The Exchanges

Q 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?

A Sure. Uh, I got to Campbell. I, 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 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 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, uh, 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 safe when they got inside, and they had been through several years of poor performa…

AI assessment note: “Sure. Uh, I got to Campbell. I, I thought I'd seen everything”

Q 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 what, what started that practice and what have you learned about writing good ones?

A 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, I've read your 50 pages of handwritten life story. You, 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, I, I was just horrible at interviewing. At least I felt I was. So I said, I got to do something 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, to thank them for something specific, maybe two or three sentences that they did for me as a way of being distinctive. I got to tell you, it was transformational. The key to making hard decisions at the top, you have to be in the black with your emot…

AI assessment note: “When I was fired from my job and my outplacement and I was shy”

Q 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?

A Well, 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. Uh, when I took this job, I, I, uh, at Campbell, I had said, you know, this is a heavy lift and, uh, we can't talk our way out of something we behaved or went 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. Uh, but we have to have clear gates of performance and we have to constantly be getting better. They're asked, there can be no question that we're getting better in the workplace and in the marketplace every year. No question. 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 they, we don't even report. 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. 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. And we were going to build a better company brick by brick. …

AI assessment note: “we have to have clear gates of performance and we have to constantly be getting better”

Q 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?

A It's not individual members. It's, it's the culture of the board because, you know, we had 15 directors, which is a large board. But they represented all kinds of points of view, so we could, we could deliberate on anything and look at it in a 360 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, 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, with Wall Street, or, or the analysts, or any activists lurking out there to critique what we were doing. So I, 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 is that they, they understand their role in the …

AI assessment note: “A good board member constructively engages in the dialogue. I guess the other observation”

Q What have you learned about leadership that most people miss?

A 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 got to 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, ah, 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. 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 going to take over this project and get it done because it's got to be done by Friday. Sometimes you got to 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? 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…

AI assessment note: “leaders get so caught up in the delivery of performance that they lose sight”

Q people, and so much more. It's time to listen and learn. Set the scene for me in the eighties, 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?

A Well, I, there were two guys that just, they say when the, uh, the, 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, the magnitude of the challenge was overwhelming. And I, 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. 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, 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? Cause he thinks just like I do…

AI assessment note: “Stuff was coming at me as part of the world's largest LBO and KKR”

Q Walk me through the first hundred days at Campbell. You, 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?

A 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, 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 going to do? They're exhausted. They don't want to talk anymore. Yeah, I, you understand. You clearly want to understand.

AI assessment note: “First hundred days, you establish a principle-centered framework for leading, and then you listen a lot.”

Q 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.

A 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, 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 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, to, so, uh, 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 went 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-Twelve survey. 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 pic…

AI assessment note: “the decision making got easy if I, if we created a framework”