 Here we are. Hey, Bob. Thanks so much for sitting with me for this conversation. Absolutely happy to do it This is a great way We're about halfway through their day here, and I think we're curious about from a global company like yours a Position that you're coming from your journey in the company's journey. So let's let's jump right in you have been at PWC your Full career. What is it like working your way up through a massive company like that? So I have been with PWC my entire career and I was just describing as somebody backstage That the good thing with my job and the career that I've had is every couple of years. I was always doing something different So for a few years actually started in our audit business There was a couple of years I worked in human capital a couple of years I went over to Japan a couple of years. I did consulting a couple of years. I did leadership responsibilities So the challenge for me was always how can I create more options for a future development? And how do I actually with every next step think about multiple options rather than it being linear? How do I think about the zigzag of a career path? For me, it was never a conscious decision I was lucky because I had great sponsors to put me in the opportunities I had which becomes a really important theme as you think about the leader you want to become and then the role and the Environment you want to create in your own organization when you think about where you are today. Was this your end goal ultimately? No Honestly when I started with PwC. I was in the mindset come in yet get two years experience and get the hell out So I'm surprised I've lasted as long as I have and I have seriously thought about leaving Five or six times during my career. What's always kept me here is I enjoyed the work I was doing it was always different and interesting I really enjoyed the people I was working with and I felt like I was growing learning and getting more Value but it was not just the compensation I was being valued in a good way to create those additional opportunities that gave me an opportunity If I ever wanted to leave I could but I was definitely getting a lot more opportunities If I stayed which obviously put me in the position to be in this job today What advice do you have to maybe some of our entrepreneurs here who have been a lot more mobile in their careers? How can they take that experience and also work their way through a company or through various companies? So the two things I would say is first anybody in whatever role you are today either an innovator a founder a Performer a management team member at a large organization a small organization. How do you continually learn? every interaction is a learning interaction and every Intervention you have with somebody is a recruiting opportunity and it could be somebody you want to recruit to your future Organization or your today organization, but it's also an interview of you So every time you have a chance to see somebody in an elevator bank at a meeting like this. It's a possible interview Likewise every interaction you have with the person to the left or to the right of you should be a learning opportunity It's up to you as to what you want to do with that learning But make sure you are continuously learning mindset a continuously interviewing mindset and a continually recruiting mindset and expand your network That's going to create options for you no matter where your career path goes or where your company ends up Going on that note when it comes to refining that that elevator pitch. What have you found works when you speak to entrepreneurs? What do you think works so so to me? It is a combination of what is it that you do that is unique? And that goes to the company in the organization and the product or serving you're bringing But more importantly as an investor as a service provider as a business partner. I'm interested in the person The product you have today the service you have today it might have a lifespan of five years The world is changing way too fast successful organizations are going to be the ones that are most agile Likewise the successful people are the ones that are going to be most agile That's why you've got to always be in this learning mindset and adopt accordingly because what I tell people that we even within PWC I Can't guarantee the job you have today is even going to be there three years from now So what I am interested in is can you show that you have taken a risk done something different? Demonstrated that success continuously with every new situation you've been in likewise and innovated our entrepreneur Has to demonstrate multiple times that they can learn fast fail fast and move on to the next thing and then ultimately be successful How much of that and maybe you can speak from your experience here is being interested in beyond just your day-to-day work Is it important to have passions or interests at least besides what you're doing for your company? So I would tell you that I do think it's important to be more well-rounded When we step back and I'll use PWC as example what we said a couple of years ago is we want people to be a professional within our Organization there's five things they have to focus on one is do you have the technical argument? So this becomes the subject matter expertise that you are part of Two is the business acumen and today I would say that business acumen has to include digital acumen digital IQ Third is do you have global acumen the world is becoming even though we have nationalism and populism? It is a very small place in terms of people trying to leverage supply chain customer experience or otherwise And if you don't understand culture and business in multiple locations, you're no longer relevant fourth is relationship skills and then Finally it's leadership self-initiated leadership and this goes to how do you take care of yourself your own mental? Well-being do you have flexibility are you managing work and life and flexibility that's coming from it? And can you be that whole person and if you are not that whole person you're limiting yourself? I think in terms of the opportunities for future success as well as the subject matter expertise That's there on the digital skills. We are of course at a tech event here Are there particular skills that you say this is an absolute essential? Qualification for someone or for you that you found was essential in adapting throughout your career. I would say no So to me the technology world is moving so fast that you know an expertise in one technology might be Evaporated tomorrow because the life stands pretty small what I would look for is more raw talent in terms of an intellectual curiosity to know what's coming How can I learn it quickly? How can I manage it effectively? How can I leverage it effectively? How can I adopt it effectively and then be ready for the next thing? So it's this continued evolution and upskilling that's needed So the thing we're doing for example in PWC is Increasing everybody's digital fitness the way we're doing that for 230,000 people is asking them to take a self-assessment test But then leverage YouTube videos self-learning and all kinds of different Collaboration tools to self-initiate the learning to be smarter on blockchain smarter on artificial intelligence smarter on 3d printing or Drone technology and it's the combination of all of those technologies That's going to actually enable the future innovation and the future success of an individual or for that matter the future success of an organization What is the response that you get at PWC from some of those trainings? Is it divided among ages? Is it divided among? Countries what's your response? So we've got just so you understand There's 230,000 people in PWC in a hundred and some odd countries around the world, but the average age is 27 So it's a really young organization on a relative scale and much different than what people probably would expect What's interesting is actually there's no a lot of differentiation amongst the age classes There's definitely though and ease of adoptability So what we have to do is make sure that the leadership teams Really are enabling the use of technologies and enabling innovation to happen and do it from the bottoms up And their job at as a more senior leader is actually to create that environment The leaders at a younger age are actually responsible to do a couple of things one is Demonstrate those those skills demonstrate those technologies and what we ask of them reverse mentor Those that don't understand what to do and how to do it And there's a big opportunity to do sponsorship from the top down and Reverse mentoring from the bottoms up and this way you get the collective team aligned around what we're trying to accomplish in Transforming our business which has historically been a human capital business to a combination of humanity and technology and data To be relevant for the future Organizationally has it been difficult to come up with this idea that someone at the bottom could teach someone at the top of the rankings So it's probably been more difficult depending on the country you're in and that's why global acumen is very important Some countries are probably a little less Problematic in that space others are much more respective at age and title So if you think about a Japan as an example very respectful of age and tenure and title That becomes a lot more of a challenge so to get a leadership team to think differently and create the right environment becomes a higher hurdle of success compared to Country in Africa where the average age is much less and there's not as much bureaucracy or historical Relevance that becomes a less of an issue for them to deal with so that's why it's important for you to make sure that when you think about these Themes it's not one-size-fits-all You actually have to make it very local you have to be as local as you possibly can When interacting with clients and interacting with your people and you have to be very relevant to say what's my culture today? What's my core competency today? What do I want it to evolve to as opposed to a one-size-fits-all if it's a one-size-fits-all You're doomed for failure in various parts of the world. What advice do you have to some of the entrepreneurs or startups here? Who are smaller scale but who want to encourage every employee to try to be a leader to try to have them take ownership of where they're working? How is that possible when you don't have this structure that you have in a massive global company? So maybe my first proposition would be leadership is not a title but an action And the more the leaders that do have the title can talk about an evidence with storytelling How leaders have evolved regardless of title and age and the more you can say that's the good behavior We expect no by the way, that's the recognition. We're given to those people the more likely you are to emulate and scale consistency of leadership capabilities The second thing I would say is that as a leader You have to define the culture and the expectation of the people in your organizations So you have to land your purpose you have to land your values and you have to land the expected behaviors and Define that what I do in our organization is say if you want to be an average performer Go do the consulting project or the audit project the way it was done last year If you want to be the leader of the future, I Want you to be sought after if you're sought after you're always in recruitment mode or interview mode What does it take to be sought after you thought about the problem? You're trying to solve for you've leveraged your network you've reached out to 20 other teams that have the same issue You've got great knowledge and right now you are going to a client interacting little by the way I want you to impress that client so much. They want to hire you I don't want you to take the job But I want them to be in a position they want to hire you and I want you to take the knowledge you learned and then go back And share it with other teams You do that the client seeks you out The other teams seek you out someday as a leader someday as a follower You're sold after the more you're sold after the more career progression progression you're going to get Just like an innovator and an entrepreneur here in terms of those that are doing it the more you are doing those things and Thinking about not yourself and your company and your idea But rather how you're solving systemic issues or solving a sector's issues or a segmentation issue or a country issue The more you're going to be sought after as a broader thinker the more you're sought after the more opportunities that are going to come your way Naturally and the more opportunities can lead are going to come your way in terms of people wanting to draw your thinking and your natural skills That's into the conversation So hearing your thoughts on that and might help explain how PWC has become such a powerhouse beyond just consulting and auditing now It's it's a massive company. Is there an idea that they can serve more beyond it's kind of original business purpose? How much how big do you want to get so to me? It's not around being big. It's about impact It's about relevancy and for us to be sustainable We have to be more agile So a couple of years ago We asked ourselves for strategic questions. How will I remain relevant over the next couple of decades? Where will we grow and how should we invest differently than we've done before? Where will I get the IP and the human capital to enable it to happen and how can I disrupt ourselves and not be disrupted? In order to answer those questions. We had to say what are those big trends? Demographic shifts the impact on technology the scarcity of resources The shifting of capital markets from west to east and then we said to ourselves now let's answer those questions with those trends in mind But it caused us to reshape our purpose So our purpose actually was crowdsourced as were our values We actually used to have a purpose that probably went to the audit business and the assurance business Today our purpose got redefined. What does the world need? What's the world requiring of organizations like often and what's our assets? And we shape that to be how do we help enable trust and how do we solve some big important problems? That required us to think differently about the values and the behaviors So what we did there was to go out to 230,000 people and say what are your values today personally? What do you think the values of PWC are today? And if this is our purpose going forward, what do our values need to be tomorrow and then we engage? Probably 80% of our organization, which was great because it was bottoms up as opposed to You know me and a small team creating and try to force it down and enable that buy-in and I don't care if you're 40 people or 230,000 people the more you can get the grounds well from the bottom up and get people aligned about what you're trying to do The easier the execution the easier the alignment will be the better the Participation will be in the personal brands that will be created and that personal brand will be aligned to the organizational brand You'll have more success and that's where to me. It's not about our scale and our size It's about our relevancy in the value proposition. I don't want to be the biggest professional services firm I'd rather be the most relevant most valued and valuable professional services firm in the defined spaces that we think The world needs us going forward I'm glad you raised the issue of trust because so much of what we hear about today is there's a lack of trust particularly and many of the bigger tech companies Privacy and data issues are in the news every single day. What are you doing at PwC to? Consistently remember that when you take to talk about your brand so Our brand is defined on trust and integrity if I am not trusted I'll never get a phone call to go do a piece of work if For whatever reason we're doing something with our clients data if I ever lose that data I have the same pump problem that the technology houses do so I'm at a business First and foremost is to make sure our organization understands brand risk management and protecting that brand and enhancing that brand at all cost and Transferring from that people agenda to data technology and people agenda becomes important And what 230,000 people have in terms of their role and their responsibility becomes important our own Surveys around digital and cyber and privacy The issue is not the technologies the issue is actually the policies procedures and the personal behaviors So step number one is that step number two is we have got to be as good as the most trusted or those that aspire to be the most trusted so we have to have a level of Dependency and privacy and cyber as governments and financial services organization So we have to put ourselves and expect us to be here if we make a mistake We have to admit it we have to fix it and we have to commit to never do it again But we are gonna make mistakes there will be problems the question for anybody in a crisis in this area is to own up up to it Quickly fix it and commit to make sure it doesn't happen again And that's where I think speed is of the essence and financial service companies and technology companies today are probably the ones That have that most issues it is not the issue that has been created It's how you handle the issue Likewise in PWC is all about how you handle the issues going forward I like to talk about that bigger picture when we talk about Regulation and we talk about making sure the consumers are put first here in Europe We've heard a lot about Europe's state of privacy law GDPR Do you see this as a step in the right direction? Do you think other countries need to start really cracking down to protect privacy and what risks does that pose for? startups So I think you got to break it down into pieces first off the EU clearly with GDPR and others definitely has Taking a leading edge in terms of how do we think about the privacy issues, but let's remember we have to have a much more clear debate of the pros and cons of whatever rules and regulations we have to put in if you want to leverage data The way many in the audience want to leverage data There's a negative to that in terms of well that then goes at the expense of privacy Which may go at the expense of the consumer and whether they're willing to give that data Likewise if the consumer wants more value there's more value in having more access to data So those trade-offs become really important the difference between the way the EU thinks about it in the way China thinks about it radically different So what I will tell you is as a world as a society we have to now think about fragmentation of rules Everybody is trying to write the rules differently So the way the US is doing it is much different the way China is different and the way the EU is doing it differently The way India eventually will do it differently and the way Russia is doing it differently The organizational issue that many of you in the audience no matter how small No matter how large no matter if your startup are established You have to navigate those rules and they are going to be a new changing environment that you'll have to be Much more fragmented in terms of how you do it and think about how you want to apply those rules Regardless of where you're doing business right now Likewise PwC and others like us will have to deal with the same kind of challenges going forward But this is where the business community has to do more Governments can't do this stuff by themselves. In fact, I would say governments are Tainted by maybe trying to get the politicians to do what's Fundamentally right for the 2% to get voted on the next time So that's why the business community has to step up it to be much more engaged in these dialogues and an organization like PwC Part of our role is to convene people to talk about this stuff We may not even have the answers but the more convening and the more dialogue the better off the answer is going to be no matter What rule and regulation you're talking about so do you see the role of CEOs or? CFOs or CEOs anyone at the top of a company or even someone in a management position at a tech company to really try to come Up with these ideas for how to deal with the ethics of AI or privacy Or is that role becoming increasingly important from a business side versus government? I think it's important for three reasons First the business community has much more better insights of the pragmatic and practical realities Of how AI gets applied as opposed to some politician and arguably in some countries even the regulators Second our politicians can't come up with the right rules because they'll be too far removed From how do you balance and strike the right balance around these things third? Our politicians today and and no disrespect from whatever country you may be from or what political parties you may have Affiliation to They will try to come up with a politically correct answer that hits the media test or the political election test And there thereby requires the business community to step up more so and be much more of a Vocal and more clairverent voice in the debate Some countries they don't even allow for that to happen anymore So the business community has to step up and and fill a void And maybe even be a counter force In some countries to the voice of the politicians and that's a really important thing that's not only responsible for Future rules and regulations. I'm going to say it's responsible for just values in general What do organizations stand for what do they mean in terms of their own purpose? And at times that might be different than what an elected official or an appointed official Actually stands for and that's why I think the role of the ceo His or her management team and their boards have to be much more visible in terms of being relevant Prevailing and purpose oriented and driven to what's right for society and all their stakeholders going forward Which puts a real big burden on the role and responsibility of a ceo today And is that something a ceo has to determine really from the start Being a startup all the way up till pwc one of the hardest things today for ceo is the the implications of social media Social media has allowed for anybody without facts to be a judge and a jury The challenge for the ceo is what what topic to get engaged on? When do I choose to engage and not engage and when do I choose to defend? Or maybe even be proactive in what I want to talk about and maybe even defending on my own choice I will argue trust which you talked about earlier is not going to come from ceos with a title Trust is going to come from the peer-to-peer interaction the more your stakeholders can do your talking the better off you are and that goes to a startup with eight people in it today To a organization with 250,000 people around the world How you choose to use your voice and on what topics and what mechanisms? Is a really important role for the ceos to think about founders to think about and innovators to think about going forward Bob, I think that's a good place to leave it. Thanks so much. Thank you everybody. Appreciate it. Enjoy the rest of time Thank you