At the December 2016 Digital Transformation Summit event in New York City, Dow Chemical’s Andrew Liveris received Chief Executive’s 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of his successful transformation of a 120-year-old company. From the presentation, Liveris headed uptown to meet with then president-elect Donald Trump, who approached him to head a manufacturing council for the new administration. As we know now, Liveris accepted and heads up the council.
Following are excerpts from a conversation Liveris had earlier that day with J.P. Donlon, Chief Executive’s editor-in-chief emeritus, in which Australian-born Liveris described how he transformed his company over the four decades he has been with Dow and commented on broader social and political issues.
“We are a very process-driven company. We’re all engineers. We have processes and rules. We were quite successful in the end-to-end transformation from a systems point of view.”
ON INCOME INEQUALITY: “Income inequality is a huge issue, along with youth unemployment and reskilling. I don’t think the undergraduate college degree does much anymore. It’s about what the high school degree did 10 or 15 years ago.”
ON WHY HE SPENDS 200 TO 250 DAYS TRAVELING THE GLOBE: “You have to be inclusive. The only thing you have discretion over is your time. Inclusiveness means I choose to give you time. I value our relationship. I value you as a customer or a partner or an employee. In some ways, I am a chief relationship officer or a chief people officer.”
ON THE KEY TO BEING A CEO: “You have to know at all times where your North Star is. Where are you going? What is your purpose? Do you live it? Are you passionate about it? Are you the high priest of it? We are not teaching that at MBA schools.”
ON THE NEW TRUMP ADMINISTRATION: “I am pro-USA. I’m not a U.S. citizen so I can’t vote. But whoever is in charge, we’re going to work to make everything better. That’s America. I, for one, and Dow will be there to help.”
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