No Fear of Failure: Real Stories of How Leaders Deal with Risk and Change

Chapter Twelve

ANNE MULCAHY: RESILIENCE

Anne Mulcahy began our conversation with a deep breath and a hearty laugh. “It's an interesting time,” she said, clearly bemused by her own understatement. In was early May 2010, and she was retiring as chairman after nearly a decade in leadership and thirty-four years as a company employee. As we talked, Mulcahy turned thoughtful for a moment, obviously wrestling with the fact that although she knew it was the right time to leave, in her heart she was having difficulty with the transition to life after Xerox.

“If you had told me in 2000 that I could have walked out on my own two feet with a company that was in good shape with a great successor, I would have said, ‘Yahoo! The sooner the better.’ And then ...