Maggie Wilderotter on ROI ‘ Return on Impact

Editor's Note: It is no surprise that Maggie Wilderotter, one of corporate America's most prominent and successful woman executives and board members, was spotlighted at the WomenCorporateDirectors (WCD) 2015 Global Institute. She engaged in a Q&A interview with WCD Chairman and CEO Susan Stautberg before a crowd of 300 accomplished women executives at the event, and has been named by WCD as the winner of the Visionary Award for Strategic Leadership for 2016 — see announcement in the News section in this e-Briefing.

Last year was a big year for Wilderotter. She transitioned into the executive chairman role at Frontier Communications, having previously served as Frontier's chairman and CEO since 2006. She also rejiggered some of her board seats, stepping down from the boards of Procter & Gamble Co. and Xerox Corp. and joining the boards of Costco Wholesale Corp. and DreamWorks Animation. (She has served on over 30 public and private company boards during her almost 40-year career.) Following are edited excerpts of her WCD interview

— James Kristie

Susan Stautberg: One of the things I've admired the most about you is that while you've had one hand on the ladder going up, as you've become more and more successful, you've had the other hand pulling other women along and helping them. You've become such a role model as CEO and chairman of Frontier by creating mentoring programs, creating a great succession plan, getting more women and people of color into top jobs and onto boards. How do you do it? 

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Maggie Wilderotter: It's important as women go up the corporate ladder, and get into positions of responsibility where we can make a difference, that we give other women a chance. When I joined Frontier — I came in as president and CEO and a member of the board of directors — I was the only woman in senior leadership and on the board. Within 18 months, the board had five women, and we changed the whole paradigm and leadership in the company. When I stepped down as CEO in April, four of the top seven people in executive management were women.

We have to give competent and capable women a chance and take risks on them and put them in positions where they can continue to move, morph, and grow. And I do that from a board perspective, too. I probably refer or place 20 to 30 women for corporate board seats a year. As the CEO of a Fortune 500 company I would get a lot of calls about board openings. Since I am full up, I always offered the names of other women in order to help them move forward onto boards. It is all about reaching out to build relationships and help each other move forward.
 
Stautberg: Tell us about the mentoring program you have at Frontier. You ask each director to spend two years mentoring one of your C-level execs?

Wilderotter: That's right. About nine years ago I put in place a mentoring program for the top 10 executives in our company. A board member gets matched with a senior executive for a two-year period. The criteria is that the board member spend time with that executive at least two or three times a year outside of board meetings — typically it's a lunch or a dinner — and they can talk about anything they want to. I am not in any of those get-togethers. Then every two years we rotate. I have some board members now mentoring their fourth senior executive. Then, when I do the annual succession review with our board, that board member who is the mentor for the executive being discussed, partners with me on the succession review of that individual.

This cross-pollinating of the board with the senior executives helps the board members see the depth of talent in the company and it helps me make good decisions on how to move talent forward within the organization.

Stautberg: As a board member, you have certainly been involved in some succession issues. Can you share some lessons?

Wilderotter: I have sat on 24 public company boards and seven private company boards, so I've basically seen it all. Board work teaches you as much what not to do as what to do. We all learn lessons in boardrooms that are like case studies that we can bring back to our own companies. When I looked at succession for our company and handing the reins over to my successor, I started working on that six years ago with our board. It's a journey, and it's not something that you just flip a switch to do. You want to make sure you do it right and get it right.

For me, the No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 responsibility of any board of directors is to have the right CEO in the right seat at the right time. Boards spend a lot of time on lots of topics, but at the end of the day this is the most important thing a board does to create shareholder value.

Stautberg: You chaired the President's National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee, and you now chair the Business Roundtable's Technology Innovation Internet Committee. Do board members really know as much as they should about cyber security, and if not, what should we be doing to learn more?

Wilderotter: Since I run a broadband company, I've been watching what's been going on with cyber hacking for the last six or seven years, and watching it escalate. I will tell you that it's a very scary environment out there. The Internet is a phenomenal innovation machine, but it's also a weapon of mass destruction when it comes to data, to privacy, to hurting countries and hurting companies. Boards have to get savvier on what the risk profile is for their company and what companies are doing to protect themselves, and that should be not just at an audit committee level but at a full board level.

At Frontier, we are doing cyber reviews with our board two or three times a year to make sure that we keep the board apprised of what's going on – not just for the protection of our own assets, but we've got millions of customers around the country that we're protecting assets of as well. The more knowledge, the better. What I've said to the boards I serve on is that we have to be focused not just on protection but on detection, because you can't wait until you have a hack or you have someone that compromises your data and information to do something about it. You have to put the forensics in place to make sure you're looking for danger all the time.

Stautberg: What's next? And, seeing as how you have had a great run, what do you most want to be remembered for?

Wilderotter: I am still the executive chairman of Frontier, so my head is down in helping with strategy. We are doubling the size of our company with an acquisition of operations in California, Florida, and Texas from Verizon. We're working on getting the regulatory approvals and on the integration for that transaction. And the boards that I sit on are keeping me busy enough. I will have a little bit more time for my family, which I'm really looking forward to.

As to what I most want to be remembered for, I call it ROI — return on impact. I have a huge curiosity about people and look to try to help them and bring out the best in them. I'm a service-oriented leader. All of us have an opportunity every single day when we interact with each other to have an impact and to make a difference. So I think having impact on people in our lives, both personally and professionally, is probably what I would want to be remembered for. 

 

About the Author(s)

Maggie Wilderotter

Maggie Wilderotter is a public company director at Costco, Lyft and Sana Biotechnology and chairman of the board at DocuSign (as well as interim CEO). She has served on 36 public company and 15 private company boards, including leadership roles for Hewlett-Packard Enterprises, Xerox and The Procter & Gamble Company.


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