Douglas Conant is an introvert.
But when he took over as president and CEO of struggling
Campbell Soup Co., he realised he had to break out of his comfort zone, get in
front of his staff, and make some bold declarations from the get-go……
Campbell was in rough shape when Conant joined the company
in January 2001. …Conant took a good long look at staff morale and didn't like
what he saw.
"We had a toxic culture. People were understandably
jaundiced with management," he said. "It was hard for me to imagine
that we could inspire high performance with no employee engagement."….
To improve the culture in the workplace, Conant started at
the top. He held weekly staff meetings and used a scorecard that evaluated each
leader's performance. He created a leadership model that outlined expectations.
The number one expectation was inspiring trust--and that meant managers had to
have a certain level of both "competence and character," he said.
"You have to know what you're doing, and you have to do
what you say you're going to do. Before you have the moral authority to lead
your team, you have to inspire trust," he said. "Trust is the one
thing that changes everything. In a high-trust culture, it's so much easier to
get things done."…… How could we be a
higher-ambition company if we didn't have higher-ambition leaders?"……
Many people weren't cut out for the job. In the first three
years, 300 of the top 350 leaders at the company exited. Conant focused on
making those who stayed and were committed to the mission feel good about their
work. In fact, he went so far as to write 10 to 20 handwritten personal notes
to employees at all levels of the organization each day to recognise those who
were performing well. During his 10-year tenure as CEO, that added up to over
30,000 notes to his 20,000 employees. Conant started to feel a change in the
work atmosphere……..
Conant established two performance metrics to measure
progress, one based on economic value, measured by shareholder returns compared
to competitor companies; and the other based on social value, measured by the
Gallup Employee Engagement Index……
The company made steady progress in both areas. For the six
years preceding July 2010, Campbell's cumulative total shareholder return was
64%, nearly five times the 13% return of the S&P 500. And by 2010, the
Gallup Employee Engagement Index showed that for every 17 engaged employees,
only one was disengaged, a ratio that exceeded Gallup's "world-class"
benchmark of 12:1. More impressively, the engagement ratio for the top 350
leaders was an amazing 77:1…..
……And ultimately, Conant found that as CEO, taking centre
stage and leading the efforts made all the difference. Perhaps just as
importantly, he knew his company subscribed to what he preached.
"CEOs must lead from in front. And we have to behave
our way to more credibility," said Conant, who retired from Campbell in
2011 and is now founding CEO of Conant Leadership. "It's not what you say,
it's what you do."
For the full article, see: http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/7133.html
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