"[Music] Meg thank you for being here today yeah happy to be yeah I'm delighted at the chance to have this conversation um I have a few questions here on your professional Journey your leadership philo..."

"the big decision that you made was to become the CEO of HP um this was not an easy job in fact this is what F's magazine had to say about it Meg stepped into a mess HP stock had tumbled 42% in the yea..."

"that's a good question so um I as uh as gu had had mentioned I um had lost the race for governor and um one of the things that's interesting when you lose a political race unlike anything else you do ..."

"is really not good and like as if on Q the next day Mark Andre called to see if I'd like to sit on the board of HP and I thought fabulous this is great what what could go wrong 12 minutes from my hous..."

"we're the second largest private employer in Costa Rica I think we're the third largest um private employer in the Czech Republic so it matters what happens to this company and I thought you know what..."

"my first rodeo and you've spoken about understanding what is going on right within an organization as you join it yes what was going right at HP what had to be fixed so I think this is a very good les..."

"the board drama everything that had happened to this company the founder DNA from Bill H and Dave Packard had shown through and first of all it's an engineering Innovation company that's who this comp..."

"fixed so there were a number of things that had to be fixed first of all um we had to win hearts and minds of HP people because you mentioned it four CEOs in the previous five years or six years um an..."

"without making a pretty significant change to the fundamental cost structure of the company and then third is we weren't keeping up with Innovation and so we had to actually Focus Innovation get HP la..."

"write down the autonomy situation um you know there was like hundred sort of relatively I would say neither of those were minor problems but they were sort of tactical problems that had to be dealt wi..."

"I needed to learn what we did I needed to get my arms around this vast company and so I tried a number of things first is you know assembled a sort of a group of people who I thought could help then I..."

"something you could not do before um in a real and meaningful way so in my Proctor and Gamble days whiter white you know fresher breath cleaner teeth in a meaningful way but what I saw at eBay was it ..."

"products and services a lot of us in the audience are moving from sort of non-technology backgrounds into leadership positions in technology not unlike have you perhaps V into eBay um with not a lot o..."

"I I'll tell you a little story so there was the CI the CTO at eBay a really very talented guy named Mike Wilson who had written the second version of eBay who was Skippy on the boards that night was s..."

"Founder technologist who is actually helping sort of move this company into into a new area great um leading up to eBay was grad school PMG Bon company Disney in Hasbro um as we think about our first ..."

"frankly at HP because we had to figure out what our strategy was so you know I think you have to sort of live in the times in which you graduate it's a very different environment than it was and you k..."

"arrived in real numbers and uh but real numbers is a relative thing my first year class at Proctor and Gamble had a hundred brand assistants of which four were women and um so my mother I think was ve..."

"thick skin for um the Press you know when I came to HP this is a great story there was a fair amount of criticism about me coming to HP in fact um there was one headline that I remember which is Silic..."

"your name on the ballot you can't actually imagine it until you do it so a lot a lot of really really good learnings thank you um and stepping back a bit uh how did you think about building a personal..."

"particularly early on in your career even though it seems idiotic and what was really going on here is PNG was trying to teach us how to get things done at PNG right they did actually know the answer ..."

"thanks I have a more personal question for you you were married to a very successful neurosurgeon uh you moved to Boston with your husband when he accepted the position at Massachusetts General uh lat..."

"see if you can find a job so he called up um two the good news is there's only 3,000 neurosurgeons in the whole country so they actually know each other so he called up Gary Steinberg who runs neurosu..."

"and we just traded off and you know you can't ever look back and say would have could have should have you know you just kind of go um and you always have to remember this is a question we ask each ot..."

"to kind of figure it out as you go along so it's hard it's hard but great fun this would be a good time to open up the floor to questions uh from the audience in Twitter we have two mics um Ryan on th..."

"office um I would say woman running for political office it is very very difficult um and I'll I'll tell you why um and I as you know I'm a republican but I have to I happen to actually have a lot of ..."

"remarkable job whether it's you know members of Congress here like you know zo lran or or others they've really done a great job take a question there hi this is Sam from MSX program uh if you had cha..."

"what's called Network effects that the more buyers you have the more sellers you have and so the First Market often gets those Network effects and yaho beat us to Japan because we had technology issue..."

"the global eBay platform because it had worked everywhere it had worked in Western Europe it had worked all over we' bought all these baby ebays and basically migrated them to one common platform whic..."

"remarkable job Ryan do we have a question hi uh when you spoke about uh turning things around at HP you spoke about returning to the founders DNA and focusing on Innovation what changes did you make t..."

"incentives to the strategy as it turns out and you all know this but particularly at big companies people actually focus on what they're being paid to do and you can wish it wasn't that way you can wi..."

"different challenge which is foreign exchange which is a problem that every other big American company has not just in our industry but you've just got to focus on um what are the most important thing..."

"with HP effectively so we've just launched a program that we call Pathfinder which is how do we reach out into the valley to find the new startups that are complimentary to what where either HP Inc is..."

"very good question um so listen I think how you win hearts in minds and how you become a trusted colleague is the same when you're the CEO as when you're a new person and that is do what you say you'r..."

"have said Jerry Brown is on this cost thing he is taking cell phones away from the civil servants one could argue he should have unplugged the landlines but doesn't matter the point was he had a lot o..."

"sort of say hey here's the kind of company that we want to be and uh celebrating some of the early Innovation one of my uh Executives when I got there had actually gone out to HP labs and said what do..."

"that's what matters most I'll say the other thing is perspective and this has been one of the Delights of being married to a neurosurgeon okay what we do in business is important it's incredibly impor..."