As co-founder and former CEO of Yum! Brands, one of the largest restaurant companies in the world with a portfolio including franchises like KFC AND Pizza HutDavid Novak gave tangible results.
In the 17 years he was CEO, from 1999 to 2016Novak helped grow the company to eight times its original size, from a market capitalization of $4 billion to $32 billion. However, Novak credits the numbers for a more qualitative than quantitative aspect of leadership – creating the right work culture.
In one conversation with Masters of Scale host Jeff Berman that aired earlier this month, Novak explained how he runs the Yum! Brands since the beginning.
“I have made it my number one priority to create a strong culture where everyone matters,” Novak said. “That became the number one job for me as CEO, because if I can create that right work environment, people will innovate and people will go further.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dH30BN6GMNo
Novak explained that in the beginning, he tried to learn from companies that were winning or consistently delivering good results. He went out and visited companies including Walmart, Home Depot and General Electric.
“We met with them,” Novak said. “Then we went back and codified what is really driving the success of these companies that enables them to achieve great results year after year.”
Novak, who supervised 1.5 million employees worldwidebegan to emphasize recognition and encode it into the culture of Yum! In the previous one INTERVIEWShe talked about how he would use recognition to motivate employees. IN a caseat KFC, Novak gave away rubber chickens and $100 as a reward for a job well done.
Today, the culture of Yum! remains a culture of recognition and cooperation, for him facing the public the culture page.