Frankly the business world was totally foreign to me. I grew up in an academic community, my mother was an artist, and we didn’t really have friends in business. But at this point I was deciphering a much shorter personal text. And I remembered that at Marcus & Millichap I had discovered that I liked commerce, the pace of it, the people of it, the pragmatic problem- solving of it.
Choosing business school was surprising, and yet absolutely right for me. Be assured; no matter how transformative your experiences has been at Stanford, this is only the beginning. As you do the hard work of distilling your life down to its essence, you will constantly discover things about yourself thatare both utterly surprising and surprisingly familiar.
I left business school lighter by a good couple-hundred page.
The Viennese psychiatrist Viktor Frankl once said,“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms to choose one‘s own way.”For me, this third epiphany followed hard on the heels of the realization that I could confound others’ expectations, and it would be okay.
There are no bad choices, as long as you learn from them. Some peoplesimply stop choosing. Anyone can allow their past to be better than their future, if they stop choosing. Do not be afraid to make decisions. Do not be afraid to make mistakes. Choose to be brave, and to keep moving forward. Don‘t let your options paralyze you. Make a decision, and then choose what happens next.
I joined the business world in 1980, and over the years, working on the East Coast, I hit my stride. I met and married the right man, my wonderful husband Frank, who’s also here today,and with him came two wonderful daughters and the loving and boisterous Fiorina family. Finally, my year in Italy paid off! We loved the East Coast, and planned on spending the rest of our lives there.
And then, unexpectedly, the call came suggesting that I might want to return home to this community, to lead the company that gave birth to this Valley-Hewlett Packard.
Nelson Mandela once quoted,“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.”That is the final realization I‘ll share with you, the realization that not only do you have control over your own life, but that you have the power to make a difference in other peoples’ lives.
I drove to Palo Alto for my final interview with the Board of Directors, and it seemed appropriate to arrive early, and sit in my car across the street from Hewlett Packard in the parking lot of Marcus & Millichap, and think about how life was coming full-circle in some unexpected, and truthful, ways.
I sat in the parking lot before what was by all accounts the interview of a lifetime, and I thought about the uphill battle that lay ahead if I took the CEO job at HP. I had no illusions about the magnitude of the challenges in leading a company that had a great past, but was now searching for its future. I knew that I was an unexpected choice for the position, and I knew that with this jobwould come a fair bit of scrutiny and criticism.
And then I weighed all of that, against what was worth doing.
I sat in my car, and I felt humbled by a great sense of responsibility for a great legacy. But I didn‘t feel afraid. I had recently watched my mother confront death with bravery, and in that experience, I learned what choosing to be brave really means. And I left fear behind.
The day I walked into HP for the first time as its new CEO, it felt both utterly surprising, and surprisingly familiar.
HP is a Great Work in its own right. It is worth preserving, it is worth revitalizing. It is a company of unique values and character, with a unique relationship to this community to Stanford, to Palo Alto, to Silicon Valley. More than that, it is a company capable of making technology and its benefits accessible to all.
And my role is to help make HP relevant in a new era. My job is to distill its original essence, and write those two pages.
My wish for you today, is that by the time your 25-year reunion rolls around-and it’ll happen a lot sooner than you think-you, too, will have found a place in the world where your values, and your character, are at home. Where your actions and your heart are totally aligned.
Let your fear motivate you, not inhibit you. Ask yourself the tough questions: Am I acting out a role, or am I living the truth? Am I still making choices, or have I simply stopped choosing? Am I in a place that engages my mind, and captures my heart? Am I stuck in the past, or am I defining my future? And what will I leave the planet, in my two pages?
Tomorrow, you take your 1,000 pages, and depart this incredible place.
Before you leave, step back and consider the enormous text of your life thus far, and acknowledge its heft, and its complexity.
Before you leave, reflect on the support you‘ve gotten, and the sacrificesthat all these wonderful people in the audience have made, so that you could have an unforgettable experience here at Stanford. Today is the day to honor them with your joy and with your fear. They have helped you have this experience. It’s one you‘ll never forget, one you will always draw from.
Before you leave, acknowledge the incredible wealth of resources you have in the Stanford community. Stanford is a Great Work, too. No matter how far you may wander from Palo Alto, you can rely on this lasting, rich and diverse web of ideas, knowledge, and friends you’ve constructed.
Remember to encourage one another. Remind each other that life is just going to get better and better, if you let your fear motivate you to begin a rigorous, but enormously satisfying lifelong process of distillation: A process of writing your two pages, single spaced, story.
And as you do your editing and decide what to leave in, and what to leave out, you will recognize the choices that are true to your essence. You will know what is worth doing, and you will do it. It will feel utterly surprising, and surprisingly familiar.
