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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. And today we're talking to Mark Weinberger, former global chairman and CEO of EY, and sitting board director at Johnson & Johnson, MetLife and Aramco.
Mark Weinberger (00:27):
Just my insides went numb because I realized I told these people that I care about them. I'm there for them. I'm a brand new CEO and I can't be with them and I'm going to go back home to be with my daughter and they're going to think I don't have a commitment to them. And the whole way home on the plane, I'm thinking I let these people down.
Claire Blake (00:45):
From his tenure at the White House to becoming CEO of EY, Mark Weinberger is no stranger to success. Yet from the beginning and throughout his illustrious career, he's been grounded by a simple concept, family. The devoted father of four discusses how navigating both his personal and professional commitments led to significant culture change.
(01:05):
So it's funny, we were just talking about your time working under Bush. My first question is, who liked to joke around more? President Bush or President Obama?
Mark Weinberger (01:17):
Oh, there's no doubt President Bush.
Claire Blake (01:20):
Do you have a good story?
Mark Weinberger (01:21):
Oh, a great story.
Claire Blake (01:22):
Don't tell me an hour story because this really isn't part of the conversation, but I have to know.
Mark Weinberger (01:26):
I have so many great stories. I mean, with Bush, it was amazing for me. And part of it was my relationship with him, but my last day in office, you're not supposed to take assistant secretaries on Air Force One because it sets a bad precedent. You go down to deputy secretary. But I was responsible for his primary achievement before 9/11 when we turned into an international. So he took me on Air Force One my last day in office and he put on his Rangers jacket. You're also never supposed to be alone with the president. There's always supposed to be the Secret Service. He brought me up front, just him and I spoke for a half hour in the plane. It was great. And then he had me call my dad from Air Force One, which is pretty cool because my dad was a plumber and really, we didn't have professionals in the family.
(02:06):
So it was a unique experience for him. So it was great. And he was loving the moment to sit there and do that. He's just a really great human being.
Claire Blake (02:14):
That's amazing.
Mark Weinberger (02:15):
Yeah. Obama is not a bad guy, but Obama was much more buttoned up, believe it or not, and also very speech oriented and less interactive.
Claire Blake (02:23):
It's funny you were just talking about your dad a little bit because I wanted to just open us with, tell me a little bit about what life was like growing up.
Mark Weinberger (02:31):
Sure. So I grew up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, home of The Office. So if you've seen the show, those were all the friends I grew up with. It was a small and is a small industrial town in Northeast Pennsylvania. Dad was a plumber, mechanical contracting. My mom worked at home in the house and three sisters and had a great life. Everything was wonderful. He wanted to go off and actually see the world and went into the Navy and went into special forces. And then my grandfather died and he had to come back and helped work in the business and so stayed home for the next many years and never ended up leaving. So he ended up having us and staying there with his four brothers and was very close to them. So it was a good traditional middle class family. And nothing I ever thought I'd end up going into politics or travel the world from, but he was incredibly supportive.
Claire Blake (03:20):
You got to see the world in a different way than he got to see the world in his attempt to do so. I mean, for you, did you ever want to be in politics, to be CEO of a large company when you were younger? I mean, what were your aspirations as a young kid?
Mark Weinberger (03:35):
So every time I would go and get a new role, whether it was a promotion at EY or whether I became the assistant secretary of treasury or was appointed by President Clinton to be on the board director of Social Security or the different roles I had, I'd call him up and say, "Dad, hey, I got this new opportunity or promotion." And he'd always say the same thing over and over again. He'd say, "That's great, son, but remember, I love you no matter whatever your title is." And he said, "The most important thing is that you never forget who you are or where you came from." And so that was incredible for me, whereas my life's success didn't become about my professional career because he wasn't someone who said to me, "I value what you're doing." He's more like, "I value who you are."
Claire Blake (04:21):
Yeah. I mean, super interesting as we talk about even some of the titles that you did have that many aspire to and never get to. And here we are on the other side of that. There was a few steps outside of the corporate world to your point that were pretty influential, I'm sure, on your journey. You worked under both President Bush and Obama. Before we talk about your experience at EY, how did that experience impact you and who you want to be?
Mark Weinberger (04:45):
I had a really diverse career, right? So being an entrepreneur and starting my own firm and not ever having a practice law before that and working for actually four presidents for Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Trump, and never having studied political science, and then running EY and not being a CPA. So it just goes to show that you never are fully prepared for whatever job you have. And I think the experience of working in government gave me an incredible ability to be a CEO where I was able to listen to a lot more different points of view and not have to have the full 100% of the answers because you never do. There's always three, four right answers from three or four people speaking to you in politics and you got to realize that and go with your best choice. And then when you look at my entrepreneur days where I didn't work at EY, it was all about selling yourself.
(05:33):
You didn't have a ticket to the dance because you worked at a huge firm. And so you were individually having to go out and just get in the door. Those experiences helped shape me within EY, even though my experience at EY helped me grow.
Claire Blake (05:45):
I'm curious about your appointment to CEO of EY. Just kind of talk me through that process a little bit. I mean, how was that received with your family who has told you all along and your dad, "We don't care about the title. We care about the person."
Mark Weinberger (06:00):
It was a hard decision to be CEO of EY. Now, I was very fortunate. My wife, who's been my partner through life and everything, allowed me to take a 95% pay cut and go work in the federal government when we had four kids under six years old, and then to start my own firm when I left the government and take risk that we didn't need to take because I could have gone back to a big firm. So she was with me through incredible, and not only with me, enabled me to get through these incredible moments in my career, and we're doing fine finally. We're making money. I'm through the government, and now I have a good job at EY, and they come and say, "Would you consider being CEO?" And our kids are still young in the teenages years, and it's a huge commitment to 200,000 people at that time in 150 different countries.
(06:49):
And so what I really did was I went and asked for permission. My wife was like, "Sure, if this is really something that's a passion that you have and interesting." The harder discussion was with the kids. So I went to my twins at that time who were young and Sean and Ben, and I said, "Hey, I have this opportunity to be the CEO of EY. What do you think? Should I do it?" And they're like, "What does that mean? And I don't know what you do today so go ahead."
Claire Blake (07:17):
Typical teenagers.
Mark Weinberger (07:19):
And I went to their older brother and it was Noah, and I asked him and he said, "Well, are you going to make more money?" That was his big question. I said, "What are you not getting now, Noah, that you need?" And then my daughter, when I went to her, I said, "I have this opportunity to be the CEO of EY, and what do you think? " And she thought for a moment, and then she said, "Well, will you still be able to coach the twins' basketball games?" And that's something that I was doing. "Would you still have time to help me talk through issues? Would you be there for me on my events like you do now and come to my lacrosse games and do things?" And I said, "Of course." And she said, "Well, then dad, you've been working for EY for a long time and you're part of their family too. I think you should do it."
(08:01):
And I then said, "Who are you and what have you done with my daughter?" But it also made me realize and continue to realize how much they cared about my personal success and the family success in total alignment.
Claire Blake (08:13):
To your point, everybody goes to the sporting events and the things that you miss, but talking through issues, and will you still be with me to talk through issues are the moments that as a parent you live for and you want to be present forward.
(08:25):
So they were on board, everybody's agreeing, we're going to do this thing. I'm curious how that transpires because then you accept the job, you become CEO. Was there a moment when you felt like that was potentially coming to a head or you were having to start to make some of those tough choices?
Mark Weinberger (08:46):
So it wasn't long, Claire, before I was tested. And so my very first speech as CEO of EY to the new partners was in China and must have been 2013, and there were a couple thousand people in the audience, probably a thousand new partners. And it's the most important career development for these young people to finally get admitted to a partnership after an incredibly long 10 plus year history of working really hard and it's celebratory and everyone wants to have fun. And I'm brand new to the firm and in this role and want to make a good impression. And so we show up in China and I prepared really hard to give my speech to them, my encouragement, talk about the firm, my commitment to them. And I thought it was a great speech. I worked long on it and I was very nervous.
Claire Blake (09:33):
I'm sure there's a lot of prep.
Mark Weinberger (09:34):
Yeah, a lot of prep. And then it gets to the Q&A at the end and someone asks me, "Are you going to be able to join us tonight at the Great Wall? We want to get selfies," because that's a big thing. And I answered the question top of mind. I said, "I would love to, but I said when I met with my daughter and asked her to become CEO for her permission, so to speak, she asked if I would keep my commitments. And she has her driving test tomorrow in Washington DC, actually in Maryland. And I committed to her, I would take her on her driving test a year ago, so I have to jump on a plane as soon as we're done and leave." And I immediately, just my insides went numb because I realized I told these people that I care about them.
(10:15):
I'm there for them. I'm a brand new CEO and I'm leaving them on their most important day and I can't be with them and I'm going to go back home to be with my daughter and they're going to think I don't have a commitment to them. And I really felt odd about it and I left. And the whole way home on the plane, I'm thinking I let these people down. I'll tell you, Claire, what's really amazing is to this day, I don't think anybody remembers my speech. I'm pretty sure I don't. So I'm not sure anybody else does. And everybody remembers that I took the time to leave and go to my daughter's driving test.
Claire Blake (10:49):
That's a long plane ride to sit with some regret. We're not talking a quick domestic flight here. Was there anything that you did in that moment to kind of gut check? I mean, was there anybody around you that you talked to to say, how did that react? I mean, this is a big moment. I'm just kind of curious if there's any lessons there around what you did to figure out how do the partners feel about it?
Mark Weinberger (11:09):
I'd love to tell you I had some enlightening moment or something lightning struck, but it was weird. It didn't. And maybe that was the most educational of all. First of all, I was on the plane by myself, so I didn't get to talk to anyone. It was a long ride on my own. But I expected when I got back to, landed in DC and in Maryland that I would hear something like disappointment or whatnot. And that's when the emails started to come in. I got probably hundreds of emails just saying thank you. And what you realize is not only did I help me keep my commitment, but just how important people will look at what you say, and they may or may not listen, they'll look even more closely at what you do. And most importantly, they remember how you make them feel. And they felt, I think, that really to me, work-life balance mattered and family was a big part of my life and as was EY.
(12:00):
And I think it gave permission to others. What I always used to say, your seat at the conference room table is what most people strive for. The boardroom table for people my age, right? You always want to be there, but your seat at the dining room table is every bit as important as your seat at the conference room table.
Claire Blake (12:19):
Did she pass the test? That's the most important question.
Mark Weinberger (12:21):
She did. She did pass the test. Thank you for asking. And thank god. I would've had to come back from somewhere else. Who knows?
Claire Blake (12:27):
Nowadays, that was back with everybody still really couldn't wait to take that driver's test because they didn't have Ubers taking them all around everywhere, I'm sure.
Mark Weinberger (12:34):
It's so true.
Claire Blake (12:35):
How do you think this decision really set an example for the organization regarding work-life balance? And I guess what I would say is to elaborate, are there any examples that you have of how you know this really made an impact, especially kind of trickling down? Because it's one thing to put a statement out there, it's another thing to have a story like this, but were there times when you could see, we really do care about families here at EY, we really do care about families from the very top. Is there anything where you realized this has really latched on?
Mark Weinberger (13:06):
It can't be one time you make a decision like that, right? And it can't be one initiative. So when I did take over EY, we changed our name to, it was Ernst & Young, it became EY. We put out a purpose, building a better working world. We made high performance teams a key element of success for our people and measured and evaluated our people on that like revenue and all the other financial metrics. So we were committing to it on paper, but the reality is unless you see it modeled in front of you, you don't feel that you have the permission to really do it. And so when I did it, I absolutely had stories of people telling me they felt more comfortable doing it, but frankly, that alone wasn't it. There were other examples where people on my teams did it and we celebrated them and we didn't just celebrate who brought in the most money or who had the most hours on a sheet of paper, but who created a team atmosphere where people were given flexibility and people were allowed to meet their other goals.
Claire Blake (14:05):
This is in your ethos. This is who your dad taught you to be. I'm assuming there were times that it was tested. You were in a demanding job. Were there any moments when this kind of prioritization of work-life balance or decisions about family hurt your career, or were there any moments when you weren't able to balance at all that come to mind?
Mark Weinberger (14:23):
Well, yeah, I'm not sure I'm ever able to balance it all. It's like you strive for balance, but you're never in perfect balance. But I will tell you, the biggest issue is, Claire, it's not one decision that determines whether you are family man or a businessman. It's all those little decisions that add up to what you do every day that matters. So other examples were, I remember when it was my daughter's first day of college and she was going to USC and we all were going to plan to go out there. It was very exciting. She's moving across the country for the first time and I was excited with my wife to go out and get her set up. And it turns out it was the same day as the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, which is hugely important for someone like EY where all of our clients are at.
(15:07):
I'm speaking on major panels on the global stage, meeting with all bunch of world leaders and really trying to get business for us and helping our client teams. And I have to decide, okay, what do I do? And those little decisions, which at the time seems so hard in retrospect are so easy, but at the time it's really a tough decision. And I did go to my daughter's USC first day and I didn't go to Davos. And you know what? I went to eight more Davoses and I never missed a single day of my daughter's first day of college. And so in hindsight, it was really easy to make that decision. But at that moment, you know what you're giving up and it's so clear and you don't see a benefit from bringing your daughter distress other than all the headache of moving her in and going to Best Buy 15 times and doing all those things which don't give you immediate value.
(15:55):
But now I see the daughter that she turned out to be and I think she's going to be the same kind of mom to her kids and that's what you hope.
Claire Blake (16:04):
You mentioned Nancy's been an incredible partner to you and fully supportive of all these decisions you've had to make. I'm assuming if I asked you how did you check this balance because as you mentioned, it's never perfect. There's always trade-offs. Do you have any mechanisms or do you have any things that you did just to kind of spot check how you were balancing what was really important to you?
Mark Weinberger (16:26):
So it's really important, I think, to have your own kind of board of directors. I talk about your life, some of our, especially in EY, we're a bunch of consultants and attorneys and accountants and really good at serving other people, but how well do you serve yourself and your family? And we think about when you're putting a company's plan together, you have a strategy, you have a purpose, you have a board of directors. How many people in their own personal life have a purpose, a strategy, and a board of directors? First of all, you need a purpose. You have to know why you exist. What's most important to you? Why do you get up every day? What drives you? And then that helps you build out your strategy, how you're going to get there. And then you need to check in with your so-called board of directors, whoever they may be.
(17:09):
And they'll be friends, they'll be family, they'll be mentors, a whole bunch of different people. And so for me, I was fortunate. My mom, my dad, for a while, my dad passed away many years ago. My mom lives in Scranton still at 92 years old, phenom and my wife who's not afraid to speak up. Thank god for that- Yes, that's right. She's also very independent though. She would not have survived. My travel, my commitment in the government during 9/11 and all these very difficult times where I was away day in and day out. And even when I was doing all these different jobs, I've always took my vacation. When I ran to become CEO, one of the things actually used against me, and this was a while ago, you could tell, not only did I have young kids and I was the only one who had young kids, so I may not be able to commit, but I said I wouldn't work weekends. I would be home on weekends.
(17:59):
Now, in fairness, it wasn't true every weekend. Lots of times I'd travel across the world, travel would come back on Sunday or Saturday, but generally that was my philosophy. On weekends, I was home with the kids doing one of their sporting events because there was four of them. And so I think Nancy knew that. And it's like financial capital, Claire in many ways, this kind of what I call human capital. When you want to make money long-term, you put it away, you put it away, you save it, it builds up over time and then the future you could spend it. So you build your human capital relationships by doing things today when you can, and then you build that credibility and then you're going to be away and you're not going to be able to do it. You're going to be letting them down, missing certain things, but you built all that human capital up day one, you could spend it later on when you really need it and they understand that if they've seen it on the front end.
(18:48):
And so I think of it kind of like that as well. You deposit it when you can and then you recognize you're not always going to be there.
Claire Blake (18:54):
My quick response to that is some people may listen and say, "Well, that's great because he's CEO. So he can say he's not going to work on weekends and make that call." Is that a myth or is that fact? I mean, and I guess I would push you to say, were there times when you really had to kind of ... I know you didn't get it right, it wasn't perfect and sometimes that has to bend, but were there any hard times where you really had to push back on whoever that may be, whatever stakeholder that is to really kind of make that hit home or is it true? As CEO, you get to make some of those calls and then you get to hope that gets trickled down for others to do the same.
Mark Weinberger (19:29):
So it's a fair question. And CEO, you definitely get to have a bigger role in setting the culture and setting some parameters, but I will tell you the demands on your time are infinite. You understand the consequences of your decisions really well by the time you get to CEO. And to me, I would measure the short-term or long-term consequences of missing a meeting or not being at a client or not reading and studying for something I'm doing versus the consequences of missing a life event or the consequences of damaging a relationship with someone in my family. And sometimes it wouldn't be the weight would be on being with my family. It would be at work because there's something really, really important. We had a crisis in some part of the world and my family wouldn't get the benefit of me being there. But as I said, if you build your record up over time, they understand that and they give you that leniency.
(20:24):
So I do think it's possible. Again, it goes back to your purpose. If your whole desire in life is how well you do at your job and nothing else matters, well, then you're going to prioritize work every time. If you believe in life, your purpose is much greater than what you get at work. Then you can't be successful at work if you don't win outside of work. And if you don't prioritize the things that are important and then other parts of your life, whether it be your hobbies, your health, your family, you can't be good at work. And that's what I used to tell my teams all the time. You may think you're doing great at work, but if everything else is failing, you won't survive, you won't last, and we need you to last.
Claire Blake (21:03):
That's incredible. That's a really good word for people to latch onto. I am curious now, your kids are out of the house. How have you seen this legacy live on?
Mark Weinberger (21:14):
So every kid is different and they're going to have their own paths, obviously, and that's what I value is for them not to look at what I did. And what I see is their independence of thought. Most importantly, I'm proud of them. The same thing my dad said to me. It's not necessarily because of their jobs. It's because of the love they share for each other and the caring that they have for each other. We've had some major life tragedies. My whole family rallied in incredible ways that you can't ever predict. And I think the fabric that was created over time is why we are so close today. And so I think my wife has as much, if not more to do than anything I might've taught them. But what I will tell you is when I look at them, I think my dad would be proud of what he's seeing, and that to me is incredibly important.
Claire Blake (22:02):
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