Christa Bourg

This book starts with a basic premise: We all need people to help us along the way. You can go only so far by going it alone. If you want to start a business, if you want a big promotion, if you are developing or launching a new product, if you want your company to move in a new direction, if you want to expand your sales territory, if you want to raise money for a good cause, even if you become the coach of your child’s soccer team, which has lost every game so far, and you want to show those kids what it feels like to win, you’re going to need people to help you get there. You’ll never accomplish anything big if you try to do it alone.

Early in my career, I had an experience that changed how I thought about my own role as a leader and inspired me to accomplish what, for me, is my greatest example of taking people with you. I was working for PepsiCo at the time, making my way up through the ranks, and had recently become head of operations for Pepsi Bottling. I had held mainly marketing positions until then, so operations was a new world for me. One of the first things I did was travel to our various plants to meet with the people there and find out more about how things worked.

I was at a plant in St. Louis, conducting a six A.M. roundtable meeting with a group of route salesmen, when, over coffee and doughnuts, I asked what I thought was a pretty straightforward question about merchandising, which is all about the displays and visibility we get in convenience and grocery stores. I wanted to know what they thought was working and what wasn’t. Right away, someone piped up, “Bob is the expert in that area. He can tell you how it’s done.” Someone else added, “Bob taught me more in one day than I’d learned in two years on the job.” Every single person in the room agreed: Bob was the best there was. I looked over at Bob, thinking he must be thrilled by all this praise. Instead, I saw that he had tears running down his face. When I asked him what was wrong, Bob, who had been with the company for over forty years and was about to retire in just two weeks, said, “I never knew anyone felt this way about me.”

The rest of my visit to the plant went pretty well, but I walked away that day with an uneasy feeling. It was such a shame that Bob had never felt appreciated. It was a missed opportunity for the business, too. We all could have benefited from his expertise, and more people could have learned from him. This guy was clearly great at what he did, but who knows how much better he could have been in a workplace that recognized and rewarded his knowledge. I knew that if he felt overlooked and underappreciated, others at the plant did too.

I’ve always believed in people, but that experience made me even more determined to be the kind of leader who would never let a person like Bob go through his entire career without being thanked for what he did and encouraged to find out how much more he could do. I wanted the people who worked for me to know that they mattered, and I wanted them to enjoy coming to work every day. I also understood that none of this would happen unless I made it happen. It was my job to cast the right shadow of leadership, because no one else was going to live up to these principles unless I lived up to them first. As a leader, you always have to remember that people tend to follow the leader’s actions. You can’t say one thing and then do another and expect people to believe in you or follow you. As the leader, you have the opportunity to set an example of how the business should be run.

When I became CEO of a global organization over a decade ago, I thought of the Bobs of the world and made it one of my first priorities to create a recognition culture wherein everyone counted and to do it so successfully that our company would become renowned for it. That was no small task, considering we now have more than 1.4 million employees spread out over 117 countries around the world. But while we’re far from perfect, it’s working. I know it’s working, because I get proof of it practically every day.

Today I am probably best known within my organization for casting a shadow of recognition and positive energy. I do this demonstrably by: (1) recognizing people in a unique way for their performance and (2) leading people in our Yum! cheer every chance I get. These two aspects of our culture have traveled all the way around the world. When I first started giving out recognition awards, I decided I wanted them to be much more memorable than your typical plaque or a pen. So when I was at KFC, for example, I gave out these floppy rubber chickens. In my current position, I give out a huge set of smiling teeth mounted on a pair of skinny legs with big feet. Now everywhere we do business, leaders in our organization give out their own versions of these awards. Our HR director in India recognizes outstanding performers by giving them a replica of the Taj Mahal, because the workers who built it are remembered for their passion, determination, and overall excellence. A general manager in Dubai gives out his Camel Award, because camels are revered animals in the desert, known for their steadfastness, perseverance, and undying spirit. The head of our construction department recognizes people with his Shovel Award, naturally, and our chief financial officer has his Show Me the Money Award, which consists of a transparent piggy bank filled with monopoly money and a copy of the old movie Jerry McGuire, in which that famous phrase originated. The fact that each leader took the time to personalize these awards makes recognition that much more meaningful and fun for everyone.

I’d also venture to say that most of our 1.4 million people around the world now know and the company’s cheer, spelling out the name of our organization. When I first started doing things like these, I was told by some people that my “Western ideas” wouldn’t work in places like Asia or Europe. Boy, were those people wrong. I believe that, just like Bob, all people, no matter what they do or where they’re from, want to know that they are important and to have fun while they’re doing their job. My favorite picture, which now hangs prominently on the walls of our headquarters, features two thousand restaurant general managers proudly doing our cheer on the Great Wall of China, all of their hands held up high. It always reminds me that my shadow has traveled a long way. It also reminds me of the power of taking people with you and the fact that it’s the key to achieving breakthrough results. My goal for this book is to share with you everything I’ve learned about how to lead your team so you can do just that.

Taking People with You is not just another book filled with leadership principles you’ve heard time and time again. It’s really more of an action plan. It offers a very specific process that will help you maximize your potential as a leader and show you how to use your leadership skills to achieve the most important goals you can imagine. It’s a book that will force you to look in the mirror and challenge yourself to rise to a higher level. It’s a step-by-step guidebook and workbook, and by its end, you’ll walk away with a tangible plan that you can use over and over again to get big things done. This is a book that will help you become not just a better leader, but also a better person, by making you more self-aware and showing you how to build up the people around you.

How can I make such bold promises? I’m certain this book can do these things because I have been developing and testing its content for the past fifteen years. This book comes out of a leadership program of the same name that I have taught to more than four thousand people in my organization.

It all started years ago, when I was a young(er) and aspiring leader, and the chairman of the company I worked for at the time called me up and said, “David, I’d like you to create a leadership program for our executives. You’ve got a pretty good reputation for building and aligning teams, and I’d like you to share what you know and what you do with others.”

I was really honored and excited by the opportunity, because this is just the sort of thing I love to do. I went to work on the program right away. I had pretty much figured out what I was going to present—I even had a date scheduled to give my very first program to a group of fifteen executives—when I got a phone call that changed everything.

It was the CEO again, only this time he had something different to tell me. “David,” he said, “we’re going to spin off part of the company.” I immediately asked, “What the heck does that mean for our people and our company?”

What it meant was this: The organization was going to split in two. The CEO would remain at the head of one half of the company, and another half—the part I worked for—was going to spin off to become a brand-new, totally independent public company.

There were a lot of implications to this, of course, one of which was that it no longer made sense for me to give my leadership program to a group of executives that I wouldn’t be working with for much longer. The program got shelved, and I got distracted by other details, like who was going to lead this new company.

It turned out that the answer to that question was me, along with a guy named Andy Pearson, a past president and professor at Harvard Business School. I became president and Andy became the Chairman and CEO, as well as my mentor even after he retired and I took over his position a couple years later. One of the first things Andy said to me when we were starting out was, “How would you like to have lunch with Jack Welch, the legendary CEO of General Electric, and talk to him about what we’re going to do with our new company?”

Of course I said yes. The opportunity to pick the brain of one of the most successful businessmen alive was too good to pass up. I asked Jack every question I could think of and just sat there taking notes as he answered. One of my last questions was, “If you were in my position, about to start a new company, what would you do?”

What he said really hit home. He told me, “Looking back on my career at GE, one of the things I wish I could do over is I wish I would’ve talked to our people more about what kind of company I envisioned us to be . . . what our values were and what we really stood for.”

I went back to my office and spent the next week thinking about how I could do just that.

I wanted us to be a company with a unique culture, one that revolved around a genuine belief in people. I took another look at my leadership program, revised it, and made it part of communicating that message. My goal was to scale the program so that I could reach as many people as possible and make it relevant to a broad audience. There are obviously a lot of people I have to reach when I want to communicate an important message about our company. Launching this program was my first step toward building a unique culture.

I taught my Taking People with You program for the very first time to a group of just eight executives in London. In the years since then, I have expanded the reach significantly and strengthened the content, constantly adding to it, refining it, and making it better. As CEO of a Fortune 500 company, I’ve had the opportunity, along with my team, to study best practices and learn from some of the most successful companies in the world. I’ve interviewed experts like Jim Collins on building great companies, Larry Bossidy on execution, Bob Rotella on the psychology of winning, John Wooden on coaching for performance, Noel Tichy on having a “teachable point of view,” and Ken Blanchard on creating a people-first culture. I’ve sought insights from highly respected,CEOs, like Jamie Dimon, Indra Nooyi, Bill Weldon, Jeff Immelt, Dave Cote, Steve Burke, Randall Stephenson, Andy Taylor, and Alan Mulally.