Notes and Takeaways from Leadership With Integrity with Doug Conant
When I listened to it: December 2021
Why I listened to it: Doug Conant is full of leadership advice and lessons. In this podcast episode with Shane Parrish, Doug talks about the importance of leading with integrity, which starts with creating an authentic foundation.
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My notes
About Shane Parrish
Shane Parrish is the founder of Farnam Street Media and the CEO of Syrus Partners, a private investment company. Shane is on the Board of Directors for WeCommerce ($we.v) Shane has an extensive background in Cyber Security, having worked for the Communications Security Establishment in various cybersecurity roles for over a decade.
About Doug Conant
Doug Conant is a business leader, author, keynote speaker, and social media influencer. He was President of the Nabisco Foods Company, CEO of Campbell Soup Company, and Chairman of Avon Products. In 2011, he founded ConantLeadership, a mission-driven community of leaders and learners.
Doug Conant wants to be remembered by his favorite phrase, “how can I help?” His goal is to help every individual I work with become the best version of themselves.
Doug’s two key influencers.
Doug Conant is full of leadership advice and lessons. Two people had a profound influence on him. One was Stephen Covey, author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. The other one was Jim Collins, author of Good to Great.
After joining Nabisco, Doug was wrestling with his life. He was being challenged to do things as a leader that were more substantial than he’d ever been challenged to do before. He realized he needed to step up his game.
Leaning on the courage of your convictions.
At Nabisco, Doug realized he need to get better anchored in what he believed in so that he could lean on the courage of his convictions. Doug believes leaders need to tend to their own foundations so that when they have to make tough decisions about people and performance, they have the courage to stay true to themselves (i.e. remain authentic).
Most people aren’t clear about their convictions
It’s not possible to rely on the courage of your convictions if you don’t know what your convictions are.
When it comes to leadership, most people fly by the seat of their pants. They react to what comes at them. According to Doug Conant, that’s fine 70 percent of the time. But when you’re in tough situations and facing hard decisions, you need to know where you stand on things.
Increase your confidence by getting clear about what you stand for
When you’re not confident in your convictions, you need to do some work inside to get anchored in what you stand for. Nobody can do this work for you. Ask yourself, “what do I want to stand for? How can I perform in a way that accomplishes results and takes care of people that allows me to look at myself in the mirror every day?”
When you get grounded in what matters to you, you are able to express yourself with full confidence.
Leadership is about people
Leadership is all about the people. As your responsibility as a leader grows, it’s easy to get caught up in the long list of stuff that has to get done and forget about the people. You prioritize performance over people. When you do this, you compromise the relationships with the people that work for you and with you. You’ve got to perform and take care of the people.
People and performance
According to Doug Conant, two things matter in business: performance and people. And if you take care of the people and maintain clear standards, they’ll take care of the performance. And the more you care about the people and what they care about, the more they’ll care about what you care about. When Doug realized this, he committed to assembling a world-class team, giving them all the tools they needed, and providing them air cover when they needed it.
Effective leaders are tough-minded on standards of performance and tender-hearted with people. They care about performance and people. They’re not mutually exclusive. Doug Conant learned this at Kraft, applied it at Nabisco, and really brought it to life at Campbell.
You cannot expect employees to value your agenda until you demonstrate that you value theirs. Commit to showing them you care about them. And trust that in time, they’re going to care about your agenda and help you lift the company up. We’re going to value you and we’re going to trust you’re going to value us.
Create a leadership model
Most leaders don’t have a leadership plan. They have a business plan. They have a financial plan. But they wing leadership. Don’t do this. Leading your people is the most important thing you do and requires a plan. As a leader, you’re on sacred ground. You’re having a profound influence on people’s lives. These people work all day. After they have dinner with their families, they catch up on email. They fall asleep thinking about what they did do and what they didn’t do and what they need to do tomorrow. And they wake up thinking about what they have to do that day. If you want them to be engaged in what you’re doing, create a leadership plan. Don’t wing it.
You can get better at leadership by apprenticing at it and studying the craft. Becoming a word class leader requires reflection and deliberate practice. Envision the type of leader you want to be and build a mental model around that. Then, study the world around you and see what other people are doing and incorporate what relates. And then, continuously improve your leadership.
Find a leadership opportunity that aligns with your leadership model
Once you have your leadership model, you need to find leadership opportunities that align with it. Think about it in terms of a Venn diagram. You have your leadership approach in one circle and the leadership approach that is expected of you in another circle. There should be shared values between how you want to lead and how the organization expects you to lead. This will allow you to show up in a way that’s effective for the organization and fulfilling for you. Being true to yourself is at the heart of this approach, but then you also have to walk in the world with others. You can do both if you’re intentional about it.
Changing culture takes time
You can’t talk your way out of something you behaved your way into. It takes time to change behavior and even more time to see results from that change.
When Doug Conant arrived at Campbell, he inherited a toxic culture. They had been through several years of poor performance, a lot of layoffs, no trust, overpromising, and underdelivering. He told the team that it would take three years to turn it around, but we’ve got to be tough-minded on standards and we’ve got to perform. If you can’t sign up for that, you’re in the wrong place. They turned over 300 of the top 350 leaders in the company after giving them a year and a half or so to get with the program. (According to Doug Conant this was hard because some of these people were not poor performers, they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time from their career perspective.)
Emotional bank account
According to Doug Conant, when making hard decisions at the top, it’s important to stay in the black with your emotional bank account. As a leader, you have to be making deposits every day into that account to build trust and credibility with your people so that when you need to make a giant withdrawal, you don’t go in the red. You make deposits by demonstrating to people that you care about them. Leadership is complicated, and you will screw up. The key is making sure you invest in sufficient trust and credibility with people so you have room to recover. When you know you’re not running on empty, it makes tough decisions much easier.
The number one expectation of a leader
When Doug Conant was CEO of Campbell, the number one expectation of a leader was that you had to inspire trust. If you can’t inspire trust, you can’t sustain performance.
Honor people when you let them go
Before you let people go, make sure the standards are clear. If people aren’t able to meet clear standards, move them out in a way that honors them. They’re not bad people. They’re just not in the right place at the right time.
Leaders live in the past, the present, and the future
Honor the past, deliver in the present, and pave a path to a more prosperous future.
New senior leaders get three years
According to Doug Conant, a new senior leader of an organization gets three years to build sustained success. The first year is the other guy’s fault. The second year is your fault, but you’re learning. And the third year, you own it.
In the first year, you need to declare yourself in the organization by making it clear who you are and what you stand for and reinforcing that with action.
The first 200 days as a leader
You have 100 days to figure it out and 100 days to operationalize a plan and get going. In your first 100 days, you need to establish a principle-centered framework for leading, assess the situation, and lead by listening to the point where everybody is tired of talking and is ready for you to make decisions. By the second 100 days, you want to build a collaborative plan and launch it. From there, it’s all about execution and course correcting as needed.
Go slow at the start to go fast later
If you go a little slow at first, you can go fast later on. When you go slow upfront, it gives people time to feel heard and be part of the process. When you go too fast, it’s your idea and nobody else feels owns it. You’ve got to bring people along with you.
Don’t overpromise, but do establish performance standards
You have got to know what you want to stand for and be honest about the situation. Don’t over-promise. Be willing to lose your job if you have to do it the wrong way. If you’re worried about saving your job, you’re in trouble before you start. You can’t talk a way out of something people behaved their way into over many years. It takes time. That being said, you must demonstrate you’re getting better in the workplace and in the marketplace, every year.
Establish clear performance standards. And then perform in a way that meets or exceeds those standards. If you’re clear about what you intend to do and then you do it, you put points on the board and you get the opportunity to do it again.
Board performance
A board’s performance is about the culture of the board, not its individual members. The key is to create a culture where all points of view can be heard and where people feel comfortable enough to share them.
A good board member engages in constructive dialogue and understands their role is one of oversight, not one of execution and management.
Clear expectations make everyone’s job easier
The more you know what is expected of you, the easier it is to do your job. As a leader, it’s your job to make sure expectations are crystal clear.
Decision-making gets easier when you create clear guidelines for what matters most. When people know what is expected of them, it gets easier to decide.
A lack of patience often keeps people from realizing their potential
Humans are conditions to want fast, but there’s no substitute for cultivating wisdom through experience. We all hunger for a quick fix. But you have to have the patience to focus on getting better every day.
Doug Conant’s morning routine
Doug Conant wakes up between 4:00 and 5:00 every morning. He cultivated that habit because when he was CEO his evening life got crazy and he found that having time in the morning allowed him to center himself for the day. Every morning, he would have a cup of coffee as the sun came up and reflect on what was expected that day. For Doug, it was important to give himself some space and quiet time to get anchored in what mattered most.
30,000 thank you notes
When Doug Conant was the CEO of Campbell, he wrote over 30,000 notes of gratitude. We are built to identify problems and try to fix them. In most companies, the majority of things are being done right, but nobody recognizes this. Doug started handwriting thank you notes as a way to recognize what was being done right. He wrote them anytime he witnessed contributions of real significance that reinforced the company’s values and plans. He would pick ten to twenty a day, six days a week.
The more you celebrate contributions of significance, the more significant contributions you get.
A good thank you note is specific, short, timely, and reinforces your standards.
Random anecdotes:
According to Investopedia, a leveraged buyout (LBO) refers to the acquisition of a company in which a significant amount of money is borrowed to meet the acquisition cost. In an LBO, the target company’s assets usually act as collateral for raising the loan. Once the deal is done, the future cash flow from the newly acquired company helps to repay the debt. In some cases, the debt is repaid by selling off some assets of the acquired firm. An LBO makes a large acquisition possible even if the acquirer has little capital to commit.
RJR Nabisco’s buyout is one of the largest and most controversial takeovers in the history of the private equity industry. RJR Nabisco Inc was bought for $25 billion by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co (KKR) in the late '80s after a stiff takeover fight. The “drama” was so hostile that it was the subject of a popular book, Barbarians at the Gate
Building trust is critical. Trust helps you navigate challenges.
To win in the marketplace, you first have to win in the workplace.
Random quotes:
“You either walk inside your story and own it or you stand outside your story and hustle for your worthiness.” —Brené Brown