May 14, 2024 • 37 mins
Manage your career more effectively with the practical strategies offered up by two inspiring former C-suite executives, Christiana Smith Shi and Grace Puma. The former president of Consumer Direct for Nike and former Chief Operating Officer of PepsiCo join On Leadership to share some relatable lessons they’ve learned from their own career journeys, including the importance of having a career forward mindset, making strategic career pivots, and the value of collaboration.
- 3 Steps to Build a Culture Where Teams Thrive: To provide lasting support to their people, organizations need to build a winning culture with inclusive, high-trust values that help their people succeed both at work and outside of it. Download and share this guide and help your organization align its culture and values with what’s best for its people.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:10):
Hello and welcome back toFranklinCovey's twice weekly podcast,
On Leadership with Scott Miller.That's me, I'm your host.
Six years in nearly 400 episodestape where we have interviewed
every major thought leader in the world,
whether they were a CEO fromthe C-suite, a business titan,
an entrepreneur,solopreneur, intrapreneur.
(00:31):
Perhaps some of them were contentcreators, maybe they were authors,
celebrities,
people perhaps that had done remarkablethings with their careers or they had
recovered or survived,
sometimes unspeakable traumas andtragedies and summoned the courage to both
live and thrive and sharetheir stories with you.
This has become the world'slargest weekly leadership podcast,
(00:54):
all dedicated to making you a betterleader. FranklinCovey, of course,
is the sponsor and they are known asthe most trusted leadership firm in the
world. You may know ourco-founder and author Stephen R.
Covey wrote this seminal book amongstmany The 7 Habits of Highly Effective
People. This book has sold morethan 50 million copies worldwide,
(01:14):
and this podcast is dedicated to alsohelping you be more effective at whatever
role matters most to you. Now,
what most of you have in common iseverybody here is trying to be a better
leader,
however you define leader and alsomanage your career while still having a
fulfilling life that ismore than just your career.
Today we have two remarkable authors.
(01:35):
They've co-authored a new booktitled Career Forward:Strategies
from Women Who've Made It.
And although the book is aimedprimarily at females and their careers,
I thoroughly enjoyed the book,took away so many great insights.
So I would argue regardlessof your gender, whether you are a mentor, a sponsor,
a champion, whether you're earlyon the front end of your career,
(01:58):
you're entering your crescendo regardless,
I think you'll find great leadershipand career insights in this book.
The co-authors are Grace Puma,
who is the former COO ofPepsiCo and Christiana Smith.
She who's the former presidentof consumer direct for Nike.
They're joining us today as co-authorsfrom different locations. Ladies,
welcome, Grace, welcome to On Leadership.
(02:21):
Thank you. It's a pleasureto be here, Scott.
Christiana, welcome as well to you.
Good to see you. Thank you.
Ladies, you are in different locations.Grace, I think you are in Tampa,
Florida, and Christiana, you'rein the northwest as well.
Delighted that you joined us todayto talk about your new release,
Career forward. First, Grace,would you spend some time,
(02:41):
maybe a minute or so and reorient yourselfto all of our listeners and viewers,
talk about your career at PepsiCo.
Maybe you could share why you had enoughpassion on this topic to write this
book, and then we'll have Christianafollow you with the same question.
Sure.
So my last role was PepsiCo as the chiefoperating officer and basically had
(03:02):
responsibility for all the globaloperations within a matrix organization.
And the reason we wrote this book wasreally around the passion of being able to
reflect on the learnings and the abilityto transfer those learnings to other
people as we had culminated thatcorporate aspect of our career
journey. So it's a pretty goodtime to reflect and give back.
(03:23):
Grace, take it a little bit further.
How many years did you spendwith the Pepsi organization?
Sure. So I spent about12 years with PepsiCo.
I originally came in as their chiefprocurement officer and then my role was
expanded into supply chain and ultimatelyto the executive vice president,
chief operating officerreporting into our CEO.
So it was really a very progressivejourney and I was very grateful for that.
(03:46):
And Grace,
maybe rewind a little bit more becauseyou have an interesting journey from of
course your parents andacademically as well.
Maybe you were born whereand then what happened next?
Sure. So I was actuallyborn in Plaines, Illinois,
but my sisters were born in Cuba.
My parents came both of them from Cubaand had the story of starting over in the
United States and building a life.
(04:08):
So from there I really learned a lotas a child about resiliency and about
gratitude as you cultivate your journey.
I really thoroughly enjoyedthe introduction where you introduced your parents
to us and talked about their no complaintsand their sort of forward-looking
mindset and took complete control fortheir circumstance and rebuilt a life for
themselves here in the US. Eventhough it was not a very long segment,
(04:32):
it made me more grateful for all theopportunities I've been given as an
American. So I appreciatedyou sharing that. Christiana,
maybe share as well you were bornwhere and what happened next?
I was born in Chicago,middle child of five.
I always say there is nothing about myearly years that you would pinpoint and
(04:52):
say he's going to be presidentof a major consumer brand,
but I guess I kind of grew upalways with the sense that I wanted
a bigger life. I wanted to know what wasout there, I wanted to see things. So I
grew up most of the time in Californiaafter we moved there when I was a kid
(05:14):
and I went away to college and Iwent from college all the way across
the country to New York City and I wasin management consulting for a long time
and then I left and went to Nike. So
there's been a couple of major times whereI made changes in my career that were
risky and it was because I wantedto see what else I could do.
(05:36):
Grace, I think people areespecially interested.
I know I am riveted listeningto people's journeys,
how did they get from here tothere and what the pivots were.
I also think people are alwaysfascinated about collaborations,
especially co-authorships. How did youand your co-author Christiana meet?
How did you decide to co-author this bookand why was this the particular topic
you chose to write about?
(05:57):
Yeah, it was really a blessing.
We were both on a board at the same time.
We joined at the same timeand as you usually do,
you look around the room andwe immediately connected.
And so from that relationship,
one day we went out after a boardmeeting and started to connect on our
journeys and our lives and we realizedthat we both had a common passion
(06:19):
for giving back, but we also hadmillennial children, if you can call them,
that our children were at that mid-stageof their career and we found it
important to share our learnings andstrategies and how they can maneuver their
journey.
One of the other things that resonatedwith us in those conversations was the
fact that we both got to seniorlevels in very different paths.
(06:40):
And this is really important becausethere was a lot of value in co-authoring.
We have a lot of shared experiences andwe have a lot of different experiences,
but there was some common truthsand strategies that we both applied.
And so that opened up the door to writea book that allowed people to figure out
how to cultivate their journeys and theirpaths by using some of the things that
we were able to learn.
(07:02):
Christiana, your book is titled CareerForward, but it's more than just a title.
You describe it as amindset, if I'm not mistaken,
in the book of having a careerforward mindset. Christiana,
would you riff on that for a moment?What is a career forward mindset?
And maybe also startwith what's the opposite?
Some people don't have acareer forward mindset,
they may not understand what that means,
(07:24):
riff on that and teach us what it lookslike not to have one and what does it
look like, sound like? Like tohave a career forward mindset?
Sure.
So career forward mindset is alot about looking down the road
and getting in the driver's seat of yourcareer and steering your career towards
(07:45):
someplace you want to end up. We usethe driving metaphor a lot in the book,
and this is one of the mostperfect examples of it.
We always like to say, if you're notin the driver's seat of your career,
someone else's,
and the opposite of a career forwardmindset is going from job to job,
maybe chasing the next title,
(08:06):
maybe chasing the next salary bump maybe stagnating in the job that you're in
and missing opportunities and findingthat when you lift your head up
mid-career,
you're not sure that you're going anyplace that's exciting to you and you're
not sure you're going to getsomeplace that's exciting to you.
So career forward mindset hasa couple of key elements to it,
(08:26):
and one is recognizing your jobis not your career and other
elements of it are saying you've gotto think about and be strategic about
setting a direction for your career.
We call it cardinal directionand about setting yourself
plans and strategies for what you'regoing to do to build your skills,
(08:47):
to increase your professionalnetwork, to develop
the roadmap that you needto to your desired goal.
Grace, I want to be careful notto stereotype women versus men,
but there are a lot of books inthe marketplace aimed at a woman's
rise to the CEO and how women can havesponsors and how important it's for them
(09:09):
to go to their careers. Grace,
have you found in either yourempirical or anecdotal research,
in your own experience,
do women tend to give up theircareers to other people in the
organizations more than men?Is it a ubiquitous problem?
And regardless of the answer,why do you think people,
I'm guessing accidentally,
unconsciously give up powerof their career to someone
(09:32):
else? Some organization,some team, some leadership?
Yeah,
it's interesting becausethe career forward mindset is rooted in intentionality
and ownership. So to answer your question,
I think sometimes it's easier for peopleto think their careers are in the hands
of the company or in theirboss or whatever's happening
organizationally.
(09:53):
And what we offer in this book isit's really about owning and being
intentional and strategicallyplanning your career.
So the answer of why men and womenmight do that is it's probably an
easier thing to say, hey,
it's in the hands of somebody elseversus I'm responsible and I'm in the
driver's seat. I have the benefit ofowning my career, owning my choices,
(10:15):
ensuring that I'm developing andtherefore comes the advancement.
And once you have yourselfin the driver's seat,
it's it's a lot harder to now makethose decisions and make sure that the
accountability lands with you.
So Grace, I'm going to-.
Scott if I could-.
Yes, please, Christina.
If I could add to that,
(10:37):
we recognize that it's hard togeneralize across an entire gender and
say women this, women that. Graceand I are very different people,
so we know really dayto day just the range of
different orientations and expectationsand experience that women will have in
their careers. However,
(10:59):
we did a lot of research and we lookedat a lot of data and there are patterns
that you can see that emerge around womenand their typical career experiences.
And what we wanted to do was put togetherour learning and our lessons for how
to be prepared for those and how toget in front of 'em as Grace said with
intention. So for instance, the factthat there's often a salary gap,
(11:21):
the fact that women are notalways very often not paid the
same as male counterparts,
but less comfortable askingfor increased compensation,
the fact that there's a broken rungpartway through a woman's career,
typically where family are formed,
where you see a huge drop off of womenfrom careers and so on and so on.
(11:42):
So as we saw the data and those patterns,
we wanted to address it in that way eventhough we recognize there's a range of
experiences everyone isgoing to have around that.
Christiana, you mentioned thisidea of cardinal direction.
Will you take a few minutesand talk more about that?
And then I'm going to come over toGrace and talk about the concept of
(12:03):
guardrails, which I think is aninteresting idea in all of our careers,
talk about, Christiana, cardinaldirection in our career.
So as I said, cardinal directionis the goal of your career,
but we chose that phrase instead ofsomething that you might've heard more
often,
like true north on purpose becauseif you think about true north and
(12:23):
sailors navigating in the seas,
they navigate to true north or to theNorth Star because it doesn't move,
it's fixed.
Cardinal direction and theway it functions in terms of
your career planning is moreflexible. It is more evolutionary.
It is this idea that you are pulling upregularly and thinking about where you
(12:44):
want to go and what youwant to do with your career,
but you're also leaving the spaceand the allowance for things to
change because that's real life.Your responsibilities change,
your life goals change.
You learn a lot as you work about whatyou want to do and who you want to do it
with, and you can continue tofirm up that cardinal direction,
(13:06):
but it stays there as a goal the same waythat you put the destination into your
GPS in your car. And over time,
as we've all seen the route the GPS tellsyou to take may change based on road
conditions, but you're stillaiming to the same goal.
Ladies, your book isn't a memoir per se,
(13:26):
but in many ways you've written it asyour own professional journeys that make
it really relatable for otherreaders, male or female,
to see themselves in your journey.
You're actually quite vulnerable aboutsome of the jobs you applied for or
internships, whatever it was, andwhy you did or didn't land them.
And so I thoroughly enjoyedthe writing style of your book.
(13:47):
I think readers and listenersto your book on audio will enjoy
the vulnerability you shared inyour setbacks as well as your goals.
Nicely done on the way in which youintegrated both of your voices and a
complimentary style.
Anyone can find themselves in someportion of your journey that isn't always
easy to do as an author.Having said that, Grace,
(14:10):
we hear a lot about boundaries.
It's a very popular term now in ourlife and the boundaries we set for
ourselves, the boundarieswe set for others.
You use a term in the book aboutsetting guardrails even early on.
Talk about that and maybe givesome specific guardrails, Grace,
that you set in your own careerand still made it to the top.
(14:32):
Here's the reason why I give a preamble.
I think sometimes boundariescan have a negative connotation.
This person has so many boundaries andso many restrictions and what they will
and what they won't do and when theywill and won't take a call or an email,
but you kind of frame that differently,
talk about boundaries and then maybeexpand on what are some of the ones that
you set that didn't justhold you, propelled you.
(14:53):
Yeah, it's a very good question.
I think you really have to be thoughtfuland intentional in understanding what
your guardrails or boundaries are.
And I think they evolve over timetoo as your life changes and as you
change as a person. So for me,
well let me first startwith why are they helpful?
They're helpful becausethen they become your,
(15:16):
it allows you to make really cleardecisions on what type of jobs to take,
what type of companies to join.
You're very clear about it becauseyou understand the parameters that are
important to you and what will makeyou successful in those environments.
So you select and you choosein a way that's informed.
And so that's why it is important for me.
(15:38):
Certainly boundaries and guardrails,
some of them that I set was takingcare of my health. And again,
sometimes you learn this earlyin my career I probably had
twists and turns and I learned that beable to go a 40 year career or whatever
it ends up being.
You really need to take care of yourhealth and you need to prioritize it,
(15:59):
and that means that you'remaking your doctor appointments,
that you're working out,that you're eating well.
And when you fall off that track,
you need to be conscious that it's aguardrail for you and it's a boundary for
you and you need to putyourself back on it.
So that's an example and it isso important because it's just
one example.
The other example is finding time foryour family connections and those aren't
(16:22):
always known or visible in your workplace.
So I call this moments that count and
creating rituals.
So one of my boundaries was I made timefor that and one might look at my career
and say, when you workedan ungodly amount of hours,
you were on planes everywhereall over the United States.
But I did and I made those rituals thingsthat kind of fed my soul and kept me
(16:44):
connected to my family. So as an example,
when my son was very young and I wasa single mom and I used to get to the
office at 6:30 in the morning, Ioften did that through my career.
I ended up taking some mornings whereI would take them out for pancakes on a
weekday which was out of the norm, andthen I would drop him at school that day.
And it just made him realize that hewas important and it was an unusual
(17:07):
connection for something verysimple. So whatever your rituals are,
those get built in and they get builtin a way that kind of keeps your soul in
check and your family connection strong.
Grace, I'm going to expand on that.
I think it's likely a lot of readerscould think a book from two C-level
executives might be a littleethereal or aspirational,
(17:28):
but one of the things I love aboutyour book is this checklist on your
guardrails. You list out 15,
20 things that people needto think about intentionally.
Is this a non-negotiable?Is it a preferred?
Is it not crucial now?
I love that grid you havearound thinking about leadership
opportunities, the industrytitle, benefits, company size,
(17:48):
DEI efforts, ESG,
quality of company leadership and havingpeople think more intentionally and
deliberately.
My experience as a person who's alsowrote a book with career guidance
is I think too many people are accidental.
They don't take the deliberate time tothink through these crucial things and
they fall into a trap andrealize, oh my goodness,
(18:09):
I had no idea the leadershipof this company is misaligned with my ethics and my
brand and they didn't do the duediligence. Take that one step further.
Grace,
talk about something you did inyour own career around self-care.
You talked about the pancake time withyour son. I'm going to guess again,
broad generalization,
(18:30):
self-care is a topic we all know weneed to do and most of us neglect it,
especially those of us whohave high charging careers.
Do you think it's moredifficult for women to
prioritize self-care intheir careers or just
generally, why is it so difficultfor us to prioritize self-care?
(18:50):
No one at their death bed wishedthey'd spent more time at the office,
the famous quote.
Talk about self-care and are theresome things you did that might give
permission to listeners and readers tosay, well, if Grace can do it, darn it,
so can I.
Yeah, I think you first of all, firstquestion, why is it harder for women?
(19:10):
I think I would speak to my experiencewas because the majority of the
caregiving was on our shoulders
and maybe we raised our hand and assumedthat role and maybe it was just given
to us.
But the bottom line is you're thecenter of the family unit in many
cases, so you're taking care of yourparents, you're taking care of your kids,
(19:30):
you're taking care of things at home bydoing all that, something has to give.
For me,
and I was a single parent when my kidswere little for a number of years,
one of the things I did was get verycomfortable with getting support where I
needed it. I didn't try to bakeall the cookies for the bake sale,
I bought them.
(19:51):
I made sure I had supportgroup around me that would
help me balance things.
So my time was spent focusedon the important things
and not necessarily all thethings that needed to get done.
So it's very much about finding solutionsand I did that actively throughout my
(20:12):
career.
I often lived way below my means to makesure that I had a nest egg and then I
could invest in things like that,
like quality childcare andother things that helped
me have quality time when I was home.
Christiana,
I think a lot of people confusementorship and sponsorship together.
(20:32):
I believe they're very different concepts.
Will you just riff on what is sponsorship?
Why is it so important? You writeabout mentorship in the book pretty,
but why is sponsorship and howdoes someone get a sponsor?
What are the behaviors, the reputation,
(20:52):
the awkward process of getting a sponsor?
And I'm guessing sponsorship isnot just as important for women and
men.
It's probably morenecessary for women than
men. I could be wrong. Take thatwherever you'd like it to go.
Yeah,
so we wanted to draw that distinctionbetween mentorship and sponsorship because
(21:15):
both Grace and I, particularlyat this stage in our lives,
get asked to be mentors a lot.
And sometimes it's literally someonemessaging us on LinkedIn who we don't even
know asking if we would be their mentor.
And it's really clear thatwith no personal connection and
no history with a particular person,
(21:36):
it's hard to give them career advicethat's more than generic that is
actually useful andtailored to their situation.
But we also know that youneed more than advice.
Mentors are great for that and they canalso provide you support and a listening
ear and a lot of important things,
(21:56):
but you need people in your career whowill go one step further and put skin in
the game. And that's whatwe think sponsorship is.
Sponsors are the people who will mentionyour name when you're not in the room.
Sponsors are people who will tell othersto take a chance and put you in the
leadership role in thatparticular project.
Sponsors are the ones who will extendtheir network to you and connect you to
(22:20):
someone that they know that they thinkhas an interesting opportunity that you
ought to understand. That's sponsorship.
So how do you get asponsorship? Well, no surprise,
that evolves a lot more organically anda lot more personally than mentorship
does.
So the best sponsors are peoplewho have actually worked with you,
(22:42):
who have seen you, who knowyou, who understand the context of your environment,
your career, your life,
and there is a certain chemistry toit that you can't force that has to
naturally develop. Whatyou can do though as
an individual who is looking forsponsorship is nurture those relationships
because it doesn't just bloomfrom, I just met you, we did
(23:07):
something for a week at this companyand now I'm expecting you to stick your
neck out for me. It's over time.
I call you and ask if wecan have a cup of coffee.
Over time I ask for youradvice on something. Over time,
if you need some kind of help or supportthat I'm in a position to provide,
I do that because you'rebuilding a mutual support circle.
(23:30):
That's how you create andnurture a sponsor relationship.
And both Grace and I havehad relationships like that that have transcended the
companies we worked for, that have lastedacross multiple stages of our career,
that have literally been a decadelonger. That's what we're talking about.
Grace, you want to add to that?
Yeah, just a couplethings on that. One is,
(23:52):
especially when it comes tosponsorships or sponsors,
it's really important to realizethat they're typically rooted in your
performance.
They're going to sponsor you becauseyou are performing very well because you
have potential to continueto grow in the organization.
So sponsors are sponsoring youwith a business purpose in mind,
good for the company, good for you.
(24:13):
And the second point I would make isit's important to keep an eye on it.
I mean,
I had this experience where I had a coupleof very strong sponsors and they all
left the company at the same time andI realized that the learning there was
to continue to cultivate tiersof sponsors if you would,
because it does, yes, it'srooted in your performance,
(24:35):
but it is important because it'sa very dynamic work environment.
So that's how you have tothink about the sponsor role.
Sounds like the key tosponsorship is broad and wide,
but really behave yourselfinto a reputation of
delivering results so that it's well said,
grace or Christiana are willing to puttheir neck on the line and sponsor you as
(24:59):
well. It's a pretty simpleconcept that takes a lot of work.
You can't manipulate your wayinto sponsorship. Christiana,
I want you to expand on the conceptof benevolent stagnation because
I think everybody experiences it andI'll bet no one knows it more of an
unconscious than conscious decision.Talk about what it looks like,
(25:19):
sounds like and feels like to be in thatzone and how does someone know it and
move out of it?
Yeah.
Benevolent stagnation is whereyou have been in a particular role
in a particular company orwith a particular employer or a particular team for
a while and you've gotten very comfortableat delivering exactly what needs to
(25:43):
be delivered in that role.
And it's well known acrossyour organization or your team that you will deliver
it. But what happens over time,
just like a rocket has to turn on, itsjust periodically to stay in orbit.
If you don't actually keep growingin a particular role or situation,
what you're going to find is there'sa strong gravitational pull down.
(26:04):
And what we've seen is people who thinkthey are very comfortable in a given
role or in a given company are the oneswho are the most vulnerable and the most
affected when things change. Companygets bought, company gets sold,
boss changes, skills andexpectations for that role go up.
We're all watching that with things likeAI and other tech trends and you didn't
(26:25):
keep up with it, right?
And suddenly your stagnation has actuallyturned into something that's a lot
more challenging,
which is that you are actuallynow behind and trying to catch up.
And it's hard to see that because you arestill delivering what needs to be done
in the current role thatyou're in. And by the way,
your team or your is relyingon it is thanking you for it.
(26:47):
You're getting lots of praise, but askyourself, am I getting opportunities?
Am I showing up in meetingswhere the rising stars in the
company show up?
Is my name being talked about in roomswho are important decisions are getting
made?
We want you to use the tools that wehave in career forward to actually
(27:08):
keep your head up above thewater, keep that up Periscope,
so that you know how to answerthose questions on a regular basis.
And you are not the onewho's caught by surprise.
I think it's a sleeper concept in yourbook that is a gift to the reader.
Whitney Johnson wrote several booksincluding a book titled Disrupt Yourself,
and in this book,
Whitney talks about how somewherebetween 18 and 36 months,
(27:32):
most of us on average master the rolethat we're in and we start to become
complacent a little bit unconsciouslyand long before we notice it.
It's not an indictment on our work ethic,
but it's just a fact that onceyou've kind of mastered a role,
you're not phoning it in, butyou are a little complacent.
And the horror is that your colleaguesaround you notice it and see it before
(27:53):
you do. And sometimes theymake assessments or judgements about your work ethic,
your career goals, your drive,
and I think it's a very importantconcept you write about in the book.
So many of those nuggetsthroughout. Grace,
no one's career is a straightline trajectory. No doubt we've all had setbacks.
Would you show some vulnerability? What'sthe mistake you made in your career?
(28:16):
Did you trust someone? Did you notgo through the guardrail checklist?
What's a lesson you mightshare in a vulnerable moment?
I'm going to ask you Christiana as well.
That's a great lesson you might share toeveryone listening today regardless of
gender.
Yeah, so I think
it's like your strength sometimes canbe something that plays out differently.
(28:38):
So for example, I would say mycapacity, especially early in my career,
I have tremendous capacity and Ican digest information very quickly.
So one of the things I had to reallylearn is to make sure people were keeping
up with me. And so as you lead,
you have to keep pace of otherpeople's learning curves.
And so sometimes it requires taking astep back and going through more time with
(29:02):
certain individuals and making surethat there's good transfer knowledge and
also just your sheer capacity.
Your work ethic might be I'm on fullthrottle in my career and I have to
appreciate dialing thatback at certain times.
So I would say it's more about that, theawareness of that and the dial it up,
dial it down capability that I hadto apply in certain situations.
(29:24):
No doubt, our strengths when overplayedcan absolutely become our weaknesses.
You can see that as evidenced bymy human resource file. Grace,
similar flip side of that, just saying,it's why it's an expandable folder.
They had to get a couplemore folders for me. Grace,
was there a particular pivotpoint or inflection point in your
(29:47):
career that maybe was replicable forother people that you might say, hey,
here's really when my career took offbecause I made these decisions or aligned
with this sponsor orhad some self-awareness,
perhaps something notunique to your own skills,
but that is inherent ineverybody's opportunity.
They just haven't let that match yet.
(30:08):
Yeah,
it's interesting because you would thinkit would be the biggest positions you
have, but it actually wasn't for me.
For me it was at a time I took avery unorthodox move and went to an
airline and I was working for a foodcompany that was a very stable food
company,
but I decided to go work for an airlinefor three years intentionally because it
was going to give me thistremendous transformational experience and I didn't go
(30:31):
there to work for an airline.
I went there to work for the CEO that wasbringing in a number of senior leaders
of different disciplines,
and it taught me incrediblecapability and skills in terms of
managing in what ended up beingthe largest financial crisis,
transforming the capability of theairline with the team. But the comradery,
(30:51):
I mean working in a part of a leadershipteam that had a mission to make really
important and strategic decisions thatturned around the performance that
ultimately led to a very successfulmerger was just invaluable.
I was at the table at a pointwhere way beyond my level in
the organization and the ability to beable to weigh in on decisions and make
(31:12):
contributions and learn from others.
So that was a pivotal point and I tookthat as the launching pad to my next big
job in a hundred billion dollars company.
Grace, what's the biggest lesson youlearned from Indra Nooya at PepsiCo?
Answer your emails. No, I'm kidding.
Okay, that's good.
In two hours, Nora was, look,
(31:34):
I had a lot of opportunity to workwith Indra and I'm so blessed. I mean,
I had direct exposure with her duringher time there and she's incredibly
strategic. She asked tough questions,
you always learn to make sureyou've done your homework.
And she appreciated the voice in the room,
the opinions and the intellectual thought.
(31:55):
So she had an un insatiable workethic, which I shared with her.
So there was a lot to learn from Indraand I was grateful for my time there.
Including answer your emailswithin two hours. Okay. Christiana,
I'm asking the same question,show some vulnerability as well.
Is there something that was asetback, a bad career decision,
(32:15):
that you might share with us that wouldwarrant people's own introspection?
I can think of several,
but we actually call them skids in thebook and we talk about steering into the
skid because everybody's career is goingto have moments where you feel like
you're losing traction or thingsare spinning out of control.
I had a pretty bumpy transition frombeing an individual contributor when I was
(32:39):
in management consulting to being amanager. So it wasn't a career change,
it was more I was committingto making that transition at
McKinsey and Company where I was.
And it turned out it was the firsttime in my career that I wasn't
naturally good at something.
And so my approach as a managerwas to stay in a very granular
(33:03):
way on top of everybody on my team andasking them where are they at and what
are they doing and lookingover their shoulder.
And the best thing that happenedearly on was two of the guys on my
team who were only a year junior to me,
gave me feedback. It was unsolicited.
So I appreciate the courage thattook them to pull me aside and said,
(33:26):
we don't actually need youto stay on top of every
cell in our Excel model. We needyou to give us overall guidance.
We need you to be out there talkingto the client we need you to do.
And they basically told me where Iwas going off track as a manager,
and it was a real pause for mebecause I was a high performer and
(33:49):
I was used to everythingkind of coming naturally.
And it taught me that I needed toactually study how to be a better manager.
And luckily I was working in a firm thathad lots of training programs and I was
able to take advantage of that.
But it was the first time that Iconsciously focused on, I have a gap.
My gap is my gap to my goal and I needto do the following things to fill that
(34:12):
gap in.
Getting feedback on your blind spots isone of the best gifts you can get from
leaders and from colleagues. Expand,
what was your inflection point positively?
What was my inflection point forthat particular moment in my career?
I think by inflection point-.
Yeah. In your career overall,
was there a really good decision you madeor a positive opportunity that really
(34:36):
took your career to new heights?
Oh, for sure. So
every time at the heart of the inflectionpoints I've had in my career has been
commitment to take a risk.
And one of the most recent ones thatI had was to leave a 24-year career in
management consulting whereI was the senior partner,
top of the tier to go to Nike andto actually go work for a company
(35:00):
that had been a clientof mine for 10 years.
And I had not worked incorporate America, so to speak,
versus professional services for24 years. I had been an observer.
I'd been an advisor and acounselor to corporate America.
I'd been a problem solver, but I hadn'tactually worked in that environment.
Not to mention I left everybody I knewin California and moved up to Portland,
(35:21):
Oregon. So from a family point ofview, a friend's point of view,
I mean it was like rip the bandaid off.
But I did that because I was committedto the fact that I was in fact at risk of
benevolent stagnation and I was gettingvery comfortable doing a lot the
same things a lot of the timeas a 10-year senior partner.
(35:41):
And I still felt like I had a lot ofgrowth left that I wanted to accomplish as
a leader.
And that one of the best ways to do thatwas to actually go into an operating
environment with the P&L responsibility,
with the clock ticking with tens ofthousands of employees and see if I knew
what I was talking about when I wasadvising CEOs for all those years.
(36:03):
Did Phil Knight have the samerequirement on two hour email turnaround?
Phil does not really use email.
I figured that would be your response.
It's very different.
I challenge anyone to tell me whatPhil Knight's email address is,
but remember when I went to Nike,
he was chair and had alreadyput Mark Parker in as the
(36:25):
CEO. And I will tell you,
Nike is very much a performance-drivenculture similar to what Grace talked
about at PepsiCo and very much acan we get it done now, culture,
and I think we're all going to find thathigh-performing companies have some of
those same characteristics.
Grace Puma, former COO of PepsiCo,Christiana Smith Shi, former president,
(36:48):
consumer Direct for the Nike organization.
Your book is Career Forward:
Strategies from Women Who've Made It.
What a gift to readers andaudio listeners as well.
I've thought a lot about my owncareer mindset and the benevolent
stagnation that all of us experience.
(37:09):
I think your book is going to do extremelywell. Thanks for your time today,
Grace. Thanks for joining us.
Thank you for your time.
Christiana, thank you as well for yourtime. Best of luck to both of you.
Thank you, Scott.
And we'll see you back here next weekfor a new conversation On Leadership.
Hello and welcome back toFranklinCovey's twice weekly podcast,
On Leadership with Scott Miller.That's me, I'm your host.
Six years in nearly 400 episodestape where we have interviewed
every major thought leader in the world,
whether they were a CEO fromthe C-suite, a business titan,
an entrepreneur,solopreneur, intrapreneur.
(00:31):
Perhaps some of them were contentcreators, maybe they were authors,
celebrities,
people perhaps that had done remarkablethings with their careers or they had
recovered or survived,
sometimes unspeakable traumas andtragedies and summoned the courage to both
live and thrive and sharetheir stories with you.
This has become the world'slargest weekly leadership podcast,
(00:54):
all dedicated to making you a betterleader. FranklinCovey, of course,
is the sponsor and they are known asthe most trusted leadership firm in the
world. You may know ourco-founder and author Stephen R.
Covey wrote this seminal book amongstmany The 7 Habits of Highly Effective
People. This book has sold morethan 50 million copies worldwide,
(01:14):
and this podcast is dedicated to alsohelping you be more effective at whatever
role matters most to you. Now,
what most of you have in common iseverybody here is trying to be a better
leader,
however you define leader and alsomanage your career while still having a
fulfilling life that ismore than just your career.
Today we have two remarkable authors.
(01:35):
They've co-authored a new booktitled Career Forward:Strategies
from Women Who've Made It.
And although the book is aimedprimarily at females and their careers,
I thoroughly enjoyed the book,took away so many great insights.
So I would argue regardlessof your gender, whether you are a mentor, a sponsor,
a champion, whether you're earlyon the front end of your career,
(01:58):
you're entering your crescendo regardless,
I think you'll find great leadershipand career insights in this book.
The co-authors are Grace Puma,
who is the former COO ofPepsiCo and Christiana Smith.
She who's the former presidentof consumer direct for Nike.
They're joining us today as co-authorsfrom different locations. Ladies,
welcome, Grace, welcome to On Leadership.
(02:21):
Thank you. It's a pleasureto be here, Scott.
Christiana, welcome as well to you.
Good to see you. Thank you.
Ladies, you are in different locations.Grace, I think you are in Tampa,
Florida, and Christiana, you'rein the northwest as well.
Delighted that you joined us todayto talk about your new release,
Career forward. First, Grace,would you spend some time,
(02:41):
maybe a minute or so and reorient yourselfto all of our listeners and viewers,
talk about your career at PepsiCo.
Maybe you could share why you had enoughpassion on this topic to write this
book, and then we'll have Christianafollow you with the same question.
Sure.
So my last role was PepsiCo as the chiefoperating officer and basically had
(03:02):
responsibility for all the globaloperations within a matrix organization.
And the reason we wrote this book wasreally around the passion of being able to
reflect on the learnings and the abilityto transfer those learnings to other
people as we had culminated thatcorporate aspect of our career
journey. So it's a pretty goodtime to reflect and give back.
(03:23):
Grace, take it a little bit further.
How many years did you spendwith the Pepsi organization?
Sure. So I spent about12 years with PepsiCo.
I originally came in as their chiefprocurement officer and then my role was
expanded into supply chain and ultimatelyto the executive vice president,
chief operating officerreporting into our CEO.
So it was really a very progressivejourney and I was very grateful for that.
(03:46):
And Grace,
maybe rewind a little bit more becauseyou have an interesting journey from of
course your parents andacademically as well.
Maybe you were born whereand then what happened next?
Sure. So I was actuallyborn in Plaines, Illinois,
but my sisters were born in Cuba.
My parents came both of them from Cubaand had the story of starting over in the
United States and building a life.
(04:08):
So from there I really learned a lotas a child about resiliency and about
gratitude as you cultivate your journey.
I really thoroughly enjoyedthe introduction where you introduced your parents
to us and talked about their no complaintsand their sort of forward-looking
mindset and took complete control fortheir circumstance and rebuilt a life for
themselves here in the US. Eventhough it was not a very long segment,
(04:32):
it made me more grateful for all theopportunities I've been given as an
American. So I appreciatedyou sharing that. Christiana,
maybe share as well you were bornwhere and what happened next?
I was born in Chicago,middle child of five.
I always say there is nothing about myearly years that you would pinpoint and
(04:52):
say he's going to be presidentof a major consumer brand,
but I guess I kind of grew upalways with the sense that I wanted
a bigger life. I wanted to know what wasout there, I wanted to see things. So I
grew up most of the time in Californiaafter we moved there when I was a kid
(05:14):
and I went away to college and Iwent from college all the way across
the country to New York City and I wasin management consulting for a long time
and then I left and went to Nike. So
there's been a couple of major times whereI made changes in my career that were
risky and it was because I wantedto see what else I could do.
(05:36):
Grace, I think people areespecially interested.
I know I am riveted listeningto people's journeys,
how did they get from here tothere and what the pivots were.
I also think people are alwaysfascinated about collaborations,
especially co-authorships. How did youand your co-author Christiana meet?
How did you decide to co-author this bookand why was this the particular topic
you chose to write about?
(05:57):
Yeah, it was really a blessing.
We were both on a board at the same time.
We joined at the same timeand as you usually do,
you look around the room andwe immediately connected.
And so from that relationship,
one day we went out after a boardmeeting and started to connect on our
journeys and our lives and we realizedthat we both had a common passion
(06:19):
for giving back, but we also hadmillennial children, if you can call them,
that our children were at that mid-stageof their career and we found it
important to share our learnings andstrategies and how they can maneuver their
journey.
One of the other things that resonatedwith us in those conversations was the
fact that we both got to seniorlevels in very different paths.
(06:40):
And this is really important becausethere was a lot of value in co-authoring.
We have a lot of shared experiences andwe have a lot of different experiences,
but there was some common truthsand strategies that we both applied.
And so that opened up the door to writea book that allowed people to figure out
how to cultivate their journeys and theirpaths by using some of the things that
we were able to learn.
(07:02):
Christiana, your book is titled CareerForward, but it's more than just a title.
You describe it as amindset, if I'm not mistaken,
in the book of having a careerforward mindset. Christiana,
would you riff on that for a moment?What is a career forward mindset?
And maybe also startwith what's the opposite?
Some people don't have acareer forward mindset,
they may not understand what that means,
(07:24):
riff on that and teach us what it lookslike not to have one and what does it
look like, sound like? Like tohave a career forward mindset?
Sure.
So career forward mindset is alot about looking down the road
and getting in the driver's seat of yourcareer and steering your career towards
(07:45):
someplace you want to end up. We usethe driving metaphor a lot in the book,
and this is one of the mostperfect examples of it.
We always like to say, if you're notin the driver's seat of your career,
someone else's,
and the opposite of a career forwardmindset is going from job to job,
maybe chasing the next title,
(08:06):
maybe chasing the next salary bump maybe stagnating in the job that you're in
and missing opportunities and findingthat when you lift your head up
mid-career,
you're not sure that you're going anyplace that's exciting to you and you're
not sure you're going to getsomeplace that's exciting to you.
So career forward mindset hasa couple of key elements to it,
(08:26):
and one is recognizing your jobis not your career and other
elements of it are saying you've gotto think about and be strategic about
setting a direction for your career.
We call it cardinal directionand about setting yourself
plans and strategies for what you'regoing to do to build your skills,
(08:47):
to increase your professionalnetwork, to develop
the roadmap that you needto to your desired goal.
Grace, I want to be careful notto stereotype women versus men,
but there are a lot of books inthe marketplace aimed at a woman's
rise to the CEO and how women can havesponsors and how important it's for them
(09:09):
to go to their careers. Grace,
have you found in either yourempirical or anecdotal research,
in your own experience,
do women tend to give up theircareers to other people in the
organizations more than men?Is it a ubiquitous problem?
And regardless of the answer,why do you think people,
I'm guessing accidentally,
unconsciously give up powerof their career to someone
(09:32):
else? Some organization,some team, some leadership?
Yeah,
it's interesting becausethe career forward mindset is rooted in intentionality
and ownership. So to answer your question,
I think sometimes it's easier for peopleto think their careers are in the hands
of the company or in theirboss or whatever's happening
organizationally.
(09:53):
And what we offer in this book isit's really about owning and being
intentional and strategicallyplanning your career.
So the answer of why men and womenmight do that is it's probably an
easier thing to say, hey,
it's in the hands of somebody elseversus I'm responsible and I'm in the
driver's seat. I have the benefit ofowning my career, owning my choices,
(10:15):
ensuring that I'm developing andtherefore comes the advancement.
And once you have yourselfin the driver's seat,
it's it's a lot harder to now makethose decisions and make sure that the
accountability lands with you.
So Grace, I'm going to-.
Scott if I could-.
Yes, please, Christina.
If I could add to that,
(10:37):
we recognize that it's hard togeneralize across an entire gender and
say women this, women that. Graceand I are very different people,
so we know really dayto day just the range of
different orientations and expectationsand experience that women will have in
their careers. However,
(10:59):
we did a lot of research and we lookedat a lot of data and there are patterns
that you can see that emerge around womenand their typical career experiences.
And what we wanted to do was put togetherour learning and our lessons for how
to be prepared for those and how toget in front of 'em as Grace said with
intention. So for instance, the factthat there's often a salary gap,
(11:21):
the fact that women are notalways very often not paid the
same as male counterparts,
but less comfortable askingfor increased compensation,
the fact that there's a broken rungpartway through a woman's career,
typically where family are formed,
where you see a huge drop off of womenfrom careers and so on and so on.
(11:42):
So as we saw the data and those patterns,
we wanted to address it in that way eventhough we recognize there's a range of
experiences everyone isgoing to have around that.
Christiana, you mentioned thisidea of cardinal direction.
Will you take a few minutesand talk more about that?
And then I'm going to come over toGrace and talk about the concept of
(12:03):
guardrails, which I think is aninteresting idea in all of our careers,
talk about, Christiana, cardinaldirection in our career.
So as I said, cardinal directionis the goal of your career,
but we chose that phrase instead ofsomething that you might've heard more
often,
like true north on purpose becauseif you think about true north and
(12:23):
sailors navigating in the seas,
they navigate to true north or to theNorth Star because it doesn't move,
it's fixed.
Cardinal direction and theway it functions in terms of
your career planning is moreflexible. It is more evolutionary.
It is this idea that you are pulling upregularly and thinking about where you
(12:44):
want to go and what youwant to do with your career,
but you're also leaving the spaceand the allowance for things to
change because that's real life.Your responsibilities change,
your life goals change.
You learn a lot as you work about whatyou want to do and who you want to do it
with, and you can continue tofirm up that cardinal direction,
(13:06):
but it stays there as a goal the same waythat you put the destination into your
GPS in your car. And over time,
as we've all seen the route the GPS tellsyou to take may change based on road
conditions, but you're stillaiming to the same goal.
Ladies, your book isn't a memoir per se,
(13:26):
but in many ways you've written it asyour own professional journeys that make
it really relatable for otherreaders, male or female,
to see themselves in your journey.
You're actually quite vulnerable aboutsome of the jobs you applied for or
internships, whatever it was, andwhy you did or didn't land them.
And so I thoroughly enjoyedthe writing style of your book.
(13:47):
I think readers and listenersto your book on audio will enjoy
the vulnerability you shared inyour setbacks as well as your goals.
Nicely done on the way in which youintegrated both of your voices and a
complimentary style.
Anyone can find themselves in someportion of your journey that isn't always
easy to do as an author.Having said that, Grace,
(14:10):
we hear a lot about boundaries.
It's a very popular term now in ourlife and the boundaries we set for
ourselves, the boundarieswe set for others.
You use a term in the book aboutsetting guardrails even early on.
Talk about that and maybe givesome specific guardrails, Grace,
that you set in your own careerand still made it to the top.
(14:32):
Here's the reason why I give a preamble.
I think sometimes boundariescan have a negative connotation.
This person has so many boundaries andso many restrictions and what they will
and what they won't do and when theywill and won't take a call or an email,
but you kind of frame that differently,
talk about boundaries and then maybeexpand on what are some of the ones that
you set that didn't justhold you, propelled you.
(14:53):
Yeah, it's a very good question.
I think you really have to be thoughtfuland intentional in understanding what
your guardrails or boundaries are.
And I think they evolve over timetoo as your life changes and as you
change as a person. So for me,
well let me first startwith why are they helpful?
They're helpful becausethen they become your,
(15:16):
it allows you to make really cleardecisions on what type of jobs to take,
what type of companies to join.
You're very clear about it becauseyou understand the parameters that are
important to you and what will makeyou successful in those environments.
So you select and you choosein a way that's informed.
And so that's why it is important for me.
(15:38):
Certainly boundaries and guardrails,
some of them that I set was takingcare of my health. And again,
sometimes you learn this earlyin my career I probably had
twists and turns and I learned that beable to go a 40 year career or whatever
it ends up being.
You really need to take care of yourhealth and you need to prioritize it,
(15:59):
and that means that you'remaking your doctor appointments,
that you're working out,that you're eating well.
And when you fall off that track,
you need to be conscious that it's aguardrail for you and it's a boundary for
you and you need to putyourself back on it.
So that's an example and it isso important because it's just
one example.
The other example is finding time foryour family connections and those aren't
(16:22):
always known or visible in your workplace.
So I call this moments that count and
creating rituals.
So one of my boundaries was I made timefor that and one might look at my career
and say, when you workedan ungodly amount of hours,
you were on planes everywhereall over the United States.
But I did and I made those rituals thingsthat kind of fed my soul and kept me
(16:44):
connected to my family. So as an example,
when my son was very young and I wasa single mom and I used to get to the
office at 6:30 in the morning, Ioften did that through my career.
I ended up taking some mornings whereI would take them out for pancakes on a
weekday which was out of the norm, andthen I would drop him at school that day.
And it just made him realize that hewas important and it was an unusual
(17:07):
connection for something verysimple. So whatever your rituals are,
those get built in and they get builtin a way that kind of keeps your soul in
check and your family connection strong.
Grace, I'm going to expand on that.
I think it's likely a lot of readerscould think a book from two C-level
executives might be a littleethereal or aspirational,
(17:28):
but one of the things I love aboutyour book is this checklist on your
guardrails. You list out 15,
20 things that people needto think about intentionally.
Is this a non-negotiable?Is it a preferred?
Is it not crucial now?
I love that grid you havearound thinking about leadership
opportunities, the industrytitle, benefits, company size,
(17:48):
DEI efforts, ESG,
quality of company leadership and havingpeople think more intentionally and
deliberately.
My experience as a person who's alsowrote a book with career guidance
is I think too many people are accidental.
They don't take the deliberate time tothink through these crucial things and
they fall into a trap andrealize, oh my goodness,
(18:09):
I had no idea the leadershipof this company is misaligned with my ethics and my
brand and they didn't do the duediligence. Take that one step further.
Grace,
talk about something you did inyour own career around self-care.
You talked about the pancake time withyour son. I'm going to guess again,
broad generalization,
(18:30):
self-care is a topic we all know weneed to do and most of us neglect it,
especially those of us whohave high charging careers.
Do you think it's moredifficult for women to
prioritize self-care intheir careers or just
generally, why is it so difficultfor us to prioritize self-care?
(18:50):
No one at their death bed wishedthey'd spent more time at the office,
the famous quote.
Talk about self-care and are theresome things you did that might give
permission to listeners and readers tosay, well, if Grace can do it, darn it,
so can I.
Yeah, I think you first of all, firstquestion, why is it harder for women?
(19:10):
I think I would speak to my experiencewas because the majority of the
caregiving was on our shoulders
and maybe we raised our hand and assumedthat role and maybe it was just given
to us.
But the bottom line is you're thecenter of the family unit in many
cases, so you're taking care of yourparents, you're taking care of your kids,
(19:30):
you're taking care of things at home bydoing all that, something has to give.
For me,
and I was a single parent when my kidswere little for a number of years,
one of the things I did was get verycomfortable with getting support where I
needed it. I didn't try to bakeall the cookies for the bake sale,
I bought them.
(19:51):
I made sure I had supportgroup around me that would
help me balance things.
So my time was spent focusedon the important things
and not necessarily all thethings that needed to get done.
So it's very much about finding solutionsand I did that actively throughout my
(20:12):
career.
I often lived way below my means to makesure that I had a nest egg and then I
could invest in things like that,
like quality childcare andother things that helped
me have quality time when I was home.
Christiana,
I think a lot of people confusementorship and sponsorship together.
(20:32):
I believe they're very different concepts.
Will you just riff on what is sponsorship?
Why is it so important? You writeabout mentorship in the book pretty,
but why is sponsorship and howdoes someone get a sponsor?
What are the behaviors, the reputation,
(20:52):
the awkward process of getting a sponsor?
And I'm guessing sponsorship isnot just as important for women and
men.
It's probably morenecessary for women than
men. I could be wrong. Take thatwherever you'd like it to go.
Yeah,
so we wanted to draw that distinctionbetween mentorship and sponsorship because
(21:15):
both Grace and I, particularlyat this stage in our lives,
get asked to be mentors a lot.
And sometimes it's literally someonemessaging us on LinkedIn who we don't even
know asking if we would be their mentor.
And it's really clear thatwith no personal connection and
no history with a particular person,
(21:36):
it's hard to give them career advicethat's more than generic that is
actually useful andtailored to their situation.
But we also know that youneed more than advice.
Mentors are great for that and they canalso provide you support and a listening
ear and a lot of important things,
(21:56):
but you need people in your career whowill go one step further and put skin in
the game. And that's whatwe think sponsorship is.
Sponsors are the people who will mentionyour name when you're not in the room.
Sponsors are people who will tell othersto take a chance and put you in the
leadership role in thatparticular project.
Sponsors are the ones who will extendtheir network to you and connect you to
(22:20):
someone that they know that they thinkhas an interesting opportunity that you
ought to understand. That's sponsorship.
So how do you get asponsorship? Well, no surprise,
that evolves a lot more organically anda lot more personally than mentorship
does.
So the best sponsors are peoplewho have actually worked with you,
(22:42):
who have seen you, who knowyou, who understand the context of your environment,
your career, your life,
and there is a certain chemistry toit that you can't force that has to
naturally develop. Whatyou can do though as
an individual who is looking forsponsorship is nurture those relationships
because it doesn't just bloomfrom, I just met you, we did
(23:07):
something for a week at this companyand now I'm expecting you to stick your
neck out for me. It's over time.
I call you and ask if wecan have a cup of coffee.
Over time I ask for youradvice on something. Over time,
if you need some kind of help or supportthat I'm in a position to provide,
I do that because you'rebuilding a mutual support circle.
(23:30):
That's how you create andnurture a sponsor relationship.
And both Grace and I havehad relationships like that that have transcended the
companies we worked for, that have lastedacross multiple stages of our career,
that have literally been a decadelonger. That's what we're talking about.
Grace, you want to add to that?
Yeah, just a couplethings on that. One is,
(23:52):
especially when it comes tosponsorships or sponsors,
it's really important to realizethat they're typically rooted in your
performance.
They're going to sponsor you becauseyou are performing very well because you
have potential to continueto grow in the organization.
So sponsors are sponsoring youwith a business purpose in mind,
good for the company, good for you.
(24:13):
And the second point I would make isit's important to keep an eye on it.
I mean,
I had this experience where I had a coupleof very strong sponsors and they all
left the company at the same time andI realized that the learning there was
to continue to cultivate tiersof sponsors if you would,
because it does, yes, it'srooted in your performance,
(24:35):
but it is important because it'sa very dynamic work environment.
So that's how you have tothink about the sponsor role.
Sounds like the key tosponsorship is broad and wide,
but really behave yourselfinto a reputation of
delivering results so that it's well said,
grace or Christiana are willing to puttheir neck on the line and sponsor you as
(24:59):
well. It's a pretty simpleconcept that takes a lot of work.
You can't manipulate your wayinto sponsorship. Christiana,
I want you to expand on the conceptof benevolent stagnation because
I think everybody experiences it andI'll bet no one knows it more of an
unconscious than conscious decision.Talk about what it looks like,
(25:19):
sounds like and feels like to be in thatzone and how does someone know it and
move out of it?
Yeah.
Benevolent stagnation is whereyou have been in a particular role
in a particular company orwith a particular employer or a particular team for
a while and you've gotten very comfortableat delivering exactly what needs to
(25:43):
be delivered in that role.
And it's well known acrossyour organization or your team that you will deliver
it. But what happens over time,
just like a rocket has to turn on, itsjust periodically to stay in orbit.
If you don't actually keep growingin a particular role or situation,
what you're going to find is there'sa strong gravitational pull down.
(26:04):
And what we've seen is people who thinkthey are very comfortable in a given
role or in a given company are the oneswho are the most vulnerable and the most
affected when things change. Companygets bought, company gets sold,
boss changes, skills andexpectations for that role go up.
We're all watching that with things likeAI and other tech trends and you didn't
(26:25):
keep up with it, right?
And suddenly your stagnation has actuallyturned into something that's a lot
more challenging,
which is that you are actuallynow behind and trying to catch up.
And it's hard to see that because you arestill delivering what needs to be done
in the current role thatyou're in. And by the way,
your team or your is relyingon it is thanking you for it.
(26:47):
You're getting lots of praise, but askyourself, am I getting opportunities?
Am I showing up in meetingswhere the rising stars in the
company show up?
Is my name being talked about in roomswho are important decisions are getting
made?
We want you to use the tools that wehave in career forward to actually
(27:08):
keep your head up above thewater, keep that up Periscope,
so that you know how to answerthose questions on a regular basis.
And you are not the onewho's caught by surprise.
I think it's a sleeper concept in yourbook that is a gift to the reader.
Whitney Johnson wrote several booksincluding a book titled Disrupt Yourself,
and in this book,
Whitney talks about how somewherebetween 18 and 36 months,
(27:32):
most of us on average master the rolethat we're in and we start to become
complacent a little bit unconsciouslyand long before we notice it.
It's not an indictment on our work ethic,
but it's just a fact that onceyou've kind of mastered a role,
you're not phoning it in, butyou are a little complacent.
And the horror is that your colleaguesaround you notice it and see it before
(27:53):
you do. And sometimes theymake assessments or judgements about your work ethic,
your career goals, your drive,
and I think it's a very importantconcept you write about in the book.
So many of those nuggetsthroughout. Grace,
no one's career is a straightline trajectory. No doubt we've all had setbacks.
Would you show some vulnerability? What'sthe mistake you made in your career?
(28:16):
Did you trust someone? Did you notgo through the guardrail checklist?
What's a lesson you mightshare in a vulnerable moment?
I'm going to ask you Christiana as well.
That's a great lesson you might share toeveryone listening today regardless of
gender.
Yeah, so I think
it's like your strength sometimes canbe something that plays out differently.
(28:38):
So for example, I would say mycapacity, especially early in my career,
I have tremendous capacity and Ican digest information very quickly.
So one of the things I had to reallylearn is to make sure people were keeping
up with me. And so as you lead,
you have to keep pace of otherpeople's learning curves.
And so sometimes it requires taking astep back and going through more time with
(29:02):
certain individuals and making surethat there's good transfer knowledge and
also just your sheer capacity.
Your work ethic might be I'm on fullthrottle in my career and I have to
appreciate dialing thatback at certain times.
So I would say it's more about that, theawareness of that and the dial it up,
dial it down capability that I hadto apply in certain situations.
(29:24):
No doubt, our strengths when overplayedcan absolutely become our weaknesses.
You can see that as evidenced bymy human resource file. Grace,
similar flip side of that, just saying,it's why it's an expandable folder.
They had to get a couplemore folders for me. Grace,
was there a particular pivotpoint or inflection point in your
(29:47):
career that maybe was replicable forother people that you might say, hey,
here's really when my career took offbecause I made these decisions or aligned
with this sponsor orhad some self-awareness,
perhaps something notunique to your own skills,
but that is inherent ineverybody's opportunity.
They just haven't let that match yet.
(30:08):
Yeah,
it's interesting because you would thinkit would be the biggest positions you
have, but it actually wasn't for me.
For me it was at a time I took avery unorthodox move and went to an
airline and I was working for a foodcompany that was a very stable food
company,
but I decided to go work for an airlinefor three years intentionally because it
was going to give me thistremendous transformational experience and I didn't go
(30:31):
there to work for an airline.
I went there to work for the CEO that wasbringing in a number of senior leaders
of different disciplines,
and it taught me incrediblecapability and skills in terms of
managing in what ended up beingthe largest financial crisis,
transforming the capability of theairline with the team. But the comradery,
(30:51):
I mean working in a part of a leadershipteam that had a mission to make really
important and strategic decisions thatturned around the performance that
ultimately led to a very successfulmerger was just invaluable.
I was at the table at a pointwhere way beyond my level in
the organization and the ability to beable to weigh in on decisions and make
(31:12):
contributions and learn from others.
So that was a pivotal point and I tookthat as the launching pad to my next big
job in a hundred billion dollars company.
Grace, what's the biggest lesson youlearned from Indra Nooya at PepsiCo?
Answer your emails. No, I'm kidding.
Okay, that's good.
In two hours, Nora was, look,
(31:34):
I had a lot of opportunity to workwith Indra and I'm so blessed. I mean,
I had direct exposure with her duringher time there and she's incredibly
strategic. She asked tough questions,
you always learn to make sureyou've done your homework.
And she appreciated the voice in the room,
the opinions and the intellectual thought.
(31:55):
So she had an un insatiable workethic, which I shared with her.
So there was a lot to learn from Indraand I was grateful for my time there.
Including answer your emailswithin two hours. Okay. Christiana,
I'm asking the same question,show some vulnerability as well.
Is there something that was asetback, a bad career decision,
(32:15):
that you might share with us that wouldwarrant people's own introspection?
I can think of several,
but we actually call them skids in thebook and we talk about steering into the
skid because everybody's career is goingto have moments where you feel like
you're losing traction or thingsare spinning out of control.
I had a pretty bumpy transition frombeing an individual contributor when I was
(32:39):
in management consulting to being amanager. So it wasn't a career change,
it was more I was committingto making that transition at
McKinsey and Company where I was.
And it turned out it was the firsttime in my career that I wasn't
naturally good at something.
And so my approach as a managerwas to stay in a very granular
(33:03):
way on top of everybody on my team andasking them where are they at and what
are they doing and lookingover their shoulder.
And the best thing that happenedearly on was two of the guys on my
team who were only a year junior to me,
gave me feedback. It was unsolicited.
So I appreciate the courage thattook them to pull me aside and said,
(33:26):
we don't actually need youto stay on top of every
cell in our Excel model. We needyou to give us overall guidance.
We need you to be out there talkingto the client we need you to do.
And they basically told me where Iwas going off track as a manager,
and it was a real pause for mebecause I was a high performer and
(33:49):
I was used to everythingkind of coming naturally.
And it taught me that I needed toactually study how to be a better manager.
And luckily I was working in a firm thathad lots of training programs and I was
able to take advantage of that.
But it was the first time that Iconsciously focused on, I have a gap.
My gap is my gap to my goal and I needto do the following things to fill that
(34:12):
gap in.
Getting feedback on your blind spots isone of the best gifts you can get from
leaders and from colleagues. Expand,
what was your inflection point positively?
What was my inflection point forthat particular moment in my career?
I think by inflection point-.
Yeah. In your career overall,
was there a really good decision you madeor a positive opportunity that really
(34:36):
took your career to new heights?
Oh, for sure. So
every time at the heart of the inflectionpoints I've had in my career has been
commitment to take a risk.
And one of the most recent ones thatI had was to leave a 24-year career in
management consulting whereI was the senior partner,
top of the tier to go to Nike andto actually go work for a company
(35:00):
that had been a clientof mine for 10 years.
And I had not worked incorporate America, so to speak,
versus professional services for24 years. I had been an observer.
I'd been an advisor and acounselor to corporate America.
I'd been a problem solver, but I hadn'tactually worked in that environment.
Not to mention I left everybody I knewin California and moved up to Portland,
(35:21):
Oregon. So from a family point ofview, a friend's point of view,
I mean it was like rip the bandaid off.
But I did that because I was committedto the fact that I was in fact at risk of
benevolent stagnation and I was gettingvery comfortable doing a lot the
same things a lot of the timeas a 10-year senior partner.
(35:41):
And I still felt like I had a lot ofgrowth left that I wanted to accomplish as
a leader.
And that one of the best ways to do thatwas to actually go into an operating
environment with the P&L responsibility,
with the clock ticking with tens ofthousands of employees and see if I knew
what I was talking about when I wasadvising CEOs for all those years.
(36:03):
Did Phil Knight have the samerequirement on two hour email turnaround?
Phil does not really use email.
I figured that would be your response.
It's very different.
I challenge anyone to tell me whatPhil Knight's email address is,
but remember when I went to Nike,
he was chair and had alreadyput Mark Parker in as the
(36:25):
CEO. And I will tell you,
Nike is very much a performance-drivenculture similar to what Grace talked
about at PepsiCo and very much acan we get it done now, culture,
and I think we're all going to find thathigh-performing companies have some of
those same characteristics.
Grace Puma, former COO of PepsiCo,Christiana Smith Shi, former president,
(36:48):
consumer Direct for the Nike organization.
Your book is Career Forward:
Strategies from Women Who've Made It.
What a gift to readers andaudio listeners as well.
I've thought a lot about my owncareer mindset and the benevolent
stagnation that all of us experience.
(37:09):
I think your book is going to do extremelywell. Thanks for your time today,
Grace. Thanks for joining us.
Thank you for your time.
Christiana, thank you as well for yourtime. Best of luck to both of you.
Thank you, Scott.
And we'll see you back here next weekfor a new conversation On Leadership.
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