The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 208: David Novak -How To Be CEO of The Year: "Take People With You"

Episode Date: June 4, 2017

David Novak is Co-Founder, Retired Chairman and CEO of Yum! Brands, Inc. (Pizza Hut, KFC, and Taco Bell), one of the world's largest restaurant companies with nearly 43,000 restaurants in more than 130 countries and territories. He stepped down as CEO on January 1, 2015 and retired from Yum! and Yum!'s Board in May 2016. During his time as CEO, Yum! doubled in size and became a global powerhouse going from approximately 20% of its profits coming from outside the U.S. in 1997 to nearly 70% in 2014. David is also the best-selling author of multiple books including Taking People With You: The Only Way To Make Big Things Happen.  In May 2016, he founded OGO (O Great One!) a consumer lifestyle brand on a mission to turn the world on to the awesome power of recognition and remedy what he calls the "global recognition deficit." In This Episode, You Will Learn: Sustained Excellence = "You must be passionate about what you do."  Warren Buffet said he "tap dances to work everyday." You should strive to do that. Must also be a constant learner/grower.  Have a healthy dissatisfaction for the status quo When people struggle at work, it's typically because they don't like the job What do you say to skeptics about the "do what you love" advice: "Colonel Sanders started KFC late in life with his social security check.  It's never too late." Must be self reflective.  Develop a strategy for yourself.  Do a needs assessment.  Dig hard at understanding yourself. The impact of moving his entire childhood.  Living in 23 states by the 7th grade.  Moved 3 times per year.  Lived in trailer parks most of his childhood. Advice to people early in their career: "Don't wait until you have a management job to lead.  Start doing it immediately." "I tried to learn everything I could from the people above me." "The minute I stopped learning, I asked for another job." "I looked at my boss as my coach.  A good boss should be a coach." The manage 2 up plus 2 down strategy: Make your boss very successful and make his/her boss very successful Help the people directly working for you successful and directly help the people that work for them to be great "Every time I met with the CEO, I always brought 3-5 ideas every time we met.  I always brought value to those meetings." "When a good opportunity came up, he thought of me"  Coaching is an "AND" job -- Tell them what you like AND how they can improve.  Must do both. The 3X5 note card exercise: Write a strength and a developmental area for yourself and share it with others so they know what you're working on.  How can CEOs get people to trust them and tell the truth? -- Ask people what they would do if they had your role.  LISTEN.   "You have to be vulnerable enough to want to know the truth" The power of recognition -- "The secret weapon I had as a leader was to recognize great performance to drive the behaviors we valued" Why people quit their jobs: Their boss They don't feel appreciated Utilize the digital leadership platform

And I said, well, I want to be a president of PepsiCo Division. He says, David, you're a really good marketing guy. And I said, well, Wayne, I want to be a president of PepsiCo Division. I want to run the whole, you know, I want to run all the functions. I want to be a president of a PepsiCo Division. He says, David, you're a really good marketing guy. I'll make you president of marketing. We don't have a lot of great marketing people in this company.

Well, listen, Ryan, when I walked out of his office, I knew that he had me stereotyped pigeon hold as a marketing person and didn't think that I could necessarily run a business. So I knew I had to find some way to demonstrate to him that I was capable of taking on more responsibility and running a division and being a general manager. Hey, and welcome to The Learning Leader Show. I am Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. It is Mindful Monday. Please go to LearningLeader.com. Enter your email address. Receive an email every Monday morning. 9 o'clock Eastern discussing mindfulness, how we can become a better leader. Some thoughts, some of the best articles of the week, maybe TED Talks, videos, other dialogue.

It's been so much fun. I've been doing it for more than a year. I'd love to have you join. On to tonight's episode. It's with an incredible leader, David Novak. He was CEO of KFC and Pizza Hut. In 1997, PepsiCo spun off KFC Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, and he became vice chairman and president of the new company, Yum Brands.

Been recognized as 2012 CEO of the year by Chief Executive Magazine, one of the world's 30 best CEOs by Barron's and one of the top people in business by Fortune, also one of the 100 best performing CEOs in the world by Harvard Business Review, bestselling author of the book titled Taking People with You, the only way to make big things happen. David is unbelievably accomplished. A few of the topics we got into.

How as a CEO? He was able to build a culture of trust, specific execution ideas we can all implement. And then his two up and two down strategy for building his career, followed by an emotional story about the power of recognition. Ladies and gentlemen, this one is so good with David Novak. All right, David, thank you so much for being here. You come highly recommended from the great leaders in my Facebook community, the learning leader community, I occasionally will ask them for ideas. And about six months ago, a number of community

members said, you've got to have David Novak on. He's incredible. The work he's done, his story is inspiring. And on top of that, he's a humble, really good guy. So I have to say welcome to the Learning Leader Show. Well, thank you very much, Ryan. I'm really honored to have the opportunity to talk to you. So to get us kicked off, I'm going to ask a bigger question. And this is about, If you look over the course of your career, you've done a great job of taking people with you, of surrounding yourself with quality individuals, with recognizing and rewarding people for the work that they do. And if you had to set aside and look at the people who have sustained excellence over an extended period of time, what are some of the common themes or characteristics you found in those people?

Well, I think the first thing I would say is that the great leaders are so passionate about what they do because they actually love what they do. I remember talking to Warren Buffett once, and he said he tap dances to work. And I think that's because he's passionate about what he does, and that makes him want to get better and better what he does. And, you know, I've tried to identify the traits that really differentiate a good leader from a great leader. And I think there's one that really pops out to me, and that is that the person that drives sustained excellence over time is a constant grower and a constant learner. And so I really look for avid learners because avid learners are constantly trying to up their game. They have a healthy dissatisfaction with the status quo. They want to get better and better and better.

And they love doing it because work is not work for them. Work is their hobby because they're focused on doing what they love. Have you, throughout the course you're here, and we'll dive into all the great accomplishments of yours, have you, and I ask this question to mentors quite frequently, do you, would you say that you've loved the overwhelming majority of your work, of your career, the day to day, I mean, because you had to grow businesses, you had to work, you had to, you were in the thick of things. What percentage of your work would you say that you, did you love? Oh, I would say the vast, vast, vast, vast majority of it. I never really felt like I went to work. I felt like it was my hobby.

You know, when you're a kid, you grow up, you play sports, or you might be in student leadership, or you might have some activity that you really enjoy. I think once you get out of college and you go to work, you know, what work became for me is my new hobby. You know, I might have played baseball when I was a kid, but, you know, I wasn't good enough to play Major League Baseball, but I was good enough to go to work and enjoy what I did. And I was fortunate enough to really learn what I loved relatively early in my life.

You know, I was not a good student, my first two years in college. And then I went to journalism school at the University of Missouri, and I absolutely just loved advertising, marketing, and writing. And from that point on, I was like a 4.0 student. And, you know, because I really, I really enjoyed it. And from that, you know, from that background, you know, I moved into advertising and marketing and just just moved up the ladder. But I think if, what I always see that's really tough is when people are struggling,

I usually find it's they don't really like what they do. they don't they don't look at their their job as being by far and away much more enjoyable than laborious and so i always encourage people to to really you know hone in on on what they love now people always tell you hey do what you love and that sounds like common sense and it is common sense but i think you have to dig underneath it why is that if you love something you're passionate about it you want more of it you want to be around it and you want to get better and better at building whatever that relationship is. And so there's a reason why people say, do what you love.

It's the thing that can really drive your ultimate performance and I think happiness, certainly in your career. So I agree. It sounds great. And we'd all love to do that. And it's neat that you've been able to. But I'm thinking about the listener who's 38 years old, who has three kids, a spouse, a mortgage, two car payments, and other.

bills. And they have a job right now where they make pretty good money where it's not a horrible job, but they definitely don't love it. They're just okay. And this is somewhat common. I'm sure you talk to these people every day. What do you say to that person who says, David, this is great and your career is incredible and it's awesome that you've been able to do this where you've loved it and tap dance to work. But that's not reality. Let's get real, man. Like we got to make money. We got to pay the bills. What do you say to the person who's skeptical about that? Well, you know, I believe that it's never too late to do the right thing. You know, people have changed their careers and gone on to happiness.

You know, Colonel Sanders started KFC with his first social security check, you know, when he's 65 years old, you know. So, you know, I think you can get yourself mired into mediocrity for your entire life and wake up when you're 75 years old and say, What did I do? Or you can say, hey, I'm in a real tough situation right now. I got to bring the money home to the family. You know, I've got to make sure that I support them. But I've got to figure out how to get into an area that I really, really enjoy and what I really, really want to do. So what I would say to that person is really do a lot of self-reflection.

What is that? You know, I think a lot of times people don't develop a strategy for themselves. They have to understand what their strengths and areas of opportunity are. where they can really make a difference. And they got to have that self-reflection and self-awareness that allows them to get to where they want to go. So, you know, I would say really dig hard at understanding yourself and what motivates you and what will make you happy. And then develop an action plan to build the capability, the know-how, the context that will get you into that area. I don't think if I had three kids and I had to pay for the mortgage and all that that I would just quit.

You know, I wouldn't say, you know, I'm not that naive to think, you know, I know it's difficult. I know it's challenging. But I think I would get very focused on figuring a way into something that can really excite me about the future. I got you. I want to take it back now to some of the beginning of how of your story, specifically, David, because it really is inspiring. You've written a few books and we're going to talk about, I probably, probably each of them. But let's go back to the one in regards to you, education of an accidental CEO, of talking about your upbringing, where you come from. Because some people might assume when

they see this guy who was, you know, chief marketing officer of Pizza Hut, CEO of KFC, Young Brands, I mean, you executive chairman that were like, oh, well, maybe he had people just kind of handing him, handing him things along the way in this upbringing. And with you, that is just absolutely not the case. Can you share how potentially your upbringing and what you went through helped build maybe some of your resilience, your grit, your appreciation, your ability to recognize other people? I'd love to learn more about that. Well, first of all, I would have to say, Ryan, my biggest break in life was being born to Charles and G. Novak. These are my parents. They were amazingly supportive, but from very humble backgrounds. My father was a government

survey. My mother came from a small town in Meadville, Missouri. I was born in Beaville, Texas. My dad surveyed for map making for a number of years. And I lived in 23 states by the time I was in the seventh grade. We moved three times a year. My mom would check me into schools and say, hey, David, you better make friends because we're leaving. And the biggest house, Ryan, that I I lived in was eight foot wide by 40 feet long until I was in seventh grade. And that was we basically lived in a trailer. I slept in the top bunk and my two sisters slept below me. And we moved from trailer court to trailer court.

But, you know, people say, well, how did you grow up in an environment like that? And, you know, to me, I tell everybody, I think I succeeded because of my upbringing, not in spite of it. You know, my parents were enormously supportive. And what they wanted for me was to live the American dream. They wanted me to be the first in the family to get a college education, which I did. And, you know, I had a, you know, when we moved every three months, I moved my neighborhood with me because there was a surveying party. So there would be like 15 families who moved together. When I played Little League baseball, you know, I would have all the surveying families out there watching my games.

It was like I was, you know, I couldn't have had more love and support. But I think that that background really helped me a lot because it helped me be able to go into new situations, work through my anxieties, assess the people, and figure out, you know, who I wanted to know, who I didn't want to know. And, you know, it helped my people skills a lot. And, you know, I didn't, I thought everybody did it. You know, I thought this was like, I had no idea that I was coming from a very humble background because I had food on the table and lots of love at home.

I love it. It's a great story. So can you talk about, though, the very beginning? So after you got in with college, maybe your first role, because that's where certain people listening, I think, they want to know maybe how I can make the jump from an individual contributor to some form of a leadership role. Can you talk about the beginning of your career and as you were making some of those transitions? Well, the first point I make, Ryan, is I believe that you start leading immediately. Yep. You don't wait until you have people working for you.

You know, as a individual contributor, you start leading by being proactive and looking for ways that you can have broader impact on whatever organization that you're working in. You know, my first job out of school, I majored in journalism or got a journalism degree in majored in advertising. And this was back in 1974, and everybody thinks how bad, oh, the world's terrible today and it's tough to get jobs, et cetera, et cetera. Well, back in 1974, you had almost 20% inflation. You had the oil embargo. You had race riots. You had unemployment was very, you know, it was tough to get the jobs. You know, it was arguably a much worse environment than what we have today.

So it was hard getting jobs out of school. So I, you know, knocked on doors and I started out as an advertising copywriter making $7,200 a year at R. Joseph Harrell and Farr. And I wrote advertising copy for banks and real estate companies. But you know what? It was one of the best thing ever happened to me because there's nothing more sobering than looking at a blank sheet of paper and have to understand what the customer you're trying to reach is thinking. come up with the idea and then I was in a very small agency you not only had to come up with the idea then you had to sell the idea and you know and then it had to work or you couldn't do it again so I thought that that was tremendous uh uh background for me but at that point when I went into

that job I tried to learn everything I could from everybody above me and whenever I had a chance to to give them an idea that might help them. I took the lead and not just sitting back, but I tried to be proactive and stay ahead of whoever I work for. And, you know, I think that that's something that I followed throughout my career. But the minute I stopped growing, the minute I knew that I was kind of at a dead end point in terms of what I was going to be able to learn in that facet of my career,

I went to the next job. So, you know, I went. from being a copywriter to an advertising account executive, and I wanted to get package goods experience, so I worked on Heinz, and, you know, I got very good training. And then I'd said, hey, I need to go to New York's if I'm going to be in advertising. But, you know, I didn't really feel good in New York. It wasn't an environment that I really liked, and I got a call out of the blue from this advertising agency in Dallas, Texas, where they said, how would you like to run some of the free-delay business? Tostitos was being launched at that time.

I was going to take that product national. So I went to Dallas, Texas instead of New York and ended up running the Free to Lay account, and that was owned by PepsiCo. And then the president of Free Delay recommended me to the president of Pizza Hut, and that's when I went to go be the chief marketing officer of Pizza. But throughout that whole process, I was constantly learning, and the minute I felt like I was getting in a dead end in terms of learning and growth, I would either talk to my coach or I would decide that it was time for me to maybe go to a different company to learn.

And, you know, I followed that mindset throughout my career. You say you had a coach? Well, that's how I looked at my boss. Okay. So you... I never, I think today, Ryan, if anybody sees himself as a boss, you know, they're like in the 1950s. It's archaic. I think you have to see yourself as a coach.

because a coach is someone who helps you win, helps bring out the full potential of you as a person and as a leader. And, you know, you get the results that allow you to keep your job. So I always, you know, I was very lucky in my career to have a number of good coaches. And I think that was a huge, huge break for me because everybody took an active interest in me and my development. Did you have any bad ones? Never had a bad one. Really? Never. Never.

Now, that's amazing. You know, I, it's almost impossible. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I had, you know, if I think about it, I had, I had seven, probably seven, seven coaches in my career. All of them ended up being presidents, functional heads, or leaders of CEOs of organizations. So everybody I worked with was really, really good at what they did, even if. if it was in a small, you know, I started out small and ended up in, you know, running, you know,

being a part of PepsiCo, moving up the PepsiCo ladder, and then, you know, ending up running young brands, which is, you know, we've got 1.4 million people in 130 countries. So, you know, it's, but I was very, I was very blessed to have so many people take an active interest in my, my development. So that leads to a question. Did you, I'm thinking about, I just, you're building your career, were you actively seeking out mentors and or coaches that weren't directly your boss or people in other parts of the business or other businesses that can mentor you? Because you mentioned whenever I felt like I was not learning anymore or there wasn't anything else to learn, then it was time to go, essentially. Go be a rookie again, as Liz Weiseman would say,

it's time to go somewhere else. But in order to go somewhere else, you've got to have people who want to hire you. And so did you have a strategy? towards building up mentors and coaches at other places. Yeah. Well, I focused, first of all, I focused within the company I was in. I, you know, I worked in the advertising agency side of the business with Free Delay for nine years. And Free Delay was a part of PepsiCo. So I was working around really high talent executives.

And, you know, in the advertising agency business, you get very high senior client contact. So I was working with senior VPs of marketing at Free Delay, presidents of Free Delay at a very young age. And so, you know, that I was constantly learning from them as I was moving up the agency business. And so then I was fortunate enough to get hired by PepsiCo itself to go run marketing for Pizza Hut. And now I'm in this incredible organization where I'm saying, I'm never going to leave PepsiCo. this is a great organization, great businesses. I'm going to do everything I can to move up the ladder

and end up running one of the PepsiCo divisions. Now, my philosophy inside of PepsiCo was that you should manage two up and two down. So what I always try to do in terms of managing up is I obviously wanted to make my coach as successful as I could possibly make him or her. and then I always tried to understand what that person's coach or boss was thinking. And I wanted to have a relationship with that person as well so I could learn and get a broader view from the company. So, you know, I would manage two up in terms of, you know, trying to seek the know-how that would make me better. And then I managed two down.

I felt my job was to help the people that work for me really be. as successful as they could be, learn from them, get their input, get them involved, fire up the team. And then I would go to what I call the front line. I'd go to the people closest to the customer. And I would try to understand what they thought was working, not working. And that really gave me a lot of insight that helped me move up the organization. One story I could tell you is when I was the head of marketing for, I was running marketing

in sales for the Pepsi Cola company. I used to go, you know, the president of Pepsi at that time was Craig Weatherup, but his boss was the chairman of PepsiCo, which was Wayne Calloway. Well, I used to go see Wayne Calloway once a quarter for lunch. I would call him up and ask him if we could have lunch, and I go over and have lunch in his office. And I always took him, I tried to take three to five ideas I would do if I was the head of PepsiCo that I could give him because I wanted him to see me as somebody who was thinking broadly about the success of the organization.

And of course, he would always pick my brain for what was going on at Pepsi and how we were trying to make our customers happy. And it was a great win-win. But one time I asked him, I said, or he asked me, the question I was hoping he'd asked me is, hey, David, what do you want to do in your career? And I said, well, I want to be a president of a PepsiCo division. And he said, you know, David, he said, you're a really good marketing guy. And I said, well, I want to be a president of PepsiCo division. He says, David, you're a really good marketing guy. And I said, well, Wayne, I want to be a president of PepsiCo division.

I want to run the whole, you know, I want to run all the functions. I want to be a president of a PepsiCo division. He says, David, you're a really good marketing guy. I'll make you president of marketing. We don't have a lot of great marketing people in this company. Well, listen, Ryan, when I walked out of his office, I knew that he had me stereotyped pigeonholed as a marketing person and didn't think that I could necessarily run a business. So I knew I had to find some way to demonstrate to him that I was capable of taking on more responsibility and running a division and being a general manager. Well, shortly thereafter, the chief operating officer job came up at Pepsi.

And so I went to my coach at the time, Craig Weatherup, I said, Craig, give me an opportunity to run operations for Pepsi. And I didn't even have any operations experience. And I said, listen, if I don't do a great job, you can fire me in six months or you can put me back into marketing. But give me an opportunity to show you what I can do in that job. And I got that job. I got that opportunity. I actually did well at it. And after two years, I got another phone call from Wayne Callaway, and he asked me if I wanted to go be

the division president of KFC. But, you know, the point that I'm making is that the reason why I got to where that opportunity was I knew how people were looking at me. I knew what, you know, I knew that I had to demonstrate that I was more than a marketing person. I saw that there was an opportunity in the company that was give me that chance to demonstrate the breadth. I went and asked for it, and I had a coach who was, you know, thought enough of me to give me that opportunity.

And as a result, you know, I became a president of a PepsiCo division, and I ended up running young brands. I saw that you have a three by five no card exercise you do. And this feels, it goes hand in hand with this, that story you just told, which is a great story. I love it. And where you write down a strength, but you'll also write down a developmental area for yourself to work on. Is this something, how did you come up with this practice, this simplistic practice, but I could see it being quite helpful of the three by five no cards. Yeah, well, one of the coaching models that we developed at Young Brands was when you coach people, the first thing you do is you talk about what you appreciate about them. Because, you know, that says that, hey, you recognize their hard work.

You recognize their strengths. And, you know, it shows a respect for the individual and the effort that they put in. And then, you know, there's always opportunities to improve. So rather than saying, but you need to do this, okay, say and build off those strengths, and you could be even more effective if you did these things. And or, you know, if your project looked at things this way or if your person, personal development was, you know, you develop these traits. So we called that the appreciate more effective model.

So what I did is, you know, I learned this, you know, probably 10 years ago. And so I created what I call the three by five exercise, which is I would write down every year at the beginning of the year. This is what I appreciate about the leadership that I have, based on all the feedback I'm getting from the people who work for me in the organization. And I could be more effective if I did these things. So, for example, one of my strengths is I'm very passionate about what I do. You know, the area of opportunity is to not let that passion overwhelm and intimidate others.

Because when you're not asking about what you do and you're the CEO of the company, you can scare the hell out of people. You can intimidate them, you know. So I used to tell everybody, don't let my passion get in the way of the truth. Okay. you know, make sure you push back at me and let me know. But Ryan, one of the things I did is I would send out my three by five card to the top 100 people in our company and ask them, this is, and tell them, this is what I'm working on, this is how I see myself, and help me get better.

And I also had all the people who, you know, I coached about 50 people in the company, you know, twice a year. I had them do a three by five card that we would go over at the beginning of the year and we'd revisit it midyear as well. And I would talk to people about how they were developing themselves as leaders. But I think, Ryan, it's so important to have self-awareness. It's so important to really understand how you come off to people, what your strengths are, leveraging those strengths to the hill. And then making sure that your weaknesses are not something that will de-referral. you know, that you know, you at least get them to the point where you're, you know, at least average at it.

Self-awareness is a really tricky one. I just had a great talk with an academic Tasha Yerick, Dr. Tasha Yerick, about this. And people listening to this will probably have already listened to her on this show. But there's so much that goes into that. It could be a two-hour-long conversation. What are some of the practices that you implement in addition to this three-by-five note card where you're sharing with others to become more. self-aware on a daily basis. Because I think when you become the CEO of a company, and even in

earlier leadership roles prior to that, one of the problems with CEOs who aren't very good is that they create an echo chamber around them where people are afraid to tell them no. And obviously, you have humility about you. And it sounds like you created systems and environments where that never seemed to happen. But you've seen it, I'm sure, in other places where CEOs, people are afraid to tell them the truth. And they're afraid to tell them if they need to fix something because they're just, they're just trying to keep their job, so to speak. How can CEOs and leaders work on self-awareness as well as creating the right

environment for people to tell the truth? Yeah. Well, I think one of the real, you know, obviously a lot of big companies have, you know, their 360-degree feedback process, which gives you self-awareness. We had those two as a law, but frankly, the most powerful thing you can do is go ask people that know you and do the manage the two up, two down process that I was talking about. And when you're with people, ask people what they would do if they were you, how they would, you know, how they would do your job differently, how they, you know, what you could do better. Now, when you have a lot of power, people are going to be reluctant to tell you, you know, what those things are. But when you ask him, I would say, hey, what would you do if you were the CEO or you or me?

And they'd say, oh, nothing. You're doing a great job. Of course. Then I'd say, well, what would you do? I'd ask them the same question again. And they'd say, oh, not nothing. You know, and then I'd ask it three or four times, and I'd get to the truth. Okay.

But you have to want to know the truth. You have to be vulnerable enough to open yourself up to criticism and suggestions. And then when you get those, I always would scream from the rooftop all the the things that I learned from people who tell me what I could do differently or or or or better. So I would look for stories that I could tell to everybody about how I was going to go down this one direction until so-and-so told me out of go this way. And if it wasn't for Mary telling me that, you know, I would have I would have made a big mistake. And you know, I think that's the, you know, that just walking the talk and casting that shadow of leadership, I think creates an environment

where people realize being a truth teller is important. Now, I know I don't like people who just tell you the truth. You know, I want the truth, but, you know, I don't want people just saying, telling you all the problems that you have, you know, I mean, that's one sort of truth. I, you need that. But I like people to turn the corner and say, okay, you know, here's the problem. This is what you might be doing, but here's how it could be even better. Okay.

So, you know, I think it's important as your truth tell that you turn, you know, you turn the corner with solutions. Yeah, don't just be a complainer. Yeah, don't be a whiner. Don't be a complainer. Yeah,

it's okay to bring up issues, but at least put some thought into potential solutions. You don't have to have to all figured out, but put some thought into a show that you care. One of the things that,

you know, I found that was the biggest thing you could do to reinforce the behaviors that you want in your organization is recognition. Yep. You know,

this is why I wrote the book, oh, great one, a little story about the awesome power of recognition. I found that the most powerful tool that I had, the secret weapon I had as a leader, was the ability to recognize earned performance. When people really did something good,

make sure that it was noticed and make sure that they knew that it was appreciated. So I used recognition and had all kinds of fun with recognition, okay, to really drive the behaviors that I was looking for in the organization and promote what we called our how we work together principles. It's what other companies might call their values. But when I saw people doing the things that would drive performance, you know, I would take the time spontaneously to recognize people for making the things happen that I knew would grow

the business. And I had a lot of fun doing. I had my own fun recognition awards from floppy chickens to cheese heads to to, you know, walk to talk teeth, you know, but I would give these things out and, you know, I mean, people cherished them. The, uh, I love the, the, the, your stories around recognition and I think you were, did you, did you put there, you take pictures with them and hang them up in your office until you ran out of space and started to hang them up on the ceiling. Is that true? Yeah. I have the, I think the greatest office in the corporate world, you know, because if you walk to my office,

yeah, you look around. You'll see people that I've recognized all around the, the, the world on the walls. I always would take a picture. I would send the picture to them so they could have the picture. But I say, more importantly, your picture is going up on my wall because what you do is what really makes this business tick. And, you know, thank you for all you do. And then people said, well, what happens when you run out of wall speech, which happened? I said, well, I'm going to put the pictures on the ceiling. And I put them on the ceiling. So when I look up, now when I recognize people, I say, you know, when I look up, I'm going to be looking at you, okay? But when people always want to see the president's office or the CEO's office, but they, and what, what I love about my office is when

people walk in, it's emblematic of what makes our business and any business tick. It's the power of the people and the ability to make a difference in that everyone counts. And the real formula for success in every business is you got to have your people capability right, then you satisfy customers, and then you make money. And I think when you recognize people, that's why I wrote, oh, great one, you know, I really, on this passion to attack what I call the global recognition deficit, there's a deficit out there. All around the world, people are starved and craving recognition, and people don't use a tool that's readily available to them. And, you know, people leave companies for two reasons. Number one, they don't get along with their boss.

That's why I believe in coaching. And number two, they don't feel appreciated for what they do. That's why I believe so strongly in recognition. because recognition says, I appreciate you. You count what you do really matters. There's a great story that I read about, too. When you were, you would travel around. I think this once, when you were C.O.O. at PepsiCo, you went to, I'll let you tell the story,

but a bottling plan about a guy named Bob and how the people describe Bob. Could you share that story? Yeah. Well, you know, I mentioned this earlier that when I got the operating job at Pepsi Cola Company, I didn't have any operating experience. So the one thing I knew is that the way I was going to increase my know-how was to go out in the field and find the people who really knew operations, find out what they needed to do their job even better, and then use my power to make sure that I would get people working on it and enabling people to be successful. So what I did is I left on Monday and I come back on Saturday, but I started out every day doing roundtables in the field. And so in St. Louis, one time I'm with a bunch of Pepsi route salesman.

and I was asking about merchandising. Because merchandising is very important at Pepsi. It's like going into the stores and making sure you have your product there. It's displayed properly, et cetera. And so I asked about recognition. Everybody started raving about this guy named Bob. They said, Bob showed me more in four hours. What I learned in my first four years of Pepsi.

Oh, yeah, you should see Bob with customers. He's amazing. Bob knows how to get the displays, et cetera. You just raving about Bob. I look down at the end of the table, and Bob is crying. And I say, Bob, why are you crying? These people are heaping all this praise on you. And he says, well, I've been in this company for 47 years.

I'm retiring in two weeks, and I didn't know people felt this way about me. And I thought, God, that is so sad. I said, you know, from this day forward, I'm going to dedicate my business life to making sure that we recognize. the people that deserve recognition and that there's few bobs out there in the world as there could possibly be in terms of people who you know who never really got it

you know so you know I became passionate about recognition and that's why I made it such a huge huge behavior and got value in our company and I have to tell you it is a powerful powerful weapon and you know I've you know oh great one

the book I wrote I mean I've gotten so many letters and people love this book so much because it's just it's a parable about this guy who runs happy face toy company, but nobody's happy. And he goes in and he finds out the reason why nobody's happy is nobody feels appreciated for what they do. And then he turns the business around by starting to recognize people who do the things that he knows is going to get the business going and the business turns around and, you know, he gets great success. But this story is based on experiences that I had in my career.

And, you know, it's basically, you know, one of the best experiences I ever had early on when I became president of KFC is, you know, I went in and the place was totally like, you know, it was an unhappy face toy company. And, you know, we started appreciating each other and valuing each other, and we turned the business around. So I viewed that as unleashing the power of people and a triumph of, human spirit. And I think that's what leaders have got to do. So you wrote a great one and you also recently started your own digital leadership platform.

What was the purpose behind doing that? Yeah. Well, I now have a digital leadership platform, which is ogolede.com. And ogolid.com, the purpose of ogolede.com is to basically, I want to help the world create, I want to create better leaders so we can make the world a better place. And, you know, Gallup did a poll where, if you can believe this, seven out of 10 people in companies across America are not engaged. You know, I call that the seven and 10 problems. Seven out of 10 people are not engaged at work. 50% just aren't engaged.

20% are disengaged. In other words, they just can't wait to get home, okay? You know, and so that means on average, only 30% of your people are going to work and are engaged to what they do. And I think that's a huge indictment on leadership. And I think what we have to do is we got to help leaders understand how to get better at what they do. That's why I love your program, Ryan. That's why I wanted to be on your program. I mean, you're helping leaders with all these podcasts.

You're helping them get insights that will help them get better at what they do. But my basic philosophy is, and what we're trying to demonstrate through this ogolid.com, is that you need to be heartwired as a leader. And by that I mean heartwired, H-E-A-R-T, your heart. You've got to show that you care. You're committed to people, that you recognize people, that you know everyone counts. You get them involved. You've got to lead with your heart. And then you also have to be hardwired.

By that, you drive execution with consistency, consistent process and discipline around what really matters, and you hardwire your organization with the processes that'll help you execute to get great results. Both the heartwiring and the hardwiring are equally important because it's very important about, you know, how you go about working with people and showing that you care. And at the same time, getting those people executing the things, the hard things that will drive results because you know they're key to your business. and I want to help people really get good at both those things and most importantly get good at heartwiring because, you know, as a leader, your leader, you have the privilege of leadership. You can make it make or break somebody's day. You know, everybody wants to be the leader. And if you're blessed enough to become the leader, you got the opportunity to really make a

positive difference for people and your business and in the world. And I think we got a huge leadership gap in this company or in this world because, you know, look at what's going on today. Look at all the divisiveness. People are not working together. And I think a leader's job is to get people working together. I love it, David. And thank you so much for being here. I would assume you'd send everybody to check out ogolid.com.

Is that correct? Yes, I'd love that. And I'd like people to look at, oh, great one. you know, read the book. I, you know, I wrote the book because I'm trying to make a difference in the world. I'm not doing it to make money. I mean, the bottom line is all the proceeds go to juvenile diabetes. My wife has been a juvenile diabetic since she's seven years old.

So, you know, I'm at the point now where, you know, I was so blessed, Ryan, I got to be a CEO of a major company. And, you know, I've lived a life I can't believe. I want to give back. I'm just focused on what I love right now. And I love recognition and leadership, and I've been so blessed to learn from so many people, just like you're doing. You know, you're getting all this knowledge out there. I just want to share it with people. I want to help people get better at what they do.

And, you know, my wish list is go to ogolede.com and start reading my blogs and podcasts and see the Q&A that we have. You know, buy the book, oh, great one, and really develop your leadership skills and cascade it in your company and and you know I think you'll see a great success. Well, David, you asked me before we started recording, what was it that's helped this podcast be successful? And one of the things I mentioned was having on incredible leaders who do a great job of they're great and they understand why they're great and they can tell that story. And I have to acknowledge that you just just crushed it, man. So thank you so much for doing that for both for me. I have two and a half pages of notes as well as my listeners.

And I absolutely would love to continue this dialogue as we both progress, man. Now, Ryan, I'd love to love to do that and I'd love to be on your show anytime. Unfortunately, I probably talk more than I should, but at this case, I'm not supposed to be listening. You did it right, man. I have to listen and try to ask good questions. And you just brought it and made it my job very easy. So thank you so much, man.

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