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Interview with Microsoft Board Member Sandra Peterson - YouTube
Channel: Microsoft
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>> Well, I'm in New York
today with Sandi Peterson.
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Group Worldwide Chairman for
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Johnson & Johnson and
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a member of the Microsoft
Board of Directors.
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So, Sandi thank
you for joining us.
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>> Oh, it's a great
pleasure. Thanks, Mike.
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>> Thank you. Your career has
been so incredibly diverse.
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You've spent time at
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major companies including
Johnson & Johnson,
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Bayer, Nabisco, and Whirlpool.
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I even understand you spent
a year working in Germany.
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Tell us a little bit
about this background.
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How did this all get started?
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>> I never planned
to work in business.
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I started out being
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a policy economics person
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who dabbled in
the humanities and the arts.
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And it was really quite
honestly, a fluke.
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I ended up right after college
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spending a year trading stocks
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on the American Stock Exchange,
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which was a fascinating
learning experience.
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And then I went to
graduate school and got
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a degree in public policy
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in Economics and Science policy.
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And I was very fortunate
during that time,
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I got to go live
and work in Germany.
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I worked in
the finance ministry,
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I did a bunch of
interesting things
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there and when I
finished graduate school,
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I joined McKinsey, and I was
one of their experiments.
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I was one of the first non-
MBA's who went to McKinsey.
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And I spent a number of years
there and I learned a lot,
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because I worked in
many very varied industries
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from computers,
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telecom, cookies and
crackers, jet engines.
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And I learned a lot
about you know,
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there's some fundamentals about
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business that are
interesting and you
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can take them from one place
to another and from that,
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it just launched me into being
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a business executive in
many different industries,
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in many different contexts.
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>> What an array Sandi.
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What was maybe the
earliest career lesson you
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think you picked up
and still take today?
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>> I think the most
important lesson I
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learned is
intellectual curiosity,
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agility of learning,
and relying on
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other people and figuring out
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how to get the best out of them.
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>> How does this
unique background,
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how does it fit
with or complement
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the other members of
the Microsoft board?
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>> So, as you well know,
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we have a terrific board
that's filled with people,
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some who've come out
and haven been in
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the technology world forever.
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People who've worked in finance,
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people have worked in lots of
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different parts of
industry around the globe.
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And I would say, I bring
a couple of things to the board.
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One is I'm a complete globalist.
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I've lived and worked and
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run businesses around the globe.
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So, I have great sensitivity
of how all of that works.
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I also would say I am one of
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the enterprise customers that
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Microsoft works with every day.
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So, I bring a sensibility
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to what enterprise
customers care about,
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what's most important to them,
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how to translate some of
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the amazing technology
that exists inside
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Microsoft and helping
make it more relevant
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to the productivity of people
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who work in companies
all over the world.
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>> And you've been
an independent director on
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the Microsoft board
since December of 2015.
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Can you tell us how were
you invited to first
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serve on the Microsoft board?
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>> Microsoft has a terrific
process of working with
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outside advisers to
figure out what's
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the right profile of a board
member to add to the mix.
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So, we're always looking
at the composition of
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the board and how to make it
most relevant going forward.
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And I was approached
by a recruiter,
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who was part of that process.
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I spent time with
board members on
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the Microsoft board in
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this process to decide whether
I was the right person,
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whether I had
the right experience,
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all those sorts of
things to join the board
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and it's been
a terrific experience.
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>> That's great.
For those of us that
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don't know what a board of
directors meeting is like.
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Can you tell us what happens
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inside the Microsoft meeting?
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>> So, I would say couple
of things about the role of
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a board member and
I think it's one of
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the things that makes
Microsoft a terrific place.
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Not only is it important what
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happens inside
the board meeting,
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but it also is
very important what
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the interactions are outside
of the board meeting.
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So, it's a very
open environment.
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We have a lot of
interaction with
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individuals inside the company
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either because we're asked,
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"Can you help this team,
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because you have some experience
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and come spend time with them?"
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and vice versa.
When we have an idea
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of something that we
think might be important,
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it's a very open environment
where we can come and share
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our knowledge expertise with
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individual members or groups of
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people inside the company.
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So, I think that's
as important as what
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happens in the board
meeting itself.
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But what happens in the board
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meeting is a couple of things.
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One is we have
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governance things that
we need to attend to,
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whether it's compensation,
audit, regulatory,
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financial matters
that are part of
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our committee structure and
so their committee meetings
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where there's
a subset of us that
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interacts with individuals in
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the Microsoft team and so
that's part of the process.
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And then, we have
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the meeting time is
a full board meeting,
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where we talk about
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the most important things
in the company,
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whether it's strategy, people,
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talent development, priorities.
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And it's a very open dialogue.
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The thing it's great about
the Microsoft board is it's
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light on PowerPoint
presentation and it's heavy
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on bringing issues forward
or things that the team
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is thinking about and
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seeking our advice,
seeking our input.
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And because of how
this board works,
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there's a lot of playoff
between different board members.
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It helps make it a much richer
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dialogue and a set
of conversations.
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And at the end of
the board meeting,
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there's clarity about, "Okay,
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these are decisions we made.
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These are things we'd
like some more follow up
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on in the next board
meeting" and "Oh,
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by the way, you know,
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I'd like you and you
to help this team do
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some work outside of the board
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contacts" and then come back
at the next board meeting.
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So, it's a very dynamic process.
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>> Sandi your experience in
health care runs very deep.
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As we turn
to tech, I guess,
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what surprised you most about
joining Microsoft's board?
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Perhaps the view of the company.
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>> So, I think one
of the things that
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surprised me the most
and I would tell you
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in a very positive way
and it's been a great part
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of my experience at Microsoft is
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that you know when Satya
was asked to become
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CEO and John Thompson took
over the chairmanship,
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clearly, that it was an
inflection point of the company.
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I joined the board
shortly thereafter.
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And how do you reinvigorate
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this company that has
a great history in technology?
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How do we make it
most relevant for
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the next generation of what's
happening in technology?
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And how do you get
the culture to be
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a vibrant exciting culture and
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the place where
everybody who works
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in technology wants to be?
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And so, one of
the things that's been
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a terrific positive
surprise for me
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is how the company and how
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the leadership has been able
to really make that happen.
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By really focusing on
a learning culture,
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focusing on there
are no stupid ideas.
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How do we get
this culture to be much
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more collaborative and open?
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And the thing that's been
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a great fun surprise for me
is watching what comes out
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of these labs and
the extent to which
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this company has
unbelievable technology depth.
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That it's really not an issue
of are they the best?
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It's really what choices
are they going to
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make to bring to
the market first.
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>> So Sandi, you've
been at the forefront of
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Johnson & Johnson's efforts to
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transform health care
through technology.
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What are some of
the most compelling developments
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you've seen in recent years?
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You know, what excites
you about that future?
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>> So, as you know I've
been in health care for
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a really long time and I
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lived through the era
of the dot.com,
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when the tech industry thought,
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"We can go figure
this out ourselves,
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we're going to disrupt
healthcare" and it didn't work.
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And it didn't work for
a couple of reasons.
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One is that healthcare
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is more complicated than
many other industries.
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There is the data to be
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able to really have
a big impact is
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locked in all sorts of
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old systems that exist
all over the place,
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whether it's
a doctor's office or
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in multiple different
hospital settings.
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And so, that is
a huge barrier to getting
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a seamless view of
the person who's
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a patient or somebody who's
just trying to stay well.
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And there are a couple
of things that
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have made a significant
difference in
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our ability to use technology
to transform healthcare.
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So obviously, the advent of
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the mobile phone and
mobile technology,
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where you now have access and
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interaction with people that's
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completely different
than it used to be,
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makes it a lot easier
to engage with people as
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consumers or patients or
doctors anywhere in the world.
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You also, with
the advent of cloud and
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technologies then it can pull
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data out of these old systems,
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put it in a data like
whether it's structured or
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unstructured and do
the analytics around it.
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It's a massive transformation
and what we are now
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able to do when it
comes to ingesting data,
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analyzing it, and
making it relevant back
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to the doctor or
back to the consumer.
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But you also need
a couple of other things.
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Obviously, the breakthroughs
we've had in biology,
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which have been
enabled by technology,
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quite honestly, have
made a big difference.
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But our knowledge of
behavior science and how you
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engage people. You know
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everybody knows they
should lose five pounds.
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Everybody knows they're
supposed to sleep.
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Everybody knows they're supposed
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to take their medication.
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Why don't they?
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And we've done a lot of work on
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the behavioral science
side and we know
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how to interact in
a very non-intrusive way.
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And so, we're really
at the forefront of
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being able to do
very different things
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now and using technology to
help transform healthcare.
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So, as we like to say at J&J,
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we want to be in
the well care business,
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not the sick care business,
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and we want to positively
impact billions of lives,
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every single day,
around the world.
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>> And Sandi you've been
vocal about the fact
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that the gender gap for
women in the workplace it
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still looms very large
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and you've been
successful at improving
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the number of women in
leadership roles at companies
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you've been involved with
like Johnson & Johnson.
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I'm wondering,
what is the key to
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sustaining that momentum,
moving forward?
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>> So, to me it's about
diversity of thought, experience.
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It's not just about women,
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although that's really
really important.
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I've always believed
that you need to reflect
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the customers that you serve in
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the world in which you
live it, and you don't,
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I mean it's a smart
business thing to do.
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There's been
a million studies done
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that say that if you have
diversity of thought,
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experience trying
to solve a problem,
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you're going to do
a much better job solving
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that problem by having that kind
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of diversity in the world.
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And so, I've always been
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a huge advocate of making
sure that that happens.
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But you have to
remember you know
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business people are trained
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to deliver results
based on metrics.
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So just saying it,
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doesn't make it happen.
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You actually have to
hold people accountable
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and you have to do all the
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right things to make it happen.
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So, you've got to
put teeth behind it,
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but you also have to do
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all those things around
sponsorship, mentorship.
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We do a lot of work and a lot
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of people at J&J are
very enthusiastic
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about helping women early in
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their lives and it's something
Microsoft does as well.
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How do we get women to want
to do the quote unquote "hard
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sciences" and keep them in
those disciplines over time?
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So, there's a lot
that you do with
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the early stages of
people's careers,
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but it's really not that hard,
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it's no harder than,
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"Am I going to make my top
and bottom line number?"
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You just have to make it a
priority and make it work.
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And the thing that's so
much fun for me to see is
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these women who take on
these great leadership roles,
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what they're able to do
and the engagement level of
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their teams is through
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the roof and it's just
really exciting to see.
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>> Well, maybe to
close then Sandi,
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when you're not
in the boardroom,
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how do you like to
spend your time?
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>> So, I spend my time
lots of different ways.
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I'm obviously, you can tell it,
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intellectually curious person.
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So, I love to read.
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I love to be
engaged in the arts,
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because I think it's
important to always
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have other stimulus and
things to think about.
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I'm also one of
these people who believes
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that you need to sort of
take care of yourself.
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So, I'm a big proponent
of working out
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in some way shape or
form every single day,
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because it's good for
your energy level,
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your resilience to be able
to do what you do every day.
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And I'm also very fortunate
that I have two adult sons,
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who are terrific, who
keep me real everyday and
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also teach me every day what
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the next generation cares about.
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>> Sandi, thank you so much.
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It's been a real
privilege for us.
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Thanks for joining
us. Sandi Peterson,
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Microsoft Board of
Directors. Thank you.
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>> Thank you, Mike.
It's been great fun.
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