Finding the Future with Darius Adamczyk - Ep4 | The Inflection Point | Salesforce

Honeywell. It's a name we all recognize.

Most people still associate us with. Oh, you're the thermostat company.

That's because Honeywell makes a long list of products. We know the N95 mask worn by our healthcare workers, barcode scanners at cash registers, and air safety systems helping pilots avoid collisions.

It just brings kind of joy to my heart to see the kinds of impact we can have on the world.

And Honeywell is everywhere from our own homes to the world's tallest skyscraper to wealth, the moon.

You can do all these things in one company called Honeywell.

But Honeywell is making a dramatic shift from an industrial manufacturing giant into a technology company.

What's different is we innovated and pivoted, and that's what I'm particularly proud of.

It's a pleasure to have Darius Adamchek, the CEO behind this transformation, with us today. Foreign. Hi, Darius. It's wonderful to have you join us today.

Well, thank you, Monica. I'm thrilled to be here.

This show is called the Inflection Point. So my first question to you is, is there a key inflection point in your life when everything changed for you?

Well, I think, Monica, for me there's probably more than one. It's hard for me to point to just one. It's certainly when I joined Honeywell was acquired by Honeywell is one when I got went to Harvard Business School and really changed my career path, but probably a big one. And maybe the one that really changed my whole lifetime was when I immigrated from Poland to the US when I was 11 and dropped into a whole new society, a whole new country about speaking the language and trying to adjust to that culturally as an 11 year old about really having that background and language skills to do that was certainly a big one. And I like look back on that time with mixed emotions because on one hand it was exciting, but it was also difficult. Particularly for the first several months, you.

Only knew 100 or 200 words of English and you were plopped into school. What grade did you start in?

I actually skipped the grades. I went right into seventh.

Oh, I did.

Which, yeah, that worked out okay for math and science, not so great for English. So it was an opportunity and a challenge at the same time.

And so here you are, you're in America and you loved all the new things. But as kids can be they were mean to the new kid.

Well, obviously when you're come from a different culture, when you can't speak the language, you can't communicate, you can't understand People you don't understand, the sports, the culture, then kids can tend to pick on you. And frankly, my first few years in the country weren't particularly fun. I mean, there were some great kids I've met that helped me, but there were quite a few that actually picked on me as well. And back then, sort of the Polish jokes were very, very popular. And I think I've heard every one of them and every variety. But like anything else, you got to kind of persevere and move on.

So you had to learn a lot about perseverance as a boy, really. And at some point, did it make you wish you had not even come to America? Did it get that tough?

Well, I think very early on, I would say in the first few months, I really felt like maybe we made a mistake by coming here, because I was miserable, my mother was miserable. My father really was the one that really drove us coming to this. And, you know, frankly, we weren't particularly well prepared because we didn't speak the language. And they had to shift careers and they had to work extraordinarily hard to make a living. And the first few months were really, really hard.

You know, the Polish jokes, a lot of them were about, you know, you're not smart. I mean, that's kind of a lot of the Polish jokes. But you actually showed those mean kids, because look at you. You got two engineering degrees, you got an MBA from Harvard. Then you rose the ranks at GE and Booz Allen, Ingersoll, Rand. And then in 2008, you were the CEO of a company that was acquired by Honeywell. So did you feel like, hey, I'm doing pretty well in the US of.

A. Yeah, it seems like I am, and it's kind of fun to achieve what I have particularly given kind of the humble beginnings. But I really believe in sort of the American dream. I still think it's possible, and certainly my father believed in it, and that's why he came here. And. And hard work, perseverance can pay off. And I think I exhibit that now.

When Honeywell bought your company, Metrologic, were you super excited? Oh, my God, I've arrived.

When we got bought by Honeywell, I frankly thought, oh, here we go. I'm going back into a large company again, which I was part of another large company before then, and frankly, that's not what I was looking for. I was looking for independence, and I like being the CEO of my own company and. And frankly, enjoyed that culture. So my point of view was, I'll stay in Honeywell for a little while. And then I'll probably move on. And I wasn't particularly excited when that happened, and particularly since I was required to stay a year or two with Honeywell.

Exactly. So they put on those golden handcuffs, which made you be there for at least a year or two. And then to your surprise, though, the competitive spirit took over. Right. Is it true you went to Dave Coat, whom I know from years past, the previous CEO of Honeywell. Did you go to him and say, hey, give me the hardest job in this company and let me handle it?

Oh, that's. That's very true. As a matter of fact, at first, I kind of thought, well, just kind of sit on the sidelines. I'll pass the time. I'll move on to something else. But. But that only worked for a couple of weeks, because if you're in the game, then you might as well play it well. And so kind of my competitive spirits took over. And then a little bit later on, I went to Dave and kind of said, I really need a bigger challenge, and kind of looked at me and smiled. So what are you looking for? I said, well, give me the most broken thing you have, the biggest challenge you have in the company. That's what I like to go up and run. And he obliged. A division that, frankly, wasn't doing particularly well. It was extraordinarily complex. And he told me, he said, okay, let's see what you got. If you can turn this thing around, then a lot of things are possible for you in the future. And that's what happened.

And so you obviously turned it around. He later said that you know more about technology than he could study for 10 straight years and still not understand it. So do you apply that kind of grit from your childhood and your engineering background? Is that the approach you take?

Well, first of all, I think Dave is being extraordinarily kind, but I do think, particularly when facing tough challenges, grit and perseverance are required, because especially when you take over a challenged business, the bad news substantially outweighs the good news. And if you let that weigh you down and you become incapacitated and you make others make decisions and you don't have a direction and a compass, very quickly, that company could derail even further. So I do kind of look back on my childhood and some of the experiences I had, and I kind of look back and say, okay, I face tougher challenges than this we can overcome. And, you know, there's been a few like that in my career.

And now you ultimately succeeded Dave as the CEO in 2017. But you did have a setback along the way. As you were climbing the ladder at Honeywell, you were passed over for a promotion that you thought you deserved. How did you handle that?

So, you know, you kind of go through the full range of emotions, all the way from self doubt to anger to lame, that every range of emotion was there. But then you kind of settle down. And what I usually do, and you say, well, okay, but what's within my control? It's really what I did. I said, well, what could I have done better? And I didn't do that right away. I wasn't happy. And I think it's fine not to be happy. But you got to get over it. You got to get over it. You got to get over it fairly quickly. And setbacks are part of life. And the key is, and this is, this is a bit of a cliche, but it's certainly been true for me, which is I've learned so much more for my setbacks than my successes.

Wow.

Because successes, you don't really learn that much because you achieve your objective and you kind of get there and say, oh, congratulations, you achieved X, Y and Z. Well, great. I guess I must have done a lot of things right. But from your setbacks, you look back and say, well, what didn't I do? Well, what could I have done differently? And you got to have a little bit of self reflections and self adjustments to really become a bit better in the future. And I think that that's been something that I've tried to retain. And by the way, even today as CEO, you get less and less feedback and you have to pick on very, very small cues. You gotta be sensitive enough to say, not heading in the right direction. And that's an important trait.

So are you telling us that being a CEO is not all cushy and great? It's not wonderful? And how does anybody keep you in check?

Yeah, well, that's true, Monica. There's. You know, the way I describe being a CEO is you're on this very, very small island, and I'm very, very lucky because I have a tremendous team. But at the end of the day, you own the decisions as CEO, and it can be a very lonely place. And you have to be both confident and humble at the same time. You have to be confident enough to make the decisions that lead the company in the right direction, but humble enough to listen to others and admit mistakes. Because every CEO makes mistakes. The great ones admit them in a just direction.

That's interesting. And you have 100,000 employees counting on you. What is it like then, day to day, being the CEO? Do you find that it's fun to get up every day, or do you find that every day you're hit with these problems, problem after problem?

It's both. I mean, it's. There are tough days and there are days that are just exhilarating. And it can go from day where you're just kind of fighting problem after problem after problem to days where you really feel great because you're either helping the world. You're, you know, the business is doing well and your initiative is working. We're helping the medical community or helping the world. We emerge from COVID but at the same time, there are some downs. And generally when people come see the CEO, it's usually not to share great news.

What's your ratio of good news to bad news? Let's take a typical day. Is it 50? 50?

We're like 90, 10.

90 bad news or 90 good news?

90 bad news, 10% good news.

Wow. How do you say stay so up?

Because most of the problems can be solved. And I tell my staff this, which is, I want to know bad news early because usually problems don't go away. They just grow bigger and they get more and more difficult to solve. So if we know bad news early and we share it, then we can fix these issues. That's why I don't get too down over them, because they're fixable. Now.

Honeywell was doing just fine, but you decided we're going to move from doing just fine and being an industrial giant to actually becoming more of a technology company serving the industrial sector. What did that take of you to make such a major pivot? You are transforming this big company.

That was challenging because, frankly, when I took over, it was just, don't break anything. Just keep doing what it is. And I knew then that I didn't want to just keep doing what he's been doing. And although Dave did a tremendous job in running Honeywell for essentially a decade and a half, I also knew that we had to evolve and change and so on. And I really strongly believe that there are people who take over very broken companies and make them good, get a lot of accolades and awards and deservingly so, because it's difficult, stressful, and so on. I actually believe it's much harder to pick a company that's good like Honeywell was when I took over and. And trying to make it great, that's much more difficult. And I knew that we were outstanding in terms of productivity and process and so on. But we had opportunity for growth and becoming a company that provides technologies for the industrial side. And that's kind of the journey we've been on for the last decade that I've been CEO. And we still have a long way to go, but we're making great progress.

These new technologies that you're getting into, are there two or three that you can tell us about that we could understand?

Well, I'll try. Monica, Two or three is not fair. I'll try to name two or three.

Otherwise we'll be here for the rest of the day. Because I know you've got that many you're working on.

Let's start with quantum computer. This isn't like a digital computer. This looks more like a science lab. And that's the physical appearance of this. It's something that's very embryonic at this stage, but something that's going to be very, very important in terms of next generation of computing power that's simply not available today. The other thing that I'm particularly proud of is this whole vision about transforming the company and moving it to more of a software solution orientation from protecting the industrial workers through flying planes more safely. That's kind of the tip of the sphere in terms of driving the new Honeywell strategy, probably. And a couple of other quick examples is some of our sustainable technologies. I mean, we're going to try to help change the energy industry and really helping some of the big oil and gas companies evolve from who they are today to the future, because we know the future is going to have much more renewable and sustainable energy.

Okay, so the quantum computing is like so crazy town, I barely grasp it. Do grasp the systems that you're putting in place. And then on the sustainable technology aspect, that is going to actually help the climate. Right. And is that where you're going to turn mustard seeds into fuel?

That's. That's one of the places we can. We can, you know, Jethropa, mustard seeds, oils, fats, we can turn all of that into fuel. We're actually one of the inventors of green diesel, green fuels. But unfortunately, it's only now that we're getting substantial interest in these technologies as the world wants to become more sustainable now.

Your transformation that you've just laid out is so radical. You sold off what everybody, when they think of Honeywell, they think of the little thermostat. You all had to actually come up with a brand campaign. And you say things like, you know, the future is what we make it. What did you want to do with Your new brand campaign?

Well, a couple of things. The first one is communicate who Honeywell is and what we do because most people still associate us with, oh, you're the thermostat company, so that's one. And really provide an overview the key technologies that we deliver for the aerospace industry or building controls, warehouse automation, sensing and control, industrial safety. Maybe as much as targeting potential customers, we really wanted to target potential employees. Because I strongly believe there's no better place to work in the world than Honeywell. And here's why. Because if you want to have a meaningful impact on the world, and I mean the word meaningful is critically important because whether you want to provide technologies that enable aircraft to fly and provide technologies that enable commercial buildings to operate, whether you want to transform the energy industry or you want to protect the medical workers, the first responders, you can do all these things in one company called Honeywell. So I also wanted to really portray all these things that we do. And you know, the future is really what we make it because we influence so many things for the future. And I'll give you, if I could just maybe just. I'm going to give you one more example of something we did in this Covid era that I'm so proud of. The world is going to need billions upon billions of vials for vaccines. We know that there's going to be a glass shortage. We just don't have seven and a half billion vials sitting around. There's a shortage. So through our materials group and some of the expertise there, we've came up with a new viable, but different material that's lighter, less susceptible to damage. It's in testing right now and it's going to provide a very good alternative to glass.

Now, did you jump on that, Darius, because this is necessary right now for Covid, or did you jump on it because this is a money making opportunity or both?

I would tell you that we responded quickly and effectively to the COVID crisis without really worrying about how much money we're going to make. And frankly, we didn't make a lot of money. But that wasn't the point. The point is we needed to help the country to come out of this crisis that we're in and we needed to help out our medical workers. And that's, that's why I love working here because it just brings kind of joy to my heart to see the kinds of impact we can have on the world.

You all also ramped up production of ventilators and PPE for healthcare workers.

I think that this again is sort of a little bit of a. We took a very sharp pivot in early 2020. Everybody wanted to kind of feel sorry for themselves in March and April 2020. Oh, no. You know, our aerospace market is disappearing, and some of our oil and gas customers are struggling, and some of those markets are really struggling. And what we did is we said, well, let's view this as an opportunity to shift the business.

Do you think, Darius, that you all were ideally suited to deal with COVID in part because you had gone through 911 and had to deal with that crisis for the airlines?

Well, Honeywell is a company that reacts really well to crises, and we've had a few. I mean, we've seen our markets kind of disappear overnight before, and 911 was a great example of that. Our biggest business is aerospace. And, you know, we've had to deal with that crisis after 911 and where for a while that market was dramatically depressed. And we kind of had the playbook. We knew what to do. We didn't take weeks or months to to act. We acted immediately. And what's different is we innovated and pivoted. And that's what I'm particularly proud of. I actually find that Honeywell people operate at their best during a crisis, and especially because there was such a higher purpose involved, which is to help the world fight this pandemic. And we were thrilling. What's possible.

You also got national attention from your mass vaccination effort you did in Charlotte, which, by the way, moving to Charlotte was another one of your major transformations. You got out of Morristown, New Jersey, right to Charlotte. And being a Southerner myself, how are you liking the South?

I loved it. I love Charlotte. We love being here. And it was a real thrill for us to partner with Atrium Health, with the Panthers, the Speedway. And it wasn't about the mass vaccination event. I mean, we're very proud of what we were able to accomplish because we literally vaccinated person every four and a half seconds.

But you used a lot of your Honeywell systems to get that done, right?

That's right. We developed some new technology using our barcoding technology around our software and so on, just to process people more quickly through the lines. And, you know, we actually wrote a handbook that we distributed to every governor in the country a little bit about how to do this.

And your handbook, I think, also has gone to the Biden administration. You now have an actual how to do this mass vaccination that can be used by others.

And that's precisely why we did it? It wasn't so much about the one or two events when it demonstrated what's possible, but to really kind of share some of the best practices with the entire country.

One recent development for Honeywell is that you were re added to the Dow, which is a big accomplishment. You were on the Dow years ago, you came off, now you're back on. Do you think this is some affirmation of what you're trying to do at Honeywell?

Well, that was certainly a thrill. And we're one of the few companies that was subtracted or deleted from the Dow and then added back in last year, which obviously is particularly exciting for all of us. And we're all very proud of that accomplishment. I know I speak on nearly 100,000 employees in Honeywell. We're thrilled to be part of it. And I do think it means that we're a very relevant company company in terms of the business world and in terms of the solutions and technologies we provide. Our day to day people did a great job. I'm not going to take any credit for that. This is really a high honor for all of the Honeywell employees and we're thrilled to be at it.

It is a big deal. So congratulations on it.

Thank you.

Before we go, let's gaze into the future because you are a very future focused company. You're making all these changes that are happening now, but you're also doing that won't even happen in your lifetime. That makes me think of the Jetsons. Do you remember the Jetsons with the flying cars? And you all are coming up with a flying drone taxi or something. So what is one or two of your very favorite way out there things in the future that Honeywell is looking at?

Electric power generation for aircraft is something that we're working on now.

Well, we're thinking electric cars is a big change and you're thinking electric airplanes.

Electric airplanes and hydrogen power, aircraft of some type. And I really believe that you kind of have to have this horizon that's short term because investors don't really like it and say, well, don't worry what happens for next five years. That doesn't really play well. But if you stagger these short term, medium term and really long term investments, I really only have one objective which is to leave Honeywell much better and much better position than when I took over. That's what I think most CEOs hopefully want now.

One thing that I saw that you all are doing in the future is getting it where people can breathe on Mars. Is that going to happen anytime soon. When will we be able to go to Mars and breathe there?

Yeah, I don't know if that's going to happen anytime soon. But, yes, we can have a role to play now as well.

Well, listen, thank you for telling me all the transformation that's underway at Honeywell under your leadership, talking about the future. And when you say your brand campaign is to attract not just the show what the customers you can do, but attract new employees, I'm sure people watching you today are going to say that Honeywell, that's a different kind of company and that's a different kind of CEO. So thank you so much for joining us today.

Well, thank you, Monica. It was a pleasure to talk to you today. Thank you so much.

Join me next time on the Inflection Point when I sit down with James Quincy, CEO of Coca Cola.

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