Because the co-founder and former CEO of Yum! Manufacturers, one of many world’s largest restaurant corporations 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 occasions its unique dimension, from a market capitalization of $4 billion to $32 billion. Nonetheless, Novak credit the numbers to a extra qualitative than quantitative side of management — creating the precise 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 essentially create a robust tradition the place everybody counts,” Novak stated. “That grew to become job primary for me as a CEO, as a result of if I can create that proper work setting, individuals will innovate and other people will go additional.”
Novak defined that early on, he tried to study from corporations that have been successful or persistently delivered good outcomes. He went out and visited corporations together with Walmart, Residence Depot, and Normal Electrical.
“We met with them,” Novak stated. “Then we got here again and we codified what’s actually driving the success of those corporations that enable them to get to nice outcomes yr after yr.”
Novak, who oversaw 1.5 million staff globally, started emphasizing recognition and encoding it into Yum!’s tradition. In earlier interviews, he talked about how he would use recognition to encourage staff. In one case, at KFC, Novak gave away rubber chickens and $100 as an award for a job nicely performed.
At present, Yum!’s tradition stays one in all recognition and collaboration, per its public-facing tradition web page.