Former Yum! Brands CEO on Leadership, Talent, and Self-Coaching

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Somehow I found a podcast called How Leaders Lead hosted by David Novak. The guest list is like a who's who of business and sports, and it turns out that David Novak is co-founder, retired chairman, and CEO of Yum Brands, which is a New York Stock Exchange listed company and one of the world's largest restaurant companies with over 45,000 restaurants in more than 135 countries and territories. And he's been recognized as the 2012 CEO of the Year by Chief Executive Magazine, one of the world's 30 best CEOs by Barron's, one of the top people in business by Fortune, and one of the 100 best performing CEOs in the world by Harvard Business Review. Okay, I share all that with you to let you know that that David has an incredible background. And in our podcast today, we cover a broad range of topics on how you can improve your personal performance, your company's performance, insights on self-coaching from his new book, Take Charge of You. And make sure you listen to the end as David shares a moving answer to my question about if he could bring one person back from the dead for 12 months, who would that be and why? With that, let's get started with David Novak. I know you play a lot of golf. You've played with some amazing partners in golf. What would you say is a lesson or two that you learned from golf that can inform what it takes to be a great leader?

Well, I think the great golfers have process and discipline around what they do. They know their game well. They know what they have to do. They practice with process and discipline around what really matters so that when they get on the course, they can perform under pressure. And I think in business, that's something that is paramount. You know, I've studied great leaders and great businesses, and they all put process and discipline around what really matters to their business so that they can satisfy their customers or what it takes to really drive productivity. This doesn't happen by accident. It happens because they've thought things through and they know how to get right good execution, and then they put the process in place to get it. The other thing that I think golf is a primary example of is commitment. You know, when you talk to the great golfers and you ask them why they ever miss a shot, most of them will tell you it's because they didn't believe that they might have the right club or they had a little bit of uncertainty. And as a result, you know, that creeped in their mind and they don't hit the shot with the kind of commitment that it takes to perform. And I think in business, you, you've got to believe, you know, you become what you, you think you are. You have to attack business with the commitment that you can get it done. And even with uncertainty, you have to wade through that uncertainty looking for the right answer with the commitment that you're going to ultimately get there.

Now, I know you played golf with Ray Floyd, and I heard you tell a story about you got on about the 12th tee and you asked him a question. Do you remember that story?

Oh yeah, absolutely. You know, we were playing together and, uh, we were You know, it was a really fun day and he was playing okay. He wasn't playing great, but he was playing very solid as you'd expect for a guy like that. But I asked him about the Masters, when he won the Masters. I said, what were you thinking? Because I always like to get inside of the head of leaders and figure out how they think. And I said, what were you thinking when you won the Masters? And he said, well, you know, all I was thinking about is where I wanted the ball to go. I visualized every shot. I thought about where I wanted it to go. And then I swung with the belief that it would get there. And Guess what? You know, the whole week the ball went where I basically wanted it to go. And you know, it was interesting. We played the 13th hole, which is a par 3, and he hit it to 2 feet and made birdie. Then he, on the 14th hole, he hit it to like 5 feet, made birdie. And the 16th hole, he made birdie from 10 feet. And then on the, you know, he all of a sudden got in this zone. And I said, Ray, what was it that really turned your game on there? And he says, I started thinking about what I did when I won the Masters. And I thought that was a great great story about the power of visualization, the power of thinking things through, and the power that we all have, you know, when we're— we can go back into our memory bank and think about the things that we've done well, and that can inspire us to do things well in the future as well.

Let's go back to your earlier days. As I understand it, you lived in 32 trailer parks in 23 states by the time you were 12. So coming from that kind of childhood, you became the CEO of publicly traded Yum Brands, co-founder, multi-billion-dollar market capitalization company. You're leading iconic brands like KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut. And I'm proud to say, I think I spent a lot of money while you were the CEO at those brands while our kids were growing up.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

What I'm wondering is, what are some of the skill sets or mindsets or other attributes do you think you either had or that you were able to develop as you were becoming a leader that enabled you to go from that kind of start to becoming what I think Chief Executive Magazine named you the CEO of the Year in 2012?

Well, you know, what's interesting is people are always amazed by my background because I did live in 23 states by the time I was in 7th grade. And, you know, I lived in a trailer. My dad was a government surveyor. We basically hooked up the government truck to the trailer and went with the surveying party from town to town. And, you know, I'm the only person person, Steve, that you know that's lived in Dodge City, Kansas, I imagine. But I actually lived in Dodge City, Kansas twice. I lived in small towns all across America. I was born in Beeville, Texas, lived in places like Chama, New Mexico, Detroit Lakes, Minnesota, Kimball, Nebraska, all these little small towns. And people say, well, how could you get to where you are coming up in an environment like that? I always say, and I mean this with all my heart, that I succeeded because of my upbringing. Not in spite of it. Because my upbringing was really fantastic. My mom and dad, all they wanted for me was to achieve the American dream, get a college education, which I did as the first kid in my family to basically do it. And, you know, they were encouraging, you know, they were supportive. They were, they were with me all the way. And, and even when I was playing Little League baseball, you know, my dad would be the coach, but the surveying party would come out and watch me play. I always had fans, you know, people that were cheering me on. And I grew up believing there was nothing that I couldn't what I could accomplish if I really worked hard. And my dad was an extremely hard worker, as was my mother. And today they're still my biggest fans. Like, they'll listen to this podcast, Steve, and they'll call me up and say, that was really great. I really liked it. Or you could have done this a little better or whatever, but they're always looking out on my behalf. So, what did I learn from all of that experience? Well, number one, I had to be checked into schools every 3 months. My mom would say, hey, David, you're going to be checking into a new school. You better make friends because we're leaving. So, you know, I learned how to read new situations. And I learned how to work through the anxiety of being in new situations or places that would make you uncomfortable. And in business, you have to do those kinds of things. And the other thing that I think you have to have in business and as leaders, you've got to have a good gauge on people. You have to really have a good sense of whether people are telling you the truth, BSing you. You have to gauge their capabilities and their potential. And, you know, in this particular world that I grew up in, I was always assessing people. I always had to come into new situations, figure out who I wanted to make friends with, who I wanted to hang with. And I think that really helped me. People always said throughout my career, how did you understand about this person? You just met them. Well, I kind of got a good gut instinct on people from this upbringing. And I learned how to get to know people in a hurry, ask them questions that could get them engaged. Form a conversation that would help me. And I think that upbringing really kind of made me the people person that I needed to be in business. And I do think, Steve, people capability is critical. I always say the formula for success for any business is if you can build your people capability, then you're going to satisfy more customers, then you make money. Too many people start thinking about, hey, I want to make money, but they don't really think about how to get there. And it's always through people. And I really had a great appreciation for people and people at at all levels. That was the other thing that I really got. You know, when I went out in our restaurants and I met with the frontline, you know, my mom and dad never had a college education, were hardworking people, and they could have been CEOs. They were just as smart, if not smarter than me. They just didn't have the experience and the coaching that I got throughout my career. And so when I'd go out in the frontline, I would always talk to people and ask them what's working, what's not working. I would always see my mom and dad out there. You know, I saw all kinds of people that I thought had all kinds of capability. And the only thing that separated me from them is they just didn't get the opportunities that I had. And I genuinely believe that. But I think that belief in all people that you shouldn't look up, you're no better than it, you know, nobody is any better than you. You shouldn't look down. You're not better than anybody else. You look everybody straight in the eye and deal with everybody as equals. I think that came from my upbringing. And I think those were keys that helped me at least get some, some success in business.

I know one of the ideas that you talk about in your new book, Take Charge of You, is this idea of reframing. And I love how you started answering my question where you said you feel like some people might look at living in a trailer park and all the different movements that you did is like, well, that would be difficult. But you said you view it the other way. You know, it's not I didn't succeed in spite of, I succeeded because of.

Right.

So I like how you frame that there.

Thank you.

Another person, I guess, that you've had on your podcast, Larry Senn, and you talked about the importance of people here. I know you and Larry talked about the importance of culture, and he said, cultures don't change, people do. I'd love for you to explore a little bit culture, how you thought about culture as you were running Yum Brands, and what are some of your thoughts there?

Yeah, it's interesting. You know, Larry Senn probably had the biggest impact on my career of anybody in terms of helping me. He was the father of culture, and he really created the idea of corporate culture, researched it, and developed all kinds of tools that leaders like myself could use within their company to get people engaged and create the kind of culture that you're looking for. But I have to tell you, Steve, I never really thought about culture. You know, I didn't even like the word. Culture sound too much like a germ to me. You know, to me, what I thought culture really was, was getting people to work together and get people aligned, get people on the same page, and create the kind of behaviors that, you know, that could really drive results. And I always did that. I always kind of figured out what we needed to do to win, what behaviors we really needed to have to win. And then I did everything I could to reinforce and recognize those behaviors in my organization or my team or whoever I happened to have the privilege of leading. So to me, I'm a big believer in recognition. In fact, I've written a book on recognition called A Great One. It's, you know, a little story about the awesome power of recognition. When you think about recognition, I think about it in a very purposeful fashion. Like for example, in the restaurant business, we studied like the behaviors of our highest performing restaurant general managers, what they did. Well, they believed in all people, they had great customer mania, they recognized people, they held people accountable. They, you know, but these were the traits that all the highest performers really had. And so we made those traits, those behaviors, our cultural values. And by the way, I don't really like the idea of values, you know, because I think that's too amorphous. I like the idea of behaviors. And then when you see those behaviors, you recognize the heck out of them, you have fun doing it. And guess what happens is you'll see more of it. That's what I found is if people really know what your expectations are, and you recognize it and you reinforce, but not only the good behavior, but also let people know that you don't accept the bad behavior, then, you know, the recognition is well-earned. You are going to see the kind of actions that lead to results. I look at culture as something that should be very purposeful and driven around the key things that you know are going to drive the business.

So customer mania, I don't think I've ever heard that phrase before. So I love that. You also talk about the importance of recognizing people. When you're running a large multi-billion dollar publicly traded company, you're held to quarterly standards. You've got quarterly earnings reports that you got to meet. So I know that you would track metrics, obviously, like every other leader would. I think you had an acronym called CHAMPS. Could you describe what that is? Talk a little bit about the importance of metrics in running a business.

Well, I wrote this book called Take Charge of You: How Self-Coaching Can Transform Your Life and Career. And one of the big things that you have to do And when you self-coach yourself is have a self-coaching habit, which means you got to be focused on continuous improvement. And every single day you wake up and figure out what's important in your business and what's important in your life, and you figure out how you're going to really make that happen. So I think, you know, having the right measures for any business is really important. For us at the operating level, we did have the acronym called CHAMPS, which stood for cleanliness, hospitality, accuracy, maintenance, product quality, and speed.. And we measured every aspect of those key dimensions in our restaurants.

And so people had their basic CHAMP score.

And so, you know, we could celebrate somebody if their CHAMP score went from 75 to 90. And we also would know if it went from 90 to 65, something was going wrong. Okay. But I think, you know, having those metrics are very important.

The other thing that we did, and I know the great companies do, is we rack and stacked all our stores.

Okay?

So everybody's metrics were out there for everybody else to see. And you know, nobody wants to be last. Nobody wants to be bottom tier. People don't wake up wanting to be mediocre, but you need to know where you stand so you can get better and improve. So, you know, I mentioned a little bit earlier about having process and discipline around what really matters. I think you need to measure what really matters. And if you go back to your golfing analogy, you know, people measure, you know, strokes gained putting.

Strokes gained by driving.

You know, these pros, they know everything about how they're doing and what it basically leads to. And I think every business should focus on what really matters and then measure what really matters. And when you do, you're going to build a performance culture, which everybody has to have.

Now, if there's too much of a focus on the numbers, it's like, who's going to get excited by the numbers? And as I was doing some of my research on you, it looks like as you had your CHAMPS acronym, and as you were measuring that, you could see, okay, well, somebody made a little bit of an improvement. But I think you realized, well, hey, that wasn't enough. And so you started identifying, I think you called them brand builders, like the top 15%, and then the bottom 10% were brand destroyers, and the middle were— tell me a little bit about that structure. What did that do for the company?

We really wanted to categorize our restaurants in a way that would motivate people to perform better and get our franchisees to perform better. So, if you had certain, you know, very high scores, you're brand builders. Conversely, if your scores were very low, you're a brand destroyer. Okay? And nobody wanted to be in that red box. Everybody wanted to be in the green box. And then obviously, we had a lot of people in the middle. Okay? But you want to be lifting people up. You know, among the most important things you can do is have high standards. Because when you, When you allow mediocre performance and look past it, you're basically demotivating the people who are really getting it done. And so, people really took a lot of pride in being brand builders. And I guarantee nobody wanted to be a brand destroyer.

Okay?

So, people were constantly looking at how they could move up. And then when franchisees would look at each other, it was kind of hard to chime in on what you ought to be doing with the marketing if you weren't running your stores well.

Okay?

So, it really motivated people to get focused on what they basically can control.

So let's do a little word association. So I'm gonna mention two words and I would love to hear your first reaction.

You ready?

Yep. Okay.

Crystal Pepsi. Biggest learning lesson.

Okay. And what was the lesson you learned?

When I went to Pepsi as a head of marketing, you know, the category was declining. We needed a big idea. I was sitting in my office one day and I said, you know what? Brands that are really growing are clear. They don't have any caffeine. What if we create a clear Pepsi? Took that idea to consumers. They loved the idea. We called it Crystal Pepsi. We put it into the market in record time, launched it on the Super Bowl. Like within 8 months, we got it ready to go for the Super Bowl. You know, this was the biggest idea I thought I'd ever come up with in my life. But I basically was a heat-seeking missile, wanted to get it on the Super Bowl, turn the business around as fast as possible. And I didn't listen to any input. And the input I got from the franchise bottlers is, you have a great idea, but the problem is, David, it doesn't taste enough like Pepsi. And I said, yeah, I don't want it to taste like Pepsi. I want it to be a lighter cola flavor. And they said, well, You need to call it Pepsi because, or, and make it taste a little bit like Pepsi because you're calling it Crystal Pepsi. And I said, ah, you don't get it. Okay. But guess what happened? This was the only product in the history of the Pepsi-Cola Company that was launched at a premium price as a carbonated soft drink. And the reason was, is the bottlers, the franchise bottlers who controlled the pricing, priced it high because I said, what are you doing? Why are you pricing it so high? They said, well, it's not gonna be around that long. And they were right. Okay. People tried it. But they didn't think it tasted enough like Pepsi. I should have called it Crystal Pepsi. And I blew a big idea. Now the good news is people made a lot of money on it because they priced it at a premium price and it got a lot of trial. But the sad part for me is when I look and think back about Crystal Pepsi is that it could have been a really long-term, big sustaining idea if I just would've gotten people more involved and listened. So that was a big learning lesson that I took throughout my career.

Okay. I know during your time at Yum Brands, you made the trek to Omaha a number of times, which is my hometown, born and raised there. You'd visited Warren Buffett. Tell me a little bit about what did you learn from Warren?

Well, the reason why I went to see Warren Buffett was, you know, I became the head of Yum Brands and I'd never had any experience working with the investment community. We were a Pepsi customer, but I knew that Warren Buffett was on the Coke board. So I called Doug Ivester, who was the CEO of Coca-Cola, and I said, And I knew they wanted this to pour Coca-Cola. And I said, I'd really like to have the opportunity to meet with, you know, Mr. Buffett. And he said, well, I can set that up. And he set it up. So I started going to see him, I think it was in 1998. And went to see him every year through 2016. And I learned so much. But when I went to him on the investment side, one thing they told me is they said, you can go there, but don't talk about your stock. So as soon as I walked in there, all he did was talk about about the business and the stock and, you know, how I felt about it. And I asked him for some advice. And he says, well, David, you're in a really tough category. Some people are in categories you can roll out of bed and make money, but you need to tell people that you're not going to be right every day, but you're going to be right more often than you're wrong. And he said, the other thing, he said, David, you're really passionate about your brands. And I said, yeah, I am. And he said, well, you might want to consider tempering that a little bit so that you can let people know what could go wrong in your business and talk about that so that people will trust you more. It'll give you more credibility. So I really learned the concept of what I call sober selling from him. You go in and you talk about your company to investors. You tell them what you think is really great. You really get excited. And then at the end you say, what are the— but you need to know there's a couple of things that could go wrong in our business. And I said, for us, Food safety. If we have a food safety issue, our business always goes down about 20% for at least 6 months.

So that can happen.

We always bounce back from it, but it can be another thing. The other thing is, is that social media, digital is really exploding. And so now if there is something that is even wrong about your business and it gets out, it can spread virally even if it's not true. So you gotta be aware of that.

And you know, I have to tell you, just by talking about the things that could go wrong, just like Warren Buffett said, I gained a lot of credibility. And I had a great reputation, I think, with the investors and they stood with our company for a long time.

And I think it was that directness and honesty, the transparency that I had that really helped out.

And I think Warren really helped me understand that it's okay to be passionate.

It's great. And as a matter of fact, I wouldn't want to have anybody that isn't passionate about their business, but you need to temper your enthusiasm a bit.

But he just doesn't believe in overselling. He believes in just laying it all out there. So, he'll talk about why he still invests in a company even though it's gone down, because he believes in the fundamentals. But he just kind of tells it like it is from his perspective. And he's had such a great track record.

People listen to him and they should..

And the other thing that I learned is just how he treats people. He treats people really well. I started bringing my highest performers with me to meet with him. So as a little bit of recognition. So I brought one guy in from Australia and he had the Australian flag outside his office. And we would always go out to the KFC because he loved KFC. I'd buy him lunch at KFC and he'd always go in the back of the house and meet with the restaurant team. And then take a picture with them where he'd be handing them his billfold. He had fun. I always tell everybody, you need to love what you do. And he's a perfect example that, you know, he has autobiography is basically tap dancing to work, you know, because he never has worked a day in his life. I mean, he's doing what he loves. I mean, this is his passion and he's excited about it. I'm sure he's had down days, but the fact of the matter is, is he loves getting up every day and attacking business. And, you know, I learned that from him as well.

I met him once on the golf course in Omaha back in the late 1990s. And so we were chatting at his golf cart and I was with my dad. And my dad's been an investor for 50, 60 years. My dad pulls out a $20 bill and says, Warren, he says, can you tell me how I can take this $20 bill and turn it into $20,000? And Warren says, well, I can't tell you how to do that, but I can tell you how to double it. And my dad says, well, how? And he says, fold it over and put it in your pocket. Well, that's Warren, you know, that's Warren Buffett. Some of his folksy wisdom. So, all right, well, let's jump into a second segment here, and I want to do this as a bit of a rapid fire, and then I want to dig into a third part here where we'll go into some detail in your new book, Take Charge of You. So you've got a great podcast, How Leaders Lead. I've listened to a whole bunch of episodes. You've had some amazing guests. So I'm going to go through a few names here of guests that you've had, and I'd love for you to just share one idea, one insight that comes to mind when I say that person's name.

So first one, Tom Brady. The ultimate process and discipline around what really matters guy. How's his golf game? It's good, but he's not world-class in it. Not like football. No, no, no. He needs to stick to his day job.

There you go.

Okay.

Steve Kerr, Golden State Warriors. Master team builder that casts the shadow of leadership himself and others pick up on what he does. Kendra Scott, entrepreneur. Simplicity. Making things simple, not having, you know, huge customer manuals, you know, basically saying, how would you treat your sister if she walked in the store?

Ken Chenault, former CEO of American Express.

He's very focused on his business, very passionate about his brand.

But very intense about getting results. Cathy Engelbert, commissioner of the WNBA.

Positive energy, all kinds of positive energy and belief, and is excited about the challenges of her business.

And the Golden Bear, Jack Nicklaus. Preparation.

All right. You have to prepare to win, and nobody was better at that than him.

All right. Let's talk about your new book here called Take Charge of You. And I know you've said that one skill that defines high potential leaders is their ability to self-coach. So tell me, how do you define self-coaching and why did you write a whole book about it?

Well, you know, as you mentioned earlier at the top of the show, I am an avid golfer and I became best friends with Jason Goldsmith, who is the sports performance coach for Jason Day. He helped him become number 1 in the world, then Justin Rose, who he helped become number 1 in the world. And, you know, I worked with him myself, which obviously I did not become number 1 in the world, but he did help my golf game a lot. But we realized we had a lot in common and that we're passionate about helping people achieve their potential. So one day I said to him, let's write a book. And we started thinking, well, what could really make the book different? Well, there have been a lot of books, as you know, written about coaching. Okay. But there wasn't any book that we knew of that would really help people coach themselves on their own. And Jason is, he's a good value, but it costs a lot of money to work with Jason Goldsmith. If I was going to be doing some coaching for somebody and I went on as a consultant, it costs a lot of money for me. What we wanted to do is give people the knowledge that we know so that they could coach themselves and perform at an even higher level. And the other thing that drove that is that When you're out on a golf course, you might have had Jason Goldsmith working with you on what you should do, but man, you got to do it yourself. You got to coach yourself. Okay? If you're running the business, you might've had David Novak give you a few ideas on how you could do it. But man, when you get in there, you got to coach yourself to perform and figure out how to take your performance to the next level. So, that was the idea. I said, let's write a book on self-coaching. Let's give people everything we know about our process, which by the way is very similar. I do it from business. He does it from a sports perspective. Let's let people know what our process is. And more importantly, let's make this a book that you could read from front to back and enjoy it because of the stories and examples that we provide from our careers. But more than that, let's give people exercises and tools that force them to go through the process of figuring out how they can take their performance to the next level. So this is a book that has lots of exercises in it. And tools that you need to use, or you can think about using that'll help you get better. And the response, Steve, has been amazing to the book. I mean, it's a lot of companies have bought it. They're rolling it out, cascading it to their organizations. And one of the things that's true is one of the big problems in business today is people are frustrated because they're not getting good leadership and they're not getting good coaching. And your life in your career is way too important to, to rely on somebody else to give it to you. So that's the basic premise of the book is don't rely on somebody else. Take charge of yourself. You know, do what you can to grow yourself. And that doesn't mean you don't need coaches to help you, but when you need coaches to help you, you can be more focused and you can find your assistant coaches that will help you get focused on what you've assessed you need to do to get better.

Touch a little bit on that last point that you made there about about also finding other coaches. So oftentimes we'll say, okay, this person is a great leader because they're coachable. They're willing to take some advice, some feedback. How do you think about the interplay between being coachable and also self-coaching?

Well, I think there isn't anybody that would buy my book, okay, that didn't have a desire to get better. Okay. There's nobody that's gonna buy Take Charge of You that doesn't have this, they want to get better. And so the people that are buying the book are coachable. Okay? Because they want to be coached. What self-coaching does is you get the tools that'll help you coach yourself in the best possible way. And, you know, I feel like, for example, you know, a lot of people struggle with what they want to do in their career, what they want to do even within the company that they're in and they're happy at. And so we make people go through the process, or we suggest that people go through the process of writing down what are all the things to destroy the, you know, joy in your life? What are your joy blockers? Okay? And then after you've done that, what are the things that give you joy? And then take a look at how you spend your time and what you're working on. And if you're working on a lot of things that, you know, take away the joy blockers, okay, then you got to think about where you can take your career, where you could take yourself that'll get you more to that joy side of the equation. And you can do that in your own company. You can do it by starting your own company. You can do it by leaving or going somewhere else. You know, but you really got to understand What makes you tick? What gives you the joy? Because if you can find that, then you can have what Warren Buffett has. You can tap dance to work. You're going to be better at what you do and you'll succeed because of it.

So, you know, I think that self-coaching and being coachable are almost one-to-one.

They're almost linked together. You also, early in the book, you talk about questions that you can ask yourself. And I think you were just sharing some of them there in terms of what's getting in the way of my joy. What would grow your joy personally, professionally? You also talk about this idea of the single biggest thing.

Tell me about that. Yeah, well, this is— comes from my experience at Yum Brands. The reason why I'm so passionate about leadership development, what I did when I decided to move on from Yum Brands was make my mission to make the world a better place by developing better leaders, is I learned how motivating it was for me to build leaders when I was at Yum, and I taught this program called Taking People With You. And I wrote a book on it. And it's basically my process of leadership of how you get your mindset right, you know, how do you develop a plan, strategy, structure, culture, and how you follow up to get results. And it's a 3-day program that I basically taught every segment myself. Okay. But the price of admission for everybody was they had to really think about what was the single biggest thing they could do that could grow Yum Brands. Okay. And, you know, so when they came in, they had the single biggest thing that they felt that could grow their brand and help them succeed as well, because they were interlinked. And then over 3 days, we worked on a development plan, taking people with you plan to get that done. Because nobody can get something big by itself. But what we're trying to do in our book is get people to think through, you know, what it is that that makes them tick, what their strengths are, what their areas of opportunity are, and then, then really say to themselves, okay, what's the single biggest thing I could do that could march me towards what I really want to get done in my life? And you start there, you knock that one off, and then you knock off the next one and the next one and the next one. And sooner or later that you can get there. And so we really want to help people figure out where it is they want to go. And then what's the single biggest thing they can do that can get them on that path and then get started on it right now.

You take two leaders, and let's say that they have similar backgrounds, similar talents, similar skills, but one of them rises to the top, makes a senior executive level, the other one plateaus. In your experience, what are maybe one or two of the key things that would trip people up, or maybe that they don't have, that keeps them at this level instead of going toward a higher level?

Well, I think I always say if two people similar skills, the one that works the hardest is gonna win. So work ethic is one, just the passion for what you do, attacking your business every day. The other thing that I think separates the really great from the good is being an avid learner and not just an avid learner, an action learner. It's one thing to learn something. If you don't do anything with it, who cares? But you know, what really separates people is when they're avid learners and then they take that learning into, into action. And, you know, you mentioned my podcast. I guarantee you every leader that I talk to is passionate about learning and getting every edge that they can get to help their company and help themselves.

Well, speaking of learning, all the different people you talk to, all the learning that you do, what's one or two things that you've learned here in, say, the past few months that has been sort of an aha moment for you?

I constantly do my podcasts and people always ask me, what really brings all these people together? What's a bond? And I think what I've kind of come to the conclusion of is that the very best leaders have an uncanny combination of confidence and humility. Okay. You're never going to follow someone that isn't confident. You know, you've got to be confident to be able to open yourself up and ask for suggestions. You know, you have to be confident to inspire people that, hey, we're going to climb this hill and we're going to get there. You know, you're not going to follow Eeyore up a hill.

Okay?

You got to have somebody that's really competent and confident in their ability. So that confidence in their ability has to be well-earned. So people think, gee, this person really knows their stuff. But that uncanny confidence is timed up with an uncanny humility. And humility basically says to people, I can't go it alone. I need you. Together we can get there. And that's what inspires people. So, I think it's like, it's the marriage of confidence and humility that really, really is a unique point. And when I look back on my career, I think I was always pretty confident and you got to balance that with humility. And when I ask people in my podcast, what are the 3 words to describe you? Somebody might say I'm humble. I always wonder about that. It's not something you really, I'm sure that person believes they're humble, but I tell my wife, I'm the most humble person you've ever met. And that's not humility at all. It's just kind of a joke. But I think you do have to be humble enough so that people know that they count and you really need them. The other thing that I see is that the very best leaders are absolutely talent magnets. They will do everything they can to bring in great talent. And they're very good at assessing what kind of talent you really need to take your company forward, whether it's technology, marketing, or whatever. Whatever it is that they really feel that they need to win in the marketplace and they got to build that capability, they invest in it, but not just money, their own personal time recruiting people. They don't delegate it. Those are a couple things. I don't know if that answers your question or not.

Well, it does. And I love the idea of confidence paired with humility because because too often I see people that are super successful where their confidence turns to arrogance. And it's when it bleeds over to arrogance that it really becomes problematic and people don't want to follow them. And it can be difficult to work for someone like that. So, but yeah, I think when you pair it with humility, it takes away the opportunity of arrogance seeping into the equation there.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, Jamie Dimon, for example, the chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, probably the most renowned financial executive in the world. He is enormously confident, but he's also humble. I mean, he goes out and he goes to call centers and he listens to people. And then if he finds out there's a problem, he fixes it because he thinks his job is to remove the barriers and help people do their job. He's not looking for everybody to just tell him how great he is all the time.

He's looking for the answers. You touched on assessing talent here. Let's dig into that here for just a moment. I know in your book, Take Charge of You, you've got some ideas in there on how to assess people who will be great leaders or could be great leaders someday. In your experience, what have you identified as some keys to spotting that emerging talent?

Well, you know, I interview people all the time. One of the things that I always look for is just body language. You know, it's like if somebody's in there on your— in your office trying to get a job, I mean, I like them up there leaning forward, I like them being enthusiastic about what they could bring to the party. I think enthusiasm is a real big plus. Passion is a big plus. It has to be tempered like we were talking about, but I'm always looking for that. I think it's very important that people are people growers. I always like to find out, tell me about people that you've developed. Tell me about your most difficult management challenge. And how did you get over it? And tell me about who you're most proud of that you know that you helped them get to where they really ought to be. And then I always ask, how do you stay on top of your game? How do you grow? Tell me about how you build your own personal know-how and what are you working on? If somebody can't tell you what they're working on, that's a big problem. So I really try to understand that. You know, the last thing I always ask myself when I'm assessing talent is would I wanna work for that person? Would I want my daughter to work for that person? If I can't get to yeses on both of those questions, I don't hire them. You wanna work around people that are gonna bring the best out of you. And if I don't get a sense that that person, you know, I might have less experience than that person, but I'd want this person to help me get better. If I sense that that person couldn't help me grow, I wouldn't wanna work for them. You know, if I didn't think that person would take a great interest in my daughter and help her be whoever she could be, whatever she could become, I would never hire him. So it's a little bit of common sense there, but I try to look for what I call tangible demonstrations of leadership, you know, growing people, seeking know-how and how they applied it to grow their business.

Real specific examples of people have done. You mentioned earlier that there are a lot of exercises in your book. What's one or two exercises that you want to pull out here and share with our listeners?

Yeah, well, one of the exercises we have is just talking about the importance of getting into a neutral state. You should never make your decisions when you're overly positive or overly negative. How do you get into a neutral state? Another exercise we talk about is reframing. As you know, we talked about the reframing of my childhood, my upbringing. Well, you might say we're not an international company, Well, yeah, that might be a fact, but put yet at the end. Okay? And we're not an international company yet. And, you know, then it opens up all kinds of possibilities. It can actually happen.

As you go through the book, there are all kinds of little things like that.

And some of them can be really big things because they can really lead to, you know, a real transformational insight.

And that's what we're really trying to help people get to is What is that insight that's going to take people to their promised lands? And so, you know, really having people take stock of the positives and negatives in their lives, you know, the joy builders, the joy blockers, all those kinds of things. We talk about, you know, thinking through your personal highlight reel.

Okay.

Really, you know, write down on paper all those things that you've done.

Okay.

That, you know, you're proud of and showed that you can perform, because then you can use them to lean on why you can get to the next thing, why you can get to where you really want to go. Because so many times people think about what they don't have. And, you know, you got to kind of be your own confidence builder. I actually, Steve, I use my offices as my real highlight reels. When I walk into my office, I have all kinds of things that I've done, people I've met, recognition I've gotten,. And so, when I just look around, I go, wow, I feel pretty good about myself. Now, that may sound egotistical. It isn't. It's just that, hey, this is my little domain. And I use that to get my mood elevator really high. I remember my dad, when he retired, he was a government worker, and they gave him like 3 things. And he says, I'm going to put these in my I love me corner.

Okay?

And I think everybody needs an I love me corner. You know, so that you can look at the past, what you've accomplished, because the past can inspire you about what's possible in the future. So build your own highlight reel.

Those are some of the things. How do we ingrain this self-coaching habit into our daily lives?

You have to take accountability. You have to take accountability. You have to, you know, not have any excuses. Okay, you got to get into that, get on with it. Okay, this is where I'm going. Now, I'm not gonna let anybody keep me from my goals. Nobody's gonna do this for me. I'm gonna do it myself. So one way I think you do it is you go public. You let people know what you wanna accomplish. Okay, when you go public, it's very hard to go back. And if you don't do what you say, you lose a lot of credibility. So I've always believed in going public, okay? If you wanna lose 30 pounds so you can get healthier, tell everybody I'm gonna lose 30 pounds.

Okay? Tell everybody.

By such and such date. Yeah, by such and such date. And then, and then if you study anything about weight loss, you record every day what you eat. Okay? Keep a journal. Okay? So you measure, you know, what's important. It's very important for you to figure out what you need to measure personally to get to where you need to go, whether it's weight loss or business, or, you know, you might be in sales. You're going to increase your sales quota from this to this, but you go public and then you measure the heck out of it. That'll put the right kind of pressure on you. I remember when I went to be president of KFC and also as a head of Yum, I said, we're going to make plan every year. And when I was running Yum, we're going to make at least 10% earnings per share growth every single year. You can bank on that. Okay. And when you go public like that, if you don't do it, you're not going to lose a lot of credibility. But that's one of the reasons why our stock went from $8 billion to $32 billion, because we averaged 13% earnings per share growth for 13 straight years.

Okay.

And that kind of consistency is important. And I went public with the fact that we were going to get dynasty-like performance, consistent performance year after year. And we identified what our dynasty drivers were. We focused on those. And I think And I think we built a very sustainable company because of it.

Well, when you talk about these metrics and measuring things, you're speaking my love language. So if you were to look at some of the things that I track, like my health and fitness, I can show you every single day for the past several decades, every workout I did, the time of the workout, even go back to high school and college, I would write down what was the weather, how was I feeling, what were the split times, I mean, I love measuring those things because you get a little hit of dopamine every time I go into that spreadsheet and I check off the workout that I did today.

So it gives you that little momentum. The other thing too, Steve, is if you didn't do that, it would be like, what have I done? Okay. You get that little rush when you do it. The day you don't do it, you will miss it. Okay. And you'll get back on track because it's so ingrained in what you do.

David, I want to wrap up here with 3 questions and they're a little bit of a mix here. So the first one is, I want to turn the table on you because in your podcast you have a couple questions that you will often ask your guests. So I'm going to take one of your questions and ask it about you. Okay?

Okay.

So if you could be one person for a day other than you, who would it be and why?

Bruce Springsteen. I can't really sing, I can't play any instruments, but I would love to be able to get on stage and entertain people like he does and throw my energy into all of what he does. I would love to be a rock star or any kind of music star that really just entertains the crowd.

Well, you should invite him on your podcast.

He is the boss, after all. I would love to get him. I'll put him down on the list.

You should. I will look forward to that episode. And speaking of the boss, my wife and I and our kids went and saw Paul McCartney in concert a couple weeks ago. And here's a guy 79 years old, filling an indoor arena of 16,000 people, playing for more than 2.5 hours.

So I think maybe music keeps you young. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I wish I was good at it, but I love country music, and I'd love to write a song someday. I've got a lot of concepts that I keep in the file. Well, what's stopping you? You know, I'll tell you what, I haven't done it yet. There you go.

Take your own self-coaching. Yeah. All right, here's a fun question. You have 5 days to play 5 golf courses anywhere in the world, and you have a private jet to fly you around.

What courses are you going to play and why? Augusta National because of the experience and the history. Cypress Point because of the raw beauty and, and challenge of the course. Shinnecock because it's the most challenging, difficult course maybe in the world. Pine Valley, because it's so hard for me and I need to conquer it. Haven't conquered it yet. Okay. And, uh, the last would be, uh, and any of these could be first, National Golf Links, because it's just so much fun to play. It's so beautiful and, you know, it's just a fun, happy course.

So those would be my top 5. Excellent. All right. And here's a final question, and this comes from a previous guest. They didn't know who I was going to ask this to, but— and I'm going to ask you this question when we're done recording. So, came again, previous guests. The question is, if you could bring one person back from the dead and they would live healthy for 12 months, who would it be and why?

This is selfish because it's not going to change the world necessarily, but but my co-founder of Yum! and best friend was Andy Pearson. And he died when he was 80 years old. And I loved him up to the day he died. And he knew I loved him. But I'd like to tell him now, you know, spend time with him, and really share with him the things that he's taught me. And thank him for the doors that he opened that I would've never been able to have opened without his network and his love for me.

So it'd be Andy Pearson. And what's maybe a key memory or a key lesson from him?

Andy was an incredible learner. Andy was, just so people know who he was, he was the president of PepsiCo, never became the CEO. Went to Harvard Business School. The first year he taught there, he got the worst ratings of any teacher. The next year, he figured out why he got bad ratings and he was the best teacher in the school. Okay, and people raved about, you know, what he did. And then he went to Clayton, Dubilier Rice in the leveraged buyout business. And then when we founded Yum Brands, he was our original chairman and CEO. And I worked with them. But I never ever felt that he ever made one decision. But he probably was involved in every one of them. And I didn't even know it. Okay. But I learned, you know, from him how to be the ultimate supporter for the people you love.

All right.

I appreciate you sharing that, David.

Yeah. Well, we will wrap it up on that. So what would be the best way for folks to connect with you?

Tell us again about your podcast, about the new book as Well, yeah, my podcast is How Leaders Lead with David Novak. So you can, you know, go to wherever you listen to your podcast, Apple, Spotify, whatever you pick, if we're there, or you can go to howleaderslead.com and also listen to podcasts. Take Charge of You, the book, is for sale now wherever you'd buy books. And if you want to learn more about that, you can go to takechargeofyou.com. And then David Novak Leadership is the company that I have where we're focused on making the world a better place by developing better leaders. We have digital leadership programs under the How Leaders Lead brand, you can check out there at davidnovakleadership.com. So, but Steve, I want to close just by thanking you for the opportunity to talk about, you know, business and the book. And, you know, I've done a lot of these, but you're very good.

We'll make sure we leave that in. Okay. All right, I appreciate it.

This has been terrific.

Thank you, David. Okay, you bet. David dropped so many gems in this episode, and one of the many that sticks out for me me is the importance of being an avid learner, but not just learning for the sake of learning. David phrased it as being an action learner. It's about taking what you learn and doing something with it, making an impact with what you learn. And just like this podcast, now that you've listened to it to the end, what are you going to do with what you learned? All right, that's all for today. Make sure you like and share this podcast through your your favorite social platforms. And for more great podcasts, visit us at barons.com/podcast.

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