Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
The Moment explores the pivotal moments that changed the lives and careers of the world’s leading CEOs and defined their leadership journeys.
Claire Blake (00:04):
From World 50, this is The Moment where we explore the pivotal moments that changed the lives and careers of the world's leading CEOs and defined their leadership journeys. I'm your host, Claire Blake. Today we're talking to Charles Lowery, executive chairman and former CEO of Prudential Financial and Director at BNY.
Charles Lowrey (00:25):
And once you begin to gain momentum, then good things happen. Success begets success. And this was a case where we realized we were gaining and that anything was possible.
Claire Blake (00:40):
When Charlie stepped into the role of CEO at Prudential, the company was in need of change. By his estimation, 150-year-old companies don't remain relevant because of their long tenure, but because of their ability to adapt. The good news was that pivoting in short order was a skill he'd learned decades earlier as a rower in the US Junior Olympics. That formative experience would serve as a life lesson for finding the grit of an underdog when competitive advantage is lost. Charlie explains the connection between sport and business, what it means to have cold blood and a warm heart, and how to spot the finish line.
(01:13):
Without further ado, Charlie Lowry. So fantastic to spend time with you this morning. I'm going to start with a real easy question, okay? Total softball. Your wife, Susie, is also an architect, so when you two talk shop...
Charles Lowrey (01:29):
She is indeed.
Claire Blake (01:30):
whose designs win the argument?
Charles Lowrey (01:33):
Oh, Susie's always.
Claire Blake (01:35):
I love those types of questions. Empire State Building, Chrysler Building, and the Seagram. Which would you live in? Which would you demolish or condemn? And which one do you wish that you had designed?
Charles Lowrey (01:50):
I'm going to say I would not condemn or demolish any of them.
Claire Blake (01:54):
Very good.
Charles Lowrey (01:55):
I would live in the Seagram's building. I think what Mies did there is fabulous and the renovation that was done and the restoration of the building is extraordinary and it is a amazing piece of architecture, as are the other two. But for me, being more of a modernist, the Seagram's building is an iconic building that changed the face of New York in many ways, and also the type of architecture that was then built for skyscrapers going forward.
Claire Blake (02:25):
I love that. Grew up in San Francisco, surfing with long blonde hair, longer than mine probably as it stands today, I've been told. Do you still surf?
Charles Lowrey (02:35):
I do. Occasionally. I won't say very often, but I grew up with a group of guys and we get together once every couple of years and go surfing. So it's great fun and I still love it.
Claire Blake (02:46):
I have lots of thoughts and visuals in my head about how hard that would be for me, so that's pretty incredible for you. I am going to kick off this conversation talking about what you studied because you studied architecture at Princeton. You got your master's at Yale and you were able to skip your first year based on your portfolio, one of the very few people to do that. What's really interesting is your dad was an investment banker. Your grandfather was chairman of Citibank. So there was kind of this tie to what your career ultimately became, but you had this small detour, so it's worth asking, where did your interest in architecture come from?
Charles Lowrey (03:22):
My great-grandfather was an architect and a very good architect. He designed, for instance, Stanford University as one of his sort of iconic projects. But I loved architecture. And so I always thought I was going to be an architect, came to New York, started my own firm, became a registered architect. And it was only after four years that I decided I need more business experience. And so went back to business school, always with the thought of coming back into architecture, but never quite made it.
Claire Blake (03:51):
You never quite made it, but after Yale, you did start your own architecture firm in New York, which you described as ridiculous and naive. So what made you think you could do that?
Charles Lowrey (04:00):
I have no idea. It was ridiculous. It was incredibly naive. We ran it for four years with a partner and we did some interesting designs and could have kept going, but decided I wanted to go back to business school.
Claire Blake (04:16):
I do want to ask you, because I think it's going to lay the groundwork for a lot of what we're going to unpack today of what did architecture teach you about solving problems?
Charles Lowrey (04:24):
If you think about architecture, it is all about problem solving and at a very large level and at a minute level. So on the one hand, if someone says, "Go design a museum," you have to consider the program, what's going to be in the museum, what's the purpose of the museum, but also what's this going to look like, and yet it has to work. The humidity levels have to be right, the light switches have to be in the right place. So you're constantly zooming in and out. And I had a professor once that said early on in my architecture career that said, "You design by refutation, which means that you take a problem and you distill it down to its simplest constituent levels, and then you begin to add to it. And that which you cannot refute, you keep everything else you throw out."
Claire Blake (05:09):
Yeah, I love that, the art of refutation. In this podcast, we're unpacking moments that fundamentally change who we are as people and as leaders. And I understand for you, there's actually a different story that truly was a hallmark of your life that still resonated in your leadership journey and actually was way back to the summer of '76 with the US Junior Olympics team when you were only 18 years old. So just dive in, tell us about that moment, what was happening back in the summer of '76.
Charles Lowrey (05:40):
Well, in summer of '76, that's when the movie Rocky came out and we were in Philadelphia. So we'd go run up and down the stairs of the museum, waving our hands over our heads. But to take you back, so I rowed my freshman year at Princeton and was lucky enough to row in the first boat of the freshman team. And that summer, because I was a year young for college, someone said to me as I was going home, I was going to go surf all summer and pick up jobs where I could. Why don't you try it for the Junior Olympic team? Because that is for kids that are 18 and under. And so I went to Philadelphia and rode for a club called Vesper. There were different clubs that were putting together teams to compete in the US championships, the winner of which would then go over to the world's, to the Junior Olympics.
(06:29):
And so we put together a boat and I was lucky enough to be in the eight. And these are eight-oared shells. So they're eight rowers and then a little guy in the front called the coxswain who yells at all of us and steers the boat. And we got to the championships and we were one of six boats to compete for the US title. And there were some very, very good boats, one of whom was a high school team that hadn't lost a race I think in two years. They were really good. So we're putting together a strategy to beat these guys because they'd never been behind in a race. And we said, okay, let's go out really fast, get ahead of them and then hopefully just hang on. That was our whole strategy. Get out ahead. But also we thought if we got out ahead and they had never been behind before, who knows what happens?
(07:18):
Maybe they sort of fall apart. So the race came, we started out, we went out like rabbits and we got ahead and sure enough, the other boat with our main competitor, there were other boats, started to fall apart and they started to yell at each other and they got further and further behind and we just took off. And we were about three lengths boat lengths ahead of the pack, which is a huge amount. With about 500 meters left in the race, when there was just an event that occurred, which was that one of the riggers in our boat, and a rigger is what holds the oar in place by which you row, broke for one of our of our teammates. And the boat fell apart because it's such precision in terms of everybody rowing together that if one person, something happens their oar or their oarlock breaks, all heck breaks loose in the boat.
(08:17):
So we were zooming along and all of a sudden we weren't. And we came to a screeching halt. Now, he was able to drag his oar back into the boat, but we were at a standstill and the other boats came flying back and came past us with 500 meters left. So with 500 meters left, from a standing start, we started rowing again. Seven guys with the eighth one sort of tagging along with us, if you will, going back and forth, holding his oar above his head, and we started moving. And I'll never forget the coxswain's voice went up about two octaves. He said, "We're gaining. We are gaining." So he started screaming. Long story short, we catch up with seven people, seven oars, and we win the race.
Claire Blake (09:03):
Oh my word.
Charles Lowrey (09:04):
And that's not possible, and yet we did it.
Claire Blake (09:09):
Moving past the adrenaline of the win, what did this experience teach you?
Charles Lowrey (09:14):
The moral of the story is sort of twofold. One is that teamwork is of the essence. The other is hard work. And those two aspects have served me really well during my life and during my professional career and athletic career.
Claire Blake (09:33):
I want to unpack this story a little bit more because I want to understand, to your point, this shouldn't have happened. This doesn't happen. I think the visual with the one crew member with the oar over their head is pretty remarkable. But how did you decide we can do this? How did you start to believe that you had it in you and then you could overcome this?
Charles Lowrey (09:55):
Well, it's all obviously a blur 50-
Claire Blake (09:58):
Totally.
Charles Lowrey (09:59):
50 years ago now. You were just sort of out of your head rowing as hard as you could because we wanted to win the race. And once you begin to gain momentum, then good things happen, right? Success begets success. And this was a case where we realized we were gaining and that anything was possible, right? And then we just put our heads down and rowed out of our heads.
Claire Blake (10:25):
Was there anything about the team? It's interesting. You walk on, wasn't even really thinking about this as ... And what I know now, the people who've done crew, I mean, the intensity around the way that sport is structured now, just from an athletic conditioning, from a teamwork and everything about it. When you think about now, I was ready to go home and then I just kind of decided I would try out this rowing thing. Was there anything about the makeup of the people on that team that you think contributed to your ability just to grind it out?
Charles Lowrey (10:57):
Yeah. Philadelphia crew is a really interesting group of people, self-selected, very scrappy, very tough, really good. So you can think we were rowing next to the University of Pennsylvania Boathouse. There's Boathouse Row where there's a whole series of boathouses and there is a tradition of Philadelphia rowing, which is really interesting. And I became at least a small part of that for the summer. But these are scrappy guys who, in the best sense of the word, who just tough it out. They're really good oarsmen, they're really good people, and it was just a lot of fun. And we had eight people from some from Philadelphia, some from elsewhere like myself, but we were all part of the Philadelphia tradition and the Vesper tradition.
Claire Blake (11:52):
That's awesome. By the way, I'm a huge Rocky fan. And so the image of the David and Goliath here and the grittiness of what I only can imagine was this team, I think does kind of ring through to me in a lot of ways. Do you remember what the celebration was like?
Charles Lowrey (12:09):
We were thrilled. We came up to the dock. We were congratulating each other, but there was no huge party. There was no nothing. And the next morning we were doing double workouts, four hours twice a day. The coach was like, "We'll see you tomorrow morning." We got a lot of work to do and we did.
Claire Blake (12:30):
Yeah. That's a lot about the theme of hard work that you mentioned. I'm going to be honest, we're going to kind of reflect back on how this moment has played out throughout your career, but I'm going to be a bit leading here. Why this moment? 50 years and a whole career later, this is a moment that clearly still stands out to you for a really compelling reason. So I'm just going to ask it very plainly. What is it about that experience that still rings true for you?
Charles Lowrey (12:58):
It taught me a phenomenal amount about how much you can push yourself. And the idea of working that hard to achieve a goal, I think is what I learned about crew. How hard can you push yourself in order to achieve what you might want to achieve and yet do it not as a loner, but as part of a team. And that to me was the greatest lesson.
Claire Blake (13:28):
So this experience with this crew team taught you how much you could push yourself and what hard work can really do. Because decades later in 2018, you become the CEO of Prudential in the midst of a challenging period for the company. Tell me a little bit about what the organization was facing when you took the helm.
Charles Lowrey (13:44):
Well, I would say it was intense, but I thought that it needed to transform because my mantra to people was just because we've been around for 150 years doesn't give us the right to be around for another 150 years. We have to earn that. And Prudential had gone through significant change before and it needed to go through significant change again. And that was part of it. How do you change and what do you change? I wanted to make sure that we preserve the great parts of Prudential's culture, which is the care for our employees and our customers and the communities in which we live and work, and yet we still needed to change and we needed to change relatively rapidly if we were going to compete in a rapidly changing world.
Claire Blake (14:29):
You've been candid about kind of the personal toll of managing something pretty substantial and what it's like to be in that corner office leading through that. But I do want to know how you lead through the organization and how you show up for the organization personally. Maybe just help me understand what that looked like to be you during that tenure.
Charles Lowrey (14:50):
I think you do it with empathy and conviction. So you have to be resolute in what you want to do and not compromise because if you compromise too much, then why do it in the first place? But you have to do it with empathy. And our head of HR at the time had a wonderful phrase, I thought, which was to have cold blood and a warm heart. So you have cold blood in that you know what you need to do and you need to do it for the organization. You have empathy and a warm heart in terms of treating people with dignity and grace and respect. And we were always very honest with folks about what we were doing, the changes that need to be made, which made people uncomfortable because there were headcount reductions, there were expense reductions, we delayered the organization, increased spans of control.
(15:38):
We changed the organizational structure significantly, and there are always going to be personnel implications to that. But you need to be honest with people and you need to be empathetic and treat them well.
Claire Blake (15:50):
That's such a great reminder in hindsight. In the rowing story, you didn't stop until you won. Winning was clear. There's a finish line. Periods like this are not as clear, not only in terms of a finish line and the transformation, but also when it's time for you to pass the torch to somebody else. What did you learn about the finish line in your tenure at Prudential?
Charles Lowrey (16:13):
I think people should realize when there is a finish line and then work with the team to make sure that you become irrelevant. So the greatest compliment, I think, in our succession planning was that the market reacted with a yawn. It didn't care.
Claire Blake (16:36):
So true.
Charles Lowrey (16:38):
And I was thrilled with that because it meant that we had done our job in terms of succession planning incredibly well, and that my successor, Andy Sullivan, was met with excitement, with all sorts of good reactions. And there is an inevitability about the succession that takes place. And we worked really hard to make sure that that happened, but I was delighted that it didn't even ... I don't know where it was in the newspaper, but it wasn't in the first few pages, that it was really the market just didn't react to the succession, which means it was a smooth succession, and that's the best thing you can hope for.
Claire Blake (17:24):
Yeah, sincerely, bravo. I think that's a really great description because I think it really is a sentiment and not easy. I think succession and passing over the torch is never as easy as kind of what is outlined on paper. I am curious how you're thinking about leaders and how are you advising now that you're on the other side of the table in the new role?
Charles Lowrey (17:49):
So first of all, in my role as executive chairman, I make it very clear that I'm not CEO. There is one CEO of this company, that's Andy Sullivan, and all questions go to him. I'm here to support and advise him and to help the lead director with the board, and that's my role. And it's worked out really, really well.
Claire Blake (18:11):
Good on you.
Charles Lowrey (18:12):
But one of the pieces of advice I give to Andy, but to others as well is we are in an incredibly volatile time right now. And so you need to look through that volatility. You need to manage the company for the longer term and just think through it because what happens today is going to be changed tomorrow. And that's important to know. It is easy to say. It's not necessarily easy to do because you do have to manage the company on a day-to-day basis. But if you think about longer term and Prudential, which has been here now for over 150 years, you need to manage for that longer term. And that's a lesson I keep reiterating to people as we go forward.
Claire Blake (18:57):
Yeah, it's really good. It's a unique opportunity to sit down with a former CEO, not even a full year out of the job. What's the next race for Charlie Lowrey?
Charles Lowrey (19:09):
Well, I was very nervous about life after Prudential. And so I read lots of books. I talked to people and like, "Oh my gosh, what am I going to do? " But I've divided it up into three buckets. One is nonprofits, and so I'm on the board of a couple of very, very interesting nonprofits that I enjoy very much. The second is giving back. One of the great privileges of having been in my position are the people you meet. And when I first became CEO, I called up a lot of other CEOs and said, "Hey, can I come talk to you about what it's like to be CEO? What do you do? What kind of things do you think about? What are the pitfalls?" And people were so incredibly generous with their time. And so I am doing that for a couple of organizations, talking to CEOs and just sort of sharing my learnings, whatever they've been, with others.
(20:02):
And that's an important part. And the third part is then corporate boards. And so I still have obviously Prudential. And as you said, I just joined BNY's board, which I'm very excited about. So those are the three buckets along with some other personal interests and things that I'll be doing.
Claire Blake (20:18):
I love that. That's Charlie's race. So in all seriousness, the most important question is what are we doing for Susie in this next chapter who experienced quite the bait and switch? She married a long-haired architect surfer from California and ended up with a not so long-haired corporate executive, right?
Charles Lowrey (20:35):
Yeah, a bald businessman.
Claire Blake (20:38):
You said it, not me.
Charles Lowrey (20:40):
Yep, yep. Absolutely. Well, she is the star of the family. She's an amazing architect, very well known and who has her own practice and she's going to continue to do that. And as I have for the 40 years in which we've been married, I will continue to support her as she goes forward doing that in whatever ways I can. And not that she needs a lot of support by any means, but she's an extraordinary architect and loves it and is going to continue to do that. So yeah.
Claire Blake (21:10):
It's so awesome. I mean, look, I think that the story, I told you at the beginning, this is a story 50 years old, but still feels so ever present in the environment that we're in today. Grit, determination, teamwork, hard work and believing in the impossible, I think is just a kind of a simple reminder, but I love the tie in your story, Charlie, to the way that you think and the way that you simplify to this simplest denominator and I think is a really great challenge for all of us. Evident in the way that you've planned your succession amongst other things. So thank you so much for sharing and reflecting and helping us understand how this plays out in your leadership journey is really remarkable.
(21:52):
World 50 exists to provide a safe space to explore ideas and create meaningful connections with leaders who understand the demands of the C-suite. Join us on the World 50 app for more.