get it done. It was a fabulous hire. And you've been on the Dell\n\n807\n00:42:12.030 --> 00:42:13.440\nTechnologies Board since\n\n808\n00:42:13.440 --> 00:42:18.570\n2016. And, and you've probably had a closer view of Michael Dell as a leader\n\n809\n00:42:18.570 --> 00:42:19.760\nthan almost anyone\n\n810\n00:42:19.760 --> 00:42:24.240\noutside the company. What does he do better than any leader you've ever seen?\n\n811\n00:42:24.240 --> 00:42:29.410\nThis has been a remarkable 10 years. And you probably don't follow this closely\n\n812\n00:42:29.410 --> 00:42:30.080\n, but Dell hit\n\n813\n00:42:30.080 --> 00:42:35.050\nanother all time high today. Stocks gone from, you know, when they took it\n\n814\n00:42:35.050 --> 00:42:36.480\nprivate and then took it\n\n815\n00:42:36.480 --> 00:42:41.910\nback out again, I'll get the numbers close, but something like 12 or 13 bucks a\n\n816\n00:42:41.910 --> 00:42:43.600\nshare to over 300\n\n817\n00:42:43.600 --> 00:42:49.340\na share now. And that, and that, by the way, doesn't count the fact that they\n\n818\n00:42:49.340 --> 00:42:51.680\nowned 82% of VMware,\n\n819\n00:42:51.680 --> 00:42:57.820\nwhich they spun off, and then a Vago bought in a massive transaction shortly\n\n820\n00:42:57.820 --> 00:42:58.800\nafter the spend\n\n821\n00:42:58.800 --> 00:43:05.280\nfor almost $100 billion. So the value creation around Dell in this 10 years has\n\n822\n00:43:05.280 --> 00:43:06.560\nbeen remarkable.\n\n823\n00:43:06.560 --> 00:43:12.440\nAnd I'd say that two things. Michael Dell had an intellectual soulmate in Egon\n\n824\n00:43:12.440 --> 00:43:13.440\nDurbin from Silver\n\n825\n00:43:13.440 --> 00:43:17.830\nLake who sort of laid out, if we go private and sell assets, we use very low\n\n826\n00:43:17.830 --> 00:43:18.960\ncost debt. We pay\n\n827\n00:43:18.960 --> 00:43:23.530\nthe debt back with cash flow, we'll go out and acquire other companies about E\n\n828\n00:43:23.530 --> 00:43:24.560\nMC to get VMware.\n\n829\n00:43:24.560 --> 00:43:33.120\nThey work together. And it took Michael being able to trust Egon and Egon to be\n\n830\n00:43:33.120 --> 00:43:35.040\nright for this\n\n831\n00:43:35.040 --> 00:43:43.920\nsort of magic to happen. During that time, Michael has looked for a longer term\n\n832\n00:43:43.920 --> 00:43:44.560\nsuccessor,\n\n833\n00:43:44.560 --> 00:43:49.530\nwhich has been a struggle. How do you take a founder? I mean, he's 41 years in\n\n834\n00:43:49.530 --> 00:43:50.080\nthe business\n\n835\n00:43:50.080 --> 00:43:56.170\nfrom being a 20 year old, making PCs in his dorm room at UT to a 61 year old\n\n836\n00:43:56.170 --> 00:43:56.640\nguy,\n\n837\n00:43:57.280 --> 00:44:04.560\nworth somewhere north of $100 billion. Who knows? I've watched him when the\n\n838\n00:44:04.560 --> 00:44:06.080\nsupply chain crisis\n\n839\n00:44:06.080 --> 00:44:14.830\nhappened. And Dell had basically sourced chips and the end assembly of PCs. In\n\n840\n00:44:14.830 --> 00:44:16.080\nShenzhen, China,\n\n841\n00:44:16.080 --> 00:44:20.310\nthere was almost like a Dell city that took each of these things, put it\n\n842\n00:44:20.310 --> 00:44:21.840\ntogether, put it in a box,\n\n843\n00:44:21.840 --> 00:44:27.720\nput it on a boat and shipped it to the U.S. Until one day, with the pandemic\n\n844\n00:44:27.720 --> 00:44:28.800\nand other issues,\n\n845\n00:44:28.800 --> 00:44:35.820\nit stopped. I won't say panic, but there was a lot of concern. What the heck\n\n846\n00:44:35.820 --> 00:44:36.960\nare we going to do?\n\n847\n00:44:36.960 --> 00:44:42.560\nAnd Michael sat at the end of the table and he listened to everyone talk about\n\n848\n00:44:42.560 --> 00:44:43.120\nthis problem\n\n849\n00:44:43.120 --> 00:44:46.980\nand that problem. We haven't figured it out. And he just said, \"Okay, we're not\n\n850\n00:44:46.980 --> 00:44:47.760\ndoing this again.\n\n851\n00:44:48.640 --> 00:44:54.930\nWe're going to diversify our supply chain. What can we move and how quickly can\n\n852\n00:44:54.930 --> 00:44:55.440\nwe move it?\"\n\n853\n00:44:55.440 --> 00:45:01.120\nAnd Dell sort of literally midstream transformed, moved things to Vietnam,\n\n854\n00:45:01.120 --> 00:45:02.880\nMalaysia, built its first,\n\n855\n00:45:02.880 --> 00:45:07.850\nwhich is kind of hard to believe being in Texas, their first factory in Mexico.\n\n856\n00:45:07.850 --> 00:45:09.600\nAnd within two years,\n\n857\n00:45:09.600 --> 00:45:15.920\nthey basically had completely de-risked their China situation. And it was\n\n858\n00:45:15.920 --> 00:45:17.200\nbecause he just said,\n\n859\n00:45:17.200 --> 00:45:22.170\n\"We're going north.\" And everybody believed that if Michael said, \"We're going\n\n860\n00:45:22.170 --> 00:45:22.320\nnorth,\n\n861\n00:45:22.320 --> 00:45:24.720\nnorth must be a good place to go. Let's go north.\"\n\n862\n00:45:24.720 --> 00:45:30.880\nYou know, I know this about you, Dave, because I've seen it up close. You're a\n\n863\n00:45:30.880 --> 00:45:32.080\ndeeply analytical\n\n864\n00:45:32.080 --> 00:45:36.470\nleader. What's the moment when your instincts were screaming one direction and\n\n865\n00:45:36.470 --> 00:45:37.520\nthe data was\n\n866\n00:45:37.520 --> 00:45:42.000\ntelling you another? There are things that you want to be true and there are\n\n867\n00:45:42.000 --> 00:45:43.200\nthings that are true.\n\n868\n00:45:43.760 --> 00:45:48.620\nAnd earlier we talked about my AT&T experience, which was, \"God, I really don't\n\n869\n00:45:48.620 --> 00:45:48.880\nwant to give\n\n870\n00:45:48.880 --> 00:45:53.850\nthis job up. I love this job. It's what I was sort of trained for.\" But\n\n871\n00:45:53.850 --> 00:45:55.200\nrealizing,\n\n872\n00:45:55.200 --> 00:46:00.300\nI'm not going to come out of this running the company. We're going to do a deal\n\n873\n00:46:00.300 --> 00:46:00.880\n. Someone's\n\n874\n00:46:00.880 --> 00:46:06.430\ngoing to buy us and I'm going to be, I'll go figure out what's next. And I had\n\n875\n00:46:06.430 --> 00:46:07.200\nto make that\n\n876\n00:46:07.200 --> 00:46:11.460\ndecision pretty quickly in order to make it happen. In other words, I didn't\n\n877\n00:46:11.460 --> 00:46:12.640\nhave two years to think\n\n878\n00:46:12.640 --> 00:46:18.520\nabout this because it may have been too late. And we had had a very near miss\n\n879\n00:46:18.520 --> 00:46:19.840\nwith Bell South\n\n880\n00:46:19.840 --> 00:46:23.520\nas an acquirer, and as you know, I grew up in Atlanta for me, that would have\n\n881\n00:46:23.520 --> 00:46:23.840\nbeen a\n\n882\n00:46:23.840 --> 00:46:29.920\nreally desirable outcome from a lot of different perspectives. I could have\n\n883\n00:46:29.920 --> 00:46:31.040\nprobably held out\n\n884\n00:46:31.040 --> 00:46:36.080\na little longer hoping that that transaction would work when, in fact,\n\n885\n00:46:37.120 --> 00:46:42.090\nSouthwestern Bell and Ed Whitaker were ready to go. And I didn't want to be the\n\n886\n00:46:42.090 --> 00:46:42.400\nguy who\n\n887\n00:46:42.400 --> 00:46:51.840\nbasically 275,000 AT&T employees and dependents said, \"That's knucklehead that\n\n888\n00:46:51.840 --> 00:46:52.720\nbankrupted our\n\n889\n00:46:52.720 --> 00:46:57.840\ncompany or drove it into a ditch and cost us all our futures. That was not\n\n890\n00:46:57.840 --> 00:46:58.880\nsomething I was willing to\n\n891\n00:46:58.880 --> 00:47:04.430\nrisk.\" We talked a little bit about AI earlier. And you live at a .com company\n\n892\n00:47:04.430 --> 00:47:05.040\nat one point and\n\n893\n00:47:05.040 --> 00:47:11.520\nyou live through the .com crash. How do you think the .com revolution compares\n\n894\n00:47:11.520 --> 00:47:12.640\nto what's going on with\n\n895\n00:47:12.640 --> 00:47:18.160\nAI, the AI revolution right now? I think Chairman Greenspan called it\n\n896\n00:47:18.160 --> 00:47:25.040\nrational exuberance, talking about the market as a whole. The .com bubble was\n\n897\n00:47:25.040 --> 00:47:26.960\ncharacterized by a lot\n\n898\n00:47:26.960 --> 00:47:31.930\nof the same things that we see today, but the bar has gotten higher. And what I\n\n899\n00:47:31.930 --> 00:47:32.720\n'm talking about\n\n900\n00:47:33.360 --> 00:47:40.510\nis taking companies public back in 2000. You kind of maybe had a couple of\n\n901\n00:47:40.510 --> 00:47:41.600\nquarters of positive\n\n902\n00:47:41.600 --> 00:47:47.760\nrevenue, but the bar was really low. And it was a form of financing, sort of, I\n\n903\n00:47:47.760 --> 00:47:48.400\ndon't want to say\n\n904\n00:47:48.400 --> 00:47:53.360\ngreater fool theory per se. Let's just say you were taking advantage of a\n\n905\n00:47:53.360 --> 00:47:54.160\npublic who was willing\n\n906\n00:47:54.160 --> 00:48:00.740\nto invest in speculative public companies, much less private companies. Today,\n\n907\n00:48:00.740 --> 00:48:02.640\nthis is bigger\n\n908\n00:48:02.640 --> 00:48:11.040\ndimensionally than the .com bubble because the amount of real investment that\n\n909\n00:48:11.040 --> 00:48:12.000\nhas taken place\n\n910\n00:48:12.000 --> 00:48:17.760\nis unprecedented. Hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars are being poured\n\n911\n00:48:17.760 --> 00:48:18.640\nin the data centers\n\n912\n00:48:18.640 --> 00:48:24.880\nwith the idea, build it and they will come. And the telecom part of the .com,\n\n913\n00:48:24.880 --> 00:48:26.400\nwe put fiber optic\n\n914\n00:48:26.400 --> 00:48:31.380\ncable in the cities, in between cities and the oceans. And we deployed all this\n\n915\n00:48:31.380 --> 00:48:32.320\nfiber and it made\n\n916\n00:48:32.320 --> 00:48:39.200\nLucent and Nortel, each of those companies grew dramatically and were worth\n\n917\n00:48:39.200 --> 00:48:40.240\nlike a half a trillion\n\n918\n00:48:40.240 --> 00:48:44.410\ndollars. Cisco was over half a trillion dollars. They were all part of that\n\n919\n00:48:44.410 --> 00:48:46.000\ninfrastructure bubble.\n\n920\n00:48:46.000 --> 00:48:52.300\nWell, I would bring your attention that Nortel went bankrupt over 15 years ago\n\n921\n00:48:52.300 --> 00:48:52.960\nnow, gone.\n\n922\n00:48:52.960 --> 00:48:59.530\nIt was sold for scrap. And Lucent and Alcatel merged. I don't even know if they\n\n923\n00:48:59.530 --> 00:49:00.080\n're still around,\n\n924\n00:49:00.080 --> 00:49:05.280\nbut the two leading infrastructure players at the time, gone. Cisco lived to\n\n925\n00:49:05.280 --> 00:49:06.240\nfight another day\n\n926\n00:49:06.240 --> 00:49:09.500\nbecause they had some other businesses. And I just noticed, I sent Chuck\n\n927\n00:49:09.500 --> 00:49:10.640\nRobbins note about this,\n\n928\n00:49:10.640 --> 00:49:16.520\nthey are right at a trillion dollars of market cap. Now they're maybe 920\n\n929\n00:49:16.520 --> 00:49:17.360\nbillion or something.\n\n930\n00:49:17.360 --> 00:49:22.320\nThat's pretty remarkable to sort of have where. But it's been 20 years.\n\n931\n00:49:22.320 --> 00:49:28.090\nI am sure they're going to be winners and they're going to be losers in this\n\n932\n00:49:28.090 --> 00:49:29.600\ncurrent battle,\n\n933\n00:49:29.600 --> 00:49:34.570\nyou know, how many LLMs do we need? How many data centers do we need? How many\n\n934\n00:49:34.570 --> 00:49:35.840\nfaster, smarter\n\n935\n00:49:35.840 --> 00:49:42.480\nNVIDIA GPU chips do we need? I don't know. But I have a feeling we're buying\n\n936\n00:49:42.480 --> 00:49:43.600\nmore right now\n\n937\n00:49:43.600 --> 00:49:49.280\nthan we're going to teach for a while. How do you, you know, what's separate\n\n938\n00:49:49.280 --> 00:49:50.560\nleaders who survived\n\n939\n00:49:50.560 --> 00:49:55.520\ndisruption from leaders who become a victim of it? I think sometimes you get so\n\n940\n00:49:55.520 --> 00:49:55.920\nbought into a\n\n941\n00:49:55.920 --> 00:50:02.790\nstrategy and you're so trained to put on a positive face and be a, you know, ex\n\n942\n00:50:02.790 --> 00:50:03.760\nuberant leader and a\n\n943\n00:50:03.760 --> 00:50:11.440\neffective cheerleader that you sometimes maybe get ahead of the situation. So I\n\n944\n00:50:11.440 --> 00:50:12.160\nthink you got to,\n\n945\n00:50:12.160 --> 00:50:17.710\nyou got to balance it. And I think some people, as you suggest, who get too far\n\n946\n00:50:17.710 --> 00:50:18.080\nout there and\n\n947\n00:50:18.080 --> 00:50:23.960\ndon't come back. I mean, they're either embarrassed or in a state of shock. And\n\n948\n00:50:23.960 --> 00:50:24.960\nso it's hard for them\n\n949\n00:50:24.960 --> 00:50:29.490\nto sort of repot themselves and come back as a different person. I think the\n\n950\n00:50:29.490 --> 00:50:31.520\npragmatists are the\n\n951\n00:50:31.520 --> 00:50:36.630\nones that go, hmm, didn't get that right. What did I miss? I probably got out\n\n952\n00:50:36.630 --> 00:50:37.840\nover my skis a little\n\n953\n00:50:37.840 --> 00:50:41.700\nbit. I maybe have been better to go a little bit slower. I mean, I always\n\n954\n00:50:41.700 --> 00:50:42.800\nremember from, you know,\n\n955\n00:50:42.800 --> 00:50:48.590\ngrowing up, my mother used to say, measure twice, cut once. And you know, the\n\n956\n00:50:48.590 --> 00:50:49.680\ntendency for youthful\n\n957\n00:50:49.680 --> 00:50:53.540\npeople is, I know this, it's close enough, cut right here. And I think there's\n\n958\n00:50:53.540 --> 00:50:54.400\na lot of cut right\n\n959\n00:50:54.400 --> 00:51:00.280\nhere going on right now, because let's face it, you can throw a dart. I mean, I\n\n960\n00:51:00.280 --> 00:51:01.520\nmet a young guy in\n\n961\n00:51:01.520 --> 00:51:07.330\nPalm Beach about three months ago, who was referred to me by a venture\n\n962\n00:51:07.330 --> 00:51:09.120\ncapitalist. I have a lot of\n\n963\n00:51:09.120 --> 00:51:14.090\nrespect for it. He said this guy's, you know, unbelievable. He's got a couple\n\n964\n00:51:14.090 --> 00:51:15.200\nof master's degrees\n\n965\n00:51:15.200 --> 00:51:18.880\nfrom Princeton. He's 28 years old. He's working on his PhD in theoretical\n\n966\n00:51:18.880 --> 00:51:20.160\nphysics. He's brilliant.\n\n967\n00:51:20.160 --> 00:51:23.610\nHe's going to change the world. But I've convinced him that he should pursue\n\n968\n00:51:23.610 --> 00:51:24.640\nhis dream to start a\n\n969\n00:51:24.640 --> 00:51:31.110\ncompany and pursue as an AI application company. So, okay, all right, great.\n\n970\n00:51:31.110 --> 00:51:32.560\nWhat makes him different?\n\n971\n00:51:32.560 --> 00:51:37.570\nYou know, we sat down, we talked. And there are so many things I loved about\n\n972\n00:51:37.570 --> 00:51:38.240\nthis guy.\n\n973\n00:51:38.240 --> 00:51:43.520\nHe's saying, you know, these guys that have done anthropic are making all this\n\n974\n00:51:43.520 --> 00:51:43.840\nmoney and\n\n975\n00:51:43.840 --> 00:51:47.410\nbuilding cups. I want to build a really durable, important company. I don't\n\n976\n00:51:47.410 --> 00:51:48.960\nwant to sell it. I\n\n977\n00:51:48.960 --> 00:51:51.780\nwant it to be successful. I said, oh, you want to be Bill Gates or Larry\n\n978\n00:51:51.780 --> 00:51:53.280\nEllison or Michael Dell?\n\n979\n00:51:53.280 --> 00:51:57.750\nWell, not exactly. You know, I said, well, you know, they did. And in their\n\n980\n00:51:57.750 --> 00:51:58.880\ncases, and Michael's\n\n981\n00:51:58.880 --> 00:52:04.120\n41 years, you know, at this, he's kind of the dean of that era because Gates\n\n982\n00:52:04.120 --> 00:52:05.120\nhas gone off the,\n\n983\n00:52:05.120 --> 00:52:09.520\nI mean, Larry Ellison, I guess, is still sort of working. But I ask him to\n\n984\n00:52:09.520 --> 00:52:10.400\nreally think through,\n\n985\n00:52:10.400 --> 00:52:14.790\neverything's going right for you right now. You're raising money at every\n\n986\n00:52:14.790 --> 00:52:15.760\nincreasing rate. You've\n\n987\n00:52:15.760 --> 00:52:19.920\ngot customer acceptance. People are, they're not just, you know, eating the dog\n\n988\n00:52:19.920 --> 00:52:20.720\nfood. They're\n\n989\n00:52:20.720 --> 00:52:23.690\nripping the dog food off the shelves and tearing the bags and eating it right\n\n990\n00:52:23.690 --> 00:52:24.560\nin the store. They're\n\n991\n00:52:24.560 --> 00:52:29.560\njust so enthusiastic about this guy's product. Where do you want to be in three\n\n992\n00:52:29.560 --> 00:52:30.480\nyears and five\n\n993\n00:52:30.480 --> 00:52:35.440\nyears? Who do you want to have around you? And what do you want people to say\n\n994\n00:52:35.440 --> 00:52:35.680\nabout you?\n\n995\n00:52:35.680 --> 00:52:40.880\nAnd it was kind of like, he hadn't really thought about any of that. And he was\n\n996\n00:52:40.880 --> 00:52:41.600\nsaying, well,\n\n997\n00:52:42.320 --> 00:52:48.560\ndon't I have time to do that later? Well, there may not be a later. You should\n\n998\n00:52:48.560 --> 00:52:49.440\nthink about it now.\n\n999\n00:52:49.440 --> 00:52:53.970\nAnd I wasn't trying to, you know, first is bubble. But I would just kind of say\n\n1000\n00:52:53.970 --> 00:52:54.560\n, you got to be\n\n1001\n00:52:54.560 --> 00:52:58.960\nthoughtful and realistic about you've been given an incredible opportunity.\n\n1002\n00:52:58.960 --> 00:53:02.880\nYeah, questions that everybody should ask themselves, you know, when you're\n\n1003\n00:53:02.880 --> 00:53:06.580\nbarking on your career or you're trying to build a company. You know, this has\n\n1004\n00:53:06.580 --> 00:53:07.360\nbeen so much fun,\n\n1005\n00:53:07.360 --> 00:53:10.200\nDavid. And I want to have some more with my lightning round of questions. Are\n\n1006\n00:53:10.200 --> 00:53:11.040\nyou ready for this?\n\n1007\n00:53:11.040 --> 00:53:16.010\nYou bet. The three words that best describe you. Persistent, optimistic, and\n\n1008\n00:53:16.010 --> 00:53:16.320\nhonest.\n\n1009\n00:53:16.320 --> 00:53:20.080\nIf you could be one person for a day beside yourself, who would it be?\n\n1010\n00:53:20.080 --> 00:53:26.640\nGee, I'd hate to say this, but probably Greg Maddox. Your biggest pet peeve.\n\n1011\n00:53:26.640 --> 00:53:31.840\nPeople who basically try to BS you and are BSing themselves.\n\n1012\n00:53:31.840 --> 00:53:37.200\nWho would play you in a movie? I'd like to say Tom Selleck, but probably not.\n\n1013\n00:53:40.080 --> 00:53:42.800\nYour most memorable round of golf from the past year.\n\n1014\n00:53:42.800 --> 00:53:49.680\nWell, I made six birdies and around at Cypress Point. I shot 72. So you know,\n\n1015\n00:53:49.680 --> 00:53:53.750\nthere were some other mess along with those six birdies, but that was pretty\n\n1016\n00:53:53.750 --> 00:53:54.560\ngood for me.\n\n1017\n00:53:54.560 --> 00:53:59.420\nYeah, it's good for anybody. What's more motivating to you? The fear of failure\n\n1018\n00:53:59.420 --> 00:54:00.160\nor thrill of winning?\n\n1019\n00:54:00.160 --> 00:54:06.040\nI'd have to say it very, various times both, but I'd probably say the thrill of\n\n1020\n00:54:06.040 --> 00:54:06.560\nwinning is\n\n1021\n00:54:07.360 --> 00:54:11.220\npretty important. What's something you've been curious about lately that has\n\n1022\n00:54:11.220 --> 00:54:12.080\nabsolutely nothing\n\n1023\n00:54:12.080 --> 00:54:17.050\nto do with work or anything you're working on? I'm fascinated with the\n\n1024\n00:54:17.050 --> 00:54:18.720\napplication of analytics\n\n1025\n00:54:18.720 --> 00:54:22.580\nto sports. You know, watching guys on the sidelines with iPads and they're\n\n1026\n00:54:22.580 --> 00:54:23.840\nlooking at plays and the\n\n1027\n00:54:23.840 --> 00:54:29.020\nblind backer move this way or a pitcher through a curveball and, you know, bit\n\n1028\n00:54:29.020 --> 00:54:31.040\nto me, analytics is\n\n1029\n00:54:31.040 --> 00:54:36.330\ntaking over sports. And it's just fascinating watching these giant men talk\n\n1030\n00:54:36.330 --> 00:54:38.000\nabout blocking technique\n\n1031\n00:54:38.000 --> 00:54:40.140\nand they're, you know, the coaches say, here, this is what I'm trying to look\n\n1032\n00:54:40.140 --> 00:54:42.160\nat. The one thing\n\n1033\n00:54:42.160 --> 00:54:49.650\nyou do just for you. I read a lot of stuff, you know, almost every day. I'm a\n\n1034\n00:54:49.650 --> 00:54:50.400\nconsumer\n\n1035\n00:54:50.400 --> 00:54:55.520\nof information and I love the fact that it's getting more efficient.\n\n1036\n00:54:56.560 --> 00:54:59.920\nBesides your family and friends, what's your most prized possession?\n\n1037\n00:54:59.920 --> 00:55:04.720\nI'd just say health. I mean, if we don't have health, what do we got?\n\n1038\n00:55:04.720 --> 00:55:07.680\nIf I turned on the radio in your car, what would I hear?\n\n1039\n00:55:07.680 --> 00:55:15.030\nProbably you would hear Yacht Rock radio on Sirius XM because it sort of dates\n\n1040\n00:55:15.030 --> 00:55:16.000\nme into my past.\n\n1041\n00:55:16.000 --> 00:55:19.200\nWhat's something about you a few people would know?\n\n1042\n00:55:19.840 --> 00:55:29.110\nI am the baby of two babies who are basically my mother is a family of nine\n\n1043\n00:55:29.110 --> 00:55:30.480\nkids, my dad, 13\n\n1044\n00:55:30.480 --> 00:55:35.450\nkids. They were the last on each side of me and I'm the youngest in my family.\n\n1045\n00:55:35.450 --> 00:55:37.200\nSo I have a grant.\n\n1046\n00:55:37.200 --> 00:55:45.040\nMy grandfather was born in 1860. Think about that. It seems impossible. It does\n\n1047\n00:55:45.040 --> 00:55:45.040\n.\n\n1048\n00:55:46.880 --> 00:55:49.840\nI am going to have to think about that. What's one of your daily rituals,\n\n1049\n00:55:49.840 --> 00:55:50.800\nsomething that you never\n\n1050\n00:55:50.800 --> 00:55:56.220\nmiss? Miss pretty boring, but I have to say, you know, starting with that first\n\n1051\n00:55:56.220 --> 00:55:57.200\ncup of coffee and\n\n1052\n00:55:57.200 --> 00:56:02.180\nreading the Wall Street Journal online. All right. We're out of the light. Good\n\n1053\n00:56:02.180 --> 00:56:02.560\njob.\n\n1054\n00:56:02.560 --> 00:56:07.120\nNow you and your wife, Susan, have three kids. So Lindsey, Andrew, and Tyler,\n\n1055\n00:56:07.120 --> 00:56:11.510\nhow have you thought about leading at home over the years, David? I know they\n\n1056\n00:56:11.510 --> 00:56:12.160\n're all out of the\n\n1057\n00:56:12.160 --> 00:56:17.500\nhousehold now, but how did you think about that? I look back and say probably\n\n1058\n00:56:17.500 --> 00:56:18.320\nin things that I\n\n1059\n00:56:18.320 --> 00:56:23.320\nregret having not having more time at home. You know, I was building my career.\n\n1060\n00:56:23.320 --> 00:56:24.560\nI traveled a lot.\n\n1061\n00:56:24.560 --> 00:56:30.880\nAnd I later, you know, realized what remarkable job Susan did with three kids\n\n1062\n00:56:30.880 --> 00:56:31.840\nby herself a lot\n\n1063\n00:56:31.840 --> 00:56:35.280\nof the time. You know, I'm in Denver. I'm going here. I'm going to Louisville.\n\n1064\n00:56:35.280 --> 00:56:36.000\nI'm going over there.\n\n1065\n00:56:36.560 --> 00:56:40.860\nAnd I come home on Friday exhausted. And it was like, here, you take these\n\n1066\n00:56:40.860 --> 00:56:43.360\nthree kids. But she\n\n1067\n00:56:43.360 --> 00:56:50.360\ndidn't do that very often. I would say that being present and participating and\n\n1068\n00:56:50.360 --> 00:56:51.760\nrealizing they just\n\n1069\n00:56:51.760 --> 00:56:57.480\nwant you. And they don't want you kind of half the time or distracted. And I'm\n\n1070\n00:56:57.480 --> 00:56:58.560\nstill distracted\n\n1071\n00:56:58.560 --> 00:57:02.640\neven the day, but I try with my grandchildren to enjoy being with them and\n\n1072\n00:57:02.640 --> 00:57:03.760\ncreate environments\n\n1073\n00:57:03.760 --> 00:57:08.150\nwhere I can be with them. Because I want them to remember me. I want them to go\n\n1074\n00:57:08.150 --> 00:57:08.960\n. You know,\n\n1075\n00:57:08.960 --> 00:57:14.880\nwe share a grandfather name. And I want them to remember Ogo. And you know,\n\n1076\n00:57:14.880 --> 00:57:15.760\nwhere was he when I\n\n1077\n00:57:15.760 --> 00:57:21.760\ndid stuff? And that would be to me an accomplishment. Absolutely. And you know,\n\n1078\n00:57:21.760 --> 00:57:22.640\nyou mentioned earlier\n\n1079\n00:57:22.640 --> 00:57:30.030\nthat you really early on you craved recognition. You've had enough success now\n\n1080\n00:57:30.030 --> 00:57:30.800\nthat you don't need\n\n1081\n00:57:30.800 --> 00:57:35.120\nany kind of external validation. So what still drives you?\n\n1082\n00:57:35.120 --> 00:57:41.120\nI'd have to say making a difference now in people's lives, being able to do\n\n1083\n00:57:41.120 --> 00:57:42.160\nthings that can turn\n\n1084\n00:57:42.160 --> 00:57:47.130\nsomeone from despair or lack of hope or, you know, sort of a feeling of\n\n1085\n00:57:47.130 --> 00:57:48.720\nhopelessness, let's say.\n\n1086\n00:57:48.720 --> 00:57:54.500\nAnd to saying, you know, with the right hand up, a lot of people, you know, it\n\n1087\n00:57:54.500 --> 00:57:55.280\n's not a hand out,\n\n1088\n00:57:55.280 --> 00:57:59.940\nit's a hand up, but people can go on to accomplish really great things. And to\n\n1089\n00:57:59.940 --> 00:58:01.680\nme, nothing would make\n\n1090\n00:58:01.680 --> 00:58:06.910\nme happy to find that person who just needs a break, who just needs a little\n\n1091\n00:58:06.910 --> 00:58:08.560\nbit of encouragement\n\n1092\n00:58:08.560 --> 00:58:12.610\nand make a difference in their lives. All right. Last question here, Dave. What\n\n1093\n00:58:12.610 --> 00:58:13.600\n's the one piece of\n\n1094\n00:58:13.600 --> 00:58:18.720\nadvice you'd give to anyone who wants to be a better leader? Be introspective.\n\n1095\n00:58:18.720 --> 00:58:19.520\nYou know, learn\n\n1096\n00:58:19.520 --> 00:58:25.540\nfrom your own mistakes and recognize mistakes when they've made and have a\n\n1097\n00:58:25.540 --> 00:58:27.040\nmentor, you know,\n\n1098\n00:58:27.040 --> 00:58:32.800\nsomeone who is your advocate that you can go to when you got a tough situation,\n\n1099\n00:58:32.800 --> 00:58:33.440\nsomeone you can\n\n1100\n00:58:33.440 --> 00:58:40.080\nreally trust. Well, David, as a good friend and as a great board member, you're\n\n1101\n00:58:40.080 --> 00:58:41.360\na guy I could always\n\n1102\n00:58:41.360 --> 00:58:45.390\ntrust and always count on. And you're a guy who walks the talk on that front.\n\n1103\n00:58:45.390 --> 00:58:46.080\nAnd I want to\n\n1104\n00:58:46.080 --> 00:58:50.320\ncongratulate you on all the success that you've had. And most importantly, the\n\n1105\n00:58:50.320 --> 00:58:50.880\ndifference you've\n\n1106\n00:58:50.880 --> 00:58:56.640\nmade in so many people's lives. So good job, my friend. Thank you for having me\n\n1107\n00:58:56.640 --> 00:58:57.120\n, David.\n\n1108\n00:58:57.120 --> 00:59:09.200\nWell, David, my phone decided to go to the graveyard last week. So I spent\n\n1109\n00:59:09.200 --> 00:59:10.320\nabout two hours\n\n1110\n00:59:10.320 --> 00:59:17.190\nat the AT&T store last week getting this new cell phone. And I know that Dave's\n\n1111\n00:59:17.190 --> 00:59:17.840\nnot the CEO\n\n1112\n00:59:17.840 --> 00:59:22.800\nof AT&T anymore, but I must say I had an excellent experience at the AT&T store\n\n1113\n00:59:22.800 --> 00:59:23.520\non Gallatin Avenue\n\n1114\n00:59:23.520 --> 00:59:27.090\nin East Nashville. So, Kristen, if you're listening, thank you so much for\n\n1115\n00:59:27.090 --> 00:59:28.800\nhelping me out. And I'm sure\n\n1116\n00:59:28.800 --> 00:59:32.480\nthat a lot of what she's learned at her job at AT&T has come from Dave's\n\n1117\n00:59:32.480 --> 00:59:35.360\nleadership. Well, you know,\n\n1118\n00:59:35.360 --> 00:59:39.520\nDave has taught a lot of people a lot about leadership. And it's one of the,\n\n1119\n00:59:39.520 --> 00:59:40.240\nyou know,\n\n1120\n00:59:40.240 --> 00:59:45.840\nwisest counselors that I've ever had. He did a great job on the young board.\n\n1121\n00:59:45.840 --> 00:59:48.480\nBut as we just heard,\n\n1122\n00:59:48.480 --> 00:59:53.600\nyou know, he's influenced a lot of CEOs and helped a lot of companies deal with\n\n1123\n00:59:53.600 --> 00:59:54.000\na lot of\n\n1124\n00:59:54.000 --> 00:59:58.060\ntough issues. So there are a lot of leaders that are very thankful for for Dave\n\n1125\n00:59:58.060 --> 00:59:58.720\nDorman.\n\n1126\n00:59:58.720 --> 01:00:03.120\nWell, David, as we do in every episode, we're going to debrief some of the main\n\n1127\n01:00:03.120 --> 01:00:04.400\nthemes that stood out\n\n1128\n01:00:04.400 --> 01:00:07.840\nfrom this conversation with David. The first one was actually really\n\n1129\n01:00:07.840 --> 01:00:09.440\ninteresting. He talks about how\n\n1130\n01:00:09.440 --> 01:00:16.480\nhis dream job was being the CEO of AT&T. So he gets his dream job. He gets into\n\n1131\n01:00:16.480 --> 01:00:17.760\nthe job only to\n\n1132\n01:00:17.760 --> 01:00:21.440\nsoon discover that there are certain realities in the business that meant he\n\n1133\n01:00:21.440 --> 01:00:22.720\ncouldn't really run\n\n1134\n01:00:22.720 --> 01:00:26.620\nthe strategy that he wanted to. So he has this big, exciting moment where he\n\n1135\n01:00:26.620 --> 01:00:27.920\ngets his dream job,\n\n1136\n01:00:27.920 --> 01:00:32.640\nand then he couldn't actually do what he wanted to do. If you have a big kind\n\n1137\n01:00:32.640 --> 01:00:33.760\nof professional,\n\n1138\n01:00:33.760 --> 01:00:38.400\ncall it disappointment like that. How do you keep going without letting that\n\n1139\n01:00:38.400 --> 01:00:43.370\naffect the way you lead and hold you back? Well, I think that the first\n\n1140\n01:00:43.370 --> 01:00:44.160\nresponsibility of every\n\n1141\n01:00:44.160 --> 01:00:49.280\nleader is to define reality. And I think Dave did a great job in this episode,\n\n1142\n01:00:49.280 --> 01:00:50.000\nreally defining\n\n1143\n01:00:50.000 --> 01:00:54.970\nthe reality that he faced at AT&T, which basically told him that he was not\n\n1144\n01:00:54.970 --> 01:00:56.080\ngoing to be able to\n\n1145\n01:00:56.080 --> 01:00:59.380\ntake this company and put it into a massive growth mode, that he was going to\n\n1146\n01:00:59.380 --> 01:01:00.400\nhave to have\n\n1147\n01:01:00.400 --> 01:01:05.440\nfind another option. But he dealt with that reality and came up with the best\n\n1148\n01:01:05.440 --> 01:01:06.400\npossible solution,\n\n1149\n01:01:06.400 --> 01:01:11.760\nand that's what I think leaders do. Sometimes people hang on to something\n\n1150\n01:01:11.760 --> 01:01:20.010\nbecause they finally got this big job that everybody wanted. It takes a lot of\n\n1151\n01:01:20.010 --> 01:01:20.640\nhumility\n\n1152\n01:01:20.640 --> 01:01:27.360\nto say, \"Hey, I'm going to put the company ahead of myself. I'm going to do\n\n1153\n01:01:27.360 --> 01:01:28.480\nwhat's right for the\n\n1154\n01:01:28.480 --> 01:01:33.450\ncompany, what's right for all the people.\" And I think Dave has always done\n\n1155\n01:01:33.450 --> 01:01:35.600\nthat in his career,\n\n1156\n01:01:35.600 --> 01:01:40.570\nand that's why I feel like he's respected so well. It's so interesting to think\n\n1157\n01:01:40.570 --> 01:01:42.400\nabout expectations\n\n1158\n01:01:42.400 --> 01:01:47.630\nversus reality. I heard someone say once that unspoken expectations are resent\n\n1159\n01:01:47.630 --> 01:01:48.880\nments in the making.\n\n1160\n01:01:48.880 --> 01:01:52.000\nAnd so there's a lot of work that you have to do, I think, in your own self-\n\n1161\n01:01:52.000 --> 01:01:52.720\nawareness to\n\n1162\n01:01:53.920 --> 01:01:57.730\ndeal with that gap between your current reality and what you thought the\n\n1163\n01:01:57.730 --> 01:01:59.280\nexpectation was and where\n\n1164\n01:01:59.280 --> 01:02:02.400\nI feel like I get stuck in my own life and where a lot of leaders get stuck is\n\n1165\n01:02:02.400 --> 01:02:03.760\nthat they can't ever\n\n1166\n01:02:03.760 --> 01:02:07.140\nbridge that gap. They can't ever get over the fact that it's not what they\n\n1167\n01:02:07.140 --> 01:02:08.640\nexpected it to be.\n\n1168\n01:02:08.640 --> 01:02:13.610\nAnd to your point, I think that one of the many reasons that David was so\n\n1169\n01:02:13.610 --> 01:02:14.240\nsuccessful and is so\n\n1170\n01:02:14.240 --> 01:02:18.320\nsuccessful is because he had the humility to bridge that gap and to realize\n\n1171\n01:02:18.320 --> 01:02:19.600\nthat what he thought\n\n1172\n01:02:19.600 --> 01:02:24.880\nwasn't the case and what's going a different direction. I think it's important\n\n1173\n01:02:24.880 --> 01:02:25.120\nto have\n\n1174\n01:02:25.120 --> 01:02:29.510\nhigh expectations. It's important to do everything you can to make sure that\n\n1175\n01:02:29.510 --> 01:02:29.760\nyou\n\n1176\n01:02:29.760 --> 01:02:39.600\nachieve those expectations and that you give it your all. But at times, there\n\n1177\n01:02:39.600 --> 01:02:40.480\nare headwinds out\n\n1178\n01:02:40.480 --> 01:02:46.960\nthere that force you to face the reality and come up with different solutions.\n\n1179\n01:02:46.960 --> 01:02:48.080\nAnd I think\n\n1180\n01:02:48.080 --> 01:02:53.360\nthat's the best way to manage your expectations is go after them with 1,000%\n\n1181\n01:02:53.360 --> 01:02:56.240\nvigor and energy.\n\n1182\n01:02:56.240 --> 01:03:01.790\nBut if you get new data or new learnings that tell you you've got to take\n\n1183\n01:03:01.790 --> 01:03:02.480\nanother path,\n\n1184\n01:03:02.480 --> 01:03:06.000\nthen go down that path. And David did that.\n\n1185\n01:03:06.000 --> 01:03:10.970\nThe second concept that I want your take on, David, is this idea of being\n\n1186\n01:03:10.970 --> 01:03:11.520\nfuture-minded.\n\n1187\n01:03:11.520 --> 01:03:15.910\nIt's clear in this conversation that David is a big picture guy and he knows\n\n1188\n01:03:15.910 --> 01:03:17.280\nhow to see around\n\n1189\n01:03:17.280 --> 01:03:21.560\nthe corner is really in all of the industries that he's worked on. But I think\n\n1190\n01:03:21.560 --> 01:03:22.320\na lot of leaders\n\n1191\n01:03:22.320 --> 01:03:26.710\nstruggle with this either because they're not wired that way or maybe they just\n\n1192\n01:03:26.710 --> 01:03:26.880\nhave\n\n1193\n01:03:26.880 --> 01:03:30.780\ntoo much on their plate to take the time and actually think about what's around\n\n1194\n01:03:30.780 --> 01:03:31.520\nthe corner.\n\n1195\n01:03:31.520 --> 01:03:35.760\nSo from your perspective, how do you develop that skill of being able to see\n\n1196\n01:03:35.760 --> 01:03:36.560\nthe big picture\n\n1197\n01:03:36.560 --> 01:03:42.270\nand mine for what's coming next? The day you start working or the day you start\n\n1198\n01:03:42.270 --> 01:03:43.200\nlearning and\n\n1199\n01:03:44.720 --> 01:03:51.360\neducation, whatever level you're at, curiosity is it. You just got to be\n\n1200\n01:03:51.360 --> 01:03:51.920\ncurious.\n\n1201\n01:03:51.920 --> 01:03:57.520\nYou have to be curious about what's going on around you if you're going to see\n\n1202\n01:03:57.520 --> 01:03:58.480\naround corners.\n\n1203\n01:03:58.480 --> 01:04:04.260\nYou got to be on top of what's happening in the world and then do pattern\n\n1204\n01:04:04.260 --> 01:04:05.920\nrecognition.\n\n1205\n01:04:05.920 --> 01:04:10.400\nI always talk about the importance of pattern thinking. If you see all these\n\n1206\n01:04:10.400 --> 01:04:11.280\nthings happening\n\n1207\n01:04:11.280 --> 01:04:18.560\nthat have some sort of convergence, there's some real meaning there. And if you\n\n1208\n01:04:18.560 --> 01:04:20.000\ncan pick up those\n\n1209\n01:04:20.000 --> 01:04:25.280\npatterns early, you're going to be first in terms of seeing around the corner.\n\n1210\n01:04:25.280 --> 01:04:26.480\nSo I would\n\n1211\n01:04:26.480 --> 01:04:31.690\nreally, really encourage everybody just to be curious as hell. Read whatever\n\n1212\n01:04:31.690 --> 01:04:32.560\nyou could read.\n\n1213\n01:04:33.680 --> 01:04:40.720\nLearn from whoever you can learn from. Watch what's going on. And then figure\n\n1214\n01:04:40.720 --> 01:04:41.920\nout how you can get\n\n1215\n01:04:41.920 --> 01:04:49.200\nor at least be entrant and hopefully ahead of it. One of the things when I was\n\n1216\n01:04:49.200 --> 01:04:49.840\nin the marketing\n\n1217\n01:04:49.840 --> 01:04:56.720\nbusiness that I did every week, there was this trade publication. Many times\n\n1218\n01:04:56.720 --> 01:04:58.160\nthere wasn't a whole\n\n1219\n01:04:58.160 --> 01:05:03.180\nlot of great things in it. But I read that cover to cover. And then I always\n\n1220\n01:05:03.180 --> 01:05:04.480\nwould ask myself if\n\n1221\n01:05:04.480 --> 01:05:09.450\nthis is going on in the world in marketing, what should we be thinking about?\n\n1222\n01:05:09.450 --> 01:05:12.640\nWhere should we be\n\n1223\n01:05:12.640 --> 01:05:19.840\nheaded? And that's just one example. But everybody has publications they can\n\n1224\n01:05:19.840 --> 01:05:22.480\nread, books they can read,\n\n1225\n01:05:22.480 --> 01:05:28.240\npeople they can see, they can help them open their eyes to the future. It's\n\n1226\n01:05:28.240 --> 01:05:28.880\ninteresting you say\n\n1227\n01:05:28.880 --> 01:05:34.240\nthat it brings to mind the answer that a lot of folks we have on the show have\n\n1228\n01:05:34.240 --> 01:05:34.880\nto the lightning\n\n1229\n01:05:34.880 --> 01:05:38.370\nround question where you ask what's one of your daily rituals something that\n\n1230\n01:05:38.370 --> 01:05:40.320\nyou never miss. And\n\n1231\n01:05:40.320 --> 01:05:45.290\nI would say probably, I don't know, ballpark 70% of the folks answered that\n\n1232\n01:05:45.290 --> 01:05:46.000\nquestion with something\n\n1233\n01:05:46.000 --> 01:05:52.320\nlike, I wake up in the morning, have my coffee and I read the news. And they\n\n1234\n01:05:52.320 --> 01:05:53.840\nhave certain publications\n\n1235\n01:05:53.840 --> 01:05:58.810\nthat they read every single morning. And building that into your routine\n\n1236\n01:05:58.810 --> 01:06:00.560\nactually does give you that\n\n1237\n01:06:00.560 --> 01:06:05.530\nperspective. I've recently started reading these two newsletters every morning\n\n1238\n01:06:05.530 --> 01:06:06.640\nfrom these branding\n\n1239\n01:06:06.640 --> 01:06:10.800\nexperts that I follow on sub stack. And it's totally different industries than\n\n1240\n01:06:10.800 --> 01:06:11.680\nwhat we're in.\n\n1241\n01:06:11.680 --> 01:06:15.840\nBut I found that starting my day that way helps me look at the work that we're\n\n1242\n01:06:15.840 --> 01:06:17.440\ndoing with a totally\n\n1243\n01:06:17.440 --> 01:06:22.410\ndifferent perspective that's informed by what else is working for other people.\n\n1244\n01:06:22.410 --> 01:06:23.760\nAnd it seems so\n\n1245\n01:06:23.760 --> 01:06:27.350\nsimple and almost like silly a little bit like, Oh, I wake up in the morning\n\n1246\n01:06:27.350 --> 01:06:28.240\nand I have my coffee\n\n1247\n01:06:28.240 --> 01:06:32.630\nand I read the newspaper, but it really does work in terms of informing you\n\n1248\n01:06:32.630 --> 01:06:33.760\nabout what's going on.\n\n1249\n01:06:33.760 --> 01:06:37.760\nIt gets you out of your own way so that you can kind of stay relevant and\n\n1250\n01:06:37.760 --> 01:06:39.840\ncurrent with what's working.\n\n1251\n01:06:39.840 --> 01:06:44.810\nYeah, the simple things, the obvious things sometimes are the best things. And\n\n1252\n01:06:44.810 --> 01:06:45.440\nyou know,\n\n1253\n01:06:45.440 --> 01:06:50.800\nbeing externally focused is critical. And what you're doing, I think makes a\n\n1254\n01:06:50.800 --> 01:06:52.080\nheck of a lot of sense.\n\n1255\n01:06:52.080 --> 01:06:58.320\nSo good on you. Well, the last topic, David, that I know is near and dear to\n\n1256\n01:06:58.320 --> 01:06:59.520\nyour heart is\n\n1257\n01:06:59.520 --> 01:07:03.740\nleadership development. In the episode, David says a bunch of times that the\n\n1258\n01:07:03.740 --> 01:07:04.880\nbiggest mistake he sees\n\n1259\n01:07:04.880 --> 01:07:09.040\ncompanies make is that they treat leadership development just as lip service.\n\n1260\n01:07:09.040 --> 01:07:09.920\nAnd they don't\n\n1261\n01:07:09.920 --> 01:07:14.110\nactually create a structure to develop their top talent. So someone is\n\n1262\n01:07:14.110 --> 01:07:15.360\nlistening to the show,\n\n1263\n01:07:15.360 --> 01:07:19.260\nDavid, and they've been wanting to develop their top talent, but they haven't\n\n1264\n01:07:19.260 --> 01:07:20.240\ntaken that step yet.\n\n1265\n01:07:20.240 --> 01:07:23.920\nWhat is the first thing that they should do? What should be their number one\n\n1266\n01:07:23.920 --> 01:07:24.640\npriority?\n\n1267\n01:07:24.640 --> 01:07:32.550\nWell, I think the number one priority must be to identify the talent. You might\n\n1268\n01:07:32.550 --> 01:07:33.440\nbe running a small\n\n1269\n01:07:33.440 --> 01:07:38.640\nteam, a small company, a huge company, but your job as a leader is to\n\n1270\n01:07:38.640 --> 01:07:40.000\nunderstand who you have\n\n1271\n01:07:40.000 --> 01:07:44.070\nworking for you, who you can influence, and understand how much talent they\n\n1272\n01:07:44.070 --> 01:07:46.960\nhave. And you know, so\n\n1273\n01:07:46.960 --> 01:07:54.680\nif you find someone that really has a lot of talent, a lot of runway, then you\n\n1274\n01:07:54.680 --> 01:07:55.680\ngot to do everything\n\n1275\n01:07:55.680 --> 01:08:00.650\nyou can to develop them and help them become the best that they can be. I came\n\n1276\n01:08:00.650 --> 01:08:02.320\nup in PepsiCo and\n\n1277\n01:08:02.320 --> 01:08:07.520\nthen at Yumbrands, but you know, one of the things at PepsiCo really started\n\n1278\n01:08:07.520 --> 01:08:09.040\nwas they called their\n\n1279\n01:08:09.040 --> 01:08:14.160\nhuman resource planning process. And then I think we took it to the next level\n\n1280\n01:08:14.160 --> 01:08:15.120\nat Yumbrands,\n\n1281\n01:08:15.120 --> 01:08:20.160\nwhere we called our people planning process. But we had a process where we\n\n1282\n01:08:20.160 --> 01:08:21.120\nreviewed our talent,\n\n1283\n01:08:21.120 --> 01:08:27.840\nyou know, every year we identified our very high potential people, and then we\n\n1284\n01:08:27.840 --> 01:08:28.320\nmade sure\n\n1285\n01:08:28.320 --> 01:08:33.320\nthat we had action plans to help grow them. But we put process and discipline\n\n1286\n01:08:33.320 --> 01:08:34.320\naround it.\n\n1287\n01:08:34.320 --> 01:08:37.600\nYou know, one of the things we know great companies do and great leaders do is\n\n1288\n01:08:37.600 --> 01:08:38.560\nthey put process\n\n1289\n01:08:38.560 --> 01:08:43.530\nand discipline around what really matters. So if developing leaders is\n\n1290\n01:08:43.530 --> 01:08:44.960\nimportant to you and is\n\n1291\n01:08:44.960 --> 01:08:49.220\nkey to your success in the company, make sure you have a process and discipline\n\n1292\n01:08:49.220 --> 01:08:50.400\naround it that\n\n1293\n01:08:50.400 --> 01:08:56.080\nyou can really, you know, put to work to make sure you develop your people.\n\n1294\n01:08:56.080 --> 01:08:59.440\nIt's interesting too, coming from David's perspective, you know, he sat on so\n\n1295\n01:08:59.440 --> 01:09:00.480\nmany boards of some of\n\n1296\n01:09:00.480 --> 01:09:05.450\nthe greatest companies in the world. And for him to say that that's a mistake\n\n1297\n01:09:05.450 --> 01:09:06.320\nthat he sees most\n\n1298\n01:09:06.320 --> 01:09:10.310\nof these types of companies make, it's kind of shocking to me. But it's just\n\n1299\n01:09:10.310 --> 01:09:11.280\nkind of one of those\n\n1300\n01:09:11.280 --> 01:09:16.250\nthings, I feel like David, that kind of falls to the wayside if you don't put\n\n1301\n01:09:16.250 --> 01:09:16.800\nprocess and\n\n1302\n01:09:16.800 --> 01:09:19.440\ndiscipline around it. Because really all it is is time.\n\n1303\n01:09:19.440 --> 01:09:23.830\nThe other thing too, Kula, is that it's not only just time, it's having high\n\n1304\n01:09:23.830 --> 01:09:26.320\nstandards. So, you\n\n1305\n01:09:26.320 --> 01:09:32.500\nknow, if you if you have mediocre talent, you will have a mediocre company. If\n\n1306\n01:09:32.500 --> 01:09:33.760\nyou have high\n\n1307\n01:09:33.760 --> 01:09:38.790\nstandards for the people that you have work in your company, and you make sure\n\n1308\n01:09:38.790 --> 01:09:39.600\nthat the people\n\n1309\n01:09:39.600 --> 01:09:42.880\nare very talented and you develop them, you're going to have a great company.\n\n1310\n01:09:42.880 --> 01:09:44.480\nAnd that's just the way\n\n1311\n01:09:44.480 --> 01:09:47.830\nhow it works. It reminds me, David, of something you talk a lot about, which is\n\n1312\n01:09:47.830 --> 01:09:48.880\nbuilding an A team.\n\n1313\n01:09:49.520 --> 01:09:53.600\nBecause eight players want to play with other A players. Yeah, and A teams get\n\n1314\n01:09:53.600 --> 01:09:54.480\nA results.\n\n1315\n01:09:54.480 --> 01:09:59.760\nAnd that's the name of the game. So David, as we wrap this episode with David D\n\n1316\n01:09:59.760 --> 01:10:00.960\norman, what are\n\n1317\n01:10:00.960 --> 01:10:04.640\nthe main things that you want our listeners to walk away with thinking about?\n\n1318\n01:10:04.640 --> 01:10:09.990\nNumber one, you don't go after that dream, dream job, you know, I mean, you\n\n1319\n01:10:09.990 --> 01:10:11.760\nknow, and then when you\n\n1320\n01:10:11.760 --> 01:10:16.060\nget that dream job, make it everything you can possibly be. But at the same\n\n1321\n01:10:16.060 --> 01:10:17.200\ntime, you know,\n\n1322\n01:10:17.840 --> 01:10:23.240\nalways be on the lookout for what reality is because your job is to define\n\n1323\n01:10:23.240 --> 01:10:24.080\nreality. And\n\n1324\n01:10:24.080 --> 01:10:28.660\nsometimes things don't work out in that dream job that you have. And you have\n\n1325\n01:10:28.660 --> 01:10:29.920\nto pivot, but pivot\n\n1326\n01:10:29.920 --> 01:10:34.890\nbecause of the reality that you face and pivot because it's the right thing to\n\n1327\n01:10:34.890 --> 01:10:35.920\ndo for the company\n\n1328\n01:10:35.920 --> 01:10:39.680\nand for the people that you have the privilege of leading. And make sure that\n\n1329\n01:10:39.680 --> 01:10:42.000\nyou put yourself\n\n1330\n01:10:42.000 --> 01:10:46.520\nin the background there. You know, it's not about you. It's about others. And I\n\n1331\n01:10:46.520 --> 01:10:47.680\nthink that's important.\n\n1332\n01:10:48.080 --> 01:10:54.300\nNumber two, if you want to see around corners, be curious, develop your ways to\n\n1333\n01:10:54.300 --> 01:10:55.600\nbe curious and\n\n1334\n01:10:55.600 --> 01:11:00.690\nidentify the patterns that are going around going on in this world. And then,\n\n1335\n01:11:00.690 --> 01:11:01.440\nyou know,\n\n1336\n01:11:01.440 --> 01:11:05.050\nbe on trend and hopefully get ahead of trend. And then the third thing is if\n\n1337\n01:11:05.050 --> 01:11:06.160\nyou want to develop\n\n1338\n01:11:06.160 --> 01:11:11.160\nleaders, identify the leaders you want to develop, develop a plan for them, but\n\n1339\n01:11:11.160 --> 01:11:12.320\nhave a process and\n\n1340\n01:11:12.320 --> 01:11:16.710\nput discipline around it to make sure that developing leaders is something that\n\n1341\n01:11:16.710 --> 01:11:17.280\n's really\n\n1342\n01:11:17.280 --> 01:11:22.480\nimportant and everybody on your team knows it. And everybody on your team is\n\n1343\n01:11:22.480 --> 01:11:23.680\nexpected to develop\n\n1344\n01:11:23.680 --> 01:11:28.160\nleaders and people that are better than they are. And perhaps use this podcast\n\n1345\n01:11:28.160 --> 01:11:29.200\nas a tool to do so.\n\n1346\n01:11:29.200 --> 01:11:36.240\nWell, that's an option. Well, David, that does it for another episode of How\n\n1347\n01:11:36.240 --> 01:11:37.200\nLeaders Lead. Thanks\n\n1348\n01:11:37.200 --> 01:11:42.170\nso much. And thank you to David Dorman for joining us for the show. Of course,\n\n1349\n01:11:42.170 --> 01:11:43.440\nthank you to our listeners\n\n1350\n01:11:43.440 --> 01:11:47.640\nfor tuning in to another episode of How Leaders Lead. Come back next Thursday\n\n1351\n01:11:47.640 --> 01:11:49.120\nand we will see you soon.\n","is_pinned",false,"pinned_at","is_featured","featured_at","mix_url","https://chtbl.com/track/DCB44F/traffic.megaphone.fm/DVL6479127451.mp3","dx_media_id",4081,"video_media_id","thumbnail_image_media_id","published_date","2026-07-09","itunes_episode_id",299,"youtube_id","oms1cPKafDE","2026-08-19T21:44:11.000000Z","Listen to this leadership podcast with David Dorman, former CEO of AT&T, and discover how to see around corners and lead through disruption.","dx_url","https://dnl.nyc3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/uploads/7B0Ixtjhm68zizRrtAhIoCEZAFDlAGZp1DnJyg2C.mp3","dx_filename","7B0Ixtjhm68zizRrtAhIoCEZAFDlAGZp1DnJyg2C.mp3","dx_mux_playback_id","4N6A5f3ysdSCp01JsLRbeKju9LpPc94qsD00ZK5yPqxKg","dx_waveform_url","https://dnl.nyc3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/uploads/waveforms/4081.json","video_url","video_mux_playback_id","duration",4309646,"thumbnail_url","https://img.youtube.com/vi/oms1cPKafDE/maxresdefault.jpg","thumbnail_image_url","dx_media",{"_13":66,"_96":80,"_97":78,"_98":-5,"_31":82,"_33":99,"_100":-5,"_101":84,"_87":88,"_102":-5},"video_media","thumbnail_image_media","filename","url","status","EcRfT9He6yiem6ypTr5j7q01NlUNFZbfJ002CloKkGow4","mux_upload_id","waveform_url","preview_media_id","first_name","David","last_name","Dorman","job_title","AT&T, Former CEO","David Dorman, CEO, telecom, AT&T","external_links","https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-dorman-12631316",0,"image_media_id",3832,3831,"2026-07-20T20:28:22.000000Z","send_push_notification_at","image_url","https://dnl.nyc3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/uploads/Sdl5ikMAsmd9bZi4OwOv28iFVKG69zwuIqTjKAKd.jpg","https://dnl.nyc3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/uploads/eU3qIkYmJohsBJFM8RI9xORxr05Cja27q444fu6q.jpg","https://www.howleaderslead.com/leaders/288/david-dorman","industry_id",2,"industry",{"_13":123,"_134":135,"_136":138},"industries",[133],"image_media",{"_13":114,"_96":132,"_97":119,"_98":-5,"_31":-5,"_33":-5,"_100":-5,"_101":-5,"_87":-5,"_102":-5},{"_13":115,"_96":131,"_97":120,"_98":-5,"_31":-5,"_33":-5,"_100":-5,"_101":-5,"_87":-5,"_102":-5},"eU3qIkYmJohsBJFM8RI9xORxr05Cja27q444fu6q.jpg","Sdl5ikMAsmd9bZi4OwOv28iFVKG69zwuIqTjKAKd.jpg",{"_13":123,"_134":135,"_136":137},"name","Technology","pivot",{"_35":36,"_122":123},{"_35":36,"_122":123},"user","token","favorites",[],"collections",[],"env",{"_147":148,"_149":150,"_151":152,"_153":154,"_155":156},"GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID","644017954836-qpllhu38r0tsrtfq85ukntcvsb0akbht.apps.googleusercontent.com","APPLE_CLIENT_ID","com.howleaderslead.webapp","APPLE_REDIRECT_URI","https://www.howleaderslead.com/auth/apple-callback","APP_URL","https://howleaderslead.com","GTM_ID",""]