Really?

Who was one of the largest slaveholders in South Carolina.

Obviously, I came from slaves.

And I think what's important is that one could take the position that boy, America didn't really do the right thing.

And I am very clear about the problems with this country, but the points that I make, it was really the values of this country that allowed me to make progress.

And in a company, part of what you've got to do is what's the higher purpose of the company? What's the mission of the company? What are the values for the company? What are the behaviors that really will enable the company to be successful? So part of what I go through is my childhood journey, my business journey, and what I absolutely did not want to do was just to write a business book.

What are your thoughts on that?

So I think one of the things that's really important, and I get a lot of calls from CEOs, and one of the things I say to them is, you should not speak out on every single issue.

What was the process like for you to go from like your first job to then the promotions you earned to ultimately the ultimate promotion as CEO of American Express?

So one is, and again, I always caveat, everybody is different.

But for me, I think I was helped by the fact that when I started at American Express, my objective was not to be CEO of the company.

It was, I'll stay there for a few years, I'm going to learn.

But I didn't have that in my head.

For me, I think it's very difficult for an individual, if you set that as the objective, are you going to be operating in a way that's what is best for you or what's best for the company? Are you going to be willing to take some of the risks that are necessary and appropriate that are beneficial to the company and actually are beneficial to you? But if you have that as the solitary goal, you could freeze.

And so for me, the things that helped me is what I always tried to do is focus on the job at hand.

Tell me about that day and what you did to document the operating principles on a napkin.

How does a big company, sprawling company, innovate and be perpetually innovative?

Obviously, you need to put in and demonstrate that you want to create a culture of innovation.

And the way you create a culture of innovation is you need to have leaders in the company who can both come up with ideas, but also identify ideas in the company and will take the risk to try out those ideas.

What I find in many large companies, and really American Express was no exception in the early days when I was there, that your hardest adversary was generally someone in the company that was protecting the status quo.

And what you have to do... is to, in fact, support people who are willing to challenge the status quo.

And one of the things that I did and encouraged throughout the organization was creating small teams that cut across functions in the organization that had an idea and give them the resources and the capabilities to drive that idea.

And one of the things that I would talk about is that we should run the risk of cannibalizing an existing business.

How do we do successions the right way? What does that look like?