Pity Bowes began almost 100 years ago, it was principally focused on mailing mail meters, if you will. And that really anchored the business in the strategy, up into the 90's. In the 90s for a host of different reasons, the business became, I would say equally focused on financial services. So there was for sure, a aspect of financial services around the com mailing business. So part of the mailing equipment needs to be a waste. And then there's also a bank, that goes along with our Carmel in business because, many customers will actually want to pre pay mail. So you need some function, some capability to actually take deposits, and then make loans. So, if you look at Pity Bowes up until I would say in 200, it was kind of those two pillars. And I would say around the year 2000. And I think it's worth noting, at least I find it interesting that 1999, Jim Collins' book, good to great, one of my favorite match of books. He talked about 12 companies and Pity Bowes is one of those 12 companies. And I'll come back to that in a moment because I think it's interesting. Around 2000, the company realized that with digital technologies, the traditional mail market was going to come under pressure. So they went on a fairly aggressive acquisition spree. They spent almost three billion dollars on 100 acquisitions over the next eight or nine years, and they were kind of all over the place. It was a way of at least, coming into it after the fact a level of coherency, that you can really discern. But what happened, and I would say a little bit of good luck. So, the financial services aspect of the business, They got out of violence to the peripheral businesses in 2005, 6 7. So they were into jet engines, they were into all kinds of different, leasing vehicles, but they got out of that before the financial crisis. But come 2008, when the economy really hit the skids, Pity Bowes began to have problems. And it was even more acute because of, the acquisition had put a lot of pressure on the balance sheet. And then in 2008, the financial crisis companies just stopped mailing. So they had kind of a perfect storm if you will. So we were pretty limited, it had to be in house. So we had these businesses, and we settled on a handful of markets that we thought were logical for us to be in. We had brand permission, we had some type of competitive edge, and there were growth markets. So the markets that we settled on, were location intelligence, a customer information management, content management. We still kept the digital mailbox, although that was a little bit, beleaguered at that point. And then there's this very small business which we call global e commerce at the time, which was a $5 or $10 million dollar business. That was really a single relationship with the eBay. So those are the growth baits, those, those half dozen businesses, we're the growth baits. So we, we worked hard to begin to innovate in those spaces. At the same time, we're also trying to innovate in our core. And the way I've always thought about innovation, is in three dimensions. There's business model innovation, there's product innovation and there's process innovation, and we used all three. So for our process innovation perspective, partially because the company had acquired so much different stuff. And was run, there's a Federated group of businesses. We had 37 different general letters, we had five different CRM systems. We had multiple service systems, we had multiple proprietary leasing systems, which very few people in the company understood. So the first important point of innovation for us was, what could you do on browser's process. So the intent was pretty simple, and that was to consolidate all of your business processes. That single processes for the entire company that were supported by contemporary technologies. So that was the first aspect of innovation. It was important for all kinds of reasons, some of which we understood at the time, some of which we've understood subsequently. But one of the key reasons it was important was. Its provided 150 or 200 million dollars of expense savings, that we could begin to redeploy into innovation of products and the innovation of other places. From a business product perspective, we began to innovate hard on those five or six areas. And I would say, one of the interesting things about our digital businesses are software businesses, because we have great customers. There were $400 million dollars worth of revenue, so it wasn't a huge business. But if you look at the client list underneath it, we had 90% of the Fortune 500. So, we didn't at that point have a great marketing function. So we went to our key clients and we said, how can we help you innovate? How can we let problems around the products and the domains that were participating with, can we begin to innovate for you? And that really began to kind of anchor the product innovation. And then we started on two Business Model Innovations, one which yielded pretty quick results and one that took a while. But global commerce business, that was really kind of a platform business, in the sense that it is a business platform that has all the attributes of a business platform. And that is, if you get enough volume through, it as scales nicely. So, it happened that I had a good relationship with eBay for my previous career at IBM. And I knew the CEO well, so I went there and asked, what can we do to take this to another level? And that began the growth of global commerce, which to some extent has been the engine for growth of the company of the West four or five years. In parallel, we began this kind of crazy development project in our core. So you remember, we had three pillars of strategy. The first was stabilize our core business. So all of a sudden, we call that reinventor core. So if you think about what the mail meter was, it was a monolithic single application analog device. That, the mechanical engineering hadn't changed too much in the last 100 years. So he said, what if you could evolve that business to a platform business of its own? So that the device would become a utility, but a multi application utility that would certainly do the evidence of a mail. But would do shipping and do lots of other applications as well. So you begin to create all new sets of possibilities, and value propositions for these million clients that you had. That they along with us, we're experiencing this melting iceberg because the value of mail was going down. So that began, you know, 2013. And those those two aspects of innovation around business model, are the most exciting aspects of innovation going forward. As you think about challenges, you start with the deck is kind of stacked against you. We had some intrinsic advantages which helped. But as you get into it, I think there's a couple of things that I think about a lot. First of all, as you evolve the strategy, you need to evolve the culture. If you look at the history of transformations and particularly failed, but also successful transformations. Those transformations that are able to evolve the culture to support the strategy, are the ones that succeed. And culture is a funny thing, because it's in some ways, not as tangible as other assets on the balance sheet. And it's not like cash or customers that are buildings that you can touch. But I would suggest with the benefit of the experience, is perhaps the most powerful. And my old boss at IBM Lou Gerstner, had different definition for culture. It's not one that you'd find in the textbooks, but it's one that I think, it's run true to me. And his definition for culture was, it's the collective capability of the organization to create value. And if you think about companies that are trying to transform themselves, that's what it's all about, right. Because you've got this great legacy business or this legacy business, it's not great. But you've got to be able to move forward into the future, and to create value, and you need the culture underneath that supports it. So, I think job one of any leadership team is how you evolve the culture to support the strategy. The second thing is, these are hard by definition, they're not straight lines. So when we started, our stock was ten, The stock went to 27 In 18 months, we're now a little over 14. So we've got to go up and down, which takes a lot out of the team. So you think you think you're there, and then all of a sudden you're not there. And that requires a degree of resilience and patience. I'm not by nature, a patient person and I don't know many Chief Executive Officers that are. But for sure, as you're going through something like this, you need to be patient. But resilience is the one that's the most important, because you take so many shots at different points in the transformation. And the first job is you've got to brush yourself off. Because there's 14,000 of my colleagues that are looking to see how I respond to different moments in time. Or different sets back and if I look despondent or if I look unsure, then they'll feel unsure. So your job, one is, if you have your own moments of doubt, that you've got to deal with those. And you've got to deal with those pretty quickly, because people are paying attention. At the same time, you can't be pollyannic, people respond to leadership that's authentic. So you got to level with people that, this is going to be tough and I use a quote with him all the time, it's from Napoleon. And Napoleon's definition of leadership as leaders define reality, but provide hope. And I think that's the tricky balance. You can't be Pollyannic, you can't ignore reality because, denial will get you in more trouble. But if you don't provide hope, then you lose the team. So it tends to be those kind of softer characteristics, as opposed to financial or business characteristics. That end up being the dispositive attributes, in terms of what you need, in order to work your way through a transformation.
