Building Brand Giants: Former CEO Greg Creed on Leading & Transforming Yum! Brands

Neil Morrison: Hi and welcome to another episode of the Aspire to Inspire podcast. My name is Neil Morrison. I’m the Chief People Officer at Staffbase. I’m really delighted to be joined by Greg Creed. Amongst many things, the former CEO of Yum! Brands, the world’s largest restaurant company. Greg, welcome.

Greg Creed: Neil, it is an absolute pleasure to be here. And thanks for having me on.

Neil Morrison: Not at all. Greg, I wanted to dive in before we get really started and just, like, effectively ask you to pick your favorite child. So Yum! Brands, obviously the owner/operator of Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, KFC. But which one is your favorite?

Greg Creed: Well, like all parents, I love my children. I love all of my children. But I did have a favorite. And so my favorite child was Taco Bell. Probably because I ran Taco Bell. I was the CEO for eight years. I was the chief marketing officer for five years before that. So while I would say I love them equally, I sort of had a slight preference for the child that I happened to nurture more than the other two.

Neil Morrison: I think that’s fair enough. Favorite Taco Bell memory?

Greg Creed: I mean, there are so many. I think that my favorite memory was that it had seven years of transaction decline when I arrived. And, I think that belief was that when I became the CMO, that I’d have to sack everybody. And what was really I think most exciting to me was I didn’t have to sack anybody. They just had to be led in a different way. And so the team that wasn’t delivering started to deliver. So I think I’m most proud of the fact that, first of all, everyone expected me to get rid of everybody. And secondly, I think it was all about leadership, and sort of the things we’re going to talk about today. So turning Taco Bell around was definitely, definitely one of the strong points. And then launching something like a Doritos Locos Taco, which, you know, we added $1 billion in sales in just 12 months with one product. So they were very exciting times.

Neil Morrison: Yeah. Very cool. Well, you know, you spent a significant time, building a career at Yum! and obviously sort of most recently finishing up as the CEO for a number of years. But can you give us a sense of that role? You know, there was a lot of change happening during the context of your tenure.

Greg Creed: Yeah. I mean, the great thing is I took over from David Novak, who had been the founding CEO and chairman when we spun off from PepsiCo in 1997. David had laid the foundations for what I thought was a great business, you know, both strategically but equally from a cultural point of view. David was sort of the champion of recognition. And so for me, this idea that what I had to do was to, you know, build on what he had done. It wasn’t like throw the baby out with the bathwater.

But you’re right. It’s a huge business. I mean, today 55,000 restaurants. I read the other day that they open a KFC every three hours somewhere in the world. 1.5 million people turn up every day to work in one of the restaurants, 140 countries. And so for me, it was about honoring David’s legacy for what he had achieved, but also, you know, bringing what I believe we needed to the table.

And so it’s that fine line between you want to honor the person that you’ve taken over from — who did an amazing job, by the way. At the same time, you want to also leave your legacy in place, you know, when it’s time for you to move on. And so I would say that they were sort of subtle, you know, differences and changes.

One of the biggest things is we spun off the China business. I think both David and I recognized that while we were — Neil, you’ll know this. We were more a marketing company than we were an operating company. And so the idea of franchising off the restaurants to franchisees who ran them better was really at the cornerstone of my five years there.

So we spun off China, we franchised about 3,000 other restaurants. And of the 55,000, I think Yum! today owns less than a thousand. So that was probably the biggest change that I implemented during my tenure.

Neil Morrison: Yeah, just tremendous change. And, you know, no easy feat in terms of leadership directly. And then, of course, indirectly through many of the leaders across the business. But, you know, in previous conversations, you’ve sort of you came across this idea of the CEO as the author of the book, and conceptually it really stuck with me. So, what do you mean by that?

Greg Creed: Well, I think great leaders are great storytellers. And so I think what you’ve got to do as a leader is you’ve got to have a, you’ve probably got to have the most long-term vision of anyone in the organization. Yes, there are people who are worried about what’s happening tomorrow. There are people worried about what’s happening next week and next month and next quarter. But I think as the CEO, your job is to really be far, far, far out saying, you know what’s going to happen.

I also think that what you’ve got to do — and in the case of Yum! when you’ve got 1.5 million people who come to work every day — is how do you galvanize everyone around this sort of, you know, vision and mission wherever you want to take them? And so the analogy of the CEO as the author of a book, because if you think about a book, when the author writes the book, they usually have the end. They know what the ending is going to be. And then they write the chapters, right? And the chapters unfold. And, you know, there’s early characters and then there’s stories, and sometimes things work and sometimes don’t.

Things don’t work in a book, you know that. That’s what keeps the book interesting. But the most important thing is, you know how it’s going to finish before you start writing the book. And I think for leadership, it’s about knowing where do you want to be when you finish your part of the book. And so I think that that was why I always thought the easy analogy to say to people is, look, this is my book. I’m writing the book. These are the chapters of the book. This is what I want to achieve.

I think that was a way for everyone. Everyone knows a book, everyone knows stories. And I’m a huge believer that storytelling is critically important in leadership, because if we just give people facts and figures, no one remembers. And, you know, my best example is, you know, if I said “Humpty Dumpty,” you know, everyone says “sat on a wall,” right? Or “fell off the wall,” depending what it is.

If I said that way, I say to everyone, “What’s Pythagoras’ theorem?” No one has a clue. What’s interesting is when we all learned Humpty Dumpty, we couldn’t write and we couldn’t read. Yet we remember the story of Pythagoras’ Theorem. We could all read and write, but we don’t remember it.

And so for me, storytelling is absolutely critical to being a great leader. And, because I think that’s how we remember things. That’s also how things get passed down through history, is through storytelling. And unfortunately, we don’t remember too many facts. So, you know, facts are not the way to communicate your strategy. I think storytelling is absolutely the way, and the analogy of a book I thought was the best way to communicate that.

Neil Morrison: Yeah, definitely. And, you know, I guess part of like crafting the narrative, writing the chapters is really bringing people along on the journey. And, you know, bringing 1.5 million people along on a journey is no easy, no easy book to write.

But, you know, I guess appealing to the emotion. But what else? What else is important about storytelling? Why is that more important for human beings?

Greg Creed: I think it’s also about staying focused. You know, I think one of the biggest challenges you can do is to try to get an organization to do too much. And I think at the other extreme is what I call the obsession metric.

So I’ll give you an example. I think in a lot of organizations, you know, everyone has 10 or 20 things to do, you know, and over time we make tiny progress, you know, tiny little progress on 20 things. And often the consumer doesn’t see any of that progress. I mean, we might be able to justify the progress, but the consumer doesn’t see it.

I’ll give you a good example I think of, when we were launching the Doritos Locos Tacos. The tacos, as you know, are made by hand, right? They’re not . . . it’s not like one patty, one slice of cheese, one slice of tomato, three pickles. That’s not how it works. And so they meant to weigh 3.1oz. And about 62% of them did, but that meant 38% of them didn’t. And most of those weighed less, not more. Right. And if you do sell 2.5 billion tacos a year, roughly 40% means about 800 million, you know, are not going out the way you want them to go out.

And so I said to the organization, I’m going to have this obsession metric: full tacos. That’s all we’re going to obsess about for six months before we launch the Doritos Locos Tacos. So everyone thought I was an idiot, which was not unusual, because a lot of the things I said, people thought, that’s crazy. And so people were like, well, you know, the restaurants won’t be clean, the trash in the parking lot won’t get picked up, the burritos won’t be full. And that’s what everyone believed.

To be honest, I didn’t know whether that was going to happen or not. And what is really interesting is in six months, full tacos went from 62% to 92%. A massive, massive improvement. And interestingly enough, all the other attributes improved.

And so I found it was one of those lightning rod moments for me, which was, I think as organizations, whether they’re tiny or large, like Yum!, is that we focus on too many things and we get the organization to focus on too many things, and we don’t make any progress, which the consumer doesn’t see, and it doesn’t change the consumer’s perception.

So I became like a focus zealot after that, which was let’s just keep the organization focused. And I think the larger the organization — to your point, Neil, — I think the more disciplined and the more focused you have to be. And so for the five years that I was the CEO of Yum!, we literally focused on four things: how to build what we called R.E.D. brands, how to run great operations, how to have great culture and leadership, and how to build, you know, a large number of new restaurants.

So those four things didn’t change for all the time I was there. And there’s always that tendency because people go, oh, what about digital? And what about this and what about that? And I find what happens is you can craft those into the existing, you know, four pillars. But in any organization that’s got more than 3 or 4 things to do, I think is really not set up for success.

Neil Morrison: Yeah. And you mentioned R.E.D. brands then. And I know that, you know, you’ve obviously written a book with Ken Muench about R.E.D. Brands.

Greg Creed: Buy the book here. Free publicity!

Neil Morrison: Okay. Why not? And of course, all of that, all of the money goes to the Yum! Foundation, right?

Greg Creed: It does. Oh, that’s a very good point. All the money, all the royalties if you want to buy the book goes to the Yum! Foundation. Ken and I don’t take a penny for that.

Neil Morrison: But I’d love to know more about R.E.D. brands. Like what does R.E.D. mean, maybe how does that even play — like, it’s written almost on behalf of the brand and the external stakeholder. But how does that play into storytelling internally?

Greg Creed: Great question. So R.E.D. came about literally before I became the CEO of Yum! David Novak, who, as we said, was my predecessor, said, “Look, I want you to travel around the world and I want you to see, you know, how good we are at marketing.” When you’re in 140 countries and three brands, I think the combination of brands and countries is like 280. The law of large numbers is going to apply — which is you’re really good to really bad at the other extreme. Right?

And so I was like, as a marketer, how do I bring consistency so that we raise the bad and the not so good to at least good? You know what I mean? So it was like, how do we get rid of the bottom, the tail of outperformance?

Ken Muench, being a colleague of mine, had worked together with me for many, many years. He had helped me when I was the CMO and CEO at Taco Bell. And we were like, well, we need to come up with something very simple — again, back to focus, right? Simple focus. The bigger, the more simple you have to be.

And so we came up with this concept called R.E.D. R stands for relevance. Is your brand relevant? E stands for easy, and D stands for distinctiveness. And I think it was a very simple template. So, you know, you would ask businesses, you know, where are you on the R.E.D.?

So I’ll give you a good example. Now, maybe not everyone won’t know this, but so, you know, KFC I would argue is very distinctive. 11 herbs and spices. The Colonel. But what was happening was that chicken was being eaten off the bone rather than on the bone. That was a sort of cultural trend. And so KFC had to become more relevant by selling sandwiches and burgers and nuggets and strips. So it was very distinctive. It needed to be more relevant.

I think Pizza Hut was the opposite, which was it was very relevant. Everyone loves pizza, but we hadn’t positioned ourselves as distinctive to Domino’s. And so what I found when I visited countries is sometimes you’d be very distinctive and you’d be doubling down on distinctive, instead of fixing, you know, relevance. So it was a way to get the businesses to focus.

And then the one that really mattered, funnily enough, in the end was ease. Because I gave a speech once that said “easy beats better,” and I was almost booed off the stage, because we all grew up, like I grew up in the “better beats better” era. But I think what we’ve come to realize is that easy is just as important as better. And consumers will essentially, you know, be attracted to any decision that makes it easier for them. And so this whole idea of ease became really central.

And so we wrote the book when I retired. Ken is a master guy of coming up with insights. And what I really love about the book is that many people who’ve since left Yum! have adopted it. And so I know a lot of people who are in the restaurant industry and outside of the restaurant industry that have said to me, “Hey, I took the book with me, and I’ve had a lot of success,” and I think that makes us feel good.

Again, we wrote a pretty simple book that’s not, you know, I said, marketing is easy, but not simple. And that was our goal. Our goal was really to make it both easy and simple and help people get focus, which again, gets back to focus and hopefully helps them be more successful. So what I love is that they still have R.E.D. conferences and R.E.D. marketing things. So I know it’s stuck, which also makes me feel good.

Neil Morrison: Yeah, definitely. And I suppose if you take the idea of the, you know, the CEO is the author of the book, well then there could be loads of CEOs writing loads of books.

But from an internal point of view, how do you make the story distinctively ownable, that it’s just happening here?

Greg Creed: Well, I think as an employee, Neil, you should think about yourselves as R.E.D. So in a sense of “do you have the relevant skills,” you know? So I mean, I think, you know, we all have to be consistent learners and we have to be inquisitive. And so I think R.E.D. applies to every individual, which is, you know, are my skills now relevant? I mean, I would argue I could not be a chief marketing officer anymore. I don’t know enough about digital marketing and influencer marketing. So, you know, I don’t have those relevant skills.

Easy is, in all honesty, are you easy to get on with? And I’m not suggesting you roll over and agree with everything, but I do think there’s a style. And then distinctive. I do think people don’t think enough about themselves as distinctive. And I think what makes you distinctive is the quality of the questions that you ask when you’re in meetings. And it’s funny, I’ve always said, you know, when people go to meetings, they tend to go prepared to answer the questions they think they’re going to get asked. We all do it, right? You’re like, oh my goodness, it’s five minutes. I’ve got to, you know, I’ve got five minutes to the next meeting. What’s, you know, what’s Neil going to ask me? I need to think about it.

And I’ve always said to people, I want you to be prepared to ask an inquisitive question in that meeting, rather than, yeah, you need to know the answers. But I think sometimes what’s more important is will you ask a great question? And so I think R.E.D. applies as team members, as leaders, which is do we have the relevant skills? Are we easy to get along with? And are we someone that’s going to bring a distinctive mindset to the organization?

And even sometimes, I mean, it’s funny, you know in business — like there’s sort of like a guy who’s got to have a blue blazer and, you know, you got to wear your, you know, collared shirt in the old days and stuff like that. I know we don’t anymore, which is wonderful. But it’s funny, I always used to wear — I think, you know this — funky socks, right? And so my funky socks were my way of being distinctive because, you know, I couldn’t wear, like, a funky blue blazer because everyone goes, well, that’s weird. So I wanted to be distinctive, not just in thought, but I also wanted to be distinctive in presence.

And even little things. Like when I ran Taco Bell. We, you know, everyone has a business card, and I’m just going to try and find my business card right now. And, basically what happened was everyone’s business card is essentially what — they’re like, white rectangles, you know, everyone sort of has a white rectangle. So this is the business card that we had at Taco Bell. So we made it in the shape of a sauce packet. We had a saying on the front. So mine happened to be “g’day!” because I’m Australian, but you could put whatever you want. And down the bottom were ingredients, but the ingredients were, you know, heart, passion, creativity, caring, respect, innovation, authenticity — something cool.

And so for me, every little way that you could make yourself distinctive, whether it was the questions you ask, in my case, the silly socks I wore or allowing everyone to have, you know, a business card like this, I don’t think enough people give thought to those things that make them distinctive and make them memorable. And I think that R.E.D. applies just as much to our career and growth as it does to a brand’s growth.

Neil Morrison: Yeah. It makes a lot of sense. I’m also now feeling loads of pressure to be very distinctive in the questions I ask you for the rest of the rest of the podcast.

Greg Creed: No pressure.

Neil Morrison: Okay. Yeah, exactly. But, yeah. Greg, one of the things that, you know, we’re observing around the world and I’m just really thinking about the number of places that Yum! Brands were in, that 1.5 million associates. You know, one of the things that were of course, hearing more and more about is just the concept of trust in leadership in general, in lots of different contexts. And I think we’re faced with a lot of that right now with elections galore all over the world.

But yeah, you know, as you think about the role of culture and the role of comms, like how does trust play a big part of that? You know, 1.5 million associates with all the best ones in the world. You’re going to meet a fraction of those people over that time.

Greg Creed: Oh, absolutely. I mean, a fraction of the 55,000 restaurants, a fraction of the people. I think people use trust in two ways. You either start with zero trust, and you have to earn it. Or in my case, I gave you 100% and all you could do was lose it. What I don’t think people understand, though, is important for me. I think trust is either a 0 or 100% game. It’s one of those things where if I give you 100%, all you can do is lose it. And if you lose it once, you don’t go to 97 or 83 or 74. In my case, you go to 0.

I don’t think people understand that enough, which is that for me, trust is absolute. It’s either 0 or 100. And so, you know, again, in an organization as large with as many people and all that, I think, you know, integrity and honesty and trust and transparency were really critical, because if there was at any stage anyone in the organization lost any of that belief in me as the leader, then I think we were doomed. And so, you know, it’s not always easy, because sometimes there are things that just for, you know, legal reasons, you can’t disclose. Right? And people go, well, why didn’t you tell us? And you go, well, I couldn’t tell you because it was nonpublic, you know, proprietary information and things like that.

I do think anyone who thinks trust is on a scale somewhere between 1 and 99, I think they’re misguided. I really do believe that. And now, look, you know, and I’m not going to suggest that everyone has to start at 100 because, you know, I’ll be honest, my wife, who I love to death, we’ve been married 43 years. You get 0 with her and you have to build up. But the same thing, if you do anything wrong, you go to 0. I just happen to start at 100. But if you do anything wrong, you go to 0.

I think too many people think, oh, well, yeah, on this issue, you know, they may not have trusted me or I, you know, may not have done the right thing. And I think it also comes back, and I know we discussed this earlier and we discussed this when I was at Yum!, which is, I think too many leaders try to make people happy. And fundamentally, your job is to do what’s right. And, you know, we could get into a long discussion about politics, which we don’t need to get into, whether it’s in Europe or in America right now.

But I think as a leader, one of them — and I used to have this saying, which is, “I’m not here to make you happy. I’m here to do what’s right. If I do what’s right, I’ll make you happy.” And so I think to set out to achieve happiness or just to appease everyone and get everyone to like you is not the right — that’s not leadership. Leadership is doing what’s right.

It’s interesting. And you may not have heard this, but the Tractor Supply Company in the US, which was really at the forefront of, I would say diversity, equity, and inclusiveness, the other day came out and said, well, because all of our customers are rural Americans, we’re going to give up on DE&I, we’re going to withdraw our climate change objectives. And so I was so angry, so frustrated. And by the way, I’m a white, straight, you know, male Protestant. I mean, you don’t get any more WASPy than me. But I was absolutely aghast that an organization was trying to make their customers happy instead of doing the right thing.

I mean, the world has a climate change problem. I’m not going to get on my soapbox, but it has a problem. And as an organization, our job is to reduce our carbon footprint. You know, the world is not inclusive enough. There’s still too much anti-you-pick-it: anti-Semitism, anti-gay, anti-religion, anti-whatever. And so I think as an organization and as a leader, your job is to do what’s right.

I see too many leaders and too many — and I know I’m passionate, I’m sorry about this — but I see too many leaders and too many politicians that pander to make people happy instead of fundamentally in their hearts doing what they know is right. And I think it takes real leadership to do what’s right. Now, if you do what’s right in the long-term, you make people happy. But to set out and make people happy and not do what is right … I don’t think those people deserve to be in leadership positions. I’m sorry. That’s just me.

Neil Morrison: No. It’s great. It’s great. Don’t apologize for being too passionate about that stuff. You know, we often look at the Edelman Trust Barometer and that actually shows that now for a number of years, really the last bastion of truth and trust is the organization. It’s the corporation that people crave that trustworthy information from their companies more than they do religion, the media, you know, NGOs. So, you know, and you work with other boards. I mean, is this idea of transparency and trust and building reputation from the inside out, is that a conversation point? Is that something you’re observing?

Greg Creed: Oh, yeah. It’s absolutely critically important, I think, because if you think — I mean, either take Yum! or any of the three boards that I’m on, they’re all large organizations. They have large employee bases. The employees want to know, am I working for a company that is consistent with the values that I believe in?

And here’s what happens, Neil, if you don’t espouse what your position is. Everyone thinks you’ve taken the opposite position. So, you know, people say, oh, well, if you take a position, 50% of the people are going to disagree with you. My point of view is if you don’t take a position, 100% of people are going to disagree with you because 50 will think you’re on this side and the other 50 will think you’re on that side.

So if the choice is between no one trusting or believing me, or at least 50% of the people believing me, I’ll take 50. Because I do think employees, they — Yes, you know, yes, the company pays you and you know, you live your life in it. But I do think people want to work for a company that has values consistent with what they believe are important. You’re not going to agree with everything, okay? You are not going to agree with everything. But I think you want to know that it’s like any club — you don’t join a club or a church unless you fundamentally believe in those values. Right? And I think an organization is exactly the same.

And so I think, you know, people want to know, what does the organization stand for? And equally important, what does the leader stand for? And I also think actions, like the old saying that actions speak louder than words is really important.

So as you know, I’m a fierce advocate for LGBTQ+, you know, in an organization — as well as I am for religion, gender, you name it. And so I could get on my little pedestal and soapbox and say that. But — and you know this — but, you know, when I was able to be the marriage celebrant for two of my very best friends who happened to be lesbians, I think I’m the only Fortune 500 company CEO that ever was the marriage celebrant for two lesbians. Now, I did it not to make a point. I did it because I love both of these ladies. They are just wonderful human beings. But I was not naive enough to know that that action would send a message on what mattered to me.

And so I think that, you know, words are powerful, actions are powerful. Words and actions together are more powerful. And I think as leaders, I think a lot of leaders rely too much on the power of the word. And I think we tend to get judged. What’s the old saying? We judge everyone else by their actions, but we judge ourselves by our words. Right? And I think it’s very important to understand that you are going to get judged by both.

And what’s interesting, this is one of those interesting things I didn’t realize because when you begin, you know, you’re the chief marketing officer, you become the CEO of Taco Bell, then you become the CEO of Yum! I’m just like Greg, I haven’t changed, you know? I’m just me. You don’t realize how much everyone watches everything you do. That was the thing I almost had to learn as a leader was every nuance, every wink, every hug, every whatever I did was interpreted.

And in the beginning, you know, naively, you’re just who you are. And then you have to just be conscious. It doesn’t mean you should change who you are, because I believe being your true self, coming to work as your true self is one of the most important attributes. But I think being aware of those things is critically important. But fundamentally, I think employees want to know where the CEO stands.

Neil Morrison: And I think it’s, you know, just listening to you, that’s hard. It’s hard for leaders to find that position or find a confident position. I think, you know, this trend on transparency on, you know, on cancel culture that there’s this sort of there’s just a risk attached to, you know, what do we stand for here, right?

Greg Creed: But there’s a bigger risk if you’re not clear about what you stand for. Look, there’s a risk in every decision. You know, every decision has a risk. Now, some of them, it doesn’t matter, you know, do I decide what I’m going to wear? You know, blue pants or green pants? Who cares? That’s it. But there’s a risk. But you know, the risk is 0.001 percent. At the other extreme, there are risks, right? You have to make these decisions.

Neil Morrison: Right, right. You mentioned a minute ago the sort of, the backlash or, or sort of ESG and diversity inclusion coming under siege. And I noticed a couple of like, opinion pieces you’ve put out recently. One of them was actually in the DE&I space. I’d love to get your views because, you know, I think you were referencing some sort of selection criteria, acronym, new acronym that you’d heard, MEI: merit, excellence, intelligence, and maybe how that was narrowing, right? The true benefit of diversity.

Greg Creed: Yeah. I think, you know, the problem is, if you think about any organization, you think about a leader, your job as a leader is to grow that. It’s to grow the business; that is ultimately your job. And whether it’s sales, profit margin, reputation, brand share, whatever it is to grow. And so for me, DEI was never about checking a box. It was not about checking a box. It was about the fact that the more diverse the teams, the more successful we were.

And so yeah, I know DEI got caught up in wokeness and you know, the far right and you know, all this sort of crazy stuff. But for me, DEI was simply about basically saying that when we had a more diverse and inclusive workforce and a more diverse and inclusive management team, surprise, surprise, not a surprise, we actually delivered better results. And, you know, I think one of my favorite things was at one stage, and you were there, we had women leading our KFC business in Canada, Australia, England, the UK, Thailand, China, and Russia when Russia wasn’t being bad.

And it was very clear because I remember . . . So you think about it, we had 248 brand country combinations around the world. I pulled out the performance of those women leading those six or seven KFC businesses, and for three or four years straight, they delivered superior performance compared to the rest of the organization. And so it’s one thing to have a belief, which I do in DE&I, but when a belief is backed up by facts, which is what the anti-DEI people don’t like, is that they actually delivered superior performance to the rest of the KFC businesses.

And so for me, DEI is about, you know, the business performance. But at its core, and I spoke about this, I have this “Ability is equally distributed, opportunity is not.” This is a fundamental belief of mine. And I do think, by the way, I think there’s opportunity in white males living in, you know, rural America. I don’t think it’s just, you know, I think it’s there’s opportunity everywhere, and what DE&I is about is matching up — is giving ability opportunities. It’s really that simple.

And so this guy Alexander Wang, who ran some AI, I don’t know, you know, company, he basically said it should be about merit, excellence, and intelligence, and ultimately overall it’s about intelligence. And I was like, that is so one dimensional, so one dimensional. And, because I’ve got this fundamental belief that the three leadership qualities that I saw in great leaders in my 42 years is what I call Smart, Heart, and Courage. Now, smart does include IQ. Okay? It’s IQ, it’s EQ, emotional intelligence. There’s actually this new thing called CQ, which is cultural intelligence, which is, you know, can you run an organization where people have different cultural perspectives?

Heart is what it is. Do you have a heart for the business? You mean, do you really love what you’re doing? And do you have a genuine heart for people, and courage is, obviously, what it says. And my experiences of all of those attributes, the three plus the sub attributes, the one that was least indicative of success as a leader was IQ.

So this guy’s going out there saying, I’m going to hire the brightest people, but sometimes the brightest people have no, they have no people skills, they have no heart. And by the way, they might have no courage because they’re good at you know, they’re smart, but they don’t have the courage to do what’s right. And so I, with what had happened at Tractor Supply and all the DEI I felt was under siege, I felt compelled to write, really I guess the anti-position of theirs. And I believe that DEI is not about wokeness and it’s about, essentially, aligning ability with opportunity and it is about improving performance. And I’ve got the facts to back it up and no one’s going to convince me otherwise.

Now I do think there is a, there is a piece in there which you read in the article about, you know, privilege and so that was an interesting eye-opener for me because as you said in the article, you know, I grew up thinking privilege was people who went to Yale and summered in the Hamptons. I thought they were privileged. And it took me a while to realize that growing up white, male, Protestant, and I guess straight was a privilege by sheer luck, by the way, nothing to do with anything to do with me.

And I think it’s important that those people who had privilege, I didn’t go to private school, I went to public school — not one of the things that I thought created privilege. I think it’s important that men like me have a voice and, not just those who need the voice, but those who, by sheer luck of birth, happen to have, have privilege. I think it’s so important that we are the voice of reason, and we are the voice of support to align ability with opportunity. I feel so passionately about this.

Neil Morrison: Yeah. And, just thinking about opportunity, I heard a definition of privilege recently, which is it’s simply the absence of barriers. Right? The absence of barriers is a privilege. And that gets in the way of or enables opportunity for people.

Greg Creed: Yeah. You know, there’s a great book I read, it’s called “It’s Your Ship.” It’s by a guy called Mike Abrashoff. And Mike went to Annapolis, to the Navy Academy. And then after 18 years, he got command of his first ship. I didn’t realize it took 18 years to get a ship, but that’s what it takes. And he tells many . . . It’s a great book. If you ever want to read a great book on leadership, that’s it.

The thing that’s really important is there’s a story in there about a 19-year-old seaman who worked, who was on the ship. Because you think about the Navy, you don’t get to choose your ship, and you don’t get to choose your crew. At least in business, you sometimes get to choose your ship, and you always get to choose your crew. Right? But that didn’t happen.

Anyway, there’s this 19-year-old kid. It’s a, you know, he’s a school dropout. He’s probably juvie. He’s probably done, you know, naughty things and all that sort of stuff. And the choice has probably been to join the Navy. So, Mike sits down with everyone on that ship for an hour. All 300 sailors, and he realizes this kid is actually, with no education, essentially a computer genius.

In those days, everything on the ship was run by, you know, pen and paper. So, you know, we went to this heading and we went to that heading and we bought, you know, five pounds of pizzas, you know, that was all . . . it was all manual. So this 19-year-old that everyone thought was a loser and a dropout and a misfit and a malfeasance, all this sort of stuff, this kid apparently writes a computer program that essentially automates everything done on this ship. And not only does that ship start using it, the entire US Navy uses it.

So for me, it’s the classic example of giving ability and opportunity. Here’s a kid that, yeah, had not yet grown up on the wrong side of the street, had probably been told to join the Navy. And here’s a leader, Mike Abrashoff, who basically gives this kid with this unknown ability, this opportunity, and it influences the entire United States Navy.

You don’t need a better story than that one to basically say your job as a leader is to unlock ability by giving it opportunity.

Neil Morrison: Yeah. And I suppose if you look at Yum! or even the restaurant or retail setting or more broadly, you know, it’s often someone’s first experience of the world of work, the first job, like we could go and talk to loads of Fortune 500 CEOs and their first job was probably in a shop or a restaurant, right?

Greg Creed: Yeah, I met Bob Iger, who runs Disney. I met him at a meeting and he said to me that he was a Pizza Hut delivery driver. So you’re right, I think, I mean, a lot of us, I actually filled the . . . my first job was actually stacking the shelves at the supermarkets, you know, at Woolworths in Australia. But a lot of people were flipping hamburgers and making fried chicken and cooking fries and making tacos and you’re right.

So I think even, you know, that’s why the restaurant general manager in a restaurant, I think is critically important because they also, if this is your first job, this is your first boss. And I think you learn either good or bad from, you know, the people that have led you and like, you know, I’m sure like you, I’ve had good and bad bosses and I’ve learned from both. I’ve learned from the good bosses what to do and the bad bosses what not to do.

And I don’t think leaders necessarily think enough about every decision you make. It’s not just important about that decision. It’s important about how people see you make that decision. And you know how you made that decision and why you made that decision and did you compromise? And I think sometimes if you’re gonna compromise, I think so long as you’re clear about it, because if you don’t, if you’re going to do something that’s sort of slightly inconsistent and look, you know, true life happens. I think so long as you’re clear about why you did it and why you didn’t do it rather than people . . . Because the clearer you are that then people, and they may not agree with you, at least they understand, you know, why you took that decision.

And I think one of the biggest challenges for leaders is to be more vulnerable. And I know from an audience point of view, I have to be honest, Americans suck at being vulnerable. I mean, Americans are terrible at it, they really are terrible. Now, I think Australians are really good at being vulnerable. I think the Dutch are really good at being vulnerable. You know, I think the Russians, when we were friends with the Russians, they were really good at being vulnerable. But Americans suck at it.

And I remember I used to drive to work and, you know, in the back of every minivan in California, you know, “My Child’s a National Honor Student.” I thought, “Where are all the dumb kids because everyone’s kid can be an honor student, right?” And so I think vulnerability is important for a couple of reasons. It makes you human. But HR doesn’t always like it. I remember when I first got to Taco Bell. I got up there and I was like, “Oh, I’m Greg, I’m from Australia, and, I’m really bad at spelling and I’m terrible at process.” I thought the CHRO was going to tackle me off the stage for revealing I didn’t do something well, right?

But my point is that all of us have things we’re great at, and all of us have things we’re terrible at. I think if you can talk about what you’re not good at, it enables you to talk about what you are good at without sounding like an egomaniac. So, you know, I’m terrible at math. I’m terrible at English or spelling, but I’m really good at math. I just got up there and said, “Hey, I’m Greg and I’m really good at math and I’m very creative.” And then people are going to go, well, how big is that man’s ego? But if you get out there and you say, look, I’m really bad at spelling. I’m not very good at process. I know process is important, but I’m not personally good at it. But on the other hand, I’m good at this and that. Then you come across as genuine because you’ve been fallible. You’ve been vulnerable in the eyes of the people that you lead.

And the reason you have to be vulnerable is because as a leader, you’re going to surround yourself with people that, not that spelling doesn’t matter, but process people I needed to have on my team, people that were really good at making the train run because I was not good at making the train run. And if I’m not honest with myself and I surround myself with people that look like me or think like me, then that’s going to be a problem because we’re not going to be successful.

So I think being vulnerable is not easy. I think it’s not easy for a lot of people, otherwise people would be more vulnerable. But I think that the ability to be more vulnerable really helps you come across as genuine and authentic and real and I think people attach to those attributes. They attach to a leader who demonstrates those attributes.

Neil Morrison: And I think that human experience and a leader’s ability to create it, you know, it makes me think of another saying that you’re pretty famous for, for offering around, you know, the customer experience will never outweigh that of the employees right? Across sectors, you’re on boards; like, what’s important about that sense of belonging?

Greg Creed: Yeah, well, I think, you know, you’re right. The customer experience will never exceed the team member experience. And I did it. I found that I sort of created that when I was the chief operating officer, which was interesting because I didn’t even know why I was the chief operating officer, because I, you know, couldn’t run a restaurant. But, and I think it’s important because a lot of organizations and you even hear it today, a lot of organizations basically say, look, you know, we want to improve the customer experience.

I mean, I’m on the Delta Airlines board. So you think about it. We have a thousand planes. We fly 4000 flights a day, basically, everywhere in the world, and there’s, I don’t know, a couple of hundred people on every flight. So you can do the math, right? And everyone says, well, we want to improve the customer experience. Every organization wants to improve the customer experience. And my point of view was, if you don’t improve the team members’ experience first, then why should you believe they’re going to improve the customer experience?

And so what I saw was, you know, most organizations talked about the customer experience, but they didn’t make the team members’ experience any better. So I’ll give you an example at Delta. This is a great example. Nothing to do with me. It happened before I joined. But here’s a good example. Most people don’t realize that pilots and flight attendants get paid from when the door closes to when the door opens. Yet, the most stressful time in a flight for the flight attendants is boarding the plane. You know, getting everybody in, getting everyone seated, getting their bags up the top. At every other airline except Delta, they do not get paid for that.

At Delta, we pay the flight attendants to board the plane. We also give the flight attendants five more minutes than all of our competitors. So everyone else has a 35 minute sort of. The customer doesn’t notice, but there’s 35 minutes to board the plane and get it away. We give them 40, and that five extra minutes means the employees are not as rushed. The customer doesn’t . . . You know, “Everyone please take a seat and get out of the center aisle because we gotta get this plane away.” Now, five minutes is costly, right? Because that plane is sitting at the gate for five minutes more.

But what Delta realized is by giving it five minutes more, you delivered a superior experience. And you also paid the flight attendants for the most stressful part of their job. So that, to me, is a great example of an organization that understands that giving five minutes more and paying the flight attendants to board the plane is absolutely the right thing to do. You know, you could argue financially it’s not the right thing to do. But if you want to improve the customer experience, you have to improve the team member experience.

And those two actions definitely improve the customer experience. And it’s why Delta is the number one US airline. Now, we’re not going to compete with Emirates and Qatar because they’re owned by governments and haven’t got to make a profit. But if you compare it to, you know, like for like, I would say that people certainly in the US would say that the best experience on any airline — and it’s in the numbers — is Delta. And that’s because we cared about the team member’s experience.

Neil Morrison: Yeah. It’s great. And I also saw that you were writing maybe a little bit about what’s going on at Boeing right now. Pretty pretty tense situation. Some observations about leadership. But I think importantly, I would love your thoughts. You really referenced that when they’re thinking about the next leader, right, like maybe for someone who values this idea of a culture, a culture-builder like culture-fueling results somehow.

Greg Creed: Yeah, it was really interesting. All of the narrative in the US and obviously Boeing, which was an institution, a respected, revered institution, has lost all respect, you know, not just in the business community, but I think within the traveling community and with pilots and all that sort of stuff, right? And so the discussion about succession, because the current CEO is going to step down at the end of the year, and all of the narrative was around, well, they just need a great engineer. Because, you know, we don’t want to have doors falling off and bolts not fastened. And you know, and obviously the huge tragedies of the two plane crashes. So they were like, “We need an engineer.” And everyone was sort of jumping on, they needed an engineer.

And I was like, oh no, I’m the contrarian. What they need is a leader who can inspire and build culture. Now I’m convinced Boeing is full of amazing, fantastic, brilliant engineers. I mean, anyone who can get, you know, planes to fly. I mean, you think about, you know, let’s get a ton of metal flying through the air, right? Like that requires great engineering. We’re going to get the thing to go to space. We got, you know, they have, you know, military aircraft, all that sort of stuff. They’re not short of great engineers. They’re short of a great culture and a leader that inspires them to want to build great aircrafts, and would be embarrassed if they built an aircraft that, you know, the bolts weren’t attached.

And so the point I was trying to make was, look, if this great, inspiring leader happens to be an engineer, well, you get the double whammy. But if the choice is between a great engineer who will not inspire or change the toxic culture, or you get the choice to choose a leader who will inspire and build culture and isn’t an engineer, then please take the inspiring culture-building leader, not the engineer. And so it’s once again, I just, it just frustrates me that, you know, all the narrative, everyone…

Is it cognitive bias where everyone jumps on whatever? You know, you just look for things that agree with whatever your point of view is? Maybe I just like being the contrarian, Neil, I don’t know. But, whether it’s DE&I or Boeing or whatever, but, you know, so I was in marketing, right? You know, I spent most of my life in marketing. When you get to be on an executive team for the first time, your job is, your allegiance is not to your function. Your allegiance becomes to that leadership team. And sometimes your job is to not do what’s best for your function in order for the organization to do its best.

And that was the speech I used to give everyone that joined my leadership team because everyone goes, wow, I’m now the Chief Legal Officer. I’m now the Chief Operating Officer. I’m going to push the operations agenda. I’m going to push the marketing agenda. I’m like, here’s your choice. Your allegiance is to your new executive team, not your function. If you think you’re here just to push. Otherwise, what you got is everyone pushing their function and no one is collaborating to say what is the best for the organization.

And so I used to give everyone that speech. Welcome to the leadership team. Yes, you are the chief, whatever or whatever that function is. But I want to remind you, your allegiance is now to my executive team, not to your function. And, you know, I think you remember we used to play the game Broken Squares, right? Where, you know, you would give people, they’d give different teams two parcels, and then it would be some, like jigsaw pieces, and you had to make a square. And everyone thought the solution lied in the squares we’d given them, but the answer was you actually had to trade with another team to get to complete your project.

And I love that. I love that because everyone’s like, oh, here are our pieces. We got to solve the problem and they forget that collaboration is actually the way for success, right? So yes, I do believe that, you know, it is about the good of the organization. Ultimately it’s the good of the organization. And if it means that marketing can’t launch a new product cause operations can’t handle it, so be it. Now, it does mean operations have to get their act together, you know, and all that sort of stuff but it’s no good saying, oh, yeah, that’s why we didn’t launch the Doritos Locos Tacos when they were 62% full, because that would have been a train wreck. We would have wasted a great idea because, you know.

So, yeah, marketing wanted to launch it, finance wanted to launch it, but the operators were like, we’re not ready. And if I had to push the go button just to be a hero, that would have been the stupidest decision I made in my life. And so I think it’s also understanding that, you know? And I love it. Every function gives the field, whatever the field is, something to do. And you go, oh, I just ask them to do two things. Yeah. Well as eight functions time two things. I’ve now got 16 things to do. No, that’s not how this game works.

Go back to focus. What are the one or two things that you want them to do? And so, you know, this isn’t difficult in a sense. You know. But it is hard to execute. I think that’s the challenge. And again, I think it comes back to doing what’s right and realizing ultimately what your overall, you know, goal happens to be. Your goal is not to maximize your function. Your goal is to maximize the performance of the organization. The culture matters more.

And yeah, as you said, you know, it’s interesting. And in business you get taught this very simple strategy, structure, culture. That’s what you get taught. Write the strategy, work out what the structure is, and then it’s sort of like, in your spare time, work about the culture. I’m a huge believer they’re the right ingredients, they’re just put in the wrong order. The right order is culture, strategy, structure. And the reason that’s important is that there are two cultures. There’s what’s going on in society and there’s what’s going on in your organization. And I would argue that if you write a strategy in the absence of understanding what’s going on in society and what’s going on in your organization, there is no way that strategy is going to a) be executed or b) be successfully executed, right? And so I’m a huge believer in: It starts with culture, then strategy, and then structure.

Neil Morrison: Greg, you know, before we bring this one home, I started by asking you, who your favorite child is, but maybe I’ll try and finish with a bit of a loftier question.

So, you know, we spoke earlier about there’s a lot going on in the world and you just referenced what’s going on: the culture in society, the culture at work, you know, maybe in some way, shape, or form, we’re all craving that sort of trustworthy inspiration at the minute, that you spoke about. So as you look at this year around the world, what’s going on, the elections happening pretty much in every corner of it. What’s something you hope for? What’s something you hope for . . . for all of us?

Greg Creed: God, I hope that sanity prevails and that this move to the right, whether it’s in the French elections, the European elections, the US elections, even in Australia, where the Liberal Party has decided to wake up and be crazy — that people understand that it’s . . . it’s probably too much to say that it’s like the 1930s in Germany, and I don’t mean to pick on the Germans, but there’s a sense of that.

And, you know, the great thing about history is we should learn from it. And, look, does the left do everything right, too? No they don’t. Like, no one is right. I think the vast majority of people, whether they’re in Europe or Australia or in the US, are pretty much in the middle. We were sort of like — I call it fiscally conservative and socially liberal — and yet, unfortunately, there aren’t politicians that represent us.

So I think it’s up to us as individuals to have a point. You know, there’s a lot of very rich billionaires now backing Donald Trump, you know, and largely because they’ll get tax cuts and, you know, he’ll make things easy for them to make a hell of a lot of money. But at the end of the day, they may all be able to give him hundreds of millions of dollars, but they only get one vote. And so I think it’s incumbent upon all of us to go out and vote, again, not to make everyone happy, but to do what’s right.

And I think if we voted from the perspective of let’s do what’s right for a society that we will leave our children . . . it was interesting, I read somewhere the other day where, you know, people believe we have a right. What we should say is we have a responsibility. And if we thought about it and what is our responsibility rather than what is our right, then I think we would make better decisions.

So my hope is that we as individuals think about what is our responsibility more so than what is our personal right. And I think if we vote in that context, we will do the right thing. And then I think ultimately, both the world and the people in the world will be happier.

Neil Morrison: Greg, thank you very much. Thanks for hanging out. Thanks for this great conversation. Really appreciate your time.

Greg Creed: Neil, it’s been an absolute pleasure. Great to see you again, mate.

Neil Morrison: Awesome. Hey, I’m Neil Morrison, Chief People Officer at Staffbase. And be sure to join us again on another episode of the Aspire to Inspire podcast.