Leading Change with Carly Fiorina

Lindsay Chervinsky: How do leaders manage risk while still leading change? How can they learn to shock the system while still maintaining stability? These questions are as relevant today as they were in George Washington's time. And just as we can take inspiration from the timeless leadership principles exemplified by George Washington, so too can we look towards today's leaders.

On September 17, 1787, the members of the Constitutional Convention gathered to sign the Constitution after months of deliberation, compromise, and decisions. Today, on September 17, 2024, we honor Constitution Day by introducing you to today's leaders and the monumental decisions that will build towards our nation's future.

 Welcome to To Leadership and Legacy, Conversations at the George Washington Presidential Library. I'm Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky, Executive Director of the George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon. In this podcast series, we talk with leaders from across the nation about their growth, challenges, and innovative approaches that made them the leaders that they are today.

 The first six conversations, which took place between August 2023 and March 2024, were led by our former Executive Director, Dr. Patrick Spero. In the spirit of George Washington's leadership, this series will feature the perspective of leaders from across industries and fields. As such, the thoughts expressed in this podcast are solely the views of our guests and do not reflect the opinions of the Mount Vernon Ladies Association.

Lindsay Chervinsky: In this episode, Dr. Spero sits down with Carly Fiorina.

You may know her as a visionary executive known for her transformative roles at AT&T and Hewlett Packard, But Fiorina's journey from teaching English in Italy to becoming a trailblazing CEO offers invaluable insights into the ways that leaders grow in both times of change and stability.

Carly Fiorina: How do I leverage this change? How do I? not stick my head in the sand and be afraid of the change, but instead say, let me use it for good. That's what successful leaders do.

Lindsay Chervinsky: In the interview, Fiorina reflects on the evolution of corporate responsibility, emphasizing that it has fluctuated between shareholder focus and broad social accountability.

Carly Fiorina: I do think that a corporation has a larger responsibility than to make as much money as possible in the current quarter.

Lindsay Chervinsky: And she discusses her vision for the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution. Highlighting the need to educate Americans about their nation's founding principles and engage communities in a renewed sense of citizenship.

With a unique perspective shaped by diverse experiences, she'll reveal her lessons for how to tackle challenges, build effective teams, empower change warriors, and produce results that matter.

And now, our host, Dr. Patrick Spero, former Executive Director of the George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon.

Patrick Spero: Carly, thank you so much for joining us. I've been looking forward to this conversation for a long time. We have so much to talk about. Your perspective on leadership is so multifaceted. And I want to begin with the way I begin all these conversations, which is to ask you about leadership itself and what you think it means.

So I'd like to ask you to do a thought experiment. And I understand that you used to teach Italian at one point in your life.

Carly Fiorina: Correction: I taught English to Italians.

Patrick Spero: Oh, that's even better.

Carly Fiorina: Slightly different.

Pat Spero: That's actually even better. what I want to ask is if you were teaching Italians or had to define leadership for them as a vocabulary word, what would you tell them that leadership means?

How would you define it?

Carly Fiorina: Fare una differenza, which means to make a difference.

Patrick Spero: Is there an Italian word for leadership?

Carly Fiorina: I'm sure there is, but, Italian society based on their own history is, quite focused on titles and positions. Italians are of course, anarchists at their heart, but nevertheless, there's a lot of title and position.

And I think many people confuse leadership with title and position. And while a leader may have a title and a position, those are not the things that define their leadership.

Patrick Spero: That's fantastic because, one of the things that I've done, or at least argued in my own life, it's that leadership.

To be a leader is different from possessing leadership. And one of the most notable things is that the word leadership itself didn't emerge until the 1790s in America. And I argue is to describe a new style of leading people in which you had to have the support and backing of other people. It wasn't just a command and follow society.

Carly Fiorina: Yes. Well, isn't that interesting? I actually didn't know that. And it's fascinating, but there is no precise word for it in Italian. Now that I think about it in most romance languages, it doesn't exist because of course, for them it was about royalty and title and position and wealth.

Patrick Spero: Exactly. I've been going around because I don't have that, I'm embarrassed to not have that great of a foreign language skill myself, but I always ask folks, do you have a word for leadership in your language? They don't.

Carly Fiorina: That's fascinating.

Patrick Spero: That's great. So I do want to move ahead to talk a little bit about your own experience, as a leader, and having these, leadership attributes, I want to begin at the very earliest. Part of your career, which is when you had recently gotten your MBA, I believe from university of Maryland and had a job at AT&T and, didn't know what your future was going to hold.

It may be a leadership position. It may not. You may aspire to one, but you didn't know how to get there. Can you talk a little bit about some of your earliest career experiences and what you learned?

Carly Fiorina: Yes. Well, let me back up to why I was in Italy teaching English to your first question.

I was in Italy teaching English because I had dropped out of law school. I went to law school. My dad wanted me to go. I love my dad, but I really hated it. So I quit after less than a semester. I went to work as a secretary, answering the phones for a nine person real estate firm. My parents were very concerned.

And then eventually I ran off to Italy to teach English. And so getting an MBA was sort of the first step in saying maybe business is my direction, not the law. But when I landed in AT&T, honestly, I had no aspirations. I felt completely unqualified for the job. I probably was. I was in an environment where there were very few women.

I was hired because AT&T had signed a consent decree with the government in which they promised to hire more women, so why not me? I did not aspire to title or position. I was honestly trying to keep my job. But what I did notice was that there were problems everywhere, that everyone talked about, everyone complained about.

They had festered for a long time, but nobody had done anything about them. Because in a hierarchical, bureaucratic setting, people felt it wasn't their job to do anything about them. And so I started doing something about them with other people. And that's, I think, the first experience that I had, in understanding that leadership is a lot about solving problems.

Sometimes it's a lot about working with other people. And frequently it's a lot about coloring outside the lines and maybe not following exactly the process that somebody else thinks you should.

Patrick Spero: That's really interesting how in that type of bureaucratic system where there are people that I imagine are set in their ways, often see the need for change, but maybe think that the change is for that person over there and not for me.

Carly Fiorina: Yes.

Pat Spero: How does one affect change in an organization like that while maintaining stability at the same time?

Carly Fiorina: Yes. It depends of course where you are in the organization and the size of the problem. So let me start by saying at AT&T, at the bottom of the totem pole, I picked problems that others agreed were a problem.

And then I produced results. Actually, results really matter. If you want to lead, you can't just talk about it. You have to show it. Once I started producing results, people would pay attention. I also learned that, if you want to lead, you have to run towards problems, not run away from them.

Most people run away from them, and in a bureaucracy, it's really easy to run away from them. But if you run towards them, and you produce results, people do notice. At a much higher level, when I became a CEO at some point, I would say, you know, in order to affect change broadly in a systemic way, you have to shock the system enough so that people pay attention and think about things differently, but not so much that you put the patient into cardiac arrest because stability and ongoing performance are also important, even as you are trying to execute change.

Patrick Spero: So AT&T you're now a, a problem solver who's confronting these, dilemmas that the institution has been dealing with for a long time.

How does your career move over time and, and what advice would you give to people as they move up the corporate ladder or if they're in a nonprofit, you know, take on greater responsibilities in a larger portfolio?

Carly Fiorina: Well, I would say first run to problems, and by the way, a lot of people will advise you in the institution, whatever it is, a nonprofit, a corporation to do exactly the opposite.

So it takes courage to run to problems. It takes the ability to, tolerate risk and ambiguity. On the other hand, I would reassure people by saying there are always people who are going to be willing to help you. Run to problems, build a team of allies around you who will help you solve those problems, and focus on producing results.

Not on taking credit, but on producing results. That always matters in any setting.

Patrick Spero: Now, for a lot of folks, who maybe are, like myself in the nonprofit world, or are historians listening to this, or are just getting started on their own career, can you tell us what life is like at the more senior levels of a large corporation like AT&T?

Carly Fiorina: You know, it's interesting. I have done, a lot of work in large corporations. I've advised, government agencies of various kinds. I have had the pleasure and privilege to chair large non profits on my own and one of the things that I would say is while the context is different-- certainly the context in a university for historian is different than a corporation-- but on the other hand people are people. And so what I found actually is how often things are the same. Change is hard in any setting.

I don't care if it's academia, a non profit, a corporation, change is hard in any setting. It's hard in a family. It's easier for people to put their heads down and just keep doing what they've been doing. The status quo is powerful in every setting, not just in a big corporation. We're here at George Washington's National Library.

I dare say that George Washington banged his head up against a wall sometimes and said, you know, change is hard, the status quo is powerful. In any setting where human beings are involved, there are people who will embrace the opportunity for problem solving and change.

These are the allies of any leader. And there are people who will resist it, always to the bitter end. But the truth is, most of the people are somewhere in the middle. Most of the people are neither change agents nor resistors, most people are skeptics. And so, positive change happens when skeptics are inspired and they move.

Not when you get unanimity, but when the skeptics say, you know what, this change thing might actually work.

Patrick Spero: And what are some of the tactics you use to convince skeptics?

Carly Fiorina: Ah, well. Such a great question. The change agents, and I call them change warriors, the people who will fight for change, lead themselves, or work with a leader.

Change agents and warriors to convince the skeptic. And so you start when you want to make a difference, solve a problem, effectuate change. You start not with the hardest thing. You start with something you can succeed at. Because it takes success to build momentum for more success. It takes change to build the appetite for more change.

And so you have to start with something that you can get done. And then the allies, the change warriors, the change agents can say to the skeptic: see, see, this is worth it. See, this is working. It's not that people don't want problems to be solved or life be better. It's that they're afraid it won't work.

And so showing them, yes, it can work, it's worth taking this risk, is really important.

Patrick Spero: That's really great because it's reminds me of something we teach about George Washington and his leadership style, which is something called strategic patience.

Carly Fiorina: it's such a great term, yes. Strategic patience is required.

Patrick Spero: Yeah, and knowing some small battles can lead to the bigger victory too. Start small and build momentum.

Carly Fiorina: And you can't do everything at once

Patrick Spero: Did you feel that way in the corporate world where you're probably a lot of pressure for the bottom line? And a desire to maximize and that you know, how did you deal with you know at scale?

I guess these dilemmas on a much larger scale.

Carly Fiorina: Well, I do think that the pressure to produce in a 90 day period has gotten overly intense in part because shareholders now hold shares for nanoseconds, not years. So I do think that is not necessarily a positive development and you see it when corporations cut corners, for the short term.

 However, I think there is no long term without a short term, and without the long term, the short term isn't worth it. So it is a balance between short term and long term always.

However, I think that you need to have a vision of what are the things we need to do in the long term while we are producing in the short term. As a example of strategic patience, when I arrived at Hewlett Packard, it was very clear that the industry was consolidating. It was very clear that we did not have all the assets we needed in house to lead in a changing industry.

It was also clear that we weren't ready to take on some of the things we would need to do yet. And so we had to build capacity, build confidence, rebuild some of our capability for several years before we were able, for example, to take on the largest acquisition in the technology industry.

I knew six months after I arrived that we would probably get there, but I also knew we couldn't get there yet.

Patrick Spero: I want to ask you a little bit more about that great. process by which change can happen that you sketched out with change allies and warriors helping convince skeptics, your own performance helping convince skeptics.

What about that third group, the naysayers, as a leader, how do you think about the naysayers if at all?

Carly Fiorina: So let me distinguish between naysayers and resistors. I would say in my experience, maybe 20 percent of the people are dug- in resistors. They may be resistors because they kind of like the way things are.

They've been successful in the status quo. They don't see a need for change because they're doing just fine and most people are focused on their own self interest. It doesn't make them bad, makes them human. Naysayers are people who might say all a bunch of negative things, but actually they're skeptics.

They could be convinced. Resistors on the other hand, frequently say all the right things. They're really good at working the system. That's why they've been successful in the system. And so a lot of times a resistor will say, "oh yes, I'm with you. Oh yes, I think this is a great idea. Oh yes, I'll help you."

But they don't really mean it. Resistors have to be figured out over time. my advice to leaders, once you know who a resistor is, you're not going to convince them. I think leaders spend way too much time trying to convince resistors. It won't work. The resistors are there. They're going to stay there.

Spend your time on the skeptics and convincing them.

Patrick Spero: That's great. So, I want to move ahead in your career a little bit more, to talk about Lucent, technologies, which was just a transformative, piece of technology. Business of which, you've played a number of different roles, at, before moving on to HP. Could you take us to the 1990s and talk about this era of tremendous change, both the ways in which business and technology were changing American society, but we're also changing the way that we did business.

And, I want to talk about your role, but for a lot of listeners, can you tell us a little bit about what Lucent does? Cause it's a little, behind the scenes, I guess you might say.

Carly Fiorina: Yes. Well, Lucent, as a standalone company is no more, it was acquired ultimately. Long after I left, but at the time, AT&T had a manufacturing arm called Western Electric and it had, Bell Laboratories. At a certain point, it became clear that strategically the, telecommunications network thing, the wireless networks or the old long distance phones, most of your listeners probably don't even know what those are anymore, but. It was clear that that strategically was a business going in a different direction.

So Lucent Technologies became a spinoff of this manufacturing research and development product arm. At the time, it was the largest initial public offering in history. it was sort of this huge, novel event. On Wall Street that something this large would get spun out and my job was to lead that spin out and to position strategically this set of assets and of course we had to look to the future and so it really was all about how is technology changing the way we live and work.

That was at the very beginning of the Internet. It was at the beginning of the Dot Com boom when all this was first, imagined. And of course, by the time we got through that initial public offering, the Dot Com boom was in full flower. It was followed by the Dot Com bust. But what I said in about 2002, jumping ahead slightly, is that we were at the beginning of a technology transformation where physical and everything analog, would become digital, mobile, virtual, and personal.

And of course we are still living through that era. Artificial intelligence is the latest instantiation of that. But we ought to, as human beings, understand that literally everything physical and analog, will become digital, mobile, virtual, and personal. so it's not just about companies understanding how to make the most of that transformation.

It's very important that historic institutions understand it as well. That people who possess lots of primary source material-- like this wonderful library, like the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation that I have the privilege to chair-- we, who care about history, to think very carefully about how do we harness this technology and preserve our history, our primary source materials, recognizing that everything physical and analog will become digital, mobile, virtual, and personal.

So how do we protect and preserve who we are, where we come from, our primary source material in this era?

Patrick Spero: That is something that we're doing here, which is trying to digitize and make available Our material so that anybody anywhere in the world can access it and learn more about our past and who we are and how we got to where we are today.

And in a few weeks, we're gonna be hosting this remarkable project that Shenandoah University is putting together in which they have created a virtual reality experience of the Constitutional Convention. I got to test a beta of it. It was my first time doing virtual reality. I went in there a skeptic, and I came out a believer, so much so that I bought a headset for my kids at home, because I saw this is going to be the future. And I sat there in Independence Hall with Benjamin Franklin on my left. It was, and to then to hear these conversations firsthand, it is going to be transformative.

Carly Fiorina: Yes. And it can be very scary because it can also distort, both present and past reality and really scary ways, but that project is such a great example of how to use a transformative trend to your advantage. What does that have to do with Lucent Technologies and HP? The connection is that change always happens.

It happens all around us. The most successful leaders, the most successful institutions are those that figure out, how do I harness this change? How do I leverage this change? How do I? not stick my head in the sand and be afraid of the change, but instead say, let me use it for good, remembering what my core principles are, my core values are, my core assets are, how do I harness change?

That's what successful leaders do.

Patrick Spero: I want, I think this came to mind when I heard you, talking about your vision of the future that you talked about in the early 2000s as a manager of people and ultimately, you know, the CEO of a corporation, how did this technological change affect your ability to manage and lead in ways, maybe positive, but also maybe negative.

Carly Fiorina: Yes. , so let's talk about the positive. On the one hand, a transformative set of changes can give you the opportunity to reclaim leadership where you have lost it. So when I arrived at Hewlett Packard, it was formally a leader that had fallen behind. It had lost its mojo, so to speak, but really it had lost its, leadership position in many important ways.

This technology transformation gave us an opportunity to reclaim that if we harnessed it, leveraged it, used it wisely. On the negative side, what I learned personally, and it still happens today, is that the tools of, say, email at the time, social media had not yet been invented. But even, you know, employee chat boards and email allowed people to comment about everything. And what I learned is negative commentary always outweighs positive commentary. And, when people can comment, Anonymously, it can be incredibly disruptive and of course we've seen this now, most people if they are feeling okay, won't comment. If they're feeling angry, hostile, resentful, they tend to comment more and when you can just throw it out there with no consequence, it can be incredibly disruptive and I saw that firsthand and of course we now see that on steroids every day.

Patrick Spero: Is there any way to manage it?

Carly Fiorina: Well, I think number one perspective is important and I have to say perspective is a very important quality in leadership. It is undervalued and underestimated and it is so easy to lose. What is perspective? Perspective is the ability to know. That not everything happening right in front of you is everything that's happening in the world.

And I think part of our problem, certainly part of young people's problem today, is they don't have perspective. So they think whatever's going on in their social media feed right in front of them is the whole world. And it's not. And when you lose perspective, you lose your ability to make sound decisions.

When you lose perspective, you lose your equilibrium. When you lose perspective, you end up thinking that something is important when actually it's not important at all. And you end up missing this hugely important thing that may be right outside in your peripheral vision. But you've missed how critical it's going to be.

Patrick Spero: So HP, you mentioned becoming the CEO of HP. What was that like to be offered the job?

Carly Fiorina: I wasn't looking for the job at all. I, one of the pieces of advice I give people all the time, and it's the way I've lived my life, is.

Don't look for the next job. Do the job you have to the best of your ability. If you do it well, opportunities will knock. It's always how I've lived my life because I never expected the next job. I was just doing the job I had. I give people that advice because I see so many people squander their potential because they're so focused on the next thing.

They're so focused on getting ahead that they kind of blow the opportunity that they have right in front of them. You know, George Washington knew, not that I'm comparing myself to George Washington, but you better fight the battle you got in front of you today before you go worry about the next one.

So, I was not looking for the job, bottom line, and I got a call, late at night. I was in my office. I answered my own phone from a headhunter, and he said, don't hang up, don't hang up. And he actually had been calling for weeks and my, assistant kept saying, this guy wants to talk to you. I said, no, I don't want to talk to him.

Anyway, he said, don't hang up, don't hang up. It's about eight. So I didn't hang up. And, because it was a storied company and a legendary company and the origin of Silicon Valley and, you know, who wouldn't want to listen? It was a lengthy process. I must say when I was offered the job, I was, still surprised.

I did a lot of homework before I accepted, and so I guess what I would say is, it was sobering to be offered the job because I knew what, as much as you could know from the outside looking in, what was really going on. I knew it would be an incredibly difficult, transformative role. I was hired as a change agent and I know how hard that can be.

I'd been in big companies for a long time by then, and I knew because I was different, it would be even harder. I was the first outsider. I was the first non- engineer. I didn't come from the computer industry, and I was the first woman beside. And all those differences were going to make it even harder.

Patrick Spero: Wow. I actually had not realized all the first that you were at that. So how did you confront that? I mean, I was going to ask you about what it was like to be, the first woman CEO. You talked about your first career at AT&T and how, you know, that you were one of the few women at AT&T at that time, and now you're at the head of the storied institution that has never had a woman as a leader.

But how did you deal with all, not just that, but all the other firsts that you had?

Carly Fiorina: You know, the first thing I did was not comment on them. Everybody else commented on them, but I didn't comment on them. I didn't talk about how I was different or the fact that I was the first. What I did do was make a very deliberate decision that I would not bring anyone with me.

That I would, in essence, signal to Hewlett Packard. that I had great confidence in the institution, that I had great confidence in the people of the institution and that I believe we had everything we needed to make the transformations that were required and that together we could make them. The second thing that I did was not get caught up in all of the discussion about my gender.

The media went crazy over it. And while certainly, I understood that it was a big step forward for women, and I was proud of that, not for myself, but for others. I also knew that if I got all hung up on that, that we would miss the opportunity for women and men at HP to say, "what are we going to do together?"

Sometimes that was hard because there was a lot of commentary on my clothes and my hair and what I looked like and crazy rumors float around because it is different when you're different. The third thing, more substantively, to your question what I did is I spent a lot of time, several months at first, not telling people what we had to do, but instead helping them discover a shared understanding of what we had to do.

And what that meant was I had customers talk to our executive team. I talked a lot to customers for months, I talked to customers, I videotaped customers. And I had customers talk to our senior team about what they saw. Not what I saw. What our customers saw. Because I knew our customers would be a more accepted advocate for the changes that were going to be required.

That was impactful to the senior team. That customers were saying you're too slow, you're too fat, you're falling behind, you're letting us down-- far more impactful than if I had said it as an outsider. The second thing I did is spend three days, which was a lot of time in the go-go nineties. It's a lot of time today.

I spent three days with the senior team. And together, we reviewed every asset we had at Hewlett Packard. Believe it or not, it had never been done before. So this was a senior team that had no shared understanding of what we had or who we were. At the end of all that, what we had together was a shared understanding of what our customers said wasn't working and what they needed us to do.

And then we could move forward.

Patrick Spero: I want to go back because when you were giving your answer about what it was like and all the commentary there surrounding you, did you feel like a lot of it was actually coming more from the outside than the inside?

Carly Fiorina: Yes, a lot of it was coming from the outside. I mean, I'll tell you just a funny story, actually. It's a different time now in some ways, but in others, not so much. My first business meeting at AT&T with clients was held in a strip club because that's where they went. Fast forward the first question that I was asked as a new CEO by the editor- in -chief of a major business publication was who had designed the outfit I was wearing.

That was the first question. Fast forward when I'm running for president in 2016, the first question after a pretty solid debate performance was, who had designed my shoes. So you know, it's different when you're different. And made the decision not to get all hung up by all that commentary, because you can really go down the drain.

Was some of the commentary from the inside? Yes, of course. Some of the commentary was the inside, because every institution is impacted by what's going on outside. So, for example, there was a rumor. It's funny, but it was frustrating at the time. There was a rumor that took on this life of its own that I had, installed a pink marble bathroom for my personal use somewhere in the executive building. This was completely fake news. This was completely false, but this rumor started internally, and it stuck around for several years.

That only happened because I was a woman.

Patrick Spero: So now to more substantive stuff, which is talking about the, what felt like a bloated old institution that had been high tech at one point, as you mentioned, I think it and Intel is really the founders of Silicon Valley. Great story about how you try to get alignment between using customers to help you align with the assets you had and how to connect them.

So can you tell us a little bit about what you did at HP to transform it?

Carly Fiorina: Yes. So let's start with, values and our core assets, because I think all change starts with what is at our core.

 Bill and Dave built Hewlett Packard in a garage and early on when the company was still very young and when it was still very small, Bill and Dave and a very small handful of executives sat down and developed a set of core values, which became known as the HP Way. Over time, the phrase, the HP Way, was used as shorthand, and it actually became a shield against change.

We don't do it this way. It's not the HP way. And so one of the first things I did was go strip away the phrase, the HP Way, and say, let's go look at what the core values actually are. One of the core values is "invention and innovation." One of the core values is "We serve customers first." One of the core values is "teamwork."

In other words, when we looked at those core values-- and I didn't do this on my own, I asked a group of employees who I thought were change warriors, "go look at our core values. And tell us, the rest of us, what they mean." When we looked at those core values, what anyone who was objective about it realized is we had strayed very far from those core values. We were no longer inventing. We were not innovative. Bureaucracy had taken over. So, in other words, I think all leaders have an opportunity to drive change by not saying everything's wrong, but by returning to what is it that at our core is most fundamental to us, most important to us.

Patrick Spero: So moving ahead, to when you have left HP and you're now running for public office the lessons you learned about change Do those apply to those in public office do you think?

Carly Fiorina: Right now at the national level sadly, no, and I say that because I maybe quite naively in some ways, I went into politics believing that it too is about problem solving.

And I think it is at some levels, and I think there are some public servants who are focused on problem solving. But I think what's happened in at least our national politics is it's not actually about problem solving, it's about performance, and in fact, problems are used to win. You know, I'm reminded of George Washington, not just because we're sitting in his library.

In fact, I quoted him often. George Washington, I'll paraphrase, but he basically said the trouble with political parties is they will come to care only about winning. And if all you care about is winning, then you actually don't want to solve the problem. You want to use the problem. So let's just talk about a problem that's been in the news for 30 years: immigration.

We've been talking about immigration as a problem for 30 years. It never gets solved, and it doesn't get solved, not because it can't be solved. It's because politicians use it. They use it to gin up their bases, they use it to win elections, and then they use it to blame each other. So, I think the strength of this country has never been in, what some politician does in Washington, D. C. Although we've had some greats. George Washington among them, although he wasn't in Washington, D. C., obviously. I think the strength of this country has always been in civil society. Alex de Tocqueville commented on that in the 1830s or thereabout. Civil society, citizens, at the grassroots level, deciding that change is required.

It's actually how all great movements for change have happened in this country. It's how the revolution happened. Didn't happen top down. It happened bottom up with some great leadership. It's how civil rights happened. It's how voting rights happened. It's how Women's Rights have happened. Change in this country doesn't come top down, lest we despair that Washington D. C. is completely dysfunctional. Yes, it is. But that doesn't mean problems can't get solved, and change can't happen. It means we as citizens have to lead where we are.

Patrick Spero: And how do you think we can improve it?

Carly Fiorina: I think that citizens encounter problems all the time, some of which they cannot solve, but many of which they can solve.

So if you have a citizen who goes on a school board to solve a problem, they're leading. I happen to believe that how we celebrate and commemorate our 250th anniversary, which is coming up in 2026, is going to have a lot to do with how we function as a country going forward. And so that's where I'm spending my time and energies along with many, many other fine citizens, leaders, and institutions such as your own.

So I think we have to run to the problem that we can have an impact on. One of the terrible, dilemmas of social media, I think, is it gives us the illusion that we can just sit back and comment on social media and we're doing something. You're not doing something if you're just commenting on what someone else is doing.

The only way to lead is to actually pick a problem that you understand, that you can have an impact on and, find some allies and start leading to try and solve the problem. Little by little, we make progress.

Patrick Spero: Yeah, I mean, I was thinking about your description about, you know, de Tocqueville and civil society and how important institutions are to helping society function.

That citizens need places to go to, to have conversations either on local level or state or national, regional. I want to ask, what do you see as the corporate responsibility to civil society today? Having been a CEO of a major company, but also senior leadership at some of the largest corporations in America, what is the corporate responsibility to civil society and how are corporations doing?

Well, let me say that a lot of corporate leaders are not going to agree with what I'm about to say, I believe that. A CEO has a balanced set of responsibilities to shareholders, of course, customers, employees, and the communities in which their employees live and work.

Carly Fiorina: Not everyone would agree with what I just said, but I do think that a corporation has a larger responsibility than to make as much money as possible in the current quarter. And I think when corporations ignore those other responsibilities over time, maybe not in the short term, but over time, they begin to erode the trust and the confidence of both their customers and their employees.

And that has consequences. I think corporations today are afraid of the political climate, and I understand why.

Because politics is poisonous right now and every issue gets turned into this hugely toxic conversation and I understand why boards and CEOs don't want to get into that. On the other hand, business is among one of the most trusted institutions in America still. And so employees look to their employers for guidance. So as an example of a role I think corporations and businesses of all sizes can play, I think business needs to be involved in how we commemorate our 250th.

I think if they just stand back and say it has nothing to do with us, they're being both short sighted and selfish. Because the greatest economy in the history of the world didn't happen by accident here. It happened here because things like intellectual property and private property were enshrined in the Constitution.

It happened here because we learned here that if you have a stake in your labor, you'll work harder. We learned here that entrepreneurial risk taking creates benefit going forward. And so, a system. has evolved here that tolerates risk taking, that permits failure as well as success. That's how the greatest economy in the world got built.

And so businesses owe something to the fact that they were founded here. It didn't just happen. I won't convince everyone that that is the case. I think there are still too many companies that will say, "no, no, no, our job is to, make the best result we can in a quarter." When they have taken a stand on issues, they've gotten their knuckles wrapped or perhaps worse.

But I think this is an opportunity to lean forward.

Patrick Spero: Do you think there's been a change in corporate sense of the responsibility from when you entered the workforce in the 1980s to today?

Carly Fiorina: I think corporate, responsibility goes through trends just like other things do I mean, I think there was the Milton Friedman school.

"No, no, no, it's just you know we owe our shareholders." That's it. Then there was an era of corporate social responsibility and ESG, and then of course that caused people to say corporations have become too woke in some circles. So I think it goes through, waves and trends. Why? Because businesses are part of the world.

Because they are a microcosm of the world around them, particularly a big corporation. Their customers, their employees represent everything that's going on out there. So you can't, pull up the moat and just stick to your knitting. You are part of the world.

Patrick Spero: So now I'd like to talk about history, and you'd mentioned your, role on the board of Colonial Williamsburg and also as the chair of the Virginia 250th commission. So what is your vision for 250?

Carly Fiorina: So I would say there are three things that we need to do, but let me start if I may, by talking about where I think we are.

I don't think we know why we're a nation anymore. This is the only nation in history not founded on territory, religion, ethnicity. It was founded instead on a set of principles, ideals, founding documents, and a system of government. That's it. The vast majority of Americans do not understand those things anymore.

49 percent of Americans say it doesn't matter whether you live in a democracy. About 80 percent can't name a single branch of government. They don't understand our past. They don't understand who we are.

And when that happens to us as a nation, then we lose our coherence as a nation. If I could use an analogy, At every family dinner, eventually, people start talking about the people that came before them. And the reason we all do that is because we know, as human beings, I need to understand who I am based on where I came from and who came before me.

And when we lose touch with that, we understand intuitively we're adrift. We can't face our future with confidence. I think that's where America is right now. I think we're losing touch with who we are and why we are a nation. And so I think the 250 is an incredibly important opportunity to educate Americans about who we are, who we all are, and where we all come from.

That's our first goal, to educate. I think we have to engage with Americans, every American, in every community. Every community, especially here in Virginia, has a story about who we are and where we come from. And we need to re- engage with all those communities.

It is citizens' role to form a more perfect union. We cannot look to some politician in Washington, D. C. It's not their job. It's our job. So those are big, lofty goals, but based upon the planning organizations that are all throughout Virginia, based upon the convening that I know Mount Vernon will be joining, of planning commissions across the country, great historic institutions that we will be hosting next week in Williamsburg.

I think it is a doable set of objectives. One more thing I've learned about leadership, if you aim high, you will get further. So yes, they are lofty goals, but I think lofty goals are required to achieve a lot, and I also think lofty goals are required to recover our sense of who we are as a nation.

Patrick Spero: The polls you cited show a level of disaffection, perhaps in American society and in the population. How do you hope to change that?

Carly Fiorina: So let's go all the way back to the beginning of our conversation. We have to identify the problem. And we have to find all the change allies and the change warriors that are out there.

The problem, we don't know who we are anymore. We don't have affection for our nation anymore, and we are not operating as citizens should within our nation.

The goal? To educate, to engage, and to re- inspire commitment, our fellow citizens. Who are our allies? Every historic institution in this country, starting with one of our most important, Mount Vernon. Every state planning commission of which there are now 50. In Virginia, there are 134 local planning commissions. In other words, there is an army of people out there who want to have an impact in 24, 25, 26.

And so our goal, our opportunity is to bind them together in common cause and worthy purpose, which is to say, let us remind Americans who we are, where we come from, and what our role as citizens must be going forward.

Patrick Spero: Do you want to share with us some of your plans for VA 250?

Carly Fiorina: Yes. So let me, everyone thinks about the 4th of July, right? So let me talk about three fourths of July that are coming up here in Virginia, but there's so much more. This 4th of July, we will have a huge celebration in Richmond. I know there will be 4th of July's all over, but of course it is also the anniversary of Patrick Henry's famous speech, "Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death."

And so what we are going to be talking about is what does freedom mean to all kinds of people, to all kinds of Americans, because the idea of liberty is intoxicating, it is leveling, it is unifying, it's something we all want. In 2025, we hope we will be here in Mount Vernon with ambassadors from around the world, because one of the things Americans don't understand and need to be inspired by is what this nation has meant to the world.

And finally, in 2026, I envisioned 4th of July celebrations going on all across this country, where it's not only naturalized citizens who are taking the oath of citizenship, but in fact, Americans are raising their right hand and also taking the oath of citizenship because that oath is powerful.

And to take that oath requires us to understand who we are, where we come from, and what our role as citizens is. We also have a mobile museum that will go to every single middle school in Virginia. If you want to know more, go to Va250. org. And I know here at Mount Vernon, you are planning amazing things as well, and we are privileged to be working with you.

Patrick Spero: Yeah. I can't wait for it to happen, and see all it does happen. So I wanted to end with a question that I ask, all of my, people that I've interviewed, who are some important role models for you, particularly, people that others may not know, but were influential for you.

Maybe it was an early manager. Maybe it was an inspiring CEO that you worked under, but who are some of the people that influenced you?

Carly Fiorina: So you know, I'm going to start very close to home. But honestly, my mother and father were both huge role models to me for different, but equally important reasons. My mother was a person of great courage.

Her mother died when she was 10. She grew up in a factory town in Ohio. She was very smart, but because she was a girl and her father married the proverbial evil stepmother, they told her, no, you can't go to college. And so she got on a bus. And she ran away at 18 after being the valedictorian of her high school and joined the Women's Air Corps in World War II.

An act of tremendous courage for a young girl, and she was courageous all her life. She wasn't highly educated. But she was courageous all her life, and I remember watching that and seeing that, and it had a profound impact on me. My father was a great intellectual, although he was not raised that way, but he was a great intellectual and what I remember most about him was he always stuck to his principles.

And sometimes sticking to our principles can be very uncomfortable. It can be unprofitable, it can be, detrimental in the short term, but he always stuck to his principles, and so those are two, huge examples to me. I'll use one other if I may, and not just because we're sitting here in his library, but you know, I think George Washington is known for many, many things, but I want to highlight two things that I think are perhaps underappreciated and that I think are critically important in leadership.

The first is George Washington was highly self aware. And what I mean by self aware is he was highly aware of the impact he did have on people and the impact he could have on people. And he considered that always. I don't say he was self- conscious. He was self aware. I look at some very famous supposed leaders today, and I think they're just completely un-self-aware.

But George Washington was highly self aware. And so he acted knowing that his actions would influence others. The other thing, of course, that I think is underappreciated in leadership is humility at the right time. George Washington had humility at the right time. He had the humility at the right time to step away from the presidency as an example.

He could have done anything he wanted at that point. And yet he had the humility to say, It is not about me. It is about something larger than me. I think humility is an incredibly important characteristic of leadership. And it is too rare in people with the title and the position.

Patrick Spero: That's fantastic. It actually reminds me of our crown jewel here at the Presidential Library, which are George Washington's Acts of Congress, which includes a copy of the Constitution. And it's notable because when you look at it, Washington marks where the president's supposed to act. So he's creating the office in real time, the first president.

But I always point out how much blank space there is, because as you mentioned, he could have made this office anything he wanted. He could have made it the creeping monarchy many people feared, but he showed restraint, and that's because he had humility, and those are two great lessons from Washington and some great lessons from your own parents that I hope we all can take with us going forward.

Carly Fiorina: I will say one other thing that your example shows, leaders do the work. They never wing it. They do the hard work. They study. You just showed me his surveying papers. He did the hard work. But I think sometimes everything is so easy on technology for us that we forget that it takes hard work. And so here he is. George Washington, he could have anything he wanted, he could do anything he wanted, and he is studying. He's studying. He's doing the work.

Patrick Spero: Well, thank you, Carly. This is fantastic.

Carly Fiorina: Thank you so much. It's been a great conversation.

Lindsay Chervinsky: As we wrap up this enlightening conversation with Carly Fiorina, it's clear that effective leadership is much more than a title. It's about making a difference, being a problem solver, and navigating change with both courage and empathy.

Fiorina's experiences from the early days of her career to her tenure in executive leadership offer a masterclass in confronting problems and building teams that drive results. Her insights around the significance of courage, adherence to principles, self awareness, and humility in effective leadership help us reflect on the leadership examples of George Washington.

We hope Carly's stories and advice inspire you as much as they have inspired us. Thank you for joining us on Leadership and Legacy, Conversations at the George Washington Presidential Library.

Next time, Dr. Spero sits down with two congressmen from across the aisle to uncover the role that service and sacrifice play in unifying constituencies and leading with accountability and integrity.

Steve Womack: I've got four qualities that I always try to emulate when faced in leadership decisions: duty, honor, courage, and service.

Lindsay Chervinsky: Leadership and Legacy, Conversations at the George Washington Presidential Library is a production of the Mount Vernon Ladies Association. This podcast is hosted by Dr. Patrick Spero and Dr. Lindsay Chervinsky. Our executive producers are Dr. Anne Fertig and Heather Soubra. We would like to thank today's guest, Carly Fiorina, for joining us.

To learn more about Washington's Leadership example or to find out how you can bring your team to the George Washington Presidential Library, go to www. gwleadershipinstitute.org. Or to find more great podcasts from Mount Vernon, go to www.georgewashingtonpodcast. com.