>> from Santa Clara in the heart of Silicon Valley. It's the Q covering the Churchills 2019 brought to you by Silicon Angle Media. >> Hey, welcome back, everybody. Jefe Rick here with the Cube. We're in Santa Clara, California At the Churchills. It's the ninth annual kind of awards banquet at the Church O Club. It's on, and the theme this year is all about leadership. And we're excited to have not one of the winners, but one of the newest board members of the church, Oh, club. And someone is going to be interviewing some of the winners at a very many time. Cuba LEM Ray Wong, You know, from Constellation Research of founder, chief analyst >> and also >> a new board member for the Churchill Club Brigade, is >> also being back here. I love this event. There's one my favorite ones. You get to see all the cool interviews, >> right? So you're interviewing Grandstand from Pallet on for the life changer award. >> Yeah, so this is really incredible. I mean, this company has pretty much converge right. We're talking, It's media, It's sports, It's fitness. It's like social at the same time. And it's completely changed. So many people they've got more writers than soul cycle. Can you believe that? >> Yeah. I like to ride my bike outside, so I'm just not part of this whole thing. But I guess I guess on those bikes you can write anywhere >> you can write anywhere, anywhere with anyone. But it's not that. It's the classes, right? You basically hop on. You see the classes. People are actually pumping you up there. Okay, Go, go, go. You can see all the other riders are in the space. It's kind >> of >> addictive. Let's let's shift gears. Talk about leadership more generally, because things were a little rough right here in the Valley right now. And people are taking some hits and black eyes. You talk to a lot of leaders. She go to a tonic, shows you got more shows. A. We go to talk to a lot of CEOs when you kind of take a step back about what makes a good leader, what doesn't make a good leader? What are some of the things that jump into your head? >> You know, we really think about a dynamic leadership model. It's something conceit on my Twitter handle. It's basically the fact that you got a balance. All these different traits. Leaders have to perform in different ways in different situation. Something like Oh, wow, that's a general. They've done a great job commanding leadership. Other times we had individuals, a wonderful, empathetic leader, right? There's a balance between those types of traits that have to happen, and they curve like seven different dimensions and each of these dimensions. It's like sometimes you're gonna have to be more empathetic. Sometimes you got to be more realistic. Sometimes you're going to be harder. And I think right now we have this challenge because there's a certain style that's being imposed on all the leaders that might not be correct >> theater thing. The hypothesis for you to think about is, you know, when a lot of these people start the Silicon Valley companies the classic. It's not like they went to P and G and work their way up through the ranks. You know, they started a company, it was cool. And suddenly boom. You know, they get hundreds of millions of dollars, the I po and now you've got platforms that are impacting geopolitical things all over the world. They didn't necessarily sign up for that. That's not necessarily what they wanted to do, and they might not be qualified. So, you know, Is it? Is it fair to expect the leader of a tech company that just built some cool app that suddenly grew into, ah, ubiquitous platform over the world that many, many types of people are using for good and bad to suddenly be responsible? That's really interesting situation for these people. >> Well, that's what we talked about the need for responsive and responsible leadership. Those are two different types of traits. Look, the founding individual might not be the right person to do that, but they can surround themselves with team members that can do that. That could make sure that they're being responsive or responsible, depending on what's required for each of those traits. You know, great examples like that Black Mirror episode where you see the guru of, like, some slasher meet a guy. Some guys like Colin is like, you know, he wants to make sure that you know someone's paying attention to him. Well, the thing is like a lot of times, at least folks are surrounded by people that don't have that empathetic You might not have had what a founder is looking at, or it could be the flip side. The founder might not be empathetic. They're just gung ho, right, ready to build out the next set of features and capabilities that they wanted to d'oh! And they need that empathy that's around there. So I think we're going to start to see that mix and blend. But it's hard, right? I mean, going through a start up as a CEO and founder is very, very different than coming in through the corporate ranks. There's a >> very good running a company, you know. It's funny again. You go to a lot of shows. We get a lot of shows, a lot of key, knows a lot of CEO keynotes, and it's just interesting. Some people just seem to have that It factor one that jumps off the top is Dobie. You know, some people just seemed >> like the have it >> where they can get people to follow, and it's it's really weird. We just said John W. Thompson, on talking about Sathya changing the culture at Microsoft, with hundreds and hundreds of thousands of employees distributed all over the world. What a creative and amazing job to be able to turn that ship. >> Oh, it is. I mean, I can turn on the charm and just, like, get your view Lee excited about something just like that, right? And it's also about making sure you bring in the input and make people feel that they're inclusive. But you gotta make decisions at some point, too. Sometimes you have to make the tough choices. You cut out products, you cut out certain types of policies, or sometimes you gotta be much more responsive to customers. Right? Might look like you're eating crow. But you know what? At the inn today, cos they're really built around customers or state Kohler's stay close air bigger today than just shareholders. >> Right. Last question. Churchill Club. How'd you get involved? What makes you excited to jump on board? >> You know, this is like an institution for the valley, right? This is you know, if you think about like the top interviews, right? If you think about the top conversations, the interesting moments in the Valley, they've all happened here. And it's really about making sure that you know, the people that I know the people that you know there's an opportunity to re create that for the next set of generations. I remember coming here when it's like I go back, I think give Hey, just I don't hear anybody in 96 right? And just thinking like, Hey, what were the cool activities? What were the interesting conversations and the church? The club was definitely one of those, and it's time to give back. >> Very good. All right, well, congrats on that on that new assignment. And good luck with the interview tonight. Hey, thanks a lot. All right. He's Ray. I'm Jeff. You wanted the Cube with that? Churchill's in Santa Clara, California. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

>> From Santa Clara, in the heart of Silicon Valley it's theCUBE, covering the Churchills, 2019. Brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media. >> Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in Santa Clara, California at the Churchills. It's the ninth annual awards banquet put on by the Churchills Club, and this year is all about leadership. We're excited to be joined by our next guest who knows a little bit about leadership. He's Carl Guardino, the president and CEO of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group. Carl, great to see you. >> Great to see you, too, Jeff. >> So what is the Silicon Valley Leadership Group all about? >> The Silicon Valley Leadership Group is an association of about 360, primarily innovation economy employers that want to make a positive, proactive difference here in the region, as well as in our state and across the United States. >> What are some of the hot topics that are on top of the plate right now? Because there is a lot of craziness kind of going on here in Silicon Valley. >> There is. But what we try to do is impact those issues that are as important to families in their living rooms as they are to CEOs in their board rooms. And here in the bay area, we call those THEE issues. An acronym, T-H-E-E. The T, traffic; H, housing affordability; E, education; and the fourth E, the economy. And we try to bring together diverse points of view for those areas that unite us, where we can actually solve some of those challenges. >> Right, and those are big, big challenges. And you work both with public as well as private groups to try to bring them together to make movement on those things. >> We're a bridge. And the first thing about a bridge is that you try to bring folks together to cross the bridge and work together. The second most important thing about a bridge is that you build them, you don't burn them down. And that's the role that we try to play with 360 highly engaged CEOs and c-suite officers. >> And it's only appropriate, because tonight you'll be sitting down in a conversation with the mayor of San Jose, Sam Liccardo, to kind of get into some of these issues. San Jose seems to be on a roll right now, a positive roll. A lot of positive news coming out of San Jose. >> Yes, and that always starts with leadership rather than luck. San Jose mayor Sam Liccardo, 10th largest city in the United States, has been able to strike that balance of being pro-innovation economy, while also caring deeply about his citizens, the residents of San Jose, 1,053,000, and how we make sure that we have a strong and vibrant economy, but also a great quality of life. >> Right. So how do you even begin to - we'll start with traffic. The T in the THEE. To address that issue, it's so multifaceted, right, it's so tied to jobs, it's tied to housing, it's tied to the growth of the economy, you know, unfortunately freeways are slow to build, public transportation's expensive, but we continue to see growth there. How do you kind of eat that elephant, one bite at a time, with something like traffic? >> Well the role of the leadership group is, again, by bringing people together to solve complex problems in a democracy with winning solutions. So we'd rather win than whine. And when it comes to traffic, one of our core competencies is actually to lead and run ballot initiatives to fund transportation improvements throughout the region and the state. In fact, in the last 30 years alone, I've had the pleasure of going on loan from the leadership group to run ballot campaigns for transportation improvements that have totaled 30 billion dollars in revenue through those measures, approved by voters to reach into our own wallets, rather than our neighbors, to build improvements that, this Christmas, in time to go into your stocking, we'll be bringing BART to San Jose, and working on the electrification of Caltrain, linking transit and better road improvements, making it better for all of us trying to travel throughout this region. >> Right. Good, we need it. >> We do. >> And on the housing, you know, because the housing is also very closely tied to traffic, and we see that the old days of single-family homes on big pieces of dirt, those are going away. They just can't support it in higher density areas like San Fransisco, San Jose, to bring those jobs next to that. So we're seeing a huge transformation in the housing space as well. >> And we need a huge transformation, both in transportation and in housing. And it's really the flip side to the same coin. T, for tails, or transportation; H, for head, or housing. And you have to make sure that you keep those linked. In fact, one of our initiatives right now is to work with all six, fixed rail transit operators throughout the nine bay area counties. What are the current and future uses of those half miles around every fixed rail transit stop that you have? How do we maximize those uses? Here's a great example. What Google wants to do in downtown San Jose, at the Diridon SAP station, is only because of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group's work to bring BART to that station, electrify Caltrain, light rail is there, Amtrak, ACE, et cetera, and they want to have 20 to 25 thousand future Google employees there within the next 10 to 12 years. Why? Because it is a sustainable location that doesn't rely on you and I slogging through traffic in our single-occupant cars. >> Right. I can't wait to see what you guys do to El Camino. That's the next one that's going to - as somebody once said in one of these traffic things, it's just a bunch of old retail stores with empty parking lots, just placed by Microsoft. Or excuse me, by Amazon. So I think we'll see a big transformation with housing and jobs, you know, along that quarter, which happens to parallel the Caltrain, and is near and dear to my heart. So a lot of good opportunities I think to make improvements. >> Jeff, there is. And as hard as transportation and traffic solutions are to put into place, housing is even tougher. And while Bay Area residents think housing is the bigger crisis, the solutions are tougher to come about, because the community isn't as united on those solutions. So the role that a group of employers like ours play, is how do we bring people together around solutions that make sure that we build homes, that are good for everyone in our society. >> Well Carl, I like your positive attitude, a lot of winning and no whining, so I wish you nothing but success. And we'll be watching. >> Thank you, Jeff. >> You're welcome. He's Carl, I'm Jeff, you're watching theCUBE. We're at the Churchills in Santa Clara, California. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

(upbeat music) >> From Santa Clara, in the heart of Silicon Valley, it's the Cube, covering the Churchills, 2019. Brought to you by Silicon Angle Media. >> Welcome back here Jeff Frick here with the Cube. We're at the Chuchill's, it's the 9th annual award celebration put on by the Churchill club and the theme is all about leadership this year. We're really excited to have a very special guest John W. Thompson, chairman of Microsoft, a partner at Lightspeed Ventures, he's been around a long time. He's known and talks to a lot of leaders. So john, great to have you on. >> Nice to be here, thank you very much for having me. >> So leadership is such an interesting topic right? You go everything from, um, West point and trying to train young men to be leaders in a military situation to a start up that starts as some small company that had some interesting idea that grows to a huge corporate thing that's changing the world. Ya know, what are some of your thoughts as Silicon Valley is going through some hiccups right now and when you look, >> [John W. Thompson] We are? >> Just a couple little ones. >> I did recognize any of those. >> Well maybe not looking at the stock market. I don't know when that thing is coming back down. But you know when you think about leaders, what are somethings people maybe don't think about and really more interestingly how should people grow or what do you look for in a board member when you're talking to some CEO of a hot rising company? >> Well I think leadership is is as much about your personality and the business that use chose to go run is anything else. And the skills and experiences that someone might need to run a, pick a business, a business the size of Microsoft are fundamentally different than what you might need to run Rubrik, which is a company whose board I serve on. But that being said, leadership has some core principles that are critical independent of the size of the company or organization you're on. First of which is, integrity, second of which is focus, third of which is follow through and execution. There is lots of things that fundamental do and do well. And those who don't do well, don't become or stay leaders very long, that's for sure. >> It's interesting to look at Microsoft cause, ya know, three big personalities. Obviously Bill got it started as a young kid, I mean he was literally a kid in college. Um, then you had Steve Ballmer come in, completely different personalities and ya know, interesting for Bill to be willing to give up their reigns and then ya know, some tough times at Microsoft little bit stagnant and then Satya came in and just has supercharged and really driven a huge transformation in a giant big company. What are some of the attributes when you look at those three as leaders and you've worked with them, that make them so successful? >> Well, I think each of them brought something fundamentally different to the table when they were in the leadership role. In the case of Bill, he clearly was a visionary. He defined a point of view about the technology industry. That had he not done that, we wouldn't be where we are in the world today. And so, Bills role was unique. In the case of Steve, the company had hit a significant bump in the road all around the anti-trust activity. And candidly, it's my impression that Bill really didn't want to be involved in that, so he turned to Steve and says tag you're it. And Steve had a very fundamental view about execution. He was very much focus on execute, execute, execute. And if you look at the way the company preformed, its revenue grew from roughly ten, fifteen billion to almost eighty billion dollars during his term as CEO. However, the stock did not perform very well. So people weren't very happy with that. Ironically enough Satya come in, Satya had run the search business, had run the cloud business, had even run the enterprise software business. So he had a very fundamental view about of what he thought the company needed to do. And there were two issues, issues number one was strategy around cloud. And on the day of his announcement, he announced mobile first, cloud first are the strategies of Microsoft. And then he quickly, quickly made it clear that the number two issue, for the company, was about its culture. And while I am unbelievably fascinated by how much progress we've made on the product front, I'm even more encouraged by what has happened on the, candidly, on the cultural front. >> Right. So on the cultural front that is, are you a harder thing to impact especially on a large global company with hundreds of thousands of employees distributed all over the world, so what are the secrets that change culture like that? >> Its fundamental, it's about openness and honesty and candor. Um, one of the things that happens here in the valley, often for some companies is when they do their quarterly or monthly employee all hands meetings, guess what? They screen and filter all of the questions. Well, we don't do that at Microsoft office. Satya does not do that. He wants to be open and honest and candid with his employees with what's going on. My gosh! That's what real leaders do. And so I think what he has done is nothing that is unique, it's just consistent. He has been very very consistent and predictable in his execution of what openness, listening rather than talking, all of the things that good leaders are able to do. >> Right, its funny the one word you haven't said since we have been sitting here, you keep saying execution of focus, which I love focus execute and delight the customer. You haven't said strategy one single time. you said vision, but not strategy. Its interesting because I think a lot of people don't put enough emphasis on, its just work, you just got to execute. >> Its one thing to have a strategy, but if you can't execute the strategy, of what value is it? So I have always had a view in my roles as leader that it's about focus and executing. Yes, you have to come up with a vision and yes you have to create ideas that employees, and partners, and customers can become excited about. But ultimately it's about execution day in and day out. 368 days of the years, not 365. >> Alright, final question I know you've got a busy night. As you look as some leaders that you look up to, maybe not of this generation that you've been working with, but maybe of a past generation, who are some of the folks that you look to for your inspiration on the leadership side? >> Well, I would have to say the first one was the former vice chairman of IBM, who I was the chief of staff to many many many years ago. His name was Paul Rizzo. Paul was probably one of the most influential people in the company during that period of time, but you'd never know it. He had a level of humility about himself. He had a level of openness and candor in his interaction with employees at all levels up and down the line. And a company of IBM's size back in those days, it was two, three hundred thousand people big. And so he would be the first leader that comes to my mind as someone who was impactful on me. Another one would have been, a guy who created Akamai. He's on the board of Oracle and he's an awesome awesome friend of mine. He was the guy that ran the America's and gave me my first really really big job. And the fact that he was willing to give a guy like me a job like that, was a pretty important move. George Conrades is his name by the way. And so those two people were very very influential as leaders. As I would look at them and try to determine whether or not can I, can I pattern myself after that? Or are there things that they do and say and execute that I should consider as I think about my evolving leadership. >> Right so important to have people that you can look up to, learn from, and to take care of ya and help you along the way. >> [John W. Thompson] I agree >> John, thanks for spending some time it's always great to sit down with you >> Nice to see you as well. >> And continue success. We'll hopefully see you next time not to long from now. >> Lets hope not. >> Alright, he's John W. Thompson and I'm Jeff Frick. You're watching the Cube, were at the Churchill's in Santa Clara California. Thanks for watching we'll see you next time. (upbeat music)

>> Announcer: From Santa Clara in the heart of Silicon Valley, it's theCUBE, covering the Churchills 2019. Brought to you by SiliconANGLE Media. >> Hey, welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in Santa Clara, California at the ninth annual Churchills. It's an awards banquet put on by the Churchill Club and this year's theme is all about leadership and we're excited to have with us today the MC, he's Rich Karlgaard, the co-founder of the Churchill Club and also a publisher at Forbes. Rich, thanks for stopping by. >> Oh, it's an honor to be here, Jeff. >> So, busy night tonight. The theme is leadership, but we've been suffering a little bit of a black eye on leadership lately in the tech scene in Silicon Valley. >> Well, I really think we have. I travel the world a lot and around the United States and I have to say that large parts of the world and the United States are falling out of love with Silicon Valley. And I think that's directly attributable to some of the companies and some of the leaders who are maybe moving so fast that they're forgetting to do the right things for customers, for employees, and for their community at large. >> Yeah, I'm wondering, get your take, a lot of these guys and gals become successful for a whole bunch of reasons, right? and they happen to be at the top of a company. I'll just pick on Zuckerberg 'cause he's easy to pick on. But you know, he had an application, it was about getting people together, and suddenly these platforms get so big and so ubiquitous, you know, is he the right guy? He never signed up to be the leader of the platform world, and yet he's kind of put in that position. We see that kind of with YouTube, because again, the platform is so big and I think it almost feels like it grows beyond the tentacles of the control. >> Well, it remains to be seen if Mark Zuckerberg is the right guy. I think of somebody from more my era, Bill Gates. And Bill Gates was a fabulous leader of Microsoft, but they ran too fast, they ran too hard, they got in trouble with the U.S. Department of Justice, and Bill Gates ended up resigning from Microsoft. And he served as a great board member of Microsoft ever since, was instrumental, along with John Thompson, the board chairman who will be honored tonight, in bringing in the person I think is the best CEO in the world today, Satya Nadella of Microsoft. Sometimes you have to hand the baton. >> Right, right. But are there some lessons that people should be thinking about when they're maybe thrust into this position that they weren't necessarily ready for? I mean, one thing about Gates is he gave up his CEO job pretty early to Ballmer, arguably whether that was super successful or not. But some of them kind of get out of the way and some of them don't. And they don't necessarily have the skills to take on some of these huge kind of geopolitical, socioeconomic issues. >> Well I think that's right. Another example, Larry Ellison led the brilliant early days of Oracle but when he got in trouble with the Securities and Exchange Commission, he had to really make way for a strong number two, Ray Lane, and that turned out to be the perfect complement, you see. You had Ellison's vision and drive but you had Lane's ability to run really good operations. Steve Jobs never got into trouble but having a really solid number two like Tim Cook was very valuable. So some of these brilliant entrepreneurs need solid number two's, so I think they have lieutenants but I don't think they have really solid number two's. >> So what are you excited about tonight? We got some really great people, you already mentioned John W. Thompson, we've had him on a ton of times, great leader. Who are some of the people you're excited to see tonight? >> Well, we have three great companies, we have Slack, Zoom, and my personal favorite, Peloton. I'm kind of lusting for a Peloton bike in my garage. I hope it arrives under the Christmas tree this year. >> (laughs) All right, Rich. Well, thanks for taking a few minutes and good luck tonight on the MC duties. >> Yeah, well, thank you Jeff. >> All right, he's Rich, I'm Jeff, you're watching theCUBE, we're at the Churchills, the ninth annual awards banquet here with the Churchill Club. Thanks for watching, we'll see you next time. (upbeat electronic music)