#84 David Novak, Former CEO OF Yum! Brands on Motivating a Work Force & Taking Charge of Your Career

What this episode is about

David Novak, former CEO of Yum! Brands, shares insights on leadership and personal development, drawing from his unconventional upbringing and successful career in the fast-food industry. He emphasizes the importance of motivating a workforce and offers strategies for individuals to take charge of their careers through self-coaching, as outlined in his latest book, "Take Charge of You."

Key takeaways

• David Novak's journey through 32 trailer parks teaches us: adaptability isn't just a skill, it's a survival instinct.
• In a world full of degrees, sometimes it's the agency background that cooks up the best marketing recipes.
• True leadership isn't about being the boss; it's about building teams and empowering those around you to shine.
• When recruiting talent, remember: it's not about the Ivy League; passion often lives in the heartland's humble corners.
• Present ideas regularly to your superiors; it’s the secret sauce for career advancement and outshining the competition.

Who speaks in this episode?

• Lynn Tomlin (Host) · 10 min speaking
• David Novak (Guest) · 24 min speaking

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 5:00: David Novak, Yum Brands, Take Charge of You, Harvard Business Review
2. 10:00 – 15:00: Andy Pearson, Clayton Duer
3. 20:00 – 25:00: David Novak
4. 30:00 – 34:28: Take Charge of You, David Novak

Notable quotes from "#84 David Novak, Former CEO OF Yum! Brands on Motivating a Work Force & Taking Charge of Your Career"

• And Columbia Lynn tomman hi everyone it's Lyn toen welcome to another episode today I'm excited to be with David Novak he's the former CEO of Yum brands which was originally…

  about David Novak · at 0:21

• Leadership are David is passionate about making the world a better place by teaching and developing leaders his latest book take charge of you is on self- coaching and how it…

  about Take Charge of You · at 1:31

• Loves the restaurant business and doesn't think we should be spinning it off and the other would be Andy Pearson who was the former president of PepsiCo was now a teacher at…

  about Andy Pearson · at 10:36

• That what has surprised you about leadership I would say how much in demand it is I think 80% of people go to work and they're not engaged according to gallops I find that to…

  about Gallup · at 30:32

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• David Novak — Person · Main guest · 3 mentions · first at 0:26
  Primary interview subject sharing leadership lessons from his career at PepsiCo/Yum! Brands and his work developing leaders through books, podcasts, and programs.
• Andy Pearson — Person · Referenced leader/mentor · 4 mentions · first at 10:39
  Presented as a pivotal partner and mentor figure for Novak during the Yum! spin-off era; described as co-founder-like partner and later CEO who helped shape culture and confidence.
• Clayton Duer — Person · Referenced business associate (unclear identity) · 1 mention · first at 10:45
  Mentioned briefly as someone Andy Pearson was working with at a leveraged buyout firm; the transcript provides insufficient detail to confidently identify the person.
  Who was the former president of PepsiCo was now a teacher at Harvard Business School and working with Clayton duer and rice a leverage buyout firm and Roger says okay you don't…

Books & papers

• Take Charge of You — Book · Primary recommendation · 3 mentions · first at 1:39
  David Novak's latest book on self-coaching and leadership.

Companies & orgs

• Yum Brands — Company · Business focus · 1 mention · first at 0:31
  Primary company discussed, spun off from PepsiCo, includes Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and KFC.
  Over 40,000 increased market capitalization over eight times and yum brands became a global Powerhouse and one of the largest restaurant groups in the world David has also been recognized as one of the world's best CEOs and leaders Barons.
• KFC — Company · Business focus · 2 mentions
  One of the brands under Yum Brands, mentioned in the context of David Novak's leadership.
  Be with David Novak he's the former CEO of Yum brands which was originally spun out from Pepsi and includes Pizza Hut Taco Bell and KFC or Kentucky Fried Chicken under his leadership the company doubled the number of restaurants to over.
• Gallup — Company · Referenced expert · 2 mentions
  Mentioned in the context of employee engagement statistics.

Media & podcasts

• Harvard Business Review — Media · Referenced work · 1 mention · first at 1:06
  Mentioned as a source of recognition for David Novak.
  Named him one of the 30 best CEOs Fortune recognized him as one of the top people in business and Harvard Business Review included him in its list of the 100 best performing…

Full transcript with timestamps

0:00 welcome to the three takeaways podcast which features short memorable conversations with the world's best thinkers Business Leaders writers politicians scientists and other newsmakers each episode ends with the three key takeaways that person has learned over their lives and their careers and now your host and board member of schools at Harvard Princeton and Columbia Lynn tomman hi everyone it's Lyn toen welcome to another episode today I'm excited to be with David Novak he's the former CEO of Yum brands which was originally spun out from Pepsi and includes Pizza Hut Taco Bell and KFC or Kentucky Fried Chicken under his leadership the company doubled the number of restaurants to over 40,000 increased market capitalization over eight times and yum brands became a global Powerhouse and one of the largest restaurant groups in the world David has also been recognized as one of the world's best CEOs and leaders Barons

1:01 named him one of the 30 best CEOs Fortune recognized him as one of the top people in business and Harvard Business Review included him in its list of the 100 best performing CEOs in the world David has an unconventional background for someone who became a great leader and CEO he lived in 32 trailer parks in 23 states by the time he was 12 I'm excited to learn how he became a great leader leer and what his secrets to leadership are David is passionate about making the world a better place by teaching and developing leaders his latest book take charge of you is on self- coaching and how it can transform your life and career it's terrific welcome David and thanks so much for our conversation today thank you Lynn I look forward to this appreciate what you do my pleasure David David how did your nomadic childhood shape you I lived in like you said a lot of states by the time I was in seventh grade and I went

2:06 to about three schools a year so my mom would say to me she'd check me into school and she'd said David you better make friends because we're leaving so I think that that background really helped me get a good sense of people understanding people moving into new situations working through anxiety which you have when you go into new situations and I also learned that you're only one friend away from happiness building that relationship where you get a friend that you can pal around with for a while even if it's 3 months kind of makes things go over and once I found that friend I was pretty happy and so I think it helped me learn how to build relationships quicker faster maybe than other people would my mom and dad are extremely smart they're still alive they're 92 years old I always look at them and I think they could have run a company if they' had a college education had the mentors an

3:00 experience that I got but what they wanted for me was the American dream they wanted me to achieve what they never achieved I was first kid to get a college education that was important to them but they still are to this day my biggest fans biggest supporters and know how to raise the bar on me every now and then David why do you think you Rose through the ranks at Pepsi so quickly and so high well I had really great coaches I first worked for Steve rhinaman he was the president of Pizza Hut and he later became the chairman of PepsiCo he took an incredible interest in me gave me a chance to come into the company I didn't have an NBA I had an advertising agency background and I went in and ran the function I ran the marketing function which was very unique for PepsiCo at the time I was a very strange cat in PepsiCo at those times but I think the reason why I was able to have some success at Pepsi was I was a

3:57 really good marketing person Pepsi put a high premium on marketing people so I really love consumers and I came up with the agency background I knew how to work with advertising agencies so I could get really good advertising creative and advertising's key from a technical skill standpoint that was great but the most important reason why I think I was able to have some success was I was really able to build great teams and hire great people and get people around me that could do what I couldn't do people who had ideas is that I couldn't come up with but when I was in Witchita Kansas working for Pizza Hut which was a part of Pepsi at the time people said you couldn't recruit people in Witchita well I ended up having the best marketing department in all of PepsiCo in Witchita and people said how were you able to do it I said well people want to be in a growth environment now I didn't go get

4:50 the people from Harvard and people on the northeast or the West Coast but I found people in the Heartland who wanted and it was amazing we had incredible people people Roger enrio the chairman of PepsiCo we had a management conference and we presented everything we were doing at Pizza in front of all the people at Pepsi and he came up to me said you're coming to Pepsi I didn't really want to go to Pepsi I was really enjoying my time of pizza he say you're coming to Pepsi I said wow so I went to Pepsi then I had a great relationship with the late Wayne Callaway who you might have known when and he took a great interest in me and I used to go see him every quarter and I always went in with three to five ideas that I was thinking about that would be good for PepsiCo Beyond just what I was doing at Pepsi because I wanted to show them that I had more potential and I was thinking bigger and broader and I always

5:42 recommend that to everybody if you get the opportunity to see somebody above you going with ideas on how you'd do their job and in a respectful way give them some good ideas but I did it finally Wayne Callaway asked me he said David what do you want to do with your career and I said well I want to be a division president and he said well David you're really good marketing guy and I said well wait I want to be a division president I want to run Pizza Taco Bell KFC fre to light Pepsi I don't care which one but I want to run one of the divisions he says you're a really good marketing guy and I said well I want to be a division president he says you're a really good marketing guy I'll make you president of marketing we don't have as many marketing people as we really should have and you can develop the function I didn't want to be a president of marketing but anyway I loved Wayne and he G me really good

6:25 feedback and that feedback was is David you were seen as a marketing person you're going to have to demonstrate to people that you can be more than a marketing person if you're ever going to be a division president so the chief operating officer job opened up at Pepsi and I went to my boss and I begged for the opportunity to run operations I didn't have any operations experience but Pepsi took chances on people and gave them diverse experiences if they didn't have it and my boss Craig weather up at the time said I'm going to give you a shot at it and I didn't know anything about operations but I did know that there were a lot of people out there that did know a lot about operations and I brought them in and asked them what they would do if they were me and I figured out what the issues were what the problems were and then together we changed a lot of the processes and developed a lot of the

7:10 tools that drove our botling operations profitability higher and I demonstrated that I could at least get an understanding of the front line making money be a general manager and then I got the opportunity to be president of KFC and that was it but one thing led to another I think I had very high self-awareness about what I needed to do to demonstrate that I was prepared to take on more responsibility and then I tried to make sure I did it there was a pivotal moment for you when Roger enri then the CEO of Pepsi called you into his office and told you that you were going to be the co-leader of the new restaurant group can you tell us about that meeting why it was pivotal and what you did then well PepsiCo made a decision in 1997 to spin off the restaurants and the restaurants were sort of the ugly ducklings of PepsiCo they had low return on Capital same store sales were down we weren't opening

8:06 up new units and the investment Community said it was a drag on earnings and so that's why they spun it off plus they thought that if we had more Focus as a restaurant company without being a part of a package goods company we would do what it takes to be more successful so I was running Pizza Hut and KFC at the time and Roger said I want you to be a co-leader I said what does that mean he said well this one guy's going to be the and you're going to be the Chief Operating Officer and I said well who is this guy and he said well it's this guy who was at the time running Taco Bell and I knew the restaurant business a lot better than him but he had just been hired by Roger a year earlier and Roger thought he had more Finance experience than me and I said well I don't think he has any more experience than me he says well you got to be with him you're going to work for him okay you guys are going

8:53 to be a teamwork but you'll figure it out you'll be the spiritual leader Etc you'll use your tools but he should be the CEO so I go meet with him and it was like looking in the mirror okay he had the same experience I had he didn't have any more Finance experience to be he had come from Circle K which had been bankrupt and he wasn't the guy that took him out of bankruptcy it was this other guy who was a lawyer and a finance person and he was the operating guy it's more like what I would be except for he didn't know the restaurant business any better than me so now I'm really convinced that I shouldn't work for him so I go to Roger R and said I'm not going to work for him I mean he's a good guy but and he said yes you are and I said well no not so then I go back to Louisville Kentucky which where Kentucky Fried Chicken was and I get this phone call from Bill Bensel who's the chief Human Resources officer he says David

9:38 you need to take this job and he said you're going to get fired I said well fire me and I hung up and I go gez what have I just done here I said there's only one person that wins in a situation like that and it's not me it's the boss and if I'm making him that mad at me I'm G to be out of here so I decided that I needed to do something so I called up Roger and Rico and said can I come see you I want to talk to you about what I want to do with the company and it was on Martin Luther King day I remember to this day in 1996 I actually went in 97 and I had a presentation 40 page deck or something on basically what kind of company I thought we could build what we would do what our culture would be like who should do what what processes needed to be better Etc and I said I don't mind working for somebody although I think I can do this job myself but but it's got to be somebody I can grow from in fact I

10:32 said there are two people I recommend one would be Don Kendall because he loves the restaurant business and doesn't think we should be spinning it off and the other would be Andy Pearson who was the former president of PepsiCo was now a teacher at Harvard Business School and working with Clayton duer and rice a leverage buyout firm and Roger says okay you don't have to work for this guy but you're not going to be the chairman of the company I got to get you somebody that can help you do the finance and all that kind of stuff so I went back to work and trusted Roger that that would be the case and he came up with a couple ideas for the chairman one was uh former Proctor and Gamble guy Arts another was yon Carlson from Swedish Airlines but neither one of them were really serious candidates I knew it but we still needed somebody I was going to work for and then finally one day he come you know I've been thinking what

11:24 about Andy Pearson well I'd recommended Andy Pearson to him like three months earlier and I go okay that'd be interesting so I said great so I have dinner with Andy and we forged the deal and the rest is history but Andy told me he said David there's one thing he said this interesting story because Andy's big thing was he loved being Fortune's 500 10 toughest bosses he was on the cover and I was sort of like the king of recognition at PepsiCo I was very much of a people person and I asked him who's your favorite CEO and he said Bob crle well Bob Crandle was one of those 10 guys who is one of the toughest guys in business unfortunate 10 toughest bosses and I said well you know who my favorite CEO is turb Keller from Southwest Airlines who's Mr people first and all that kind of stuff and I said if you like Bob Crandle who's a hard ass and I like herb Keller and I want to build a company like herb Keller's building at

12:21 Southwest Airlines we're going to have a problem it's not going to work out and I said I'd like you to read this book and it was a book called nut on Southwest Airlines a great book and you get all kinds of ideas I recommend it to everybody today so Andy reads the book and I come back and meet with him a few days later and and he say I can support you I can see why you need to build a company that's Frontline oriented like Southwest Airlines is okay but there's one thing you need to know I said what's that he says I want to be the CEO of the company now I thought he was going to be the chairman of the company and he said I haven't been a CEO before and I'd like to be the CEO and I said well Andy if you want to be the CEO that's fine with me and because I figured this I think he was 72 at the time that if I couldn't convince Andy in the board within three years which he had a three-year contract

13:12 that I should be the next CEO there was something wrong with me and I was clearly going to be the next to line so Andy took me under his wings we had a great partnership he became my best friend he was a co-founder of Yama and we did it together we call her you know basically everybody sees us as the co-founder Founders and he was my best friend when he died at 80 and I I gave the eulogy of his funeral and I think of Andy every day but it was a lot of self- coaching going on there I could tell you that it is such an extraordinary story for so many reasons David first you are obviously hyperco competitive and when you are going to be named the number two position at yum you figured out a way to make it work for you and you brought in a great leader as CEO that you learned from who then became your best friend and essentially your coach yeah he Andy and I work together he turned over the range to be a CEO after two years

14:12 because he said David you're doing the bulk of the work you should be the CEO and I kept him on the board until he died there wasn't a day I didn't talk to Andy Pearson I loved Andy and you know what he never made a decision that I can recall but he probably made a lot of them that I didn't know about just because I listened to him and I respected his points of views but I always felt like I made the decisions and I thought that was a great learning there because you take the joy of the job away when you take the joy of the decision away and I always felt like I was making every decision at Young brands from day one and that just shows you how wise Andy was he was able to influence me in a way that I never felt him micromanaging or telling me what to do and he gave me enormous confidence he told me from the very beginning he said David and Jamie Diamond was on our board too Jamie Diamond the chairman of JP

15:05 Morgan Chase was on the board at that time he'd been fired at City group and was on the beach as they say in the financial world and he told me he said you know what you and Jamie Diamond are going to become two of the finest CEOs of your eror I didn't really know what a CEO did I was learning the ropes and he told me that and jimie wasn't even a CEO and he told jimie that but he believed in us before we even believe in ourselves like you need to but Andy is a very special guy so you learned about leadership essentially by looking around you by practicing it by seeing who you thought were great leaders and with working with some of the best leaders let's talk about some of the traits and characteristics of great leaders that you've identified one of your major ones is humility can you talk about that with my podcast how leaders lead I interview all kinds of CEOs and leaders of industry and sports leaders and it's

16:05 amazing all of these leaders are extremely confident because you know what it's an important trait to have because people are not going to follow you unless you give them a sense you know where you're going so confidence and belief in yourself and belief in what a business can be is is really essential and all the best leaders really have it but it's married with humility with a sense that that hey I don't know everything I need you and that humility of letting people know that you need him I think is just an essential trait and a lot of times you have so much success that you start thinking that you know everything and people don't get what you get and you lose your humility the great John Weinberg from Goldman Sachs told me once he said David you either grow or you swell and I think the best leaders they grow and they manage their ego that putting their ego aside and believing in what other people can bring

17:04 to bear I think is absolutely essential one of the other traits that you talk about is reframing you reframe in in a very particular way using the word yet can you tell us about that yeah that's Jason Goldsmith is my performance coach who wrote the book take charge of of you with me that's one of the tools that he taught me you might say I haven't hit a 20% margin and he just adds dot dot dot yet put that yet at the end of everything you have it done and it means that you can still do it and I think that's an essential way to think you don't want to block off the progress that you can make if you're a golfer I haven't shot par yet keep giving yourself the openness that you can do that and you got to reframe opportunities sometimes negative things happen to you for example I had cancer and I kind of reframed it as a blessing that I've got a great opportunity to tell everybody I love I love them they

18:06 can tell me they love me and I have a chance to tackle this and move on and I'm going to do it but I reframed it as an opportunity to get in even better shape learn more do more get myself prepared to win and versus saying oh no I don't know what I'm going to do now I think that that's an important way to look at things the best leaders when they get into adverse situations they look at what can be learned from it and how they can turn the situation around on its ear use it as an opportunity you have a problem let's say with a new product how can you turn that problem into future opportunities by learning from it figuring out what went wrong and what are the steps that you need to do to take it to the next level the next time so it doesn't happen again but I think the best leaders are always looking for ways to find positive even out of a bad situ ation and hand inand with that you believe in keeping a

19:03 neutral mindset yeah if you get in a neutral mindset you're open to ideas it's a growth mindset if you have a lot of anxiety negativity one way or the other or you're too positive you really can't look at things in a balanced perspective so try to get neutral in your approach the other thing I really believe that's important is that you do everything you can to manage your moods as a leader you make your worst decisions when you're angry resentful and tired you make your best decisions when you're grateful when you're in a state of gratitude so I always try to work my way up the mood elevator and get myself into a state of gratitude the best way I can and I try to be conscious of my moods if I'm angry or irritated about something I try to find a way to get my mood up to the point where I can at least be curious and interested before I make a decision and I think that being aware of your moods is critical I love your quote

20:02 from Stan mccristal the former US commander in Afghanistan who has also been a three takeaways guest and the quote the temptation to lead as a chess master controlling each move must give way to an approach as a gardener enabling rather than directing a gardening approach to leadership is anything but passive unquote tell us about that gardening approach that you believe so strongly in I really think that your job as a leader is to look at your people as people that can really flourish under your leadership if you create the right environment for them you help them you coach them you develop them and that's how you get the best results to me nothing big happens by yourself in order to take people with you taking people with you is the only way to make big things happen so you have to have people on the journey you can't micromanage you can't control you've got to do what I call unleash the

21:05 power of people get them knowing that you need them and getting them involved and that leads to Commitment there's one law and Leadership that has been proven over and over again you have no involvement you have no commitment and I think a gardener looks at a way how to bring everything together in that Garden so it becomes beautiful it's almost like an Orchestra conductor the garden will sing and the instruments will play and it all works together that's what leadership is all about and one of the tools that you use to do that to get everyone to play together and give their best is recognition can you talk about some of your examples your rubber chickens or your cheese heads well go back if you don't mind just to my roots of recognition why is it that I believe in recognition so much I always have believed in people I always felt that people should be thanked for what they do respected for what they do Colin pal

22:06 told me once recognition says that you're watching as a leader you're watching what's going on when I was running operations for Pepsi I used to go out in the field and meet with the front line people and I was in St Louis one time and I was meeting with a route salesman and I was asking about merchandising there was it was early in the morning 6:30 I brought in coffee and donuts and we're all sitting around this round table and I said tell me about merchandising who's doing it well what are you learning these days and Merchandising at Pepsi is critical it's like how your products are placed and whether the facings were right did you have enough display space and all this so everybody started talking about this guy named Bob who's sitting directly across from me and he said Bob is the best merchandiser I've ever seen Bob taught me so much in half a day I learned more from Bob in a half a day

22:53 than I learned from other people and my first four years of Pepsi this guy's amazing and everybody's raving about this guy and look down at the end of the table and he's crying and I said Bob why are you crying he said well I've been in this company for 47 years I'm retiring next year I'm I'm sorry I'm retiring in two weeks he said okay he said and I didn't know people felt this way about me and that hit me in the gut because it was like here's this guy who's so good at what he did people were raving about him and he didn't feel appreciated he didn't know that he was so highly valued and I said to myself if I ever have any opportunity going forward the number one value that I'm going to use to drive performance is recognition and so as it turned out three or four months later I got the opportunity to go be president of KFC so I went in there and the morale was down it was very negative KFC hadn't

23:46 made plan of PepsiCo since it would had been acquired it was really a tough environment the franchisees hated the company the company hated the franchisees so I said I got to change the attitude around here and I said said I'm going to use recognition to do it but I wanted to have fun because it was a very D culture nobody was having fun people were too busy hating each other so I heard about this guy in it who had a meeting once a month his department meeting and he recognized people by giving away this rubber chicken so I went to him I said geez I love your idea and I'm looking for a recognition award that I can give away here at KFC as the presence word would you mind if I used your rubber chicken as that he says no I'd be honored if you did that and so I started giving away Rubber Chickens I'd number them go in to a restaurant see somebody's cooking original recipe the quality is great find out they've been

24:36 in the company for 19 years that they were the number one team member on the team they were focused on quality and I go in and I say gee Lynn you're the best original recipe cook I've ever seen I write down you're the best original recipe cook quality is what makes us tick thank you for all you do sign a David Novak then I would give him this rubber chicken and then I say I want to take a picture of you I take a picture of them and I say I'm going to send you a frame picture you can throw it in a trash if you want but I'm going to put your picture on my office wall because you're what makes our business tick and I gave him a $100 because you couldn't eat a Floppy chicken and people started literally crying when I give them these Rubber Chickens it was amazing and so I started recognizing people whenever I saw the behaviors that I knew were going to drive success and it was amazing how people started working together more

25:28 positive energy more accountability more teamwork but I believe that recognition should be very purposeful you need to figure out what the five six things are that if your teammates do it it will drive the behaviors that drive results and then if you recognize those behaviors every time you see them you don't have to give away a rubber chicken but I did that was what I did but people will do more of those things so if you want customer focus when you see people really focused on the customer say hey God I can't believe you you're doing that with the customer that's so excit I mean that is fantastic that's what's going to make our business good if you want Innovation somebody develops a new product or comes up with a new process it's awesome go to their office or go to you say gee I heard about you doing this thank you so much that's exactly what's going to make our business go and it's amazing how people do it well it works

26:21 so well at KFC we helped me turn around the business there then I got promoted to be president of pizza and I went there and I gave away cheese heads green bathed Packer cheese heads and I wrote on them numbered them Etc then I got promoted to be the head of yum and I gave away these walk to talk teeth and I'd write on them number them take pictures and all this now if you come to my office and Louin it's still there my office is lined from floor to ceiling of people that I've recognized all around the world and then if you look up on the ceiling people said what happens if you've run out of wall space I said I'm going to put them on the ceiling so if you look up you'll see pictures on the ceiling now everybody when they come to the corporate office we call it the restaurant support center they want to see the CEO's office everybody restaurant managers come in they want to see it so when they walk into my office

27:09 they know what our business is all about people people and recognition and this took off if it had just been me doing this it wouldn't have led to all the results we got but people saw the power of it other people came up with their recognition Awards and then everybody had their own recognition award and people were doing recognition all around the world and I just talked to David Gibbs who's the CEO of young Brands they're going to have me come speak at their 25th anniversary in March and he said you know the Bedrock of our success is the recognition culture that you started when you were the CEO it's still there we all have our recognition Awards etc etc but that makes me really feel good because people it's been Quantified time and time again people leave companies for two reasons one they don't feel appreciated and two they don't get along with their boss so they're part and partial the boss should really be a

28:01 coach and the coach should be appreciating you when you're doing good work and then people are going to be happier and they're going to stay and very few times people change their life by changing a job they're very few Quantum Quantum leaps where that it's like you know you go to one job and you get like a massive salary increase it's more incremental but the one thing you can change is the job is the boss and the culture and so I I think you can feel a culture when you walk into a restaurant or any business you can feel what the place is like so to me recognition is really created a powerful culture at yum and it was a performance-based culture because we recognize people around the values that we knew would drive results and I also recognize bad behavior too I mean if you didn't perform you got fired you got coached first and then if you didn't get your act together we asked you to go to

28:55 some other company and make people miserable but that's how we looked at it David what's the one question you believe that every leader should ask their people how can I help you it's a great question you write about extraordinary authenticity how can leaders be more authentic including showing more vulnerability I think you got to recognize first of all that the only person you can be is you and people recognize a phony every step of the way if you're not being yourself people will recognize it so easily it's unbelievable so you can't fake it you got to be who you are if you want to be authentic you have to be vulnerable enough to ask people for help you have to be vulnerable enough to let people know you screwed up I taught a leadership program called taking people with you and believe me people loved hearing my stories of where I screwed up more than they did My Success my failures were

29:53 much more enjoyable for them to hear about they really love heing him because I think it was like Hey this guy got to where he is and he failed I can get there too but I always looked at those things as learning experiences and I try to share them but I think when you stand up and talk about how you screwed up and what you could have done better and that's being vulnerable that makes you authentic my authenticity came through for my recognition Awards I'm a Floppy chicken kind of guy that's who I am not everybody's a Floppy chicken person not everybody can give away cheese heads but that's who I am that made me authentic and very special well I don't know about that what has surprised you about leadership I would say how much in demand it is I think 80% of people go to work and they're not engaged according to gallops I find that to be just shocking and that's an indictment on leadership that's why in my new life I'm

30:53 focused on making the world a better place by developing better leaders I have the David Novak leadership company and we have how leaders lead brand and digital training and podcasts and books and it's all nonprofit and it's all geared towards developing better leaders and we're trying to do it in elementary school with global game changers and middle schools high schools with lead for change which is the largest privately funded leadership development program in middle schools and high schools in the country we've got 15,000 teachers signed up this year I have the Novak Leadership Institute at Missouri and then for aspiring leaders I have how leaders lead and so I'm trying to develop leaders at all ages and I'm thinking gez if just one of them can be the president of the United States someday we could teach them how to lead just one of them what a home run that'll be and to me it's just such a sad State

31:46 of Affairs that we have the leadership that we have in our country and have had for years it doesn't matter which party and it sickens me to think of all these people going to work every day and they're not engaged and they don't feel valued I think 70% of people feel like they're not appreciated by their boss the numbers are huge I don't know if that's the exact number but the gallop numbers are just amazing and I'm trying to teach people about taking people with you and recognition and those kinds of things it makes such a difference at all levels in terms of being a friend being a partner in a local community organization in a small business in a big business or in politics yeah it's be the leader act like the leader you can be a janitor you can be an admin you can be a vice president you can be a CEO everybody can lead in their piece of yum I always said yum was our company so you lead in your

32:44 piece of yum if everybody leads in your piece of yum then it'll all add up we'll be doing great but don't wait for to have somebody tell you what to do this is why I really wrote the book take charge of you it's we want people to take accountability your life in your career is way too important to delegate it to someone else learn how to coach yourself and by the way once you learn how to coach yourself you'll be able to coach others better and that's great David what are the three takeaways you'd like to leave the audience with today I'd say number one take charge of your life in your career don't delegate it to someone else it's the most important thing you can do and it's important so make sure you learn how to really self- coach yourself number two purposeful recognition is your most powerful motivational tool and in my case have fun doing it it really can light up your team and light up your company and the

33:36 third thing is is that you have to have the humility be confident yet humble enough to know that you have to take people with you to make big things happen nothing big ever happens by yourself thank you David this has been terrific I really enjoyed your new book take charge of you well thank you very much Lynn and I appreciate what you're doing on the leadership front the great guests that you have and the thoughtfulness of all your questions if you enjoy today's episode and would like to receive the show notes or get new Fresh weekly episodes be sure to sign up for our newsletter at 3 takeaway.com or follow us on Instagram Twitter and Facebook note that three takeaways decom is with the number three three is not spelled out see you soon at 3 takeaway.com

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "#84 David Novak, Former CEO OF Yum! Brands on Motivating a Work Force & Taking Charge of Your Career"?

Lynn Tomlin (Host), David Novak (Guest).

What is "#84 David Novak, Former CEO OF Yum! Brands on Motivating a Work Force & Taking Charge of Your Career" about?

David Novak, former CEO of Yum! Brands, shares insights on leadership and personal development, drawing from his unconventional upbringing and successful career in the fast-food industry. He emphasizes the importance of motivating a workforce and offers strategies for individuals to take charge of their careers through self-coaching, as outlined in his latest book, "Take Charge of You."

What is mentioned in this 3 Takeaways episode?

8 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including David Novak, Yum Brands, Andy Pearson, Take Charge of You, KFC, Harvard Business Review. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "#84 David Novak, Former CEO OF Yum! Brands on Motivating a Work Force & Taking Charge of Your Career"?

The episode runs 34 min; the transcript is about 6,789 words in 38 timestamped sections.

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