Why CEOs need to check their blind spots and their judgments
In his new book, the former CEO of Yum! Brands, David Novak, breaks down how leaders can stop judging others.
As CEO of Yum!, I also had the privilege of touring our restaurants often, meeting frontline workers who were just as smart as I was but who hadn’t had the same opportunities. Because they happened to be washing dishes, working the drive-through, or standing at a grill, people automatically assumed that they didn’t have much to say worth listening to. It was a big mistake that I always tried to rectify, and it saved us from making mistakes more than once. It’s also how I brought to life the defining principle of Yum!’s culture: a culture where everyone makes a difference. For instance, when we launched our oven-roasted chicken pieces at KFC, everyone at our corporate office thought the product was just great as it was. But then I talked to the cooks at a couple of our restaurants who showed me how difficult it was to make the product with consistent results in the real world. That insight sent us back to the drawing board. Thanks to those cooks, we found a quicker and simpler process for making a consistently good product, which saved us a ton of time and money in the long run.