Words matter. These are the best Ursula Burns Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
Impatience is a virtue.
Kids are pretty resilient. You don’t have to be at every volleyball game. We can’t guilt ourselves.
I’m a black lady from the Lower East Side of New York. Not a lot intimidates me.
I want to stop transforming and just start being.
Race and gender definitely came up, occasionally, in my life at work. But the bigger challenge that I had was age. I took roles earlier in my career than people expected, and so a lot of what I got was, ‘Do you actually know enough to do this?’
If you go to Norway, Finland, Russia or Australia, you’ll see Xerox or Fuji-Xerox people, not just the name on the door. We have human beings who live and work and serve customers everywhere around the globe.
Xerox is really good at managing documents, and we’re definitely good at managing through a process.
My mother raised us to think that if we worked hard, and if we put our end of the bargain in, it would work out OK for us.
The world is full of opportunities – every day there’s something new that you can do. For example, you could make dirty water potable. Why does anyone not have potable water? Because it’s a problem that hasn’t been solved yet, but it can be.
CEOs resign when the internal dynamics of the company and the external dynamics of the company actually come together to say it is appropriate. When the internal dynamics ask you whether you have a replacement. I think the transition from CEOships have also become cartoonish.
Xerox manages the infrastructure of E-ZPass for a large number of states. So when you say E-ZPass, and get some bill from E-ZPass, or call and ask a question about E-ZPass, you’re talking to a Xerox person.
I don’t want to overemphasize this, but not a day goes by when I don’t think about my mother and what she would think about what I just did. I often adjust my approach.
Crankiness is a human attribute that, when people walk in the door of Xerox, they remain human. The best way to get the best out of people is to not force them to be something other than they naturally are. Now what do they have to be? They have to be respectful. You can’t be ridiculously disrespectful.
I’ve had many mentors, but the one that has the most impact was my mother.
My perspective comes in part from being a New York black lady, in part from being an engineer. I know I’m smart and have opinions worth being heard.
I realized I was more convincing to myself and to the people who were listening when I actually said what I thought, versus what I thought people wanted to hear me say.
Unlike people, companies outlive their founders and their leaders.
My mother was pragmatic, focused and extremely, exceedingly practical, and she was the ultimate self-determining person.
As I’ve progressed in my career, I’ve come to appreciate – and really value – the other attributes that define a company’s success beyond the P&L: great leadership, long-term financial strength, ethical business practices, evolving business strategies, sound governance, powerful brands, values-based decision-making.
My mother was amazing. I guess, in our community, if you wanted to get by you had to work hard. So she cleaned offices. She did everything that you could imagine. We were really poor. But she would say, ‘Where you are is not who you are.’
