Taking People With You: The Only Way to Make Big Things Happen Paperback (8 page)

Just think about how much we advanced our position on the learning curve, in terms of what we needed to do to be a great company, by going out and studying those that were already great. One best-practices tour gave our company a base of knowledge and a focus that we have been building on ever since.

That early best-practices tour really reinforced the idea in our company that, for any problem we need to solve, learning all we can about it is the best place to start. There is always more to know, and when people ask me what I look for when hiring someone, an avid learner tops the list. People who are avid learners love what they do and seek out know-how wherever they can find it, which makes them a whole lot smarter and their results a whole lot better.

The examples below are tangible benefits that have come about as a result of our companywide commitment to always be learning, to being “know-how junkies.” They should give you some ideas about how you, as leader, can seek out opportunities for both you and your team to expand your knowledge about your business:

McDONALD’S IMMERSION DAY
: Over the past six years, McDonald’s has grown its average unit volume by 40 percent, which resulted in a dramatic turnaround of the brand. So a few years ago, I asked every leadership team we had around the world to go to school on McDonald’s. We learned everything we could about them through store visits, research, and tapping former employees, which sparked our commitment to focus even more on the basics of operational excellence as well as to leverage our restaurants more throughout the day with the launch of breakfast menus and by expanding our beverage line beyond carbonated soft drinks.

BEST-PRACTICING APPLE
: On the surface, Apple’s business may seem very different from ours. Nevertheless, the CEO of Taco Bell, Greg Creed, and his senior leadership team visited Apple in 2010 because the company has had such phenomenal success with creating new products that people want and a brand image that people buy into. One of the things Apple leaders talked about was the idea of “addition by subtraction,” which for them meant that, even though they could put forty buttons on an iPod, isn’t it more appealing for the customer to have to deal with just a few? Everything for them comes back to clarity and simplicity, and those concepts have been applied by leaders at Taco Bell in a variety of ways. For example, the team launched a menu-simplification effort that reduced the number of food items offered in order to make it easier for customers to order while, at the same time, allowing us to
improve our speed of service.

SHARING ON ICHING
: We have such a big company and so much know-how within it that one of our biggest challenges has been to figure out how to share that knowledge efficiently and effectively. To figure out how we could make sharing easier, a team headed by our former chief operating officer, Emil Brolick, visited IBM, P&G, and Microsoft to find out about their systems for sharing knowledge. The result was iChing, our own internal network for connecting to each other and sharing ideas and knowledge no matter where we are around the globe. And the most amazing part is that the system has been so successful, that now companies are looking at us as a best-in-class example of sharing know-how. We’ve shared our story with companies like Kimberly-Clark, Marriott, Best Buy, and Disney, among many others.

Four Tactics for Being a Better Know-how Junkie

1. Eliminate “Not Invented Here”:
   The phrase
   not invented here
   refers to an unwillingness to adopt something because it didn’t originate with you. As leader, it’s your job to make sure that nothing gets in the way of a good idea, no matter where it comes from.
   
2. Act Like You Own the Place:
   I don’t mean that you should act like you own the place in terms of your ego, but more in terms of how you think about the business. If you owned the company where you work, you’d be concerned with all aspects of it. You wouldn’t just think about your own role or your own department; you’d think about the total picture. Adopting this attitude will force you to look at and learn about more aspects of the business, which will give you a broader perspective. It will also demonstrate to others your potential for taking on more responsibility.
   
3. Keep Your Big Goal Top-of-Mind:
   In the information age, knowledge is everywhere, so you have to be strategic about it. Have you ever noticed that when you decide which car you want to buy, you suddenly see that car everywhere you go? Well, that’s not because everyone has the same car;
   it’s because identifying what you want gives your brain a focus and a filter. You have to do the same for your Big Goal. Keep your antennae up and your Big Goal top-of-mind, and you will suddenly see ideas for how to reach it everywhere you look.
   
4. Seek Out Knowledge Holders and Sources:
   Be proactive about gaining knowledge by searching for expertise. Who knows something about what you’re working on? Go talk to those people. You’d be amazed how many doors you can open just by telling people you’d like to learn from them. In addition, where can you find information about what you’re working on? Go look up those sources, whether they are case studies, books, business magazines, or what have you.
   

Each year I just wanted to do better, and knowing that we can’t stand still, at the end of every year I would take some topic about the game and research it. I might take rebounding or I might take zone defense or I might take the fast break. I would take all the books written by coaches who I thought excelled in that particular area and I’d read them all and take notes on them. About some things I would call coaches and try to get all the information I could. When Alcindor [later known as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar] came, I’d never had anyone approaching his size, so I started contacting Wilt Chamberlain and coaches that had had extra-tall players and talked to players personally to get all the information I could acquire from them in regards to working with an exceptionally tall and talented player. So I think that working on these things in the off-season kept me sharp. … It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.

—
JOHN WOODEN, COACH OF UCLA’S BASKETBALL TEAM, WINNERS OF TEN NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIPS

Being open to and on the lookout for good ideas yourself is only half the battle. You have to position yourself so that good ideas can come to you. That means creating an atmosphere in which the people around you feel comfortable speaking up and know that there is a benefit to doing so.

I got to be about forty years old and finally had to admit that I didn’t do everything perfectly. That first admission was probably the hardest. … I need to recognize I don’t always have the best ideas. Our people don’t always have the best ideas. My company doesn’t always have the best ideas. So I need to be looking everywhere.

—
DAVID COTE, CEO OF HONEYWELL INTERNATIONAL

Early in my career, I had a boss who, every time I came to him with a new idea, would answer by saying, “That’s funny, I’d been thinking the same thing.” At first I thought it spooky how alike we were, but pretty soon, I caught on. As the big boss, he didn’t want to admit he hadn’t thought of something himself. And it wasn’t just me. Around the office,
“I was thinking the same thing!” became a punch line that one of us would shout anytime anyone had an idea, no matter how trivial. (“I think I’ll go get a glass of water” … “Well what do you know, I was thinking the same thing!”) Not only did our boss’s bad habit dampen our drive to come to him with ideas that could improve the business, but it also caused us to lose respect for him as a leader. After all, if he needed to steal our ideas, he must not have been very
confident about his own.

I think the best thing I can do to become a better leader is to keep an open mind to all different points of view, learn and listen to people of other industries, because I think our world is changing so much that first we’ve got to figure out lots of dots and then figure out how to connect the dots. We need to recognize that there isn’t a book on how to run a $40 billion, now going to a $60 billion, corporation. You don’t just take the book from the rack and read it and become a leader. You have to write the book as you go along. It’s the listening and learning that really makes a difference.

—
INDRA NOOYI, CEO OF PEPSICO

In contrast, Howard Draft, head of Draftfcb, one of the world’s largest communications agencies, once told me how, even though he’s been in the business for more than thirty years, he often relies on the ideas and opinions of young people right out of college. In a recent meeting where a team was working on a creative strategy for a Kraft product, he was offering the group his viewpoint when “this young woman with a pierced nose and red hair looks up at me and goes, ‘You’re absolutely wrong and here’s why you’re wrong.’ I was so proud of her I went over and hugged her.”

Imagine the difference in working for these two guys: One won’t even admit your ideas are your own; the other is hugging an employee in front of everyone because she had the guts to stick up for her opinion, which she backed up with knowledge. Who would you want to work for?

Tactics for Wiping Out “Not Invented Here”

If you want to take people with you and reach your goals more efficiently and effectively, you need to learn to see every person and every experience as an opportunity to expand your knowledge base. The tactics below will help you ensure that you are truly wiping out “not invented here”:

1. Model the behavior by being a know-how junkie yourself:
   When I was in marketing, I read
   Ad Age
   every week cover to cover. In fact, anything that had anything at all to do with marketing, I was all over it, looking for ideas and knowledge about what was going on in the industry. If you want your people to be learners, you have to show them that you have a passion for learning too.
   
2. Actively listen to and learn from others:
   One of the best things I do every year is attend meetings of the American Society of Corporate Executives. This is a group of about thirty active CEOs who get together periodically. The price of admission is that each person has to give a ten-minute presentation on something they’ve learned in the last six months, followed by a Q&A with the other CEOs. This is a group of very smart and very accomplished people, but it’s amazing how much we can all still learn. I’m always surprised by how much knowledge I gain by just listening closely to a group of smart people talk for a few hours.
   
3. Create a culture of healthy debate/healthy decision:
   This means you have to establish a safe environment where people can share and disagree without fear. We had a board meeting once where Javier Benito, the chief marketing officer of KFC, came in to talk about our new Krusher frozen beverages. He was touting the new U.S. formula, which is different from the one that had been successful internationally. I didn’t think the U.S. version was half as good, and I told Javier so at the meeting. He then told me all the reasons why he thought I was wrong. We went back and forth
   like that for a while in front of the board of directors, who are my bosses. After the meeting, I went straight to Javier’s office and told him how much I appreciated that he had expressed his point of view. I still thought he was wrong, of course, and I told him that, too, but more important was the fact that he had displayed the
   courage of his conviction and the kind of behavior we want in our company. So I thanked him for it.
   
4. Celebrate using someone else’s idea:
   There is no idea people love more than their own, but the higher up you get, the more important it is to celebrate other people’s ideas more. Doing so will create an environment where people will want to come to you with their ideas, not hold them back. That’s why, every time I talk about our Achieving Breakthrough Results program, I make sure to give Sam Su credit for being the first to discover the tools from John O’Keeffe. As Robert Woodruff, the former president of Coca-Cola, once said, “There is no limit to what a man can do or how far he can go if he doesn’t mind who gets the credit.”
   
5. Share what you know:
   As I mentioned earlier, I visit Warren Buffett every year, and when people in my organization hear this, they’re always curious. Warren is one of the most respected minds in business today, and people always want to know what he has to say. So after each visit, I share his wisdom with my team. I’ve even started picking one of our top leaders to bring with me to our lunch every year as a reward for superior performance. That way, they can learn directly from him as I do.
   

If I were to say, “Look, this is Steve’s idea and I think it’s a great idea,” people instantly listen. If you say, “I’ve got a great idea,” people are a little skeptical because everyone loves their own ideas. Taking the ideas of other people and championing them is the best way of getting things done.

—
MICKY PANT, PRESIDENT OF GLOBAL BRANDING, YUM! BRANDS

Self-reflection