What Do Difficult Times Teach Us About Leadership?

Cold Open Stock Freefall

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Our stock went from 156 to 6. Our Apple stock was a $6 stock the same day ours was, by the way. And I think we found that we had a lot of people who were tough and committed and willing to sacrifice for each other. That's what it takes to build a great company, a great culture. A real leader has to make an impact at the point of attack. When times are tough, I believe you should support as a leader. When times are good, I believe you should inject tension. I put so much into the preparation. I don't use notes, I tear them up because I'm walking out there. I have a couple messages. I'm going to go for it. It doesn't matter if I'm off a little bit. Nobody cares. I said eight and it was ten. Nobody

Welcome And Why Tom Matters

SPEAKER_00 0:39

cares.

SPEAKER_01 0:39

Welcome to the Yog Nation, the Spirit of Gratitude podcast on the OneTegression platform. Hello, friends. My name is Yogesh Patel, and this podcast explores the themes of bullying, self-awareness, and the power of our inner spirit, including the silent battles we all face. Join me every week as I invite high-profile guests as we explore how adversity shapes us, how gratitude lifts us, and how we can all uncover the inner strength that we all have within ourselves. Join the conversation. I appreciate you listening in.

SPEAKER_02 1:50

That commitment reflects the deeper story of his life, the adversity that shaped him, the humility that changed him, and the power of making people feel seen, valued, and appreciated. Today, Tom shares what leaders are getting right and wrong in the age of AI and why building a meaningful life sometimes requires the courage to reinvent yourself. Because the best leaders just don't build successful companies, they lift people up. And with gratitude, it is my honor to welcome you to the podcast, Tom.

SPEAKER_00 2:18

Yogi, it's great to talk to you again. I loved working with you in the past. It's great to do this.

SPEAKER_02 2:24

Thank you. Thanks. I'm uh deeply touched by that. And for the citizens of Yoge Nation who I like to call the listeners, I happen to be an employee at NetApp when uh Tom was one of part of the executive team at the company. So it's just fun for me to meet my heroes uh in this journey being a podcaster.

SPEAKER_00 2:42

Well, it's such a cool theme that you develop. I love it.

SPEAKER_02 2:46

Thanks. Thank you.

Dot Com Freeze And One Cut

SPEAKER_02 2:48

Well, Tom, curious. You faced a lot of adversity as a business leader uh to achieve success. What were those moments like and what did you learn?

SPEAKER_00 2:56

You know, real quick, from I joined in '94, NetApp, May '94, and between then and the year 2000, we became a billion-dollar company, one of the fastest growing companies in Silicon Valley history at the time. Uh stock did great, everything was pretty sensational. And when you're in that situation, it's kind of hard to screw up. You know what I mean? It just wasn't that hard. You I would say you find out if you have a friend when you got a problem. And when in both your life or in business, we've all experienced when you have a significant problem, people you expect to step up don't, people you never thought would do, and your relationship changes forever. So in the year 2000, we had the event that was called a dot-com bubble. Uh basically the market froze for tech. And I always knew that these there were companies that were making no money, and they talked about eyeballs and clicks. I knew they were going to get hurt eventually, and they did. Many went under, but the companies that were great companies also got hurt. Our stock went from 156 to 6. Our Apple stock was a six-dollar stock the same day ours was, by the way.

SPEAKER_03 4:08

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 4:09

Remember, Apple got crushed. Cisco got crushed. So that is adversity. And we just finished a plan for the following year at 1.5 billion, which I thought was conservative. We grew from 250 million to 500 to a billion in two years. And the next year, I thought we could go to 1.5. I actually thought we had a good chance to double again. And reality became the market froze. And it, you know, it's better to be losing deals than it is to have a market freeze. Market freeze means people just say, I don't feel good about what's going on. I think we'll hold off. That's what was happening everywhere in America. So we we had hired ahead for that $1.5 million. All of a sudden we realized it's not going to happen. And I had I had never even come close to missing a base case on any forecast to our CEO Dan Woman Rowan. But it wasn't about the forecast anymore. The market told us this isn't gonna happen. So we had to do a cutback. And I think we learned a lot about each other and about our company when we did the cutback. So we we made the decision we didn't want to do what other companies were doing, but one cut, one cut, one. I call it the death of a thousand cuts. We wanted to say, okay, what's the worst case? Well, I thought the worst case is we would go down by about 20%, which is exactly where we landed. We landed 800 million the next year. And if that's true, what's the head count? And we cut below that. So we had one cut. We didn't do another cut for a decade at all. But we wanted to tell people, we wanted to be able to say that to people. We're gonna take it, and we didn't just say, okay, let's cut 20%. We said, okay, if this is the reality, what business is, what part of our business give us the best chance to recover, what parts are no longer as relevant? We might take out if we could still take good people and put them on something else, but let's stop doing some stuff. One of the hard lessons in life is when you when you're really struggling, you need to cut something off. You don't want to just if you take 20% of everything, you may be killing the muscle. So Dan Wormenhoven, the found and one of our founders, James Lyle, got on planes. I got on a plane with Dave Hitts, and we visited 80% of all the offices in the world within about a two-week period. And we were pretty big at that point. And so we stood in front of every one of our employee bases and said, look, because of external conditions, we're not going to be able to make the plans that we've hired to already. We're going to have to cut back. By the way, none of them were surprised. They were reading the they knew that something was up.

SPEAKER_03 6:52

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 6:52

But we we had a significant team put together inside to deal with from HR. We had a great HR leader, and basically, we want to make sure we treat these people with respect. This is not a performance-driven outcome. Number one, because if it was performance, we would have already dealt with it. Number two, we want to make sure that they compensate. What's the high end of the range anybody's doing in Silicon Valley? And number three, we want to be aggressive about giving them references to get them back, give them another good opportunity.

SPEAKER_03 7:20

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 7:20

Many of those people came back over the years. But what I found was the most common reaction of our employee base was what can we do to help? Thanks for being transparent. We didn't send some email and hide. Thanks for taking the tough questions. And what can we do to help? And I thought, we're going to come out of this. You mentioned it's 2009 was the year we were boarded the number one company workforce. We went, took us a couple years to get back to a billion, a couple years to get to two billion. 2009, we were at 3 billion, 2012, we were at 6 billion. So it was quite a story of recovery.

SPEAKER_02 7:55

And citizens, just a personal story to share on that. I was one of those ones that was affected by this one-time layoff. Uh, luckily, I landed on my feet two months later working at Apple Computer of All Places. Pretty good. Yeah, exactly. You know, I was uh one of the folks that led the inside sales team selling Apple's branded server and storage products at the time. So it's and you know, I think the references I think spoke volumes of me getting hired at the company. So again, I just wanted to thank you and the culture that you created at NetApp for ex-employees to thrive.

SPEAKER_00 8:32

Yeah. You know, one other point I'll make about when you really have adversity. There's an old saying, adversity builds character. I think adversity reveals character. You find out who people are when they're really under stress, and that could go poorly, or it could really give you an appreciation for someone that can stand up

Respectful Layoffs And Real Transparency

SPEAKER_00 8:54

when times are tough. And I and I think we found that we had a lot of people who were tough and committed and willing to sacrifice for each other. That's what it takes to build a great company, a great culture.

SPEAKER_02 9:05

Well, let me double-click on that, Tom, because you say this, I mean, respectfully saying, of course, you say this as a business leader, or you lead and delegate. But when it comes to the individual contributor or the person that's in the weeds, how is that message different?

SPEAKER_00 9:22

Well, I at a high level, I just always thought about like a sports team. Any sports team that accomplishes greatness, they look out for each other. Guys hurt, the other guy tries a little harder. Don't worry, I got you. And you you if you care enough where you'll sacrifice for each other. The world changed. I'll give you an example. I had a I had a guy call me up about I you, as you all know, I had a saying, catch someone doing something right. So if anybody does something extraordinary to help a customer, to help society, yeah. If they sent me a note, I called the employee and I said, Thank you. This is why we're in business, you make me proud.

SPEAKER_03 9:58

Right.

SPEAKER_00 9:59

And this woman called me from Virginia. She had just joined from Cisco, which was a networking company. We were in storage, so she needed to learn a whole different thing. And she said to me, I have two guys who have sat in this office at night, a couple hours each night, to make sure I got up to speed as fast as possible. I've never experienced something like this. There's nothing in it for them. And I asked them, Why are you doing this? They said, We're just paying a phone. This is what people did for me when I got here. So you've created a first of all, I think it's all about who you hire. When I interviewed people, I didn't sugarcoat stuff, I didn't oversell it. I wasn't trying to say, boy, I you really got to come here. I explained who we were, what we believed in, what we were trying to accomplish, and the challenges. You know, we have a big rival named EMC. They want to kill us, they're gonna try and drive us out of business. They say they're gonna. So this is the challenge. Um, and two people hearing that, one says, that's for me, and the other one goes, that's not for me. Either way, it's okay.

SPEAKER_03 11:00

Right.

SPEAKER_00 11:01

But we were really good at getting like-minded people to want to be on the same team and to go through whatever we had to go through, do something special.

SPEAKER_02 11:10

Well, I think it also goes back to what you the the word that you mentioned before, character. I think at the time, NetApp and its unbelievable talent pool hired great characters in their respective roles.

SPEAKER_00 11:22

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 11:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:24

And people were willing to sacrifice for each other. There was very few times anybody, I mean, I I could I can't even think of one sitting here, came to me and and fought for themselves. I need more, I need, I need. I didn't have those conversations. I had a number of when I say, I have a guy who's doing great in inside sales, I really would like to see him get more because I think he could he deserves it and could use it. Right. I love those conversations.

SPEAKER_02 11:48

Well, even in your all-hands meetings, I think the number one word that always came to me when I thought of you was this word contribution. It's selfless.

SPEAKER_00 11:58

Yeah, I you know, when you think about leadership, I believe in leading from the front. I believe a a real leader has to make an impact at the point of attack. In other words, I don't want to walk and spreadsheet.

Adversity Reveals Who You Are

SPEAKER_00 12:10

Boy, where the numbers are down. Oh, thanks, didn't know that.

SPEAKER_03 12:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:14

As opposed to, I remember when I was a sales guy, I had a new district manager, he came to me, he said, What are you working on? And I listed about 10 different things. He said, Which of those really make an impact in your mind? And they were like three. He says, Don't do the others. I'll I will distribute that work to other people. If you can make an impact on those three, it's gonna help the company. That's I was like, Wow, because I was just trying to say yes to everybody because I didn't want anybody down, sure. But he's like, No, let's let's dig in on a few things and do them well. So I I as you all know, I never flew under 250,000 miles my first 20 years. Yep, my last year's president, I flew 375,000 miles, put down perspectives. Uh, to go around the world is 25,000. So I went around the world about every 11 days. And my what my it's a lot of travel, all commercial, by the way. And but my requirements were when I landed, I just made sales calls like crazy, but I wanted to host a dinner for internal people wherever I went to talk about our I would talk about our culture in front of the whole group, so we all stayed on the same page because when you grow really quickly, you could lose that culture, right? And secondarily, I I learned a lot from the people at night. Tell me what's really going on, tell me how you feel.

SPEAKER_03 13:36

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 13:36

And and by the way, when I came back from trips, I'd always have a meeting with the exec staff and say, let me tell you what I learned on in India. Let me tell you what I learned in wherever I went. 54 trips to Tokyo. That's a lot of stuff, but I learned a lot.

SPEAKER_02 13:52

How does that relate to someone at a personal level? I mean, the the principles of leadership you've you've said at you know, applying at a at a company level. What is that like when a person is raising a family, a parent raising their children? What are the similarities there?

SPEAKER_00 14:14

Well, you know, I I did not have kids with my first wife, and I have a 10-year-old son now and a six-year-old daughter. So I'm the learner here. Let's turn this around.

SPEAKER_02 14:24

Welcome to a life of worrying forever, having kids.

SPEAKER_00 14:27

You know, but it's it's made my life so much richer. But I I say this to take it a little bit differently. I you know, I when I was growing up, I didn't have a lot of confidence in myself. I was smaller than the other kids.

Leading From The Point Of Attack

SPEAKER_00 14:42

I had a brother who was a sensational athlete. Um, I ended up being a good wrestler, which of course, then you're doing against people your own size. That's how I ended up going to college on a wrestling scholarship. But if you people have asked me before, yo, did people expect you to be successful? It's because those some people just seem like they did it from the beginning, right? Right. Yeah. So we do the endowment in 2000. And when you do that, and it was all the newspapers around the country. I got all kinds of people calling me, a lot saying nice things, some saying, could you send me money? You seem to have some. I need some. I never met. But my favorite letter was really put how people viewed me as a kid. This woman writes me a letter, dear Tom. You may not remember, but we went to third grade together. I'm like, I don't remember anything about third grade, then or now. And then she says, I just read an article in the News Day, Long Island News Day, about someone from with your name from our town who gave all this money to Notre Dame. You should meet them, you might be related. Definitely not that guy. Definitely not this guy. But you know, I think the reason I bring that story up, I got confidence over time. And this is not, it's a lifelong game to grow. And I when I went to Notre Dame, the first time I was around people of that quality, I went to a public high school. I was smarter than most of the kids without doing that much. I didn't have the study habits, and at first it was very intimidating. I was like, oh my God. But I had a guy say to me one day, you know, you just don't work that hard and you still do pretty well. And I thought that was my thing to be cool. He said, Do you think when you get out of here and you apply to law school, something you're gonna say, I did pretty well, but I didn't work that hard. Do you think that's gonna be a good selling feature for you? He said, The reality is you're afraid to go all in because you you might not do any better. I was so wait one more time. That's he said, You're afraid to apply yourself and compete with all these people because what if you don't do any better? You have this thing, I could do it if I wanted, but you don't. I wanted to hit him. I was a wrestler, I was pissed. I went for a run and I said, Oh my god, he's right. I'm not applying myself. This is my sophomore year. And I said to myself, whatever happens, I'm never gonna have that conversation again. And I just did my best to utilize everything I had. I used my best efforts. No one outworked me. I never got outworked in business after that. It changed my life, and and so from when I left Notre Dame, I didn't know what I was gonna do, but I was much more confident that whatever I chose to attack, I was gonna learn it. I was gonna be around good people, I was always gonna surround myself with people I could learn from.

SPEAKER_03 17:40

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 17:41

And we'll see what happened. And it, you know, I I got in technology, so that was the field. I love the fact that we solved problems with tech. And that's really what I love doing. Yeah, I got I was asked to be a district manager at 26. I was 10 years younger than anybody in my company. I for I said, I don't want to do that. It's like herding cats. I already made good money, I like I don't have to worry about anything. Well, what's for dinner? And as soon as I did it, that they asked

Confidence Lessons From Notre Dame

SPEAKER_00 18:10

me to do it, I realized I got much more pleasure out of giving a plaque than getting a plaque. I loved the fact I could bring you up on stage and say, this is what he did. And know that I'm I played a part in your development. That was much more enriching to me than someone saying it about me or me.

SPEAKER_02 18:30

So I I say to people Can you imagine having your son or any other kid at an elementary school player rising up and saying, This is the reason why I'm here?

SPEAKER_04 18:43

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:46

Right? Yeah, it just brings it back to earth. It's just it just brings back to the humanity that we have in all of us.

SPEAKER_00 18:52

You know, it's tell that story. It's not like I'm some special person that oh, I would I went I I got to go to Stanford for their executive program, 1989, six-week program, and there was a study, it was a Yale study on leadership, and most high performance people have time-bound, measurable written goals, very high percentage. Now, the time frames could be different, like Lou Holtz had life goals. But anyway, I set up a goal system.

SPEAKER_02 19:19

Lou Holtz being the head coach of the number lane football team.

SPEAKER_00 19:21

Yeah, he passed away recently.

SPEAKER_02 19:23

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 19:23

Um, but I'm saying Tiger Woods has written goals, and I didn't have written goals. I put a system together. If anybody's interested, if you go to Forbes.com and has a lot of views on 90-day goals. But one of the things that they talked about was the fact that uh people like Michael Jordan, and how did they not have a ceiling to whatever? How did they even allow greatness to happen? And I took a step back. I I really gave that a lot of thought, and I I I said to myself, I was already further in my career than I ever expected. I was running sales for a public company, running half the country, and and there was no expectation of anybody I knew growing up. None of those people went on to do too much, or it wasn't expected, let's put it that way. We're lower middle class, Long Island. But I said, So in my mind, I had already accomplished more, and I said, This is a bad way of thinking. And I said to myself, why not me? Why not me? When I think of greatness, so as I started to set my goals, I like 90 days because it kept moving me forward, time-bound and measurable. But I started to say, when I use the term greatness, I only have one life. I am gonna try to do something great.

SPEAKER_02 20:48

Do you sit there and get angry? What are your emotions like?

SPEAKER_00 20:54

No. So I so I I said let me just tell you real quickly, I I do three personal goals and three professional goals my whole career. And I do personal first. And the question the questions you ask yourself are important if I do what am I proud of me for the next 90 days? If I did what three things gotta be measurable. I want to get on a treadmill for three times a week for 30 minutes. That's a goal. You can determine whether it's the right goal. Uh maybe I've lost contact with a relative or parent or something. I'm not and I was I'm gonna establish that contact this

Why Not Me And 90 Day Goals

SPEAKER_00 21:30

quarter. I am gonna work hard to be feel good about myself. This is on the personal side. Three goals, and then I stop. Then I do three professional goals. If and the question I always ask myself there, what am I gonna do to make an impact? I never wanted to fit in. I want to make an impact on the business. Why am I here?

SPEAKER_03 21:50

Right.

SPEAKER_00 21:50

And by the way, on the professional goals, I reviewed it with my boss or the or the people work for me. Because I want them to know what I'm focused on. And I also want to, I remember Rob Salmon, who ran sales first, said to me, I put I was gonna go to China because they kept asking me. And he said, Tom, you've been there a couple of times. We need you in so many other places. I would prefer you didn't do that. Okay, but I haven't done the work yet. But I have three and three, right? I'm gonna I'm gonna do this quarter. And then I put it aside for a day, and I pull them back and I read each line out loud. I say, if I do that, will I be proud of myself? It a lot of people I realized at Stanford that I was living my life to make other people proud of me. It was really important to me to have my parents be proud, my friends and all this kind of stuff. Doesn't matter at the end of the day, if you're when you're getting to be older, you're gonna look back at your life and say, Am I proud of myself or not? And it's not gonna be good if it's no, but other people are right. So I push myself. So what happened with this goal system? First time I did it, I had six out of eight. Sounds sounds terrible, or four or four out of six. But I was so invigorated because I was directing what I was gonna do.

SPEAKER_03 23:06

Right.

SPEAKER_00 23:07

You're gonna get goals given to you by a company, but what is it that I want? And I started to lift my expectations of myself because then I started to make them and exceed them. I had the simple one on the treadmill. I said I was gonna be on a treadmill, I was because I was all flying, I wasn't working out 30 minutes three times a week. And I when I redid it, I said I could do more than that.

unknown 23:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:32

So I put 40 minutes. When I was on that treadmill, I wanted to quit at 20. I'll never forget that. And I said, but I'm not quitting. And when I passed 30, I started to get excited. When I hit 40, I was like, I could do more than this. So what it's about is developing habits. And a lot of times when people use the word habit, they think of negative things. Positive habits change your life. I started to get really good habits. I had a guy, I got passed over for a promotion. John Morganbridge was my boss. John was the first CEO of Cisco Systems. He was my boss at a company called Stratus. And I he passed me over twice for a job everyone thought I should get. People say, 'You're gonna accept that job?' and I'm like, nobody called me. So I called John up, but I go, John, he goes, How you doing, Tom? I said, Not so well, John. He goes, Why? John, you just hired a nitwit above me for the second time. Everybody says, Why aren't you in that job? He goes, You think you should get that job? I would never give you that job. I was I was like stunned. I was the leading sales guy. I thought he was kidding, but he wasn't laughing. I said, Why would you say that? He said, Tom, remember I asked you if you'd be on the comp committee. Yeah, what'd you say? John, I'm a sales guy. Leave me alone. He went through like four different things. He said, Those are in the job description for the job you're telling me I gave you. Oh, note to self. So I had niche myself by saying, No, no, no. What I turned around to do is run toward problems, run toward things I didn't know.

SPEAKER_02 25:11

That takes courage. That takes a lot of courage.

SPEAKER_00 25:14

That that is the single thing was a breakthrough for me. I said, Don't do what's comfortable, do what's what is the problem that everybody wishes they could solve, and get involved in it and figure out if you could help.

SPEAKER_02 25:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:28

Change my

Run Toward Hard Problems

SPEAKER_00 25:30

world.

SPEAKER_02 25:31

Well, I think also what changed uh the world of the folks, the net the net appians, I'd like to call, is you mentioned the five attribute attributes of the net app culture. That's attitude, candor, recognition, leadership, and embracing change. Can you explain candor for me?

SPEAKER_00 25:49

Yeah, candor is one of the most critical on that list. So Dan Woman over at one of his maybe his first meeting he had as a staff, he said, Listen, you're on the executive staff. When you're we're in this room, it's very important. We have candor that if you if I say something and you you don't agree, if you don't say something back, it goes in concrete. What you can't do later is go outside and say, Boy, I don't like what Dan said. You have something to say, say it in this room. If you have nothing to say, why are you in this room? Now, he said, we're gonna drive candor through this company. And the only way that works is if it starts at the top. We gotta want, we gotta make sure people know they can come to us with ideas. And the reason that's so important, especially in a fast-growing company like we had, is the best answers to most problems are not found in the executive suite. They're found by the people closest to the action. And if they know that you would listen to them, take their input, and potentially take the idea and run with it, then they'll go home and think about it. Otherwise, they'll get on a bike. I'm in the Hamptons right now, so I'm looking outside in this nice. But they'll get on a bike and go. It's not my problem. So we constantly had people coming forward. I've been thinking about it.

SPEAKER_02 27:03

Let me ask you a devil's advocate question, then. I mean, for the for the ability for people not to speak up when it really matters. Yeah, there's a certain, I'm not going to say politics involved, but there's reasons why people don't say anything for fear of judgment, for fear of looking stupid, right? For fear of backlash.

SPEAKER_00 27:21

Right.

SPEAKER_02 27:24

How do you explain that?

SPEAKER_00 27:25

Well, first of all, I totally understand that. We wanted a culture where that was not true. So we had to model it. We had to model it. I mean, you're going to hear uncomfortable things. People come in and go, what I didn't like, you if somebody came in and they say, Hey, I think this is ridiculous, this plan we're running is stupid. I'll go, okay, what would you do? What would you do differently? Well, I hadn't given that much thought.

unknown 27:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:50

That's called bitching. Yeah. But if you if you're going to come in, at least have

Candor Means Speak Up With Ideas

SPEAKER_00 27:55

some ideas on how you'd fix it. But people knew that they could come in with ideas. And there are many examples where we took it and ran with it. Where they and we had programs developed that people came and said, If I and I say, How many people would you need to do that? How would you measure it? If the interest came back into doesn't matter if it was like I wanted, we would go with it. Now, I can't solve the problem. If you come from a company where they don't want the truth, which a lot of companies are like that, I can't solve that problem. But I yeah, I I wanted a culture that people knew that they they have, if they felt strongly about something that could back it up, an argument, that they can make that argument to anybody, anybody in the company. Basically, we wanted people to go do that through their channels, but everybody knew they had the right to come to Banner Meet. Everybody, every leader knew that.

SPEAKER_02 28:47

Yeah. And I guess, Tom, what I'm thinking about now is even more elemental than this, and that is the family dynamics, right? Or the relationship you have with your school is, you know, taking that small step of courage to speak up. Yep. If there's not something that you feel is right or comfortable and not being afraid. So I think a lot of what you mentioned about candor speaks to courage.

SPEAKER_00 29:10

You know, I I feel really good about the relationship I have, my wife and I have my two kids because they tell us everything.

SPEAKER_03 29:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:19

Good or bad. What happened today? What was the most uncomfortable thing that happened today? What you know, what well, what didn't. And they tell me, I want that to be true. I no matter what it is. You know, in these days when mental health is an issue for kids, big time.

SPEAKER_03 29:36

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 29:37

Uh the worst thing that can happen is you don't know what's going on with your child's thinking, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_03 29:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:46

So that's very, very important to me. You know, I've I recently joined the board of my son's school, and I'm getting involved more in my daughter's school, and I'm getting pretty aware of some of the issues surrounding driving topic. The school my son's goes to is the oldest private school in America. It's gonna be 400 years old in two years.

SPEAKER_03 30:09

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 30:10

125 years before the revolution.

unknown 30:14

Stuff like that.

SPEAKER_00 30:15

My math may be off. But so they they're pretty good at what they do, they teach boys, but um still I think we always have to be open to change. The world is changing dramatically. What outcomes, how is AI going to be introduced in schools? That I'm on the AI committee for both schools. Interesting topic.

SPEAKER_02 30:36

Interesting. I thought I thought our rel our conversation would be around AI and business. I didn't realize it'd be around AI schools. Tell me more, Tom.

SPEAKER_00 30:45

Well, the the thing about it is we concluded very quickly, it's not like you could say we're not going to do this. You know, we have to embrace and use it in the right way. They still have to develop their reasoning.

SPEAKER_03 30:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:58

AI can be something later you introduce in a way that they can use it for different things. That's that's but the number one thing is their thinking processes have to be developed. And so, I mean, I'm in there's a guy from uh Google, there's a guy from uh Microsoft that are way up the chain in their AI. So they're very tuned to all this kind of stuff, and and there are just people who are very, very smart. Most of them have something to do with AI that are on the committees. Um, but I'm learning and I'm finding it fascinating to think about how young people that when they get out of school, AI is gonna be so fundamental to think about seven, eight years from now. So, what does that look like? How do we use it in a way that is ethical?

AI In Schools Ethics And Reasoning

SPEAKER_00 31:45

How do we use it in a way that's beneficial? And I think that's a very, very important life topic.

SPEAKER_02 31:52

And unfortunately, I think there's still gonna be some trials and tribulations uh smoothening the rough edges until we get to that stage. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 31:59

I yeah, I 100% agree.

SPEAKER_02 32:02

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:04

But let me just make the point in business, I still think it's important that we realize that AI is gonna automate certain things that many, many processes are gonna be automated. So you don't want to be a data gatherer as a job anymore. It's not a good job. Yeah, but what you do with that data, what you do, if that's true, how about this? I think in education it's gonna lead people to study the arts more. I think because your ability to reason is gonna be what separates you from somebody else as opposed to your ability to code it.

SPEAKER_02 32:39

That's interesting. I know that on the leadership, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:43

Bright Bright Pridgewood, what one of the big the hedge funds, I forget one of the most successful up in Connecticut, they forever have looked for people like with history degrees and this kind of stuff, but they they like the way they philosophy majors, yeah. But whether you major it or not, they like the way they thought because they could give them all the data. But what's the interesting? How would you look at this differently than anybody else? And what if that's true, what would you do with it?

SPEAKER_03 33:12

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 33:13

That's what I think is gonna be the next challenges for both how business gets the most out of this for the right outcomes and how the type of people can develop their careers.

SPEAKER_02 33:23

Well, taking it a step further, it looks like that portion of creativity that lends itself to liberal arts would and could be a competitive advantage to any uh organization.

SPEAKER_00 33:34

I believe that. I I sincerely believe that. I was with a uh a young lady recently that uh she was like the head of strategy at Goldman Sachs, and she's the head of the largest hedge fund on the West Coast. She had an English degree. I was like really yeah, yeah. She liked classical novels and study, she went to Oxford and you know did some very interesting things. Uh, but it just showed me again your ability to think is and and then it's people skills, the soft skills. I've always

AI Careers Creativity And Soft Skills

SPEAKER_00 34:10

believed that you know, your ability to help other people, to motivate them, to lift them, to challenge them. You know, I I like to do when when times are good, when times are tough, I believe you should you should support as a leader. When times are good, I believe you should inject tension. Most people do it exactly the opposite.

SPEAKER_03 34:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:36

Don Valentine, one time got me. Don Valentine founded Sequoia Capital, the most famous venture capitalist ever. And he was our big investor at the beginning, and then he told me, just go on, stay out in the field. Don't even come to these meetings anymore. I love you out in the field. Nine months later, the numbers look great. And they said, Don would like you at the next board meeting. I'm like, I'm waiting for palm leaves and stuff. It's gonna be unbelievable. I come walking in and they hand this chart to me, the CFO. He says, Don likes to start with this chart. Okay, if I put it down, I only have one chart: sales goal, performance.

SPEAKER_04 35:12

Right.

SPEAKER_00 35:14

How are we doing? And Don starts hitting me on this chart. Well, what's in that bucket? And I'm like, I don't know. He goes, Sure. No, what's in deferred revenue? I don't know. The guy who gave me the charts, like taking notes. I'm like, what are you doing? That's your chart. He did this for like 20 minutes, and finally he says, Well, we're running out of time. Anything else you have? I thought running out of time, I haven't said it yet. So I put my chart down. At one point, he said to me, Do you often put charts up? You don't know what's on the chart. I'm like, so I put my chart up. I said, Well, I guess it doesn't matter much to this crowd, but we're way above goal. Thanks for asking me. I flew it from New York to California. I leave there and I'm steaming. Doug Leone, who runs Sequoia, has run Sequoia

Support When Tough Push When Easy

SPEAKER_00 36:00

now. Yeah, comes running out. He was a young guy at Sequoia at the time. He goes, Tom, you didn't like that meeting, did you? I go, Boy, Doug, that Stanford education wasn't wasted on you. And he goes, Why do you think Don did that? No idea, Doug. He says, Tom, he knows what the numbers are. Don believes the single killer of companies and runoff of careers, complacency. And he never lets you get complacent. He's gonna push you hard because he knows you can take it, and he knows you can do more, even as good as you're doing. He's gonna ask you tough questions. He was doing that to teach you a lesson. And that's the lesson I took from that, which is and I did this throughout my leadership career. Times are tough, and you know, you were there. I showed support for people who were struggling, and I would do what could we do to help, as opposed to come down on them, like add more stress. But when times are good, Mike Bush hit a did a billion dollars at Apple, and Mike hit his first $10 million deal. And I congratulated him next day. I'm in the cafeteria. He goes, How about that deal? I said, Were you a historian? We talked about that yesterday.

SPEAKER_02 37:14

But I think uh the lesson isn't lost, Tom, in terms of what you just shared from a business standpoint applies to any type of setting, whether it is a school, right? Whether it's even a club. Um it's all the ability to encourage people when they're down and push them when times are good.

SPEAKER_04 37:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:36

Final question, Tom. We have a minute left here. Um, I'll

Preparation Storytelling And Final Mindset

SPEAKER_02 37:40

give you the final word with the question of what mindset leads you to do your best work.

SPEAKER_00 37:46

Excuse me, I'm I didn't hear.

SPEAKER_02 37:48

What is a mindset that leads you to do your best work?

SPEAKER_00 37:51

Mindset that first of all, I like to have a clear mind because I'm prepared. To me, it's all about preparation. People ask me, I do all kinds of public speaking, as you know. People always say, Are you nervous when you get up to speak? The biggest crowd, 17,000. Oracle World did that two years ago. No, because I'm prepared. I have I put so much into the preparation. I don't use notes, I tear them up because I'm walking out there. I have a couple messages, and I'm gonna I'm gonna go for it. It doesn't matter if I'm off a little bit, nobody cares if it was I said eight and it was ten, nobody cares. They want to know what's the story. So when I go to a sales meeting, anything, I have a clear mind, I am prepared. I know what the question I ask before I speak, before I go on a sales call to the rep, I say, what do you want them to feel when I leave? I think people always they put up charts to throw facts. Nobody's ever changed their life because they write a chart.

SPEAKER_03 38:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:50

But when someone tells a story, or someone you see someone do something that is striking to you that you can relate to, there's a chance it could change your life. So change you, you know what? I'm gonna do that.

SPEAKER_02 39:03

And thank you, Tom.