Most of my career has been in sales. I spend 50% or more of my time with customers and employees, and I can't wait for it to be more than 50%.
When parents are confident that their children will live, they have fewer of them. They invest more in each child's food, health and education.
Whenever an earthquake or tsunami takes thousands of innocent lives, a shocked world talks of little else.
We're living in a different world now in terms of employee needs, and companies have to offer alternative methods for getting the work done. Even under the most difficult circumstances you can have creative flexibility.
I got a journalism degree. I started doing journalism - I interned at 'Cosmopolitan' magazine in the 1970s, which probably wasn't the best place for me, and I spent six or nine months freelancing. Anyway, I wasn't that good at it.
You know a good board when you see one.
Work/life benefits allow companies meaningful ways for responding to their employees' needs; they can be a powerful tool for transforming a workforce and driving a business' success.
We're long past having to defend or explain why women should be on boards, given all the data that shows how companies with female as well as male directors perform better. It's unfortunate when companies with a large percentage of women constituents don't reflect that in their boardrooms.
Whenever an earthquake or tsunami takes thousands of innocent lives, a shocked world talks of little else. I'll never forget the wrenching days I spent in Haiti last year for Save the Children just weeks after the earthquake.
I have zero tolerance for people who don't come completely prepared. I expect contribution, I expect attendance, and I expect directors to take trips and visit the company's programs.
My dad was an editor and a writer, and that's actually what I aspired to be.
If you're a global company you are going to have jobs overseas. The reality is if we start taxing those jobs at a rate that makes them noncompetitive in those markets, the reality is that we're going to lose business.
If we could muster the same determination and sense of responsibility that saves a country like Japan - or a company like Xerox - then investing to save women and children who are dying in the developing world would be very good business.
I left Xerox for the non-profit sector because it was clear to me that only public/private partnerships can pull off a turnaround plan at the scale we need to tackle global poverty.
Entire families work for Xerox.
I worked in sales. It was definable, it had a quantifiable approach to accomplishment that had a great deal of importance to me. It had a degree of clarity that I loved. And of course, it was core.
I'm not formal and I'm impatient. So I think my team would say that when she starts tapping her pen and the leg starts moving quickly, that it's time to move on. I'm not good at long, drawn-out kinds of sessions.
My dad was an editor and a writer, and that's really where I would have liked to have gone. But the genetic link was not intact there, so I wound up going into business. But I love to write, still. I'm not a great writer, but I enjoy it.
There is an explosion of information happening, yet people demand quick access to relevant content that cuts through the clutter.
Boards without women - blacklist those suckers. It's 2011. They've had the time - it's significant that they don't have women.
The hardware business is all about per-unit manufacturing cost and functionality. The services business is less asset-intensive and more dependent on people.
People ask my mother whether she had any idea that I'd be CEO of a company some day, and she would say, 'Absolutely not. Totally out of the realm of possibility.' There was certainly nothing that would have been very predictable in my upbringing.
By the time I stepped down as Xerox's CEO in 2009 - and as chairman in January 2010 - Xerox had become the vibrant, profitable and revitalized company that it still is today. What made the difference was a strong turnaround plan, dedicated people and a firm commitment from company leaders.
Get face time with the customers.
