David Novak 0:04 

Welcome to How leaders lead where every week you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world, I break down the key learning so that by the end of the episode, you'll have something simple that you can apply as you develop into a better leader. That's what this podcast is all about. Today's guest is David Gibbs, the CEO of yum brands. That's pizza, Taco Bell, KFC and the habit burger grill. And yes, it's also my former company. David is doing some incredible things to continue to drive growth that yum brands. And as you're about to hear, he has a unique mentality that helps him do it. You see, David stepped into the role as CEO back in January of 2020. And was immediately faced with the challenges of the COVID 19 pandemic. But throughout his career, when David has found himself in challenging situations, he looks for the opportunities for the upside for what's positive. And if you've got that ability to reframe a situation, well, you've got the key to unlocking growth, for your business for your team members. And for yourself, too. When you listen to David, you can't help but learn that you can inspire others and drive big growth when you flip the script in a tough situation. So here's my conversation with my good friend, and soon to be yours, David Gibbs.

David, you started your career at PepsiCo, which spun off pizza at Taco Bell and KFC into what is now called yum brands. And you've been at PepsiCo and yum brands for well over 30 years. Everyone's changing jobs like the wind. I mean, why have you stayed in one company for so long?

David Gibbs 1:50 

You know, that's the beauty of a company like ours and the legacy from PepsiCo, I've always felt challenged. I felt like I've changed jobs and change companies, even though I've stayed within the same ecosystem. So I've had the chance to work on the Taco Bell business, the KFC business, the Pizza Hut business, I've had a chance to work in different functions. You know, I think a critical part of being a world class company like Yum, is continually challenging your talent and giving them opportunities to grow. So they never go anywhere else. And I'm a great example of that.

David Novak 2:19 

So it's not that the fact that nobody else wants to hire Yeah.

David Gibbs 2:24 

Hopefully that's not it. It really is just a joy of the what we do you know how much fun it is to work in our business. We work in the greatest business in the world, we're working with people on the front lines, serving people food that brings joy to their life, we're creating career opportunities for people. It doesn't get any better than this. Why would I go anywhere else?

David Novak 2:42 

You know, you came up in finance and real estate positions. When you knew yum brands and PepsiCo, both were companies that the marketing people usually got the big jobs got the run the divisions, did knowing that impact you in terms of how you approached your career moves? And how did it affect your psyche?

David Gibbs 3:02 

It definitely did you know, you're surrounded by all of these marketing geniuses, and you know, you're never going to be one of them. But that seems to be the key to success. But the other key to success at companies like ours is to be a growth driver. And I decided early on that I would make my brand, the David Gibbs brand, all about driving growth, I was going to be the CFO or the finance guy that figured out how to invest money to make even more money. And I think a lot of times people don't think about their own brand within their company. Everybody has a brand that is associated with them. And that's a lot of advice I give to people that are starting out their careers, think about who you want to be and then go be that person.

David Novak 3:43 

So that's really interesting. You looked at yourself as a brand. And you were going to be Mr. Growth. How did you make sure that people in the organization really saw you that way? Because you know, you might see yourself that way, but you've got to get the attention of others as well?

David Gibbs 3:57 

Well, I was fortunate that I started out in a part of the business that is wired for growth, and that's the development function. PepsiCo hired me, but they put me into Taco Bell to go find new locations for Taco Bell's. So it was a growth driver of the business, the more stores were built, the more money we built. So I developed the commercial skills, and I had the setting for me to become known as somebody who could get a lot of real estate deals done and get a lot of new stores open. And then I kept that kind of mindset when I went into the finance function, which is a little bit more challenging and a totally different nature. And there I looked for ways to invest money to grow, not ways to cut money to save. And then when I got in a position where I could influence others, I would come up with some pithy ways to describe what we want it to be like find a way to say yes, you know, the finance department, as some people I've heard call it can often be the sales prevention department. We don't want to be the sales prevention department. We want to be the find a way to say yes department.

David Novak 4:55 

That's great, you know, and and you were the yum brand CFO during the China's been off, where China became a licensee of yum brands. But if I recall, and I was around back then you were hesitant to take that job. Why was that? Like

David Gibbs 5:11 

you and everybody else, I had ambitions to be a big general manager. And you always there's always a little bit of fear about becoming pigeonholed into a functional role, particularly when you take the top role and that function, you sort of limit your options. But you know, that's sort of a closed, that's a fixed mindset. And I realized quickly that the experience that I would get in a job like that would only help me and open and if I looked at it the right way, and did the job the way I wanted to do it, which was be the growth driver, that it would open up other opportunities for me. And of course, that's how it played out.

David Novak 5:41 

Looking back, you know, what, what did you see as the biggest business challenge you had on your journey to become a CEO?

David Gibbs 5:48 

Well, I think it was in a company like ours, where marketing talent and sales talent, you know, rises to the top, it was getting to reframe how people looked at me, and to see me as a big leader. The other challenge about it that I had was, look, we're a people business, we're a culture business, we're all about the soft skills that Yum, you created, that when you named it a recognition culture. And to be in a job like mine, you've got to be a culture leader, you can't just be a culture follower, you've got to demonstrate that the culture is ingrained in you. And I figured out that what I'm passionate about is people development, hiring the best people, developing them, retaining them, and growing them. And that's a big part of our culture, you instilled that from the start. And I tried to while I was building a name for myself, as a growth leader, I tried to also build a reputation as somebody that would surround themselves with the best talent in the industry. And that could bring the team to bear. And that's what you really need in the top jobs in every company. That takes some people a lot of time to figure that out. But if you can surround yourself with a whole bunch of people that are better than you, you're assured of success.

David Novak 6:55 

Well, you certainly have made that a huge priority. And when you look back on your career, you got handed some tasks that I'm sure were not that easy. What was the biggest business challenge your project that you're working on, that was a toughest for you to get done?

David Gibbs 7:10 

Well look, different parts of our business are wired differently, and some are set up better than others for long term success based on the history of the brand. You know, we've had parts of the business like the pizza, US business, which was a dine in business migrating to a delivery business. During that migration, it was a tough business to be running, because you were working out of these diamond stores into the delivery assets. You said to me at the time, take that job, because that's a really hard job. And you'll learn more in that than anything else you do. That was a hard job. But I did learn a lot in it. And I do think we got the brand back on the right track. And today, you know that pizza business is doing so much better as we've embraced off premise and delivery and technology. But we had some tough calls, you know, when you're taking the franchise system with you. And we're all used to doing things a certain way, changing people's mindsets, and doing it collaboratively, is the hardest challenge that we have in our business. But that's what we're great at it. We're world class at working with our franchise partners. And in a constant evolution of our businesses. We're constantly reinventing our businesses, no business is static. And that's a skill you need to develop. So I was lucky enough to have that challenge.

David Novak 8:17 

Now, if you could go back 30 years, David and start over, what's something that you do differently?

David Gibbs 8:22 

I think the only thing I would do differently is I would enjoy the journey more and be less worried about the destination. If you think about it, we all start off. And we have these lofty ambitions. And if we're not reaching every single milestone in goal in record time, you know, we find ourselves getting frustrated. And that certainly was me. But now that I look back on it, every job I've had, every role of every team that I've worked with, I've enjoyed the whole journey has been really joyful the whole time. And I was probably a little bit too wrapped up in the destination and not enjoying every single moment of the journey.

David Novak 9:00 

You know, how have you managed the transitions that you've had so successfully whenever you've joined a new team and stepped into a new role, because you had a lot of them, as you just described earlier,

David Gibbs 9:11 

I had a benefit early in my career in that I worked at what we call a shared service. A lot of companies have this, where you're working in a function that is being shared across a whole bunch of different people. So you have a whole bunch of different bosses, and having to please a whole bunch of different bosses, you quickly learn, you know, to have empathy to look at things through the lens of other people, what little tricks you can do to help bring them over to your side to become partners. Because when you're a shared service, people don't have to take your call. You need to work with them and you need to win them over. I was blessed to have that opportunity to work in the real estate function, which was a shared service between Taco Bell KFC and Pizza Hut and I had to develop that skill of partnering with people that other businesses and I look for that now when I hire people I look for people that have been consultants in their background because consultants often aren't welcomed in, and they have to figure out a way to get their foot in the door and become a partner.

David Novak 10:09 

What's the best way to get your foot in the door and become that partner? I mean, tell us a story of when you actually did that?

David Gibbs 10:15 

Well, I think people want to know that you're authentic and genuine. When I was a real estate manager, one of the things that I think I use very effectively, is most real estate managers would go out and visit a potential site and go into cell mode with the people at the brand and the operators to say you need to prove this site, I've got this great site, you've got to approve it, so I can get credit for it on my bonus, and we can get another store open. But I, when I would do site rides with the operators, I would take them to some sites that I liked. And some sites that I didn't like, and explain to them why I didn't like it, to build credibility with them, that everything I was doing was not just selling that sometimes when I was selling it was because I believed in it. And then when I was taking them to some other sites that I didn't believe in, they could understand my logic for why I would reject things. Funny enough, I would end up in situations where I would take them to a site I didn't like, and then they would start to try to convince me that maybe we should do it. And that's when you know you've broken through. And now you're working on equal terms. Really looking at the facts. Nobody's got their own agenda. You're working together for the greater good.

David Novak 11:23 

You know, you've always had the ability, David to drive important changes, even when you work for some bosses who had a tendency to avoid conflict that it takes to really get things done. How did you navigate those situations? How do you manage up successfully?

David Gibbs 11:39 

Like, I've always been a big believer, as cliche as it sounds, is my job is make my boss look great. If you just approach everything you do with that mentality, it's amazing how things fall into place. So when I worked for people that maybe were conflict avoiders, my job was to take on the conflict that they didn't want to take on help them look good, and just do it behind the scenes. My job was to help coach them on conflicts that they needed to take on that I wasn't able to handle, but it was important for them in their job. And it's funny to me how my attitude has always been whoever I work for whatever you want me to do, whenever you want me to do it, however high you want me to jump I'm all in. I've heard

David Novak 12:17 

you say that people should necessarily want to only work for great bosses, because you can learn even more sometimes from the bad ones. Can you give me a for instance, without mentioning any names, obviously, where this has popped up in your career in a big way.

David Gibbs 12:34 

First of all, I've been fortunate that I have worked for some great leaders, my wife, Sharon, who, you know, always joke that every time I came home and I had a new boss, I would tell her, I can't believe how much I'm learning from this new guy. This is so fantastic. So for the most part, I've learned lots of great lessons about leadership. And I think you're very fortunate when you work for a company with the kind of leaders we've had to just learn by observation. But I've certainly seen other people handle things that backfired on them and use that as opportunities to learn from the best example I can give you, which really changed how I led in a big way, is at one point in my career, I was working for a leader who prevented me from getting a new job opportunity. He didn't know that I knew this. But I found out through backchannels that he said I wasn't available for a bigger role, because he didn't want to let me leave his team. I eventually overcame that I confronted him on it, and I got the job. But the feeling I had of being held back because somebody else was selfish and wanted me on their team and wouldn't give me up. I've kept that in mind. Every time we make people decisions in this company, when we have leaders that are being put up for jobs, and I hear somebody say, Well, they'd be great in that job. And it's a bigger job, but I can't really afford to let them go. I just go back to that time. But what that felt like to me, and we don't want to be a company like that we want to be a company that prioritizes getting people into the best opportunities for them to grow and where they can have the biggest impact on the business.

David Novak 14:02 

Well, one of the reasons why I know you kept getting more and more responsibility is because you do have this passion for developing people, which he talked about a little bit earlier, where that personal passion really come from.

David Gibbs 14:16 

I think it probably came from being a really big sports participant, I played basketball and tennis in college and in high school. And I always loved competing and the fact that you can get so much better in sports with some coaching and the right kind of experiences, you can really build up skills that you didn't have. When I was a little kid I couldn't make a left handed layup to save my life. And I just decided one summer by the end of this summer. I'm going to be really good at left handed layups. And I went to work on making left handed layups and I got to the point where I was a little bit more comfortable coming in from the left side for a layup that I was on the right side. So I learned early on that you can really improve your skill set, actually so much so that you can ask anyone My friends From early in my life, I always wanted to be a coach, I thought, wow, this is so great. You can teach people things and you can see improvement that's so rewarding to help them and, and to see the impact you can have. I planned on quitting PepsiCo, you know, when I was 40 years old to go become a high school basketball coach, that was my real plan in life, because I enjoyed it so much. Obviously, that's another one of those things that I failed on and didn't follow through on. But what I discovered is that the joy that I would have from coaching people in basketball and get the same joy, working in a company like ours, through hiring people and helping to develop them,

David Novak 15:35 

it's great. And here you are, now you're the CEO of yum brands, what is it about this role that might have caught you by surprise?

David Gibbs 15:43 

Well, after being with the company for 33 years, getting to observe great leaders like yourself, you would think I was perfectly prepared for whatever would come with this role. But I was not prepared for a pandemic. And in fact, the pandemic, you know, I started in January of 2020, because we have a big business in China, I was already aware of what was going on in China day one in the job. Now, we didn't know how severe it would get. But that's one thing that caught me by surprise. And then there's a whole bunch of follow on things from that, you know, a lot of the social unrest that occurred over the last few years related to inequality. I didn't realize as the CEO of this company that I would be dealing with so many issues like that, I embrace that opportunity, I think young can be an agent for change, and that we can do so much good in the world in terms of equality. But I could never have pictured what the last two half years would look like. I do remember saying to my wife, when I started in the job, I said, Look, everything's set up. Well, the company's doing well, you know, the future is really bright. The one thing I know is it's not going to play out the way it looks right now, my first day on the job.

David Novak 16:52 

It never does play out, there's always that surprise around the corner. You know, you talked about the importance of building culture, and you have over 2000 franchisees, they have their own businesses. You know, obviously, they pay you royalties for the the ability to participate with the brands, but you can't control how they run their companies. How do you build culture worldwide when you don't have that control?

David Gibbs 17:17 

Well, certainly, that's the biggest challenge in our businesses, our businesses expressed through 2000 different entities with their own leaders and their own way of approaching business challenges. And I think under your leadership, we created a framework for what what our values are at Yum, you know, a recognition culture. And it's amazing how that's come alive around the world and how we keep building on it and building on it layer by layer by layer. So while we don't have direct control, we create an environment and an ecosystem that really does, you know, create more similarities and how our business represents itself in our communities than differences. But a lot of it does get back to picking the right partners. It's such as simple truth in our business. But the reality is, if you have a bad franchise partner, you're never going to be able to build your brand the way you want. And if you have a great franchise partner, it's really easy to build it and grow the way we've been growing. So I think we're pretty rigorous now about the partners that we choose and making sure that we have the right ones. And when we make those changes in some markets and get the right partner in there, things take off like clockwork.

David Novak 18:30 

Let's face it, your life is just too important to delegate to someone else. That's why I'm so passionate about self coaching. If you're new to this concept, I put together a free self coaching guide that will walk you through the principles of how to become a great self coach to really find fulfillment in your life and career, you can get it at take charge of you.com/guide. This free guide will give you a simple plan you can follow to kickstart your self coaching journey. It's a perfect time to invest your time into self coaching, as we near the end of the year, and think about what's to come in 2023 This guide will help you become the very best you you can be get into take charge of you.com/guide. And you give your people a lot of autonomy and they really appreciate that. But what caution Can you give leaders on how to give that autonomy out? You know, how do you know when to take the leash off inlet people go? What have you learned about that aspect of leadership,

David Gibbs 19:34 

this company and traveling around the world has taught me the power of empowering people. Another saying that I've always remembered from your days of leadership is when you take the joy of the decision away from somebody, you take the joy of the job away from them. So the power of giving people control in the field is immense. The reason yum has been so successful in emerging markets, for example, is because those are markets where You really have to customize your business a little bit to the local tastes. Obviously, if you're in India, you're not serving beef and for your other parts of the world, you know, there are certain delicacies that you want to serve and incorporate in your menu, all of those decisions can't be made from the center. So I've learned when in doubt, hire great people and rely on them in the field, rather than trying to control things from the center, even though it goes against a lot of my tendencies to want to really manage stuff tightly and ensure success. And it's worked for us. And it's really a hallmark of our business. You know,

David Novak 20:33 

you've talked about your tendencies that, you know, this could be difficult for you that can be difficult. That requires a lot of self awareness. How do you stay self aware,

David Gibbs 20:41 

I think self awareness is one of the most underrated skills and leadership that there is. And we all know, when you're dealing with somebody who's not self aware, it's really hard for them to be successful. I first of all, I have a wife who keeps me very self aware and has no problem giving me feedback. And a family that feels the same way, which I love. But I think I've tried to create an environment where people can give me feedback and know they're not going to get their head chopped off, they may get into a debate about something, but they know I appreciate it, you want to surround yourself with truth tellers you want to, and you want to be a role model for that truth telling, you know, so many times you can get into a meeting. And there's something that's not right, and everybody knows it, and nobody voices it. If I voice it, and you know, I'm willing to take on the elephant in the room, I hope my team sees that they can take on the elephant in the room with me and give me that feedback.

David Novak 21:29 

You know, you lead what is called the capital light move for yum brands, give people just a quick overview on what capital light means as it relates to yum. And then what was the challenge of taking the organization with you,

David Gibbs 21:43 

it's very easy to build a retail business by spending your own capital building all the stores owning all the stores and having all the employees work for you. It's a many degrees more complex to operate through franchisees where all the stores are built by them and run by them. In 2016, we made a move, by separating off all of the company owned stores we had in China into a separate franchise entity and selling off some other stores that we owned, we made a move to asset light. So the benefits of that are, we no longer have to deploy capital to build stores. And we have the benefits of franchising, which is you have local ownership of your stores, people that are in the communities that should know better how to bring your business alive in those different countries around the world. It wasn't an easy move, there was lots of dissenters in the company, we even had some people leave the company, because they disagreed with it so much. But at the end of the day, we got all the benefits that we thought we would get out of it. Less capital deployed franchise partners that were more empowered to grow the business. And then we even got some benefits that we never anticipated. Or at least that weren't obvious. Back, when we did the asset light move, we were building about 1200. net new stores a year, a lot of them built with our company capital, you would think if we backed off of building stores with company capital, that maybe the amount of stores that we built would go down. But the opposite happened, because we empowered our franchisees and we gave them the ability to go build stores in their markets, and to help support that because we rallied all of our internal resources against it. And now we're building over 3000 net new stores a year. So we had a massive benefit from this. And it's all being almost all being done with franchisee capital, which is great because they're getting great returns. So it's a win win for everybody.

David Novak 23:32 

Three year did 3000 stores a year net new stores a year, you know, how do you do that? I mean, how do you lead that effort?

David Gibbs 23:41 

Again, I think this is one where we had to really shift the organization's mindset shifting everybody to becoming asset light was a challenge because people took pride in we own some of the stores and they were running them directly. So we had to shift their mindset before we could get the result we wanted. Well, the same thing goes with development. If I If you had told anybody in this company five years ago, we're gonna build 3000. net new stores. While we were going towards an asset light model, they would have said we're absolutely insane. So we had to get over that barrier, the mental barrier. And we made it the focus of every conversation. And the funny thing is it was the opportunity was just sitting there because franchisees are getting good returns from building these stores. So they were very receptive to working with us to accelerating growth. It was really more just about getting everybody's mindset around the opportunity and going after it. And lo and behold, the results have exceeded our expectations.

David Novak 24:35 

And I've heard you David talk about the importance of being both David and Goliath in business. You know, what do you mean by that?

David Gibbs 24:43 

We are the world's largest restaurant company. We've got 54,000 restaurants and counting and we're growing faster. You're building more restaurants every year than any other company. So obviously we're a Goliath, but we have to think small we have to break that in massive company up into small pieces, and act as if every store matters. And every employee matters. And every new location gets our full attention. And the asset light model allows us to do that, because we don't really have that many employees that work directly for the corporation. So we can influence the employees that work for the corporation, and then get that to trickle down throughout the entire system. But every leader, I've talked to talks about having that challenger mindset, having that mentality of just cutting through bureaucracy and everything you do. Every day I wake up, and I, my number one driver is just getting rid of complacency and bureaucracy on our business, and acting like a much smaller business.

David Novak 25:41 

So you go into market, you feel like they're complacent. What do you do?

David Gibbs 25:45 

The easiest way to get a better result that I've found, is to change out leaders when you don't have the right leader in place. But there is another aspect of this, which is, have we really been clear with the organization about what we're trying to do? So you've heard me talk about this a little bit. We want to have a winning mindset. We want to be thinking about market share growing our market share every year, just growing our sales year over year, of course, we have to do that. But are we growing our sales and growing share at the same time. So I think there's an element of this, of just establishing what we define as success in our company. And so we've defined that in a bold way. You know, it's about beating year ago, sales, but it's also about beating the competition and growing our share. And I think that coupled with the right leaders makes it very clear what our ambitions are.

David Novak 26:35 

David, you're a humble guy. But you also are what I would say supremely confident in your ability. Is there ever been a time where you experience self doubt? And most people do? And how did you overcome it? Can you tell us that story?

David Gibbs 26:48 

Well, look, I think we all experience, self doubt. And if you're honest about it, there's lots of directions you can pick the job of a leader is to pick one and then confidently move forward. The best story I can think about is when I had self doubt, but put it aside and march forward is, you know, the early days of the pandemic, when I was getting on, you know, video chats with 1000s of employees and franchisees, and everybody was looking to yum. And to me for answers about how are you going to get through this. And I realized early on, that was going to be a great opportunity to establish my brand of leadership, and also build tighter bonds with our employees and with our franchisees. So I put the self doubt aside, I didn't know what's going to happen with the pandemic nobody possibly could. And I realized my job was to give a little confidence to people that whatever is thrown our way, we'll figure out how to get through it. And our number one priority is take care of our employees and our customers and our franchise partners. And we're going to live up to that we then follow that up with some very specific actions that I think inspired even more confidence. We told our franchisees Look, you guys are in trouble right now. Don't pay us royalties, we'll give you a grace period on royalties, it was a bold thing to do, because we needed the money to keep the company running. But we knew that they didn't have it. And we had an opportunity to build even stronger bonds with them by being the first one to go to them and say, Look, you know, your survival is our number one priority.

David Novak 28:16 

That's great. You know, I want to shift gears for a minute and take you back. What's a story from your childhood that shaped the kind of leader you are today.

David Gibbs 28:25 

The first one that pops to mind, I'm sure there's lots of them is I was playing a tennis match. I was on the tennis team in high school. And I lost the first set badly. I was down in the second set, I think it was like five, two. So the other guy was serving, I was dead to rights in this tennis match. And the guy was a friend of mine on the other team. And I came back and won that match in a three set like four hour just drained me. And I never thought I could but I wouldn't give up. And you know, for those people that know me, I can be pretty stubborn and pretty persistent. And I think about that match a lot like you know, no matter how far down you are or how difficult something seems, you can come back, you know, I can picture where I was on that court, I can picture the weather, everything about it is still fresh in my mind, and still a motivator and I apply it to other situations.

David Novak 29:21 

Now you played tennis, which was an individual sport, you play basketball, which is obviously a team sport, and you really are a big proponent of you know, developing teams and growing teams. And one of the things that I observed about you is that you always try to win over the toughest person on the team, or the most challenging franchisee I mean, most people would stay away from those people like you can't believe okay.

David Gibbs 29:47 

Why do you do this? That's funny. That reminds me of another story from when I was just out of college. I had my first job out of college, was working on the sales and trading desk at Salomon Brothers in New York City. See. And as you know, there's a lot of gruff people in that environment. I'm this new kid out of college. And I had some job where I had to go around and check in with the different traders every morning on a couple of things, and get some information that I would share with other people. And I was doing the job for a while, and I started to form a good relationship with one of the traders, and I was talking to a more experienced associate. And I said, Oh, um, you know, it's going pretty well, you know, John really likes me, he was really nice to me. And the guy said to me, John likes everybody, you know, if you can get along with Joe, and you can get Joe to smile once now you've done something. And it's true, every time I would approach Joe's desk, I was like, in a panic, because I thought he was going to hit me. And I would, you know, quickly get in there ask you a quick question and get out of there. So then I turned it around, and I said, I'm going to form a good relationship with this guy. And I actually did, and I sort of carried that lesson with me too, is like, it's easy to get along with the easy people, the real challenge is try to figure out how you can tackle the more difficult people. And those relationships often can be the most rewarding and the most important to you. You know, a lot

David Novak 31:07 

of people are scared to give and receive feedback, you know, they avoid both like the plague. But it sounds like this really isn't that much of a struggle for you. What process can others follow that can help them gain confidence, and how to give feedback to others.

David Gibbs 31:24 

I think the number one obstacle for giving effective feedback is our own innate desire to be liked. If I give somebody feedback that I know is going to be tough for them to receive, they're going to maybe feel a little bit less positively about me. It's hard to do that people are naturally wired to be approval seekers. But I flipped that around in my mind to think the most valuable thing you can do to somebody is give them really actionable feedback. And I've had those experiences over my career where I've given people really tough feedback, and then they've come back to me, you know, sometimes years later and said, you know, you've told me that, and that's made a difference in my life. And I appreciate that at the time, they're not going to appreciate it at the time, they may be angry with you. And it takes some self confidence and the commitment to really wanting to help others to be able to do that.

David Novak 32:17 

One of the other things that you talked about as the importance and you mentioned a little bit earlier about being your authentic self, when did dawn on you the importance of being your authentic self? And did you learn that yourself in some way? And then two part question, how do you promote that across the organization,

David Gibbs 32:35 

I grew up in New York, where everybody's their authentic self, as they tell you how they feel. So maybe it's a little bit easier for me, but I'll give you a good example of where I thought that was really valuable. And where I promoted it for the organization. Go back to those early company wide calls that we had about COVID. I could sense how tense everybody was how worried they were, how could they even trust that the company was going to take care of them. So in one on one of the first calls, I realized I had to make things more lighthearted and be a little vulnerable. So I just casually said, you know, what are we going to do about cutting our hair, we can't go get our hair cut anymore, because we can't be around people are we all going to have hair down to our knees, it became a little joke in the company, like, everybody would ask me about cutting my hair. So then I went out and I bought scissors and the clipper and I started cutting my own hair and reporting on it back to the rest of the organization. And there's other examples like that, where when we have those calls, I tried to keep them very, you know, authentic, real. Yeah, and talk about things that are every day so that people recognize we're being transparent. And I think it's brought the company closer together, and has set that role model of Hey, it's okay to talk about your personal life and share things with everybody. So now when we get on those calls, the other leaders in yum do the same thing. They talk about what they did since the last call. You know, we just had one of these calls and Tracy skeins, our great Chief Operating Officer talked about dropping her kids off at college, and how that felt. And I think that can be very powerful for an organization to make a big huge company in 150 plus countries feel small because you know, intimate details about your senior leaders.

David Novak 34:19 

You know, I've heard you tell others that you spend probably 50% of your time learning new things. Why is that and tell us a story about the most recent thing that you've learned.

David Gibbs 34:31 

The ability to be in constant learner mode is something you taught me early on. I remember the first few times you use this phrase avid learner. I was like What's he talking about with this avid learner thing? And then I started really getting a full appreciation for it. And the fact that you do these podcasts is a great example of an avid learner you get more out of this than anybody listening to it. You love hearing stories and learning from others and that's great. And what I found is how I'm having leaders around the company that are wired the same way, is invaluable. You know, almost every leader of any big company that I've met, is intellectually curious. And I'm no different. So I mean, as far as examples of, you know, how I satisfy my intellectual curiosity, you know, obviously, I'm a big reader, I'm a constant Googler of information. There's nothing that, you know, the invention of the internet that you can carry in your palm was a game changer. For me. I remember sitting at a table with a bunch of people at a dinner, when I got my first BlackBerry. And we were talking about how many stitches there was on a baseball. This is like 20 years ago. And I quickly on the BlackBerry looked up on the, you know, the one G internet, how many stitches there was on the baseball? I guess there's, I think there's 108. And I remember thinking, wow, this is going to change my life, I can get any answer I want in the palm of my hands. And funnily enough, I think I'm surrounded by a whole bunch of leaders that young, that are constantly looking up things like how many stitches there are in baseball, constantly, intellectually curious about how things are done, and how we could learn from them?

David Novak 36:12 

What's the thing that you've learned? Most recently, that's kind of surprised you,

David Gibbs 36:16 

I just went to India on a business trip. So first time outside the United States during the pandemic, and a lot of people now are talking about what does the future of work look like? How are we going to work from the house, we're going to work from the office, it's hybrid, what? What's the solution, our Indian team, on their own, remade their entire office in a way that it promotes, you know, collaboration, got rid of everybody's dedicated offices, for the most part, redid the office with little cues that I recently learned about are important in a work environment, like having the right kind of background music at the right level, I mean, all these little subtle things that I had never even thought about, they incorporated into this work environment. And it's a smashing success. So I think, you know, every day I learned something fascinating, oftentimes, just, you know, by just visiting with people in our business, because there's so much going on around the world to learn from our biggest challenge is how do we share that with other parts of the world, and you know that well, from your time that you're on, because you can be so big, sometimes people are reinventing the same thing and three different parts of the world. And

David Novak 37:29 

we'll be right back with the rest of my conversation with David Gibbs in just a moment. But you know, David has defined his career as someone who drives growth and growth is something we all want for our organizations, for our teams, and for ourselves. And I loved what will Ahmed, the CEO of whoop, the wearable health device had to say about this concept?

Will Ahmed 37:50 

Well, it's funny, we define the whole business through growth and retention, which we've nicknamed grow tain for grow and retain, you know, those are the two levers on our business. And I would say that, you can't have one without the other. And for us, ensuring that people are really enjoying the product for months and years, and hopefully for the rest of their lives, is core to our value proposition.

David Novak 38:14 

Listen to my entire conversation with will Episode 64, here at how leaders lead.

You know, I love to get into how leaders make really tough decisions. And and when Russia invaded Ukraine, you had some big decisions to make there. Take us through the actions you took, and why and how did you think it through.

David Gibbs 38:41 

But I think the first thing you realize is the world is looking, we're going to be judged on how we deal with this, and what's the way that young with our values, we would handle it. And that became quickly apparent that we can continue to trade in Russia, we can continue to even be seen as profiting from doing business in Russia. So the first thing we did is we stopped all development of new relocations. And we committed all of the profit that we make to Russia to be diverted towards humanitarian causes. It's one thing to say you're going to exit Russia, but that's going to take some time. We wanted to do something tangible, immediate, that people could see how serious we were about our values and how we stood for them in a situation like that. We're always going to do the right thing in those situations. We've advanced discussions to exit the country, Pizza Hut, we've sold that brand to a local partner who's going to rebrand those stores. We're in the process of doing the same thing with KFC. There can be no there's no gray area when it comes to doing what's right. These are tough decisions, but they're actually easy to make if you have a set of values that you operate by.

David Novak 39:48 

What was the toughest thing about making that decision, David?

David Gibbs 39:52 

The people on the ground that worked in our Russian business, you know that that was also a priority. They didn't do anything wrong. We were concerned about making sure that we took care of them and that they didn't have any negative consequences from that. So we shut all of our company stores, for example, right away, that was another aspect of what we did, in addition to committing the profits to humanitarian causes. But we also continued to pay the employees of those companies stores, we cared about the people at the stores, we cared about the people that worked in our office there. We've tried to do everything we can to navigate what is clearly a very complicated, difficult situation. So far, I think we've done the right things.

David Novak 40:27 

You know, Dave, one of the things that I wish I would have done a better job in was technology when I was running yum brands. And you now describe Yum, as a tech company. That seems like a big stretch, certainly from where we were when I was there. But you know, what have you done to lead that revolution?

David Gibbs 40:45 

Well, that was you know, if you look back at my list of the five things I wanted to get done back in January 2020. For the next chapter of growth, three, you know, very high on that five was getting our Tech game in order. We're the world's largest restaurant company. But we didn't have the best technology in our restaurants. We weren't a leader in tech, we've made that transition. Now. We had been working on it prior to that. But we've really capitalized on that over the last couple of years, we've more than doubled the sales that come through digital channels. And that was simply just assembling the right people. We've got a world class team of people that lead tech for yum. Now, we actually just had our global leadership summit, which you were kind enough to come to attend and help us celebrate our 25th anniversary. at that summit, the function with the most leaders represented was technology. The last time we had that summit, it was what the one with the least. So our most senior leaders now over index on technology leaders, and we've done some acquisitions of other companies to comprehensive strategy to win in the category.

David Novak 41:46 

Well, as they say, in Australia, good on you, because it's definitely making the company better. And you know, it was interesting, David, that you did have me come back and speak to everybody as the co founder of yum brands at this 25th anniversary and, and you know, I interview a lot of different people, different CEOs, but when you become CEO, most CEOs basically say, Hey, forget the last guys, you know, I don't want to see them again, this is my show. Now. What made you say, Hey, it's okay to have somebody else come in. It used to lead the company. You know, most people don't do that.

David Gibbs 42:19 

There's a number of reasons why I had you come number one, it was the 25th anniversary, and I thought nobody could do a better job of helping us celebrate that, then you. You're also obviously, iconic figure in our brand. And I think people enjoy seeing you and hearing your stories of what Jung was, like 25 years ago, I want to seek leaders that have low ego and are collaborative, that don't have to invent everything that are happy to share the spotlight, want to build on the successes of their predecessors, not tear down what they did, and start over as if they had all the answers. And the last guy didn't. I thought role modeling that with you and Greg creed, you know, who was in between us, you know, we do that in every way, shape, or form. I want to celebrate you guys. And I want everybody to see, I'm standing on the shoulders of giants. I'm not starting fresh. We're just authoring another chapter. But we have a lot that we owe you. And when leaders in this company take over a new part of the business. I don't want them to throw away all the ideas that the last guy or gal had, I want them to build on them.

David Novak 43:18 

You know, David, it's been so much fun. And I want to have a little bit more with what I call my lightning round of q&a. So are you ready for this? Ready? Here we go. What's one word others would use to describe you?

David Gibbs 43:30 

Competitive?

David Novak 43:32 

What's one word that you think best describes you?

David Gibbs 43:35 

Curious?

David Novak 43:37 

What's your biggest pet peeve?

David Gibbs 43:38 

complacency. If I see it creeping into myself or anybody else, I can't stand it.

David Novak 43:45 

What's something about South Africa that you you'd know only if you were a young CEO?

David Gibbs 43:53 

Well, certainly that we have way more KFC and McDonald's has stores on the ground.

David Novak 43:58 

How about same question for China.

David Gibbs 44:01 

It's hard to appreciate how dominant our businesses they're relative to any other retailer in the world. We are the defining Western retailer in that country. How about France, the fact that the country that maybe has a reputation for being the most highest quality tastebuds in the world, absolutely loves our products. Our KFC fried chicken is such a huge hit there. I've always found it fascinating how they flocked to our business and it just goes to show you if we serve KFC fried chicken on white china in a fine tablecloth restaurant, it would be a hit. It's a hit no matter what the setting

David Novak 44:37 

was something about you that few people would know.

David Gibbs 44:40 

I always answer that with I'm a card counter. I was a card counter in playing blackjack when I was in college. So I used to go to Atlantic City and count cars and I actually got thrown out of a casino in Monaco at one point, right after college.

David Novak 44:56 

If you turn on the radio in your car, what would we hear?

David Gibbs 45:00 

Probably CNPC, when was

David Novak 45:03 

your last? I can't believe this is happening to me moment,

David Gibbs 45:07 

probably when I found that I was going to become the CEO of yum. Or when I found out I was going to be the CEO of yum. And we were I was going to be leading it in a pandemic.

David Novak 45:18 

Just a few more questions. That's the end of the line, you're out here. You're a CEO, your wife, Sharon is a doctor, What's it like having a partner that's way, way smarter than

David Gibbs 45:28 

I'm glad it's so obvious to you, it is everybody else. I don't know how you can go through life without having a partner like that, where you have somebody that you can talk to get great advice from, that will shoot you straight. She's been everything to be my rock. And there's no way I'm in this job without having her as my partner. And by the way, my kids are great sources of inspiration and feedback as well. So I've been very lucky with my family,

David Novak 45:53 

you know, you're passionate about creating a level playing field for your team members across yum. What are you doing to really make that a reality?

David Gibbs 46:02 

Well, in the summer of 2020, we committed $100 million to what we called an initiative about unlocking opportunity and fighting inequality, that money is being put to an amazingly good use all around the world through our businesses. Examples of that, which some people may be familiar with is, you know, we are funding a program at the University of Louisville to create a course that teaches people how to become franchisees, with an emphasis on bringing in diverse candidates through that program will provide tuition assistance. And the idea is to create these pathways, you know, it's one thing to provide paychecks, but paychecks can only go so far, we want to create pathways for people so they can make the journey from a team member all the way to a franchisee. But you know, there's so much going on in that area, our involvement in 110, which is creating positions for black leaders in the United States and family sustaining jobs. And you name it, we've got initiatives across a wide variety of parts of the business.

David Novak 47:01 

And what's your unfinished business as CEO of yum brands?

David Gibbs 47:06 

Well, we both know there's always going to be unfinished business every morning, you wake up, and there's some new areas of opportunity. And that's the thing about our business, we all of our brands have been around for 60 years, because we've continually reinvented them, we've still got a long way to go in terms of a consistent experience in our restaurants, a long way to go in terms of building out our stores. We're one of the few companies in the world that can say we have been around for over 60 years. And we have more growth ahead of us than we do behind us. We have 54,000 restaurants now there's no doubt we're going to have well over 100,000 restaurants at some point in the future. So there's always going to be something for the next guy to work on. confident of that.

David Novak 47:47 

No question. You know, one of the things we had some challenges early on at yum was really getting Taco Bell to start to take off on an international basis. And you know, I've seen the recent numbers, and it looks like you're really building some momentum on that front. What was it that got Taco Bell over the hump internationally,

David Gibbs 48:05 

I think it was actually something that was started when you were leading yum. And that was reorganizing our business. So we had dedicated leadership to Taco Bell internationally. In the past, we would have leaders that would manage the geography and they would run KFC, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut all in their same geography. And Taco Bell didn't get enough attention. Once we started creating an organization that was solely focused on Taco Bell, you know, the brand started to come alive internationally. But it's always a long journey to start building in countries, we know you have to get to scale. And that takes time. But we're at that tipping point. Now we're actually building more of Taco Bell's outside the United States today than we are inside the United States. And that trend is going to continue for a very long time.

David Novak 48:45 

And you know, one of the things that I don't think people really understand is just how successful KFC is outside of the United States. What makes KFC so strong outside of the United States and really a lot stronger than it is in the United States.

David Gibbs 48:59 

The KFC business in the US is really got some momentum going behind it now. And we're excited about, you know, the opportunity we have in the US we only have 4000 stores in the US. We've got 7000 Taco Bells, for example, there's no reason why we can't have the same kind of numbers in us. So we still have a very bright future in the US. But we went through a period where we had to really get our game together and now we're got momentum. Internationally, KFC set up with a lot of advantages over a lot of other concepts. Chicken is the preferred protein around the world. It's easy to introduce a chicken concept into a country because people are used to chicken, particularly in emerging markets where they are having in their backyard. And then of course, the kernel I believe is one of the most recognizable logos in the world. There's some surveys that say the most recognizable so when you have a combination of an iconic brand and a protein that is favored. We start out with some advantages. But our big advantages, you know, is the people that we have building that brand around the world and the way that they bring it to life in unique brand building ways. It's a category of one kind of brand. There's nothing else like it and has truly been successful anywhere. We invest behind it, put the right people behind it, build the right assets serve their product, the way it's supposed to be served. It's a winner every time.

David Novak 50:14 

As we're having this conversation, David, there are a number of times where you kind of flipped the script, turn things around on its ear, a bad boss can really be your best boss. These ways that you flip the script? Where did you get that kind of approach?

David Gibbs 50:29 

You'll appreciate that Scott bergrin and I actually came up with a hand gesture that we would use to flip the script, when we were getting backed into a corner and something. Maybe it was with the arm on setting our plan, or it could have been, you know, on a franchise issue, whatever it is, I think it's always helpful to try to look at things from the opposite perspective. A good example of that is when COVID hit, I knew that that was going to be terrible for humanity. And obviously, we would all undo it in a second if we could. But I just put my mindset in, okay, what good can come out of this? And how do we capitalize on it, because it's the only thing we could control. And I think that mindset helped we build stronger relationships with franchisees stronger relationships with the employees. That's an example of this mentality of just flip the script on anything, anything that is presented to you as being bad. I immediately tried to figure out okay, how can this actually be good?

David Novak 51:25 

So what's one piece of advice David, you'd give to aspiring leaders.

David Gibbs 51:30 

We talked about this a little bit before, but enjoy the journey. If you're working towards milestones, you'll never be happy, because you'll get to the milestone, you'll be happy for 30 seconds, and then you'll be worried about the next milestone, enjoy the journey.

David Novak 51:42 

Speaking of enjoying the journey, we've been on this conversation for about an hour, and I've enjoyed every minute of it. David, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to share your insights. And I also want you to know how proud I am of you, as a former CEO of yum brands that we have somebody as talented and as special as you are taking the business forward. So thank you very much, buddy. Thank you for having me, David, I loved it.

You know, it's always great for me to hear from David Gibbs, and to catch up on all the good stuff happening at yum brands with him at the helm. You know, David clearly has always had an eye for growth, from his days in finance to his passion for helping employees develop to now as he's making the kind of big decisions that drive 3000 net new stores in a year. That's amazing. I mean, it's hard to put into words, just what a staggering rate of growth that is. That's like opening a store every three hours for a full entire year. But that growth mindset comes from his incredible ability to flip the script. For him a tough situation is an opportunity to learn. If something doesn't go his way. He asked, Hey, what does this make possible instead? Think about the power of that question. Leaders with that kind of mentality are unstoppable. They inspire others, and they find success in the most unlikely places. So let's work on developing that mentality this week. Here's a bit of coaching for you schedule, 30 minutes in your calendar and use that uninterrupted time to consider a challenging situation that you're facing right now. Then try to flip the script on it. Ask yourself, what new opportunities does it give you or someone else on your team? What benefits could there be? What's the upside? Now we all know you got to be careful not to sweep the best stuff under the rug. As a leader, it's your job to define reality. Just bear in mind that even in the toughest of realities, there are big opportunities waiting for the leaders who are tenacious enough to flip the script. So do you want to know how leaders lead? Well, we learned today is the great leaders flip the script and tough situations. Coming up next on how leaders lead is Steve Holmes, the former CEO of Wyndham hotels, and the non executive chairman of both Wyndham worldwide, and Wyndham destinations, two companies that he spun off that are doing great things.

Steve Holmes 54:22 

What I learned early on was, there are core values in your life, you have to respect people you have to I won't go through all the core values, but you have to, you have to have those values. And then you apply them to wherever you are. If you're the person that people are looking up to. You have to let people know what you believe in. And when I had a chance to do that, as CEO, it was just taking what I had done before and putting it into a much larger scale.

David Novak 54:47 

So be sure to come back again next week to hear our entire conversation. Thanks again for tuning in to another episode of how leaders lead where every Thursday you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world Hold. I make it a point to give you something simple on each episode that you can apply to your business so that you will become the best leader you can be