Rosalind Brewer, COO, Starbucks

[Music] welcome to this year's first view from the top we're extremely excited to kick off this year's series with roz brewer the chief operating officer and group president for starbucks raz was born and raised in detroit she earned her bachelor's degree in chemistry from spelman college and began her first job as a scientist at the kimberley clark corporation she spent more than two decades at the company moving into business operations and eventually becoming the president of one of the company's global divisions in 2006 raz was hired as a regional vice president at walmart six years later she became the president and the ceo of sam's club she was the first woman and the first african-american to lead a division at walmart she then joined starbucks as chief operating officer in 2017 and has been much celebrated for her success there even before helping to lead the company through the coveted pandemic fortune has named raj to its list of 50 most powerful women in business she's been featured in an exhibition on game changers at the smithsonian national museum of american history and working mother magazine has named her to the list of top 10 most powerful moms which is pretty awesome actually two years ago raz delivered the commencement address at her alma mater spelman college and at that time mary campbell the president of the college said those glass ceilings are real but rise brewer has become an adept glass cutter she has walked the same road as many of you and with relentless determination so we're looking forward to hearing more about raz's story and her achievements in today's conversation with joy wong nba21 raj thank you so much for joining us it's really wonderful to have you thank you for having me ron we are so excited to finally have you join us thank you there's a lot of ground to cover today we'll talk a lot about how you lead large organizations and dive deeper into your leadership style but first i would love to start from the beginning and talk about some early influences that you had in your life sure let's do it so roz many of us don't really start developing our leadership still uh styles until quite late in life but from what i learned you seem to have had a really strong voice from very early on in fact you were suspended from school in third grade what happened you know it amazes me what people can find out about me but yes that did happen you know early on um you know some might uh call me as a troublemaker but you know being the youngest of five i knew how to you know really fight for that last uh piece of bread on the table so the youngest of five taught me how to be you know uh take care of myself but you know in third grade um i got into trouble because you know i'm sitting in class and uh you know the teacher is teaching math and i had older siblings and you know she's teaching this long way to do this problem and so i just thought i'd just get up and help her out you know and just say no there's a shortcut to this and so i keep telling her until the point where the next thing i knew long story short my parents were at school picking me up uh you know because i was adamant about taking that talk and uh teaching the teacher and the class you know a shortcut on a math problem or two so um it's one way to get in trouble and um you know my parents you know i thought i was really in trouble but you know i think after a while i watched how many times i would laugh at all the stuff i would do as i was growing up but uh i think that was my start that's an amazing story and that's actually funny because here at the gsb there's this tradition for doing shenanigans in class and one of them is that you would get up halfway and you would go to the white board and teach um so it is very funny to me how we're obviously copying what you did in third grade at the age of 26 exactly it's it was crazy never grow old um i'm curious so you said that your parents kind of find that funny um how did they react to the incident and and broadly how did your parents shape your values sure well i think it was eventually they thought it was funny because initially you know my parents were so adamant about education and you know i grew up in a family in a household where kids were to be seen and not heard you know and so we were you know always you know shut it off to do the things that we were right and it was very strict household a lot of that came from my parents did not have the opportunity to go to college and quite honestly neither finished high school and so for them to have five children and i'm the youngest of five acting out in school was totally unacceptable because they knew you know it's a fine thread between you know getting kicked out of school once and what can happen to you i think what made it a little funny was because i really wasn't acting out i was just trying to get my voice heard right and so i think they began to see that you know i want to use my voice and you know maybe i had raised my hand and she didn't pay attention to me you know and so they started really understanding that the dynamics in some of the classrooms you know and so it it turned into a different story but quite honestly that would have been disciplinary and action by my parents because they were so strict about education they didn't want us to miss a thing and so um it was the beginning of us you know really having um conversations about what does it take to be excellent and what's the expectation of you and they would constantly raise the bar for everything in our lives and so for all five of us to go to college on the backs of two parents who you know never really were able to do that and worked in the automotive automotive industry was really um heroic on my parents part yeah and it sounds like they really instilled this this confidence in you and a drive and to uh to to speak up and and have a strong voice and with that confidence you then decide um to leave home and then attended spelman college and you have often talked about spelman as a very defining experience for you so i'm curious what were some lessons that you learned there that stayed with you until today sure so you know spelman's a very small school private um black all-women's college in the south i grew up in detroit and um first of all i had never experienced you know the the southern life um and it was vastly different for me i was the only being the youngest of five i'm the only one that went to went away to school everyone else is wonderful schools in the state of michigan i wanted to move away and i did but spelman when i got there i realized that it was my new home because in that environment first of all i love that it was a liberal arts institution because i got a chance to really dive into critical thinking and they were getting all into your head about things that i'd never really thought about but then also too is such a nurturing environment to have a you know first name basis with your professors and um and the all the entire faculty it was very special to me and to be in the environment of people who women who look like me but came from all different walks of life i thought i was in a knew that i was in a very unique situation and so going to an hbcu is a very deliberate decision you're deciding to go into an environment that's that's pretty unique especially all women but i remember a couple of experiences that made me realize how special spelman was so by my senior year my dad had been diagnosed with cancer and spring break of my senior year i'm studying for the gmat trying to finish my major in chemistry minor in uh math all at the same time when i get the call that i need to get home because this looks like you know my father was um moving was passing on and so this was six weeks before graduation and um you know all of a sudden i get my organic teacher changing all of my um test dates for me so that i can test when i get back uh the school chaplain was in my dorm room like within 10 minutes after getting the call and you know everyone was just rallying around me just trying to give me the strength to get home get my dad buried get back to school take the gmat and graduate in six weeks and um you know i don't know that that would have happened for me at any other institution and so it is something to have that kind of feeling and closeness that i will absolutely never forget my experience at spelman because i felt like people saw me for me and um not as you know another number in the school so it's it's a special place a very special place it sounded like a really hard experience to go through and i'm so glad that the school was fully supportive review um you did talk a lot about it being being a strong community um so during my research i actually came across something on social media if you could see on the screen you probably remember this yes yeah oh wow yeah that was october 2nd 2018 the day it was announced that i was the new chief operating officer for starbucks yeah so this this was an amazing time um all over the country actually all over the world um i had um my sorority sisters actually i'm an alpha kappa alpha uh uh just like uh kamala uh harris and so uh you know they rallied around me and every drive-through or store they went into they ordered their drink and put my name on it and it was it was overwhelming when i saw i didn't see this because i was involved in the press releases that morning and i got back to my hotel room i was in seattle and i turned on social you know i was starting to look at my social media feed and i saw all these cups and i just absolutely lost it i mean i remember i slipped off the bed onto the floor and i was just like oh my god did they really do this and it was just a reminder that there's no other place um in the world that you can feel like you know someone accepts you for you and it was you know my sorority my college um and uh it was a truly heartfelt moment but it was amazing it was really great yeah it's so incredible to see that the relationship that you had we're still so strong it was 20 odd years later um and also just inspiring to to see that you have such an impact on your community well it was it was it was something else it was amazing now rod um your influence obviously at impact extends way beyond spelman into the many organizations that you've been part of and as a leader what you like to say is that you like to lead both with your head and with your heart yeah so i thought we should start with the first piece leading with the head now you've been in the retail industry for more than 10 years now and um you were quite the visionary during a lot of time for example when you were at sam's club you invested a lot of effort into curbside pickup and e-commerce efforts um which was quite ahead of many of the the offline retailer peers um and still a really critical piece of the the strategy for walmart today um so i'm curious now you're leading starbucks you're on the board of amazon what are some big bets that you're making on the future of retail sure so you know it's interesting because some of that work i'm bringing forward with me to starbucks but i will say that joining starbucks starbucks had a fantastic digital flywheel once i joined there and their loyalty program was very strong but as you know any business leader will tell you is that every day it's about trade-offs can we continue to invest in all of the technology that we need to have and still do everything else we need to do to innovate at the company and so myself along with many others because there's some extremely bright brilliant talent at starbucks i am so fortunate to have the kind of partners that i have there but we created uh together in innovation lab and in that innovation lab we began to think about how do we change the engine of making coffee at starbucks and so we have baristas that love the beautiful craft of making a wonderful latte and so they want to be seen doing that um but actually you know we're pretty popular right now and so in the morning you know we have stores that will do you know uh you know some astronomical number of coffee cups per minute right and so we began to look at a new engine at starbucks and so we introduced a new model where it's a pickup only store where everything is digital we flip the kitchen to the back and we've opened up several of those we have three or four of those in our unit but we just recently announced we're gonna add more of these pickup units to our our our fleet uh so the technology uh goes on and on with with starbucks so it starts also with the stores and then also too relieving our baristas of having to do any kind of manual work like manual scheduling so all scheduling is automated centralized planning and replenishment is underway everything that we're doing from optimizing the drive-through window and what's so interesting is that going into this cobot experience in life where we're trying to create social distancing everything that we had in our innovation pipeline we've been able to bring it forward pretty quickly so that's been part of our recovery plan we had innovation plans three to five years out we're now executing that on an a by 18 months we'll have all of that innovation out in the field and so it's pretty exciting it's around beverage innovation the store innovation and then what we continue to do with the digital flywheel so um you know i've um i'm very grateful for the work and the things that i learned at walmart because i'm actually bringing that forward at starbucks and it's exciting to have you know be with a coffee company that's so digitally you know sound as we are so it's pretty exciting and one thing that you mentioned that will probably continue after the pandemic is this trend towards everything going more virtual and digital right and you talk about changing store formats into pickup only um it seems like a very particular problem to starbucks because the company has always prided itself on being a third place and a place where people will come together and and relax and have a great conversation um so how do you think about creating and maintaining that connection in that community in a virtual world yes and you know that is one of the things that we put you know we look at our work as what are the most significant problems we can solve and that is one of them because you know that's what we admire about our mission and values is that third place but when you approach a starbucks and you see the familiarity of your barista that you love and that you can say hello how are you jessica and you remember your barista your barista remembers the customer it starts right there and that's rather you're handing something through the drive-through window or you're going out to curbside and we right now i'll tell you our customer connection scores are higher than they were pre-coveted and that's pretty exciting to see that you know first of all we know that people are starving for connection again and they're starving for something that they're familiar with so that you know their customized beverage is something that they look forward to and when starbucks opened back up they were like oh my gosh okay there's something that's normal here and i can see my barista and we never underestimate that so the things that we're doing is we're just trying our best to free up our baristas time so that they can give eye contact and look the customer squarely in the face and you know i i get amazed and i tour a ton of stores i'm still touring stores even through covet i'm just doing my own driving um to stores by myself in the in the vehicle in my own car and just going to stores and walking in and spending time at a distance uh with the baristas because they want to see us and then i hear the conversations between the customers and the baristas and the excitement of them reconnecting it's amazing to me and it and it helps me understand that um some of this will be temporary but what they really want is that human connection and we can still provide that even if we're going to some of our convenience my models so we're pretty excited about that and our customers are giving us great feedback right now yeah as a person who's going through her second zoom quarter i i totally advertise with that yeah it's it's been it's been really wonderful to see so and roz you are a bit different from a lot of our guests uh for view from the top in that many of them are ceos but you are a true operator and you've led massive organizations like like sam's club and and uh starbucks um and i think you have this amazing ability to to see the big picture but also to really get into the weeds um an example was that when you joined starbucks um the it was actually kind of a low point for the business and sales wasn't doing well and you came in and quickly discovered some operational issues that really moved the needle um one of them was an insight that store traffic was too slow at around two o'clock in the afternoon that's right yeah i and i bet there could have been maybe 50 hundreds of issues that you could have looked into um so how are you able to hone in so quickly at such a micro level sure so you know one of the things on being at walmart is that you know you spent you we we got a chance to spend a lot of time in stores and after a while i can almost walk in a store and get a feel for the operations of the store one prime example is if i walk in a store i can tell if the employees are not proud of their unit they'll immediately look down at their feet so i know they're either not proud of the operation they recognize who i am and i'm about to hear the story so what i try to do when i walk in these units is to kind of diffuse that to say look i'm here to help i'm not here to reprimand so you know i've thrown trucks at walmart which means unloaded midnight you know i've done that and you know i wouldn't enjoy getting behind the bar i don't make the best latte but i try my best to do latte art as best i can looks a little weird sometimes but you know i try to meet them where they are because i feel so responsible that there's probably something that we did at the home office that's creating a bad outcome at the store so that's that's part of it but i've also um you know having a background in chemistry i'm a little bit of an analytics so you can kind of watch operation and see what's flowing and not flowing and and then match it with numbers and data and analytics and pretty come out pretty much come out with your solution so um you know understanding that we were maxing out in the morning but then tons of opportunity in the afternoon it was a chance for us to say what is what's the menu in the afternoon what's a customer looking for in the afternoon who's in the store in the afternoon what's competition doing in the afternoon and then you know we were able to adjust um and offer something different in the afternoon day part and begin to grow the business that way so we dug ourselves out of a pretty deep hole um back at that time and you know it's still pre-covet we were having some of the most fantastic results and as you saw in our prior earnings we're returning uh to recovery um in short order so um you know it pays off to be um an operator i will tell you i say it's like the ultimate bob and weave i've got to go high and create strategy and multi-year you know straight the create the vision create a road map give people something to aspire to create hope but then i've got to be able to kind of live in their shoes to know that when i make these changes and i suggest big major growth initiatives i have to understand what is it going to take to get this team to follow me and i'm really glad that i had some of the small jobs that i have but i realize the reason why i've had some of these small jobs too is because uh quite honestly you know there were times in my career where i was given the you know the unfortunate work to do and i always had to do some of the toughest dirtiest jobs um and i had to do those so but it gave me a chance to learn and i try and put it to work every day and look at it as a blessing that i got some of the smaller jobs the unfortunate positions yeah it's amazing to hear that you took that experience and didn't complain about it but but rather turn it into a lot of empathy than than now for your employees um and it it's interesting to see how you know it's a combination of both um the analytics and then also just feeling the story and seeing the people but again starbucks has thousands of stores and 300 000 employees so when it's at that scale how do you make sure you're successful in driving execution and then uh perhaps equally importantly at motivating those people so so they're aligned around the same goal sure so it is all about your talent right and so having um the ability to identify great talent um and it's not just individual talent it's also looking at what's the dynamics of your team how do you get that team to move like an or like an orchestra and that's what i always say is that i feel like i'm the conductor of the orchestra and i want it to have its best performance so i can't just select one or two good talents i've got to figure out how are these people going to work together um you know prime examples right now the executive vice president for u.s operations that reports to me she is a fantastic people leader she can motivate like something i've never seen and when you've got that large number of stores you need someone like that and she's not one that i'm gonna press about strategy i'm not gonna press about her spending because i trust she'll do that very well but more than anything i know she'll motivate that barista that's on the front line and that's so important so it really begins with the talent that you select and how you put those pieces together and then how do you build the trusting relationships because they've gotta know that i have their back every day i instill that in them i stand up for them i fight for them and so then i think when i do create that visionary message they trust that i'm going to get them over the finish line right and they know i'm not going to leave them on the sideline they know i'm not going to blame them they know i'm going to dig into the details with them and so we begin to work together because i i do believe in still rolling my sleeves up um it takes that you cannot in in retail today if you're not willing to roll your sleeves up um get ready for some pretty mundane numbers because it takes you really getting into the trenches to get these companies to grow and that's what it takes right now and speaking of motivating people i think this is a great segue into the second piece of your leadership which is leading with the heart and as an asian woman i i could sometimes get a little tired of questions around diversity and equality but at the same time i do recognize the value of sharing my own experience in the hope that it sparks conversation so in that spirit i would love to revisit a moment that was particularly difficult for you early in the days and it was only a few months after you had took over the starbucks america's business two black men rashaan nelson and dante robinson were wonderfully arrested in the starbucks store in philadelphia now i think many of us knew the facts of what happened later but could you take us back to that moment you just heard about the incident you got on a flight you're on your way to philadelphia what was going through your mind sure so you know when i got the news um and and it was interesting the way i began to pick up the news and um the news was really hot on black social media and it hadn't quite hit anywhere else so i'm hearing it and i'm letting you know other people in the company know and it's kind of catching up with us that we got a problem in philadelphia once we realized just how bad it was um we did i did take off to philadelphia and meet some of my partners there the first thing that really startled me was that i was begin beginning to get the feed on the two gentlemen and i could see what they look like so i knew right away so first of all it was two people arrested it wasn't we didn't know that they were african-american males it quickly became african-american males and then when i saw them the first thing i thought about is um wow you know this this is not going to be good in addition to they look so familiar to me right because um they're everything that i've seen in my communities right and by the way i have a son i haven't my son was that exact same age and so i looked at what happened and thought this could happen to my son any day of the week and i was actually terrified because those two gentlemen went to jail that night and they stayed there overnight just for having walked into a starbucks and there's something wrong with that there's something wrong and i knew right away there was something wrong and um we got into philadelphia um created a war room and began to work on this situation and the first thing was to make sure that these two gentlemen returned safely to their home and uh and we were engaged in in um in in that work um and then began to tell the story and to admit that uh starbucks did something wrong here and you know our policies failed us our leadership failed us um this happened under i felt like it happened under my watch um i was running i'm running u.s operations part of our responsibility and these two gentlemen the police were called after 10 minutes of being in our stores now um that's not what we do at starbucks and so i knew and then i looked at the young woman who was running that store and like i mentioned before leadership um is you know all about the talent that you selected she's a fine talent but for her to work at a store at 18th and spruce in philadelphia and she's a young new leader we set her up for um failure and then the whole system falls down falls apart and the interpretation of policies was taken for granted um we had work to do and the other thing is that we had not had the realization that what's happening outside a starbucks store has begun to come inside the store so homelessness and all those things that are happening in our communities but our policies say you know allow people to have a beverage sit down stay for a while if they're not ordering after about 45 minutes you know maybe encourage them to have a beverage but you know now people come into our stores for respite right and for warmth and but our policies were based on something years ago when that's not what a starbucks store was you know equipped to do and our leaders weren't trained to how do you handle anyone coming in and outside the store so it could be misinterpreted and it was so we admitted our faults but we got around this issue we knew we needed to train on anti-bias training there are some biases that were likely involved in this and we got after it and we continue to get after it daily with training and development and leadership at the right time right person in the right role all of those things really matter in terms of how you want to manage but it was frightening because i knew at any moment that could have been my son and quite frankly i got a call from my son and uh he's living in new york and he said mom you know this thing is this is bad and you have got to fix it and i'm and you've got to do this this is all this is everything you need to do right now and when you hear your son talking to you i picked up fear in his voice because i think he was saying mom fight for me because that's me i felt that and i fought like hell for him and for dante and rashawn that this will never happen again and like you're saying in that moment yes you're the ceo but you're also a mother and then you are part of the community how did you think about balancing having your own voice versus quote-unquote being the voice of the company right right so you know i think um you know timing is everything i think the company was open to my influence on this situation i think they clearly recognize that i'm going to take care of the brand and do the right thing for the company um but we all have to recognize when the company um has not done its best work and um that was a very honest moment for all of us and so i think there was immediate um you know growing trust for me they were getting to know me but they knew that i was going to take care of the company as well as take care of this situation because i felt like if i could influence starbucks and you know the visibility of this brand could we absolutely influence other companies so all the training that we developed we did it open source so if any company calls us and said how did you do that you know you closed your stores where who did your training we developed our training here take it and it was expensive and we gave it to any company or anyone who called us and said look we'll teach you how to do this um no charge because this is a problem not only for starbucks it's a problem in our society right now of making judgment of people um you know prematurely and it has to stop and you know eight police officers called for two gentlemen sitting in a store is unacceptable and we're fortunate that that's all that happened to those two gentlemen that they had to stay overnight very fortunate because we've since then right learned some other things that could be terrible yeah yeah and it's good to know that in that moment it seems like those two things really aligned and yet it was still very a very emotional moment for you right you talking about fear and worry and and it just sounded really overwhelming so how how do you take care of yourself in moments like that yeah well i'll be honest with you for that period of time where we were in philadelphia the media was pretty hot um i took on a lot of the local media the other good thing is that throughout my career i've gotten to know pretty much most of the mayors across the united states i make it my business to know them because i feel like i'm going to need to have a conversation with them either i'm buying real estate in their city or investing or something so um i used my rolodex like i never like i've never have and i called in you know a lot of help for people to teach me how to have these conversations so i tried to keep my fear down and turn it into energy it was sleepless i mean we didn't go to bed several days i remember one day we had to go over to the courthouse and i'd run out of clothes and so i had on a pajama shirt with my suit jacket over it and so i kept pulling my jacket to cover up the little teddy bear on my shirt because i still had on my pjs up under there because i couldn't get out of the hotel because people were wanted to touch and feel it so i put it that way and so you it's amazing what you'll do when you know you've got a little bit of fear and anxiety but you know you've got you've got work to do you just buckle down and do what you have to do and wearing a pajama shirt up under your you know your suit is not the worst thing that'll ever happen to you so you just have to keep your head on straight it was hard to focus but i knew that we were doing the right thing and i knew that we were living in a historical moment and we had a chance to either do this very right or do it very wrong but everything i had learned in my life came to bear in that situation my son's face these two young men who were trying to start a new business they were there to have a conversation about starting a new company my new company that i was falling in love with i didn't want them to fall on the ground you know the lovely young woman who we had hired to work in this store what's going to happen to her so everything was coming together and so this whole concept of head and heart you know that is the leadership model that makes you most successful in these heated moments because you can't have if i went through this thing just with my head i would have made a whole lot of different decisions you know it probably would have been much more abrasive um and but i was able to keep my head on straight thank you so much for sharing that really personal and emotional side with us and it's inspiring to see that that actually helps you become more effective as a leader and not um to your detriment um as a senior leader you're never afraid to say what is right um but for some of us and for me at least um as we're a bit earlier in our career it could sometimes feel very risky uh or and daunting to speak up if we don't feel like we have sufficient credibility or seniority so i'm curious how has your voice evolved as you became more senior sure so what you just described that was me early on in my career um you know i i actually felt like my voice didn't really matter because i was overlooked so much i was like well they don't care to hear what i have to say so i can go to a meeting unprepared or you know because they're not ever going to call on me it doesn't matter you know and um you know that's pretty frustrating after a while i mean you know i was doing a job on my own self with that mentality but then um and and then my next you know the next part of me after that was trying to find my place and use my voice and i then began to be too much like the company person i began to dress like all the men at work and all of that crazy stuff and it was ugly apparel i hated it but i did it anyway and i was sick when i was driving home like who is this and then i just you know and i'd get home and my family would be like okay why are you talking like that and so then after a while it was so stressful that i just said i just have to figure out how to bring my whole self to work so um you know i have two children i have a son and a daughter my daughter is 17. well early on you know my daughter wanted to swim she's african-american so like every other black family you have to get your daughter's hair braided that's just the whole deal if they're going to swim you got to get the air braided so one day i'm leaving work they're like why are you leaving early i was like i gotta go get my daughter's hair braided swim class is starting like why are you braiding her hair i was like because if i don't i i'm gonna have to deal with this hair on her head and so i had to explain cornrows to people i work with and after a while i just decided it was so stressful trying to hide i could have said oh i'm leaving the office for a doctor's meeting a doctor's appointment i was like no i gotta go get cornrows done so i was you know let me tell you what that's like i to sit here for eight hours you know in in the salon so um but once i started doing that i felt so much better the stress was so high of me trying to be two different people i could not bear it anymore i was not myself and so i just reconciled that i've got to bring my whole self to work and the more that i was like who i am in my day in my personal life at work actually work took off because i think people got to know me better and they knew how they could see me for me and there was no shell they had to peel off so it was uncomfortable for my peers my boss everyone else but once i started once i decided what do i have to lose you know um so it was so much better but the other thing i i look back on and this is what i tell when i have a new hire that's uh straight from school is that we know why we intentionally hired you you know this isn't a numbers game but if i hire an asian woman that's because i want an asian woman's voice at the table so if you come and don't use your voice i feel like i got a bad investment here so i always tell folks understand why you're here don't be bashful about it let's be clear i need an asian woman's voice at the table so that's why here this isn't anything about you know um i need you know they hit a number a diversity number and so sometimes when i see people sitting back in their seat and not engaging in the conversation i will call on them and say what do you think and they hate it but after a while and then i don't you know i just say okay good idea move on you know but i keep picking on them until they feel because first of all you gotta hear yourself talk and once you hear yourself talk you're like okay i can talk i mean you know it's just that simple and then when people nod people will nod at your idea then you're gonna find somebody that's gonna use your idea once you say it they're just going to say a little different and then after a while it just it becomes a pr a process but don't sit silent in the room and i try my best whenever i see that i always call that person out and try to give them a platform and i'll endorse what they say i'll help them with their viewpoint i see that they're struggling because it absolutely it still takes that but don't be silent in the room even if you think you're going to make a mistake that's better than sitting there quiet because you begin to suffocate to be honest with you you suffocate your opinion yourself it'll change your self-esteem so just get it out there and feel like you have value and i think it's so important that is amazing advice and ros you've been advocating for equality for many years but it a lot of times it just seems like things haven't changed as much as we would have loved them to and i know this year has been particularly difficult for a lot of us as we continue to witness racism and injustice and at times it could feel very overwhelming and disheartening um i'm curious if you see any hope in the moment and and what do you think we can all collectively do to use this moment to move forward together yeah you know um i'll be uh really frank with you you know there's been some days where i've had to really pull myself up um to say and do the right thing you know because i'm human too you know i'm a mom you know the ahmad aubry thing really struck me hard that one stuck with me george floyd murder stuck with me um you know i have it's so interesting i have all nephews and only one niece and so all these black males young black males are around me and so i remain nervous and scared for them right now and you know wondering what more that i can do but i pull myself up knowing that if i stay steadfast to set the example engage as many people as i can in conversations and use myself as an example to teach and educate maybe i do have a way to begin to change these narratives and the views of people the other thing i think that that i've been really focusing on is getting people to vote and vote in the vote in every election i don't care if it looks like a school superintendent and you're you know just go vote you know um and so i'm i've been a pretty big advocate for that um it's the best way we can change and have our voice heard is to vote i think also too i'm an optimist and i think that there is something about a pandemic happening during the time of social unrest during the time of some of the most environmental ish biggest environmental issues ever between in one week we had fires flooding and storms all in one week across two different parts of the country and then the outcome of this is to see the inequities of who gets help and who doesn't get help and so you know when you see about you know you see things like what's happening with covet and you can't say well why is that happening well why are african-americans and latinos why are they more exposed well it's because of housing and living conditions years ago asthma is something that is environmental right and so what was their housing situation like where are there opportunities for medicine and by the way where's the education system so what this is doing right now this very moment that we're in it is unveiling the weaknesses in our country like never before so while we all regret it i personally regret it it is now pulling the covers off of so many embedded issues that we have to face because these things will happen again but hopefully we'll never go into a pandemic while our communities are in such social unrest so um you know put in positions where health care is not available to them hopefully we'll begin to do things different because right now we have a laser beam on the real ills of our country right now and we should be paying attention to those yeah that's very true and i hope more people would not just pay attention but also be part of it and share the burden exactly yeah and i i can't wait i hope soon enough we'll be so obsessed about talking about equality the same way that we're obsessed with uh quarterly earnings today exactly exactly that's so true you're right about that ross i time just flew um i'm at the we're at the end of the interview it's truly been a pleasure um we did select some students for a q a session so we'll turn to those student questions right now awesome that's great i think we see the first student on the screen do you mind introducing yourself before the question hi roz hi joy um i'm marcia austin i'm an nba one here at the gsb great and so my question for you is this what was the most pivotal point in your career that you think was the point that led you to the c-suite uh i think probably the most pivotal moment that led me to the c-suite was when i left kimberly clark after uh 22 years of being in the cpg industry i was group president of global manufacturing and operations and i left there to take a role at walmart as a vice president a regional leader out in the field running stores and i knew either i was crazy or i was determined to do something great at the time walmart didn't have the best reputation at that time and um i knew i was walking into either a gold mine or you know something else but it was an opportunity for me to really step up i really wanted to impact the most people that i possibly could and walmart has 2.2 million employees and i said you know what roz forget about you know i really wasn't thinking about this c-suite i was thinking about impact but now i realize um you know impact comes with scale and growth and i knew um as soon as i got in there i was promoted for four months after i came in as a vp i was made senior vice president and then within a year executive vice president so um you know but again i wasn't in pursuit of the ceo job i actually you know when i got the call for the sam's role after being with the company for five to six years um you know i knew then i was like oh wow this must be a big opportunity you know so it wasn't like i was looking for that but i think that moment where i said i'm willing to throw away a title a comfortable job to go to an environment um i knew i had something in me that i was trying to satisfy and it was impact and so i think that that gets you to some of the higher levels when you pull yourself out of trying to get a title and put yourself into a big problem to solve yeah that really resonated and i think here in the silicon valley we probably sometimes bias towards like founding our own thing and creating impact that way yeah two million employees um that's that's like that's impact for you that's impact that's right uh we're going to take a question yeah so hi hi good morning from germany yeah so my name is violeta i'm in stanford lead program it's my first month and i'm very very happy and excited that i have the opportunity to ask you a question on one side you have mentioned about covid speeding up your pipeline your innovation lab projects but i'm interested about now about the current situation so so my question is how do you manage to operate successfully under discovery 19 situation to maintain a durable and growing business yes um i love this question because you know we're trying to understand what is gonna you know remain permanent what you know um i don't really enjoy the term new normal but there's gonna be some permanence out of this and then there are some things that's very temporary and trying to separate the two of those um is where the difficulty uh comes into play but i will tell you um you know one of the things we're learning about covet is you know how important it is to keep your business sharp you know we've got a pretty clean balance sheet so we went into this um in a strong financial position but not knowing whatever you know what could happen to your business you know it just reminds us all to run this thing pretty sharp because you know there are some companies that are not going to make it and that are relying on a lot of help from um from the government so it's it's just a reminder you know going through this covet experience in terms of how important it is to stay sharp um i also will say that who would have ever thought that we would have a life living in technology like we're doing right now and how can we you know remain humanized you know like the question that i got earlier um you know about you know what are those things how you know do we keep the starbucks brand fresh but i'll tell you is that if you've not learned empathy through this instance you shouldn't be a leader right now because people this is very difficult we have young mothers who are on zoom calls all day while they're trying to teach a four or five year old how to get themselves through a zoom call and get their lessons done um i i i'm telling you i feel so blessed that my kids are older because i'd have to throw in the towel and we cannot afford to have women not in the workplace that is just not acceptable it can't happen we've got to think of other solutions one of the things i've done in my organization is that we have no meetings before 9am because you need to get the kids settled and get them at least in front of the laptop and pack a lunch and prop them up in front of that screen that's the reality and then we have something on fridays called quick connect fridays and the only thing you're allowed to do on a friday is call someone and say hello you can't have any business any serious business meetings um and it's for you to reflect on the week recognize people give people recognition and call and check on somebody and so we call it quick connect fridays and no meetings monday through friday before 9 a.m and that's one of the things that covet has taught us is to meet your employee base where they are and it's important now and it's going to be important for a while i think he's just waiting for the third student to come on the screen hi roz uh my name's steve soma i'm also a member of the stanford lead program and my question i think you kind of touched on this a little bit but maybe you could expand on it was how does the shift to remote work uh influence your leadership style if at all yeah so um what i just mentioned is is part of it but i think the other part is i'm finding as a leader that i have to be very intentional um because you know when you've got someone engaged in a camera you know it's not like you're going to lean over and have a casual discussion and you know create the sidebars and sidebar conversations can be very rich right because you kind of vibe off of each other so one of the things that i worry about a bit is that what about our future innovation because innovation happens when you know brains collide and conversations happen so we've been you know using some unique software for that to help us as software called nero that you probably are familiar with or um you know just um you know i was able to go over to the home office this week in seattle and spend some time in our innovation lab just to connect with people to say i see the work you're doing i you know love what you're doing and to keep on so i'm spending a lot of my time um just making sure that i have these connection points with individuals and making sure that innovation keeps going that's one of the things i worry about is that um you know refilling that pipeline of of innovation right now rose i love that even though you were talking about innovation but you are still fundamentally talking about people and meeting them where they are and and um making sure that they could have a voice um i have one last question for you before we wrap it up um we'll be asking this question to all the speakers that join us this year what principles do you rely on when you're facing the toughest moments as a leader so in my toughest moments um first of all i rely on high integrity and so first and foremost i want to make sure that i am doing the right thing um by the situation in my integrity nor the integrity of the company is going to be impaired so i would have to say high integrity is the first thing the second thing that i rely on is trust i want to make sure that each and every day i'm building trust people want to know that they work for somebody that cares about them and wants to um and that they can be dependent upon so i i rely on on trust and trusting relationships and then lastly i think what i depend on and this is the operator in me is just doing what i say i'm going to do and that's not always easy you know i have competing objectives sometimes i have a very tough calendar um i'm a director of one of the largest companies in the world that you know is a fantastic company amazon so i have to make sure that i can deliver on what i say i can do because it's part of who i want to be known for i want people to um feel like they can trust me and that they can count on me so that that really matters to me quite a bit thank you for sharing that roz i we learned so much from this conversation about managing massive organizations about motivating people making tough decisions but but i think above all about how we should and can show up as ourselves and and with our values and speak up when when uh something's not right yes so yeah i thank you again for joining us and uh thank you for making our world a more equitable and well caffeinated place yeah that's awesome well thank you so much i've so enjoyed this and you know to the students and the faculty there um keep doing great things i mean the most important thing we can do is just get into the minds of you know young people make them feel valued show them the ropes and the road maps and the future and the vision of what can be and we'll all get through this um we'll all be better for it so but thank you for having me thank you ross it's been an honor

Channel: Stanford Graduate School of Business

Views: 19,310

Rating: 4.9060054 out of 5

Keywords: stanford, stanford gsb, stanford graduate school of business, mba

Id: 0Z7bgj37ibA

Length: 54min 18sec (3258 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 09 2020