I read a thought-provoking piece in the New York Times today about Ursula Burns, the new CEO of Xerox. It’s a little bit of a puff piece about the first African American woman to run a major American company. It tells about her early life in a poor New York neighborhood and the influence of her tough, single mother.
The article also talks about the culture in Xerox - and that’s what really struck me. According to Burns, one of the issues that the company needs to overcome is being too nice. That’s right. She doesn’t talk about the cut- throat culture of this corporate icon; no criticisms of the dog-eat-dog world. Instead, she talks about what she calls “terminal niceness” and how she wants the employees to “take more initiative, become more fearless and be more frank and impatient with one another to ratchet up performance.”
This article might have caught my eye because Ms. Burns sounds like a kindred spirit. I have been accused of being direct and impatient. I have no doubt that those are “nice” ways to say … something else.
Be that as it may, I do feel a sense of urgency to help families address issues related to affordable housing and stable communities. I believe that it is essential that each of us is challenging ourselves, our employees, our partners, our grant recipients and our leaders to take some risks, rethink our strategies and ensure that we are working as efficiently as we can to address the real issues we face.
We recently completed half-day review meetings with each of the Foundation’s national partners to discuss what we have accomplished together, where we want to go and how we can work more strategically to get there. Essentially we were asking “How can we be smarter about what we are doing?” The dollar amounts we were discussing are probably not going to go up anytime soon, which is all the more reason we need to be sure we are investing wisely and deriving the best possible returns in our communities.
In 2010, my refrain has become looking out for lost opportunities. I have absolutely no doubt that the work of The Home Depot Foundation benefits thousands of families and communities every year. None. But what more could we do? Are we challenging ourselves and others to be our best? To achieve the most we can?
During this fortnight of the Olympics, I can’t help but think of how Apolo Ohno thinks about what he is putting into his training. He said every night he asks himself if he truly did everything he could that day to make himself the best he can be. He said that on most days it’s hard to honestly say yes to that question, which I’m sure is why he’s one of the best athletes in the world.
Each night, he’s asking himself if he missed an opportunity to improve, to do better. Perhaps we should ask each other that same question and avoid being too nice to answer honestly.
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