When I was in my thirties, I lobbied to become chief operating officer of PepsiCo’s beverage division in the East—and I got the job. I was a bit young for the role, but I had a bigger obstacle to overcome: I had little operational experience. My career so far has been in marketing. I made a risky proposition to the CEO and Chairman and convinced them to give me a chance. If I couldn’t prove myself within six months, they might fire me or demote me. Neither option helped my career.
Why am I confident enough to take risks?
I know something important about myself: I am an active learner. Put me in any role or team and I look for sound ideas and insights wherever I can find them, then combine them with action and execution. This is a habit and mindset that I see in most of the leaders I admire and that I’ve learned from them throughout my career.
Active learning is critical to me because I do not have the same level of formal education as many of my colleagues. I have a public school journalism degree, but no Ivy League MBA. Because my dad was on the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey team marking latitude and longitude, I moved from town to town every few months while growing up and lived in over 30 states in 23 states before high school. In a trailer park.
This was the beginning of my positive study habits. When I was in elementary school, my mother worried that moving frequently would affect my studies. Mrs. Ann Schultz, my teacher in Dodge City, Kansas, reassured her. “David has lived in more places than most kids will in their lifetime,” she said. “Your son is getting the best education I know.”
I’m learning how to learn – as much as possible, with as many different people as possible, as fast as possible. I learned that you never know where the next big idea might come from, and you shouldn’t judge the value of people or their insights based on their background.
As a motivated learner, I’ve earned a reputation for solving big problems and turning around teams and brands. That’s how I succeeded as chief operating officer, which ultimately led me to become the CEO of Yum Brands. That’s how I helped Yum grow from $8 billion to $32 billion during my 17-year tenure. This is how I make a positive impact in people’s lives today.
I have developed the important principle of learning from anyone, any experience, and any new situation that has something valuable to offer.
For example, one of the first things I did in my new role as chief operating officer was visit our bottling plant. I know that’s where I can learn about the root causes and best solutions to our big problems. However, I didn’t go to the manager. I get up at 5am, talk to route sales people, and sometimes ride with them to meet our customers. I spent hours working with people on the production line and in the warehouse. “What do we need to do better?” I asked. “What did we do right?” I learned that our predictions were wrong. We are often out of stock. We couldn’t get product out of the warehouse fast enough. Low morale. When I reported the situation to the plant managers, they would say, “How did you discover this problem so quickly?”
I asked. I observed. I paid attention to the ideas and lessons provided. I’ve applied this discipline from my early days as a newbie in marketing, and it’s helped me adapt more quickly to each role so that I can make a positive impact faster. It had a big impact on my career trajectory.
One of the dangers of leadership is that as you advance to more senior positions, you can lose touch with reality, let your ego take over, and stop listening. I may have fallen into this trap considering that I sometimes feel like I lack pedigree. But I see leaders like this and how it impacts their teams and results, so I steadily work on cultivating and maintaining an open, curious, and humble mindset.
I learned to ask better questions that help me understand fundamentals, see the world as it is, expand our options, and clarify the right actions. For example, if I’m worried that we might be stagnant or missing an opportunity, I ask, “If new talented people come in and take over, what will they do?” I ask my team, “What?” Can We do” rather than “what we do” should We are willing to expand their thinking. In difficult situations with other teams or organizations, I ask, “What would happen if we gave the trust first?” We constantly compare ourselves to our competitors and ask ourselves, “What can we learn from them?” What did you learn about how to win? ” Questions like these increase the flow of great ideas in my team.
For example, I was hired as head of marketing at Pizza Hut (then part of PepsiCo) about 10 years before I became chief operating officer. Pizza Hut needed help with its data, so one of the questions we asked was, “How can we bring weekday sales closer to weekend sales?” It sparked a series of successful ideas for the team, especially Tuesday kids night. The kids got a free personal pan pizza and a small party pack with a regular pizza order – which gave us weekend level quantities.
Step by step in my career, I learned by doing what needed to be done or what would have the greatest impact, such as taking on new challenges, doing the hard thing, or doing the right thing. When we learn by doing, we discover insights that come from action. Two of my most famous habits are pursuing happiness and recognizing team members who contribute to our success.
We learn more when we feel positive emotions, and I have consistently made career decisions that allow me to do work I love, with the people I love, achieve great results, and have fun doing it. A few years after I was chief operating officer, when I was president of KFC, I was offered the position of president of Frito-Lay, which was a great opportunity. But I said no because I discovered how much I loved the restaurant industry. Ultimately this decision gave me the opportunity to lead Yum Brands.
At Yum!, we’ve built a culture of recognition from the beginning. It allows us to identify those behaviors that drive success, look for those behaviors within our teams, and demonstrate them across the company so people feel like their contributions matter and are valued. We’re known for it, and I attribute a lot of our incredible growth and success to what we learn from our dedicated team members.
This is the ultimate lesson I learned throughout my career: Active learning is the foundation for nearly every other important leadership habit. When you learn with purpose and focus on making a positive impact, the results lead to greater possibilities for you and the people and teams around you.
The views expressed in Fortune Star review articles represent solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the following views and beliefs: wealth.
