MAY 2017 | SCENE 73 on the town New York as soon as you can. I got to talk to you.” That’s how I met Jack Welch. And then we worked together when I retired the first time from P&G in 2010 and when I joined Clayton, Dubilier and Rice, which is a private equity firm. Jack and I were kind of senior advisors. He is a great man. Were you always interested in business? I wasn’t. When we went to Chicago, my parents put me in this Dominican All Boys School to help me focus on academics. Then I went to a small liberal arts college in upstate New York, Hamilton College, because I thought I could play basketball. Not a good reason to pick, but it was a good school academically. My freshman year I majored in math; my sophomore year I majored in English Literature; my third year I went to France and majored in French and French History; my senior year I realized I had to graduate and graduated in history. I considered law school, but instead I went into the PhD program at the University of Virginia. I won this thing called the Presidential Fellowship. My whole education was paid for and I was able to study Medieval and Renaissance history at the University of Virginia, which was my interest. In November or the first semester, the first draft of the Vietnam War was held and I won the lottery. I got a 69, which meant that I had to report for active duty in March. I enlisted in the Navy in which I spent five years and three months. I started in Snowden’s Naval Security Group (Lt. Col. Benjamin Snowden). We are in the middle of the Vietnam War and I spent 47 weeks learning Modern Hebrew. I went through Supply Corps School and they sent me to Japan, where I spent three years running sort of all of the PX and club services for a big air base there. The aircraft that were on the carriers in the Gulf of Tonkin came in and out of our air base. What was your great lesson from your Vietnam experience? My great lesson is two-fold. They give both men and women a lot of responsibility at an early age and I like that. And the other thing is that at least with the Navy, it’s a relatively small unit. It’s a ship’s crew, or an air base support team, or an air group. So you have friends for life. I don’t see them all the time. You shared the same experiences. I never saw combat, just support, but we served people who went into combat. What was your big break? A couple of things. I was very lucky to end up with one serendipitous decision at a time, involved with something that was a good fit with my values and aspirations, and something I enjoyed and learned and grew from. Whether it was going to that all boys’ school – or whatever – I had the attitude that okay, I’ll give it a shot. It was totally different to what I was used to, going from t-shirts to a more formal jacket and tie environment. The guy that got the best grade in the class is sitting right there. Everybody else is sitting in alphabetical order. They post all your test and SAT scores and how many push-ups you can do. It’s intended to be totally transparent and based on merit. Would I have rather had 300 when the Vietnam lottery took place? Yes. Not because I didn’t want to serve my country, but because I Finish the following sentences: My best quality is… I’m a great listener and I’m objective. I wish I could be more like… Mahatma Gandhi. A good business always… Puts the customer first. A good product is one that… Delivers on its function so it does what it says it is going to do. High quality, high service and a fair price. A good value. The key to success in business is… Serving the customer better than anyone else can serve the customer so the customer keeps coming back and buying the product and services. A great leader will always… Listen. was interested in getting my PhD. The Navy changed that and when that ended it was kind of interesting. I was married by then and my first son was born. I’ll never forget this decision. I was 28 years old. That’s when I applied to business school at Harvard. I had business-like jobs in the Navy and thought to myself I can do that. I also applied to law school. But I thought law school is three years. What do you do if you’re not Perry Mason and you’re a lawyer? Business school seemed a lot more interesting to me and I wanted to get on with life. It’s a series of choices that worked out. I can’t tell you it was any life plan. When I was nine or ten years old and jumped on my Schwinn bike there was no plan. What accomplishment are you most proud of in your career? I think the things that always got me most excited were to be part of the team that created, designed, and developed a new product and especially one that was really successful. I was on the team, and this sounds so mundane, that worked on liquid Tide® detergent. There were other liquid detergents out there, but they actually didn’t clean that well. The challenge was putting all this chemistry into liquid. I spent a lot of time on some of the hair care products that we did. With Pantene, we actually put conditioner and treatment in a shampoo and had them stay together to work on your hair. I was part of the Febreze® and Swiffer® teams. That excited me the most. The other thing that I can’t help but feel good about is that I was the “Accidental CEO.” The only reason I was elected was because we were failing in 2000. We had lost half of our market value and our stock price dropped in half. For the next seven years or so, we more than doubled the sales of the company and tripled profits. All of our established brands were growing again and then we made some acquisitions that turned out to be pretty good, one of which was Gillette®. It was a great seven or eight years and a huge team effort that was a lot of fun. We were running so fast.
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