Campbell Soup Company was having its troubles when Douglas Conant was hired as CEO in 2001. I know several people who were and are Campbell Soup senior executives although I have never had the pleasure of meeting Conant himself. But I have watched and heard the story of how he led the company forward. He left in 2011 and has now written a book about his thoughts on leadership, a book on the skills he used to fix the problems and recreate the company for success going forward.
Many things about his leadership style have jumped out at me over the years but two things in particular interest me greatly. First, when he arrived he spent the first year evaluating everything, but most importantly the top people. He truly understands that culture and everyting else flow from the top. In a global company with a huge workforce the top, as in every company, is the CEO but in a large company the top also includes quite a few other senior people.
In the case of Campbell Soup, the top included around 350 senior people. Conant rapidly figured out they, as in so many companies, were the problem. What to do?
Be tough and fix the problem was Conant’s choice. To this end he turned over approximately 300 of the top 350 people in his first three years. About half came from inside as he does believe in promoting from within…if possible. The other half were brought in. Conant understood that you can’t build a top quality, successful global company without having the best people at the top.
In my consulting I notice how few are willing to take this tough step and so are destined to be less than they could be due to fear of removing the weak and finding the strong. And everyone working for, funding, and connected in any way to the company suffers for it.
The other thing he understands is touchpoints…which just happens to be the title of his book. Touchpoints: Creating Powerful Leadership Connections in the Smallest of Moments. Touchpoints is all about using every single opportunity to have a small touch with someone. Touchpoints is all about building strong and continuous connections to the people that work for and with you. Touchpoints in many ways is the opposite of our internet world where people think a connection to someone you don’t know on Linked In is a real connection.
My favorite touchpoint? The handwritten note. For years I’ve talked about this as a great way to connect with people, even writing a book with Kay Keenan, Conversation on Networking, that included this idea. And we gave a zillion talks where we mentioned this idea. You can imagine how much fun I found it when I learned that Conant sent out 10 to 20 handwritten notes each and every day to people within Campbell Soup.
These are not random notes filled with gratuitous compliments but serious notes related to success with business issues. Conant estimates he wrote over 30,000 notes during his time at Campbell. 30,000! He feels so strongly about the value of the touchpoint of handwritten notes that he devoted who knows how much of his valuable CEO time to writing notes to his people. Imagine what it must have been like to be in some far flung outpost of Campbell Soup and receive a handwritten note from the CEO discussing and thanking you for something you did.
And imagine how many people you would share this with. And their reaction.
Two simple to think about and difficult to do ways to build a stronger organization: get the right people and touch them constantly.
Trackbacks for this post