Kathy Murphy is widely regarded as one of the most powerful women in business and has served as the inspiring President of Personal Investing at Fidelity Investments. She joins us as she prepares to step-down from her post to share her wisdom and insight in an adventurous talk that hits on many significant topics.
Kathy Murphy is widely regarded as one of the most powerful women in business and has served as the inspiring President of Personal Investing at Fidelity Investments. She joins us as she prepares to step-down from her post to share her wisdom and insight in an adventurous talk that hits on many significant topics.
Erol Senel:
Hello everyone, and welcome to Success Shorts. I'm Erol Senel. Today we have a very special guest. Kathy Murphy is widely regarded as one of the most powerful women in business and has served as the inspiring president of Fidelity Investments, personal investing unit, for the past 12 years. And during this time, she's led a period of growth and positive cultural change that has been the envy of an entire industry.
Now, earlier this year, Kathy announced that she'll be retiring so I took a leap of faith and I invited her on. That's because I've always wanted to have the chance to speak with her. And my hope is that when we're done, that you feel like you've had the chance to do so, too. So I hope you enjoy our time with Kathy Murphy. Let's go. Kathy, it's a privilege to have you join us.
Kathy Murphy:
Oh my gosh. It's my privilege to be here. I've been looking forward to this conversation.
Erol Senel:
Well, that's something to hear. I've wanted to talk to you for quite a while because you've always been like this beacon of inspiration, for not only the folks that work at Fidelity, but for many professionals across a lot of different industries. So this is definitely going to be special. But when you announced that you're retiring, I just figured I had to get on my horse and try to make this happen. Otherwise, I feel like I would have really missed out on a golden opportunity. But before we get into your story and insight, I just wanted to take a few minutes to focus on you as a person. So I'm going to start with a very easy question.
Kathy Murphy:
Okay.
Erol Senel:
Who is Kathy Murphy?
Kathy Murphy:
Oh gosh. Who's Kathy Murphy? Okay. So I'm a mom, I'm a wife. I'm a sibling of five brothers and sisters, so one of six kids. And I'm a lawyer by training who came to the business world, sort of mid-career. I was a lawyer in a corporation, but then made the switch to business a little bit later in my career after being a general counsel, chief administrative officer, et cetera. And in terms of who I am more broadly, I love sports, like to have a good time. People call me fairly competitive, I don't know about that, but I think I do like to win, it's a lot more fun than the alternative.
Erol Senel:
Thanks for sharing that. And I'm sure that competitive part has probably played a pretty big role for where we've ended up during your time here, so that definitely has come through. And you joined Fidelity back in 2009 and for those who don't remember what was going on, 2009 was a very uneventful year. Just kidding. We were actually coming out of a pretty severe financial crisis. And since then you've led the personal investment side of Fidelity through a period of just staggering growth. And I'm blown away thinking about that period and not just in terms of business, but also how much Fidelity has grown up as a culture. It's been amazing to witness.
Erol Senel:
And now here we are coming out of the pandemic. So between these two crisises, you definitely know how to make an entrance and an exit. Now that we're going to get into things I'd like to start by asking a pretty big question and having heard you speak many times before, I know that you're quite humble when asked certain things, but I'd like you to kind of put that aside for just a moment, because I'd like to know why do you think you've been so successful?
Kathy Murphy:
First and foremost is, and I really do believe this, as somebody, one of six kids, I played sports my whole life, I really do fundamentally believe that you are only as good as the teams that you're on, and the teammate that you become. And so as a teammate and as a leader of teams, it's really important to surround yourself, not only with great talent, but talent that can collaborate and find a purpose bigger than themselves. Really focus on, what can I do that's bigger than us, that we all want to be part of? That's been the core of success that I've had. And I will also tell you personally, I get a lot of energy from being part of a team. It's very, very gratifying to me to be part of a bigger group that's looking to push boundaries and achieve excellence. So to me, that's category number one and maybe two.
Kathy Murphy:
Beyond that, in terms of personal characteristics, I would say, and my son just graduated from high school, and so I was giving him a little bit of this in terms of insights as he's going to go off to college which is, your time is your most valuable asset. And so if it's worth your time, it's worth doing really well. Be choiceful about how you spend your time, but then have a high bar of excellence. And so I've always wanted to be part of a group and part of an effort where we're not just sort of putting in the work, we're saying, "Let's take it to the next level." Like, "If we're going to spend the time on it, let's blaze new trails. Let's see what's possible. Let's help more people."
Kathy Murphy:
And as part of that, not none of us have this all the time, but I think another sort of personal attribute is have a positive attitude. Was it Colin Powell that said "Optimism is a force multiplier"? Whether it's in terms of generating energy from your team or generating energy for ideas, being positive as you push boundaries and achieve more than you ever thought possible is really very fulfilling.
Erol Senel:
I want to stick with the whole topic of teams for just a second. We live in a pretty individualistic society, and although I felt more of a team or collective mentality approach kind of emerging over the past decade or so. But when you think about how you've been able to focus on teams throughout your career, where do you think that initially came from for you?
Kathy Murphy:
For me, I think it was playing sports. But it doesn't have to be sports, it could be... Another great example is music. I'm not musically inclined but you think about an orchestra, it doesn't work unless everyone's in tune together, in sync in creating something beautiful together. And I will tell you is, these books, which probably very few of your listeners will know because I'm frankly too old, but I will share them with you anyway. When I was growing up, I had an older brother who read a couple of books that had a big impact on me. And then one that I read myself. And the three books were, Instant Replay, by a guy named Jerry Kramer who was an offensive guard for the Packers and played for Vince Lombardi. And he diaried a season of the Packers the year that I think they won the Ice Bowl.
Kathy Murphy:
Vince Lombardi wasn't perfect, but he did instill this essence of teamwork and excellence at the core of not just sports, but life. So the quote that I took from that book was, and has nothing to do with sports, "The quality of a person's life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence." Quality of your whole life. You are given talents, God-given talents, what are you going to do with those? Fulfilling your potential has always been sort of my focus as a leader. So, one was that. Another was a book by Gale Sayers, a running back for the Chicago Bears. The name of the book was, I Am Third. God is first, my family is second and I am third. And he also talked about his journey, but a journey with faith and family and that pursuit of excellence.
Kathy Murphy:
And then the third one, and maybe I'll say four, the third and fourth had nothing to do with football. And that was, Little Women by Louisa May Alcott and Nancy Drew. And those were strong woman role models that were doing things that women weren't supposed to be doing in their eras. And so those are the things that kind of have motivated and stuck with me since I was a little kid.
Erol Senel:
I love that. Some really powerful personalities to pull from, no question. And I was kind of surprised to hear you put some fictional characters in the fray as well, which I think is very telling about society and decades past when you're thinking about the role models that the young woman had to pull from. But that whole concept of living with intent and purpose and kind of just going at it to pursue the greater things, that's really within all of our grasps.
Kathy Murphy:
And I think people want it, right?
Erol Senel:
Definitely. But you kind of have to choose to do it.
Kathy Murphy:
Yeah. Well, you and I happen to be in a business that can and should make a massive impact in the lives of millions of people. So in personal investing at Fidelity, we actually went through an exercise, gosh, seven, eight years ago to say, let's actually articulate our common purpose and go through an exercise with thousands of people to get their ideas about what the values and behaviors we expect, but what is that common purpose? And what we came away with was that our common purpose, the reason we're here working so hard together is that we inspire the better futures of the millions of clients who were privileged to serve every day with one of the most important aspects of their lives, their family's financial future.
Kathy Murphy:
And as I went across the country talking with groups of employees about that, one of our employees looked at me and said. He says, "I have an even more succinct way of describing that." He said, "We're in the dream-making business. We make dreams come true for people that count on us." And like, how awesome is that? It's not easy every day, and not every day feels like you're making a dream for somebody, but at our core, that's what we do regardless of what the job you have in personal investing. Whether you're a lawyer in compliance, you're customer-facing, you're serving someone in our branches, you're in technology, we come together to help millions of people with their families' future.
Erol Senel:
The way you just described that last part. Oh, I've always kind of thought about Fidelity as a person in some ways. Kind of like an amalgamation of all the different employees and leaders that work there, and all the intents that go into the things that are done regularly, then to hear you laying on the values and purpose. Like if you just take a step back, a corporation can be a person. And we're part of this greater system that's trying to do greater good. And I do think that we're starting to see that more and more with other corporations as well, but yeah.
Kathy Murphy:
Well, and by the way, when we were redesigning our branches to have them be more welcoming and more accessible to the broader range of clients we serve and not to sort of be that traditional alpha male type of firm, and as we were examining all aspects of our experience for our clients in our branches, the thought occurred to us, our very name, Fidelity. The definition of fidelity is loyalty to somebody about something important. And so we now put the definition of Fidelity in all of our branches.
Erol Senel:
I guess it's been a little bit since I've actually been in one of the branches, but it is nice to know that we do that because it does carry so much gravity, the name and the word fidelity. And I think that should come out in whatever anyone's trying to pursue in their own lives. The power of intense and identifying a true north to direct all that energy towards, it's just such a game changer if you can do that. Now, I want to pivot just for a moment, because I know that it hasn't always been rainbows and butterflies in your career.
Kathy Murphy:
No.
Erol Senel:
And I also think that those times when things are difficult is where we really kind of learn who we are and also kind of push ourselves to those next levels.
Kathy Murphy:
Yeah.
Erol Senel:
So I'm wondering if there's been any of those kinds of memorable instances where you've, quote unquote, failed either as a leader with an idea or whatever it was. And how were you able to flip that into some kind of greater good that couldn't have been experienced without going through that hardship?
Kathy Murphy:
Well, I like to say when I get asked the question, "Can you talk about your failures?" I say, "The list is long and impressive." So because I guess, I think you're defined by what you learned from your failures as much as from the success itself, and a failure helps drive success. I'll give you an example from my prior firm, which I actually was very mindful of as I tried to do something at Fidelity. I was running wealth management for a large organization, and I had this idea that I thought we could really, again, push the boundaries of our growth and how we serve people by fundamentally organizing the business differently and putting things in different places and asking my leadership team in the first instance, and then the broader organization to adopt that mindset. And we had a series of meetings and I got the head nods. Some of them weren't wild about it, but I thought people were on board. And so we did it.
Kathy Murphy:
And then I found out afterwards the head nods were not really enthusiastic support, it was basically a passive aggressive way of saying, "Not so much on board." And so when I realized that not all of them were totally on board, and that was reflected in how it showed up in their teams, it didn't work. I'm like, oh my gosh, that is a huge learning. I thought we were there, but we weren't. And that's my fault that I didn't press harder to get underneath some of the concerns. And so fast forward to Fidelity, when we did our most recent and gigantic transformation of our business in terms of running the full business in an agile, digitally oriented way, I made sure that we had whatever the candid conversations we needed as a leadership team and we kept pushing to see, even if you weren't aligned, would you get on board? And there was some tough sessions over a couple of months.
Kathy Murphy:
And there was a moment where we went to see what this could look like based on a company in Europe that had done it, and they saw the power of it. And I still remember the conference room we were in, in Europe, where everyone said, "Look, I don't know if I'm going to have a job at the end of this transformation or what my job will be, but I'm in." And we had this... The symbolism was, everyone put their Fidelity ID badge in the middle of the table and said, "It's a badge in the middle of the table moment. I'm in, regardless of what it means for me." That was so because as you know, that transformation was not for the faint-hearted.
Erol Senel:
It definitely wasn't. I mean, you think about how conservative the financial industry is, and culture is in many ways. The stereotypes there for a reason. And to think about that transition, to make more of a technology-based mindset, that it's following the agile model and hopefully allows for quicker pivots and development and all that, it's so counter to what's been there. But the past few years of going through it has been so exciting at the same time. But to your point, when it comes to an organization or even smaller groups, you have your ideas and you see things that are going well, and then you might think, "Oh, I see something that we could be doing even better." You really have to remember that there's so many people that are bought into the way that things are going right now, especially if they're going well.
Kathy Murphy:
Right.
Erol Senel:
That really is pushing for better, actually intrinsically better. The passion's wonderful, there's no questioning that, but there's so many people with skin in the game that you have to be empathetic to what they've gone through before you ask for more.
Kathy Murphy:
Right.
Erol Senel:
That's a big one. And I just want to thank you for sharing that because I think people need to really keep that more to the front of their mind, not just with work, but also with some of the things that are going on with society as well.
Kathy Murphy:
Yeah.
Erol Senel:
So as I was mentioning earlier, you came to Fidelity, an organization that has tens of thousands of employees in a bunch of different countries. I don't know, how many are we in for personal investing? Like five, six?
Kathy Murphy:
So, personal investing in terms of our employee base, we're in... Let's see, one, two... Yeah. We're in probably five at this point.
Erol Senel:
About five countries, tens of thousands of people, and somehow you as a leader, you've been able to humanize all of them to the point that when you made an announcement that you're going to be retiring, many people's hearts just dropped. So I'm wondering, how were you able to create an environment where so many people feel like they have a relationship with you even though not that many likely spent all that much time with you personally?
Kathy Murphy:
Well, thank you for that. And I don't know for sure, but I'll tell you, I care an awful lot about our people. I talked about working with a team that energizes me, going out and meeting our people and understanding what I can do to make their jobs better, easier, to me, that's the best part of my job. So as I traveled the country and I traveled the world, meeting our employees, it was always about our common purpose, the aspirations of achieving our collective and individual full potential, and what could I do, as a leader whose single most important responsibility is just to help our people achieve their full potential, what could I do to make their lives easier or make them better contributors? And I think people appreciate it when you care. And I think they knew, I wasn't always right, I make mistakes, but fundamentally people knew I cared about them and the PI organization.
Kathy Murphy:
And our common bond was, we all cared about the clients we serve. So I think that was a big piece of it. And then the second thing is, I think, as a leader people did not always love what I said and didn't love to see me coming, because I'd asked an awful lot of them. But what I've learned over time is, if you are a leader that doesn't have big goals, that success is defined much more incrementally, your people see that too and they don't get as energized. I think really good talented people want to be challenged. And then when they hit those peaks, they feel really rewarded. And so I think that that kind of bonded us together too.
Erol Senel:
Evolutionarily, once we get beyond a certain number of people in a group, we go from being a collective of people and we need something more to believe in.
Kathy Murphy:
Yeah.
Erol Senel:
And I think that's really where the culture and persona of personal investing and Fidelity Investments in general, that you and Abby and everyone has worked so hard to foster here really comes into play. And I think that's allowed for many to buy into and feel even closer than we may actually be when it comes to the relationship with you. And that really speaks to the way that you're leading and the effectiveness of your message. So that's just awesome. But even with all this goodness that I'm just spouting, I'm curious, what does it feel like to know that you're breaking 20,000 people's hearts?
Kathy Murphy:
So, I told my boss, Abby Johnson, about my plans back in January of 2020, so well before the pandemic. And neither one of us knew a pandemic was about to hit. And so it became the issue not to speak of for a whole year, which is fine. But the motivation for me was, first and foremost, I was not going to say anything to anybody, including my boss until I was highly confident that our transformation in PI was deeply embedded, number one, and that we were on a sustained and accelerating growth path. And as you know, we've had record results for the last nine years now, and I wanted to make sure that not only was that continuing, but that it was accelerating and then the trajectory was even better because of all the hard work we had done. So I felt like, number one, I was leaving the business and our colleagues in a good place.
Kathy Murphy:
And I frankly thought, in light of all we had done together, you didn't need me as much. Because there's always going to be new challenges and new opportunities, but the whole point of our transformation was to change how we think about running the business and how powerful our team is. And it's not as important who the leader is, it's important who the people are on the team and how they work together. So all that being said, I am going to continue to be one of your most energizing and active clients. And I did have to warn people that I will provide feedback on a regular basis.
Erol Senel:
Please do.
Kathy Murphy:
Yeah.
Erol Senel:
But I need to ask, why now?
Kathy Murphy:
I've shared with people that, my dad died unexpectedly of a heart attack at 57, leaving six kids and a wife. And I saw what that did to my family, but I also kind of made a mental note that life is short. And I think each of my siblings, once we reach 57, we kind of do a mental check-in and even joke with each other about, "Okay, 57. Now what? You may not have much time left." And so I said, if I can retire at that age, basically it's a short life in a big world. And so go explore some other adventures. As long as my conscience was clear about how I was leaving PI.
Erol Senel:
So what are those next adventures?
Kathy Murphy:
I haven't had much time to think about them specifically because I'm still here and probably will be for several more months. But I would say that I put them into four or so categories. One is, more fun with family. Second is, more fresh air and sunshine. Work really hard and this pandemic has shown the value of sort of just getting outside and exploring the world a little more, particularly when you can't. Third is, early on in my career, I could do a lot more sort of hands-on in terms of charitable work, where you actually were rolling up your sleeves, helping people directly. And as my job got bigger and I had to travel more, it's sort of like you give more checks than you give your time. And so I want to give back instead of just giving checks. I really do want to help people in different ways and I've got some areas of interests like helping children who I think are our most vulnerable and they have... You want to give children the brightest chance for a better future.
Kathy Murphy:
And then the last category is just to keep the intellectual muscles working, maybe serve on some corporate boards or some startups where I can help coach them, outside of financial services. Just do something to give back to industries that I think have with it a lot of good purpose and promise.
Erol Senel:
That all sounds really exciting. So we're definitely, good luck with all that.
Kathy Murphy:
Thank you.
Erol Senel:
Now I do want to hit on one, maybe a little bit more of a serious topic for a moment, because you are at the pinnacle when it comes to powerful woman in business. And as you mentioned, you started out your career as a lawyer, and then you work to general counsel and then CEO of wealth management over at ING. Then you come to run personal investing at Fidelity. Now everything that I just listed off has really been in a traditionally male dominated environment. So with all that in the backdrop, how have you been able to, for one, overcome some of those headwinds, but also how have seen some of those headwinds evolve over the years and what are some of the areas that we still need to pay attention to so that the next Kathy Murphy that comes along has a better chance to leave their impact?
Kathy Murphy:
Yeah. It's a great question. In terms of me personally, I feel fortunate that I benefited from some really good bosses and informal mentors. These are people, I didn't have like a formal mentoring relationship with them, but they reached down and helped me when they didn't have to. And that's a sort of a pay it forward concept. I think all of us have an obligation to do that. But I will say that certainly in this industry, whether it's here or 20 years ago, there's no question that there's bias built in lots of different ways, whether it's gender or ethnicity or sexual orientation or disability. And I try and focus on what I can control. Control my destiny as much as I can. And one of the things I focused on after I got my first big business role, as opposed to being in the legal side...
Kathy Murphy:
So first of all, just as a little background on this first big business role, I was at a company with 150,000 employees worldwide. The top 200 were asked to get together every year for a leadership conference. So the top 200 of 150,000. And I remember the first year I went, there were seven women out of 200. I'm like, "Okay, Alrighty here."
Erol Senel:
Wow.
Kathy Murphy:
And you note it. All right, you note it. You can't influence or impact everything, but what I did notice over time is that the leadership of the company cared most about what I called points on the scoreboard. What they cared most about was the success of the company.
Kathy Murphy:
So I just became determined to say, I'm going to drown out some of the atmospherics and run my business in a way that contributed very positively to those points on the scoreboard. And you can get distracted by a lot of other things. And I found by doing that, it helped give me a compass, but it also allowed me not to dwell too much on things that I couldn't control, but that could bother me. It doesn't work for everybody and I will say, so in my case, there was one instance in my career where I had a boss that I just could not work for. I questioned his values. And so I left that, but otherwise I have not had bosses that gave me fundamental concern. If you do, that becomes a much different issue than what I was talking about in running my business, and that's harder. That's harder, it's more pervasive, it's endemic to bad culture. And too many people suffer from that. Whether it's, again, women or people of color or people with any kind of concern about are they accepted?
Kathy Murphy:
All right. So where are we and where we go from here? I will tell you that, I remember as a young lawyer in the late '80s, early '90s, the company I was with at the time, Aetna, which has changed dramatically since then, was really at the leadership of embracing multicultural marketing, embracing flexible work schedules, including for women, really thinking about women's careers differently. And I loved that. I participated in some of that and I ran multicultural business areas, et cetera. What is amazing to me is, if you fast forward from the late '80s, early '90s, to now, 2021 very little has fundamentally changed. And that is a gigantic issue for corporate America and for society at large. We are talking about the same issues I remember talking about back then. And I think we have to ask ourselves fundamentally, why can't we make more progress here?
Kathy Murphy:
How do we redouble our efforts and do some things differently to get a different result. For me at the core of diversity and inclusion, I'm going to come back to a broader fundamental point I made, diversity and inclusion to me is fundamentally about people feeling comfortable at the place they work to achieve their full potential. And when you feel like there's a culture that does not fully accept you, or that does not allow you to bring your full self to work, or you come into an environment where there's a club and you feel like you're not in it, based on whatever the criteria is, then you can't possibly achieve your full potential. And when you step back and look at financial services, for example, and you say, look at the tens of millions of people in the United States alone, that we are supposed to serve with the full spectrum of their financial services needs.
Kathy Murphy:
And then you step back and you look at the profile of the financial services industry, very, very white, overly male. And you say, how can we possibly, from a business perspective, and frankly from a broader corporate value perspective, how could we possibly reach all the people with the possibility to help them and grow your business if we continue on this path? And I think the issue of attracting and retaining people from diverse backgrounds critically important, but the inclusivity is essentially the ROI. When people feel that they're fully included and can be them full selves and reach their full potential and are included, then magic happens at work. It can't be that people come in and you spend all this money trying to attract people and then they feel like they're stuck once they get here. It's like, well, what's the point of that?
Kathy Murphy:
And by the way, maybe a little bit of a third rail and then I'll stop because I know I've been talking a long time about this, I know there's been concerns expressed by certain white males about, are we the endangered species? It's no, no. We want to create an environment where everyone can achieve their full potential and contribute positively to grow, not only the business in front of us, but to grow it in a multiplier fashion, by just continuing to expand the boundaries of these businesses based on having a more diverse approach to what we do and really celebrating diversity of thought and diversity of perspective.
Erol Senel:
Yeah. I mean, you hit on so many important topics there. There are things that we truly do need to be aware of and continue to strive for. It just doesn't have to be a debate sometimes.
Kathy Murphy:
Right.
Erol Senel:
We're just trying to create an environment where people feel like they can achieve what all of us really want to achieve, be happy with where they work, where they go to school, whatever the environment is. I think is just important on some level that we can understand and try to meet in that middle ground.
Kathy Murphy:
Yeah.
Erol Senel:
I think there's too much of an inclination to just polarize immediately by bringing other elements into it, be it politics, be it religious beliefs, be it philosophical beliefs, whatever it is. We can try to just shelve that for a moment and just kind of see what the root cause is. And if we can do that, then maybe we can work a little bit more productively to expand out from there and take into account different voices and considerations. But the fundamental issue is really, what needs to be the focus.
Kathy Murphy:
Well, and that's why I come back to the fundamentals. To your point, if you agree on the fundamentals and don't let all this other stuff sort of cloud the conversation, at least initially. So you get alignment on it, what is the fundamental objective here? I think it's hard to argue with the fundamental objective.
Erol Senel:
Because it's what we all want.
Kathy Murphy:
Right.
Erol Senel:
It's what we want for our kids.
Kathy Murphy:
Right.
Erol Senel:
It's what we would want for our brothers and sisters or parents or whomever. So it's like, why do we have to create friction where there initially doesn't need to be any friction? How certain changes are carried out? Yeah. There should definitely be some conversation and deliberation around that. There's no question about that.
Kathy Murphy:
Right.
Erol Senel:
But if we can just agree on that central point, I mean, yeah. So I wanted to wrap things up because you've been extremely generous with your time, but for those listening, I want to kind of leave them with something unique. You have a different level of understanding on so many planes of business and strategy? So you kind of have carte blanche wherever you want to take this question, but kind of given the rapidly evolving world that we're finding ourselves in right now, what's something that you're observing with curiosity? And how can anyone better prepare themselves to succeed in light of it?
Kathy Murphy:
What I would say is the pace of new digital and technology capabilities that is reshaping businesses before our very eyes is stunning. That velocity has quickened at a dramatic pace. So I think that business people in the 2020s, 2030s, my son just starting out at college, people have to commit to being curious, number one, but also taking the time to learn more about those digital capabilities and technology capabilities and have some sense of how they work. I joke often that I'm the last broken down lawyer who's going to run personal investing, right? Because increasingly, the business is the business of technology. We have created a digital company powered by technology, and then the differentiator is the expertise of human beings that add value where technology and digital capabilities don't. That mixture is the magic. To be a successful business person going forward you have to take the time to understand more deeply about those digital capabilities and how the technology comes together. You don't have to be able to code Python, but you should have some sense of how coding works. I would say that's my basic piece of advice.
Erol Senel:
And that's awesome. But for those who are just kind of wrapping their heads around that, like I am right now, where would you say they start?
Kathy Murphy:
Well? So I will tell you what I say even to kids in high school or kids in college. So I've said this to my own son, to my nieces and nephews, if I were them, I would, number one, take a class in coding. Learn the basics of coding. Number two, take a course on digital design. Understand, it's not just the underlying technology, digital companies succeed on how they bring the experience to life through digital design. So that's number two. And number three would be, depending on your aspiration level. Either understand how statistics work or ideally more the 10 basic algorithms that power a lot of the digital capabilities. So early on in our transformation in PI on our digital transformation, we had the top 200 leaders in PI go to MIT, including me, to learn those 10 basic algorithms. Again, I'm not going to be a data scientist anytime soon, but at least I can converse with them and understand the basic language. So those would be my very practical suggestions.
Erol Senel:
Those are definitely some good ones. And I'm just going to add in, understanding our own psychology and the psychology behind these technologies that are being developed is a massive one too.
Kathy Murphy:
Yep.
Erol Senel:
Just so that we can understand and know ourselves and how we're interacting with technology around us. So, Kathy, this was so much fun. Thank you so much for joining us and enjoy that sunshine and the time that you plan on giving, once you decide to leave your post. But seriously, this has just been great. It's such an honor.
Kathy Murphy:
Thank you so much. I enjoyed it. It was great.
Erol Senel:
Thank you. And that's all we have for this episode of Success Shorts. Hopefully you found today's topic useful and remember, have fun, stay curious, and keep it short.