Michael Dell, chairman and CEO of Dell Technologies, says writing his new book, Play Nice But Win: A CEO’s Journey From Founder to Leader, was quite the cathartic process.
“As I pieced it together, you know, there were times when a whole bunch of memories just came pouring through me, that I’d forgotten about,” he says.
From Dell’s early work as a newspaper subscription salesman in Houston to his life now, as the head of a company that had more than $94 billion in sales in the most recent fiscal year, things have clearly changed a bit. Alan Murray and Ellen McGirt, cohosts of Fortune‘s Leadership Next, a podcast about the changing rules of business leadership, have interviewed the CEO numerous times throughout his career.
Going personal publicly is not Dell’s usual M.O. “My first book, in the late ’90s, pretty much had none of that,” Dell says, but adss that disclosing more about himself has been a good thing. “It’s fun to see how people were reacting to it,” he says.
Dell joins Murray and McGirt on a recent episode of the podcast to discuss his new book, the reasons corporate transformation is challenging (if not impossible) for a public company, and the role Fortune has played in Dell’s story. Listen to the full episode below.
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