Darren [00:00:01]:

Hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode of One of One. I’m your host, Darren Gold, CEO of the Trium Group. My guest today is Doug Conant, former president and CEO of Campbell Soup Company. Doug stepped into the CEO role at Campbell in 2001, inheriting a toxic culture and a workforce that had lost faith in its leadership. Over the next decade, he engineered one of the most remarkable turnarounds in modern business history. But what makes Doug’s story so compelling is not just what he accomplished, but the inner journey that made it possible. A lifelong introvert who, after being fired at age 32, learned the importance of living his authentic life story, and in so doing, built a philosophy grounded in deep listening, relentless self reflection, and an unshakable belief that to win in the marketplace, you must first win in the workplace. In our conversation, we explore the crucible moment that forged everything. What it really means to be tough minded on standards and tenderhearted with people, and what 50 years in the arena has taught him about the inner work that great leadership demands. Please enjoy my wonderful conversation with Doug Conant. 

 

Doug, it’s so great to have you on the show. I’ve been an admirer of yours from the outside, at least for some time, so getting to have this conversation with you is a real treat for me. I know we’ve got a ton of ground to cover and short time to do it, but I’m eager to dive in. But thank you for being here.

 

Doug Conant [00:01:39]:

Well, it’s a pleasure to be with you. The issues of the day are sort of overwhelming to people, and I think it’s important that we help each other process what we’re dealing with, and I hope I can be helpful today.

 

Darren [00:01:56]:

That’s a really nice frame for our conversation, and I imagine we’ll get into the times of the day and the importance of leadership in all of that. Before we do, I wanted to start with a concept that Warren Bennis, I think we’re shared admirers of his coined, which was crucible moments. The moments in time that really kind of forge who you are as a person and as a leader. And I know you had this crucible moment in your early 30s, and I was wondering if we could start there. I share that, by the way, as just an entry point into perhaps the inner journey that you’ve been on and that you offer from and teach from and lead from. If that feels like a decent place to start, I’d love to understand what happened and how you made meaning of all of that.

 

Doug Conant [00:02:44]:

Well, it does, and it’s particularly propitious at this moment for me, because tonight I am going to a gathering to discuss Jim Collins new work, which is all about what to make of a life. And he talks about cliffs, among other things. And this was a cliff for me. Warren called it a crucible. And Warren indeed was a mentor of mine and a friend. My first book was published under his banner by Wiley, and he was an absolute delight. I’m one of the people championing the Warren Bennis Leadership Institute at the University of Cincinnati with his daughter Kate and Betsy Myers. So you’re in my space. Welcome to my world. Now I’ll talk about one of my crucible moments, or a cliff I felt I was falling off of. I had been working for 10 years for General Mills. I got my MBA in 1975, started working for General Mills March 15, 1976. And in fact, you’re walking into my golden anniversary right now, which we just started celebrating a few weeks ago. And I worked for General Mills for 10 years in brand management, one in the home office in Minneapolis for six and a half, seven years, and then three years in one of their subsidiaries, which was a great company, Parker Brothers Toys and Games. And it was fun, man. I was marketing director of all the toys and games, and it was a great job. I was on my way into work one day and assistant at the front desk said, doug, the senior vice president of marketing would like to see you. And I went up to his office and he couldn’t look at me. I knew there was something going on. And he said, doug, your position’s been eliminated. You need to be out of here by noon. And it’s like, I’ve been working for the company for 10 years and it was 9 o’ clock in the morning and I need to be out of there by noon. And when I lost my job in 1983 or so, this was like a scarlet letter. Losing your job then. Now everybody has a story about losing a job. But then it didn’t feel that way and you didn’t want to talk about it and you were embarrassed by it. I packed up my things, I went home to my wife, my two small children, and my one very large mortgage, feeling every bit the victim. It felt like my career was over in a snap. And that was my crucible moment, what to do? And I’m going to shorten the story a bit. But ultimately I was paired with an outplacement counselor who became a mentor of mine until he passed in 2006. 2006. And what he said to me had a Profound impact. Every time I would, his name was Neil McKenna. And every time I would call to make an appointment or in fact that afternoon I was told I should meet with him. I called him and said, Mr. McKenna, I was shell shocked. Mr. McKenna, I’ve been given your name. I know it’s late in the afternoon, I’d love to meet with you. He said, well, I’m right here. I need you to come over right now. I said, I don’t want to interrupt your dinner. We can schedule it out. He said, no, we’re going to stay here and we’re going to work through this. So I drove almost an hour to get to where he was. It was dinner time and we sat in his office and he was there for me. And he was there for me completely. But what really gave him away was the first thing he said when I called him on the phone. He answered the phone and he said, hello, this is Neil McKenna, how can I help? There was no caller ID. I mean, I’m way before caller IDs, cell phones. He didn’t know who was calling him, but he was just there to help. And every time I called him for the next 20 years, he would answer his phone and say, hello, Neil McKenna, how can I help? He was just there to help people. And I didn’t realize it at the time, but he was setting the table for me to lead in a similar manner, to just be there to help people on their journey. But it took me a long time to get to a place where I understood that. But I did learn very quickly how traumatic events can occur in the workplace. And as a leader, you just need to be there to help. And the more you help people navigate these things in the fullness of time, the more people help you navigate your stuff. And that was my experience.

 

Darren [00:07:33]:

Was there a particular piece of advice that he gave you that evening or over the course of his.

 

Doug Conant [00:07:38]:

Well, there was probably too long a story, but I’ll make it do it in a minute. The first thing he had me do, he said, doug, I want you to handwrite your life story. I said, are you kidding? He said, I don’t have time for that. I gotta get a job. He said, on the other hand, this is the perfect time to do it because you don’t have a job inarguable. He said, I want you to handwrite everything you can tell me about your family and your life story and your family history. Everything. I want it all. And so I ended up with 50 handwritten, lined notebook paper pages, handwritten both sides, 100 pages, actually. And I turned it in two weeks later. It was my first homework assignment in a long time. And he read it, and he was in the process of helping me prepare for interviews and do my resume and all this stuff. And he said, doug. I went back after he read it two weeks later, and he said, doug, I just don’t get it. You know, the person I read about in this family history is a person of substance, a person of high character, a person of immeasurable drive. And then you’re interviewing for this job, and I know you’re an introvert. All you’re doing is answering my questions. The person I’m preparing to go do interviews is not the person that wrote all this. They’re two different people. And many of us, you know, this is not going to be news to you. Many of us have a siloed life. We have our work life and our personal life. And I had sort of the first decade of my career. I was in what Jim Collins calls in his new book, a fog. And I was trying to find my way. So I was just keeping my head down and doing what I was asked and trying to do it with distinction, quietly. And if somebody needed something, I was there to help. And as I was trying to feel my way through, and I learned the lesson there that that wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t representing myself in a way that I could feel good about. And I also wasn’t serving the enterprise as much as I could. So it was a really important wake up call. And ultimately, when we wrote the Blueprint, our second book, one of the lines that came up, Amy Fetterman, my co author, came up with this. And it’s really prophetic. I mean, it’s important. And the line is, your life story is your leadership story. You are enough right now to be an impactful leader. But you’ve probably got all these life story things in your mind that you have put in the parking lot while you’re dealing with all the day to day stuff. But we’re gonna go back into this parking lot, we’re gonna unearth those things, you’re gonna learn from them, and you’re gonna bring them into how you choose to show up for people. And boy, is that a powerful idea. And we all have access to our own parking lots. The other thing I’ve learned over time related to that is nobody can do this but you. It’s your parking lot. Nobody knows what you know, and nobody knows what the right path for you is. You have to find it and it’s right there in your parking lot. So that all started my journey, went to the next level in 1983, and I’m slow. It’s 43 years later or something, and I’m still learning, you know. Yeah.

 

Darren [00:11:14]:

Well, what I love about that is I think what’s implied underneath it is everybody’s ultimate leadership philosophy and blueprint is going to be totally unique. Like there’s no one right way to lead. And maybe even what I hear you suggesting is people are oftentimes looking outside of themselves for the model of leadership they want. And the answer’s really inside the person. Is that a reasonable way of summarizing it?

 

Doug Conant [00:11:42]:

I think that’s true. I would twist it a little. In our book the Blueprint, My observation is most leaders have looked outside and seen all kinds of leadership techniques and practices, but most of them are operating by the seat of their pants in terms of understanding their own parking lot. So the thing that’s been neglected is that inside stuff that needs to be brought up and channeled into how you show up in a genuine, authentic way, which Warren would be talking about. Warren Bennis. Most of that work has really not been fully developed. And so what we focus on doing is helping them through reflection, go into their parking lot, find out what matters most. But you don’t stop there. You then do have to look at the world around you and learn from that, too. I mean, I talk about leadership as a craft. You’re apprenticing at it and you’re trying to get to mastery. You never get all the way there. And I think you look inside and outside and you bring all of that into your thinking. I’ve learned. I learned a lot from Warren Bennis. I spent a lot of time with Stephen Covey. I’ve learned from a whole panoply of people. Brene Brown, Susan Cain, who wrote Quiet, all those people have influenced Jim Collins, Dan Pink, all these people have had influence on me. But I’m viewing it through the lens of who I am, having spent a lot of time and I’m still. I’m slow. I’m still trying to figure that out. But I think it’s the inside and the outside working synergistically together to help you become the best version of yourself. Because it’s not just about you. Leadership leaders need followers. And so if you’re going to influence others, you’ve got to be tuned into what works with others. And so there’s a whole world out there that can help you with that. So you’ve Got to be tethered to who you are, but you’ve got to be prepared to go beyond that.

 

Darren [00:13:49]:

So in a moment, I want to have us jump forward to 2001 and the Campbell’s story, which you’ve told a lot, but I want to maybe inquire in a little different way. But what I’m curious about before we get there is when you began to examine your own parking lot of things and develop your own authentic leadership story from your life story, was there a particular quality or attribute that rose to the top that you had been suppressing or not bringing forth as powerfully as you needed to?

 

Doug Conant [00:14:26]:

Well, I don’t know if there was no epiphany. It wasn’t a bolt of lightning that struck. But as I went through the process, I began to get incredibly well anchored that my approach to moving things forward had to be a people first approach. And eventually, by the time I got to Campbell, I codified that in language that said you have to win in the workplace before you can win in the marketplace. And the workplace was a people first mindset. We’ve got to create a culture that celebrates people, and in the fullness of time, they will celebrate our agenda. And in fact, in my thinking, it doesn’t work any other way. So that’s where I started to double down on people first. You know, my friend Jim Donald, the former CEO of Starbucks and he chairman of the food company that just tried to merge with Kroger, Jim said, if you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room. You know, and I didn’t want to be the smartest person. I wanted to have the best imaginable talent in the room with me. And that all started with a people first mentality and working with people I could learn from and grow with and encouraging that mindset and that approach throughout the enterprise. So that’s sort of. I started to give birth to that when I lost my job.

 

Darren [00:15:56]:

And when you say people first, could we click one layer beneath that? Because a lot of people say it. I’m not sure they actually live it. What does it mean to you? What does it look like in practice? What did it look like as you were codifying it, I think at your time at RJR Nabisco, I imagine. But what did that actually look like for you?

 

Doug Conant [00:16:14]:

People first look like. Yeah, yeah. It was like this morning, I was just over at the Gallup Organization here in Washington, D.C. which is where I’m talking about, and they have a quote on the wall There, it’s a Deming quote, Edward Deming. And it was about, I’m going to screw it up, but the importance of asking the right questions and then you get the right answers. But you got to really be careful with the questioning. You probably experienced this in your podcast. You’ve got to be thoughtful about how you’re approaching it. And my philosophy started to become I was going to lead by listening. And that’s how I brought to life people first. I started with, in many conversations with my Neil McKenna. How can I help? I wrote a book on this called Touchpoints, New York Times bestseller and how can I help? And then I listened. I listened to what they said, what they didn’t say. I framed it and then I tried to help them advance it in a meaningful way. And they owned it, not me. And I found that leading by listening helped me cross a lot of divides. Like right now I’m a 75 year old man. If I led, by the way I was, started my career in a hierarchical, authoritarian kind of way Post World War II, it would, it would fall short with the employees of the day. But leading by listening, you can lead any generation, you can lead any group of people you want, but you gotta genuinely listen. You’ve gotta genuinely be there to help. You’ve gotta genuinely listen, you’ve gotta frame it properly and then you’ve gotta apply all the wisdom that you’ve cultivated over your life to helping them move it forward. So if I had a codified, I’d say leading by listening. And it doesn’t mean you don’t make decisions, but it means you, you listen before you leap. Sort of instead of look before you leap, you listen before you leap.

 

Darren [00:18:27]:

Nice. Any particular moment in time decision that was made where that attribute of how you lead, starting with listening, really paid off in a way that it wouldn’t have if you had been leading as you were sort of originally.

 

Doug Conant [00:18:43]:

Well, prior to a lot of times. But prior to going to Campbell Soup Co. I had been hired to, as I took this, the smallest general manager job at Nabisco as part of Post Barbarians at the Gate, which was the world’s largest leverage buyout LBO at the time in the late 1980s. And for 10 years we slogged through that. The last five years I was president of Nabisco Foods. And I thought I’d seen it all. I mean, if anybody read the book or watched the movie, it’s a little old now. It was like the Wild West. I thought you couldn’t make this stuff up. And I thought I’d seen it all, and I was carrying that set of assumptions with me when I went to Campbell Soup as CEO. We completed the sale of Nabisco finally, five years later than KKR had expected. December 31, 2000. I started working a week later at Campbell as CEO. And I was sort of bringing all that. That mindset with me about this is going to be. Nothing could be worse than what I had encountered there. And I started off listening, and I discovered quite quickly that, in fact, Campbell in many dimensions, was worse and that I needed to really lift my game in terms of leading. And to do that, I discovered I need to listen more and not less. And I was assuming I. Well, now I’m the CEO. I’m in the corner office, you know, and I’m taking charge. And I discovered just the opposite. I had a lot to learn. So I ended up listening more and trying to look underneath the hood at how the people had been affected by the tumult that they had experienced the prior decade, really. And so that was probably. I had this false set of assumptions when I went in there and my first day. Every CEO, when you go the first day and you’re talking to the company, and what was I going to say? I said a lot, but the theme was expect action. And quite frankly, that was the wrong thing. I should have said, expect listening. I’ve never said that until this interview, but I quickly pivoted and figured it out. And it was wise because they weren’t looking for people to take action. They were looking for people to listen to what was really going on and to look under the hood carefully and thoughtfully, and then to shape an agenda that had some promise of succeeding. Stephen Covey had a great line. He used to say to me more than once, because, you know, you’re a Young Turk and you’re trying to prove your mettle. And he used to say, doug, you cannot talk your way out of something you behaved your way into. And Campbell had behaved their way into a mess. And no leader can come in and talk his way out of it. You had to get down into the muck and wrestle with things before you could find your way out. And that was my first misstep, the first day. But I recovered.

 

Darren [00:22:26]:

Well, it’s such an interesting point, because I think most CEOs, when they step into situations that require big changes, have an orientation to moving fast, taking actions, being decisive. And I understand the instinct, but what you’re pointing to is something that I think is much more attuned to what’s actually needed. And at the same time, if I’ve got this right, I think you’ve written about this, that over the first three years, you replaced 300 of the 350 senior leaders of the organization. So it wasn’t that you didn’t take action. It was that I’m guessing you’re taking action on the foundation of deep listening. So I’m just curious about both that point and then I want to dive into this massive amount of change that you architected, because I imagine people listening to this are in similar situations where they’ve got to really move a culture and a company. And that big cohort of your senior leaders is probably the highest point of leverage. At least that’s the way I position it.

 

Doug Conant [00:23:30]:

I felt if you believe you’re not. You don’t want to be the smartest person in the room and you’re totally dependent on others. I felt I had a lead from in front there, but you also had to have. You had to be smart about it. You had to have due process. In fact, over the first three years, we had a global leadership team of 350 people. We were spread out around 38 countries and was sort of complex, and we had multiple product lines. We weren’t just a soup company. And so it was complex. And again, you can’t talk your way out of something. You had to behave your way out of this. And you had a. I believe you have to have some kind of due process. You just don’t start firing people. You can’t pull an Elon Musk in the federal government. You can’t do that in a company, because people. You’re going to lose the people you lose and the people that still work there that are going to wait to think you’re coming after them next, and then you’re paralyzed. So in the spirit of the language I was using at the time, win in the workplace in order to win in the marketplace. I started working with the Gallup organization when I first got there in 2001, I guess. Yeah, 2001. And we said, well, the closest proxy we have to the kind of culture we’re trying to create, we have to measure it somehow. You can’t manage it if you can’t measure it. And the measurement creates room to discuss how to make it better. So we started a Gallup survey. We did it for 10 or 11 years as long as I was there. And we also had a set of standards that we had. We changed our leadership model. And it was an incredibly low trust sort of Bankrupt emotional environment. And we said the number one job of every leader was to inspire trust. And then that led to five behaviors. And the ultimate one was produce extraordinary results. Because trust is great, but we also have to perform. We have to do those two things, not just hold hands and sing Kumbaya. We also have to deliver. And we got to hold those two things carefully in our hands. And so we started this survey and the first year I said to the leaders, this is your base. I’m not even looking at it. The next year we hope to see improvement. And we had a process in place where everyone in the world was surveyed. Of 25,000 people, probably half of them were surveyed. A statistics sample for every each one of the 350 leaders. And then after the survey results came back, all the people in the company in their respective units would discuss the survey results. So everybody was part of the process once a year. And then they had to identify what’s working, what’s not, and what’s needed in our group or in our company, our division, whatever it is. And we’re going to commit to fixing three things by next year. We want to make material progress against these three things. No more than three. And so we started that process. Oh, and we added one question a couple years in because it needed to be made. A point needed to be made. The 13th question on this Q12 survey was, how helpful was your manager in implementing all the changes that needed to be made that you all agreed to make? And all of a sudden the managers became more helpful. It was amazing. All you have to do is ask their employees confidentially. So year one is the base. Year two, we’re going to look at the results and we’re going to talk about them and we’re going to see how we can help you make them better. Year three, if we’re not making material progress, we’re either going to move you to a place where you can contribute or we’re going to help you leave the company and work somewhere else. But it’s going to be a three year process. It’s not perfect, but it’s not immediate. So we established the process and a lot of people just chose to leave because they didn’t want to be part of the process. Probably out of the 350, 200 might have chosen to leave over the three years, but we ended up having a higher 150 people from outside and we had a backfill, all the people that left. So it was a massive change process. But it happened over three years and we Got to a much better place. What I loved about it was our employee engagement went up every year, despite all the chaos that was going on, because we were clear about the process. We were trying to be caring with the people, the people who were staying and the people who were leaving. And so we did what we needed to do. We did it in a pretty darn transparent way. And I think in the fullness of time, we had the best employee engagement in the Fortune 500 for the whole company, going from the worst. And in those 357 years after we had gone through that process, we had an engagement ratio which Gallup had never seen before, and it was 77 to 1. 77 leaders, highly engaged. For every one that was not, we had created in an old canned soup company, an old economy can company headquartered in the poorest, most dangerous city in the United States, Camden, New Jersey. We had created an employee engagement profile second to none. So. But we did need to change the leadership. One last footnote to this. Anybody listening? If you’re running a company, a division, a team, a mindset that I encourage people to bring is I’ve got three years. If I’m lucky the first year, it’s the other guy’s fault. Whatever we didn’t do, you know, we’re doing the best we can. We’re trying to fix it. The second year, we’re seeing some shoots of opportunity. But by the third year, the end of the second year, you own it. And so all the decision making you make starting in year one has to recognize that you do need to build trust. But you don’t have forever. You’ve got basically three years at least. That was the mindset I had. That was true for CEOs, but it was true. I don’t know, I was in 20 different roles in my career. And you do have to hit the ground running, but you have to have a sense of process that lets everybody know that you’re not just shooting from the hip.

 

Darren [00:30:09]:

I’m curious about this for leaders that are listening, that may be in industries that are just incredibly fast moving and they may not have the space of three years, they’ve got to compress the time period. Is this a compressible philosophy? And if so, absolutely.

 

Doug Conant [00:30:26]:

First of all, if you’re in one of those industries, you know, the timeframe is different. I mean, you know, if you’re in Silicon Valley and you’re in a. Or a new venture, you know, you don’t have three years, right? I mean, so you’re going in with your. If Your eyes aren’t wide open, they’re open. And the second thing is there are three phases. You figure out how you want to do. You’ve got to, you’ve got to create a platform that says things are going to change. And to the degree we can, we’re going to create a process for change that’s transparent and clear. And then we’re going to have to make the changes. And you know, this corporate life is very Darwinian. You know, you either grow or die. There’s not a lot in between. And we’re going to choose growth. It beats the alternative. And if we don’t have three years in this situation, we only have two, then we have to do it in two years. But we’re going to do the best we can to lead by listening, to create a platform that promises to take us to higher ground. And we’re going to work with you to achieve that so that you’re not feeling as if you’re a victim to some nefarious plot of your leadership team. You know, you can’t go there, can’t do it. Not only the people that leave are being not respected properly, the people that are staying are seeing the same thing. And, and they’re never gonna be devoted with the intensity and the level of engagement you need to lift things up to higher ground, at least in an enduring way. You can episodically have a, you know, if you’re a startup, you’ve got a three, four, five, six years time horizon. That’s a different game, but the same principles apply.

 

Darren [00:32:18]:

The way you just described that reminded me of something I’ve heard about your philosophy that I love your, your thoughts on. I think you say something to the effect of really tough on standards, tenderhearted with people. I think it’s a great polarity. Can you say a little bit more about that and how present that was for you during this period of time?

 

Doug Conant [00:32:37]:

Oh, it’s, it’s mission critical. It’s one of the three most important things. Because if you choose to operate in a corporate environment, and quite frankly in a nonprofit environment or an academic environment or a federal government environment, you have to perform. And there are standards for performance. So if you want to do this, you have to be tough minded on standards. At the same time, if you think in order to fully leverage those standards, you have to have the people you work with fully engaged in the work, you damn well better be kind to them. You know, I do this little exercise which has really significant impact on people. When I’m speaking, I’ve written about it too, several times. But I define leadership as the art and the science of influencing others in a specific direction. And then I ask them to think about someone who had a profound influence on their direct on them. And interestingly, very few people think of a boss. They think of a grandparent, a father, a mother, an uncle, a coach. You know, you’ve got someone in mind right now and I guarantee you we’ll talk. Did they have high standards for you?

 

Darren [00:33:55]:

Enormously high.

 

Doug Conant [00:33:56]:

Yeah. Right. Did they have your back?

 

Darren [00:33:59]:

Yeah, 100%.

 

Doug Conant [00:34:00]:

Yeah. Were they kind to you?

 

Darren [00:34:02]:

Deeply loving?

 

Doug Conant [00:34:03]:

Yeah. Yeah. And all I’m saying is be like that with other people. It’s not that hard. You know what? It looks like you’ve experienced it, but somehow in the work world, it’s become an either or world. In Jim Collins work on Good to Great, he talked about embracing the genius of the and and rejecting the tyranny of the or. Tough minded on standards and kind hearted with people is embracing the genius of the and and it works, you know. Are you a parent?

 

Darren [00:34:37]:

I am. Three children.

 

Doug Conant [00:34:38]:

Okay. With your kids, do you have high standards for them?

 

Darren [00:34:42]:

Sure.

 

Doug Conant [00:34:43]:

And if you just pounded away on the standards, how effective would you be over time? They have to know you have their back and that you care about them and that you’re kind. But sometimes you can’t be because there’s a bigger issue. But this is the art and the science of leadership. It’s being tough minded on standards and being kindhearted with people. And there’s no reason that can’t work. I would say that some leaders don’t know how to do that and they do have to be authentic. So they have to show up as who they are. Our president right now, I mean, it’s not his leadership style, but we talked at the very beginning. You said every leader has their own style. It grows out of how they were raised and what they believe in. So some leaders are different. But if you want to build an enduring situation with your family or with a team or with a company, you damn well better have high standards and you damn well better be kind hearted. The reality is you don’t have a choice if you want to. If you really want something that’s enduring and something you can be proud of,

 

Darren [00:35:55]:

you’re very much preaching, preaching to the choir. It’s probably my number one leadership principle in how I lead. I call it love and performance, which I think is pointing to the same, you know, the same paradox, the same. And I’m curious also because I just used the Word and the word love, which isn’t very spoken about in terms of business, and yet I’m gathering it sort of at the core of who you are. Is that true? What does that word evoke for you as you think about your life and leadership?

 

Doug Conant [00:36:28]:

Well, I don’t use the word that often, but I feel the emotion and I care deeply. I care deeply about the people I’m on the journey with every day and everyone I meet. Actually, my Uber driver on the way here was from Afghanistan and I was learning, you know, I care about the human condition, so I care deeply. Some people would call that love. I use love carefully with my family, but it doesn’t mean I don’t. I love my work. I have a passion for it. And it’s about helping people on their journeys, which is what I did when I was a CEO and what I do have done for 15 years now with Conant leadership. It’s all about helping people on their journey to get to higher ground. So love is a strong word, but not wrong.

 

Darren [00:37:28]:

Well said. I want to mind maybe just one more time the experience of leading one of the most celebrated turnarounds at Campbell. Were there other aspects of your experience or decisions you made or practices you had that were particularly unique, which I’m always mining for on this show? It’s called one of one for a reason. Anything you’d point to?

 

Doug Conant [00:37:53]:

Well, I doubled down on getting people engaged in the work. Look, we have to do tough stuff. We had to let go 300 people. We had to make tough decisions. All right? That comes with the territory. I have found that most organizations, especially large ones, and I dealt with ones at scale, are great critical thinking machines. They find what’s going wrong and they fix it. And I can find the busted number in the spreadsheet. Meanwhile, there are 87 numbers in that spreadsheet that are beautiful, but nobody talks about those. So I started celebrating contributions of significance with people and I became sort of known for that. I didn’t mean to, but I’m old, so we weren’t just shooting around emails and text messages to everybody. Most of my company did. When I first started, probably half the company didn’t have a terminal. They were people working in factories and things like that. And I started. I noticed that on our one portal we had, there was a lot of good stuff going on and my assistant would print all that stuff out. I had a two and a half hour drive home. I would read everything and on the way into work, I’d pick 10 to 20 people that had Made a significant contribution that prior week. And I’d hand write them a note and we would get it off to them that morning. And if it was overseas, we might even FedEx it to their home. And all of a sudden, these notes were flying everywhere. And my. The people that work for me basically came to me, a few of them anyway. Do you expect us to be writing all these notes? You’re sending notes to all my people? And I said, no, but I do expect to have a little more balance in terms of celebrating what’s working while we’re fixing what’s not working. It’s not that we’re. It’s abundance. It’s the abundant mentality. It’s the paradox of, you know, fixing stuff and celebrating stuff at the same time. And so Stephen Covey would talk about it as building the emotional bank account of the organization. And so these notes started going out when I retired, I was being interviewed by, I think, Forbes, and they said, we understand you write a lot of notes. I said, yeah, 10 to 20 a day, six days a week. I have for about a decade. And we did the math in my office, on my calculator, in my drawer. And it turned out I’d sent 30,000 notes out over my career just to Campbell people. And we only had 25,000 employees. So wherever you went in the world, there was a handwritten note from me saying, thank you for over delivering the quarter in sales or getting the production line up and running in Sydney, Australia. We appreciate your contributions to our company, signed by me. And these things were all over the place. And it created. I think you have to show up in a visible way to make things real for people. You know, if I just said, let’s celebrate and we’ll have a event once a year or company celebration, that’s good. But doing this every day was good for the organization, was also good for me because every year I get. Every day I’d get to work having just celebrated 20amazing contributions the prior week, every day. And I said, God, we’re doing some good stuff here. So I had a spring in my step, which helped me put a spring in more people’s steps at Campbell. So I think tangible expressions of appreciation for things that are moving the company forward. These weren’t happy birthday notices. These were thanks for helping deliver on the strategy or thanks for helping. They were all connected to what we were trying to do. I think tangible acknowledgement of contributions is a big deal. It can’t be just with your kids. It’s the same thing. All these people maybe got two notes from me over 10 years. It’s not like I was patting them on the back every day. But when they did something significant, I tried to celebrate it. And I commend that to people, especially today when we sort of have a glass half filled mindset in our world.

 

Darren [00:42:17]:

I’m curious, it’s an incredible practice and I’m just noting the importance of, you know, a small handful of signal inducing practices that a CEO can commit to that amplify through the rest of the organization. And I’m curious, in this particular case, you may not have had people do the same exact thing, but did it start to build a culture of appreciation?

 

Doug Conant [00:42:41]:

Oh, yeah, it did. Everywhere it did. Some of the leaders were more verbal, oral and they would manage by wandering around, which I also started doing after the financial crisis in 2008. My assistant told me I needed to get out more and talk to people. And I’m an introvert. I didn’t want to. I like to write notes. She said, well, you’re going to go out there and you’re going to talk to people. Eventually I did. I walked. Got my 10,000 steps in every day and had my little pedometer on and my walking shoes. And people knew if I was walking I might not be able to stop, but I was more visible. And so that’s another way to celebrate another practice. As a CEO I had and as a company president in Nabisco was employing the how can I help? Language from Neil McKenna all the way back to when I lost my job. People, many people would remember, they’d bump into me in the hall and I’d say, hi, how can I help? And it got to be a bit of a joke, but it broke the ice and it created a platform for conversation where they had to talk to me. I wasn’t talking to them. So employing practices like that, there’s so much to talk about here, but the one thing to watch out for is you have to be able to do it in a sustained way. It can’t be episodic because people have trouble following you. So you have to, it has to nest perfectly in your cockamamie life. You know, I don’t know if you’ve interviewed James Clear. Atomic habits.

 

Darren [00:44:22]:

Read the book, but not interviewed.

 

Doug Conant [00:44:23]:

Yeah, okay, he’s right. You gotta have these tiny habits that fit in your life that you can sustain. There’s a lot of literature on this. So any CEO who wants to drift into this territory has to do it with, you use the word intentionality and has to do it with an eye on. Is this something I can realistically sustain or is this just going to be something I do for three months and then I’m going to move on to the next thing? A lot of CEOs are attracted by these shiny objects, but it’s hard to sustain. So you have to think about that before you do it.

 

Darren [00:45:02]:

Well, the beauty of the question that when you meet somebody, typically it’s how are you? And so you’ve got a structure in which you can embed a new habit by just replacing that question with something that’s a little bit more provocative is a little bit more you. So I love that. I’m already thinking for myself what that might be and whether it’s authentic and sustainable. But I want to jump on the piece you’ve now mentioned a couple times, which is introversion and what that’s meant to you and what your journey to maybe claim that fully for yourself has been like and what it’s unlocked so

 

Doug Conant [00:45:36]:

hard, you know, I mean, I’ve taken the Myers Briggs test five times and every time I’m an introvert. You want to be an extrovert, you want to be the life. It’s just not me. And I’m much more comfortable in a one on one conversation of substance, you know, and, or just a casual conversation, but more one on one. And I get overwhelmed by these things. And if you’re a CEO, you, you’ve got to play in that game. My lesson there is I had to be more courageous at engaging with people. And I came to this conclusion that it’s hard to showcase the courage of my convictions if I don’t know what my convictions are. And that drove me to all the reflection and the study work so I could get really well anchored in how I wanted to show up with intention. So once I sort of got there and I sort of started to see that get traction, it made it easier. But it was still hard. It’s still hard. After an event, I will go home and either watch TV or read a book just to get settled again. You know, the other thing, a trick. An executive coach friend of mine, her name’s Deborah Benton, she wrote a wonderful book, Lions don’t need to Roar. She’s coached a lot of successful women executives and men, but she recognized that I was an introvert. It wasn’t hard in the one on one. And she said, you know, this is hard for you, isn’t it? I said, yeah, it is. I don’t know what to do. You’re supposed to tell Me what to do. And she said, here’s what I want you to try. She said, when you’re with a group of people, you’re going to stand back, probably 2ft farther back than anybody else in the group because you’re more comfortable being outside of it a little bit. You’re on the edge. And she said, this is what I want you to do. And this is going to sound strange. I want you to get one step closer, just one step closer in this conversation. Take one step. I said, I’m not doing that. It’s going to be weird. She said, just try. Try it for a week. One step. No, I’m not doing it. I get back to my offices. I had met with her in Denver. I was getting this coaching, and I went back to Persippany, New Jersey and I thought on the way back, I think, well, I’ll try it one step closer. And so I started getting one step closer to. In any group discussion, it changed everything. It changed everything. All of a sudden the conversation was different. The level of intimacy, I’m not saying we got highly intimate, but the level of intimacy was one step closer. It just changed everything. And guess what? I found out I could even take another step closer. And then when I was shaking someone’s hand, I could actually put my hand on their shoulder or something, which was really weird for me. I mean, I. But I found out they weren’t going to bite. And in fact, my relationships at work started to become more meaningful, fulfilling. And so for all my introvert friends, I shared this story with Susan Cain, who wrote the book Quiet. And she just smiled when I shared this story for all my introvert friends. Just take one step closer and it can change your life. We wrote about that in the Blueprint. It’s one of my stories, but I commend it to everyone. You can do this. If I could do it, you can do it. One step closer.

 

Darren [00:49:24]:

Is there a more generalizable insight that you take away from that moment?

 

Doug Conant [00:49:31]:

Well, first of all, I had to be comfortable enough to take one step closer. All right, so that’s where the internal work had to be done. So it’s a two step process. We’re wildly oversimplified. We’re creating this as we go right here. Darren, you got to do the inside work before it can be manifested in the outside behavior. So I did a lot of work trying to figure out what made me tick and how could I show up authentically for people as an introvert. And that was hard for me because it was Pushing buttons that I really didn’t want pushed. But you have to do the inside work before it can be manifested in a genuine way outside. So it’s not just as simple as one step closer. It’s do the work and then as you get more comfortable, take one step closer. The other thing, I started taking one step closer with people who I was closer to at first, where I was more comfortable. And I thought, well, this isn’t so bad. And in the fullness of time, it changed how I showed up. But it’s a journey. Yeah.

 

Darren [00:50:42]:

Well, there seems to be maybe a bigger theme from this conversation that is becoming clearer to me, which is the combination of maybe patience and urgency. Right. Again, pointing to another and another paradox. And this notion of things are gonna take time. They’re a series of steps toward a goal. And whether it’s the move to get comfortable as an introvert or the three year period at Campbell’s where you architected a big transformation and what was expected of leaders, that’s at least kind of occurring to me as maybe something to take away from this conversation.

 

Doug Conant [00:51:20]:

Yeah, I think it’s a good observation. I think again, I’ll go back to good degree and Jim Collins work. When he did that work, he came up with a framework for a level five leader. The leaders that were at the pinnacle of leading transformational change that promised to be enduring. And he said the two differentiating characteristics of the level five leader were humility and fierce resolve. And I sort of subscribe to that. You know, it’s a grow or die world. I intend to grow. I don’t have it all figured out, but I’m going to grow today so that I can contribute more tomorrow. And I have that resolve and I will carry it with me to my last breath. And for me, it’s also having the humility to learn from the world around me and the people around me, which sort of connects to how can I help and leading by listening. So for me, that’s it in a nutshell. Look, you make tough calls. When I was at Nabisco, people started. I used the Covey organization to help me do some change management in. I was a senior vice president of marketing at the time and I was sort of known as a lovey dovey covey guy. And that implied like I wasn’t tough enough or strong enough. The groups I worked with outperformed everybody else. Everybody else because we were focusing on winning in the workplace in order to ultimately win in the marketplace and honor the agenda of the people that were there. In a way that caused them to want to honor the agenda that we were trying to move forward with. And you know, I commend that mindset to, to everybody. If you want to move things forward, you’ve got to have this mindset is, you know, I’ve got to honor the standards, but I’ve got to also do it in concert with a meaningful effort to honor the people. Just in my experience, it just doesn’t work any other way.

 

Darren [00:53:32]:

Yeah, it’s a great way to sort of bring us towards a conclusion before we do. So I wanted to just offer some space. Is there anything that you haven’t shared that you think is important to share or to put a finer point on something that we’ve already talked about as we close?

 

Doug Conant [00:53:50]:

Well, yeah. I’m celebrating my golden anniversary this year. 50 years in leadership since I survived my MBA at the Kellogg School, which wasn’t even called the Kellogg School then. It’s how old I am. And I’m about to launch the most definitive work I’ve ever done on the subject. It’ll be published in June and you’re the first to hear about it actually, or one of the first. It’s called the Higher Ground Leadership Success System and it builds on all of my work, but it does so in a way that helps you get the foundation built properly and then helps you navigate everything else in a manageable, bite sized way. They forced me with this article to make it approachable and comprehensive at the same time, all in 3,500 words. But you can do it. And what I’m excited about is anybody can do it. And if I had to tee up, one thing out of all of that I’m observing today, in today’s world, it’s the importance of kindness. You know, I think there’s an economic. The economics of kindness are at play here. It’s in short supply and it’s going to be increasingly valued. And so if you want to be a leader of today and tomorrow, you’ve got to lean on bringing kindness into your workplace. If you want people to make choices, to stay with you and work with you and help you lift the enterprise up, you don’t have a choice. You have to be tough minded on standards and kind hearted with people. I’m going to close the thought with one of my favorite quotes. It’s from Conan o’, Brien, of all people, and he says, look, work hard, be kind and amazing things will happen. And that’s been my experience in my 50 year career and it can work for anybody today. They can get to higher ground. And in June, you’ll learn how.

 

Darren [00:56:01]:

I’m looking forward to it. It’s a great way to end, given where we started, which is the complexity of the world around us. And the call to kindness, I think is so needed and so appropriate. Doug, it’s been an absolute privilege and pleasure to have this conversation. Thank you for sharing your 50 years of experience and wisdom and condensing it into an hour, much less 3,500 words. I really appreciate the time. It’s been great.

 

Doug Conant [00:56:26]:

Happy to do it. You ask good questions. Thank you.

 

Darren [00:56:29]:

You’re very welcome.

 

Doug Conant [00:56:31]:

You’re doing important work. You have the potential to move people in the right direction, and the principles you’re employing, you’re skating to where the puck needs to go. So I wish you all the best of luck with it.

 

Darren [00:56:45]:

Oh, thank you. That really resonates. I appreciate it from you in. What a wonderful conversation. What strikes me most about Doug is that his philosophy wasn’t found in a book. It was forged in the wreckage of being fired at 32, refined through a decade of transforming one of America’s most iconic companies, and lived out in 30,000 handwritten notes to people who needed to be seen. His invitation to all of us is simple and demanding in equal measure. Do the inside work and then show up fully for the people in your care. I look forward to being with you on the next episode of one of one. Until then, I hope you live and lead with courage, wisdom, and above all, with love.