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[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.
Thank you. Quite an introduction!
Quite a class!
Wow!
It's great!
>> Governor, welcome to the GSB.
>> Thank you.
>> Welcome to The View From the Top.
We're excited to have you here because you've managed to be at the top of,
I think at last count, at least four organizations.
And so we wanna talk about your professional success and,
and management skills.
But one thing the Dean mentioned, which I think is particularly important is your
committment to personal success, your family, your community, your faith.
And I want to start by an anecdote, which is actually the first time we met.
And I haven't told you this story,
though you know I grew up in your hometown for some time.
And that's 21 years ago,
you invited a bunch of boy scouts over to your house when I was 9 years old.
To have a- >> Oh.
>> Yeah.
[LAUGH] No it's good.
>> They're still cleaning up that mess.
>> Yeah.
[LAUGH] Yeah.
So you, you invited a bunch of us over to your house.
I think it was about 30 boys and we were there on a Saturday or
Sunday and you spent the day with us all day, grilling burgers.
It was a pool party.
And I'm struck by two things as I remember that story.
One is that there aren't very many parties I remember from being nine years old.
So you clearly know how to throw a very good party.
>> [LAUGH] >> Serving beer to kids is always
a [INAUDIBLE] >> Yeah, right.
>> [LAUGH] >> Right.
So thank you for that.
[LAUGH] The second is that, you know, on reflecting on the story,
I realized that this was roughly around the time you were running Bain Capital and
about to embark on the Senate campaign, and that really struck me.
Where the press is filled with stories when you were leading major organizations
but still found time for these kind of examples.
And the word having it all gets thrown around a lot but
you have sort of managed to have it all.
You have a great career, you have a great family,
you're committed to your community.
I wanna know how you've managed to strike that balance and have it all.
>> I don't know that I've spent a lot of time analyzing
how you balance your life, at one point I remember feeling that I
wasn't dong as much as I should be doing in my home with my kids.
Also feeling I wasn't doing as much as I should be doing at work, and
also feeling I wasn't doing as much as I, I should at church in my assignment there,
and then realizing that not things were pretty well in balance [LAUGH] and and,
and there may be.
It's humorous, perhaps, but there's some truth to that.
Which is if you're spending all of your time in, in one aspect of your life and
not devoting it to other things that are important to you,
then obviously things are out of whack.
I, a couple of things I backed into.
You're in the joint program.
Business law program.
I, I came from Brigham Young University to Harvard.
And was convinced I would flunk out.
And cuz I looked around and
I saw all these people who were obviously smarter than me and and how was I possibly
gonna make it in this environment except by just studying like crazy.
And so, I studied all the time.
And if I was not studying, I felt like there's this black cloud hanging over me.
I should be studying.
I've gotta be working because I'm gonna, I'm gonna flunk out.
And, and it was, it was omnipresent and at some point I finally said you know what,
I'm, I'm gonna do something which, which goes back to biblical times,
I'm gonna take Sunday off.
I'm gonna decide I'm not gonna study at all on Sunday, and
I'm gonna devote that day to my family, to worship and just personal time.
And it was amazing what happened when I made that decision because then,
on that Sunday, I didn't feel the black cloud there anymore.
It's like, okay I, I, I can't study today, I don't have to worry about it.
And, and the same thing happened as, as I went into my career,
in the consulting industry.
I said, you know what?
I, I'm not just gonna work when I come at the end of the day.
It may be a late night.
It may be I get home at 6:00 or 7:00 instead.
But when I come home I'm gonna close my brief, briefcase and not work.
And I'm gonna devote the time I have at home to my family.
And it was wonderful.
It was just, it was, it was freeing because I could really focus on
the things that I cared most about in life which, which were my wife and my kids.
And now of course if there was a big presentation coming up why I'd, you know,
I'd break that rule.
But, in terms of a, a regular pattern of life those were a couple of things I did.
Sundays stayed, for me, a day of family.
Coming home at the end of the day stayed a family time.
I traveled a good deal.
Of course, if I was, was on the road I worked like crazy late into the night.
But a few of those decisions early on shaped how I spent my time and probably
helped me balance my life to, towards those things that mattered most to me.
>> So how did you get away with that?
>> [LAUGH] >> I mean, there's a lot of people,
I mean, all of us come from these, you know, careers or are going into these
careers where, if you say, I'm gonna go home at 6 o'clock, I'm sorry.
That, you know, that's not always met with a lot of positive reception.
>> Yeah, no. I, I, and I may have misspoken there.
Some nights, I might have been able to get home at seven.
>> Or take Sunday off.
>> And, and, but, but I but I found if you take a block of time off for
yourself you may well be more productive than if you don't.
And and that may not be true depending on the organization you go to.
But I remember when I was talking to Bill Bain about joining Bain and Company and
I said look I, I have to take all day Sunday off.
So if there's like a company meeting, or if you want to come in for
a case team meetings on Sunday, I just won't be there.
And if that's something that,
that the firm can't accept, then I'm probably not the right guy for the firm.
And, and I live by that.
A, again, unless there was some kind of a, an unusual experience, some,
you know, terrible crisis happened.
I was going to jump in with both feet like everybody else.
But that was the every day occurrence, and I think it may be more effective and
more productive.
And I, I had good consulting assignments and got promoted as time went on.
So I don't think it hurts to have something more
in your life than just work.
I think, I think having faith, or a community that you care about,
politics, and children.
I think that makes you a more full human being,
more able to understand how the world works, and how most people think, and
may actually make you more effective.
And by the way if it doesn't, and you don't get promoted
in the way you wanted to And you don't make as much money as you wanted to.
So what? Life is not about getting promoted and
money.
If that's how you measure your life, I got some bad news.
There's serendipity in the world.
Bad things happen in business and the economy.
You can't be guaranteed you're gonna get promoted, and make a lot of money.
But if you measure yourself by the things that count most to you, your relationship
with your spouse, your friendships, your children, your family, those things
you can succeed at whether or not the world goes to hell in a handbasket.
So you know, I think you lay out how you want to live your life and, and you do
that you can have success regardless of what happens in the world around you.
>> You mentioned your time at Harvard and how this kind of came to you then.
This, this need to create some sectors in your life.
One of the other decisions you made at Harvard was,
you're graduating with a JDMBA, you decided to go into management consulting.
I'm curious for all of us making these kind of choices today if you Have similar
interests, and were here where we are today,
would you make the same decision to go into management consulting?
And I ask that as a JDMBA going into management consulting,
so I hope the answer is yes.
>> My condolences.
>> Yeah, no, thank you.
>> No, I mean, my path, was very different than the success books suggested.
I mean there are books out there that said that you know you
ought to have a clear goal in mind and think about that goal and
and I grew up in Detroit My dad was a car company CEO.
And I fully anticipated to go work for a co, for an automobile company.
That's what I wanted to do.
And so after my first year in the JDMP program,
I went to work at Chrysler Corporation.
And thinking that's where I was gonna go.
And I hated it.
I was so deep in the organization.
And of course the people, I mean, my boss' boss' boss had never met the CEO and
never would.
And and decisions being made that would affect the success of that company,
I'd never have any impact on unless I was there 50 or some odd years.
And I thought boy, this is just not at all like I imagined it.
And, and so I came back in the second year, and, got a job.
I think it was my second year, in the program.
I got a job with the Boston Consulting Group, for a summer job.
And it was fascinating, and it was exciting.
And I loved it.
And, and so it was not a great analysis I did to say,
this is the right next step for my career.
I just enjoyed it.
My path in life has primarily been focused on doing things I thought were fun and
enjoyable, and so that was fun.
My undergraduate major was English.
Why would you go into English?
There's no future, right, as an English major?
What are you going to do, all right?
But I liked reading and I liked writing.
So I went, I took English as my major, and then coming out of business school,
law school I went into consulting because I enjoyed it,
not because that's where I thought I'd spend my life.
I expected I'd be there for two or three years, like most people do, and
then get a job in a line corporation of some kind and, and
perhaps move up, more aggressively by having started in consulting.
I love consulting.
Because I am, I am oriented towards solving problems.
I like analysis and data and problem solving and writing and
writing presentations.
That's what I like to do.
That's what took me there.
And so, I would, I would go to those, I've followed
the career path that you enjoy most as opposed to trying to follow a career path
that you think will lead to the highest income or the quickest promotion.
Do what you enjoy and then your life will be enjoyable and fulfilling.
>> So, one other thing you're known for
is parachuting into very troubled environments.
You went from being captain back to being consulting to turn that around.
You went from Bain Cap to the Olympics, turned that around, and
then you parachuted into my home state of Massachusetts and
helped turn that around as well.
What, what led you to make those decisions?
What were you looking at to make to make those kind of like pretty risky bets.
>> Yeah I, I don't know that I have jumped into troubled situations
because I enjoy troubled situations.
[LAUGH] I, I, but but it is a sense of obligation.
And maybe it's my upbringing or my faith.
Or I say upbringing in my parents.
My dad had this sense of obligation to the country.
And my dad was born in Mexico, of American parents living there.
There was a revolution at the time.
Came back to the United States.
Lived in public housing, got public assistance, and and grew up poor,
very poor.
And had a, a, perhaps as a result of that,
of bringing in the opportunity in this life, th, that developed over his life,
had a great sense of obligation to America and to the community.
And so, whenever he felt that there was a need that wasn't being met,
he volunteered and jumped in.
And, and somehow, I felt the same way.
So, in, the first step, you mentioned going from Bain Capital, which was highly
successful and growing like crazy, and Bain Consulting was in trouble and
it was in trouble because of financial steps that had been taken by the founders.
And it looked like it might disappear all together.
And I was asked by the partners of the consulting firm if I would leave
Bain Capital for a couple years, and come back, and run the consulting firm.
And I felt like how, how can I say no?
There were a thousand people who were working at Bain Consulting at that point,
and I figured that there was a very high risk it wouldn't make it.
I had the particular skills that were most needed at that point.
Financial skills.
Cuz they needed a financial re-engineering as well as some leadership skills.
And so I came back to the consulting firm.
The Olympics?
Why go to the Olympics?
I mean, I I've pointed this out before.
There was some irony that a person of such limited athletic talent would be running,
running the, I mean, I didn't even letter in a sport in high school, and
I'd be running the premier sporting event in the world.
But I, I and I was not a big fan of the olympics.
When I heard that Utah won the games, it's like, yeah, so what,
who cares whether and but then, when I got asked to take a close look at it,
when it was in trouble, a few things weighed in my mind.
One was that this was the community my parents had been raised in and, and
it was gonna be tarnished by a potential scandal.
Number two, I began to recognize that the Olympics is one
of the few remaining places In the world where, where young people get to see,
day in and day out, the great qualities of the human spirit.
From hard work and
dedication to patriotism to teamwork, passion to, to determination.
I mean the, the list goes on and on.
We watch the Olympics not because we're Enthralled with bobsled, you know, or
ski jumping.
But instead because we see these young people from around the world,
in, in a crucible of stress rising above it all.
And great things are, are, are viewed.
And so I thought it's important these games go on.
And I have the particular skillset that's probably needed at a time like this to get
the games back on track and the same thing running for Governor.
We had a Republican Governor at the time I was considering coming back after
the Olympics and running for governor.
But the approval rating of our Republican governor was 13% and, and a number of
republican leaders said we really, would really appreciate you coming back and
applying what you've learned in your prior experiences to help our state turn around.
We've got this massive, massive deficit.
And a lot of people are going to lose jobs,
we're going to lose our economic edge as a state.
Can you come back?
And that's what, that's what drew me and
that's part of the way Why end up running for President?
It was out of a sense of obligation and, and love for the country.
And a sense that I was in the right place at the right time.
And with one thing.
You've heard the quote many times.
My mother asked it, or said it all the time.
If not now, when?
If not here, where?
And if not me, who?
And, and she said if, if you're the right person at the right time,
how can you possibly walk away?
>> I am interested because clearly your drive comes from this commitment to public
service, but, you mentioned your father as a great influence on you and
you talk about him a lot.
And one of the quotes from your, the documentary on you,
is you talking about him and saying, you know, you always think about dad and
how you stand on his shoulders.
How could you go from his beginnings to I can run for president?
I started off where he ended up.
And that's a very self-reflective statement that I think is
really interesting.
And I'm wondering how much of his success pushes you to strive higher,
to aim higher, to push yourself more than maybe you would have otherwise.
>> You know, I think some people compete with their dad or
their mom because they have a sense that, that will fulfill who they are or
define them as a success because they beat their dad or they beat their mom.
I'm not in that category.
I didn't feel in any way I needed to compete with my dad.
In part because he was uncompetitive, with family or friends, or whatever.
A guy entirely without guile.
That said, what my dad and my mom taught us in our home, and
the way they they lived their life affected the way I developed.
And, and led me to have certain skills I probably wouldn't have had without that
upbringing, and gave me a perspective on life I probably wouldn't have had without
being raised in their home.
I, I was young, lucky, lucky to be the youngest in the family, and, and
I was six years younger than my next oldest sibling.
And the result of that was that I was kind of home with my parents for the last six
years after my brother went up to school, and so Dad could take me to work with him.
And, and I would watch my dad,
first when I was younger at American Motors, interacting with executives there.
Then I saw him as Governor, and would go to meetings and watch him.
My summer jobs were working at the Governor's office, signing his name,
by the way.
[LAUGH] On, on, on notary certificates, all right?
It's very strange, that I authorized people's signatures with my dad's false
signature, but none the less.
>> [LAUGH] >> I, I got, I got to watch,
I got to watch how my dad interacted with people,
not recognizing that I was really learning from that experience.
And so, yeah, my, my dad and, and, and to a great extent also my mom,
and the commitment they made to family and church and
community shaped what I felt was right about how I should live my life.
>> I wanna turn to leadership and management, and
talk about some of the success stories you've had of which there are many.
I'm curious, when you go, you, you've led multiple different types of organizations,
private sector, public sector, non-profit.
When you go into any these situations, are there any leadership or management
principles you take with you no matter where you go, that you found successful?
>> You know, and, and I mentioned this to you, Ryan before we came in here.
And, that is I, I was one day sitting with a the Chief Financial Officer of my state,
who was someone I'd hired from Bain Capital, and
before that he'd worked at Bain and I had Bain Consulting.
So, I knew him well, Eric Kriss is his name,
and a nephew of Milton Friedman by the way.
But Eric said to me, Mitt, there are two types of leaders.
One is the kind of leader that knows a particular techniques and
skills they use in leading.
And the other is someone who has no clue why they're a leader.
You're in the latter group [LAUGH].
So, I'm not sure I'm, I'm gonna be able to, to help you with this,
with this question.
But there are, there is no question in, in my mind, but the things that,
that allowed me to be effective in consulting and
then In helping form a private equity firm and venture capital firm.
And then in the Olympics and then in the state.
That, that those kinds of, of attributes passed from one one sphere to the next.
I, I don't know what they all are.
One, one is, I believe, having a clear vision of where you want to go and, and
being able to articulate that to yourself.
Perhaps writing it down.
I tend to, I take out the, the notes section of my iPad and, and will,
will write down what it is I want to accomplish and
think about precisely what I hope to accomplish with a particular assignment.
So, I'll write that down.
So, having a clear objective, I think, is important.
Number two I think it's important to know what your values are.
I didn't ever write that down.
I just knew what they were.
But, for me, people and, and associations with other people and
friendships with people were more important than,
than any other aspect of what an enterprise might be doing.
More important than profit, more important than gaining market share,
more important than promotion.
What, what, were the feelings I had for other people and they had for me.
And so I have, I don't try and treat people with respect,
I do treat people with respect because I respect people.
It's not that I say to myself to be an effective leader I have to
be respectful of people.
No, I mean, I am respectful of people,
because I respect other human beings as being sons and daughters of God.
And, and equal in all respects to me.
So, that, that is, I think that's just part of, kind of, I mean,
again I get that from my parents.
That's just part of who you are, or who you aren't, as the case may be.
I don't think you can fake that.
And, and I, I'll mention one other thing, and then you, you can come back to it.
I like a, or push me further if you'd like.
>> [LAUGH] >> As a management style,
I like extensive participation.
I like a lot of give and take.
I remember on one occasion
the Chief of Staff while I was serving as Governor came in.
And she said look,
we've had this tough decision to make about whether to spend, I can't remember
how many hundreds of million of dollars putting in this new subway line.
And and, and she said,
I'm going to bring in the cabinet members, we all agreed, that we should do it.
All of us admit, we've gone through the numbers, and, and the pros and cons, and
we all agree we should do it.
And they all sat there, and I said, does anyone here disagree with this decision?
And they said no that they were all on board, and
I said then I can't possibly go ahead.
He said, what do you mean?
I said, well, I have to have someone here who disagrees.
We've gotta have someone who can make an argument for why it's a bad decision.
Pl, please go back and find, if you have to, someone on the other side of
the aisle, in the Senate or the House, or someone who really disagrees with this,
and then let's take it apart once we can have that kind of debate.
I love that kind of exchange and debate.
And, and, not because, you know,
I think I'm the judge who can always pick out the right, the right answer, but
because I enjoy the give and take, and the mental exchange.
And I find when you have that kind of exchange,
often times I end up being wrong.
Often times others are wrong, but we learn from it.
And I am entirely non-defensive about whether my answer, the one,
the preconceived notion I came in with was right or not.
I only care about getting to the right answer.
And if the group, if as a group we can come up with a right answer,
I don't care whose idea it was.
It's like yeah, let's, let, you know, it's the fun and the engagement of drawing on
people and their experience that I, that I find compelling.
And I'll mention one more thing.
And that is, I, I used to think I should spend my time,
as a leader, working with people to help them overcome their weaknesses.
And then I realized that's a waste of time, because, by and large,
people don't overcome their weaknesses.
Instead, I found that my job was to help people take advantage of their strengths.
And if they had weaknesses, define ways to ac, to accommodate that by bringing in
other people who had the strengths where they had weaknesses.
Or where I had weaknesses.
And I do, by the way.
And by the way, I have tended to bring in people who,
who can complement my own weaknesses.
And, and so it being capital, for
instance, I, we are a, a very different group of people.
It's not th, th, th, the 18 partners that were there when I left.
Now there are over 100.
But the 18 partners who were there had very different personalities and skills.
In part because I saw my job as not trying to make them all the same, but
instead taking advantage of the particular skills people had and
encouraging those things and filling in th, the blank spots and the flat spots.
Where where they may not have been, may not have been quite as effective.
>> Your most recent management challenge was your presidential organization.
And I'm curious.
>> You may heard. I didn't win. [LAUGH] >> Yes.
>> [LAUGH]
>> I did hear that.
And and, and, and
that's actually what I wanna ask about,
is when you look back at managing that organization.
I know everyone can play Monday morning quarterback in politics,
but when you look back at managing that organization,
what was different about managing a presidential campaign?
And, and maybe what would you have done differently if you,
if you looked at it from a management standpoint again?
>> Well, a candidate is by and large not the manager of the campaign.
And, and and that has brought home to you day in and
day out by the people who are managing the campaign.
>> [LAUGH] >> And, and and so I you know I,
I have run for office before.
I've worked on my mother's campaign for US Senate.
I worked on my father's campaigns.
My father ran for governor three times and was elected three times.
He ran for president, was not elected.
But I worked on my dad's campaigns, my mother's campaign and
the candidate is really out there speaking.
The candidate is out, is out doing the job of connecting with people and,
and and, and taking the message to the, to the voting public.
The people running the campaign you choose like you would if you were the,
the chairman of the board.
And you choose someone to be the chief executive officer,
the chief operating officer.
And you have both in a campaign.
You have a CEO and a COO in a well run campaign.
And so I was not the CEO or the COO of my campaign.
I was probably more like the chairman of the, of the campaign.
And, and key strategic decisions, I insisted on being a part of.
And, and managed in the way that, that I've just described.
We would have probably the eight or
ten top people in the campaign come together and debate major issues.
So if, in a presidential campaign.
Was I gonna play in Iowa?
This is in 2012, I played in 2008 and, and
found Iowa to be, Iowa to be expensive and a good start but not sufficient.
Was I gonna play in Iowa or
was it hopeless and should I just go directly to New Hampshire?
And we debated that at great length.
And and talked about a strategy to go forward, and, and, and
selected a strategy which worked very well.
Winning the nomination, by the way, is not easy.
You know after it's over it all looks very easy.
Oh you were obviously gonna get the nomination.
Oh yeah, I mean, I was behind Rick Santorum, in the last three states.
I believe Iowa.
I don't mean Iowa.
Illinois.
Wisconsin, Michigan, also, Ohio.
I think I was be, behind five or ten points,
with only days to go before the the primary.
And so, it is tough to do that, and I think we did pretty, pretty well, I think,
in the general election.
We faced some real challenges and made some big mistakes.
And, and, but as I looked back at the, at the process that we pursued,
I'm, I'm pleased with the process and pleased with the people.
We had a really good team of people.
Very committed and one of the things I liked about it,
there was the not the kind of politics inside the organization you sometimes see.
People, you know, backstabbing and trying to claim credit for good things.
You know, people have strengths and weaknesses.
Each of our team members, had like myself, had real weaknesses, but
we worked well by and large and, and got a lot of things right and some things wrong.
You mentioned things wrong.
One of the big challenges that a Republican candidate has is that,
that minority voters tend not to vote extensively in Republican primaries,
or participate in Republican caucuses.
They tend to vote in democratic primaries and democratic caucuses.
So if you're Jeb Bush right now or Chris Christie or Marco Rubio or
Scott Walker and you want to get the nomination,
you're going to be going to the people who vote in your primaries and
in your caucuses which will, by and large, not be minority voters.
So for the next year you're gonna watch the candidates on my side of
the aisle spend all their time with the white population and
typically not at colleges either.
And then when they get the nomination, when somebody finally becomes the nominee,
they run to the minority community and
say give me your vote and they say where have you been?
All right?
And that was a mistake I made.
Which is, I was so anxious to get the nomination,
I didn't spend as much time as I should have taking my message to minority voters,
fighting on minority, or in this case, Hispanic T, uh,TV and
radio airwaves, getting my message across, even though it wouldn't have helped me in
the primary necessarily It certainly was essential in the general.
And, I think that was something we missed in our strategy sessions.
And, in part because we looked at what had happened in the past.
We said we had to target independent voters so we went after independence.
I won independent voters.
Won them in, in, in Ohio among other states.
We said hey, if you got it, independent vote in Ohio, you are gonna win.
No they're not [LAUGH] we needed a much better showing among minority voters and
that's a place we really messed up and you know, so
I go back and say would I have changed the team?
I, I like the team, I, I was proud of the team we had.
And the way we work together.
But do we make a mistake in strategy?
Sure, that, that among others.
>> Moving to the idea of running for office.
People in the room have come up to me and said they want to pursue a career
in business like you, and then run for office, like you.
I'm curious.
If you were to give advice today to someone like that,
would you follow your father's advice, which was, you know, find a career, find
a reason not to run, and then run later on when you don't have so much at stake?
Or would it be something different in today's age?
>> I'm afraid I'm, I'm prisoner of my dad's advice.
>> [LAUGH] >> And, and, and I'll tell you why.
My dad's advice was, because my dad ran for governor when he was 56 years old.
He'd been head of a car company.
He he felt that his state was circling the drain, the state of Michigan.
He saw that, that automobile jobs were leaving, his state, going to other states,
and, and other countries, and felt that he had to try and turn things around.
He felt that race relations in the state were a word, awful and
civil rights have not been advanced as they should.
That the schools and the city, Detroit, were, were just a tragedy.
And so, he got involved and ran for governor.
I got involved in his campaigns.
I found politics very exciting, and he said to me,
as also to my sisters and brother.
He said, you know, I wouldn't get involved in politics until your kids are raised and
if, and only if you're financially independent.
And it's like wow.
That, that's never gonna happen.
I thought I mean, I mean you know working in, in consulting is great but
it's not gonna make you financially independent.
And so I never imagined I'd get involved in politics.
And and what happened was starting Bain Capital and
then having the stock market take off and, if you're leveraged, and
the stock market goes from 1,000 to 10,000, it's a good thing, all right?
And so. >> [LAUGH]
>> So suddenly I bec, I, those, those
conditions became met. I, I. >> [LAUGH] >> That's the euphemism of the day.
>> I'll write that
down, yeah. >> Yeah.
>> [LAUGH]
>> But I, I personally, and
I don't, I don't think you have to be financially independent to run for office.
I, I think you have to be able to,
to meet your mortgage without having to win the election,
however. And
that was what my dad was concerned about. I I think it really helps,
if people who. Who go to work in the statehouse or
go to work in Washington actually have experience in the real economy and
in the real world and can take that experience to government.
Whether that's in teaching, or working in the foreign service, or, or working,
in a corporation, I think it really helps yo go there with background and
experience that you can share with others.
I think that was the concept with the,
that the founders had in mind in forming our, our Republic.
And that is that you had come from a, a real, I mean look at John Adams.
I mean, he was a, a farmer in Massachusetts, went to serve,
became President, went backed home and, and went back home, became a farmer again.
And, and I think that's a better model then what we have right now.
And so, you know, my advice would be.
Yeah, work at a real job.
Get some experience.
And if the window opens, you see an opportunity to serve, locally,
state wide, nationally.
Then jump in.
Because good people are needed badly.
You, another quote you, you said in your documentary was that the other
side often acts like they don't know what it's like to own a business.
They don't know what it's like to have everything on the line.
And I see that disconnect a lot today,
especially with income inequality as a burgeoning issue.
In particular, private equity is something that you were tremendously successful in,
in the campaign talked about it in a different way.
And a lot of our classmates are going into private equity or
going into these business careers that are seen as very prestigious here but
maybe elsewhere are seen differently.
I'm wondering what you think about that disconnect and
whether there's ways we can bridge that divide or how you think about it now.
Well a couple of things, one, my, my concern about incomes
in America is not so much focused on why some people make so
much, as opposed to why are so many people making so little.
And, and we have large cohorts of people in this country
who have not seen rising incomes, and and have not seen it for a long time.
And, and so my concern is how do we get people out of generational poverty?
How do we get people out of situational poverty?
And how do we get the whole middle class in America, as well as lower income folks,
to see rising incomes again?
And that, that for me is the big, is the big issue.
I, I don't look at peop, at Steve Jobs and say boy, he's a bad person for
making all that money.
I, I look and say thank heavens for Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and, and
Scott McNealy and, and Marc Andreessen, more power to them.
Do, be more and more successful.
And, by the way, if you wanna give it all away during life, that's fine too.
Great.
But, so I don't look and say okay those, I don't think those people are the problem,
I think the problem is how come we're not able to lift more?
How come we can't get more people to see rising incomes and, and more prosperity?
And there are a lot of reasons for, for that, but, but I happen to believe very
fundamentally and profoundly, that without question, that the best principles for
helping people get out of poverty and seeing rising incomes is for, is for
us to follow conservative and Republican principles.
Now, you might say oh well that's, that doesn't make sense,
you're just the party of the rich.
Let me tell you friends, the rich will do fine whether Democrats are in power,
liberals are in power, conservatives or Republicans.
The rich do fine all over the world.
The rich do just fine.
The people whose lives are affected by politics and
leadership are the people in the middle and the people at the bottom end.
And the reason I'm a Republican is that I believe the principles that,
that my party stands for, or at least that I stand for.
That those principles are the best designed to help people see rising incomes
again and better jobs for their kids.
And, and the best principles to get people out of poverty.
I, I mean I, don't, I mean I,
and we could have this debate at great length but I think evidence proves it.
I think logic proves it.
That's why I'm Republican.
That's why I ran for office is I want to help people in the middle and
in the bottom see rising incomes and, and
I believe that you're successful, then you're enterprising.
You're going into business.
More power to you.
Go out there, be successful.
Build a business, work in a business that's already there, make it better.
The better an enterprise does, the more profits it makes, the more you can invest.
The more you invest, the more you can grow.
The more you grow, the more people you can hire.
The more people that are being hired, the more wages will go up.
Wages go up because there's demand for labor that outstrips the supply of labor.
That's how they go up, and so, I, I want you to succeed.
I mean, I look at you and when you're all highly successful businesspeople as
you hope you will be, I won't look at you and say there's the enemy.
I'll say they're my friends, I love you, I appreciate what you're doing,
I want to see you successful.
And as you're successful, I want you to recognize that your success is
contributing to the success of our country and
to those people who rely on the jobs you'll help create.
>> We only have time for
one more question before we're gonna move to audience Q and A.
And it's a simple question, maybe.
It's just what does the future hold for you?
You're boxing Evander Holyfield.
>> Yeah.
Yeah. >> In the near future.
>> Yeah.
>> Which
>> Is a risky.
I can say is a risky decision to me,
but you know, I >> [LAUGH] The term pulling his punches
come to mind, yeah.
>> Yeah, hopefully.
Yeah. >> [LAUGH] Yeah.
Yeah.
>> But I'm curious, you know, what, what do you want to do next,
given all you've accomplished?
>> Well, you know, I, I would, I continue, I continue to be motivated
by the same things that got me into presidential politics in the first place.
And so I will work for
individuals who I believe will get America on the right track to once
again create more jobs than we have supply of labor, to see rising incomes again.
That means better schools, that means better innovation,
that means making America the most attractive place for entrepreneurs and
innovators and businesses of all kinds.
It also means an entirely different foreign policy.
I happen to think that the foreign policy of the last six or
seven years has been a disaster and the globe is feeling it.
So I wanna change direction for our country in, in a way that I think would be
more productive for the safety of the world, and the well-being of the world,
for the preservation of liberty, and for rising prosperity for all Americans.
So that how do I do that?
By campaigning and raising money for Senate and Congressional seats at the,
at the national level.
By helping Republican candidates for President.
I'd help the Democrat candidates, but they, they're not asking for
my advice at this point.
>> [LAUGH]. >> And there's only one, really,
at this stage.
>> [LAUGH] >> And, and but I, you know,
I speak regularly with with people who are running for office and offer my advice and
will continue to do so and in, I mean I do a lot of fundraisers and, and speeches.
And, by the way the reason I'm here.
During my campaign, I wasn't at college campuses and
business school and law schools.
I was at Harvard law school last week and
I was at Duke and, and, I'll be at University of Chicago coming soon.
The end of this week I'll be at, at, at, in Jacksonville, Florida.
I speak to college campuses cuz I want people to understand.
The people who are conservative,
are conservative, because we believe the principals of conservatism
are best able to help the middle class and the poor.
We know how to end poverty.
Generational poverty.
But we're not doing it.
Because there's not a political will for it to happen.
But, so, that, that's what I'm devoted to.
Now at the same time I'm back in business,
because I want to make sure that I can provide for myself and
my family without drawing down their inheritance and and of course e,
every politician who leaves office says I'm gonna spend more time with the family.
I actually am.
I have 23 grandkids and I'm spending time with the family and love it.
Thank you Ryan.
>> Great. Well we're gonna move to some Q and A now.
And there'll be mics on the left and the right side.
So raise your hand high if you're interested in asking a question.
For those at the top please continue to Tweet your questions.
And we're gonna start with a question from Twitter so
I'll point to [UNKNOWN] over here.
Yeah?
>> What worries you most about the U.S. economy?
>> Well I'm, I'm concerned that we may be seeing a bubble in,
in in tech stocks and, and that we could have the, a kind of
disruptive event that could cause the, the stock market to collapse.
And I'm not, I'm not terrified about people losing money in the stock market.
I'm terrified about, about going into a recession again.
That would put a lot of people out of work.
Obviously the Fed has used every tool it has to get this economy going.
And if we went into a recession at this point, there are not a lot of tools.
I mean we're already at zero, effectively zero interest rates.
So there are not a lot of tools.
We've, we're spending massively more than we take in.
So we're, we're pursuing a highly stimulative monetary policy and
a highly stimulative fiscal policy both, so
if we went into recession at this point that'd be pretty tough.
I hope that doesn't happen.
I think there's some positive, elements on the, on the horizon that, one of course,
is very low cost of energy which is stimulative.
Gives people more money to spend and those things are encouraging.
I don't think we're gonna see something of an immediate nature that
causes us to fall into recession again.
I sure hope not, but the rest of the world is a little iffy and
it can have an impact in America.
Longer term though is my, is my concern.
Longer term, I see America as adopting of the policies of Europe.
Higher and higher corporate taxes, although Europe is getting away from that.
I'll say the traditional policies of Europe.
Higher and higher corporate taxes.
Higher and higher levels of regulation.
Higher and higher personal attacks.
Burdens.
Schools that are being run, more for
the interest of the, the unions than they are for the students.
Permanent intractable poverty.
Generational poverty is what I'm referring to.
These things give me a great deal of concern.
I, I'm concerned about America's innovation lead.
We, the, the political class doesn't understand we're in competition.
The political class thinks like the American business world
used to think back in the 1960s, which you didn't.
And then came along strategy.
Which was the idea of not just how good I am, but
how good I am relative against everyone I compete with.
And right now we're competing and the political class doesn't understand that
we're competing with Russia, and with China, and with the Jihadists.
They have a strategy,
Russia has a strategy China has a strategy, and objectives.
The jihadists do.
What's America's strategy?
What's our global strategy?
Where are we headed?
What are we trying to accomplish?
What are we doing in Latin America, what's our strategy for North Africa,
the Middle East?
Hilary Clinton said it right.
Just deciding not to do dumb things is not a strategy.
And and so, I mean, that, that's what concerns me most about America and
about our economy is that we don't seem to have a strategy about where we're heading.
And we're becoming more and more like Europe on a number of dimensions,
education, poverty, taxation, regulation, and foreign policy.
And that, that gives me concern, and that's why I'm as active as I am still,
politically.
Though I'm not running for office, thank you very much
>> [LAUGH] We have a question over here.
Stand up then, just introduce yourself please.
>> Hi.
>> Hi Governor Romney, my name is Alex Pierce, and
I'm a first year all select [UNKNOWN] I'm from Massachusetts as well.
One of the central themes of the GSB, and the view from the top program is
the power of Authenticity as a tool for effective leadership.
We see then a business but we see that, I think, less so in political leadership.
And so I wanted to see how you balanced being the authentic Mitt Romney versus
what you thought the audience or the kind of Republican machine wanted you to
be like, or what, what did you wanted to say?
>> Yeah, you know, one of the great challenges in running for office,
is that you will be defined by your opposition.
And at and it and, by the way, an attack is,
is very difficult to respond to without spending all your time in response.
I remember the first time I got attacked, and
this was when I was running against Ted Kennedy.
And, and, and my, you know I went to my staff and
I said you know we got to answer these charges these attacks.
And they said you know, if you are explaining you are losing.
The, that is a little catch phrase in politics,
if you are explaining you are losing.
So you never explain, you never respond to the attacks.
You just attack back.
And the only thing you can do is attack back just harder.
And, and so these campaigns are just attack, attack, attack.
And by and large,
it's very difficult in a campaign to have people get to know who you really are.
I mean, in a campaign you spent more time with me by far.
And I mean TV time included.
If you take all the time you saw during the 2012 campaign, of b, and
compare it with what we spent in this room, we spent more time now, together,
talking about things that we all care about.
We choose candidates based on very little interaction with them, and
typically the interaction is watching 30 second ads, which are packaged and
very brief, and by and large are attacking their opponent.
And, and then debates.
And that's about it.
Some people have noted, you know, Mitt, if you'd have just shown that,
that documentary that was done on you, why, the,
the people would've had a different perspective.
It's, like, yeah. But who would've watched a documentary?
All right?
Who's gonna sit down and watch a one and a half hour movie on someone running for
office?
I mean, no one's gonna do that cuz you're gonna figure, rightly,
it was all, you know, entered in for the campaign, by the campaign, and, and so I,
I I don't know how we can do a better job describing and showing who we are.
And, and my own view was, look, I was, I served as Governor for four years.
The positions I had and the postures I took on issues
were the same as when I was governor as when I was running for president.
And hopefully people will get that perspective based on my record.
But it's, it's a real challenge and, and in the upcoming election
presuming Hilary Clinton is the nominee on the democratic side.
And she may not be, but it looks obviously very good for here now.
She's pretty well defined in people's minds, pro and con.
On the Republican side, people aren't as well defined.
And so they're going to have a challenge,
whoever our nominee is, becoming better known in the mind of the public.
And the goal of the opposition will be to define the Republican in a negative light,
in a very negative light, and that's just, that's part of the territory.
You know, getting into a race.
It's, it's, it, it, you, I was gonna say it's not fun.
The truth is it is fun.
Running for President is really fun.
It's like for sport for old guys.
All right? >> [LAUGH]
>> It's, and
you come away, passionate about a coun, the country,
more optimistic about the country, you meet extraordinary people.
It's a wonderful experience.
If you get the chance to run for president, do it for sure.
But I love the experience.
And, and, you know, I just wish in the campaign, you had more time to be seen and
known by more people and I think if people did that,
we'd have a better shot at electing people we were happy with after the election.
>> Yeah, thanks.
>> Great, we have one question over here in the back.
>> Okay, yes sir.
>> Hey, my name's Elliot Damachek, and I'm a second-year MBA.
Was at Bain Consulting beforehand and going back afterwards, so thank you for
helping to make that exist.
>> [LAUGH] >> [LAUGH] My question is around you
mentioned that your father was helped by public assistance programs a while back,
and traditionally the view of the Republican party is much less favorable
towards those types of programs.
So I was wondering how your view on that has evolved and
how it's shaped by your father's experience.
>> Yeah. Thank you.
A,a, actually, there are, I, I gotta talk about two groups of, of People in poverty.
One I'll call situational poverty.
Someone loses a job, or, or has a life changing illness of some kind.
And the situation means, they're now in poverty.
Those people typically come out of poverty relatively quicker.
When I say relatively quick, they come out of poverty eventually.
And, and the programs to help them come out of poverty are extraordinarily helpful
and important.
And it could be housing, food, training programs, child care and so forth.
And we have a good series of social help programs for people in that setting.
I'm sure they could get better.
Unemployment insurance is another of those.
And they should be fine tuned and
evaluated to see what makes them more effective, but those work well.
Where, where Republicans like myself have some angst is in our solutions for
generational property, and that's people who obviously go from generation to
generation in poverty and don't ever get out.
Back in the 1960s,
when I was in high school, Lyndon Johnson declared the War on Poverty.
We today have record levels of poverty, more than when Johnson was president.
About 15% of Americans live in poverty.
So, so, why didn't it work?
And the answer is the programs that were put into place,
in many respects, made it more difficult for many people to get out of poverty.
I mean, the highest marginal tax rate in America is not the marginal tax rate for
people in my tax bracket or yours.
The highest marginal tax rate is for the poor.
If you're on Medicaid, housing vouchers, food stamps,
and so forth and you start earning money.
You're gonna lose all sorts of benefits.
And the effective marginal tax rate if you will, benefit tax rate, is huge!
And so we lock people from in, in, into, into staying, on,
on, on government assistance because it would be crazy for them to get off.
We make it almost impossible to get married.
If, if he, for a, a poor person.
If a young person is pregnant and, and she decides to marry the father of the child,
she's far less likely to qualify for Medicaid, for housing vouchers, for
food stamps, and other forms of assistance.
The, the only likely way that she'll be able to really get the support she needs
is if the father provides some of his support that he has,
doesn't get married and she gets Medicaid and so forth, these other programs.
And as a result, not surprisingly, huge numbers of people follow that path.
There, there was a study done by Brookings Institution some years ago, and,
and I've got the numbers here directionally right.
I'll have to go back and look at the numbers, but they're close to these.
They said, what, what happens in America if someone graduates from high school,
marries before they have their first child and has ever held a job, and
the answer is 3% of those people will fall in poverty.
What happens if someone doesn't do any of those three things?
70% of them will be in poverty.
It's like aha, so
if you want to make sure we eliminate generational poverty in America,
one you want to make sure there are huge incentives to get people their first job.
We don't do that.
Two, you wanna make sure that schools are safe and teachers are effective so
we can get people through high school.
We don't do that.
And three, you wanna make sure that your government programs encourage people to
get married as opposed to create disincentives for marriage, which ours do.
We're doing exactly the wrong things if we wanna get people out of poverty.
And yet there doesn't seem to be any real effort in Washington to change that.
So Republicans are saying, by the way, when I was Governor,
I said look I want to spend more money on childcare and have a greater work
requirement to get people out of the home and into, into the workplace.
I am happy to spend more money on assistance but
I want it to help get people out of poverty, not lock them into poverty.
So support and, and government assistance to end and
alleviate poverty, Republicans are all in favor of, but they want to find things
that actually solve the problem as opposed to cause people to live in poverty in a,
in a human tragedy that goes on and on and on, generation to generation.
Thanks for the question.
>> Unfortunately I, I'm gonna have to take the last question here.
>> Boy, I am wordy aren't I? >> We're cutting you off, yeah.
>> [LAUGH] >> Be worried.
No we we asked a,
a question of all of you from the top speakers, and
its one that we have to answer when we apply to the school.
And there are obviously a lot of ways you can answer this so I'm interested, but
the question is what matters most to you and why?
>> It's not one thing.
And. So I'm going to give you a longer answer.
One, another long answer.
One, I believe in God.
I know some people don't.
Many people who don't, nonetheless, believe in something
greater than themselves.
I, I believe that, that if you believe in something greater than yourself, that,
that your life will be more full and and productive.
So I, I believe in God.
And by the way, in believing in God, I believe therefore we are all his children.
And I believe that God loves all of us and
I believe he loves us as you would love your children.
Some are doing naughty things.
Some are doing nice things.
But you love them all.
And and, and I believe that I will be measured, and you will be measured,
based upon what you have done for your fellow, children of God.
And and that means your spouse, your children, and your community more broadly.
So that's a big part of what's important to me,
which are the people around me that I care for.
The person I care for moot, most in life is my wife.
We met at a high school.
I love her passionately.
She is the most important person in my life.
If I could do anything, any day, it would be to be with her.
That's what I enjoy most in life.
Close thereafter is to be with my kids.
My, my boys and their wives, and now 23 grandkids.
The, the greatest joy I have in life is being with them.
Sitting around in the back yard, or at a beach just being with my grandkids and
family, is the greatest source of happiness and
the most important thing to me.
Coming beyond that, is a circle which includes my church, my congregation,
the people I know at church, and my sense of service to them.
Service in the broadest sense.
Giving back in the sense of caring for people around me is,
is follows from that belief in something bigger than myself.
I, I happen to believe that the currency in life is the people that you love and
that care for you.
The friends you have.
Most of which you've learned here, you'll forget.
The people you met here, you'll remember for the rest of your life and and
will form a big part of your, of your wealth.
That's your balance sheet when life is over, who loves you and you love, and
who are your friends and, and and how close are they to you.
So what's the most important thing to me?
My God, my, my wife, my kids and, and my fellow human beings.
And, and I participate and engage with, with, with people large through campaigns,
through speeches, through serving at charities in all sorts of ways.
And, and the rewards, the rewards that come back are, are rewards in people.
And in friendship and love, and that's what makes the most impact in my life.
Thanks, you guys. Congratulations to you and best of luck.
Good to be with you >> Thank you very much.
>> Thank you.
Thank you.
Nicely done.
Very nicely done.
>> [MUSIC]