[APPLAUSE]

Thank you.

Thank you. Quite an introduction!

Quite a class!

Wow!

It's great!

>> Governor, welcome to the GSB.

>> Thank you.

>> Welcome to The View From the Top.

We're excited to have you here because you've managed to be at the top of,

I think at last count, at least four organizations.

And so we wanna talk about your professional success and,

and management skills.

But one thing the Dean mentioned, which I think is particularly important is your

committment to personal success, your family, your community, your faith.

And I want to start by an anecdote, which is actually the first time we met.

And I haven't told you this story,

though you know I grew up in your hometown for some time.

And that's 21 years ago,

you invited a bunch of boy scouts over to your house when I was 9 years old.

To have a- >> Oh.

>> Yeah.

[LAUGH] No it's good.

>> They're still cleaning up that mess.

>> Yeah.

[LAUGH] Yeah.

So you, you invited a bunch of us over to your house.

I think it was about 30 boys and we were there on a Saturday or

Sunday and you spent the day with us all day, grilling burgers.

It was a pool party.

And I'm struck by two things as I remember that story.

One is that there aren't very many parties I remember from being nine years old.

So you clearly know how to throw a very good party.

>> [LAUGH] >> Serving beer to kids is always

a [INAUDIBLE] >> Yeah, right.

>> [LAUGH] >> Right.

So thank you for that.

[LAUGH] The second is that, you know, on reflecting on the story,

I realized that this was roughly around the time you were running Bain Capital and

about to embark on the Senate campaign, and that really struck me.

Where the press is filled with stories when you were leading major organizations

but still found time for these kind of examples.

And the word having it all gets thrown around a lot but

you have sort of managed to have it all.

You have a great career, you have a great family,

you're committed to your community.

I wanna know how you've managed to strike that balance and have it all.

>> I don't know that I've spent a lot of time analyzing

how you balance your life, at one point I remember feeling that I

wasn't dong as much as I should be doing in my home with my kids.

Also feeling I wasn't doing as much as I should be doing at work, and

also feeling I wasn't doing as much as I, I should at church in my assignment there,

and then realizing that not things were pretty well in balance [LAUGH] and and,

and there may be.

It's humorous, perhaps, but there's some truth to that.

Which is if you're spending all of your time in, in one aspect of your life and

not devoting it to other things that are important to you,

then obviously things are out of whack.

I, a couple of things I backed into.

You're in the joint program.

Business law program.

I, I came from Brigham Young University to Harvard.

And was convinced I would flunk out.

And cuz I looked around and

I saw all these people who were obviously smarter than me and and how was I possibly

gonna make it in this environment except by just studying like crazy.

And so, I studied all the time.

And if I was not studying, I felt like there's this black cloud hanging over me.

I should be studying.

I've gotta be working because I'm gonna, I'm gonna flunk out.

And, and it was, it was omnipresent and at some point I finally said you know what,

I'm, I'm gonna do something which, which goes back to biblical times,

I'm gonna take Sunday off.

I'm gonna decide I'm not gonna study at all on Sunday, and

I'm gonna devote that day to my family, to worship and just personal time.

And it was amazing what happened when I made that decision because then,

on that Sunday, I didn't feel the black cloud there anymore.

It's like, okay I, I, I can't study today, I don't have to worry about it.

And, and the same thing happened as, as I went into my career,

in the consulting industry.

I said, you know what?

I, I'm not just gonna work when I come at the end of the day.

It may be a late night.

It may be I get home at 6:00 or 7:00 instead.

But when I come home I'm gonna close my brief, briefcase and not work.

And I'm gonna devote the time I have at home to my family.

And it was wonderful.

It was just, it was, it was freeing because I could really focus on

the things that I cared most about in life which, which were my wife and my kids.

And now of course if there was a big presentation coming up why I'd, you know,

I'd break that rule.

But, in terms of a, a regular pattern of life those were a couple of things I did.

Sundays stayed, for me, a day of family.

Coming home at the end of the day stayed a family time.

I traveled a good deal.

Of course, if I was, was on the road I worked like crazy late into the night.

But a few of those decisions early on shaped how I spent my time and probably

helped me balance my life to, towards those things that mattered most to me.

>> So how did you get away with that?

>> [LAUGH] >> I mean, there's a lot of people,

I mean, all of us come from these, you know, careers or are going into these

careers where, if you say, I'm gonna go home at 6 o'clock, I'm sorry.

That, you know, that's not always met with a lot of positive reception.

>> Yeah, no. I, I, and I may have misspoken there.

Some nights, I might have been able to get home at seven.

>> Or take Sunday off.

>> And, and, but, but I but I found if you take a block of time off for

yourself you may well be more productive than if you don't.

And and that may not be true depending on the organization you go to.

But I remember when I was talking to Bill Bain about joining Bain and Company and

I said look I, I have to take all day Sunday off.

So if there's like a company meeting, or if you want to come in for

a case team meetings on Sunday, I just won't be there.

And if that's something that,

that the firm can't accept, then I'm probably not the right guy for the firm.

And, and I live by that.

A, again, unless there was some kind of a, an unusual experience, some,

you know, terrible crisis happened.

I was going to jump in with both feet like everybody else.

But that was the every day occurrence, and I think it may be more effective and

more productive.

And I, I had good consulting assignments and got promoted as time went on.

So I don't think it hurts to have something more

in your life than just work.

I think, I think having faith, or a community that you care about,

politics, and children.

I think that makes you a more full human being,

more able to understand how the world works, and how most people think, and

may actually make you more effective.

And by the way if it doesn't, and you don't get promoted

in the way you wanted to And you don't make as much money as you wanted to.

So what? Life is not about getting promoted and

money.

If that's how you measure your life, I got some bad news.

There's serendipity in the world.

Bad things happen in business and the economy.

You can't be guaranteed you're gonna get promoted, and make a lot of money.

But if you measure yourself by the things that count most to you, your relationship

with your spouse, your friendships, your children, your family, those things

you can succeed at whether or not the world goes to hell in a handbasket.

So you know, I think you lay out how you want to live your life and, and you do

that you can have success regardless of what happens in the world around you.

>> You mentioned your time at Harvard and how this kind of came to you then.

This, this need to create some sectors in your life.

One of the other decisions you made at Harvard was,

you're graduating with a JDMBA, you decided to go into management consulting.

I'm curious for all of us making these kind of choices today if you Have similar

interests, and were here where we are today,

would you make the same decision to go into management consulting?

And I ask that as a JDMBA going into management consulting,

so I hope the answer is yes.

>> My condolences.

>> Yeah, no, thank you.

>> No, I mean, my path, was very different than the success books suggested.

I mean there are books out there that said that you know you

ought to have a clear goal in mind and think about that goal and

and I grew up in Detroit My dad was a car company CEO.

And I fully anticipated to go work for a co, for an automobile company.

That's what I wanted to do.

And so after my first year in the JDMP program,

I went to work at Chrysler Corporation.

And thinking that's where I was gonna go.

And I hated it.

I was so deep in the organization.

And of course the people, I mean, my boss' boss' boss had never met the CEO and

never would.

And and decisions being made that would affect the success of that company,

I'd never have any impact on unless I was there 50 or some odd years.

And I thought boy, this is just not at all like I imagined it.

And, and so I came back in the second year, and, got a job.

I think it was my second year, in the program.

I got a job with the Boston Consulting Group, for a summer job.

And it was fascinating, and it was exciting.

And I loved it.

And, and so it was not a great analysis I did to say,

this is the right next step for my career.

I just enjoyed it.

My path in life has primarily been focused on doing things I thought were fun and

enjoyable, and so that was fun.

My undergraduate major was English.

Why would you go into English?

There's no future, right, as an English major?

What are you going to do, all right?

But I liked reading and I liked writing.

So I went, I took English as my major, and then coming out of business school,

law school I went into consulting because I enjoyed it,

not because that's where I thought I'd spend my life.

I expected I'd be there for two or three years, like most people do, and

then get a job in a line corporation of some kind and, and

perhaps move up, more aggressively by having started in consulting.

I love consulting.

Because I am, I am oriented towards solving problems.

I like analysis and data and problem solving and writing and

writing presentations.

That's what I like to do.

That's what took me there.

And so, I would, I would go to those, I've followed

the career path that you enjoy most as opposed to trying to follow a career path

that you think will lead to the highest income or the quickest promotion.

Do what you enjoy and then your life will be enjoyable and fulfilling.

>> So, one other thing you're known for

is parachuting into very troubled environments.

You went from being captain back to being consulting to turn that around.

You went from Bain Cap to the Olympics, turned that around, and

then you parachuted into my home state of Massachusetts and

helped turn that around as well.

What, what led you to make those decisions?

What were you looking at to make to make those kind of like pretty risky bets.

>> Yeah I, I don't know that I have jumped into troubled situations

because I enjoy troubled situations.

[LAUGH] I, I, but but it is a sense of obligation.

And maybe it's my upbringing or my faith.

Or I say upbringing in my parents.

My dad had this sense of obligation to the country.

And my dad was born in Mexico, of American parents living there.

There was a revolution at the time.

Came back to the United States.

Lived in public housing, got public assistance, and and grew up poor,

very poor.

And had a, a, perhaps as a result of that,