Employees and customers as opposed to shareholders?

As opposed to banks, as opposed to analysts, there's a whole set of constituencies. And quite frankly, even at that point in time, shareholders were looking for results, not stories. And the only way you're going to get results is by focusing on employees and customers.

Rather than creating a traditional vision statement, you put together a fictitious Wall Street Journal article that described what the company would look like in 2005. How did what was actually written in 2005 differ from that fictitious article?

I think we probably kept that fictional story somewhat high-level so that we'd have the benefit of saying, "See? It did come true!" So we left room for some degree of alignment and hope. But I think what was most important was that we had placed big bets on staying with our research and development investment so that we would be proud of our technology pipeline. That certainly has materialized.

We were building our services business, and the fictional article said we would become known as a services-led technology company. I, too, believe that has materialized -- we built a $3.8 billion services business. Most importantly, it was written to really give people the view of how you would feel being proud of your company again. And I totally believe that's materialized. I think the brand esteem, the pride the people have in the company, the reputation that we've built back -- we were recognized as one of the top five companies for ethics in the industry by the Ethisphere Institute just recently -- the vast majority of things people could relate to. We certainly built in some financials and stock prices that haven't all materialized yet.

You've said that effective communication was the single most important component of your turnaround strategy. What's No. 2?

Close to No. 1 would have been our investments in research and development. While we were making really tough decisions everywhere in the company, we knew that the long-term success of the company would only be sustained if we had a great pipeline of innovation coming through.

What was the single toughest decision you've had to make as CEO of Xerox?

Certainly during those years, there were a lot of tough decisions. I sometimes point to, because it was one of the most memorable experiences, shutting down our consumer business. It's a business that I ran, I helped author. A business that could have had promise over time, but there wasn't time. You're in a situation where you have to make really clear choices. You can't afford to be less than decisive. So we made a decision that that was not core to the company's success or strategy, and therefore shut down that division. Great people, a lot of promise. Always tough to do, but this one was kind of personal.

Can you identify a single best decision?

I don't think so. It's interesting -- I get asked a lot about the turnaround, and I think the hope is that there's some magic or silver bullet, or something that people can point to that really was exceptional. And I actually think that we turned the company around very much on a whole set of fundamental good business practices that we sustained for a long period of time. No magic formulas. This one's really just hard work and great people who stay focused and can accomplish great things.