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Every Moment a Touchpoint for Building Trust — Doug Conant

Contributor: Alice Liu

Work and Life is a two-hour radio program hosted by Stew Friedman, director of the Wharton Work/Life Integration Project, on Sirius XM’s Channel 111, Business Radio Powered by Wharton. Every Tuesday from 7 pm to 9 pm EST, Stew speaks with everyday people and the world’s leading experts about creating harmony among work, home, community, and the private self (mind, body, and spirit).

On Work and Life, Stew Friedman spoke with Doug Conant, current Chairman of Avon Products and former President and CEO of Campbell Soup Company from 2001 to 2011. Conant discusses how to create positive company culture, where such a culture stems from, and what it means for the lives of the employees and the business performance of the company.

Following are edited excerpts of Friedman’s conversation with Conant:

Stew Friedman:  What do you do to engage and retain employees?

Doug Conant: Doug ConantWell the founding principle here—and it goes way beyond Campbell’s—is you can’t expect employees to value your agenda as an enterprise until you tangibly demonstrate that you value their agenda. So I think you have to lead by leaning in and tuning in to what your employees are looking for.

SF: How did you do that?

DC: We did it on an organized level, but I think as a leader you have to do it on a personal level. At a high level we surveyed our organization every year for ten years and basically said, “What’s working, what’s not, and what do we need to do differently?” We empowered over 600 work groups around the world to make the changes they needed to make to help build a better company. We asked them to just take on three things at a time, but over ten years, each group took on thirty things and made them better. As a company, we also took on thirty big things over ten years and made them better. We went from having the worst employee engagement in the Fortune 500 to having the best, and as the employee engagement got better our business performance got better.

SF: What was key to making that happen? I’m sure following through was critical because many companies do pulse surveys, collect the data, and have meetings to discuss what this data might say but nothing happens, which results in the employees thinking, “Well you might as well not have asked in the first place.

DC: I couldn’t agree with you more, and this is true throughout society. It’s episodic leadership. It’s the program of the day. It’s well intentioned. It starts well. It hits bumps. It loses momentum. It drifts away. You have to be a dog on a bone with this, and you have to persevere. The operating notion that guided us at Campbell’s is that you can’t talk your way out of something you’ve behaved your way into. I think as a culture we’ve behaved our way into a place where families are feeling a little bit abandoned, and we’re going to have to behave our way consistently back to a place where we are really truly valuing the family. In our case, we made this a ten-year odyssey. We had the ten-year goal of going from worst to world-class engagement. We got to world-class engagement in six years and got to best-of-class engagement at the end of year ten.

Conant discusses how he was able to turn around Campbell’s employee engagement levels from worst to best by addressing employees’ agendas first and foremost. If you are an employee, what is on your agenda? What would you like to see your company do better? Join us in the comments section below with your thoughts and experiences.

Conant is also Chairman of the Kellogg Executive Leadership Institute at Northwestern University, Founder and CEO of ConantLeadership, and New York Times best-selling author of TouchPoints: Creating Powerful Leadership Connections in the Smallest of Moments. To learn more about Conant’s work, visit his blog, follow him on Twitter @DougConant, or visit his website.

Join Work and Life on Tuesday, May 20 at 7 pm on Sirius XM Channel 111 for conversations with Janet Hanson and Nilofer Merchant. Visit Work and Life for our schedule of future guests.

About the Author

Alice Liu Alice Liuis an undergraduate senior studying Management at The Wharton School and English (Creative Writing) at the College of Arts & Sciences. 

Posted on May 14, 2014 by
Filed Under: CEOs, Productivity | Leave a Comment

Youngest Woman CEO Pursues Four-Way Wins — Julie Smolyansky

Contributor: Alice Liu

Work and Life is a two-hour radio program hosted by Stew Friedman, director of the Wharton Work/Life Integration Project, on Sirius XM’s Channel 111, Business Radio Powered by The Wharton School. Every Tuesday from 7 to 9 PM EST, Stew speaks with everyday people and the world’s leading experts about creating harmony among work, home, community and the private self (mind, body and spirit).

On Work and Life, Stew Friedman spoke with Julie Smolyansky, President and CEO of Lifeway Foods. Smolyansky became the youngest female CEO of a publicly held firm at the age of 27. She spoke about how she became CEO of Lifeway Foods and how she implements Total Leadership concepts to integrate the different parts of her life.

The following are edited excerpts of their conversation:

Stew Friedman: Tell us the story of how you became the CEO of Lifeway Foods at such a young age.

Julie Smolyansky: Julie SmolyanskyMy family immigrated to America from the former Soviet Union in 1976. We were refugees and settled in Chicago. Through their entrepreneurial spirit, my parents founded a Russian food deli that eventually led to Lifeway Foods. They took the company public in 1988. For them, there was no work-life balance. I think it’s a nice luxury to be able to talk about it when you have all the resources and networks like we do now, but for an immigrant family it’s a little bit of a different conversation. My dad worked seven days a week. There were times when I really didn’t see him for months on end, because I’d go to sleep and he’d still be working, and I’d wake up and he’d already left for work. I saw my parents sacrifice quite a bit.

After I graduated college, I was in graduate school planning on being a psychologist. I had a bad experience in the field, so I asked my dad serendipitously for a part-time position in the company so I could finish grad school and reevaluate what I wanted to do. I saw how he was empowering people. I fell love with what he was doing. I left grad school after the first year and came to work for him full time in 1998. After all the years that I hadn’t seen him, I was reintroduced to my father as an adult, and it was really wonderful to establish a relationship with him.

Unfortunately on June 9, 2002 my father died of a sudden heart attack. It was a really traumatic experience for me. Not only was I mourning the loss of my father, the company at that point was earning about $12 million in annual revenue. We had about 70 employees and nationwide distribution. I knew that this was my father’s complete passion and everything that he had spent his life working for. I made a promise to him that I would do everything in my power to make sure that Lifeway not only succeeded, but that it thrived. The day that we learned my father had passed away, a handful of his friends were standing around in a circle within my earshot saying, “Sell your stock. This company is done. There’s no way that a girl can run this company.” That really pissed me off, to be honest, and it still fuels me every day.

SF: Earlier in the show I shared a story about how Daniel Murphy, the second baseman of the New York Mets, faced a great deal of criticism for taking paternity leave for the first few days of the season while his wife gave birth to their first child.  What are your thoughts on this?

JS: We need to redefine what it means to be man in society. I think we need to raise boys to be empathetic so that they can be good partners and so that we have a balanced, fair society. When a father and a son are throwing around a baseball in the front yard, and you hear the father say, “Hey, you’re throwing like a girl,” what message is that sending to the boy, and what message is that sending to the girl next to him? When I had my babies, my husband was with me the entire time that I was in the hospital, and he really bonded. He not only was with me through that, but he left his family business to raise our children full-time so that I could continue to scale everything that I’m doing. I think it’s great that moms and dads and other kids see him in the hallways as much as they see me in the hallways at school.

SF: How did the change in the definition of your husband’s role change your family and your business?

JS: We had to make the decision of whose career we would propel forward, and we were at a point when Lifeway was really exploding, and he said, “You’re really good at what you’re doing. Keep doing that.” I have daughters, and we both thought it would be a really good thing for them to see this change in role models. The fact of the matter is that, like myself, he also missed his parents growing up when they were building their business. He said it’s been the joy of his life to be able to raise our daughters and be there for them. Again, when we talk about redefining what it means to be a man, he is living proof of that.

SF: What are some of the most useful strategies that you’ve discovered as the CEO of your company for how you can be truly effective in the different parts of your life given the pressures that you face?

JS: One of the greatest things I did was read your book Total Leadership, and I spent a day and a half with you five years ago when we were starting our family. One thing that really hit home for me was the idea that we should not be striving for “work-life balance” per se, but that instead, we have to integrate our careers, our selves, our families, and our communities into one overlapping circle. I’m not perfect at it, but I think about it a lot. I sometimes get three out of four integrated, and I’m happy with that.

SF: What are some of the things that you do?

JS: For example, it’s important for me to be fit and healthy. I’m a better leader when I’m able to run, so I run marathons. Not only do I run marathons, but I also talk about them in my work, and I try to lead by inspiring my team to take the time to invest in their own health. I also raise money for an organization called Every Mother Counts, which advocates for better maternal health. I integrated that messaging throughout the company in a campaign where we donated money to the foundation every time a customer bought a bottle of our Kefir. I did all of that in the workplace, and I was also running with the stroller. That was my time to share with my kids and show them the importance of exercise. Through running, I’m working and raising awareness on the campaign we’re building at Lifeway, and I’m working on my own health and myself.

SF: That’s what I call a four-way win. You’re hitting on all cylinders. You’re making things better for yourself, your family, your community, and your business all at once.

Smolyansky candidly discusses her viewpoints on paternity leave, the role her husband plays at home, and her strategies for integrating work and life as a female CEO. She also speaks about how discussing work-life integration is a luxury her parents never had as they tried to build their business when they first immigrated to America. Do you, your parents, or someone you know have an experience similar to Smolyansky’s parents, or do you think work-life integration is a “luxury” accessible to only relatively wealthier families? How do you think first-generation immigrants can achieve work-life integration amidst the sacrifices they must make to establish a life for their families in a new country? Join us in the comments section with your thoughts and experiences.

Join Work and Life next Tuesday, May 6 at 7 pm on Sirius XM Channel 111 for conversations with Peter McGraw about the role of humor at work and with Cali Yost whether telework is a concept that can work. Visit Work and Life for a full schedule of future guests.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alice LiuAlice Liu is an undergraduate senior studying Management at The Wharton School and English (Creative Writing) at the College of Arts & Sciences. 

Posted on May 3, 2014 by
Filed Under: CEOs, Health and Wellness, Meaningful Work, Women Primary Breadwinners, Work/Life Integration | Leave a Comment

Make Workplace Flexibility Work For You – Allison O’Kelly

Contributor: Morgan Motzel

Work and Life is a two-hour radio program hosted by Stew Friedman, director of the Wharton Work/Life Integration Project, on Sirius XM’s Channel 111, Business Radio Powered by Wharton. Every Tuesday from 7 pm to 9 pm EST, Stew speaks with everyday people and the world’s leading experts about creating harmony among work, home, community, and the private self (mind, body, and spirit).

This week on Work and Life, Stew Friedman spoke with Allison Karl O’Kelly, Founder and CEO of MomCorps, about the growing consciousness of the value created by workplace flexibility arrangements. O’Kelly discussed how engaging your networks, managing stakeholder expectations, and having honest personal conversations can bring about work-life satisfaction for individuals in new and unexpected ways.

The following are edited excerpts of Friedman’s conversation with O’Kelly:

Stew Friedman: The conversation about workplace flexibility has changed these days. We’re operating in a different landscape now where there’s more fertile ground for innovation, and where MomCorps, as a staffing agency, can push its client firms to adjust their employment policies and become more flexible.

Allison O'KellyAllison Karl O’Kelly: Yes. I think that companies now, for the most part, want to make flexibility work. This is especially true when you’re talking about the Human Resources department of many organizations. They understand the importance of flexibility. Now it’s about understanding how to make flexible arrangements work.  I think that once the mindset is there, it’s a lot easier to help companies implement strategies to make it work.

SF: How do you get that initial mindset shift? What are your methods for making that happen for an employer?

AOK: As far as the mindset shift is concerned, I see that most people have that already. We don’t spend a lot of time trying to convince people why work flexibility is good. What we do spend a lot of time doing is trying to just get companies to understand the quality of candidates for a given role and to grasp why they can get a better candidate if they’re willing to provide some flexibility to him or her. We often talk about flexibility as being another form of currency. Sometimes it can actually be a way to save money – whether that’s not paying for full-time work that can be done part-time or not paying for office space. We’re certainly not asking companies to hire someone flexible who is not the right person for the organization, but hopefully they can quickly understand that if they give up a little bit on the flexibility piece, they are going to get an amazing candidate that they otherwise might not be able to get.

SF: They can maybe even get a better work method out of it too, in the experiment of trying a new way to get things done.

AOK: That’s also important. We hear over and over again about folks who work on a part-time basis and how amazingly productive they are. I personally think that’s because when people are treated like adults and they’re given that level of flexibility they’re just so much more loyal to their employers. They really want to perform well and do a good job for them.

SF: I’ve found that in order to make any kind of alternative work arrangement work, it has to be not only something that is good for you, but also beneficial for your employer, and even more, for your family and your community. I like people to think of creating what I call “four-way wins” among these four domains of their lives. I believe thinking that way really helps you negotiate effectively because you’re thinking from the point of view of the people around you and not just your own needs. Is that an idea that resonates with your approach?

AOK: Absolutely. We talk about that a lot when we are giving advice, not only just to our candidates, but also when we’re simply talking or writing on the subject – it really is so important that it’s not just about you. Certainly, if you’re going to ask for a flexible work arrangement, in your head it is about you, but you also need to figure out why the employer should be good with what you’re suggesting. There could be so many reasons for that. Cost savings is always a good one, but especially if you’ve been at a company for a long time, retention is also very important.

For example, maybe there are opportunities for you to bring somebody else on, and you can train that person so that the company ends up spending the same money they’re spending now but for two people. They’re not going to have that work otherwise. That’s why it is so essential to figure out what is most important to your employer. Perhaps it’s really important to them that you are at a particular meeting every Friday, and so you will make sure that you’re at each of those meetings. That, then, becomes part of your deal. Ultimately, I think you need to find a way for the employer to feel comfortable with your idea and feel as though the company is getting something valuable out of this arrangement, rather than simply doing you a favor.

SF: That’s a critical theme we’re going to come back to again and again throughout the Work and Life show. It’s really essential because what many employers fear, of course, is that when people ask for alternative work arrangements that they, as the employer, are going to lose something. What they have to be shown is that they’re actually going to gain something. It sounds like you do a lot at MomCorps to try to make that happen.

AOK: Absolutely. I agree that this idea is critical. Gone are the days when your employer would say, “Let’s just do this because I really like Allison, and she’s a nice person.” We don’t have the money or the time for that these days. First of all, you have to be somebody who is very valuable to the organization, and, second of all, whether you are already there or not, you need to prove why you are valuable to the organization and why allowing you to have an arrangement that might be different from what the general employee base has is actually going to be good for them as the employer and not get in the way of doing business. As we know, at the end of the day it is business, and they need to make sure that they are able to meet their outlined goals and objectives.

O’Kelly zeroes in on how organizations and employees can create mutual value by having honest conversations in open and trusting environments. Have you ever been a part of a workplace conversation with colleagues or managers in which you realized that your seemingly conflicting interests could both be realized through a creative solution? Join us in the comments below with your thoughts and experiences.

To learn more about O’Kelly’s work, visit https://www.momcorps.com.

Tune in to Work and Life next Tuesday, April 22 at 7 PM Eastern on Sirius XM Channel 111 for conversations with Doug Conant, Chairman of Kellogg Executive Leadership Institute, and former CEO and President of Campbell Soup, and Brigid Schulte, Washington Post reporter and author of Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has Time Visit Work and Life for a full schedule of future guests.

 About the Author

Morgan MotzelMorgan Motzel is an undergraduate junior in the Huntsman Program in International Studies and Business at Penn focusing on Management and Latin America.

Posted on April 17, 2014 by
Filed Under: CEOs, Entrepreneurs, Flex Work/Project Work, On-Ramping/Re-Launching, Women and Work | Leave a Comment

To Be More Productive, Take More Vacation — Brett Hurt On Work And Life

Contributor: Liz Stiverson

Work and Life is a two-hour radio program hosted by Stew Friedman, director of the Wharton Work/Life Integration Project, on Sirius XM’s Channel 111, Business Radio Powered by Wharton. Every Tuesday from 7 pm to 9 pm EST, Stew speaks with everyday people and the world’s leading experts about creating harmony among work, home, community, and the private self (mind, body and spirit).

On January 14, on the first episode of Work and Life on Sirius XM’s Brett HurtBusiness Radio Powered by The Wharton School, Stew Friedman spoke with Brett Hurt (WG’99), an e-commerce pioneer, about his company’s unconventional approach to vacation time and executives’ responsibility to develop perspective by taking breaks.  Hurt co-founded Bazaarvoice (a platform for companies to understand and use online consumer product reviews in marketing and product development) and founded Coremetrics (marketing analytics for e-commerce companies).  His tenure as CEO of Bazaarvoice brought him deep understanding about building a strong culture and motivating high-achieving employees.

Following are edited excerpts of Hurt’s and conversation with Friedman.

Stew Friedman: How did you manage to invest in yourself and employees as whole people while you were running a company in the start-up phase, with so much going on?

Brett Hurt: Part of the way I did it was I set out to have guard-rails. I’m a big believer in having guard-rails and non-negotiables for yourself, and there were two for me. One, no matter how busy we got in the company, I would be there for my daughter’s most important events. Two, our family would take five to six weeks of vacation every year – half of that just with my wife, and half with the kids. I’m proud to say that even in the year we took Bazaarvoice public, I still took those five to six weeks. That matters because as the CEO of a company, you’re the only person who sees what’s happening across the entire company. Everyone else on your team is focused at a departmental level, and no matter how collaborative they are, your head of sales doesn’t know the world of your head of product. You, as the CEO, can see across and decide what the priorities should be for the entire company. Of course, you get lots of input from your team and you need to listen especially to the people on the front lines with your clients and your partners, you are the synthesis point. You have a duty to the company to step back, clear the air for yourself personally, and essentially have that level of objectivity to be able to look at the company from afar instead of being so close to it that you lose perspective. You’re absolutely more productive if you maintain objectivity.

SF: What have you been able to do to help employees believe in themselves and overcome doubts and concerns to get what they need at work?

BH: At Bazaarvoice, one of the leaps of faith we took early on was to make our vacation policy solely based on trust. It is unlimited and self-regulatory, meaning that an employee can decide how much vacation they need, based on their life circumstances. We don’t track it. When I was younger and just starting my career, my vacation needs were much different than they were when I started Bazaarvoice, and I had a six-month-old daughter, my first child. We had an employee who joined us and worked really hard for three months – he beat all of his goals, and did in three months what someone would normally have done in six months – and then take a three week vacation to China. And of course when he came back from China, he told all his friends about what a unique work environment he’s in. People who are that amazing from a performance standpoint tend to hang out with other people who are amazing performers, and they all came to work for us.

SF: Has anyone ever abused that policy?

BH: To my knowledge, no one has ever abused it. When you treat someone you work with the way you, yourself, would want to be treated, with the ultimate respect [for their judgment] – when you follow through on the Golden Rule – that person will treat you, in turn, with such respect that you have to encourage them to go on vacation.

Part of Hurt’s innovative approach to building trust and flexibility in his organization is his practice of introducing books about integrating work and life to his management team, always with robust debate about what their lessons mean for Bazaarvoice and how to “make them part of our narrative.” Here are his top recommendations for further reading and what he said about each book on the show last week:

Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and In Life One Conversation at a Time (Susan Scott, Berkeley) – “This was all about helping us be authentic with each other.”

Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us(Seth Godin, Portfolio) – “This taught us to bring our personal passions into the workplace, and to treat it like a collegiate environment.”

Total Leadership: Be a Better Leader, Have a Richer Life (Stew Friedman, Harvard Business Review Press) – “Stew’s followers are familiar with this, and how it focuses on the development of the whole person.”

Brett is currently the Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors of Bazaarvoice, a Partner at Capital Factory, and he invests in early stage companies through Hurt Family Investments with his wife of 18 years and “confidante and best source of business advice,” Debra. Brett also serves as a Mentor at TechStars Austin and an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Wharton. You can find more of his insights and advice for entrepreneurs on his blog, Lucky7, where he writes regularly.

Come back to our Forum on Wednesday to read excerpts of Stew’s conversation with Erin Owen, about bringing Eastern philosophy to bear on modern management and – to pick up a theme started in the Brett Hurt conversation – the benefits of stepping back to move forward smarter.

Join Stew tomorrow night (Tuesday January 21) at 7 pm on Sirius XM Channel 111 for conversations with Deborah Epstein Henry and Matt Schneider (W’97) on new career paths and employer models in the legal profession, and the rise and impact of stay-at-home dads. Visit Work and Life for a full schedule of future guests.

Liz StiversonAbout the Author

Liz Stiverson is a 2014 MBA candidate at The Wharton School. 

Posted on January 19, 2014 by
Filed Under: CEOs, Entrepreneurs | Leave a Comment
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