New author, following career in Fortune 500.

0:00 Speaker 1 Wills today is Andrew Liveris. He was chairman and CEO of Dow Chemical, one of the biggest companies in the world, and he wrote a new book, Leading Through Disruption. Well, mister Deliveris, welcome to WABC.

0:20 Speaker 2 Thank you, John, happy to be here.

0:23 Speaker 1 Tell us why, tell us a little bit about yourself, where you started and how you got to be the CEO of one of the largest companies in the world.

0:34 Speaker 3 Well, i’d I could call it the American dream. It probably is, but also the Greek dream and the Australian dream. The son of Greek immigrants to Northern Australia, first.

0:45 Speaker 2 Of my family to go to university.

0:48 Speaker 3 College did chemical legendeering, and Dow Chemical found me, recruited me, and I had a forty three year career, pinched myself as I got promoted, and when I got to you know, been the running for.

1:01 Speaker 2 The top job and got it.

1:03 Speaker 3 I spent fifteen years as CEO and chairman.

1:06 Speaker 2 And I’m going to.

1:07 Speaker 3 Tell you, John, whether it be a Greek heritage, my Australian upbringing, whether it be my American dream, I’m true, I’m a global citizen, but I truly feel like I’ve had a blessed life. And I wrote a book ten years ago, or Make It in America, which got a lot of fame, especially with the Obama and Trump administrations,

1:29 and I decided to write a second book as I retired.

1:33 Speaker 1 Now, I mean, you’re too young to retire. But aside from that, your new book is called Leading Through Disruption and Being the CEO. I remember asking you one time how many countries was dal Chemical in?

1:50 Speaker 3 Yeah, well we were had sales officers in one hundred and sixty countries and manufacturing facilities and over fifty of them.

2:00 Speaker 1 Now, I remember also asking you how many countries did you go to a year? Being CEO?

2:07 Speaker 3 Forty international crypts Almost every trip was a country. But you know I did a lot of countries twice and three times, so somewhere between twenty and thirty countries a year.

2:18 Speaker 1 Now, dealing in so many countries international risks, money risks, I mean you have to be of one sharp CEO. I mean seriously, I mean not everybody can do that complicated job. How did you feel about it?

2:40 Speaker 3 Well, I mean I wrote the book because I think this century as a CEO, as a leader, any leader of any institution, but certainly global institution is seeing so much disruption, so much tectonic shifts, and so many interventions.

2:56 Speaker 2 You think about this century nine to eleven.

2:58 Speaker 3 The global financial crisis, the global pandemic, the rise China, the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I mean, politics failing in every major country versus a democracy. I felt that to be a CEO to deal with that, I had to have a different playbook, a different way of operating.

3:19 Speaker 2 And one of those.

3:20 Speaker 3 John was to reinvent myself. You know, I wasn’t a CEO when I retired. That I was when I started, and I think I took count at least six different versions of myself.

3:31 Speaker 2 You had to be resilient.

3:33 Speaker 3 Persistent, and agile and keep pivoting your large corporation and pivoting down the size, you know, and eventually emerge for DuPont, I mean, I got to tell you cultural change of the large kind is not for the faint pilot. But I wrote this book to give the next generation some positive lessons about what I learned on how to do that.

3:57 I talk about beopolitics, country risk. I talk about financial risk. I talk about people risk. I talk about environmental, social and governance risk. I talk about a digital risk and I bring them all together and say, here’s how you manage your way through those intersections.

4:16 Speaker 2 And you know, it’s the old football adage, don’t just go deep, don’t just go wide.

4:21 Speaker 3 You have to be deep and wide, and that’s what I try to do with the book.

4:25 Speaker 1 Understood And has the book hit the stands yet?

4:30 Speaker 2 Is it out tomorrow?

4:32 Speaker 3 You know you are my first live interview or my first interview to tape, I guess, but you’re going to go live and I’m all week. I have a book signing in Avenue next Monday, the eighteenth of July, and I mean it’ll be hitting the stands big time. I’ve done a lot of pre orders, a lot of big endorsers,

4:55 from Richard Branson to Hank Paulson to Tony Jamie Diamond, the second Adelieah. They’ve all written nice notes about the book. They’ve all read it, and they’ve all said it’s the playbook for leaders for the twenty first centur three.

5:13 Speaker 1 That is wonderful because it’s becoming more and more complicated to find the right CEOs to run that size of company. And we’ve seen it. We’ve seen that so many times in the last twenty years. You know, a company like companies like Xerox and Kodak and so many companies that did not make it because they weren’t as good as

5:38 the original CEO.

5:40 Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, totally fast one thing.

5:46 Speaker 3 But running corporations five six generations, you know, that’s.

5:52 Speaker 2 So much outer paid and they’re.

5:54 Speaker 3 Complicated, and these comic shifts make even more complicated. So you’re right, it’s not how you’re going to find someone to lead.

6:04 Speaker 1 And tell us the fact and the reason you wrote to cee the book in who is your audience? Who do you want to read that book?

6:15 Speaker 2 Well, I got to tell you that.

6:17 Speaker 3 When I first started writing it, my publisher said, you know, this is not a business book. This is a book for all leaders. You can be leading in NGO, leading a government, leading a city, you can be leading a company.

6:29 You also need to help young people understand that our generation hasn’t.

6:35 Speaker 2 Screwed it up.

6:36 Speaker 3 What we’ve done is for giving you a massive opportunity. And here you young people have to step up and understand that the playbook for leadership in this century.

6:47 Speaker 2 This is the way you go forward. Don’t look back, don’t look at what we did. We grew up in the boom boom years post World War Two.

6:56 Speaker 3 Where growth could forgive all sins. This sort of growth is responsible growth, is sustainable. Growth is growth that is you know, includes equality. And let’s not make it wocism. Let’s make it a business strategy. Let’s generate new profitables based on responsible business. So I wrote for the generation that’s getting despondent in.

7:21 Speaker 2 The lack of leadership.

7:22 Speaker 3 I’ve got to academy I’ve started in my alma mater has got one hundred and twenty students in it right now, and they teap being taught books in this book. And what I’ve decided to do is to actually make the book available for the entire next generation.

7:37 Speaker 1 Well, that is wonderful news. Anything else you want now? The book is going to be available on Amazon and Bonds and Nobles. Where is your book available?

7:45 Speaker 3 Yeah, all bookstores that have business or leadership books as of tomorrow, and it’s been on Amazon for a while. Amazon is going live for ordering tomorrow.

7:56 Speaker 1 Well, I’m going to make sure I order your book and read it this week. And anything else you want to say to all American.

8:04 Speaker 3 People, what I want to say is America’s based on hope and dreams, and America is also based on perspiration.

8:13 Speaker 2 This book will give you.

8:15 Speaker 3 A pathway to work hard to get the rewards that America can offer. Please pick it up and then drive us to the next century, this century with positivism, not the neism we’ve seen of late.

8:31 Speaker 1 Andrew Liveris, former chairman of Dow Chemical and CEO one hundred and sixty countries. Is it the congratulations? Congratulations you’re too young to retire. Maybe on our next interview you’ll tell us what you’re going to be doing for the next twenty years.

8:48 Speaker 2 I will do that, John, and great to be on your show and your friend.

8:52 Speaker 1 Thank you so much, and God bless you. And congratulations on your son’s wedding and.

8:59 Speaker 2 Thanks Thank you, John, and love to you and Mago and the family. Thank you.