Xerox CEO Ursula Burns seems like a really nice person. She sat down at WIF10 for a wide-ranging interview that touched upon the revitalization of the company she runs, the greening of Xerox and what it means to be a leader. She has been at Xerox long enough to have watched its transformation from the copier company to the business process company it is today. Interesting factoid: when Xerox made its first device it did 14 pages a minute in black ink. Xerox knew people wanted more, and spent the money to make color. But 90% of pages produced by companies today have color in them, but today 80% are still printed in black. Why? Cost. Today, black and white is .01/per page; color is .07 per page. Until that comes closer, customers will skip printing in color. That's one simple Xerox mission: solving cost of color, which would be a simple but critical change in how people produce documents.
Burns assumed the helm at Xerox in the midst of the economic meltdown. She says, matter of factly, "Crisis is the best motivator: When people think things are going well. theres no reason to change it." So the best time to change is when things are uncertain. That gives you permission to think about things differently and permission to do something about it. For example, going paperless. "Paperless sounds like blasphemy for a company like Xerox, but it's not; we're helping companies move in that direction, too."
As for her leadership style, she suggests that CEO's resist the urge to over-communicate. What is over-communicating? "Most communications assume people aren't intelligent. We should do the opposite. Most people can fill in the story." Xerox had to create a story for which people could say, "yeah that will work." So there is a big story and the major pieces of the company have to fit the story--then let the leaders of the company figure out how to make it work.
A leader can't answer all questions through global, mass communications. You have to be able to trust the company leaders to communicate down the line.
One initiative she focuses on is the "Dreaming with Customers" program, in which Xerox brings clients to research centers or vice versa and spends time with them, both asking them what their problems are and understanding what they do. Out of that Xerox understands true pain points of customers and then researchers can go out and try to figure out how to fix their problems. She offered two examples of Dreaming with Customers in action:
- P&G executives travel all over the world doing their own Dream with Customers and use PDAs, but it was difficult to communicate. So Xerox developed a mobile print solution that worked for P&G because Xerox knew how P&G worked.
- P&G makes lots of diapers. Parents write the kids name on the diapers. Why not make a product with the name already on it? That's a Xerox solution for a P&G product. It delivers more value and revenue for P&G, more revenue for Xerox.
"We don't have to frame ourselves as green. What we've done is serve a need that's real. Our focus is to use less of everything--less paper, which you can do by making paper that uses less tree." Xerox makes paper now that uses 90% of a tree instead of the 10% of the tree used previously. The company uses less water, and technology is the key to that. The solution was "solid ink." Solid ink uses less water. Also, normal printers use lot of energy and create lot of waste--the average printer produces 900 pounds. Solid ink creates 90% less solid waste. It's like a crayon-it consumes itself during use. "You become green by taking something that's needed, paper, ... innovate it and use less than in the past.
Clearly this is not your father's Xerox, and Ursula Burns has just begun.
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