In case you weren’t able to read the first part of Wendy’s recap of the 2014 SHRM Conference, you can read it here.
Here goes part two of her three part recap of the happenings of #SHRM14:
Overall, it was a great conference; the keynote speakers and the presenters were very engaging.
The keynote speaker for Day 2 was David Novak, the CEO of YUM! brands (Doritos, Taco Bell, KFC, etc.). He started by having the audience stand up and spell out Y-U-M YMCA-style. It felt a little strange, but it was good to be moving around. He had a few good points, but unfortunately, a lot of his presentation was selling his book and his products─ which SHRM asks that speakers refrain from doing. It was a bit of a turn-off. His main idea was “Taking People With You”—creating a vision and helping people to understand it so they feel they can help implement the vision. David shared the story of Crystal Pepsi. He has a marketing background, and in their marketing studies it was noted that the dark caffeinated products were not doing as well as light products. So they created a clear Pepsi. They test-marketed clear Pepsi, and the participants said that “it didn’t taste like Pepsi”. His team told him that it wouldn’t do well because it didn’t taste enough like Pepsi; however, he thought he knew it would be a great sale, so he told them to go ahead and release it. The public didn’t buy it because… “it didn’t taste like Pepsi”. David said it was a major fail for him and taught him that he needed to include others and consider opinions and recommendations. (By the way, he said Crystal Pepsi has been documented as one of the top 10 marketing fails of all time and Saturday Night Live even did parodies about it.)
David created a leadership training program that demonstrated to executives how to develop an action plan geared toward getting results. Once the program development was complete, he began training the leaders. But he wasn’t able to reach very many; so he determined he needed to scale it to reach more people. He needed to train others so they could train more people. It cascaded from there. His leadership tips:
- Be self-aware; you are a brand yourself. Every year write out what you like about being a leader and what needs to be improved
- Ask how people see you—you have to know
- Be the hotshot before someone else takes your job
- Be a know-how junkie; soak in knowledge
- Celebrate others’ ideas more than your own
- Unleash the power of people – 90% of people want to do well
- You have to believe that what you are doing can be done
The responsibility of leadership is to define reality. The more you know, the more you care. If people are not involved, they will not care about the vision.
David has reached 4,000 managers throughout the world with his training. As an organization, YUM! is focused on attacking world hunger; proceeds from his book go to feeding people around the world.
Stay tuned as Wendy raps up her recap tomorrow with a summary of Strategic Planning.