An hour with Carly Fiorina

today on good pr presents carly fiorina the former ceo of hewlett packard is the first woman to lead a fortune five hundred company and in two thousand sixteen a presidential candidate and kate mcintyre carly fiorina gave the annual don't lecture on april fourteenth two thousand nineteen moderated by bill lacy the director of the university of kansas dole institute of harley to tell you the dole institute of politics we're going to have it here and delighted to be here and i was recently with senator dole he was a guest on my podcast which is called by example and i was hugely relieved when he asked me are you speaking at the dole institute that i could say yes to the rest of the i guess we better i think i'm sure that's the case let's start by getting to know you a bit better tells about your upbringing and your education and how you decided to get into the business world well my hat like so many of us my mother and father provided an incredibly

important foundation for me both of them had difficulties growing up i would say my mother was the only child of a assembly line worker in ohio and although she graduated as the valedictorian of her high school class her father refused to let her go to college he thought it was a waste and so she ran away enjoying the women's their core in texas which is where she met my father my father had grown up in a very small town in texas with a noticeable physical deformity and the sort of howard his way through by dent of hard work and intellect and i tell you those buried three stories about my mother and father because what they both instilled in me was the importance of an education the importance of honor and integrity the importance of making the most of your gadgets and in fact they sort of

summed it up when my mother said to me in sunday school one day what you are is god's gift to you what you make of yourself is your gift of god and it was sort of a promise to me that i had guests and feel very gifted and it was a challenge that i needed to find them and use them and that was very important i was a goody two shoes middle child my core competence was pleasing my parents and ticking off my older sister and younger brother and so i you know i feel very gifted and i went off to college i went to a wonderful school stanford university but i got a degree in medieval history and philosophy i would actually highly recommend liberal arts i think they are incredibly important but i was unemployed and so i tried law school my dad wanted me to go to law school hated it hated it quit after less than a semester i did have the presence of mind to go before the first exam but i

had no point i mean literally no plan and that's how i ended up as a secretary in a real estate firm i had helped put myself through college alice what we used to call a kelly girl we'll call them that anymore but we used to be kelly girls i see so many women nodding knowingly we were temporary office personnel and i knew how to type and file and answer phones so i went to work doing that full time and what got me into business that long convoluted story is too man came up to my desk one day they were in that nine person real estate firm and they said we've been watching you we think you can do more than type and file do you wanna know what we do and that was my introduction to business but more than that it was i had this feeling they at someone had seen possibilities in me that i didn't see in myself

and when someone sees possibilities a new things change as i tried never to forget that because everyone all of us need somebody to take a chance on us and i've had a lot of people take a chance on me you had to make some very tough tough calls is the ceo of hewlett packard can you talk a little bit about that and describe how you were able to work with those stakeholders in those situations so yes a lot of tough decisions were necessary when i was asked to become the ceo of the company was in great difficulty actually it was a storied company was a legendary company was a successful company but it had sort of lost its way and in the middle of the biggest technology boom in history actually it was growing at a little over one percent

profitability was deteriorating in every product line that we were losing market share we were number one anywhere anymore except for printing we no longer were in the top twenty five innovators in the world even though we spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year on innovation we have missed nine quarters in a row which is hard to do when you're a big company is there's a lot of you know jerry rigging of a balance sheet that companies can do if they're not ethical so a lot of transformation was required and yet this was a company that was very proud of its heritage and very proud of its culture and there was something called the hp way which was about the core values that the founders of the company bill and dave had focused on things like innovation risk taking teamwork integrity serving customers but over time what happened is people to short handed all that and talk about the

hp way and hp way that phrase came to be a shield against change we don't do it that way it's not the hp way i start with all that because honestly the first thing that was necessary was to re acquainted ourselves with who we really were and what we were really trying to do any order to do that i asked a team of people to go out and speak with customers and partners and for our customers and our partners to hold the mirror up to our face and show us what they saw and what they told us was that we were it's low fat complicated crazy that we were in innovating anymore the reason i was so important is because i was not going to be able to successfully howell lives changed which was necessary

i'd just saying i'm the new ceo things are going to change people had to understand here in understanding their hearts is well why change was necessary and the best people to tell them that was not big box the best people to tell them that we're our customers because people at hp wanted to serve customers and they wanted to be good partners and so that's how we started and once we had a we spent a lot of time coming together as a team on all the assets we had all the issues we had a it's what i call when i teach problem solving to others you have to have a clear eyed and compelling an incomplete view of the current state where are we actually and that's how are customers could help us and then you have to have a long winded that view of weird we won about what's the future state and so we worked very hard on getting both of those things and then building a plan through consensus actually on what it would take to get there can you tell us why you wrote this book

i wrote this book find your way and i am i wrote this book because i think there are a lot of people in this country who are feeling powerless helpless frustrated perhaps because the culture around us lifts up a lot of things that are superficial not substantive we lift up power and fame not leadership we lifted up out raging controversy not character what i know from experience is that everybody has more potential than they realize what i know from experience is that everyone can learn how to solve the problems that impact them what i know from experience as people closest to the problem actually know best how to solve it and what i also know from experience is that leadership is not in the

position or title it is about changing the order of things for the better and we are all capable of and so this book is that everything i know about leadership and why i know that everyone is capable of being a leader when they have a tight or not and that everyone is capable of the disciplines that all leaders possessed which are human qualities and tell us a little bit about the difference between planning your life and having a path so arun there are white young people today maybe there's some here and i was this way when i was in college but i think there's a huge pressure today on people to have it all figured out and people get asked all these question where's your first job and what you gonna do then where you going to just constant set of questions that gives the impression that everybody needs to have a pretty clear plan for their life i have a clear plan for my life i was going to law school then it all blew up and after i

quit law school and went to work in a nine person real estate firm people kept saying especially my parents what you're gonna do what you're gonna do what's the plan and my answer was i don't know i don't know but i have to make a living i have seen more careers to re old because somebody got so fixated on i need to be a vp by this time i need to make this much money by this time i need to be in this kind of job by this point i've seen so many people get derailed because they get so hung up on the point but they don't see all the opportunities are in front of them or they don't actually use all of their potential and all of their gets and may never actually find out what they're made of i've also seen people who have sacrificed virtually everything to achieve the plan and when they actually get their to whatever their destination was a couple things usually happen either so corroded by the

journey to arrive at their destination that they're not who they once were who they actually wannabe anymore or they get to the destination and they figure out it's not everything i thought it would be and they're disappointed or dissolution or they never get there at all and they're devastated and so what i've seen people who are fulfilled and successful do over and over again is how one to behave everyday how we make sure that i see the opportunities in front of me especially the opportunities to work with other people to make things better solve a problem that's right in front of me and what i know is opportunity always knocks and people are brave enough they can walk through the door and then other opportunities will come along so my advice to young people but we have a lot here and even as this but their parents might be wondering my advice is really simple get a job any job you know it doesn't matter what job that doesn't have to be the

perfect job but don't be disappointed if you don't get the perfect job but when you were just get a job and do it really well and when you do it well you can learn a lot about yourself a lot about other people and opportunity will not ok in the book you talk about the disciplines of leadership what are some of those well you know this is why i had bob dole my podcast i had i have a high castle by example and it started that podcast for the same reason i wrote this book in many ways i think people are very confused about leadership i think they think it's somebody with big tidal someone with a big position i used to think that if you have a big office you must be a leader of fame ish yep our you must be a leader there are leaders who have positions and titles but they're not leaders because of their position and talk by example is to lift up people some of them famous some of them not who our leaders because of their disciplines not their titles and bob dole is such a perfect example of this so there are

for essential disciplines that every leader i think must have if they're truly elite are changing the order of things for the better and solving problems the first is courage and the reason courage is such a so important and you know so many examples of bob dole's courage that the reason courage is so important is because when you solve problems you have to challenge the way things are and when you challenge the way things are people criticize you and the reason they criticize you discuss the status quo is powerful even when it's terrible the status quo is prophecy have to be brave enough to challenge the way things are to make things better and that takes courage and bob dole has demonstrated that over and over again it takes character he certainly has that character is honor and integrity over time discourage over time it is continuing to keep going when the going gets

tough and the go always gets tough as part of life but certainly part of problem solving its collaboration bob dole was at senator and before that in his political career a person of strong convictions but he always was able to collaborate with people who didn't always agree with him and the reason he could collaborate which you have to do so with this cause he was a humble a mouth to know i need other people maybe i need another point of view here somebody you know something i don't know it was also empathetic he so empathetic it's amazing to hear him i'm sure you have that when sarah door talks about the veterans there he greets at the world were two memorial empathy just oozes out of his sports and that empathy allows him to see value in other people regardless of their appearance or their circumstances and that's why the leadership and allows

quality is you can call it optimism you can call it seeing possibilities but leaders are people who see possibilities matter how bad a situation as a leader sees the possibility for it to be better and in particular leader sees possibilities in other people and boy is alibaba will be talks about how optimistic at as he talks about how he so lucky desk as he's one of these people who just sees possibilities everywhere he looks those are the fundamental qualities of leadership courage character collaboration seeing possibilities and the reason i said anyone can lead as goods those are human qualities will have them if we choose and that's the hard part about leadership in the end it's not a choice as a lot of people could be brave and choose not to be where they could have character and they choose not to their choices are what would you say to everybody about math and how they can go

about maximizing their own potential well the advice i give it in the book it's a little bit absolute the like the advice get a job any job i had tools of the book but i start was solve a problem any proper actually solve a problem because what happens is we all sit around and complain about power if we all do there's never a situation of their problems in any setting a family an institution that club a dorm a dozen batteries company usually people know what they are and they talk about what they are and they complain about what they are but it takes the cattle ization of leadership to actually do something about it and so my bias is a problem that you understand the problem that impacts you pick a problem that's close to you in other words not big and abstract close to you and start working with others to solve it is amazing what happens when people get focused on actually making something that

are usually everyone gets better you mentioned the character a couple times talk a little bit about more about the importance of character in terms of leadership we'll character it's such an old fashioned word in some ways and we don't lift it up in our culture and sometimes you know if you think about writing it it's very hard to all the stuff thats on social media you know while the amount of time we spend in social media and a lot of that stuff isn't about character and it's not a solid foundation of values the character is values over time character is knowing for example that the ends don't justify the means character is knowing that how you get things done is as important as what you get done so in a company selling yachts it's important to make the quarterly

numbers but it's just as important maybe more important over time how you make the quarterly numbers on how many times we seeing that play out in business i am those are all the aspects of character and the reason that is a discipline it's it's easy to say i have a character but course what happens is people's character gets tested i tell some stories in the book of where my character's been tested or other people stared characters been tested he gets tested because people get very fixated on the end the goal the destination the prize and so you'll hear that in some ways i tell people the higher you go the more temptations their artists sellout the easier it is to lead character go the more likely it is that you're going to sell your soul to politics for example george washington to listen seventeen eighty nine

the trouble with political parties as they will come to care only about winning or win winning is the goal there are lots of times when we sacrifice character and when we've seen those stories so is hanging onto its staying true to those values when it's easier in the short run to let them go to achieve an end and when sometimes letting them go to achieve that end gets you more accolades then standing truly character it's easy to say and it's hard to do over time and that's why it's a discipline doesn't come easy you write in the book about the importance of overcoming people overcoming fears talk a little bit about that and how that helps one achieve their goals so why things that i've learned in my life is that everybody's afraid of something and most of the surf re double our things actually there are what i would call profound few

years when i was diagnosed with cancer as a profound fear and i might die when we realize that our younger daughter was an addict that's a profound fear she might die but the truth is that we are so often paralyzed by a fierce that are not profound but it nevertheless have tremendous power over us i'm afraid of looking foolish i'm afraid of making a mistake i'm afraid of being criticized i'm afraid i won't fit in i'm afraid i'll never amount to anything all these features are debilitating to people over time i'll tell you an interesting story to illustrate as we do a lot of work house to my foundation with the wounded warrior project and the people who are working with wounded warriors often

talk about how difficult it is to get a wounded warrior to come to a job fair in you would think so companies so many companies want to hire wounded warriors and yet when they put on the job fair we are always disappointed who shows up and so i was doing a leadership lamb and some work with them and i said well what are the veteran's afraid of people were startled by the question these are wounded warriors are not afraid of everything they've gone to battle and a wounded warrior raise their hands out tell you what were afraid were afraid of going in not being offered a job were afraid of being offered a job and not knowing how to do the job were afraid of going to the job and being pitied instead of being understood for what we can bring all those are real fears that we all have them and the fear of being criticized as one of the most powerful figures people have it's why the status quo was so powerful or don't rock the boat who you think you are and that's not your job to follow the process stick to the world and so we have to

overcome those fears if we're going to actually make things better which is the purpose of leadership and frequently we have to overcome criticism to lift someone up who we see has potential but maybe doesn't fit them all i mean we doing their hope what's well no actually they're not it took a lot for those two men to come to my desk and say we think we can do more i'm sure they got criticized for that so overcoming those fears that seems silly when we say them out loud i'm afraid of making a mistake how many people don't move forward with something because they're afraid to make a mistake where they're afraid to be criticized or they're afraid to look foolish what advice do you have in the book for helping people improve their relationships with other people well you know i think bob dole honestly is such a great example

of the how to stay here but i talked about humility in empathy humility is required because first all there's nothing worth doing that a single person can do on their own nothing i mean we lived up the solitary hero but they don't exist really everyone who accomplish as anything is help by others humility is knowing that humility is the ability to say i don't know what all i don't have it all i can't do it all by alone actually can't fix it that humility is important because it's the impetus for a relationship in many cases i learned that when i started out in business after that a secretarial pool and women to at and t i didn't know anything i had to be humble i literally didn't know anything so i had to ask a lot of questions and i found out that when you ask people questions and set a telling

them how much you know you an ally but not only do you learn a lot but you start to establish a relationship and then that hopefully can lead to empathy empathy is when you actually can see beyond someone's appearance someone's circumstance someone's political affiliation someone's religious affiliation whatever it is that makes them different from you you can see past that and see or begin to understand what they bring to the table and why they are where they are and what why they are or who they are so humility empathy ask questions ask questions ask questions and find something that together you can work on maybe a problem that impacts you both or maybe something you both think could be made better what characteristics do you feel worried most critical

to you in terms of rising too you're being the ceo of hewlett packard well i honestly i would say i think these qualities that i talked about i think it's kind of a package deal should meaning courage is the first one but i think all of them are important let's just say quickly a lot of people took a chance on that we all needed someone to take a chance on us every one of those states that i had to and that means that people can see past wow she doesn't look like what we think they're supposed to look like so people took chances on me but i am i think all of these things matter my first client meeting when i went to at anti my first meeting where i was actually going to meet a real life customer it was held in a stripper because my colleague and his clients always

had lunch at a strip club when they came into town and i am i might literally not have made it through my second week on the job if i had not been able to get over my fear of my gosh i've never been a district up what we need to do and i'm gonna look like an idiot yeah i did but i think all of those qualities are necessary and i think besides all that and this is true of all problem solving where near ceo or not this ability to analyze what is the current state really what is the current situation really and find consensus about that and then what we trying to do really what we trying to accomplish and can we agree on what we're trying to accomplish i think that's a vital as well we so often in politics never even agree on the current state we don't agree on what the promise so when i saw it and if we agree on the ground we dont

agree on the goal and that we argue about the method to get from a point where we are about which we disagree and a point to which were going about which we disagree it's no wonder we don't get anymore what are some of the gender based challenges that you face both in the business world and running for big political office well when you're different it's different when youre different it's different it just this album my first meeting was held in a strip club when i became the ceo all the press wanted to focus on my first day on the job i wanted to talk about the company and innovation and all the wonderful assets we had all they wanted to talk about was my gosh you're a woman and the first in depth interview that i gave

the editor of business week which was then a very successful publication i will admit i was delighted when they went out of business i'm sorry that's not kind of me but i do the editors questioned have made very first question was what designer major suit so it's different when youre different my campaign manager was routinely asked when i was running for president what are those shoes she's where he saw a stiffer when you're different and we need to acknowledge that i'm the advice i give to young women or anyone who's different honestly is don't get a chip on your shoulder and don't hide your life under bush and what i mean by that is when you're different then the norm you're going to face different difficulties sometimes more difficulties

and it's easy to get to the point where you think everybody is giving you a hard time the guy in the strip club was giving me a hard time and yet those two men had came to my desk gave me a hand up and so they are truly bad people with bad behavior and bad people and bad behavior has to be confronted but most people aren't that they may be thoughtless they may be careless they may be clueless but they're not bad people and say you have to get over it that prior to me this trip and we became great comics great teammates and i learned later that he was afraid of me he was afraid of the brand new model with the nba who was gonna take his job so will get a chip on your show in the us and he says don't hide your light under a bushel it's tempting sometimes when you're getting under a lot of flak for being different to try and fit in when i was coming up in the business world

there was a book called how to dress for success right member that there was a book called how to dress for success for women and if you recall that book basically the advice was look as much like a man as possible wear a bow tie wear a white shirt buttoned up all the women are nodding their heads where white shirt buttoned up to the throat where a very severe dog suit seriously and we all kind of do that for what i was dressed that way going to the strip club by the way the cab driver did want to know if i was the new act which just sort of had a piano a lot to take off i think he figured that the plane is to eat we sort of strive to fit in sometimes don't and about being who you are being who you are whoever you are be that brings all of that to the table because when people try and fit in there or do something they think somebody else wants we are not living up to their potential and they won't be as effective ok we've talked about your

book pretty much you know since we started i have to ask you this question in my life actually as i guess i do have to ask you know this one question that's not related to the book give us your assessment of current political thing on what you know where the and it's part of why i wrote the book i do think that first there is this there's a saying politics is downstream of culture and i think sometimes that's true if you think about what our culture lives out what is our culture with the reality tv outrage controversy conflict we lift up i think really honestly some of the stupidest most outrageous people ever we lift up people who are famous for being famous right and i think all that has sort of going downstream to politics but remembering george washington the trouble with political party says they will come to care only about winning i think we're at the point

where politics is very much like our culture at large it is a lot of vitriol a lot of controversy it's a little bit like a worldwide wrestling what's not happening is progress on festering problems how long we've been arguing about immigration how long we've been arguing about debts and deficits how long we've been arguing about health care how we mainly arguing that veteran's care for a really long time and so part of me thinks that the hp purpose of the political system to focus on winning it makes it very difficult to solve problems because the dynamic of winning in sports my team versus your team you know hey it's my team i don't care what my team does its my team and we excuse people's character because they're on our team we destroyed people's character because they're not on our team that dynamic

is the opposite of problems a problem solving dynamic is always as bob dole demonstrate it the dynamic a problem solving is always win win let me find the best in my opponent not the worst let me try and find common ground not polarized the situation on the other hand and we solve problems win elections and so that's why so often we talk about the unresolved problem and we never somehow resolve the good and gun control that pick your picture problem that we argue about but the dynamic a problem solving is always win when it is always collaborative in a spirit of humility and empathy i think we lack a lot of humility and empathy these days and a lot of promise or faster a lot of people here would agree you very much i have one more question that i'm going to

open it up to today from the audience my final question carl is about your organization and walking potential what's the mission of the organization and what do you hope to achieve over the next several years the mission of the organization is to bring leadership and problem solving training to nonprofit organizations there is we do through growing fury enterprises leadership in crime solving training for corporations for businesses of all sizes but having led several nonprofits myself there is a a lack of investment in human capital in the nonprofit world and frequently that investment is lacking not because people are good it's that the money goes elsewhere and i want the money to go to the meal i want the money to go to the clothing i want the money to go to the childish and so so often people and nonprofits who are dealing with if you think about it some of the most pressing and festering problems

in our society the people are to investigate and so we i have a national network of coaches and eight curriculum that is very similar to this book which is based on things that i know work because i'd use them for so many years and we deliver that two nonprofit all kinds where were invited in some cases we collaborate with companies who want us to help lift the nonprofits up that they invest in but it's been very rewarding work and i hope that we will continue to make a difference in the communities where we are invited that's carly fiorina giving the annual duel lecturer at the university of kansas the former ceo of hewlett packard will take questions from the audience at the dole institute of politics right after this from the university of kansas we're kansas public radio ninety one

five lawrence and ninety one three all spurred junction city for on the web a kansas public radio dot org if you missed last week's conversation about president trump and the media you can listen to it on our website as well as most previous episodes of kbr presents you can also subscribe to vacate your present podcast on itunes or wherever you get your podcasts support for katie are present on kansas public radio comes from audio reader a radio reading service for the blind and visually impaired grateful for the generosity of all donors to help meet annual programming needs donation information is at the reader that way you die edu you're listening to kbr present on kansas public radio i'm kay mcintyre today on k pr presents its the two thousand nineteen paul lecturer with former presidential

candidate and former ceo of hewlett packard carly fiorina see now takes questions from the audience at the dole institute of politics reporter i hear from the chancellor thank you so much for sharing your story and your insides what motivated you to run for political office and what do learn from running for political office so what motivated me is i think ours was intended to be a citizen government i think we have too many professional politicians and i think when you have been doing the same thing running in winning running in winning running and running running in winning your entire career there's a lot you don't know now i think our country was founded on the principle that citizens go to serve for a while and then they go away and go back to doing something else i also think that from us kill point of view

i thought it was useful that somebody who understood bureaucracies really well would try and talk about what it takes to move your axes government is a huge bureaucracy and one of the reasons it never changes is cause i don't think we have enough people understand actually had to change it i'm not saying by the way that there are very fine people in politics there are some really fine people in politics but i am saying that i think there are too many people who have done nothing else and that's not healthy in any situation diversity is good in many forms what i learned i learned there the disconnect between what salt between what gets talked about in political campaigns and how it gets talked about it how it gets amplified to the media and what citizens and voters actually one attack talk about that distance is vast and i think

it's getting bigger you know i would sit and have conversations with voters and they would be so different and the conversations i would have on the debate stage or with me and that's one thing i learned the second thing i learned is that the two political parties control the process to a degree that we are not where i was not aware until i was and so the two political parties determine how the debate schedule works who gets on the debate stage how long you're on the debate stage how long you get to talk on the debate stage when you make it to the debate stage those rules are set by the parties in the media before anything ever starts and it's been to every election i know that i thought debates were kind of an opportunity for citizens to take a look and everybody they're actually not they're pretty orchestrated process he's and they are orchestrated to get through primaries as fast as possible because if your purpose is winning you wanna get to the general election there will question the way in the

back and get on i guess most of my question was rick perry it is true we've said that things are different when you're different i almost shed a very minority box in the you know in the book but i guess it's a lot harder the more things change in the more people become aware of things like racism and massage me and things like that because it becomes something you don't talk about it anymore and then you have to rely on yes i'm gonna i do my work the best i can but believing in this nonexistent meritocracy where is the systems are a camera rigged so i guess how do you go on and make a positive difference and this teacher yourself understand that most of what the obstacles are going to face and over again i get to actually see them or

address them directly so i look i think it is without a doubt true that there are structural obstacles and i think it is also without a doubt true that only back up and give you some day because i believe in having a clear eyed view of the current state where are we actually so on the one hand you could say things have gotten so much better in terms of diversity and they have in many ways and yet for example if you looked at corp corporate boards you'd find percentage a women's about sixteen percent percentage of people of color or minorities is about twelve percent those numbers have not moved in twenty five years so we're not making as much progress as we should know what that data tells us is there

are structural impediments and it also tells us that there are habits that get in the way that's just true a habit that gets in the way is human we'll share it but for example all of us are most comfortable with people like us were most comfortable with people that we had something in common with it's hard for us to collaborate with people who are truly different it's why humility and empathy are so important and so what you see is groups of people over time and becoming more and more and more alike and you see so many selection criteria being based on who i know in my comfortable with them or they like me and so ultimately we're going to make the kind of progress we need to make as a nation when we realize that our diversity is our strength and if you have people who have a different point of view that's a good thing it's

harder but it's a good thing so now to your specific question i got asked a version of this question of another university catholic university where is speaking a couple weeks ago and somebody said how do you know when to just do your job and do it really well and quit because he you can stand in a more your values are being sacrificed or how do you know which to do stick to it or get out and assemble there is something else so and i think this is the hard part it's called confrontation there is a time when bad behavior has to be confronted and when attitudes they get in people's way have to be confronted expect the courage the very first time i became a boss and i had subordinates and my was introduced me to my new subordinates as this is carly she's our token bimbo ok

now things have changed maybe we know not to say that but things haven't changed what sometimes people think that and so i had a decision to make but i keep going put my head down should i quit what i chose was a third way in that case i said i have to confront this and so i went into his office and i closed the door and i said you will never ever do that to me again and hears why there is a point in time when you must respect yourself if you don't respect yourself others will not respect you and sometimes that takes you to a tough place but it may be a better place and putting altogether or just baring your head and pretending that you're unlocking your potential when in fact you just miserable and no one fulfills their potential when they're miserable there a question over here it appears that you believe term limits could be one of these solutions to some of the governmental problems what are the chances of ever getting term limits through a congress

of political and long term politicians zero now by the way i'm not saying it could never happen but if you think back what what is the what is the genius of this country what is the thing that is absolutely unique about this country it's not that word democracy actually it's that citizens are somber when not government not presidents that senators not citizens this is a country if you read the constitution of course it talks about individual rights why because the individual was thought to be the center our sovereignty we've had to work really hard to make sure the individual men to all individuals but nevertheless that was a unique idea and the other thing of course constantly

talks about his concentration of power and how power concentrated is power abused the constitution is a lot about preventing the concentration and the abuse of power and we concentrate a whole lot of power in a bunch of people in one city called washington dc alex de tocqueville came to this country and eighteen thirty something and what he remarked upon was what he called civil society what he found so remarkable about this country was not our institutions of government it was not our politicians it was civil society the only way a term limits are going to happen is if citizens demand it and maybe it has to happen state by state and a country like ours problems get best solved bottom up not top down we know that that's true and business it's true in our country not all countries but in this country it's clearly true but if you think it's gonna happen

because people who are in washington don't want to stay there are gonna say hey this is a good idea let's vote on term limits that's not going to happen it has to come from the bottom up i asked around with your presidential run as was the on the drug administration and the influence areas of the guinness the howard schultz do you think there is a continued interest and core in corporate interest and corporate influence and presidential runs in politics in general or is this just a weird blip well first let's say there's tons of corporate influence in politics right through money through them you know one of the reasons i talked so much in my presidential run about the concentration of power is because a big complicated concentrated locus of power which is what washington is that big it's

complicated that a lot of power concentrated there is in that kind of setting only the big can import the wealthy big companies have a far better chance of influencing legislation and small companies ever get wealthy people have a better chance than poor people i mean it's how big complicated systems were unfortunate and it's why dispersing that power ultimately i hope we will get passionate about that as a nation because we can address so many other things as longer so much power is concentrated if you're asking do i think it's a blip that business people say i'm gonna run for president i hope it's not but i hope we have more and more citizens with diverse backgrounds who say i'm going to actually get involved in politics not forever but for a time it would be interesting you know we have in a place like kansas there are people who do form who also were in government but the point

is a different point of view is important that's not to say that the government is just like a business is clearly not that's not to say that there are there are very specific things that someone has to learn or no now public policy about three co equal branches of government about how things work that's clearly not true but it is not healthy in a company to have everybody in charge be the same and have done nothing else but be in that company is also not healthy country for everybody in politics to be basically the same end i think in many ways we're seeing the fruits of that i think more i hope more people from different walks of life will get into politics the question is will they be captured by the system or will they actually challenge the system not just around china but actually solves a problem that is where you have any other questions really pushing even use

saddam in and graduations than ever march and so that stuff on the overall question given all that you've accomplished in your inner ear businesslike her saliva in your professional life what advice would you give yourself that you were twenty five years old and started over so we don't get a do over doing but but but what i would say to myself is don't worry about all this stuff and we worry about we worry about it so much stuff that doesn't matter in the end and it's very hard because when you're young you don't want to fit in and you do one of the popular and while there's so much pressure now on social me i mean the amount of times some people spend sure eating the perfect photo on instagram that while none of that matters

doesn't matter and so what i would say is don't worry about the stuff that doesn't matter worry about the things that you are and the things that matter all the things we've been talking about who am i really want to i really want who do i really someone i had a student who asked me the other day how would you define success and we get all mixed up about success to and i truly mean that's an eyewitness said it at twenty a successful person is a person whose life is filled with love moments of grace and positive contribution and when people focus on those things good things here what became of the

hugely successful georgia markets and build will attack by him in touch with them to this day out from that little nine percent real estate firm they eventually built its markets in our jackets huge its regional now national they became hugely successful which did not surprise me at all because they taught me all that time ago although i didn't know it at the time if the purpose of leadership as problem solving high school of a leader is done like potential in others hi is calling on the leaders to unlock potential in others and they knew that they saw possibilities in law to people and because they saw past delays and lots of people they build a really successful they're a question over here putting aside policy differences you think best exemplifies leadership that point for a democrat field man

i'm not answering at one point try to tell you what they were at it why an audience or im not just hunting to be politically correct the reason i'm planting is that you know there's that old saying on tough times build character i actually think tough times reveal character so they're all the manson tough times when i see what character is revealed very little final question here today oh boy my question as you said that you learned a lot that you didn't know when you ran for office and so if you were to do it again what would you do differently based on what you earn and will we see carly fiorina on the ballot again well the first law i've learned never say never am but it's not my focus now i would also tell you that just as i never had a plan to become a ceo and i truly did and i never had a plan to run for president

and then as time went on it became the right decision for me given the opportunities i saw what would i do differently i think the the answer is i'm not quite sure but what i know is that i know a lot of more now about how the system works and that's useful because we dont know i didn't know how the system or i didn't know how the debate system more valuable and i feel for those eighteen democratic candidates because there are they are entering into a system that is designed to wean them really fast and designed to choke oxygen off of a lot of them as fast as possible so knowing that i'd have to think about your question earnestly but just knowing that would cause me to look at it differently this be a great place for an announcement about twenty twenty a tony for

your might want to listen to thank you so much as that wonderful after you've been listening to carly fiorina the former ceo of hewlett packard the first woman to lead a fortune five hundred company two thousand sixteen presidential candidate theory they gave the annual dog lecture on april fourteenth two thousand nineteen at the university of kansas moderated by bill lacy director of the dole institute of politics i'm kay mac entire kbr present is a production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas mr nico