Doug Conant
Founder and CEO, ConantLeadership. On 1 show, 1 appearance. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
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Doug Conant served as President and CEO of the Campbell Soup Company from 2001 to 2011, where he orchestrated an acclaimed turnaround in corporate culture and financial performance, and later served as Chairman of Avon Products. Through his firm ConantLeadership, he advises executives and has authored bestselling leadership books, including TouchPoints and The Blueprint.
1shows
1appearances
25statements
3resolved
2supported
1contradicted
67%fully supported
Everything Doug Conant said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Conant: Most companies no longer report quarterly earnings
“Most people aren't reporting quarterly earnings. They're doing annual, they provide guidance, but they're looking more long-term in nature, which is appropriate.”
Conant: Reading books about other great leaders cannot build your leadership
“Reading the books about all these great leaders and how they did it has nothing to do with you.”
Conant: Campbell Soup replaced 300 of its top 350 leaders during turnaround
“We turned over 300 of the top 350 leaders in the company. Six out of seven.”
Conant: Slow initial pacing in turnarounds enables faster subsequent execution
“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 t…”
Conant: Most business leaders lack an intentional leadership plan
“Most of the leaders I encounter, they lead by the seat of their pants. They create great business plans, you know, and financial plans, and then you say, what's your leadership plan? I have no idea. And it's like, wait a minute, leading your people is the most…”
Conant: Stephen Covey did not manage organizations well
“Stephen Covey never ran anything, and he, and when he did, he didn't do it particularly well, but his thinking enlarged my world.”
Conant: Leaders must define core convictions before facing high-pressure decisions
“I believe you've got to tend to your own foundation 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…”
Conant: Taking care of people directly drives corporate performance
“There are two things that matter here in, in all the corporate world. It's performance in people. It's not just performance. It's performance in people. In fact, you take care of the people and they'll take care of the performance.”
Conant: Nabisco Foods outperformed every US food company for five years
“Ultimately, we performed well one year, we performed 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 Cam…”
Conant: The best leaders balance tough standards with caring for people
“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.”
Conant: Companies must tangibly value employee agendas before expecting reciprocal commitment
“We cannot expect you to value our agenda until we tangibly demonstrate that we value yours.”
Conant: Gallup found Campbell Soup had worst Fortune 500 employee engagement
“We started tracking employee engagement every year with Gallup, and when we first did it, the year one 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…”
Conant: Campbell Soup leaders lost jobs if failing to inspire trust
“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.”
Conant: Turnaround leaders have at most three years to succeed
“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.”
Conant: Turnarounds require 100 days to assess and 100 to operationalize
“My experience, you've got a hundred days to figure it out, a hundred days to operationalize it and get going.”
Conant: Leaders lacking clear anchor get whipsawed by Wall Street
“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 Wall Street and boards and activists.”
Conant: Leaders focused on saving their jobs fail from day one
“If you're worried about saving your job, you're in trouble before you start.”
Conant: Vigorous boardroom debate protects companies from Wall Street and activist critics
“The key is to create a culture where all points of view can be heard, and where people are comfortable enough to share them, 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 yo…”
Conant: Board members must focus strictly on oversight rather than management
“I guess the other observation about a good board, in my opinion, a good board member 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 make sure the organization is…”
Conant: Pairing planning with simple intervention frameworks solves almost any problem
“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.”
Conant: Leadership operates on a mastery model improved through study
“Leaders can be born, but they are most certainly all made better. You know, I think leadership works off a mastery model.”
Conant: Leaders must operate in the past, present, and future simultaneously
“As a leader, you gotta live in three time zones simultaneously. The past, the present, and the future. Everything you do has gotta honor the past, deliver in the present, set the table for a more prosperous future.”
Conant: Leaders must maintain positive emotional bank accounts to survive mistakes
“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…”
Conant: Life is managed across five core cylinders anchored by early mornings
“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, ah, my community, And my faith. So I have five …”
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Doug's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 KNOWLEDGE PROJECTLEDGER | Founder and CEO, ConantLeadership | 1 | 25 | 67% 2/3 | full record on the Knowledge Project → |