Ginni Rometty: IBM CEO on Leadership, Power, and Adversity | Lex Fridman Podcast #362

I've had to do plenty of unpopular things. I think anytime you have to run a company that endures a century and has to endure another century, you will do unpopular things. You have no choice. And I often felt I had to sacrifice things for the long term. And whether that would have been really difficult, things like job changes or reductions, or whether it would be things like, hey, we're going to change the way we do our semiconductors and a whole different philosophy, you have no choice. I mean, and in times of crisis as well, you gotta be. I always said it's not a popularity contest.

The following is a conversation with Jeanne Rometti, who was a longtime CEO, president and chairman of IBM. And for many years she was widely considered to be one of the most powerful women in the world. She's the author of a new book on power, leadership and her life story called Good Power, coming out on March 7th. She is an incredible leader and human being, both fearless and compassionate. It was a huge honor and pleasure for me to sit down and have this chat with her. This is the Lex Friedman podcast to support it. Please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Jeanne Rometti. You worked at IBM for over 40 years, starting as a systems engineer and you ran the company as chairman, president, CEO from 2011 to 2020. IBM is one of the largest tech companies in the world with maybe you can correct me on this. With about 280,000 employees, what are the biggest challenges running the company of that size? Let's start with a sort of big overview question.

The biggest challenges, I think are not in running them, it's in changing them. And that idea to know what you should change and what you should not change. Actually, people don't always ask that question, what should endure? Even if it has to be modernized, but what should endure? And then I found the hardest part was changing how work got done at such a big company.

What was the parts that you thought should endure? The core of the company that was beautiful and powerful and could persist through time? That it should persist through time.

I'd be interested. Do you have a perception of what you think it would be?

Do I have a perception? Well, I'm a romantic for a history of long running companies. So there's kind of a tradition as a AI person, to me, IBM has some epic sort of research accomplishments.

Yes.

Where you show off, you know, Deep Blue and Watson, just impressive, big moonshot challenges and accomplishing those. But that's, I think that's probably a small part of what IBM is That's mostly like the, the, the sexy public facing part.

Yeah. No, well, certainly the research part itself. Right. Is over 3,000. So it's not that small. That's a pretty big research.

Yes.

But the part that should endure ends up being, you know, company that does things that are essential to the world. Meaning the who? You know, think back. You said you're romantic. It was the 30s, the Social Security system. It was putting the man on the moon. It was, you know, to this day, banks don't run, you know, railroads don't run. That is at its core it's doing mission critical work. And so that part I think is at its core it's a business to business company. And at its core it's about doing things that are really important to the world. Becoming, running and being better running the.

Infrastructure of the world. So doing it at scale, doing it reliably.

Yes. Secure in this world. That's like everything. In fact, when I started I almost felt people were looking for what that was. And together we sort of in a word was to be essential. And the reason I loved that word was I can't call myself essential. You have to determine I am right. So it was to be essential. Even though some of what we did is exactly what you said, it's below the surface. So many people, because people say to me, well, what does IBM do now? Right. And over the years it's changed so much and today it's really a software and consulting company. Consulting's a third of it and the software is all hybrid cloud and AI. That would not have been true, as you well know, back even two decades ago. Right. So it changes but I think at its core it's that be essential. You said moonshot can't all be moonshots because moonshots don't always work but mission critical work.

So given the size though, when you started running it, did you feel the sort of thing that people usually associate with size, which is bureaucracy and, and maybe the aspect of size that hinder progress or hinder pivoting. Did you feel that you would.

For lots of reasons. I think when you're a big company, sometimes people think of process as the client themselves. I always say to people, your process is not your customer. There is a real customer here that you exist for and that's really easy to fall into because people are a master to this process and they that's not right. And when you're big, the other thing and boy there's a premium on it is speed. Right. That in our industry you Gotta be fast and go back. Like when I took over and it was 2012, you know, we had a lot of catching up to do and a lot of things to do and it was moving so fast and as you well know, all those trends were happening at once which made em go even faster. And so pretty unprecedented actually for that many trends to be at one time. And I used to say to people, go faster, go faster, go faster. Honestly, I've tired them out. I mean it kind of dawned on me that when you're that big that's a really valuable lesson. And it taught me like the how's perhaps more important than the what. Because if I didn't do something to change how work was done, like change those processes or you know, give them new tools, help them with skills they couldn't, they're just like do the same thing faster. If someone tells you, you know, you got hiking boots and they're like no, go run a marathon, you're like I can't do it in those boots. But so you've got to do something. And at first I think the ways for big companies, I would call them like blunt clubs, you do what everyone does, you reduce layers. Because if you reduce layers, decisions go faster. There's just, it's math. If there's less decision points, things go faster. You do the blunt club thing. And then after that though it did lead me down a, you know, a long journey of they sound like buzzwords but if you really do them at scale, they're hard around things like agile and because you've really got to change the way work gets done and we ended up training God, hundreds of thousands of people on that stuff to really change it correctly on how to do it correctly. That's right. Versus because everybody talks about it. But the idea that you would really have small multidisciplinary teams, work from the outside in, set those sort of interim steps, you know, take the feedback pivot and then do it on not just products, do it on lots of things was it's a hard to do at scale. People always say oh I got this agile group over here of 40 people. But not when you're a couple hundred thousand people. You got to get a lot of people to work that way.

The blonde club thing you're talking about. So flatten the organization as much as possible.

Yeah, yeah, I probably reduce the layers of management by half. And so that does, that has lots of benefits. Right Time to a decision, more autonomy to people. And then the idea of like faster clarity of where you're going because you're not just filtered through so many different layers. And I think it's the kind of thing a lot of companies, if you're big, have to just keep going through. It's kind of like grass grows, you know, it just comes back and you gotta go back down and work on it. So it's a natural thing. But I hear so many people talk about it, Lex, this idea of, like, okay, well, who makes a decision? You've often heard nobody can say yes and everybody can say no. And that's actually what you're trying to get out of a system like that.

So, I mean, your book in general, the way you lead is very much about we and us, you know, the power of we. But is there times when a leader has to step in and be almost autocratic, take control and make hard, unpopular decisions?

Oh, I am sure you know the answer to that. And it is, of course, yes.

Fun to hear you say.

It's fun to say it. Yeah. You know, because I actually a. There's a leader for a time, but then there's a leader for a situation. Right. And so I've had to do plenty of unpopular things. I think anytime you have to run a company that endures a century and has to endure another century, you will do unpopular things. You have no choice. And I often felt I had to sacrifice things for the long term. And whether that would have been, you know, really difficult things like, you know, job changes or reductions, or whether it would be things like, hey, you know, we're going to change the way we do our semiconductors and a whole different philosophy. You have no choice. I mean, and in times of crisis as well, you got to be. I always said it's not a popularity contest. So that's. None of these jobs are popularity contests. I don't care if your company's got one person or half a million. They're not popularity contests.

But psychologically, is it difficult to just sort of step in as a new CEO and because you're fighting against tradition, against all these people that act like experts of their thing, and they are experts of their thing to step in and say we have to do it differently?

When you gotta change a company, it's really tempting to say, throw everything else out, back to that. What must endure. Right. But I know when I took over to start, I knew how much had to change. More I got into it, I could see, wow, a lot more had to change. Right. Because we needed a platform. We'd always done our best when we had a Platform, a technology platform. You will go back in time and you'll think of the mainframe system, you'll think of the PC, you'll think of perhaps middleware. You know, you could even call services a platform. We needed a platform. The next platform here to be there skills. When I took over, if I we inventoried who had modern skills for the Future, it was 2 out of 10 people for the future. Not that they didn't have relevant skills today, but for the future. 2 out of 10. Yikes. That's a big problem, right? The speed at which things were getting done, that has to. So you got so much to do and you say is that. Is that a scary thing? Yes. Do you have to sometimes dictate? Yes. But I did find and it is worth it. I know every big company. I know my good friend that runs General Motors as she's had to change go back to what is them them, you know. And when you do that, that back to be essential. We kind of started with hey, it's be essential. Then the next thing I did with the team was say okay, now this means new era of computing, new buyers are out there and eh, we better have new skills. Okay, now, now the next thing, how do you operationalize it? And it just takes some time but you can engineer that and get people to build belief.

And for the skills, that means hiring and that means training.

Yes. Oh boy, that's a long. Skills is a really long topic in and of itself. I try to put my view in it. I learned a lot and I changed my view on this a lot. I'll go back at my very beginning, say 40 years ago I would have said at that point, okay, I was always in a hurry. I was interviewing to hire people. I don't know how you hire people 40 years ago I'd be like, okay, I got to fit in these interviews. I got to hire someone to get this done. Okay. Then time would go on. I'm like, oh, that's not very good. In fact someone once said to me, hey, hire the best people to work for you and your job gets a lot easier. Okay, I should spend more time on this topic. I spend more time on it. Then it was like, okay, hire experts. Okay, okay, hired a lot of experts over my life. And then I was really like an epiphany. And it really happened over my tenure running the company and having to change skills. If someone's an expert at something and has just done that for 30 years, the odds of them really wanting to change a lot are pretty Low. And when you're in a really dynamic industry, that's a problem. And so, okay, that was like kind of my first revelation on this. And then when I looked to hiring, I can remember when I started my job we needed cyber people. And I go out there and I look, unemployment in the US was almost 10%. Can't find them. Okay, it's 10% and I can't find the people. Okay, what's the issue? Okay, they're not teaching the right things. That led me down a path and it was serendipity that I happened to do a review of corporate social responsibility. We had this one little fledgling school in a low income area and high school with a community college. We gave them internships, direction on curriculum. Lo and behold, we could hire these kids. I said, this is not csr. Like I just found a new talent pool which takes me to now what I'm doing in my post, you know, post retirement. I'm like this idea that don't hire just for a college degree. We had 99% of our hires were college and PhDs. And I'm all for it. So you're very. Don't.

I'm deeply offended.

No, you should not be. And I, you know, I'm vice chair at Northwestern, one of the vice chairs. But, but I said, I just really like aptitude does not equal access. These people didn't have access, but they had aptitude. It changed my whole view to skills first. And so now for hiring. That's kind of a long story to tell you. The number one thing I would hire for now is somebody's willingness to learn. You know, and you can test, you can try different ways, but their curiosity and willingness to learn, hands down, I will take that trait over anything else they have.

So the interview process, the questions changed, everything changed. The kind of things, you know, talk to them about is try to get at how curious they are about the world testing.

And I mean we triangulated around it lots of ways and now look, they're at the heart of it. What it would do is change. You don't think of buying skills, you think of building skills. And when you think that way with so many people, and I think this country, many developed countries being disenfranchised, you gotta bring em back into the workforce somehow and they gotta get some kind of contemporary skills and. And if you took that approach, you can bring them back into the workforce.

Yeah, I think some interesting combination of humility and passion because like you said, experts sometimes lack humility if they call themselves an expert for a few too many years. So you have to have that beginner's mind and a passion to be able to aggressively, constantly be a beginner at everything and learn and learn and learn.

You know, I, I saw it firsthand when we were beginning this path, you know, down the cloud and AI and we said, and people would say, oh, IBM, you know, it's existential, they got to change and all these things. And, and I did hire a lot of people from outside very willing to learn new things. Come on in, come on in. And I sometimes say, shiny objects, trained in shiny objects. Come on in. But I saw something. It was another one of these. You're not a shiny object. I'm not saying that it's. But I learned something. Okay. Some of them did fantastic. And others, they're like, well, let me school you on everything. But they didn't realize, like we did really mission critical work and they'd break a bank. I mean, they would not understand the certain kind of security and the auditability and everything they had to go on. And then I watched IBM people say, oh, I actually could learn something. Some were like, yeah, okay, I don't know how to do. That's a really good thing. I could learn. And in the end, there was not like one group was a winner and one was a loser. The winners were the people who were willing to learn from each other. I mean, it was, to me, it was very stark example of that point. And I saw it firsthand. So that's why I'm so committed to this idea about skills first. And that's how people should be hired, promoted, paid, you name it.

Yeah, the AI in general, it seems like nobody really understands now what the future will look like. We're all trying to figure it out. So, like, what, you know, IBM will Look like in 50 years in relation to the software business, to AI is unknown. What Google will look like, what all these companies were trying to figure it out. And that means constantly learning, taking risks, all of those things. And nobody's really skilled in AI because.

You have to learn. You're absolutely right. That's right. Couldn't agree more with you on that.

You, you wrote in the book, speaking of hiring my drive for perfection often meant I only focused on what needed to change without acknowledging the positive. This could keep people from trusting themselves. It could take me a while to learn that just because I could point something out didn't mean I should. I still spotted errors, but I became more deliberate about what I mentioned and sent back to get fixed I also tried to curtail my tendency to micromanage and let people execute. I had to stop assuming my way was the best or only way. I was learning that giving other people control builds their confidence and that constantly trying to control people destroys it. So what's the right balance between showing the way and helping people find the way?

That is a good question because like a really flip answer would be as it gets bigger you have no choice but to just, you know, you can't do it. You have to, you have to tell or show. I mean you've got to let people find their way because it's so big you can't. Right. That's an obvious answer. Scope of work, bigger it gets. Okay, I've got to let more stuff go. But I have always believed that a leader's job is to do as well. And I think there's like a few areas that are really important that you always do. Now it doesn't meaning you're showing. So like when it has to do with values and value based decisions, like I think it's really important to constantly show people that you, you walk, your talk on that kind of thing is super important. And I actually think it's a struggle young companies have because those values aren't deeply rooted and when a storm comes it's, it's easy to uproot. And so I always felt like when it was that time I showed it, I got taught that so young at IBM and even General Motors that in fact I write, I do write about that in the book. First time I was a manager, I had a gentleman telling dirty jokes and not to me, but to other people. And it really offended people. And some of the women, this is the very early 80s, and they came, said something. I talked to my boss, I'm a first time manager and he was unequivocal with what I should do. He said, and this was a top performer, it stops immediately or you fire him. So there are a few areas like that that I actually think you have to always continue to role model and show. Right. That to me isn't the kind that like when do you let go of stuff? Right.

So the values and relationships with, with.

Clients, yeah, whatever you're in service of. And the other thing was I really felt it was really important to role model learning. Right. So I can remember when we started down the journey and we went on to this thing called the Think Academy. IBM's longtime motto had been think. And we said, okay, I'm going to make the first Friday of every month Compulsory education and. Okay, I mean everybody, like everybody. I don't care what your job is. Okay. When the whole company has to transform, everybody's got to kind of have some skin in this game and understand it. I taught the first hour of every month, month for four years now.

Nice.

Okay. I had to learn something, so. But it made me. But I'm like, okay, if I can teach this, you can do it, right? I mean, you know, kind of thing.

So it was a compulsory Thursday night education for you?

Oh, a little. I'm a little bit better prepared than that, but yes, you're so right, yes.

So you, you prepare.

Yeah.

So like personality, you like to prepare.

Yeah, but there's roots in that. Go back deeply. Deeply, deeply, deeply. I. And I think it's an interesting reason. So why do. Why are you. You're preparer, my friend. Yes, you are. You prepare for your interviews.

Sure.

The rest you wing.

Yeah, I wing.

But that's okay. I mean, you don't have to prepare everything. I don't prepare everything either.

No, but I unfortunately wing stuff. I save it to last minute. I push everything. I'm always almost late and I don't know why that is. I mean, there's some deep psychological thing we should probably investigate, but it's probably the anxiety brings out the performance that can be.

That's very true with some people.

I mean, so I'm a programmer, engineer at heart. And so programmers famously overestimate or underestimate. Sorry, how long something's going to take. And so I just. Everything always underestimate. And it's almost as if I want to feel this chaos of anxiety of a deadline or something like this. Otherwise I'll be lazy, sitting on a beach with a pina colada and relaxing.

Yeah.

I don't know. So that we have to know ourselves. But for you, for me, you like to prepare.

Yeah. It came from a few different places. I mean, one would have been as a, as a kid, I think. I was not a memorizer. And my brother is brilliant. He can. He read it once, boom, done. And so I always wanted to understand, like how something happened. Didn't matter what it was I was doing, whether it was algebra theorems. I always wanted to. Don't give me the answer. Don't give me the answer. You know, I want to figure it out, figure out. So I could reproduce it again and didn't have to memorize. So it started with that, that. And then over time. Okay, so I was in university in the 70s when I was in engineering school. I was the only woman. You know, I meet people still to this day, and they're like, oh, I remember you. I'm like, yeah, sorry, I don't remember you. There were 30 of you, one of me, and I, I, I think you already get that feeling of, okay, I better really study hard, because whatever I say is going to be remembered in this class, good or bad. And it started there. So in some ways, I did it for two reasons. Early on, I think it was a shield for confidence. The more I studied, the more prepared I was, the more confident. That's probably still true to this day. The second reason I did it evolved over time and became different to prepare. If I was really prepared, then when we're in the moment, I can really listen to you see, because I don't have to be doing all this stuff on the fly in my head, and I could actually take things I know and maybe help the situation. So it really became a way that I could be present and in the moment. And I think it's something a lot of people that in the moment. I learned it from my husband. He doesn't prepare, by the way, at all. So that's not it. But I, But I watch the in.

The moment, the negative example.

No, no, no. And I'm not going to change that. As he says, he's a type C. I'm an A. Okay.

That's how love works. Yeah.

And I have been married 43 years, and that seems to work. So. But that idea that you could be in the moment with people is a really important thing.

Yeah. So the preparation gives you the freedom to really be present. So just to linger on the. You mentioned your brother, and it seems like in the book that you really had to work hard when you studied to sort of, given that you weren't good at memorization, you really, truly, deeply wanted to understand the stuff, and you put in the hard work, and that seems to persist throughout your career. So, you know, hard work is often associated with, sort of has negative associations, maybe with burnout, with dissatisfaction. Is there some aspect of hard work at the core of who you are that led to happiness for you? Did you enjoy it?

I enjoyed it. So I will be the first. And I'm. I'm really careful to say that to people because I don't think everyone should associate G to do what you did. You have to. There's only one route there. Right. And that's just not true. And I, I do it because I like it. In fact, I'm careful. And as time goes on, you have to be careful as more and more people watch you, whether you like it, you're a role model or not, you are a role model for people. Whether you know it, like it, want, it does not matter. I learned that the hard way. And I would have to say, people, hey, just because I do this does not mean I do it for these reasons. Right. It's a be really explicit. And I'd come to believe usually when people say the word power, I don't know, do you have a positive or negative notion when I say the word power, we'll just do it.

Probably negative one, yeah.

For some stereotype or some view that somebody's abused it in some way. You can read the newspaper, somebody's doing something personal. People like, I'll ask people, do you want power? And they're like, oh no, I'd rather do good. And I think the irony is you need power to do good. And so that sort of led me down to in as I thought about my own life, right? Because it starts in a. Like many of us, you don't have a lot, but you don't know that because you're like everybody else around you at that time. And I want to end tragedy. My father leaves my mother homeless. No money, no food, nothing. Four kids. She's never worked a day in her life outside of a home. And the irony of that, I hear I would end up as the ninth CEO of one of America's iconic companies. And now I co chair this group 110. And that journey, I said, the biggest thing I learned was you could do really hard, meaningful things in a positive way. So now you asked me about why do I work so hard. I ended up writing the book in three pieces for this reason. When you really think of your life and power, I thought it kind of fell like a pebble in water. Like there's a ring about. You really care about yourself and like the power of yourself, power of me. There's a time it transcends to that you are working with and for others and another moment when it becomes like, about society. So my hard work, I'd ask you one day, sit really hard and think about when you close your eyes, who do you see from your early life, right? And what did you learn? And maybe it's not that hard for you. I mean, it was. It's funny the things then, if I really looked at it, it's no surprise what I do today. And that hard work part, my great grandma, as you and I were comparing notes on Russia, right? And Never spoke English, spoke Russian, came here to this country, was a cleaning person at the Wrigley building in Chicago. Yet if she hadn't saved every dime she made, my mother wouldn't have a home and wouldn't have had car. Right. What did I learn from that? Hard work. In fact, actually, when I went to college, she's like, you know, you really should be on a farm. You're so big and strong. That was her view. And then my grandmother, another tragic life. What did she do, though? And think how long. That's in the 40s, the 50s. She made lampshades. And she taught me how to sew. Right. So I could sew clothes when we couldn't afford them. But my memory of my grandma is working seven days a week sewing lampshades. And then here comes my mom in her situation, who climbs her way out of it. So I associate that with, well, strong women, by the way, all strong women. And I associate hard work with how you are sure you can always take care of yourself. And so I think that the roots go way back there, and they were always teaching something. Right. My great grandma was teaching me how to cook, how to work a farm, even though I didn't need to be on a farm. My grandma taught me, here's how to sew, here's how to run a business. And then my mother would teach us that look. But just a little bit of education. Look at the difference it could make. Right? So, anyways, that's a long answer, too. I think that hard work thing is really deeply rooted from that background.

It gives you a way out from hard times.

Yeah. You know, I think I've seen you on other podcasts say, I thought I did. Do you want a plan B? Didn't you say, no, you would not like a plan B?

Yeah, I don't.

Because you're like, I would prefer my back up against.

Am I remembering or like that you seem to like, at least certain moments in your life seem to do well in desperate times.

True enough. True enough. That's true. I learned that very well. But I also think that maybe this isn't the same kind of plan B. I think of it as, like, I was taught, like, always be able to take care of yourself, don't have to rely on someone else. Sure. And I think that to me, so that's my plan B. I can take care of myself. And it's. It's. Even after what I lived through with my father, I thought, well, this set a bar for bad. After this, nothing's bad. And and that it's a very freeing.

Thought, the being able to take care of yourself. Is that you mean practically or do you mean just a self belief that.

I'll figure it out, I'll figure it out and practically both. Right.

So you wrote, quote, I vividly remember the last two weeks of my freshman year when I only had 25 cents left. I put the quarter in a clear plastic box on my desk and just stared at it. This is it, I thought, no more money. So do you think there's some aspect of that financial stress, even desperation, just being hungry? Does that play a role in that drive that led to your success to be the CEO of one of the great companies ever?

It's a really interesting question because I was just talking to another colleague who's CEO of another great American company this weekend and he mentioned to me about all this adversity and he said, or I said to him, I said, do you think part of your success is because you had bad stuff happen? And he said, yes. And so I guess I'd be lying if I didn't say I don't think you have to have tragedy, but it does teach you one really important thing is that there is always a way forward, always. And it's in your control.

And I think there's probably wisdom for mentorship there or whether you're a parent or a mentor that easy times don't result in growth.

Yeah, I've heard a lot of my friends and they worry. They said, gee, my kids have never had bad times. And so what happens here? So I don't know, is it required and why you end up not required, but it sure doesn't hurt.

You had this good line about advice you were given that growth and comfort never coexist. Growth and comfort never coexist. And you have to get used to that thought.

If someone said that they think of me like one of the more profound lessons I had in the I, it's from my husband and which is even more, you know, funny actually.

You could just steal it. I mean, you don't.

Oh, I have, I have. Shamelessly. He'll, he'll, as he'll tell you, okay, so the story behind growth and comfort never coexist. But honestly, I think it's been a really freeing thought for me and it's helped me immensely since mid career. And as I write about it in the book, I'm mid career and I've been running a pretty big business actually. And the fellow I work for is going to get a new job. It's going to get promoted. He calls me and he says, hey, you're going to get my job. I really want you to have it. And I said to him, no way. I said, I'm not ready for that job. I got a lot more things I got to learn. That is like a huge job around the world. Every product line, development, you name it, every function, I can't do it. He looked at me, he says, well, I think you should go to the interview. I went to interview the next day, blah, blah, blah. Guy says to me, looks at me and he says, I want to offer you that job. And I said, I would like to think about it. I said, I want to go home and talk to my husband about it. Kind of looked at me, okay, I went home, my husband is sitting there and he says to me, I went on and on about the story, etc. And he says, do you think a man would have answered it that way? And I said, he says, I know you. He's like, six months, you're going to be bored. And you, all you can think of is what you don't know. And he said, I know these other people. You have way more skill than them. And they think they could do it. And he's like, why? Why? And for me, it internalized this feeling that I am going to say something that's a bit stereotyped, that it resonates with many, many women, and I'll ask you if it does after, is that they're most harsh critic of themselves. And so this idea that I won't grow unless I can feel uncomfortable doesn't mean I always have to show it, by the way. So that's what I meant. Growth and comfort can never coexist. So I was like, he's exactly right. Now the end of that story is I went in, I took the job. When I went back to, the man was really my mentor looking out for me. And he. He looked at me and he said, don't ever do that again. And I said, I understand. Because it was okay to be uncomfortable. I didn't have to use. I mean, now I would take stock of the things I can do, right? And really think or I look for times to be uncomfortable because I know if I am nervous, like I don't know if you're nervous to meet me. We never met in real person.

I'm still terrified.

No, you're not. But then it means you're learning something, right?

Holding it together so well.

I also, that to me matters.

I think it's interesting the Maybe you could speak to that, the, the sort of the self critical thing inside your, inside your brain. Because I think sometimes it's talked about that women have that, but I have that definitely. And I think that's not just solely a property of women in the workplace. But I also want to sort of push back on the idea that that's a big bad thing, that you should silence because I think that anxiety that leads to growth also there's like this discomfort. So there's this weird balance you have to have between that self critical engine and confidence.

Yeah, I think that's a good point.

You have to kind of dance because if you're super confident, people will value you higher. That's important. But if you're way too confident, maybe in the short term you'll gain, but in the long term you won't grow.

Very good point. So I can't really disagree with that. And, and to me, even when I took on jobs, I always felt people say, well, is it, you know, what point? Are you confident enough? And I came to sort of believe again a theme of my beliefs that if I was willing to ask lots of questions and understood enough, that's all I needed to know.

Let me ask you about your husband a little bit. So you write in the book, you write in the book. It's just jumping around. Like I said, I'm a bit of a romantic. So how did you meet your husband?

So I met my husband when I was 19 years old. So I was a young kid and I met him when I had a General Motors scholarship. So I was at Northwestern University through my first two years, had a lot of loans, financial aid, and a professor said, hey, you should sign up for this interview. They're looking to bring forward diverse candidates through their management track. Now these programs don't exist anymore like that. They will pay your tuition, your room and board, your expenses, Northwestern, other Ivy League school, these very expensive schools. And I think you'd be a good fit. I am eternally thankful for that advice. I went and I interviewed. I actually got the scholarship. I mean without it I'd have graduated with hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt. So part of that was in the summer I had to work in Detroit. I lived in a little room by a cement plant, not theirs, but I mean, that's all I could afford.

Very romantic.

Very, very romantic. And the person who owned the house said, you know, hey, I'm having a party, you're not invited, I'm going to fix you up with someone tonight. And that turned out to be my husband. And so it was a blind date.