Name: The CEO of Infor on His Career, Life, and Race
Uploaded: 2017-03-07
Duration: 6 min 47 s
Description: Charles Phillips, CEO of Infor and former president of Oracle, joins us for an on-camera discussion.

My name is Charles Phillips CEO of Infor. [ MUSIC ] I was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, My dad was in military so I move around every two or three years and so [ INAUDIBLE ] Oklahoma and Georgia, Madrid, Germany, North Carolina, on and on and had three brothers were all about five to seven years apart. So we were usually alone in school and usually the only African- American face in the school that we were going to so It does make you grow up pretty fast in terms of fitting in and learning to get along with people and then seeing a lot of different cultures and cities. I remember when we were living in Madrid, we took a vacation down to Barcelona, put three boys and got in a giant Oldsmobile and then drove down to Barcelona. And we were I didn't make a lot of money so my mother cooked inside of the hotel. So on the balcony she's cooking fried chicken. They don't fry foods there, they never smelled that so they called the fire department and they all arrived and we thought we were being arrested. And they said what's the smell? And so we explained to them this is something we eat. And try it and so my mother being a southern mother will say come on in, sit down, I'll make you some food and they all sat down, the neighbors started coming in. So, we met probably 30, 40 people that day and turn them all into friends. So, it shows me that something that putting on a wrong way and something that you know, people are very different and barely communicate And by that afternoon, we were all friends. And so that's what I grew up around. I guess I had a unique experience growing up, it was all about diversity because you had no choice. Everybody was from somewhere else and moving around a lot. So for me, the power of diversity and meeting new people turned into a good thing. And you'd be surprised how far a smile can go and just being friendly to people and engaging with people, get to know them and don't make assumptions before you get to know them. And people change once they see you're personally interested and approachable, they turn into different people. By the time I got to the tenth grade, I ended up in Atlanta and that's where I started getting interested in technology. I walked into what was then called a Heathkit store, kind of like a Radio Shack back then. This was before you could buy a PC and so we would build them. I didn't know that I walked within the store and a manager saw the look of curiosity on my face and invited me to come learn about how to build a computer. They had a club that met every Tuesday and Thursday night, they didn't know anything about me but told me to come, and so I started coming. A month later I was programming and two months later I'd built my first computer and been in computers ever since. Just some random guy who took an interest in them. One of the things I remember is early on as a second lieutenant after running a unit that I was in artillery unit and one of the. People who were, one of the marines just basically wasn't up to the task and it was certainly the excruciating thing trying to figure out what I should do, should I remove him from that job, and basically move him to some other position or get him out of the marine corp. And as I thought about that, kind of four or five months went by. When I finally did that thinking that the rest of the unit would be upset, just the opposite happened. I said I thought he was one of your best friends. They came in and told me thank you for doing that but [ UNKNOWN ] that guy was dangerous. Yeah, we liked hanging out with him but that was the right thing to do. So, people that taught me early on, high performers. Liked to be around high performers and if you accept something other than that, they notice that. When I got out of the Marine Corps, and I stayed in the Reserves, but I wanted to come to New York. My wife. From New York. I didn't really know anything about New York, so I just wrote a bunch of letters, probably about 200 of them. I think I got two interviews. [ LAUGH ] It wasn't quite as popular back then, being in the military I guess. But nonetheless I got started at the Bank of New York and from there I ended up with Morgan Stanley but essentially I went on interviews, and the only way I got the first job After waiting outside the office of the head of HR all day it was I walked into his office finally and saw the little anchor on his desk, on his nameplate. That told me that his dad was a marine. That's the only way I got in. There were certainly instances when I first met people [ UNKNOWN ] they were hesitant and weren't sure. They had to take longer to evaluate me. In one story, I remember when I was at Morgan Stanley used to talk to clients on the phone all over the world, had a pretty close client in Japan for literally eight or nine years before I ever saw him. I finally went over there on a trip to visit a lot of clients and He was just stunned when I walked in and almost speechless and didn't say anything for the first 20 minutes just let me talk. So sometimes that happened but I don't think it had any material consequence. But you just have to deal with it but I grew up moving around meeting new people all the time so it didn't bother me as much as maybe it would have somewhere else. I met Larry Ellison while I was still on Wall Street because I wrote about a lot of a database technologies and technologies in general related software and so. He was one of the up and coming companies at that time and as I was about to leave Morgan Stanley they go on a private equity, he heard about it and said don't do that. I want you to come and work here and get me started on acquisitions since you know all these companies. And so after some hemming and hawing, I said okay, I'll come and get started, thinking I would leave after a year and so, and on a handshake, and getting started, then go into private equity, and kinda eight years went by. During my time at Oracle I think we did about 70 acquisitions and our company tripled in size so it was quite a run. Why I think the reason I've been offered leadership positions beyond just working on [ UNKNOWN ] and got into operational roles was people had confidence that I had managed people in tough environments before And liked doing it so that's the major lesson you draw from most military positions but particularly the Marine Corps, and then the kinda esprit de corps how do you build that and build a team of people who care about the mission as much as you do? No one you see who's successful had a kind of easy walk in life, everybody has challenges. Anything worth achieving that's great. You're gonna have to overcome a lot of things along the way. And so, part of this is just kinda, intestinal fortitude inside yourself. Know that you're gonna be challenged, but that makes the journey that much more interesting. Just be relentless about it and focused, and you see people who are like that, they just don't stop. If the left door doesn't open, then they go through the right door and just keep moving ahead. [ MUSIC ]

Charles Phillips, CEO of Infor and former president of Oracle, joins us for an on-camera discussion.