Because the co-founder and former CEO of Yum! Manufacturers, one of many world’s largest restaurant firms with a portfolio together with franchises like KFC and Pizza Hut, David Novak drove tangible outcomes.
Within the 17 years he was CEO, from 1999 to 2016, Novak helped scale the corporate to eight instances its authentic measurement, from a market capitalization of $4 billion to $32 billion. Nonetheless, Novak credit the numbers to a extra qualitative than quantitative facet of management — creating the suitable work tradition.
In a dialog with Masters of Scale host Jeff Berman that aired earlier this month, Novak defined how he steered Yum! Manufacturers from the start.
“I made my primary precedence to actually create a strong tradition the place everybody counts,” Novak mentioned. “That grew to become job primary for me as a CEO, as a result of if I can create that proper work surroundings, folks will innovate and other people will go additional.”
Novak defined that early on, he tried to be taught from firms that had been successful or constantly delivered good outcomes. He went out and visited firms together with Walmart, Residence Depot, and Common Electrical.
“We met with them,” Novak mentioned. “Then we got here again and we codified what’s actually driving the success of those firms that enable them to get to nice outcomes yr after yr.”
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Novak, who oversaw 1.5 million workers globally, started emphasizing recognition and encoding it into Yum!’s tradition. In earlier interviews, he talked about how he would use recognition to inspire workers. In a single case, at KFC, Novak gave away rubber chickens and $100 as an award for a job nicely accomplished.
In the present day, Yum!’s tradition stays considered one of recognition and collaboration, per its public-facing tradition web page.
