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Bill Ruckelshaus served in two different Cabinet-level posts, heading the Environmental Protection Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and also serving as Deputy Attorney General of the U.S. Justice Department. He also held senior posts at Weyerhaeuser Company and Browning-Ferris Industries in the 1980s and 1990s. Ruckelshaus remains a director of several corporations, including Cummins Engine Company, Nordstrom, and Weyerhaeuser. He grew up in Indiana and holds a bachelor's degree from Princeton University and a JD from Harvard University.
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(Interview began informally, with small talk in Ruckelshaus's office at Madrona Ventures. In chatting about the book, after I described the aim of understanding the key events of leaders' early professional development, Ruckelshaus looked me in the eye with a grin and asked, "What about luck?")
BR: I must say, the question of having what you just described as some big architecture, of what I was ultimately going to do in life - I never had anything like that. The best advice I could give to somebody who had an interest in a position of leadership - of developing their own life into a position of leadership - was to make sure to pay attention to what you're doing today, and whatever assignment you have, and do it to the absolute best of your ability. It's been my experience that all kinds of other opportunities open up!
The mistake that more people make than not is when they get one job, or one assignment, they immediately begin thinking about, "What's my next step?" And they forget that if they don't do the job they have in a superior way, there won't be any next step. That's certainly the advice I've given my children when they were quite young. I really believe it. I've had several experiences in my own life where you're given something to do which is - which you may think at the time is not fully up to the capabilities you could bring to something bigger - but if you just pay attention to the assignment you've got, and do it to the absolute best of your ability, people just pile assignments on you! They just give you more and more to do.
Let me give you an example: I had an early experience in the Indiana attorney general's office, when I first got out of law school. I came back to Indiana, and was practicing with my brother and my father, practicing law, and at the same time was working in the Indiana attorney general's office. You were able then under the rules to have an outside practice as well as the government practice, as long as you didn't have a conflict of interest. I went into the attorney general's office with maybe 15 other people. The national highway system was being created at the time, and they needed a lot of young lawyers to try these condemnation cases, where they were building highways and taking property from people. The question wasn't whether the government had the right to take the property under the eminent domain laws - The real question was, what do you pay them? And the sort of class that I went into the Indiana attorney general's office with was made up of a lot of talented lawyers, and some others - they weren't all great and talented - but they got themselves into a position. I wasn't working on highway cases, but most of them went over to this separate office where they were working on these highway cases, and they developed this level of cynicism about what they were doing, and about the attorney general - just a poisonous atmosphere!
I was lucky enough to be assigned to the state board of health and have a normal relationship with the attorney general's office, and I kept asking for more things to do, and boy, they just kept piling them on me. Three years later, I was the chief counsel in the Indiana attorney general's office, and there were about 85 lawyers reporting to me. A lot of that was luck - other guys left. People that were much more qualified than me to do that work, by virtue of their experience, weren't around, so he gave me the assignment. These other guys I came in with were still trying highway cases, just as they had when they had come in. My sense of it was, they just didn't pay enough attention to the job they had, and concentrate on doing it really well - or they would've gotten more assignments. That's just one example. I could give you twenty where the same thing happened.
PH: And were you very conscious at the time - you mentioned a couple of things: one was not becoming too cynical; another one was really excelling at the things immediately assigned to you - Were you conscious of doing those things - avoiding cynicism and...
BR: Yeah, I was conscious of - certainly of doing the best job I could. My father had given me the same advice. It seemed to me to be very sound at the time. And I wasn't in the environment, the separate building, where those other people were. It may have been harder to resist, and the culture had built up - making fun of the attorney general, and everything else they were dealing with. But it was a very bad atmosphere, and I wasn't in it, and that may be the luck part of it. I don't know if I'd have been smart enough to avoid all of it. I hope so, but I'm not certain.
PH: One of the things that's interesting to me in looking at your career is that you have had experience in all of these different spheres in life: so, obviously, your early work in law, and then moving over to government, public service, and then also having a stint in private industry, as well. When you started in that initial - Was the role in the state attorney general's office the first full-time role that you had?
BR: Yeah. Yeah, I was sort of a junior partner in my father's law firm, but the real assignment, where I was spending 90% of my time was in the Indiana attorney general's office.
PH: So when you started at that point in your career, were you thinking about, were you interested in having a multi-faceted career focused on -
BR: I was very interested in politics. It was one of the reasons I went to law school. I had been exposed to books like - what was the book written about IBM? - "Organization Man", and it just struck me that those places were close to prison! Getting into a big corporation, and "The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit" - these were all influential books at the time that I'd read, and they just struck me as places I really didn't want to work. I didn't want to get myself caught in the kind of cookie-cutter. Business had no attraction for me at all. Government and politics did. My grandfather had been the state chairman of the Republican party in 1900, my father had been very active politically, my brother was in the state senate, so I was interested. I'd met and interacted with a number of politicians. I was interested in it, I'd majored in it in college, and law school really was a way for me to have something to do in the event that I wasn't successful with a political career.
But I was interested in the law as well. I'd had a family background in law. But politics was really my passion in that stage of my life. And business was something I wanted to stay away from, not to get involved.
PH: Okay, so you went to law school and had this role in the AG's office. You sort of had your eye - You said on the one hand that you were concentrating on excelling at what you were doing -
BR: Right.
PH: But at the same time you did sort of have some thoughts in the future about somehow moving towards political work.
BR: Yes, I was, I got active politically. I joined the Young Republicans, volunteered for all kinds of activities. As far as the party was concerned, the state of Indiana was a very politically based system, in that most of the jobs, the political jobs, were elected officials that were there. So I felt that it was necessary for me to find out if it was possible for me to get elected to the job. Did I have any talent in that field?
So in the decade of the '60s I ran 3 times for office. I ran for Congress in '64 and was swept up in the Goldwater snowball. I was not personally for Goldwater, but my opponent was, and in May of '64, Goldwater just about peaked in Indiana. Then I spent the next several months - 15 of them, really - working with a group that changed the organization, the Republican organization in Indiana - threw out the incumbents and overwhelmingly won. Organizational change was terribly important in the state at the time.
PH: Mm-hmm. Was this something you were doing on nights and weekends, outside of your day job at the time?
BR: Yeah, yeah. If you worked for the attorney general, he was an elected official. He would give you time on political matters, particularly if they were related to him. (Chuckles) And you - I don't know if it's still true or not, but 3% of your salary went to the Republican party! The same was true of the Democrats.
PH: It was a straight deduction?
BR: Well, actually, it was a quote-voluntary payment, but you were expected to pay it. It was an open and notorious system. In fact, the Wall Street Journal would have an article about once a year about how corrupt the state was because of this payment. I didn't agree! I thought [the WSJ editorialists] were wrong - you were part of the party, you were expected to contribute to the party's well-being, and the people who operated the licensing branches and counties - The county's political organization got half of the money that came from the sale of license plates. The result was that the people who worked in these places really were very responsive to the public. They knew that the public's support was necessary for them to keep their job, so you had this kind of customer-service attitude -something that was picked up later in business - that was very ingrained in that whole structure. It wasn't corrupt in the sense that it was underhanded - it was all out there for everybody to see. And it worked! The government in Indiana, whether Republican or Democrat, is very responsive to the public, in terms of service, and in terms of trying to do what they need - which is the way democracies are supposed to work.
PH: So when you went through this early stage in your career, then, and you were working in the AG's office, and then sort of in your spare time doing all these political activities, how did you deal with some of the, not setbacks, but bumps in the road? You mentioned running for office, and not -
BR: Yeah, well, I ran 3 times. I won the second time - I won in the House of Representatives, in the state, and was elected majority leader the only time I was there. It was a curious set of circumstances that led to that. But then I ran for the U.S. Senate in 1968 - I had run for the House in '66 - and was defeated there. And it's not easy to lose. I wouldn't try to confuse that it was easy to roll over. But, it's part of being - I knew that when I went to law school. That was one of the reasons for being a lawyer, so I'd have something to do if I didn't succeed in elective office. I've never run for another elective office, and wouldn't. 10 years was about how long I spent doing that. I had sort of roughly planned that that's what I planned to do. Whether I would've carried through with that kind of plan if I'd have been elected is - I ran against Birch Bayh, who was a very popular incumbent - whether I would've adhered to that, I don't know. I probably would've run again. There are an awfully lot of people in their 80s who said they're only going to run once! (Laughs)
PH: So you went through these races, and you had to deal with some difficulty there. How did you transition from that to the next thing in your career?
BR: Well, I was contacted by the incoming attorney general, John Mitchell, to come to Washington to - in this case, actually, New York - to interview for a job in the new Administration. And given my experience in the Indiana attorney general's office, the Justice Department was the natural place, so then I became assistant attorney general. He asked me to serve in his department, and as a presidential appointee. So I was an assistant attorney general in charge of the civil division.
PH: And how do you think John Mitchell noticed you, or got to know you?
BR: I think it was because of, I'd met him during the campaign, and I was running for the Senate. Yeah, he was the President's campaign chairman. So he would come through sometimes. And I met him and Dick Kleindeist, who was the deputy attorney general, from Arizona, during the campaign. I didn't get to know them well. I also think it was because of a state chairman then in Indiana, named Beulah, who's since died, who wanted to have some of his people in the Administration, and he was quite vociferous about his desires. I think his pushing, plus [my] background and the meeting of those people were what really led to my going to the Justice Department.
PH: Okay. And that sort of opened up a whole new phase of your career, then?
BR: Yeah, it was. I found I liked the executive branch better than the legislative branch. I would not have said that prior to running for the Senate, but my experience in Washington convinced me that that was the place to really get things done. You could accomplish a lot more in a relatively short period of time in the executive branch, more so than in the legislative branch. Your tenure, obviously, was dependent on the President's desire to keep you employed or win re-election, so from that standpoint, it was less within your own control as to whether or not you stayed there. But I found it more challenging, more interesting - you could accomplish more.
The legislative branch is such an amorphous kind of thing, with its own compromises. It's one reason why these senators, or congressmen, are very good at getting themselves elected president, and why a governor is much better.
PH: You feel that they aren't prepared for the actual experience?
BR: There's a number of things. They are on the record for virtually every issue, because they vote. Executives don't. So they're not at liberty to let issues ripen and finally decide what they think after all the facts are in. They kind of have to decide and vote as it all floats by in the legislative process. Secondly, they've had no experience at managing big institutions. None are bigger than the U.S. Government, and they often aren't very good at it! And they're not very good at explaining to people what they would do under certain circumstances. They take positions on specific issues, like tax reform, or health care or whatever it might be. Somebody drafts up a paper for them, and they say, "This is my position." But if you watch Dean, as an example, debate these other candidates, he handles the issues about organizational structure and how you respond to that and how you manage people - He seems more self-assured, and he is more self-assured, because he has more experienced than the other guys are.
In any event, I found that I liked the executive branch better and managing these big public issues was very interesting. In fact, I've had a number of these jobs, and thought about what is it about these jobs that makes it really appealing to me? I sort of decided there are 4 things: Is the job interesting? Is it challenging? Is it exciting? And is it fulfilling? If you find a job with all 4 of those - interest, excitement, challenge, and fulfillment - you better hang onto it, because there aren't many like that. (Chuckles) I found more of them in the government than anywhere else, particularly that last criteria, the fulfillment. Because you're working on things that are bigger than you. It has nothing to do with personal enrichment - at least, it better not. (Chuckles). So they're bigger than yourself, and they're really societal problems. And if you can make a significant contribution to the solution of the problem, I just find it very compelling. In the private sector, I can get the first 3 - I can get the challenge, the interest, and the excitement, but I have trouble with the last one.
PH: And how old were you, roughly, when you went to DC?
BR: That was 1969, so I was 37.
PH: And how long did that period last?
BR: Well, I was there until I got in a fight with the President in '73, so I was 41 when I left, about 41.
PH: Okay, so it's interesting how you mention the 4 criteria, and then how business sometimes has a hard time fulfilling the fourth one - yet at some point you did transition over to business.
BR: Yes. I started a law firm in Washington in 1973-74, after I left the government. I was fortunate enough when I left the government to be of interest to people in the public-speaking circuit. So I had an agent approach me from New York who said I could make a living and support my 5 children by making speeches. It's amazing what people will tell you!
PH: I'm kind of curious. One of the other big things that I'm trying to identify and understand is the pattern by which opportunities arise for people. I was curious about how Mr. Mitchell knew about you initially, and I'm also curious about what made you attractive to the public speaking circuit at that point?
BR: Oh, it was clearly the way I left the government. It was clearly the so-called "Saturday Night Massacre", which had a lot of prominence in the country. People wanted to hear about that - They didn't really want me to talk about it, and that wasn't necessarily what I did talk about. But that's what made them - anything that makes you even remotely a celebrity will put you on the speaker circuit, as long as that celebrity status is maintained. It helps to be able to make a speech, but that isn't necessary (Laughs) to get on that circuit.
The maw for public speakers is unbelievably big. What they'll pay you, whether it's by current standards, or the standards that existed then, was to me mind-boggling. Students would have access to very large pots of money that they could ask speakers to come on their campus and make speeches. I didn't know any of this, but there it was, so for a period of time, that was the way I made a living. I also didn't want to jump into the practice of law, having just left the government in October. So we didn't start the firm until June. Then I was there for about 2 years, until I went to Weyerhaueser.
The thing that led me to Weyerhaueser was first of all, the nature of the job, which I found quite intriguing. Second, I really didn't like practicing law in Washington. I found that working in the government was fascinating, challenging - all those things I mentioned - but working outside the government on behalf of clients, even where I was fully comfortable with the position that these clients were taking - I was still in a different position with my old colleagues in the government, more of an advocacy position. I felt very uncomfortable, so when the offer from Weyerhaueser sort of came out of the blue, which it did. I would still be in Washington, in a sense, (Laughs) albeit 3000 miles away. It wasn't coming in - It didn't have the elements of business that I found repulsive earlier in my life.
PH: What were those elements?
BR: Well, namely, that you came in at the starting level and tried to beat your way up, and how many ways there were to sidetrack you on the way to the top. This one I was really starting with a group of 5-6 people who were allegedly running the company. It was a wonderful way to get exposed to the American corporation. It was a highly ethical place, working on natural resource issues, which I liked, so it had a lot of appeal to me.
I had been out here in the Army, in Fort Lewis, when I was a young man, for a year and a half, and I really loved this part of the country. My wife and family had never been here, and that was the hardest part, talking my wife in particular into coming, because she'd come out here twice to look for houses, and it was weather like this, only rain, not - just pouring down. (Laughs) She was like, "This is terrible! Why would we want to live there?" She's since come to love it as much as I do.
PH: What do you think, then, made Weyerhaueser approach you?
BR: They were looking for somebody who would have government experience. They felt that the increasing pressures coming from the public sector on their business was something they didn't understand well enough. They wanted someone with a legal background, so that the law department would in effect - I wasn't the general counsel, but the law department was in effect going to report to me. And all these external issues they had, plus the energy issues and those things that had to do with the environment, were very important to them. So they felt that they needed someone to sort of handle that portfolio of issues for them. My background was a good fit.
PH: Sure. I'm curious, were there other offers or opportunities? It seems to me that there were these inflection points, where you move from Indiana to DC, or from the government out to public speaking tours for a little while, and then onto private practice of law, and finally from DC out to Weyerhaueser here in the Seattle area. As you made these transitions, were there other options and opportunities that you considered and rejected?
BR: There were a number of other opportunities. Ah, I didn't, I can't say that I didn't even seriously consider them, because I did, particularly in the practice of law. As I left the government back into the practice of law, which is what I'd done before and what I assumed I'd do again - I considered a number of law firms, I considered going back to my home state of Indiana. But for a whole host of reasons, they weren't as attractive to me as starting this firm in Washington, and then as I said, I found I didn't like practicing law in Washington. It was much different than Indiana - much less law, much more government. And so, there had been other opportunities before Weyerhaueser, but none of them as appealing to me. [With Weyerhaueser,] I would get clear out of that environment that I didn't like there, and I knew this part of the country and liked it. I thought, I was intrigued by the timber, the paper business. I liked the people that were there - They seemed to be people I could work with successfully.
The time I had the most opportunities for jobs was when I left the government the second time, when I came back to the government to the EPA, the second time, and then after - I told the President [Reagan] at the time, I would stay through the election, but I was going to discover whether it would be possible to get environmental reform, if I were going to stay for part of his second term. I said, "It's obviously up to you to decide whether I'm going to stay, but I just want you to know that I'll try to get this agency straightened out - it was a mess - and once I do that, I'll then determine whether we can get any reform done. It will only be the latter that will make me stay." I spent a lot of time with senators and congressmen on the Hill about the environmental structure that we put in place. There was a need in my judgment, and still is, to adjust it. There was no appetite for it. Still, they all agreed it was time to adjust it, with varying levels of enthusiasm. But since they had no intention of doing it, why not agree? I don't know how enthusiastic they would've been about reform anyway. But the real reason was because the [Reagan] Administration, much like this [Bush II] Administration, has developed such a negative image with the public about their interest in enforcing environmental laws, or making environmental laws, that you couldn't - the atmosphere was poisonous. You couldn't get reform. So I decided I didn't want to stick around and manage - I knew how to manage the agency, but I didn't want to do that for 4 more years.
So when I left that time, I had all kinds of offers for jobs, including going back to Weyerhaueser. I had over the course of about 4 months, 44 invitations to join corporate boards. I'd come home and tell my wife, "Here's another one! Where are these people coming from?" (Chuckles) It was just sort of a coincidence of a whole lot of things that happened, and people felt they needed some environmental experience on a board, and here was a guy who had business experience, and he'd just come out of the EPA, and the Administration was continuing in office, so he'd probably have some knowledge and maybe even influence with them. And I accepted a few of them, but by no means all of them. It just got to be ludicrous - and other offers to take various kinds of jobs in industry.
Instead, I came back here and joined Perkins Coie - This was in the late, middle-80s. But I did so on the assumption that I wasn't going to practice law. They told me what they were going to pay me, and I said, "Cut it in half." I told them, "I don't want you depending on me to bring in a bunch of clients, justifying my salary. So I only want half of what you're offering." Which was fine with them! (Laughs) There was no objection to that. And we started a venture firm doing a number of things that were of interest to me at the time.
PH: So a couple of things that were very interesting in hearing you lay out this narrative. As you sort of talk about your criteria, the things that made you screen out options, that you rejected, it seems like there's a pretty big role for you with personal tastes - what part of the country you wanted to live in, the kind of people you wanted to work with, things you felt comfortable with and not comfortable with. Did you ever find yourself in a situation making decisions not because you wanted to, but because - In other words, did you ever feel a divergence between what you wanted to do and what you felt you should do?
BR: Oh, yeah, sure, in the government, that's true all the time. Well, not all the time, but a lot of times. And it's true in other - The more, the broader your responsibility is, and the more interests your decision will affect, the more those interests will try to steer you in one direction or another. In the government, to the extent that that steering effort can be directed at people to whom you report, namely the President - when I was at the EPA - after all, he was elected to make these decisions, not you. As long as what he was asking you to do was not contrary to what you felt was fundamentally wrong [sic], then it seemed to me, and still does, that you have an obligation to go along with what he asks you to do. If he asks you to do something like fire Archibald Cox, which in my judgment was fundamentally wrong, then you have an obligation to say no. But if his opinion is different than yours, and you get a chance to make your case to him, and it's not persuasive enough, and therefore he suggests you go a somewhat different way, then I think that's what you should do.
Now, it looks like people, lawyers who are independent contractors in one sense, and clients, but [they feel] they're their own person, that's - that isn't true. You are at the behest of your clients, or you're not going to have any clients. Obviously, if he asks you to do something you think is wrong, or you think is - I don't mean wrong in the sense that it's a bad strategy, but it's fundamentally wrong - then you don't do it. But that isn't - I had Ross Perot once, who was my client when I was practicing law in Washington, and he asked me to do something, and I told him I wouldn't do it, and said, go get another lawyer, which he did. But that's rare, that that will happen.
But then when you're in charge of a big organization, you're not free to do whatever you want. You have to make a judgment as to - under all the circumstances, is this institution ready for the course I think it should take, or what do I need to do to condition the people in it, and the external environment, so that the course I want to take makes sense, and can be achieved? You are free in one sense - you can order people to do things - but if it's dumb, you won't be there for very long. So you have to make all kinds of judgments as to what you think will work in a particular set of external and internal circumstances, that will guide what you do, and if judged against some sort of objective standard of, "Is this the right thing for this organization to do?", well, maybe so, under all the conditions are there. But if I had absolute power to determine what should be done, I might take a different course.
I don't think - People see that as you gain more authority and responsibility and power, you have more freedom to do whatever you think is right, but not necessarily, particularly if it affects a whole host of internal and external actors, that you have to take into account in order to make the judgment.
PH: Another interesting thing, which you actually touched on in that answer - I'm very impressed, or interested by, the degree of - it's hard to articulate, exactly - I guess your orientation to institutions? Your comfort with and your respect for institutions, which I think in a lot of cases young people today might view a little differently.
You've got a certain - not respect, exactly - but you've got a certain acceptance of the role of institutions. It seems like at various stages of your career - whether in the Indiana AG's office, or the U.S. Government, back to the big companies you worked with - in all those cases, you were working with very large institutions, and were very aware of your need to develop leadership skills within those institutions. Was that something you thought about - did you ever consider working in, not necessarily the startup environment, but a much less organizational, less institutional-type environment?
BR: Yeah. I think - In the first place, I do respect institutions, and think that one of the big social problems we have today in this country is the erosion of respect for institutions, whether it's government, corporations, labor unions, churches - all kinds of institutions today are under fire, sometimes for justifiable reasons. But we've got to be careful in a free society where we have created these institutions necessary to pursue the elements of freedom, that we don't destroy those institutions. Because if there isn't a fundamental trust in those institutions acting consistent with the public interest, then that necessary trust which underpins their capability of acting erodes to the point where they can't function.
Our government risks that today. Now the politicians play on that. I can't tell you how many Congressmen - Congress is in very low public esteem today - will, I've heard, talk to their own constituents, and say, "You think Congress is bad, let me tell you, you don't know the half of it, and I'll proceed to tell you." And that's why you see in so many Congressional districts, individual Congressmen will be held in pretty high esteem, and the institution of which they're a part is very low! It's the only place which I know of where the people in it gain by attacking the institution of which they're a part! They don't - I'm sure they don't sit down and ask themselves, "Does this make me less effective because I'm undercutting the trust in the institution of which I'm a part, and the constituents I represent?" It doesn't make them - it does make them less effective if the institution of which they're a part doesn't have the trust of the public. It doesn't necessarily make them unelectable - in fact, quite the contrary. Attack an unpopular institution, and associate yourself with the point of view of your constituents, and they're more likely to vote for you.
But it's too bad. I think that institutions are no better or worse than the people that run them. Just as in this country we have such low esteem of corporations today, a lot of people that are in those companies are very good people. They're trying to do the right things - it's a very complex world we live in, they've got to deal with all these governance issues that they never thought a lot about. If they don't deal with them successfully, their position becomes jeopardized, even though they may be very effective managers inside the organization.
I think the skills to do that successfully are not necessarily the same skills that drive the entrepreneur to start something from scratch, where there's very little structure if any at all. In their ability to access, or to take the idea of either a product or service that they're trying to sell, and turn that into a business - that skill is not necessarily the same skill at all of moving in laterally or just moving up through a big institution and make that function well. People find themselves in situations where they've been very successful in starting up a new company and developing an idea, and they find all of a sudden they've got all these people problems (laughs) - all these things they don't want to - they may not be any good at dealing with, or they may not want to deal with. It's just not something that gets them excited. For that kind of person, get out and start something new. Do it again!
PH: Did you ever consider anything like that, like an early-stage or a less, more fluid environment?
BR: Only from an investment standpoint, and watching it through venture capital. Not actually doing it. Maybe if I'd seen that opportunity as a very young man, I would've gotten excited about it. I don't think that's my biggest skill, to be honest with you. You know, it's very very time-consuming, it's tough on your family. Any big job is tough on whatever your family obligations are, but seeing these young guys who start these companies - that's their whole lives, from the time they get up until they collapse at the end of the day.
It reminds me of - The parallel's not as exact as it might be, but it's like - I watch trial lawyers. I used to try cases when I was a young man, but I never got involved in very many really big cases, like trial lawyers today. I didn't like the idea of even starting that part of - I was pretty good at trying cases. That was a skill I did have. But it's your whole life! If you get in one of these big trials that lasts six months, you are through the weekends, at night - nothing can get your attention like that can. Because you've got to prepare each day anew as if you've never done anything about it, to get ready for the next witness and what they're going to do, say, or might say. You were so buried in that relatively narrow issue - not narrow for your client, for them it might be life-or-death - but how would you have time to do anything else, and think about anything else?
Work on issues that I mentioned that were so attractive to me in the government was because they're bigger than yourself. So I didn't want to get in that [trial-lawyer] situation. I think the same thing is true to me of entrepreneurial activities. If they don't occupy your whole time and attention, chances of succeeding are not very great.
PH: Interesting. So I guess that's a good summary question to wrap up here. What about work-life balance? Achieving all the things that you achieved, particularly in that early stage when you had a wife and a young family, and a number of kids, did you find it a challenge to juggle the responsibilities of work versus home life?
BR: Yeah, I sure did. I don't think the challenge was as great for me as it was for my wife. My wife is a very intelligent woman, came through the same set of academic challenges that I did, really higher up on the academic (chuckles) - really #1 in everything she ever did. And then all of a sudden, she's supposed to become a mother, and stay home with the children, and I go off and work and do whatever happens on the outside world.
We went to Washington - when we first were married, she was going to law school at night. I had 2 children from - my [first] wife died, and so they were less than a year [old] when we were married. So she was taking care of those children in addition to the 3 other children we had between us. And she was going to law school because she needed this intellectual stimulation. She needed some stimulation outside of taking care of the children. I encouraged her very strongly to pursue those things, and when we went to Washington, she worked in the White House. She first worked for the Republican National Committee, then she went to work in the White House, and was one of the leaders of the early women's movement, back in the '70s. That was tremendous for her. I thought she balanced that very well, but boy, terrific strain, and it was that for both of us.
We now - We have 10 grandchildren, and we see how our children cope with all that, and we've asked ourselves, (chuckles) "God, how did we do that? 5 children?!!?" First place, it takes an enormous amount of energy. I haven't got the energy now. But the balance is just something you work at all the time. Somehow (laughs) we got through it. As long as you're thinking about it, and trying.
PH: Did you consciously prioritize one or the other? Did you have a strategy where at certain times, work would be ascendant, and other times, family would?
BR: Yeah, well, obviously family, if you had an emergency, was ascendant. For instance, when I was at Weyerhaueser, I traveled a lot. I'd come home here on the weekends, and I love to play golf, but I stopped playing golf. I couldn't go off playing golf on Saturday and Sunday when I'm home, then take off again on Monday. So weekends were really devoted to the family. In my wife's case, so was the week. She was active around here in a number of areas, but not like she had been in Washington.
So there were, yes, conscious tradeoffs, but I never felt that I was being greatly inconvenienced because of my family. Now they may have felt that as a result of the concentration on some of these jobs. The jobs in Washington, particularly at a place like EPA, when I was starting - BFI, when I went down to Texas, was also a bit hard to balance that with - It was just really my wife and me who were still at home at that point. But moving laterally into a big company like that, and trying to make sense of it - there were a lot of things about it that made it very complicated.
[The company] was coming into a wall that caused their growth to slow, and so I had to sort of restructure the company and keep it going. There was a lot of belief inside the company, that for all they knew, I was the problem. They had been doing just fine until I showed up. Well, it was clear that the wall was coming at us (chuckle), and my predecessor decided he didn't want to be at the wheel when the truck hit it.
So that was a much harder job, and took a lot of my time, and intellectual effort. But it was before it was public, so that was aspect wasn't there.
PH: Well, this has been very helpful. Thank you very much.
BR: Okay. I look forward to reading your book - Interesting subject... (Conversation continued for several minutes. I really turned off my recorder too quickly)
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