[MUSIC]
It was only 30 years ago that
I was sitting in the audience,
just like you are.
And I distinctly remember feeling
this incredibly strong desire
to figure out how I could build my
full life, not just my work life.
Tom will remember, we had our oldest kid,
I had my oldest kid.
I should say,
my wife had our oldest child-
>> [LAUGH]
>> The first day of finals of fall term,
first year.
And it was sort of one of those
fascinating life's lessons.
And I'll just start with this story.
Because I showed up to the GSB,
everyone kind of remember first term?
kind of really stressful.
You come in, and you're like,
my God, am I qualified?
Look at all these smart people.
I'm highly achievement and accomplishment
oriented, I need to do really,
really well.
So I'm going to freak out and
stress out like everyone else.
>> [LAUGH]
>> I don't want to fall behind.
Anyone had that experience?
I showed up saying, you know what?
I don't have to do well,
because I have an excuse.
I have an excuse everyone can understand,
because we're about to have
our first child right due date
the first term of finals.
And so that term was one of the most
interesting experiences of my life.
Because while I saw a lot of
my classmates freaking out,
I would sort of go back
to Escondido Village and
the married students' housing,
those funny people that had children.
>> [LAUGH]
>> And I wasn't freaking out.
And sure enough,
Jack was born the Sunday of finals.
I remember going to Maureen McNichols,
it was her first year teaching financial
accounting, first year at the GSB, giving
her a cigar during the prep session.
But that first term of business
school I got five H's.
And it wasn't because, and
Tom will attest to this,
it wasn't because I was one of
the smartest guys in the class.
We had a lot of really
smart people in our class.
But it was because I didn't let myself
fall into the narrative of the group,
of the community, of the norms.
I gave myself permission maybe to fail,
and as a result, I succeeded.
And so
what I thought I'd just do this morning,
this afternoon,
is share a little bit of my experience and
some lessons I've learned from
others over the past 30 years.
And I'm going to share different
stories and anecdotes.
There's no perfectly woven theme.
And I would just say two things up front,
and
I'll say these when I
come back at the end.
Number one, hindsight is really easy,
and hindsight sounds really good.
So I will tell you these things as though,
how it all weaves together perfectly and
it's all simple and insightful.
And I'll tell you, there wasn't one moment
during the last 30 years where I was
certain I was doing the right thing.
There wasn't one moment when I was in
the middle of it that it felt, great,
I got this all figured out.
I still don't.
And so I just want to say up front,
it's going to sound good in hindsight, but
actually living it is a different story.
And then the second thing I'll tell
you is, life's hard, life's hard.
And once you accept that and see,
that the beauty of it, in some ways,
a lot of the other stuff gets easy.
But let me start out,
I'm going to put three simple themes.
One, a question,
do you want to be world-class?
Two, your real life can be
a competitive advantage.
Your whole life can be
a competitive advantage.
And three, do you want to win?
And if so, it'll be hard.
So one, who here wants to be
world-class in your career?
Let's say you're going to be a CEO or
an investor or an entrepreneur,
who wants to be world-class?
All right,
who wants to have a family life and
a set of friendships that
are just outstanding?
Yeah, me too.
>> [LAUGH]
>> Early on in my career, I went to a talk
by a guy named Jim Loehr, and he talked
about the concept of a business athlete.
And he said,
same question I just asked you.
And he said, do you know what's so
interesting?
When you look at world-class athletes,
they want to perform.
They're on the playing field and they
want to perform at the highest levels.
And for every hour they're on the playing
field, they prepare 10 to 20 hours, and
they invest in themselves.
They don't assume they're
going to be able to walk out,
perform on a world-class
stage with no preparation.
They invest in their bodies,
they invest in their minds,
they invest in their skills,
they invest in their weaknesses.
They take preparing themselves
really seriously, and
they view that as a sign of strength,
not of weakness.
The narrative about business is,
whether you're a CEO or an entrepreneur or
a great investor,
that we just work all the time.
We don't really need to sleep or eat.
Anyone that got a coach, or
god help you, a therapist,
that would be a sign of weakness.
You never show your weakness,
it's all strength.
And that somehow we just assume we're just
going to be able to jump on the playing
field, a world-class playing field,
and just perform.
And as he said this to me, I was a young
consultant at Bain at the time, I thought,
this makes a lot of sense.
That actually the narrative
of investing in yourself,
investing in all parts of yourself if you
want to have a full life, made sense.
And so the first set of things I would
just share is taking care of yourself,
invest in yourself.
Now part of it's easy,
investing in your body.
Eat decently,
exercise, sleep.
This is the one I keep relearning,
the sleep thing.
You get going, and
you're going, and you're going.
And you say, I'm grinding my way through,
need to catch up on sleep.
And I watch my productivity go [SOUND],
right?
Jim Collins, who was a great professor
here, has a wonderful framework for sleep.
He says he tries to get
70 hours every ten days.
He can't, his life doesn't allow
him to get seven hours every night.
But he's found his body equilibrium, and
he works to get 70 hours every ten days.
And I've found that to
be a useful framework.
So taking care of your body and
having it be ready to perform.
Your skills, this is perhaps the easiest
piece, investing in your skills, right?
Understanding what are your strengths,
what are your weaknesses?
How do you learn,
how do you build your skills?
I had a great learning early
on at Bain about learning.
I came out of business school with
a narrative of, how you learn is,
I was going to find someone in
business who was going to mentor me.
And I would be down at his or her knees.
They'd be like the wise Buddha,
conveying all the wisdom about
how I could be successful.
And I would be the student in front
of a room where there was a teacher,
and I'd learn everything
from this individual.
And here's what I
realized fairly early on,
that actually no one person Was going to
be able to teach me everything.
In fact, after a couple years you
realize actually you're better than
your mentor on some things.
And I realized I had the same paradigm
in life that I had in school,
that teacher, student, and
that's not how it works.
That learning, I realized,
if I wanted to learn,
I could learn a little bit from a lot
of people, not a lot from a few.
And it changed my
narrative about learning,
where I feel like I can learn
from each person I interact with.
I can learn from each meeting.
I don't just learn from my bosses,
I learn from my peers.
I learned from people I don't know.
And here's the funny part.
My brain, I've trained my brain to say,
what can I learn?
I was just having a wonderful
conversation with Matt.
Where's Matt?
Who just introduced me backstage.
I'm learning from him.
And what I've found is, when I meet
someone, I look for their good qualities,
because I want to learn from them.
And then people sense that I know that
I'm looking for the good quality, so
they tend to open up and respond.
And that increases the cycle of learning.
As where most people kind of sit back,
well, is this guy smart enough?
And so, in building your skills,
learn from everybody.
You can learn from everybody,
every example.
You can learn what to do,
what not to do, but learning.
I've had coaches,
I've had had multiple coaches.
I have a therapist,
which I'll come to in a minute.
I have a spiritual coach,
both a Jesuit and a Buddhist.
I've had work coaches,
team building coaches.
We have a couples therapist,
Eileen and I do.
It's like if you're a world class
athlete you want to get coaching.
That's a sign of strength, not weakness.
And there's some great
resources out there.
Some great resources to build your
skills and to show your life.
The last area I'll say, if is there's
body and skills, the probably least
talked about, maybe most important is your
mental, emotional and spiritual health.
And interestingly, there's a lot
being written about this right now.
Anyone here Golden State Warriors fans,
right?
The four principles is mindfulness.
They have four team principles all around
principles of mindfulness, and the notion
that performing at the highest levels
is only possible, only possible, when
you have mental, emotional, and spiritual
balance, each of us finding our own.
And so I said early on, I came out
of business school, I was feeling
incredibly stressed, incredibly stressed,
two years into my career at Bain.
I came back and saw a professor here,
Jerry Porras, who put me into contact with
a woman named Jill Mellick who's
a therapist, in Palo Alto.
And I've seen Jill on and on for 30 years.
She's an enormous friend and
resource as I try to live my life.
I've always feel like seeing
a therapist is a sign of, I don't know,
strength not weakness.
I'm not afraid to say it.
I don't think I could have
processed my life alone.
She's helped me process my life.
Some priests, Jesuit priests I met here at
Stanford, now a Buddhist, Jack Kornfield,
had been an enormous source of support and
help and inspirations at key times.
Again, helping to develop
all parts of myself.
One of the things I learned in therapy
was I had this massive fear of failure.
I was feeling anxiety early
on in my career at Bain.
Even though I was technically doing well,
I was just becoming wracked with anxiety.
And what I learned through a couple
years of therapy was actually,
I just had this massive fear of failure.
And you know what?
Parts of that still exist today.
Parts of myself I'm continuously learning,
it's like there's some familiar friends.
There's version 14.0 of the same thing.
But consciousness about who you are,
consciousness about your proclivities,
consciousness about your habits
of your mind is such a gift.
because then you can recognize it.
There I go again, I'm feeling anxious.
Or, there I go again,
I'm feeling insecure.
At least my experience is,
I haven't been able to figure that
out on my own, I go out and get help.
The last kind of help I just share is,
building community, which is sort of
what you're doing with each other.
My wife and I have felt so blessed
because we've built a community around
us where we share our
lives with our community.
And it starts in small ways.
When I joined Bain out of business school,
where there was eight of us,
that were part of that class, and
we just agreed that every Friday morning,
or the first Friday of every month,
we would meet at the exact
same restaurant for breakfast.
And anyone that was in town would come,
and
we'd just kind of end up
sharing our experience.
And we did that over two, three years, and
watched as each of us went
through our ups and our downs.
And then we'd start, I'd start saying god,
I'm having such a difficult time
with my boss, or the travel is
just wearing on me, I'm so tired.
And someone else would say,
yeah, I'm having that.
Here's how I've been dealing with it.
And we didn't solve each other's problems,
but there was a sense of sharing, and
community.
And we've had the same thing.
We've had a couples group,
my wife and I had a couples group.
We met with five other couples for
15 years, once a month,
sharing our lives through young childhood.
And the process built
a sense of community.
And in a sense, that community
was an investment in ourselves.
So first point, if you want to be world
class, you have to invest in yourself.
And all this stuff that some people think
it's kind of fuzzy, I don't view it fuzzy,
I view it as the only way you can actually
perform and perform at the highest levels.
Second, theme, your whole life,
your real life can be a source
of competitive advantage.
Again, I learned this by accident.
I was married when I showed up to the
business school, in fact I was married and
as I said earlier,
we were going to have a kid.
So we never had time to figure out
personal life and professional life.
We started early and it was all one life.
And this notion of zero sum framing,
I actually hate the word work balance,
life balance.
because it suggests that it's work or
life.
It's my wife's career or my career,
it's our children or our career.
And so it immediately frames
things as zero sum and
then a term life like balance
suggests that there's an answer.
And so we've always tried
a very positive sum mindset,
which is not either or,
it's how do we find the best of both?
Acknowledging we'll never get there,
acknowledging there is no Nirvana.
One of the lessons I've
learned through experience,
accidental experience to some extent,
around dealing with how you balance,
family, friends, career,
is don't be afraid to ask,
because creative solutions can
>> Evolve.
First experience in that, so we had our
child, my first year of business school.
And the same year, my wife applied to
Stanford Law School and she got in.
So, we had the young baby.
She's going to start law school.
I'm going to do second
year of business school.
She's not really into babysitting or
nanny's, or anything.
So we agree that the right thing to do is
for me to go in and say to the the dean,
I'm going to need to either take the
second year of or need to go part time,
because we were very anxious about
it while she's starting law school.
So I went in the Jerry Gould who was
the Dean of Student Affairs at the time.
I say, Dean Gould I need to either
take the year off or go part time.
And she said, okay, that's fine.
Or no, first I said take the year off.
And she said, well,
you don't have to do that.
At a minimum, you can go part time.
And I said, you can go part time?
I don't know you go part time.
Is there any policy in that?
She said, no, but we can figure that out.
You can go part time.
So then I said, okay, I can go part time.
How does that work?
She said, why don't you just pick
the classes you want to take and
the first week just show
up to those classes.
And if you show up to four classes, great.
And if after a week or two weeks, you
think you need to drop-down to three or
two or one, you can.
Sure enough what happens,
I show up to four classes.
And after a couple weeks, it's
kind of working, it's kind of working.
I didn't need to go part time, but
I had to give myself
permission to give it a try.
I never would have tried it.
Had, this is again,
the lesson of not being afraid to fail.
Giving yourself permission to do
something that's counter intuitive and
I actually graduated on time,
and it was a wonderful year.
So again, the don't assume,
don't make assumption that you can or
you can't do something.
A second example, four years later,
Eileen finished Stanford Law School and
had a clerkship for
the federal judge in San Francisco and
she had to be in judges
chambers every morning at 7:30.
Well, every weekday of the year.
At the time, I'm working at Bain.
I am out of town all the time.
We have two kids.
And so,
my conclusion is I've got to quit Bain.
So I walk into Tom Tierney who is
the guy running the San Francisco
office of Bain and I say,
Tom, I gotta quit.
Eileen's going to have to be in
judge's chambers every morning,
which means I have to take my two kids to
school every single morning this year,
which means I cannot travel even once.
So I just need to quit and
he's like, Donahue, you idiot.
>> [LAUGH]
>> He used to call me, Donahue.
You don't need to quit,
we'll put you on a local client.
Now at the time,
Bain San Francisco had zero local clients.
>> [LAUGH]
>> It's like, Tom,
we don't have any local clients if
you haven't noticed like we're all
traveling a lot.
He says, well, we'll get a local client.
And so two weeks later, he takes me
up to Fireman's Fund up in Novato.
He says to the Farmer's Fund exec's.
Here's the deal,
I'm going to give you a free bang
case team led by this guy Donahue.
So, it's a free team.
Now after three month, he's going to have
to figure out how to get you to pay him.
Pay Bain, but in the interim, it's free.
By the way, he can't ever be here
before 10:30 in the morning.
See you.
That was the most productive
year of my career.
Turned out developed a great relationship
with the people at Fireman's Fund.
They totally accepted I wasn't going to
be there before 10:30 in the morning,
because I had to drop my kids off.
And in fact,
they learned to respect it, an admirer.
I was having a positive some.
Now, there were some Bain partners at the
time that thought I was weak that somehow,
some of my peers thought I was weak.
He's dropping out of that upper out
thing or he's got a, I had no choice.
It didn't bother me.
I did not listen to it.
So what not the whole world's going to
tell you it's wonderful when it happens,
but it worked.
It worked and it was ironically
the most productive year of my career.
Third example of don't make assumptions
and be willing to ask for permission.
So about seven years ago, my wife was
a big supporter of President Obama.
She's been in law and
human rights her whole career.
So he appoints her to be Ambassador
to the Human Rights Council.
In Geneva.
I'm CEO of eBay and we have two
kids still at home in high school.
So we think, okay,
how are we going to make this work?
Now, we were a little bit
further along in our lives.
And so
we talked about it with our kids and
our kids are like,
are you freaking crazy, mom?
Do it, go.
We'll figure it out.
We'll make it work and our kids gave
us permission, and we made it work.
We made it work in a way that was some of
the richest periods of our family history.
Our older kids helps the younger kids,
it was just wonderful.
So, your full life can be a competitive
advantage in your work life.
If you're open minded and
you're willing to assume
creative solutions may exist,
engage others.
By the way, in your personal life, here's
what I've learned in my personal life.
My kids don't give a shit about my title.
Me giving them orders or
acting like a boss never works.
I've learn listening
from my relationships.
I've learn empathy from my children.
I've learn humility.
I've learn how to multitask.
I've learn the importance of just
resilience and staying with it.
By the way, those things really matter and
work it turns out.
And if you want to be leaders,
those things actually are pretty
important qualities of being a leader.
And so again, if you'd look forward,
don't think about your personal
life versus your professional life.
I'm not saying it's easy and
there's some Nirvana, but understand,
learning in one can
contribute to the other.
Last thing and
then I'll open up to questions.
Again, I go back to my early thing.
How many of you want to
win on a world class
stage not just to perform, but to win?
Turns out, that's really hard.
Just for a minute think about it,
I want you to think about it just for
a minute a period in your career where
when you look back, you're most proud.
A period where you learned the most and
grew the most in your professional
capacities, just think for a moment.
Now think for a moment for a period
in your personal lives that when you
look back, you say,
I actually grew as a person.
I look back with some pride and
fondness on this period of time.
For how many of you were those periods,
either professional or
personal when things were going really,
really well?
Okay, for
how many of you were those periods
when you were confronting adversity?
Yeah, that's been my experience.
Here's the bizarre thing.
The things I'm most proud of in hindsight
were really hard in the moment.
They didn't feel good in the moment and
I realized I spent my life hoping I could
set myself up so I really feel good.
I want to feel great about my family.
I want everything to be going well.
I want to feel great about my career.
I want everything to be going well.
And yet the periods that I look
back on with pride and fondness and
the periods in which I know I grew
the most, were the periods of adversity.
And so I've had to learn how
to not be afraid of adversity.
Now can I tell you, I enjoy adversity?
I can tell you that when I confront
adversity now, when adversity is dealt to
me, professionally or
personally, I don't like it.
If you could give me an out, I'd take it.
But I can tell myself, you know what?
I'm learning.
I'm growing.
I'm doing something for
which I will feel pride.
If I sustain and
have the courage and commitment and
resilience to get through it.
And here's the interesting thing about
performing on a world class level,
it's really hard.
I'll use two sport analogies so
apologies to take
global football, soccer for
those in the US.
It's a wonderful, wonderful sport.
I love the World Cup because almost every
country on earth gets to have their
national team.
And a couple hundred teams start and
they start playing each other, right?
And start whittling away down.
You start with, I don't know,
150, 200 countries and
you get to the World Cup Finals.
The best two teams in the world
on the pitch for 90 minutes and
these teams have great players,
great strategies.
They're well prepared and
the games are ugly, right?
There are people getting dirt on
their shins, shit on their uniforms.
There's injuries, there's back and
forth and all the great strategies kind
of get tossed out, and it's a battle.
It's a battle, right?
You know the final score of
the last four World Cups?
1- 0, 0- 0,
2- 1, and 1- 0.
The difference between winning and
being the World Cup champ,
and not being the team no one
ever remembers, is one goal.
It's not who, believe me when
you're in the middle of that game,
it's not like, I'm just rocking dudes.
Like we're Brazil,
we just passed it all over the place.
It looks great.
No, it's the opposite.
It's who capitalizes on
opportunities better.
Germany, their best player gets injured,
right?
In the beginning of the last World Cup and
the substitute scores the goal to
win the game in overtime, right?
Anyone remember this?
Anyone from France?
[LAUGH]
Making one mistake or
capitalizing one opportunity is
the difference between winning and losing.
And when you're in the middle of it.
Anybody watch the NBA finals last year?
You think it was fun to
play in those games?
No, it is a pitched battle.
It is hard, it is overcoming adversity.
It is committing to team work.
It's having the resilience to bounce back.
It's having faith that you
can prevail in the end but
not knowing until the last
minute about whether you will.
That's what it's like.
So instead of me wishing I was in
some cool place where everything's
going all great.
I realized no, I want to to play in
a world class stage and I want to win.
And it's going to be really hard and
I'm going to feel like I have
a lot of adversity along the way.
And I don't like adversity, but
at least I know I'm growing.
At least I know I'm doing
some will be proud of.
One last story,
gets back to my fear failure.
Is Matthew Thoreen here?
>> Yeah.
>> Where are you, Matthew?
This is a story about your dad, Matt.
Matt's a second year I had.
His Dad was my first boss at Bain.
One of my best friends, a helluva boss,
tough boss, but
a helluva boss and a great man.
And early on in my Bain time, during that
period where I'm having this fear of
failure, I'm just wracked
with just anxiety.
He's like, this is a baseball analogy,
apologies to anyone that
doesn't understand baseball.
I think you'll get the gist of it.
He's like, John, your problem
is you're trying to bat 0.900.
Kent, what do you mean?
He's like well, when you were in college,
you got As, which means you got 90% right.
You were in business school, you got Hs,
which means you got 90% right.
And so you're assuming that
you gotta get 90% to win.
But now you've gone from the little
leagues to the jr leagues,
to the college, to now you're in pro.
And guess what?
The pitching is really good,
good fast balls, good curve balls.
And you were so afraid to strike
out because you don't want to bat.
You're afraid you won't bat
0.900 that you're paralyzed.
You don't want to get in the batter's box.
He said best I can tell, greatest hitter
in baseball history batted about 0.350,
Which means every ten times he came
out to bat, he could strike out six.
Hit a couple of singles,
the occasional double and be
the greatest hitter in baseball history.
Kent says, you know what?
You best I can tell being
a leading hitter in business is
similar to in baseball,
you got to bat 0.350.
If you're going to play against, if you
want to play on a world class stage.
So you know what instead of being
afraid you can't bat 0.900,
get in the batters box and swing and
sometimes you're going to strike out.
Sometimes you're going to strike out with
the bases loaded and the stands full.
But all you gotta do is get a couple
of singles, an occasional double, and
maybe an occasional home run.
Get in there and swing.
And you know what?
I've been a CEO of two companies.
I had four children, dual career,
a lot of experiences.
Batting 0.350 is actually not so bad.
You can't bat 900 in life.
So once I let go of trying to bat 0.900,
whether it's coming to the GSB,
my first term, or
dealing with Carl Icahn at eBay.
All you gotta do is bat 0.350 and
don't be afraid to get in there and swing.
The power of resilience,
the power of commitment,
commitment to yourself and
commitment to the journey
is the thing that I think differentiates
the people that win and those that don't.
Last thing I’ll say,
before I’ll turn it over to your questions
or whatever you want to talk about.
It sounds so easy.
It’s so easy for me with hindsight to
tell you these stories, these learnings.
These blessings I've had.
There is not one moment in
the last 30 years where Aileen and
I were certain we were doing
the right thing as parents.
There's not one moment where I've
been certain about whether I'm being
a good father or not.
I can tell you I get a lot of
credit now for the eBay turnaround.
There was not one moment in the middle of
that turn around that we were certain we
were going to make it.
All right?
And again, part of the goal, part of
the purpose is just that commitment
that aspiration to build a full life.
And the commitment and
the resilience to pursue it and
in the faith that ultimately,
ultimately, it's a life worth living.
So, let me stop.
I'd be happy to answer questions or
talk about any topics you'd like to.
>> I just want to ask you as you said,
you have to sort of like practice it and
then sort of keep reiterating and
building the muscles.
How do you retain that
memory of resilience because
I pass that struggle and then I'm facing
another one, anxiety about finding a job.
Like how do you sort of remind
yourself it'll be all right and
then ,you pass through it and
then how do you even make that happen.
You talk about spirituality and
meditation mindfulness.
I would be happy to listen more on
what granularity you have on that one.
Thank you.
>> I'm looking for a job right now,
so you and I are together.
>> [LAUGH]
>> All right?
So, I'll tell you what I'm doing and
we can compare notes.
>> [LAUGH]
>> Seriously.
And you talk about One of the best
things I've had the last year off.
First time since I left the GSP, 30 years.
First time I had more
than three weeks off.
I've taken the last year off.
And one of the best things I did was,
I did a ten day silent Buddhist retreat,
up at Spirit Rock.
Great resource,
anyone want to, Spirit Rock.
They have one day programs,
three day programs.
A guy named Jack Cornfield
sort of founded the center.
And I wasn't,
I wasn't big into this beforehand,
but the power of meditation has
been a wonderful gift for me.
And here's the image, here's the image
that I took out of that retreat.
That the Buddhism,
the Dalai Lama would say, it's not
a religion, it's a science of the mind.
So, left brain got me like,
that's interesting.
And you start looking at brain sciences
and one of the interesting things in brain
science is,
they're not documenting two things,
one your brain becomes more negative over
time because they talk about the brain.
Bad experiences having a velcro
experience on your brain.
Good experiences having
a teflon experience.
That's bouncing off.
And it's Darwinian.
It's natural, you know?
We step out, you step out in front of
a car and almost get hit by a car.
Boom.
You're brain remembers that,
don't do that again.
Your brain remembers it unconsciously and
consciously.
A beautiful sunset.
Your brain may or may not remember it.
So, over time our brains actually
magnify tough experiences,
bad experiences if left unattended.
But the second thing they're proving is
that you can actually train your brain to
counteract that.
You can train your brain to be more,
I'll say equanimity,
not even happier but have equanimity.
And the image they used that really helps
me, is they talked about how every person
is deeply imbued at birth with
what they call Buddha nature.
It's Buddha nature is simply kindness,
generosity, compassion and love.
And that every, they would say every
sentient being but every human being,
at birth has deeply imbued with
those qualities whether you're
born into ISIS or into Africa or
into Atherton, right?
Every human and
it's always there inside of us.
It's like the blue sky.
The blue sky is there every single day in
history at every single point on earth.
There's blue sky up there.
But what happens is clouds, right?
Some days it's sunny, blue skies but
a lot of days it's cloudy.
Some periods around the, some places
on Earth, there's a lot of clouds.
Sometimes they're dark clouds,
fog, you just think about how, and
when it's foggy or cloudy you forget
the blue sky's above the clouds, right?
You get your mood gets impacted by that.
And the clouds are nothing but air.
And so, what happens to us, and
this happens to me, is I get clouds.
And I lose sight of my Buddha nature.
Clouds can be habits in my mind,
fear of failure.
It can be my experiences.
It can be distractions, like digital life,
like you get so fragmented.
And so, I walk around at times
feeling like there clouds coming over,
I forget my Buddha nature, and
when I forget my Buddha nature,
that's when I get insecure, or
that's when I begin to get anxious.
And what meditation's been for
me is just simply waiting.
I said wait a minute,
they're just some clouds.
I got to see through the clouds, let's see
the blue sky, which is my Buddha nature.
That kindness, generosity, compassion,
love, are deeply inside me.
And when I can connect with that, then you
know what, I might regret the job thing.
I don't know how it'll happen.
I don't know when, but.
And so, for me the process of meditation,
it just one of just
reconnecting with that.
Turns out, meditation is hard, too.
[LAUGH] But so,
I'll see you in the unemployment office,
we'll collect our checks together.
[LAUGH] All right, we'll go, here, okay.
Great, you can hand the mics to whoever
and then, I don't have to pick.
>> Hi, I'm Tannen MSX program, so
there is more than just MBA students here.
>> Yeah.
>> I just want to understand from your
perspective how important it is in life to
win because you seem to
talk about it a lot.
But can't we afford to lose to
promote the interest of others?
I mean, in the context of your
Buddhist philosophy and all.
There seems to be an awful
lot talked about winning for
oneself and maybe for your organization.
What about losing?
Is that something that we
need to embrace somehow for
the interest of others or
the interest of society as a whole?
>> Yeah, I think that's a great question.
I think what's,
it's how we define winning.
For me, winning I set goals for
myself when I was at the GSP about
I want to be not just
a successful business person but
I want to develop a rich and
fulfilling life to the best extent I can.
So, I think each of us has to
define what is our own version.
It's our own intentionality,
our own aspiration and intentionality and
not always listen to what everyone else
is saying about winning and losing.
So, the first thought that comes to mind,
is that each of us defining
what is your aspiration for
yourself in your life?
What do you want to commit yourself
with intentionality toward?
It could be toward world peace.
It could be toward helping
people that have lost.
I mean,
it could be a lot of different things.
And then to your point, even in that game,
losing is often the best lessons in life.
The best lessons in life.
So at least for me, I've always
had that image of I want to win,
but win in the things I care about.
And winning doesn't always mean
that someone else loses, or
that other people recognize winning.
Parenting is a wonderful example of this.
Because parenting, you don't get
a little scorecard along the way.
And if you listen to it too much,
you feel like you're losing a lot.
But when your children get older,
you look and
you say,
am I proud about who they have become?
And that's winning.
Does that make sense?
It's a great question.
So, don't let others define.
If you let others define winning and
losing, they'll define it zero sum,
not positive sum.
You are right, society and
our world right now is a little
bit very zero sum oriented.
You could argue that we need
a different definition of winning.
Who's got the mic, over, great, hi.
>> Hi, have a question about your
relationship with your wife.
That's the type of relationship that at
least I'd like to have with my partner,
for many reasons.
One of the things, at any point in time,
you two were a team on, we're kind of
like optimizing for both of you rather
than just being like I meant to just be.
I wanted to go to school and so on.
Could you share something?
Could you share how you grew
personally into that relationship?
I'm sure it changes couple to couple,
but at least for
you, how did you make that happen?
Like, how did you find
that balance in a couple?
>> So the first thing I'd start,
I just want to talk to the men in here.
I have one piece of advice to
you based on my experience,
find someone who is smarter than you,
nicer, better looking.
>> [LAUGH]
>> And a deeper person and
personality, and merrier.
Because that's what I did.
And I do think in all seriousness,
we met in college and we talked.
Her maiden name is Chamberlain and
mine was Donahoe.
We talked about Chamberhoe.
>> [LAUGH]
>> A partnership.
I'm totally serious.
Chamberhoe, and then we had Chamberhoe
1.0, and a little later in our marriage,
Chamberhoe 2.0, and when she went
to Geneva, it was Chamberhoe 3.0.
And in that was just sort of a, we had no
answers by the way on any of this stuff.
Again, in a dual career marriage family
thing, it's even more than work stuff.
It's really easy in hindsight but
it's really a journey.
I'd say the quality I
appreciate the most about
my wife is that she demands
that I become a better person.
She actually doesn't really care
about my career or my successes.
She does care about
the kind of person I am.
And I've always felt her presence, and
her both expectation and encouragement,
and her rolemodeling on it.
And I think she'd probably say the same.
She'd say the same in response.
And marriage is a, Work of art.
It's a piece of work, it's hard.
It's hard, but
it's sort of like parenting.
If you have a commitment to try to, okay,
we're going to try to see this through,
we're going to try to make this work,
we feel really lucky.
Community, the value of community
run marriage has been huge for us.
Other couples.
We had like, described this couples
experience, couples group we've had five.
It's the second Saturday of the month,
we better meeting us.
God, we don't want to go to this meeting.
We're so busy, we're so stressed,
our kids this, blah, blah, blah.
God I really don't
want to be going to this.
And we go and people would start talking
about what's going on in their lives.
And time would just, and after three or
four hours you get in the car to go
home and you think,
God we don't have it as bad as they do.
>> [LAUGH]
>> And
I mean that in the best
sense of the word right?
We were just sharing our experiences,
and it was a little bit of perspective.
Here we are, we're so obsessed and,
you know, about ourselves, and
our own lives, and our own situations,
and crises, and this and that.
And what you get in community,
you realize, hey wait a minute,
that's what it's about,
it's what it's about.
I will say, she's also had a tougher, by
the way, to the women in the group we've
both written about a little bit of
this on some of [INAUDIBLE] stuff.
She's had a tougher path,
career path wise.
She was working at a law firm at
the same time I was working at eBay, or
Bane rather, early on and
there was definitely
in our generation, and I think still
to this day, women have a tougher path.
You know Deb Grunfeld, Deb's wonderful,
you haven't had her class here.
I used her at eBay,
she's got this narrative that
male leaders can be both smart and
likable and female leaders,
the ones that are smart, are perceived
not to be likable, think Hillary Clinton.
And ones that are likeable
must not be smart.
And that it's not just men
that project that on women,
it's women that project
that on women as well.
And so Eileen was always one of
the smart ones, and she used to get
performance review feedback saying
you shouldn't be so direct.
Shouldn't be so direct.
And she would just cut
through the clutter.
Her boss used to go out drinking, get all
the guys going out drinking afterwards.
We had two kids,
she didn't want to go out drinking.
So I also think it's been fascinating
watching her go through our career paths.
And I've a lot of admiration because
she's had a tougher path than I have.
I think that's changing a little bit but
it's still,
there's a lot of way to go in our society
in that so, thanks for the question.
Next question.
Who's got the mic?
>> I've got it.
>> All right.
>> [LAUGH]
>> So first John, thanks so much for
coming here to speak with us today.
I just wanted to pivot back to your
thoughts on mindfulness and meditation.
And one of the things is that
it's easier to see the blue sky,
or at least notice the clouds when
you're either doing a one week silent
meditation in Bhutan or when you're
sitting in your room by yourself.
But that can be much harder when
you're in the midst of a 12
hour day at the GSB or
managing a multibillion dollar company.
And I just wanted to know if you had any
thoughts on how to better integrate those
practices into the workplace,
either specific things that you've done or
opportunities you see for
better integrating those two.
Yeah, it's a hard, I could speak
personally about how challenging that is.
And here's the sort of strange
thing about in my case,
I could always make time to work out.
But making time to meditate
somehow felt harder, it's like,
well that's kind of stupid.
I can work out my body but not my brain,
and then I began doing a little bit.
I'm old enough now,
I've had knee surgeries that basically
working out means riding an exercycle.
I'll ride the exercycle
listening to meditation music,
try to do a little bit of both,
sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't.
But the only way I've known
is trying to put habit in.
Jack Cornfield had a wonderful little
piece of advice because he talks about
having mindfulness just in little moments.
Not in like 20 minutes
of sitting like this for
periods on end, but
he just in a moment of the day.
And sorry if this offends anyone, but
he says every time you go to the bathroom,
take a moment.
>> [LAUGH]
>> A little trigger,
every time you wash your hands, every time
you do whatever, just, take a moment.
And sometimes that works for me and
sometimes I'll go through two,
three, four days.
I'm now to the point where I begin
to recognize the symptoms and
when I don't do it.
And then I feel resistance to doing it,
which is the best symptom that I need it.
But, having common practices and
then trying to break it down in to
where it doesn't have to
be gigantic swaths of time.
>> So we've reached the end of
our Q&A time, unfortunately,
we've got about three minutes left.
>> Okay.
>> And I know John had something had
something he wanted to say to the group.
>> Yeah, I discovered,
anyone here heard of John Gardner?
John Gardner was one of
the wisest men around, he was
secretary of HEW under President Kennedy
and then was in Johnson's administration.
And he was at the GSP when I got here, and
he wrote a lot about personal renewal and
the importance of personal renewal.
And about 20 years ago,
I found a paragraph
that he wrote that just grab me and
it became my,
I don't know if it's a personal mission
statement but it's a touchdown for me.
And I literally have it
laminated in my wallet and
I just want to close by reading it.
because it's something that has, I read
this, probably once a month I pull it out.
Meaning is not something
that you stumble across
like an answer to a riddle or
the prize in a treasure hunt.
Meaning is something you build
into your life, you build it
out of your own past,
out of your affections and loyalties.
Out of the experience of human
kind as it is passed onto you.
You built it out of your own talent and
understanding, out of
the things you believe in.
Out of the things and people you love,
out of the values for which you
are willing to sacrifice something.
The ingredients are all there,
you are the only one
who can put them together into that
unique pattern that will be your life.
Let it be a life that has dignity and
meaning for you, if it does,
then the particular balance of success or
failure is of less account.
So anyway I'll end where I started,
I honor and bless you and congratulate you
for caring about building meaning into
your lives for this journey you're on.
And the commitment you have to making it
a fulfilling and meaningful journey and
I wish you the very best of luck,
thank you.
>> [APPLAUSE]
[MUSIC]
