#118 Doug Conant: Leadership With Integrity

Doug Conant breaks down how putting his employees first made him an internationally renowned business leader atop both the Nabisco Foods Company and the Campbell Soup Company. On this episode Doug discusses why you can’t win in the marketplace if you haven’t won in the workplace, his first 100 days as CEO of Campbell Soup, adjusting to shifting consumer preferences, how to know when you have the right people and the wrong people, and so much more. Conant served as the President of Nabisco from 1999-2001 and then spent a decade as President and CEO of The Campbell Soup Company. In 2011 he founded ConantLeadership, a consulting company focused on championing leadership that works in the 21st century. He’s also the author of The Blueprint: 6 Practical Steps to Lift Your Leadership to New Heights. -- Go Premium: Members get early access, ad-free episodes, hand-edited transcripts, searchable transcripts, member-only episodes, and more. Sign up at: https://fs.blog/membership/ Every Sunday our newsletter shares timeless insights and ideas that you can use at work and home. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/ Follow Shane on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  The key to making hard decisions at the top, you have to be in the black with your emotional bank account with the culture. As a leader, you have to build that bank account. You have to be making deposits every day into that account to build trust and to build credibility with the people that work there, knowing that there are days where you're going to make some giant withdrawal because you're going to screw up, because you will. And the companies that are doing well in today's challenging times are the ones that are building trust with their associates that's going to help them navigate the challenges of the day. We have challenges today. We had challenges yesterday. We'll have more challenges tomorrow.

• 0:56Shane Parrish?

  Welcome to the Knowledge Project Podcast. I'm your host, Shane Parrish. This podcast sharpens your mind by helping you master the best what other people have already figured out. If you're listening to this, you're not currently a supporting member. If you'd like special member-only episodes, access before anyone else, transcripts and other member-only content, you can join at fs.blog/podcast. Check out the show notes for a link. Doug Cannott is here today. Doug was the CEO of Campbell's Soup and worked at Nabisco during the toxic leveraged bio culture that prompted the book Barbarians at the Gate. Doug is full of leadership advice and lessons. We talk about why you can't win in the marketplace if you haven't won in the workplace, the first 100 days as CEO of Campbell's Soup,

• 1:39Shane Parrish?

  adjusting to shifting consumer preferences, how to know when you have the right people and the wrong people, and so much more. It's time to listen and learn.

• 1:56Shane Parrish?

  Set the scene for me in the 80s and not only like how did you end up at Nabisco? What was it like working for the LBO, largest in history at the time? And the pressure that you must have felt internally and the employees as well? And then how you applied some of this learning from Covey inside?

• 2:13Speaker 00

  Well, there were two guys that just they say when the student is ready, the teacher appears. I was ready for two people that really had a profound influence on me more than others. One was Stephen Covey and the other one was Jim Collins. And they both became very good friends. I was wrestling with my life. I had gone into Nabisco and it was at Nabisco that, you know, the magnitude of the challenge was overwhelming. And I was realizing without knowing it that I needed to step up my game. Stuff was coming at me as part of the world's largest LBO and KKR, the poster child for barbarians at the gate.

• 2:58Speaker 00

  You're young for this, but it was a huge deal at the time in the corporate world. We were being challenged to do things that just were more substantial than I'd ever been challenged before. And I realized I needed to get better anchored in what I believed in so that I could have the courage of my convictions to deal with all of it in a way that where I would survive because it was challenging. So that's where I and I was searching for help, not knowing I was searching for help, but I was searching for help and I discovered Stephen's book and I read it on a trip with my wife and totally neglected her. And I ultimately, she said, what are you reading? I said, this amazing book. And she said, why is it so amazing?

• 3:41Speaker 00

  Because he thinks just like I do and it was The Seven Habits by Stephen Covey. And I wrote a whole book on it in the blueprint, but I believe you've got to tend to your own foundations so that when you get put in the thick of thick things and having to make tough decisions about people and performance and every day where you're pushed to the edge, you have to be incredibly well anchored and have the courage of your convictions. It's hard to have the courage of your convictions if you don't know what your convictions are. And, uh, and most people are flying by the seat of their pants. Especially all the people that were listening to you on Wall Street. They're, they're doing life by the seat of their pants. They're reacting to what comes at them, which I do too. Uh, 70% of the time.

• 4:26Speaker 00

  But when you're in these tight, tight situations, you gotta know where to draw the line and where you stand on things. And I wasn't confident enough. Uh, so I needed to do some inside work to say, well, what do I want to stand for here? And how do I want to make this work? So that I can not only contribute and perform, but I can do it in a way where I, you know, I can look at myself in the mirror every day. And nobody can do that work for you. And I'll tell you, you can't, reading the books about all these great leaders and how they did it, has nothing to do with you. So I did my homework and I lifted my game.

• 5:07Shane Parrish?

  Talk to me about being inside and the pressures that you felt and learning on the fly, going through that. I mean, it must've been, you know, you turned around multiple divisions. You rose up the ranks. It didn't always seem clear that was gonna happen.

• 5:21Speaker 00

  Oh, no, I had been fired earlier in my career. And it wasn't that I did anything particularly wrong. I just don't think I did enough right. And but, you know, every time I do a Myers-Briggs test, I'm an introvert. And that's hard, you know? If you're trying to be a leader and influence the direction and you're uncomfortable in the spotlight. I discovered that I, I needed to, uh, really get anchored in what I stood for. It was even extra hard for me because I had a, I had to overcome my introversion and my shyness and my reserved nature. And so the only way I could do that was to get really firmly grounded in what mattered most to me.

• 6:05Speaker 00

  And, uh, when I was firmly grounded, I was able to step outside of myself and express it. And so I spent a lot of time working in this territory, more than most, because I felt like I needed to. You know, uh, there's a great Brene Brown quote. You can either walk inside your story and own it, or you can stand outside your story and hustle for your worthiness every day. And you know, as a shy, introverted, oldest child, I was going through and I was walking inside my parents' story for me, my teacher's story for me, my coach's story for me, my boss's story for me, my organization's story. I was walking inside everybody else's story.

• 6:50Speaker 00

  And I sort of began to realize when I lost my job in my early 30s, like, this isn't working. I need to figure out what my story is. And in fact, when I got let go from my job, the first thing my outplacement counselor did for me, he said, "Look, I want you to sit down and write your entire life story for me. Handwrite it. And I want every detail in there. And I want it back in two weeks." But I handwrote 50 pages, front and back, 100 pages, small handwriting. I wish I had that. I don't know where it ever happened to it. And as I got into my life story, it was like, wow, look at all this stuff. And

• 7:32Speaker 00

  I haven't really reflected on any of this. I've just been going from, you know, one step at a time, here to there, boom, boom, boom. Yet I had this incredible story being exposed to people who had profound influences on me. But I just sort of left that in the dust and moved on, although I carried their lessons with me below the surface. But as I wrote it all down, I realized, wow, this is really rich stuff. And I started to ruminate on it, manage it. And then shortly thereafter, I met Stephen Covey. When I was at Nabisco, to get directly to your question, I was doing this Covey stuff, and these guys were talking

• 8:13Speaker 00

  about me doing all this lovey dovey Covey stuff. And our mission for the LBO was E-Cubed, earnings, earnings, earnings. And it had nothing to do with people, it had nothing to do with organization. You know, you were just expected to manage all that, but I need my quarterly earnings. You got to hit our targets. I just felt that was short sighted. Uh, but I knew I had to deliver the earnings, but I also knew we had to create a roadmap for prosperity that was gonna allow me to make the earnings a year from then, when I had to lap that quarter and deliver again. As I was being challenged with all that, I sort of landed on this philosophy that said,

• 8:57Speaker 00

  look, there are two things that matter here in, in all the corporate world. It's performance and people. It's not just performance, it's performance and people. In fact, you take care of the people and they'll take care of the performance. You know, I'm this guy from the Midwest who shows up on the East Coast, Pollyanna-ish kind of perspective that you take care of the people, they take care of the work and, and the more I care about them, the more they'll care about our agenda and the better we'll do. I mean, logical to me, but it wasn't the language of, of, of the day, the heyday of the 1990s and it was countercultural at the time, both within Nabisco and in the broader world. I just became wildly committed to assembling a world-class team.

• 9:42Speaker 00

  And then to give them all the tools they needed to fight the fight. And to give them air cover when I could, because nobody else agreed with me. And, uh, so we started doing that and I started paying attention to them. Ultimately, we performed well one year, we performed yet well the next year, and the next year I was made president of Nabisco Foods and for five years we outperformed any other food company in the United States, which is how I ultimately ended up getting the Campbell job.

• 10:13Speaker 02

  Bonjour, compadre. It's the

• 10:17Speaker 02

  How do I negotiate so many great travel deals? My greatest gadget, the Priceline app. It's got hotel deals, flight deals, rental car deals, all of those deals in a bundle. Deals, game day deals, concert trip deals. No one deals more deals than Priceline. Hold your horses, there's more. The app lets you filter hotels by neighborhood, vibe, star level and amenities like pools and spas and beachfronts and, wait, I'm not done. Stop cutting me off.

• 10:44Speaker 03

  This episode is brought to you by Tic Tac. Lace up and get your game on because the Tic Tac lineup just got a new teammate. Dr. Pepper Tic Tac. This new double threat puts two of your favorite flavors into one box of mints. And when two iconic flavors come together, the result can only be iconic. Score big. Try Dr. Pepper Tic Tac today.

• 11:07Shane Parrish?

  Before we get to the Campbell job, I want to hone in on two parts of that story that stick out for me. One is, where did you get the courage in an organization to do something different that goes against what everybody else in the organization is doing, right after you were fired from your previous job?

• 11:23Speaker 00

  Well, I had time in between. I had one other job before then. I had gone to Kraft and I got my sea legs again.

• 11:31Shane Parrish?

  Okay.

• 11:32Speaker 00

  And I worked for some pretty tough guys there. And I learned I could do it. I mean, it wasn't an incidental amount of time. It was seven years. But it was the, it was seven years I needed to sort of mature. And, you know, I talk about the importance, my language again, of being tough minded on standards of performance and tender hearted with people. I was inclined to be tender hearted with people. And I need to, I needed to kind of get more comfortable with being tough minded on performance. And I did that at Kraft. And I learned you can do both. The culture I grew up in was either you're, you know, either you're Vince Lombardi tough or you're lovey dovey covey.

• 12:16Speaker 00

  And what I found is, in my opinion, the best leaders that create enduring value have tough standards and care about people. They're not mutually exclusive. And I learned that at Kraft. I applied it at Nabisco. And then I really brought it to life when I got to Campbell. So that's where that came from.

• 12:37Shane Parrish?

  Is there a particular story that comes to mind when you think of a great example of being tough on standards and kind with people?

• 12:45Speaker 00

  Sure. I got to Campbell. I thought I'd seen everything. When I got to the Wild West of the world's largest LBO, and I was there for a decade, I thought I'd seen everything after Barbarians at the Gate. And then I got to Campbell and it was, there was a whole new world. And it turned out to be a very, very toxic culture. And I was bringing my same philosophy. In fact, day one, when I talked to the employees at Campbell, I said, you know, we cannot expect you to value our agenda until we tangibly demonstrate that we value yours. It just, to me, it just doesn't make any sense. So my commitment is you're

• 13:27Speaker 00

  going to see that we care about you. And we're going to trust that in the fullness of time, you're going to care about our agenda and help us lift this company up. And we were in bad shape. We started in the 19th century, and we were still selling the same products, canned soup. The leading analyst in the sector was comparing us to a buggy whip. And we were headquartered in the poorest, most dangerous city in the United States, Camden, New Jersey, where we had a city of 75,000 people and 70 murders a year. And we had razor wire all around our facilities with guard towers. It looked like a minimum security prison. The razor wire and the guard towers were there to make sure people felt

• 14:10Speaker 00

  safe when they got inside. And they had been through several years of poor performance, a lot of layoffs, no trust, overpromising, underdelivering, churn at the top, investigations by regulators, you name it, it was happening. So I got there and I said, you know, here we go. New day, we're going to value you, we're going to trust you, going to value us. And it's going to take a while. It's going to take us three years to get to a place where we can really lift our heads up. Because we're not going to overpromise and underdeliver. We are not going to be able to talk our way out of something we behaved our way into. It took us years to get into this mess. It's going to take us

• 14:55Speaker 00

  years to get out. And I'm convinced all the leaders were saying, yeah, we'll see how long this works. You know, you know, here, here comes Mr. Lovey Dovey Covey again. And he's not tough enough. We turned over 300 of the top 350 leaders in the company. Six out of seven. We gave them a year and a half or so to get with the program. But if it wasn't working, they knew because I was very upfront, we're going to have to make some tough calls here. And we're either going to find a job that you can do as an individual contributor or reporting or something. We're going to try and make it work or else we're going to help you find another job somewhere. But we got to be tough minded on standards here. We've got to perform.

• 15:38Speaker 00

  And in terms of performance, we said there are two things. It's the what and the how. The what was we have these standards that we want to hit in terms of our business performance. And the how, which was more important, quite frankly, is, and here's how we're going to comport ourselves as leaders. And if you can't sign up for the what and the how, you're probably in the wrong place. And I think people were saying, oh, yeah, yeah, we've heard this before. We'll see how long you last. We turned over 300 of the top 350. You talk about tough, that was tougher than anything we did at Nabisco. Uh, we promoted 150 from within, but we had to go outside and find 150 more blue chip, young Turks to come in and transform the company into a 21st century fighting machine.

• 16:22Speaker 00

  That was probably the single toughest thing I ever had to do because some of these people were not poor performers. They were just in the wrong place and at the wrong time, uh, from their career perspective. But I had a greater good to look after. I had 20, 20 to 24,000 people counting on me to get it right. A footnote to this conversation is we started tracking employee engagement every year with Gallup. And when we first did it, the year one, uh, Gallup said, this is the worst we've ever seen in a Fortune 500 company. This is horrible. We had an engagement ratio of, which is how many people are engaged compared to how many people are not of two to one.

• 17:06Speaker 00

  The average for Fortune 500 was four people wildly engaged for every one who wasn't. We were two to one. So basically, we had two people doing the job of three everywhere in the world. And we tracked it every year for the decade. And while I was making all these changes, I wasn't quite sure how it was going to turn out, you know, we'd made all the changes and then I didn't know how employee engagement was going to come out, but I couldn't imagine doing it any other way. So the chips were going to fall where they fell when we measured it. Turns out every year we made the changes, employee engagement went up because all the employees knew what needed to be done. They were just waiting to see if there was a leader who was going to be tough minded enough to do it.

• 17:52Speaker 00

  And we weren't perfect, but we tried to be wildly supportive of everybody we moved out. I had been fired in a tough way that wasn't particularly caring. And I said, I don't ever want to do this to anybody else again. I won't be associated with it. So we tried to be really compassionate with the people we turned over. They didn't all agree with it. But I know we did the best we could at the time. That's an example of where you, you know, you declare you're going to commit to building this kind of culture. You damn well better do it. And, and if you're going to build a culture that's going to be tough minded on standards and caring about people.

• 18:34Speaker 00

  Either you, as Jim Collins would say, either you get on the bus or you don't. You got to get the right people on the bus.

• 18:41Shane Parrish?

  I wonder to what extent hard decisions at the top make for easy decisions at the bottom.

• 18:46Speaker 00

  You know, the, the key to making hard decisions at the top, you have to be in the black with your emotional bank account with the culture. As a leader, you have to build that bank account. You have to be making deposits every day into that account to build trust and to build credibility with the people that work there. Knowing that there are days where you're going to make some giant withdrawal because you're going to screw up. Because you will. It's just too complicated. But you know that when you have that big withdrawal, you're still going to be in the black. Then it makes it much easier to make those decisions at the top because you're not running on empty with the employees.

• 19:27Speaker 00

  But the key is, how do you build that bank account before you need it? And before you have to make those tough calls? I had three years to demonstrate to all the employees that we cared about. And that we were gonna upgrade the facilities and that we cared about their work environment. And we cared about how their supervisors treated them. The number one expectation of a leader at Campbell was that you had to inspire trust. If you couldn't inspire trust, how could you inspire performance? And if you weren't inspiring trust, you were at risk. You'd lose your job. So you declare that, you live it, you work it every day. And then if people aren't able to get with the program, you kindly and gently, but firmly, move them out.

• 20:10Speaker 00

  And you do it in a way, wherever possible, that honors the individual who's been affected. It's not that they're bad people. It's just that they're not in the right place at the right time. And they ought to be honored. Everything I do emanates from a commitment to honoring people. And that's where it all starts. And so, all of the stuff we're talking about is really about, okay, how am I gonna honor this person in this situation at this time, right now? And do it in a way that acknowledges whatever has brought them here, what we have to do in the present, and also sets the table for a more prosperous future conversation.

• 20:53Speaker 00

  As a leader, you gotta live in three time zones. Simultaneously. The past, the present, and the future. Everything you do has got to honor the past, deliver in the present, set the table for a more prosperous future. And as you think that way, that's why trust building becomes mission critical. And the companies that are doing well in today's challenging times, the ones that are doing well are the ones that are building trust with their associates that's gonna help them navigate the challenges of the day. We have challenges today, we had challenges yesterday, we'll have more challenges tomorrow.

• 21:32Shane Parrish?

  Walk me through the first hundred days at Campbell. I think you mentioned in a previous interview, you felt like you had three years to turn it around. What was the first hundred days like? What steps did you take?

• 21:42Speaker 00

  Look, as a leader at a senior level, at the outside, you've got three years. The first year, it's the other guy's fault. The second year, it's our fault, but we're learning. The third year, you own it. So, in that spirit, the first year, I had to declare myself with the organization, who I was and what I stood for. And I had to bring that to life with tangible actions. First hundred days, you establish a principle-centered framework for leading, and then you listen a lot. First hundred days, you lead by listening. To the point where everybody says, "My God, you've listened enough. What are we gonna do?" They're exhausted. They don't wanna talk anymore. Yeah, you understand.

• 22:27Speaker 00

  You clearly wanna understand. Great. By the second hundred days, you've got a plan together. And I'll use Campbell as an example. I started January 1st. I declared myself. We started to set the organization up. Made some early hires that started to set the tone that I was serious about it. And we committed to having a plan by July. So, the first hundred days was doing a situation assessment and listening. The next hundred days was building a plan in a collaborative fashion with the leadership. And by July, we had launched our revitalization plan for Campbell.

• 23:10Speaker 00

  And then we were off to the races implementing the plan. My experience, you've got a hundred days to figure it out. A hundred days to operationalize it and get going. Knowing that it's not gonna be perfect. You're gonna have to course correct along the way. That's how I see managing turnarounds, which I've done everywhere I've been. There are, some people would say that's too slow for a turnaround. I find if you go a little slow at first, you can go fast later on because everybody's felt heard and been part of the process. If you go real fast out of the gate, it's your idea and nobody owns it. And you're off leading the team, only to turn around and see the team is back at the starting line.

• 23:55Speaker 00

  So, there's an art to this. You've gotta bring people along with you, and I think... The first 200 days are the most critical with that. You declare yourself and then you then you create a plan to bring it to life.

• 24:08Shane Parrish?

  How do you think about the mismatch timelines between sort of what you do in the first year is probably going to affect the profits in the second year. But a CEO, you're probably wanting to invest for a decade or two decades in the future. And yet also knowing that the average tenure of a CEO in the S and P 500 is probably what? Three to four years. How do you? How do you address these mismatch timelines between immediate results and long-term performance?

• 24:33Speaker 00

  I think there are a couple of things. First of all, you've got to be, you've got to know what you want to stand for. When I took this job, I, I at Campbell, I had said, you know, this is a heavy lift. And we can't talk our way out of something we've been have to go into. We're going to have to build something that's an enduring proposition. It's going to take time and we've got to be willing to live with the results. But we have to have clear gates of performance and we have to constantly be getting better. There has, there can be no question that we're getting better in the workplace and in the marketplace every year. No question.

• 25:17Speaker 00

  And then you have to perform and meet or exceed those expectations. Today it's easier because when I first started, it was how, what were your earnings this quarter? Now that we don't even report, most people aren't reporting quarterly earnings. They're doing annual, they provide guidance, but they're looking more to long-term in nature, which is appropriate. I was willing to not have my job if I had to do it the wrong way. This is where you have to be incredibly well anchored. We talked earlier about if you're not well anchored in the leader you want to be and how you want to lead, you're going to be whipsawed by analysts and, and Wall Street and boards and activists.

• 26:01Speaker 00

  And we were going to build a better company, brick by brick. And we were going to make sure we served all of our stakeholders, not just our shareholders. And we said that at the beginning and I basically said it at the end 10 years later. And I think if you're clear about what you intend to do and, and then you do it and you put points on the board every year. You get the opportunity to do it again. But if you're worried about saving your job, you're in trouble before you start.

• 26:33Shane Parrish?

  You mentioned the board. I'm wondering, maybe there's a particular story that comes to mind. But what makes for a helpful board member versus an unhelpful board member?

• 26:42Speaker 00

  It's not individual members. It's the culture of the board. Because, you know, we had fifteen directors, which is a large board. But they represented all kinds of points of view, so we could deliberate on anything and look at it in a three hundred and sixty degree way that I thought was incredibly healthy. I found it to be a blessing. We also had members of the founding family on the board who were tethered to the long-term interests of the company, which I also found enormously helpful. I think it's not one board member or another. I think the key is to create a culture where all points of view can be heard and where people are comfortable enough to share them.

• 27:27Speaker 00

  And that's what we had at Campbell when I was there. We had people that we would go toe-to-toe and we disagreed on some things. But, you know, those points of view, it was better to have it in the boardroom than it was to have it out with Wall Street or the analysts or any activists lurking out there to critique what we were doing. So I loved having a very candid, a large candid, arguably unwieldy board. Everything that mattered came up in those board meetings. And so we were able to deal with it before we took it outside. A good board member constructively engages in the dialogue. I guess the other observation about a good board, in my opinion, a good board member

• 28:11Speaker 00

  is that they understand their role in the process, and it's one of oversight. It's not one of execution and management. You know, their job is to is to make sure the organization is properly governed. And that that the enterprise is living up to the standards that have been set for it. Not to make sure you've done the right job with your marketing that quarter or that year.

• 28:40Shane Parrish?

  Before we get to leadership, I want to ask you how you went about making decisions. Did you have a particular process or routine was for for decisions that matter? I'm thinking high stakes decisions.

• 28:51Speaker 00

  You know, first of all, this conversation makes all this stuff sound simple. It's not. It's messy every day and you're anguishing over every, every decision about a person, every decision about a board meeting. I'm I'll just use a CEO life, but it could be any life. I spent more of my time not being a CEO than I did being a CEO. I was basically in that work world, in that lane of work for 40 years. I was only a CEO for 10. The other 30, I was a entry level marketing person to a lead, to a manager, to a leader.

• 29:30Speaker 00

  So for me, the decision making got easy if I if we created a framework for what mattered most. If people knew what mattered, it made it easy to decide. If you know all stakeholders matter and you know that you're expected to do better tomorrow than you did today, and you know that your enterprise is committing to what committed to winning in the workplace before you win in the marketplace, you create this framework. Everybody knows what's expected. You know, the Gallup survey, they ask 12 questions, which get at the hygiene of an organization. It's called the Q 12 survey.

• 30:12Speaker 00

  And one of those 12 questions is, I know what is expected of me. And the more you know what is expected of you, the easier it is to do your job. So as a leader, the key is make sure the expectations are crystal clear and make sure that if it push comes to shove, that if it if you've got to pick performance over people, then you better get somebody else in the boat with you because that's that's something that's taken very seriously in in our in my organizations.

• 30:42Speaker 00

  When it came to process, we would do a strategic process where we would assess the situation every year and revisit our strategy for the next three years. We would then say, what are the implications for the coming year? We would then do an annual plan. We would then break that annual plan down into quarterly expectations. And as we did that in a collaborative way with every leader. It was another example of where slow, you start slow, you can finish fast because everybody's on the same page and they all execute against it. Then you're just doing modest course corrections.

• 31:26Speaker 00

  The other thing, so there's a planning process you put in place. And then there's a process for interventions where you find out what's working, what's not, and what's needed in the here and now. And between the planning process and a simple intervention process, what's working, what's not, what's needed, you can find your way through almost anything.

• 31:51Speaker 02

  Bonjour, compadre. It's the

• 31:53Speaker 00

  Price Line Negotiator.

• 31:55Speaker 02

  How do I negotiate so many great travel deals? My greatest gadget, the Priceline app. It's got hotel deals, flight deals, rental car deals, all of those deals in a bundle. Deals, game day deals, concert trip deals. No one deals more deals than Priceline. Hold your horses, there's more. The app lets you filter hotels by neighborhood, vibe, star level, and amenities like pools and spas and beachfronts. And, wait, I'm not done. Stop cutting me off.

• 32:21Speaker 03

  This episode is brought to you by Tic Tac. Lace up and get your game on because the Tic Tac lineup just got a new teammate. Dr. Pepper Tic Tac. This new double threat puts two of your favorite flavors into one box of mints. And when two iconic flavors come together, the result can only be iconic. Score big. Try Dr. Pepper Tic Tac today.

• 32:45Shane Parrish?

  What have you learned about leadership that most people miss?

• 32:48Speaker 00

  It's all about the people. You know, what we tend to do, and I'm guilty of it, you know, you tend to have these huge jobs, and you got all this list of stuff that has to get done, and you get all caught up in the tasks, and you forget about the people. Because I gotta get this done now, it's due by the end of the month. And they're not getting it done, and, and all of a sudden, you're compromising the relationships with the people that work for you and with you. I found that leaders get so caught up in the delivery of performance that they lose sight of taking care of the development of the people. That's the thing I have to constantly remind myself of. Because you still have to perform, you've got to perform and take care of the people.

• 33:30Speaker 00

  But typically where you end up compromising is you, you, you just say, well, I, I don't have time to deal with him or her right now, I'm just gonna take over this project and get it done, because it's gotta be done by Friday. Sometimes you gotta do that, I mean, that's reality. Most of the leaders I encounter, they lead by the seat of their pants. They create great business plans, you know, and, and financial plans, and, and then you say, "What's your leadership plan?"

• 33:59Speaker 00

  "I have no idea." And it's like, "Wait a minute, leading your people is the most important thing you do, and you have no plan? Well, yeah, I just kind of work my way through it." Well, that's bullshit, from my point of view. You know, I would, I, I tell people that leading your people, you're on sacred ground. You're having a profound influence on these people's lives. And you're doing it by the seat of your pants? Give me a break, you know, these people are working all day, then they're having dinner with their kids, and what are they doing after dinner? They're getting back on email, working at night, falling asleep, thinking about what they did do, and what they didn't do, and what they gotta do tomorrow. They get up thinking about what they have to do that day, squeeze some time in with the kids or the dog, and they do it all over again.

• 34:45Speaker 00

  And you want them to be wildly engaged in what you're doing? And you're not thinking about it? Hello? And what I find is, most leaders do it by the seat of their pants. And some of them are better at it than others, but largely, that's not good enough. Leaders can be born, but they are most certainly all made better.

• 35:09Speaker 00

  You know, I think leadership works off a mastery model. I think the world works off a mastery model. In terms, all the way from Darwin and the species mastering their environment to leading. And I believe you apprentice at it. You learn from it, you study it, you study the craft. And then you get better at it. I can't imagine the first podcast you did was as good as the podcast you do now. You get better, you work at it. And these leaders, they just think by virtue of making decisions by the seat of their pants today, they're going to be better at making decisions by the seat of their pants tomorrow. That may be true, but I, I just contend it's inadequate. So most leaders I see haven't been intentional enough.

• 35:54Speaker 00

  And haven't really thought about it. That's where I challenge them to do better. And to be clear, 75% of my day when I'm leading is by the seat of my pants. You know, that's just life. We got a lot of crap coming at us every day, right? We're overwhelmed by data, by stuff coming at us. But I'm saying 25% of the time, you ought to know what matters most. And you ought to really be attentive to it every day. Most leaders haven't done that enough in that territory in terms of reflection and study to be world-class, to be world-class leaders.

• 36:34Shane Parrish?

  What does a leadership blueprint look like, a leadership plan? What's the blueprint for that?

• 36:38Speaker 00

  I think a blueprint has to be, for your leadership, has to be anchored in how do you want to lead? It has nothing to do with anybody else, yet, all right? It's, uh, the process we take people through is envision the leader you want to be. Uh, do some reflection of your life, because I contend your life story is your leadership story. And then study the world around you and see what other people are doing that might relate to what you, the way you want to be, you know? And, uh, I've got lots of mentors like Stephen Covey, Jim Collins, but the people I've worked for, who I've learned from.

• 37:20Speaker 00

  So take that reflection and study and then actually build a, what I call a leadership model. I believe models can be incredibly useful. You create a mental model for how you want to show up as a leader. And then, as you do that, you build practices into your life that bring that model to life in a very tangible way. So it's not just talk and leadership mumbo jumbo. It's here's how I show up. And then you commit to a continuous improvement process of doing a little better with that model regularly. So that's what a leadership model is. But that is not enough because then you've got to take that model, which is all about you and how you want to walk in the world.

• 38:03Speaker 00

  And then you've got to actually go into the real world. And think about it in terms of the Venn diagrams you had in school. You have your leadership approach here. And then over here, you have another circle that is the leadership approach that is expected of you in the world at large or in your organization. In the middle, hopefully, is a crosshatched area where there is stuff that you value in how you want to show up. And there is stuff that the enterprise values on how they want you to show up. And the process we take you through is it's putting those two things together so you can show up in a way that's effective for the enterprise and fulfilling for you.

• 38:47Speaker 00

  And every enterprise I've been in, and I've been in some crazy ones, there are some things they all want and that everybody wants in most of their leadership work, certainly in virtually every sector. But in corporate, I can say, look, there are two things. Performance and people that you're expected to perform. If you're a leader, you want to perform. And the enterprise wants you to perform. And they also want you to perform through people because they're having you manage people. So typically, a blueprint for success is thinking about how you want to lead, figuring out what's expected of you, and then creating a reentry approach that says, okay, here's how I'm going to lead in a way that meets the needs of my organization.

• 39:32Speaker 00

  And we see just wild success with this as people are really tethered to what matters to them. And they're doing it in a practical way that matters to the enterprise. And you can do both. That's my belief. And what I struggle with is, and I have Lots of friends who study leadership and write about it, but arguably have never really done it. But they've studied people and done it. They add a lot of value. You've got to be able to do this in the real world. And you've got to be able to work on lifting your leadership in the middle of your cockamamie life. And who has time for this stuff? Nobody has time for it.

• 40:18Speaker 00

  So the process that I'm talking about was built so that it could fit in. When you do it, it nests perfectly in your cockamamie life. And you can do it in a way that speaks to you and meets the needs of the enterprise. You can do all of that as long as you do it in small chunks with a continuous improvement mindset. That's the concept of a blueprint.

• 40:43Speaker 00

  Being true to yourself is at the heart of it. But then you have to walk in the world with others. So you've got to take that into account while you're being true to yourself. And that's the bridge we try and help people build when we work with them. One or the other just won't do. If you're just trying to meet the needs of others, you're hustling for your worthiness. And Brene Brown language, you're not walking inside your story. We want you to walk inside your story and be effective inside your enterprise. I have yet to find somebody that can't do both. If they are intentional about it and not just doing it by the seat of their pants.

• 41:21Shane Parrish?

  Talk to me about the things that people who teach or write but haven't done miss. When you're reading that or you're thinking about it, is there something that you're like, oh, how do you think about that?

• 41:36Speaker 00

  Well, first of all, I don't, I think it's more important to realize what they hit. Because they're able to step outside of it. They bring perspective and objectivity that I think enhances understanding. Big time.

• 41:48Shane Parrish?

  Yep.

• 41:48Speaker 00

  So I think there's a lot more value addition than I think there is what they quote unquote miss.

• 41:54Shane Parrish?

  Totally.

• 41:55Speaker 00

  But you never know until you're in, until you're trying to, you're dealing with these people shoulder to shoulder. Day in, day out, grinding away, trying to make it all work amidst all of its complexity and ambiguity. And he said, she said, what do we, there's no substitute for living it, you know? It's just like my friends who are professors. I can't understand their life either. I haven't walked in their shoes to the extent that they have. So what they miss is I think the visceral understanding of what it's like to be on that side of the table and walking in those shoes.

• 42:37Speaker 00

  That's what they miss, but they add so much more value because I've learned so much. Stephen Covey never ran anything and when he did, he didn't do it particularly well. But his thinking enlarged my world. Jim Collins, I mean, he sees a lot of stuff, but he doesn't want to go run something of any scale.

• 42:58Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 42:59Speaker 00

  His, his, his perspective was, it's just beautiful because he's studied the world and really invested time and energy and research and work in understanding it. And that adds a ton of value, but you gotta walk a mile in their shoes too.

• 43:16Shane Parrish?

  Are there common patterns that you see that keep people with high potential from achieving their goals or realizing their potential?

• 43:24Speaker 00

  Patience is one, you know, we're conditioned now to want change faster and faster. And, and there's no substitute for cultivating wisdom through experience. I talk to you when I'm out on the west coast or I'm talking to folks in Silicon Valley. It's like my perspective is discounted, which is annoying, but understandable. And because I'm almost 70 years old. And how could I possibly understand what this 30 year old person is going through? And we get in this conversation and I say, well, how much wisdom have you accumulated in the last decade since from 20 to 30? A lot, you know, I've learned a lot.

• 44:07Speaker 00

  Well, how much more do you think you'll accumulate from 30 to 40? Or forty to fifty, or fifty to sixty. There's and there's no substitute for it and there's no way to go faster with it. The demands of society are such that you got to do more, better, faster now. And the leaders today sort of hunger for the quick fix, just like the Wall Street hungered for the good quarter.

• 44:33Shane Parrish?

  Yeah.

• 44:33Speaker 00

  And we're saying, well, you know, you got to look at this on longer term time horizon. If you want corporate responsibility, we got to create room for people to create corporate, enduring corporate enterprises that can serve society better. Uh, and not live quarter to quarter. The same thing is true about young leaders. You don't live quarter to quarter. You got to create room for yourself to grow over time and to have patience and to just focus on how can I help the enterprise do better today than I we did yesterday? And how can I grow and be a little better today than I was yesterday and and get into a continuous improvement mindset as opposed to a quick fix mindset?

• 45:18Speaker 00

  That's the tough piece and I was just like them. I wanted more, better, faster, too. And I kept track of when I was going to get my next promotion and was I going to get promoted before this person or that person? But ultimately, uh, that's where I've landed.

• 45:35Shane Parrish?

  Want to switch gears and ask you a few personal questions before we wrap up. Um, I, when I was doing some research, it came up that you wake up between four and five every morning?

• 45:44Speaker 00

  Pretty much, yeah. I'm a morning person. I actually cultivated that habit in an intentional way, interestingly.

• 45:53Speaker 00

  Because as I was a company president and then a chair and then a CEO and then a chairman, my evening life got crazy. But my morning life, I realized that if I wanted to sort of get centered for my day and everything, I just needed to get up earlier. And I was early morning anyway. But I started getting up an hour earlier and gathering myself. I'd sit out in my garden in New Jersey at the time, where I lived for most of this time, 25 years of my work. And would have a cup of coffee as the sun came up and reflect on what was expected that day and gather myself a bit before all hell broke loose.

• 46:36Speaker 00

  And then I would go into, inside, shower, shave and shine. And I, I, I remember putting on my suits every day. And it was like I was putting on my armor and I was getting ready to go into battle. I found it to be a real important part of my life to give myself some space and quiet time to get anchored in what mattered most. The other thing I did was, one of the things that mattered most was my kids and, and my family. And so I would be up with them for breakfast and then I would always try and find a way to take one of them to school before I would go to work.

• 47:19Speaker 00

  So I tried to be available in the early mornings, knowing that the afternoons and nights were, were risky. I, I moved my wake up time up and it worked. And to this day, I, I mean, I was up today, well, actually I slept in today. I slept until five today. But I got a ton of work done. You sort of need to figure out what matters most in my life. And my work was part of it. My family was another part of it. And my own personal well-being. Those are three of my five cylinders. The other two were my community and my faith. So I have five cylinders that I work off of. And three of those cylinders, with the practice of getting up early and reflecting, I was

• 48:03Speaker 00

  able to center myself and sort of help manage those three cylinders in, in a, in a, in a way that served me well, gosh, now for almost 30 years.

• 48:15Shane Parrish?

  Well, you were the CEO of Campbell's. You wrote over 30,000 thank you notes or gratitude, notes of gratitude or thank you notes. I'm curious as to you, what started that practice and what have you learned about writing good ones?

• 48:29Speaker 00

  When I was fired from my job and my outplacement and I was shy, my outplacement counselor said, "You're never going to get a job. You're too shy. You only answer the questions that you're being asked. You're not selling yourself. You're not, you know, I've read your 50 pages of handwritten life story. You're committed. You're wildly committed to contributing and excelling, yet you show up in such a shy, reserved way." And he said, "You've got to figure out a way to make your job search distinctive." And as try as I could, I was just horrible at interviewing. At least I felt I was. So I said, "I gotta do something

• 49:10Speaker 00

  here." So what I did was when I would go, if I came to your building in Ottawa and I was interviewing for a job there and there were, I'd meet six people and I'd meet the receptionist who opened the door for me at the building. I would get all their names. When I was done, I would walk next door to the coffee shop and I would handwrite each one a note and I would walk it back over to the receptionist before I left and ask them to deliver it that day to the people that I had just met. And I would make sure to thank them for something specific, maybe two or three sentences that they did for me as a way of being distinctive. I gotta tell you, it was transformational. The key

• 49:53Speaker 00

  to making hard decisions at the top, you have to be in the black with your emotional bank account with the culture. As a leader, you have to build that bank account. You have to be making deposits every day into that account to build trust and to build credibility with the people that work there, knowing that there are days where you're going to make some giant withdrawal because you're going to screw up, because you will. And the companies that are doing well in today's challenging times are the ones that are building trust with their associates. It's going to help them navigate the challenges of the day. We have challenges today. We had challenges yesterday. We'll have more challenges tomorrow.

• 50:50Shane Parrish?

  Welcome to the Knowledge Project Podcast. I'm your host, Shane Parrish. This podcast sharpens your mind by helping you master the best what other people have already figured out. If you're listening to this, you're not currently a supporting member. If you'd like special member-only episodes, access before anyone else, transcripts, and other member-only content, you can join at fs.blog/podcast. Check out the show notes for a link. Doug Canard is here today. Doug was the CEO of Campbell's Soup and worked at Nabisco during the toxic leveraged bio culture that prompted the book Barbarians at the Gate. Doug is full of leadership advice and lessons. We talk about why you can't win in the marketplace if you haven't won in the workplace, the first 100 days as CEO of Campbell's Soup, adjusting to shifting consumer preferences,

• 51:35Shane Parrish?

  how to know when you have the right people and the wrong people, and so much more. It's time to listen and learn.

• 51:48Shane Parrish?

  The Knowledge Project is sponsored by Metallab. For a decade, Metallab has helped some of the world's top companies and entrepreneurs build products that millions of people use every day. You probably didn't realize it at the time, but odds are you've used an app that they've helped design or build. Apps like Slack, Coinbase, Facebook Messenger, Oculus, Lonely Planet, and many more. Metallab wants to bring their unique design philosophy to your project. Let them take your brainstorm and turn it into the next billion-dollar app, from idea sketched on the back of a napkin to a final shipped product. Check them out at metallab.co. That's metallab.co. And when you get in touch, tell them Shane sent you. The Knowledge Project is sponsored by Greyhawk.

• 52:30Shane Parrish?

  Successful families know that wealth can create a curious dilemma. It creates benefits, it secures the future, and creates opportunities, but it also presents challenges. How do you stay true to your values and ensure that future generations use their wealth wisely? Greyhawk is about helping you solve that dilemma by working with your family on both the financial and human elements that build long-term well-being. If you value independence, transparency, and authenticity, and want to learn more, connect with them at greyhawkwealth.com. The Knowledge Project is sponsored by Admired Leadership. There are lots of good leaders out there, but how many truly great ones? The kind of leaders who are deeply admired, admired at work, admired at home, as partners, as parents.

• 53:15Shane Parrish?

  The kind of leaders who make other people better. For 30 years, Admired Leadership has been uncovering the habits, routines, and behaviors of the very best leaders. How they give feedback, make decisions, build relationships, how they motivate and inspire. Behaviors any serious leader can learn and master. Better leaders make people better. Find out more at admiredleadership.com. Set the scene for me, in the 80s, and not only, like, how did you end up at Nabisco? What was it like working for the LBO, largest in history at the time? And the pressure that you must have felt internally, and the employees as well? And then how you applied some of this learning from Covey inside?

• 53:58Speaker 00

  Well, there were two guys that just, they say, when the student is ready, the teacher appears. I was ready for two people that really had a profound influence on me, more than others. One was Stephen Covey, and the other one was Jim Collins. And they both became very good friends. I was wrestling with my life. I had gone into Nabisco, and it was at Nabisco that, you know, the magnitude of the challenge was overwhelming. And I was realizing, without knowing it, that I needed to step up my game. Stuff was coming at me as part of the world's largest LBO, and KKR, the poster child for

• 54:42Speaker 00

  barbarians at the gate. You're young for this, but it was a huge deal at the time in the corporate world. We were being challenged to do things that just were more substantial than I'd ever been challenged before. And I realized I needed to get better anchored in what I believed in, so that I could have the courage of my convictions to deal with all of it in a way that, where I would survive, because it was challenging. So, that's where I, and I was searching for help, not knowing I was searching for help, but I was searching for help, and I discovered Stephen's book, and I read it on a trip with my wife. Totally neglected her and I ultimately, she said, "What are you reading?" I said, "This amazing book."

• 55:25Speaker 00

  And she said, "Why is it so amazing?" "'Cause he thinks just like I do," and it was The Seven Habits by Stephen Covey. And I wrote a whole book on it in the blueprint, but I believe you've got to tend to your own foundations so that when you get put in the thick of thick things and having to make tough decisions about people and performance and every day where you're pushed to the edge, you have to be incredibly well anchored and have the courage of your convictions. It's hard to have the courage of your convictions if you don't know what your convictions are. And, uh, and most people are flying by the seat of their pants, especially all the people that were listening to you on Wall Street. They're, they're doing life by the seat of their pants. They're reacting to what comes at them,

• 56:07Speaker 00

  which I do too, uh, 70% of the time. But when you're in these tight, tight situations, you've got to know where to draw the line and where you stand on things. And I wasn't confident enough, uh, so I needed to do some inside work to say, "Well, what do I want to stand for here and how do I want to make this work?" So that I can not only contribute and perform, but I can do it in a way where I, you know, I can look at myself in the mirror every day. And nobody can do that work for you. And I'll tell you, you can't, reading the books about all these great leaders and how they did it has nothing to do with you. So.