“The more you honor people and their whole selves, the more they honor the agenda and better perform. It’s not rocket science.”
— Doug Conant
I host a weekly radio show on SiriusXM 111, Business Radio Powered by Wharton, called Work and Life. We publish edited versions of my conversations as free podcasts. I invite you to listen to the episode (embedded below) that is my conversation with Doug Conant, founder of Conant Leadership and former CEO of the Campbell Soup Company, where he transformed employee engagement from average into world class. Doug is a NYT bestselling author, Chairman of the Kellogg Executive Leadership Institute at Northwestern University, co-chairman of CECP, and former Chairman of Avon Products.
In this conversation, Doug describes how he lead Campbell’s Soup Company from among the worst of all Fortune 500 companies in employee engagement to best-in-class. This story is so compelling because Doug emphasizes the struggles he had to overcome to make even incremental changes. Over ten years, these small improvements ended up having substantial impact. We also talk about the importance of reflection, particularly in how Doug overcame difficult experiences like getting fired early in his career. The big takeaway from this conversation that Doug shows so well is that we have more control than we think. Listen and learn new ways of thinking about leadership and what it means to bring your whole self to work.