The secret to making the right career decisions with Patty Stonesifer

Summary

WorkLife with Molly Graham: "The Secret to Making the Right Career Decisions" with Patty Stonesifer

Podcast: WorkLife with Molly Graham
Host: Molly Graham
Guest: Patty Stonesifer
Date: May 5, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Molly Graham dives deep into the concept of crafting a personal mission statement as a tool for making intentional, meaningful career (and life) decisions. Her guest, Patty Stonesifer—a trailblazing leader who’s held influential roles at Microsoft, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Amazon, and major nonprofits—shares the philosophy and practical process behind her own succinct mission statement. The conversation explores how defining core personal principles can serve as a compass for accepting or declining opportunities, staying true to one’s values, and adapting as those values evolve over time.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Power of a Personal Mission Statement (04:50–06:22)

• Molly sets the scene: Most people improvise their careers based on external rewards (titles, promotions), which may not lead to personal fulfillment.
• Patty introduces her framework: She created a personal mission statement—also described as a set of core principles—to guide both major life choices and daily activities.
• Quote (Patty, 05:06):
  “A mission statement is kind of what are we going to do? And the principles are kind of how are we going to do it? And I've merged those two into a simple statement to both guide big decisions, but also provide a framework for me organizing my days.”

2. Patty’s Mission Statement: Origin & Meaning (06:22–14:00)

Patty’s Mission Statement

• “Love, be loved, seek justice, keep learning, and laugh.” (06:22)

The Origin Story

• At age 40, after significant career achievements, Patty began to formalize her values as she re-evaluated her life’s direction.
• The process accelerated after leaving Microsoft and briefly joining DreamWorks, which prompted her to scrutinize new opportunities through a more intentional lens.

The Five Elements, Explained:

1. Love, Be Loved

   • Patty emphasizes intentionally showing up with love and openness, both personally and professionally.
   • “This idea of intentionally finding the time and the space and the opportunity to love and be loved. Whether that is in a corporate setting … or being the friend, being the mentor, being the colleague, and being a mentee. All of those things got bigger and better as I got older.” (10:27)

2. Seek Justice

   • Rooted in her family’s activist values, seeking justice became central as she gained the means to make it her life's work.
   • “My family was very oriented around social justice. They were very activist Catholics … I was also pursuing it when my day job was, you know, producing the next CD ROM for Microsoft games. But to be able to put that in the center … was really a fantastic change in my life orientation.” (11:34)

3. Keep Learning

   • Encompasses both intellectual curiosity and openness in relationships and roles.
   • “The need to stay open to … I’ve got to change. I’ve got to hear this person. I’ve got to learn from this person. That is part of keep learning.” (13:14)

4. Laugh

   • Originally omitted, added after Melinda Gates pointed out the heaviness of the statement.
   • “Some of the work that we choose to do in seek justice can cause a lot of tension … laugh just says, you know, don't take it all so seriously.” (13:58)

3. Using the Mission Statement to Guide Choices (18:45–24:00)

• When to let go (even without the next "rung" in hand):
  “The hardest thing in the world is to let go of one rung of the ladder without your hand on the other rung.” (19:08, Molly quoting Patty)

• Patty’s process for evaluating new opportunities involves running them through her statement, serving both as a “yes” and “no” tool:

  • Big jobs (like the Gates Foundation, the Washington Post interim CEO, nonprofit boards) were accepted or declined based on alignment with her principles.

• Practical Implementation

  • Patty literally maps out her priorities on a sheet: her five principles down the left, categories across the top (personal, business, nonprofit), and lists related activities.
  • “So I merge them so that the short term and the long term, the very deep and the very, you just gotta do it all come to one place.” (22:53)

4. Adjusting and Evolving the Framework (24:57–27:45)

• The statement is both a filter and a retrospective tool; she checks regularly that her time matches her values, especially in different life stages.
• Example: The choice to remain interim at the Washington Post instead of pursuing the CEO job full-time was guided by realizing that “love and be loved” needed more space in her life.
  • “I was unwilling, at this age, I'm almost 70 this year, I was unwilling to have Love and Be Loved kept in a pocket sized compartment. I needed that to grow right now for reasons in my family, my life and my time of life.” (26:09)

5. Saying Yes, Saying No, and the Courage to Change (28:17–32:15)

• On being naturally out of balance; the framework helps Patty, a self-described “go for it girl,” to assess and recalibrate when needed.
• The mission statement also guided her in choosing roles (like leading Martha's Table, a local nonprofit focusing on food and education equity in DC) that balance “seek justice” with “love and be loved.”

6. Bringing the Mission Statement to Challenging Situations (30:40–32:15)

• Patty recounts using her statement to speak up for equity and inclusion in situations where it wasn’t popular.
  • “It’s not even always decision making; sometimes it’s when you use your voice when it’s very risky … you have to say, lost for you. Probably good for. Definitely good for me.” (30:40)

7. A Step-by-Step How-To for Listeners (35:23–42:30)

• Patty walks Molly (and listeners) through self-reflection questions to build your own statement:

  1. How do you want to show up?
  2. What is your special purpose or power?
  3. What is an area of personal growth you highly value?

• Molly tries to distill hers with Patty's help, focusing on family, guiding/mentoring, connection, extreme learning, and authenticity.

• Quote (Patty, 42:30): “I want my memoir to be something close to practice, love and justice, learned, laughed. You know, that would be sufficient for me.”

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Years ago, she wrote down a personal mission statement, a short set of principles that she uses as a North Star when she's making career decisions or thinking about how to spend her time.” (03:48, Molly intro)
• “The world is full of a lot of cool things, and you can only do a few.” (09:28, Patty on leaving DreamWorks)
• “Make your decisions slowly.” (21:43, Patty’s hard-won advice)
• “A really good framework will let you make even the hard decisions.” (27:05, on stepping down from the Post interim job)
• “Knowing that you were enough is really important. And I feel like this helps me know that my life, my contribution, it was enough.” (43:03, Patty on legacy)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Time | Segment/Topic | |-----------|------------------------------------------------------| | 01:49 | Molly sets up the career decision challenge | | 04:50 | Patty’s introduction and discussion on frameworks | | 06:22 | Patty’s personal mission statement (recited verbatim) | | 07:56 | The moment she wrote it down (post-Microsoft) | | 09:28 | The brief DreamWorks detour—lesson on “cool jobs” | | 10:13 | Breakdown of each principle (love, justice, learning, laugh) | | 13:58 | Addition of “laugh” after Melinda Gates’ feedback | | 18:45 | Leaving Microsoft: how the framework helped | | 22:53 | Patty’s weekly use of the framework—practical method | | 24:57 | The sheet: how she maintains her values | | 26:09 | Applying the framework to major jobs like the Post | | 28:41 | Martha’s Table: balancing local impact and values | | 30:40 | Using the mission statement in high-stakes situations | | 35:23 | Tutorial: How to build your own mission statement | | 42:30 | The “six word memoir” and encapsulating your life’s impact | | 43:03 | Reflection on fulfillment and being “enough” |

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Practical Takeaways

• Build a Short, Actionable Mission Statement
  Keep it concise—one line or a handful of words you can refer to daily.

• Use It as Both a Filter and a Compass
  Evaluate new opportunities, requests, and even your weekly planner against your statement.

• Update Regularly
  Your values—and the level of emphasis—may shift as your life circumstances change.

• Include the Whole Self
  Integrate personal, family, professional, and growth ambitions rather than separating “work” and “life.”

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Final Reflections (Summary at 43:29)

Molly closes with the insight that bringing work and life together with conscious, values-driven choices is the lesson Patty models; the key isn’t having perfect balance, but having a reliable compass and the courage to check against it often. Values will evolve, and the most “successful” decisions are those that truly align with who you are.

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For Listeners:

To Craft Your Own Mission Statement:

• Ask yourself:
  1. How do I want to show up in the world?
  2. What’s my special purpose or unique contribution?
  3. What kind of growth do I value deeply?
• Iterate—a few words or a sentence is enough.
• Use it for both daily and major life choices, and let it evolve as you do.

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“Practice love and justice, learn, laugh.” – Patty Stonesifer (42:30)

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This summary covers all major content from the episode, omitting ads and promotional segments.

Transcript

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[Patti Stonecipher]

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[Molly Graham]

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[Patti Stonecipher]

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[Molly Graham]

Work consumes most of our lives, particularly if you're working 40, 50 or more hours per week. That is a lot of life. Over time, what you do for work can shape not just how you spend your days, but how you think about yourself. And yet, for something that takes up so much of our lives, most of us are basically improvising when it comes to deciding what work we should do. Early in my career, I was definitely in some kind of race. It was a race to prove myself, to get recognition that I was good at things. That recognition came in the form of titles and promotions and compensation and all the visible signals that I was winning. Even though it was somebody else's race and somebody else's rules for a long time, I let it Guide how I made decisions about my career. And then at some point, life made me pause and ask a much harder question. What do I actually want? What does success mean to me? What matters to me in my life? What do I want my life to be about? And how does work fit in to all of that? Most of the big decisions in our careers don't come with clear answers. They come with trade offs. Prestige versus meaning, Scale versus proximity. Money versus time. Safety versus growth. So when all the options look good on paper, how do you stay true to yourself? And how do you decide what's actually right for you? I'm Molly. Hi, I'm Holly Graham. And this is Work Life, a show where we untangle the messy human side of work. Patti stonecipher is one of the people I have turned to most often when I've made decisions in my career. I admire her so much, not just because of what she's done, but because she's always seemed to know how to stay true to herself. It can be so easy to let things like ego and prestige lead, particularly when you've held fancy global jobs. But Patti never has. Years ago, she wrote down a personal mission statement, a short set of principles that she uses as a North Star when she's making career decisions or thinking about how to spend her time. The clarity from this mission statement has guided her into becoming one of the most impressive people that you have probably never heard of. Patti was the most senior female executive at Microsoft in its early years. She then became the founding CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation and one of Amazon's first independent board members. And she still sits on that board today. And before you say, well, that sounds pretty fancy to me, she's also used this mission statement to turn down big jobs that didn't quite feel like her. So this episode is about that mission statement, why she created it, how she's put it into practice, and whether the rest of us can build something similar. Patty Stone. Safer. Welcome to Work Life.

[Patti Stonecipher]

Thank you, Molly. It's great to be here.

[Molly Graham]

I'm so glad to have you. I've been looking forward to this conversation. So, Patty, you have a personal mission statement that guides your decisions. Will you tell us what it is and how you came up with it?

[Patti Stonecipher]

Yes. Well, I think at some level, while I call it a personal mission statement, you could also call it personal principles. Right, Because a mission statement is kind of what are we going to do? And the principles or kind of how are we going to do it? And I've merged those two into a simple statement to both guide big decisions, but also provide a framework for me organizing my days. And so I've been very proactive about making sure that I define success through this statement that I then use as an organizing framework for what am I going to do this week, this month, this day. I'm a person who says no a lot so that I can go deep where I say yes, but I say no a lot. And I have friends who are wonderful, wonderful change makers who just cannot say no. So that need to have a framework that says I can only keep learning on two or three things. Right. And so that means a lot of no's. A lot of no's. And I use that framework, plus the discipline of limiting the number of things within each part of the framework as a no device as much as it is a yes device.

[Molly Graham]

I love it. All right, will you tell us what the mission statement is?

[Patti Stonecipher]

It's very simple. It is love, be loved, seek justice, keep learning, and laugh.

[Molly Graham]

I love it so much. How did you come up with it?

[Patti Stonecipher]

So I've always been prone to thinking about what values should be guiding things. I came from a family that was very big on social values, but I kind of put that in one bucket and work in another. And, you know, my first four decades, I was very consumed with, yes, a young family, but also very big job in the tech world making money. I started out with none and began the process of really building asset base for my family. But at age 40, while I had more or less made decisions that I felt good about, I really realized that I'd made more money and had more success than I expected. And it was time to step away at that point from Microsoft and really consider what more did I want this second half of my life to be? Not just using those values informally, but formalizing them. That's why my statement is so short, because I needed something that I could be thinking of when people asked me to do something, when an opportunity presented itself. When what I was planning for next week came up, I needed to have a touchstone that was easy to go back to and make sure that I was using my time and my power and my resources against that real set of mission and principles.

[Molly Graham]

Yeah. How did you actually write it down? When did you first write it down? Did you just sit in a room and come up with it?

[Patti Stonecipher]

I think I wrote it down, Molly. The day after that, I announced I was leaving Microsoft. The principals of dreamworks SKG called me and said, come join us. And I said yes, because it seems so cool I was ready to step away from Microsoft. It definitely fit my keep learning category. But I just grabbed that next really cool rung and. And 12 weeks later began a conversation with Bill and Melinda Gates about what they were hoping to do with their philanthropy and how we might do some of that together. And I realized, oh, I'm going to have to be far more intentional, because by that time, several corporations had called. I had begun the process of joining board of directors. But it was necessary to really get a framework to know not just where to say yes, but where to say no. Where to say later, where to say didn't hit the top of the priorities.

[Molly Graham]

Yeah. So first of all, I wanted to say, despite knowing you well, I didn't actually know you. You built the statement this early. And. And I also think it's really interesting because I think often when other people tell your career story, they say, oh, she left Microsoft and she went straight to the Gates Foundation. But actually, there was a job you took in the middle, which you mentioned, the DreamWorks job, and you left it pretty quickly. Like, that must. That must have been really hard.

[Patti Stonecipher]

I teasingly say, sometime I'll write my 12 weeks in Hollywood memoir. Very short. But I really just. I had worked with the folks at DreamWorks on a joint venture at Microsoft, and I just admired them and admired what they were, the boldness of what they were trying to do, and it just seemed so cool. Right. So I said yes because it was so cool. But you know what? The world is full of a lot of cool things, and you can only do a few. I changed the statement over time to be simpler. You know, I think the love and be loved has moved even further up the priorities as I've gotten older and as. Especially as my husband has needed more attention. You have to look at these things, you know, every year or so and decide, is this still the right composition for me?

[Molly Graham]

Yeah. Well. And I actually want to go through it piece by piece because I'm guessing each piece actually has a story for, like, what it means to you. So will you talk a little bit both about the pieces of it and what they mean to you, but also how they've changed over time?

[Patti Stonecipher]

Well, let's start with love and be loved. I think of that as how I want to show up in this world. You know, what are the high personal values for me? And I've always been a very loving person, but I did not always, when working like a crazy person, put this into action as frequently and as thoughtfully. This idea of intentionally finding the time and the space and the opportunity to love and be loved. Whether that is in a corporate setting where I think I probably used to be tougher. You know, you get older, you get more experienced, you can be clear without being tough. And I became, I think, more clear and a little less tough as time moved on and as love and be Loved opened myself up to people loving me even more, to not just being the boss, but being the friend, being the mentor, being the colleague, and being a mentee. All of those things got bigger and better as I got older.

[Molly Graham]

I love that. And then will you talk about seek justice?

[Patti Stonecipher]

Well, I think all of us have at some level, a feeling of our special purpose. And at the beginning, I listened to what others said. My special purpose was, was I am one heck of an organized, get stuff done kind of girl, right? If you give me a problem, I'm going to solve it, I'm going to get it done, we're going to nail it down. But choosing where to apply those skills came with some level of success, right? So at the beginning, I really was trying to stabilize my family's finances and get the house and the car and the student loans paid off, all of those things. And as those began to ease, I realized I could apply those skills of knowing how to organize people and projects around a mission and that that mission could be aligned with seeking justice, which was my number one heart priority, my number one purpose from the get go. My family was very oriented around social justice. They were very activist Catholics. And, you know, if you talk to any one of my siblings, they've got a great story of how they're pursuing that, even if their day job is something else. And I was too. I was also pursuing it when my day job was, you know, producing the next CD ROM for Microsoft games. But to be able to put that in the center, to make that special purpose that I have a seek justice and to use the skills and that I developed was really a fantastic change in my life orientation.

[Molly Graham]

Right. Okay, let's keep going. So the next part is keep learning.

[Patti Stonecipher]

So keep learning. This need to keep learning intellectually is important, but also I found as a manager, as a leader, as a wife, as a daughter, et cetera, the need to stay open to. I've got to change. I've got to hear this person. I've got to learn from this person. That is part of keep learning, right? Is to not take yourself as a manager too seriously. You need to learn, even if you don't like what everybody's saying, you need to hear it. And learn it. So that whole process of keep learning and it becoming very important for me in my personal life as well as my professional life was something that started at the beginning and got richer and richer as I got older.

[Molly Graham]

Yeah. And then what about that last line

[Patti Stonecipher]

laugh came late in that one of my dearest friends said she thought it sounded really kind of heavy. It was Melinda Gates who I've shared a lot of the seek justice work with. And we talk a fair bit about how are we doing in a bigger way, right? Not just how are you doing this week, but how are you doing? How does it feel about how things are lined up for you? And when she heard my mission statement, one of the versions of it, she just said that seems, you know, it seems heavy and you don't feel heavy. And that's when I added laugh to the end of it. You know, some of the work that we choose to do in seek justice can cause a lot of tension, can cause a lot of anxiety, especially right now in so many people having polarized positions and laugh just says, you know, don't take it all so seriously. And so finding ways to laugh, to laugh at ourselves, to laugh at the situation, that's a really important and wonderful additional attributes. But it's also kind of when I tell people about how you might want to build this, it's kind of like what word did you leave out that you really want to make sure you get in there? And for me it was either gratitude or grateful or laugh because you gotta laugh. Foreign.

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[Molly Graham]

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[Patti Stonecipher]

Not by the time I did, it was really time for me to leave Microsoft. I felt that, yeah, I felt that I had at point some. Some level outgrown it. I mean, probably the only brave thing I did was step away and let go before I grabbed. But I grabbed so quick. I mean, there was just like 24 hours where I didn't grab onto the next thing.

[Molly Graham]

You know, that's one of the first pieces of career advice that you gave me That I repeat all the time, which is you said to me, let go. Yeah. You said, the hardest thing in the world is to let go of one rung of the ladder without your hand on the other rung.

[Patti Stonecipher]

Yeah. So no, it. It felt like it was time. It was scary. It was scary in kind of a personal, what am I going to do next? But it wasn't scary leaving Microsoft.

[Molly Graham]

Yeah. And then you said you took the DreamWorks job because it sounded cool.

[Patti Stonecipher]

I mean, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Steven Spielberg were on the phone. You just kind of just. I'm a just say yes kind of girl. Right. So I would rather say yes accidentally, you know, and have to unwind it than let something go. And they were so cool. Right. Microsoft was a great builder of software, but nobody ever really called us cool. They just didn't. So I think I was seduced a bit by how cool that would be. Okay.

[Molly Graham]

And so then Bill and Melinda came to you and asked if you might want to start working with them on their philanthropic stuff. And what was it about that moment that made you feel like you needed a mission statement or needed help in that decision making?

[Patti Stonecipher]

It wasn't just. I mean, I think most people would say, if these people are ready to have a blank sheet of paper and try to figure out how to use their wealth to change, to change inequity in society, which we had these similar goals, but, you know, from different lenses, most people would say yes to that. The thing that probably moved me further towards needing a framework was I also said yes to the Kinko's board. I was on the Alaska Airlines board. I was on the Viacom board. So I said yes because of these opportunities to learn, to use what I knew how to do, all of those things. And it just was, those were a bad batch of decisions because there was nothing wrong with doing them. But they limited the opportunity for me to spend the time on, seek justice, spend the time on love and be loved. And they didn't fulfill keep learning, but I unwound those. And it was helpful that I had the Gates foundation, which aligned so much with what I needed to do, because I could explain to those people, look, I want to pour everything I've got into this effort to do, you know, to find an answer for vaccinations, to do something about childhood nutrition, to see what we can learn about education in the United States. And unwinding those corporate boards over the next couple of years was a very big lesson for me. And make your decision slowly.

[Molly Graham]

Make your decision slowly. And it also Sounds like almost like you realize there was an imbalance. Like you'd leaned like too hard on the learning value, but you hadn't paid attention to the seek justice piece. Like, it sounds like there was a balance piece to it as well.

[Patti Stonecipher]

Well, at the beginning, the Gates foundation was small, right. I was above a pizza restaurant in downtown Redmond where we move the desks around on the weekend if I had to add one person, right? So there were, it was teeny tiny. We did the books out of Quicken. So even though I knew what their ambition was, I still felt like I had a lot of capacity. And so I started applying that capacity, you know, to a range of other things where people wanted me. And you know, there is flattery in being wanted. But yeah, I think I just, maybe I just got a little sloppy and having a more focused framework that you literally can carry around and, and, and, and, and put things against it really helped me focus.

[Molly Graham]

Totally. You waved a piece of paper. So, like you actually use this mission statement every day, right? You have a form for how it integrates into your day. Will you just talk through what that is?

[Patti Stonecipher]

Yeah. So down this side are those Big Love, Beloved, Seek Justice, Keep Learning, Laugh and Play. And I, most of my activities line up underneath those, but then I have a column for personal business and corporate nonprofit, because there's just a lot of stuff you got to do in, in life, right. I've got an issue with the back fence in the house and I've got, you know, those things have to be on the list too. So I merge them so that the short term and the long term, the very deep and the very, you just gotta do it all come to one place. And it's such a regular touchstone for me that I was telling my daughter Sandy last night about that fact that I was gonna do this podcast and she was explaining to her husband how much I use this process. And I was telling them that their 8 year old daughter Della checks to see that it still says Della, get the thing framed at Framebridge on it, because she knows. She's still waiting for me to get this one particular piece of memorabilia framed for her. And it's on there and she knows if it's on the list, it'll eventually get done.

[Molly Graham]

But wait, so, so, and I think this is right, but you have basically a form sheet of paper that you use that has this like the, the mission statement down the left side and

[Patti Stonecipher]

some categories across the top and then down the side. And so under Love and be loved, I have subheadings for the people that I want to love and be loved for. So I make sure what am I doing with friends that's going to take it the next step? What am I doing with, with Sandy's family? What am I doing with Matt's family? What am I doing with Mike? And try to pick some things so I have a bigger picture of what I want to do about love and be loved with Mike in this coming year. So we work on those big things. But then I make sure that, you know, this weekend Arena Stage has a musical that he loves. So I looked at that ahead of time and we've got that on there. So it's a combination of things that are telescope and things that are microscope on there. Big things I want to get, keep my eye on and things I just gotta, I just want to get done this week, this day.

[Molly Graham]

And do you print, Patty? Is it a new one every week or do you use it on a monthly basis? Once a month?

[Patti Stonecipher]

Yeah. Okay. Just scribble all over it. You notice it's a combination of pretty prints. This was February 1st. It's a pretty print and then a lot of little scribbles all over it.

[Molly Graham]

And it just lets you kind of track how your actions and your, the things that you need to do map to the things that are important to you. So you kind of notice if there's a gap.

[Patti Stonecipher]

Yes. And to be honest, a lot of your listeners are probably mid career so they can look at certain milestones. I'm at a different point in my career and I've heard many people who are semi retired or retired say that the time just falls like sand through the, through the sieve and they're not sure what they get at the end of it. And so this also helps me with that retrospective look to say, yeah, I did do my part for seeking justice. And so it's, it's a, it's a level of satisfaction that you get too by knowing this adds up to doing a good job. Right?

[Molly Graham]

Yeah. So was it different when you were doing things like running Martha's Table or when you were interim CEO of the Washington Post? Like, do you use it differently when you are actively in a job?

[Patti Stonecipher]

No, but I'll use the running the Post. So as I said, literally Jeff Bezos came up to me at a meeting we were at that was about Amazon and said, you know, I think I'm going to need some help. Is there a chance you could step in and help me at the Post? And I just said, oh yeah, oh yeah. I could do that. So I cleared the decks and did it for six months. And I loved that job. But it is a 12 hour a day direct work and another six hours where you can't get your mind off of it because there's so much that a job like a place like the post takes on. So what I realized was that Love and Be Loved was getting about this big and keep learning and seek justice was really big. But I was unwilling, at this age, I'm almost 70 this year, I was unwilling to have Love and Be Loved kept in a pocket sized compartment. I needed that to grow right now for reasons in my family, my life and my time of life. And so I said no to doing it long term, which was hard to do because it fulfilled much of what I really find resonance with. And that's what a really good framework will let you do, is make even the hard decisions.

[Molly Graham]

Yeah, it sounds like it both helped, you know, when it was sort of a full body. Yes to the do this temporarily help out in this interim capacity and full body. No, because you were so your, your framework was out of balance.

[Patti Stonecipher]

One of the reasons I need a framework is because I can be an out of balance kind of girl. So you know, I mean the, that I am a go for it girl. Right. And whether that is on the keep learning or on the, on the seek justice or whatever, I am just gonna go for it. Give me that ball, I'm going to run. And so a framework that, that allows me to assess whether I'm fulfilling across the board is very important for my, my values, but also my personality.

[Molly Graham]

Yeah, that's. I do think of you as a whole body person. So that resonates. I want to talk about Martha's Table because I, I remember when you were in that job, you said to me this feels like the work that I was. So I am curious, like talk a little bit about how you chose to do that and how you used your mission statement to end up there. Also, obviously we should share what Martha's Table is and what it does.

[Patti Stonecipher]

Yeah. So Martha's Table is a very DC based organization that uses both food and education and family interventions, family opportunity to really try to increase equity and opportunity in Washington D.C. so with food, there is an enormous amount of food inequity in this country and in this city. And Michael, my husband, had long been a supporter of Martha's Table small checks every holiday, which thousands of families across D.C. had done. And so we would get these newsletters that were a little hokey and a Little cheap. And I'd see them and I'd look at them and learn about them. And then shortly after we moved here, I saw one that said they were looking for a new CEO, and I thought I could do that. And so I had to figure out, how do I apply? And they didn't really think I was serious. They thought that maybe I was just going to do it for a year and walk away. But thankfully, a couple of people intervened and told them, oh, no. Yes, she's had this great big job at the Gates foundation moving billions of dollars, but she's dead serious. If she says she's going to do it, she's dead serious. So that, again, was a matter of balancing. I had done this big scale, seek justice, and I was ready to do something that married the love, be loved and seek justice a little closer. And that was just so fulfilling for me. There were many parts of it that I wasn't an ideal leader for, but there were many parts where I felt like I was able to marry the love and be loved with the seek justice and keep learning. I was learning every day that I was there.

[Molly Graham]

Yeah. So, Patty, I am curious, like, if. If the mission statement has helped you make decisions either at Martha's table or somewhere else where there was conflict, was there a time when it's helped you sort of through. Yeah, just a moment of really hard decision making?

[Patti Stonecipher]

Well, it's not even always decision making that sometimes when you use your voice, when it's very risky. Right. So I've been in boardrooms where discussion of equity and discussion where are the women at the table? Or where are the people of color at the table? Or how are we going to do X in a way that's inclusive? Was not a very popular discussion. But you got to use what you have. Right. And I actually had one situation where a board member afterward just said, well, that was a lost hour because we ended up having a discussion. And, you know, you have to say, lost for you. Probably good for. Definitely good for me. Probably good for a broader. So a lot of it is just that kind of choice making of where do you use your voice, where do you use your power, where do you use your time? And it happened over and over again. And at Martha's Table, as you know, people wanted us to do a lot of different things. Right. And we had to say no, it looks like our highest and best use is stick to food and education and then fill out these family programs. Every board meeting, they wanted you to do a ton of different things. So constantly going back both to my personal mission statement and figuring out also how Martha's table fit into that and where did that live. But it also told me when it was time to go, when it was time for a leader that was closer to the work to come in.

[Molly Graham]

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[Molly Graham]

Okay, so I, I, I want to just try to give people the tools to do this for themselves if they can. And we're going to use me as a guinea pig and we'll see how far we can get. But I am curious. Like, let's say I want to make a mission statement, and either I have nothing, or in my case, I have a set of values. But I, I've always been jealous of your mission statement. So I'm ready, I'm ready for the Patty tutorial. Like, what are the essential building blocks? How do you start?

[Patti Stonecipher]

Oh, I think there's just a couple of questions. And the first one is, how do you want to show up? And in your family, with your colleagues, with life, how do you want to show up? What are the one or two or three major personal characteristics you want people to describe? So when you think about yourself, Molly, how do you want to show up?

[Molly Graham]

I mean, well, I'll just talk out loud for a second, but I think that, like, I have love and be loved really resonates with me because I think for me, I have a value called family, but it's the broadest definition, meaning I have friends that I think of as family. And I'm, I, I really care. Like, when someone needs something about being the person that can, like, get on the plane or just show up, you know, wherever you need me, in whatever way you need me. And when I can't do that, I often feel like I'm failing. And that's true for my, you know, nuclear family. That's true for my extended family, and it's definitely true for, like, a set of friends. And so I think that's really important to me when it comes to family.

[Patti Stonecipher]

So build family, be family, support family. Something in that is how you want to show up. And that goes for your best colleagues as well as the, the broader network, as well as those really, really close, right?

[Molly Graham]

Yeah, it does. And I think, like, it also probably does actually. Connect to how I coach and support leaders these days. Like, I, I've been trying to figure this out, but I used to really care about broad impact and now I, I really love depth, which is something my 20 year old self would have been very puzzled by. But as you say, these things evolve. But I feel like if I can say that something I did, Even if it's 30 minute conversation, you know, change the trajectory of someone's life or decisions, that, that's, that's meaningful impact to me. So it isn't always about, you know, hours and hours of time or deep, deep relationships as much as it is feeling like I've had a meaningful impact on someone. So I think those two things are connected, not necessarily the same. I have another value called guiding, which I.

[Patti Stonecipher]

Your special purpose. Right. So the second thing is, the first one is how do you want to show up? How do you want to be in relationship to the, to the world or to the people around you? The second one is. And then what is your special purpose? And there's just to me, Molly, that kind of guiding, building, et cetera, those are related. You want to be family, you want to build strength, or I don't know what, what would you say your special purpose is?

[Molly Graham]

Oh my God, the questions are so big, Patty.

[Patti Stonecipher]

That's why it takes a while to build this out. This is not one of those lightning round things, but this is just for the purpose of a. Yeah, the example.

[Molly Graham]

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I mean, I think, by the way, I have another value that's called authenticity, which I actually think is probably related to the family one, uh, may

[Patti Stonecipher]

be your final one. Right?

[Molly Graham]

Yeah.

[Patti Stonecipher]

Because you want to always do all these things in a way that, that's why laugh for me, because I don't want to be self important. I desperately do not want to be self important. And if you keep laughing, you do it. So authenticity is kind of that, maybe that trailing element too, that.

[Molly Graham]

Oh yeah, I, that really resonates because I've thought a lot about how to authentically do this podcast. The Molly. The Molly version. Yeah. Special purpose. Like, I do think at this point it is about helping people feel less alone and feel more confident and more sort of seen and supported in their work. And that's what I think the guiding is about, which is like, to whatever extent I can use the tools at my disposal to help people feel more sane and more clear and more, you know, less alone. I don't know how that would end up in a statement though.

[Patti Stonecipher]

That's okay. But I've got build strength and connections and guiding. I've also got authenticity. I've got be family. Build family. Show up for family.

[Molly Graham]

Yeah. And so the questions were, how do

[Patti Stonecipher]

you want to show up? Is the first question. What's your special purpose or your special power? And yours, you know, the building strength and connection. Probably your special power is guiding, right? Because you are really a great, great guide. And then what is a key area of personal growth you highly value?

[Molly Graham]

Mine is the same as yours. Actually, my value on this one is extreme learning. Because I tend to only like, I feel like I'm at my best when I'm actually terrified. I mean, one of the reasons why saying yes to this opportunity to take over this podcast was such an easy to. Your point about saying yes to Jeff Bezos 15 minutes after he asked you or whatever. I said yes as soon as they asked me, because I was like, that sounds terrifying. I have no idea if I would be good at it, but I'm gonna learn so much, you know?

[Patti Stonecipher]

Amen. Amen. Okay, so here's just the straw man. Now, obviously, this takes weeks of thinking about it. So be family or build family. Let's say be family for now. Build strength and connection. Bold and risky learning, authenticity. And somehow in that, you would have to make it a little snappier, a little better. But, wow, there's a lot in that. If you really had a framework that said, am I being family? Right. What am I doing to be family? To build strength and connection, Gosh knows, what are your highest priorities right now for building strength and connection? And then bold and risky learning, and then authenticity. I love that because it keeps you from thinking too much of this, the rest of it, Right? So for me, you know, there's this framework, but then part of the reason I kept it short was a whole series of things about brevity. And one was this book that I dug up. Did you ever see this book? It's called Not Quite what I Was Planning, Six Word Memoirs. There's a website for it. It was from Smith magazine. And there's all these people that said in their next time, better parents, better hair. Somebody else's memoir was, I just randomly opened this little bit Lucy Tempered by Ethel. I mean, I love it because it's sobering. Not quite what I was Planning as your six word memoir. And I kind of am a planner. Right. I want my memoir to be something close to practice, love and justice, learned, laughed. You know, that would be sufficient for me. I would feel really good if people thought I really, truly my Memoir was practiced. Love and justice. I learned and I laughed. That would be enough. And for you, this just, like, great families, strong connections, bold learning, authentic. I mean, that would be pretty cool.

[Molly Graham]

Patti, I love this framework because it really does. I mean, it's. I love that you're writing your obituary as we're talking, but, like, I love. It really does force you to be reflective and to think about what are the things that genuinely matter to you in terms of how you're going to spend your time and your energy and your force in the world. And these are. They're, like, small, simple things, but they end up being really big and also really important to just ground you in who you are and how you move through the world. So thank you for doing this.

[Patti Stonecipher]

And as you get older, as you get older, like I am knowing that you were enough is really important. And I feel like this helps me know that my life, my contribution, it was enough.

[Molly Graham]

Patty, thank you for coming on Work life. This was magical.

[Patti Stonecipher]

Thank you, Molly. I loved it.

[Molly Graham]

Okay. Wow. First of all, I'm so glad you got to meet Patty. One thing I love about Patty's approach is that I do think a lot of us think of work and life as two separate things, right? You have your job, and then you have everything else. And she. It's very obvious when she's talking that she sees them as one thing. It's one set of time, and she's making choices very consciously about how to spend that time. And I think that's like, the best part of Patty's mission statement is that it really pushes you to think, how. How do I want to define success? How do I know what's right for me, not what's right for my mom or my dad or whoever is in my head or what other people think? And that can be big and small, right? Like, she mentioned big decisions like leaving a job or staying at a job, which is often what we think about. But she also mentioned little things like speaking up in a meeting or choosing what to invest her time on a weekly basis in. And it's so cool that her mission statement lets her be clear about why. Right? Why is she doing the things she's doing? Why is she investing her time the way she is, but also to check in? Because it's not like anybody ever has this balance perfect. Do you know what I mean? Like, it's not like anybody's, like, figured it out. It's actually more about having the compass and then having a way to ask yourself, like, how you're doing against that compass. The other thing that Patti talked about, though, that I really resonate with is just that things change over time. What is important to you when you're 20 is different than what's important to you in your 30s and 40s and 50s and 70s. And that has really been true for me. And I think you could hear Patty saying that like the ask to join the post full time as the CEO she might have said yes to in her 40s, but she said no to it in her 70s because it didn't make sense based on her principles and her mission statement. So I really hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did. And I just want to say that people like Patty are the point of what I want to do with Work Life, which is that there is so much wisdom trapped inside someone that has had such incredible experiences. You can hear in everything she says. I've learned so much from her in my life and she's never going to write a book, which is such a bummer, Patty, but but my goal is to bring lessons out of people like Patti because I think we all can learn a ton from people like her. All right, time for me to go work on my mission statement. Work Life is a production of Ted and Pushkin Industries. This episode was produced by Isaac Carter. Banban Cheng is our story editor. Ted's executive producer is Daniela Balarazo. Constanza Gallardo is the executive producer for Pushkin. Special thanks to Roxanne hi Lasch, Valentina Bohonini, Lainey Lot, Tansika Sangmanivong, and Ashley Murphy. If you like the show and want more, come join the discussion on my substack lessons. I'm Molly Graham. Thanks for listening.

[Patti Stonecipher]

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