AYNE Episode 16 - Season 7 - The Captain's Table and Wendy Becker - 7/11/2024

Thank you, Giles. It's fantastic to be here today on such a lovely London day.

Oh, that's such a list. I'm pretty much a straight shortbread girl myself, actually. It's sublime.

I think, you know, my themes are always luck and raising one's hand. Those are the two things I believe in. I grew up in America with a slightly crazy life, moving house 15 times by the time I was 15, changing schools every year, and doing a variety of different things. And one day, I did not have a very well-off family. One day I was in a doctor's office and picked up a magazine in America called Fortune Magazine, and it happened to be an episode where they had Fortune 50 CEOs profiled. And I thought, gosh, that life felt different than mine and that looked really exciting. So I sort of set a goal that that was what I wanted to do, and I tried to make a set of choices and set myself up to do that from a very, very young age.

I did. I did. I liked the idea of the structure and I liked the idea of the creativity, and I liked the idea of going to one place every day for work. And I always thought I was going to be a one-place-every-day type of person, but my path has ended up being very, very different than that. I started my career at Procter & Gamble in Cincinnati because they lured young graduates with the idea of being president of your own small company. So I worked on a variety of products at P&G, all of which I was allergic to.

So it was Toast deodorant soap, which I don't believe made its way over to Europe, Bounce fabric softener. So these things that had incredible scents, and I have horrible hay fever. And that was a fascinating experience because you really, from that experience, learned all about consumers and you learned about how what you do in business can actually affect everyday life. And that was something that I sought to do with the rest of my career. So I was there for a while, which was great, but was not a big fan of Ohio. So I went back to business school at Stanford and took off from there.

Oh, you know, sun every day. You know, really super interesting, clever people. It was brilliant. And I saw what maybe the world had to offer. But I graduated with a lot of debt, as one did back in the 80s. So I went to the highest-paying job I could possibly get to pay off that debt, which was McKinsey, thinking I'd stay there for a couple of years, but I ended up staying for quite a long time, about 15 years.

Yeah, you know, you learn an apprenticeship, but you also, these are two incredibly strong values and culture organizations, or they were when I was there, and that really provided a structure and a framework to be creative and to develop one's skills and to understand, you know, what was leadership going to be for me. And developed fantastic networks.

Well, actually, the interesting thing for me at McKinsey was I had two halves of McKinsey. So in the 90s, I was in Silicon Valley as everything was taking off. You know, when I started at McKinsey, it was very exciting to have internet access at the beginning, and by the end, we were thrilled with our time with mobile phones. But at the end of the 90s, a bit of an internet bubble, the first internet bubble hit. And so I used that opportunity to see the world and spent a year traveling with McKinsey around the world and landed myself back in London in the end of 1999. And in the 90s, I spent a lot of time with McKinsey thinking about how do you make McKinsey an even better place to be. So I did a lot in terms of long-term strategy, and that awakened my interest in technology, my interest in innovation, and my interest in change, which I then was able to follow through when I left the firm.

Yeah, no, exactly. When I left McKinsey, it was, you know, did one of my most favorite jobs ever, actually, was at Carphone Warehouse, where I worked with Charles Dunstone in an incredibly entrepreneurial environment, which was just a totally different world than McKinsey. But you know, again, in this idea of leadership and this idea of innovation and this idea of how do you bring things back to customers. Working with Charles and just an outstanding cadre of people was fantastic. And from there I went to Vodafone. So very local to very global technology, working across, you know, 10 different businesses on their brand, working on sponsorship, working on software, and saying how do you bring technologies and innovation to the market that's as relevant in Africa as it is, you know, in Kensington. And so that was super fascinating. Again, this theme of innovation, consumers, and providing leadership to a group of people that were committed to a goal was really reinforced. So from there, I took a foray again back to wanting to work with entrepreneurs and founders and being in a world of innovation and change, and joined Jack Wills first as Chief Operating Officer and then as Chief Executive, which was all about saying how do you really get to know teenagers, teenagers who fall in love with your product and teenagers fall out of love with your product, and manage that cycle while the internet and social media was taking off. And it was fabulous.

Yeah, I'm a big believer that business is all about people. And if you know how to set clear goals, if you know how to communicate those goals, and you know how to get people excited about that and then clear roadblocks for them, you know, to kind of get out of their way and reach for things that they might not have thought about doing, it's all kind of the same. You have to make capital bets differently, and you know, I've learned that in my board career, but there's a lot of tenets which go across companies and across industries.

Yeah, you know, when I left McKinsey back in 2007, 2008, I joined the board of Whitbread, and I really didn't know what the heck I was doing. So I was clearly lucky in landing that opportunity. But what I realized actually as a board member, again, it's the same thing. It's about inspiring the executive, it's about making sure you're clear on your North Star and removing roadblocks, and understanding what are big decisions and what are not big decisions. So I have done a variety of boards working across industry, whether that's Whitbread, Oxford Nanopore, and now Sony and GSK and Logitech.

I think when you grow up moving house as many times as I do and changing school as many times as I do, you can either approach all of these new situations as daunting and overwhelming, or something you can learn from. And if it doesn't work out, then you move on to the next thing. So I love variety, I love change, and I think, you know, you can learn something from everybody you work with and in every context you work with. And so that helps bring things from business to business.

You know, I think one of the things anybody who lives a life like I do is hopefully you wake up every day appreciating your privileged position and appreciating that the opportunities you are afforded only because you're in those positions. And so for me, extraordinary experiences come out of fantastic conversations with extraordinary people. And so I have a number of those that I can think of where you have two or three different people around a table that you sit down and you think, gosh, I didn't really know this person beforehand, and you fall upon a common experience or a common aim or a common goal. And common goal is the most interesting to, you know, create that moment of magic that you both say, how can I go take forward? And those are probably the experiences I remember most clearly. And knowing the team at Chair Mentor International at CMI, where I know a lot of their mentoring that they will do will happen around a breakfast or lunch or even dinner.

It sort of changes attitude somehow. Yeah, no, I think, you know, I think tables are really different by cultural context. So my husband's Italian, I spend a lot of time in Italy. You know, those meals are incredibly vivacious and the business conversation there is passionate. It's like the food. I don't know, you know, people get into issues, they argue about issues, they believe in issues, they stand for things. That's really exciting. I think the table in England is very interesting. I remember I had a dinner once when I was the Chief Marketing Officer of Vodafone, and we had the person sitting next to me, who was a very important person, having an incredibly social conversation for the first three minutes and then an incredibly commercial conversation. And then all of a sudden the next course came and somebody said, 'Change with fish,' and you immediately, that person completely ignored me for the next course. And that was odd as an American, because in America a table is really about welcoming, it's about overabundance of food, and I think that the conversation there is much more social.

Oh, I'm definitely a round table person, and not too big, because I like to have those moments when you can shout across the table, or not too loudly across the table, make a suggestion. And I think those dynamics are important.

I am a big cook, actually.

I do have to reveal a deep dark secret that I own 750 cookbooks.

And so I don't know you, Giles, very well, so I would definitely do it on the safe side. We would clearly have a pasta or a risotto to start, and I make a mean parmesan risotto. We'd start out with that, and then I would suggest you're probably, I'd say you might like a fish course next as opposed to a big roast. So we would have fish.

Exactly. And then of course we would have to have a light lemon pudding to finish off with a little bit of shortbread.

Yeah, look, I like energy, I like ideas, I like conflict, I like it all at my dinner table. So I would pick people who embody that. I'd probably pick actually Sir Paul Nurse, who I think is fascinating in the area of science. I would pick one of the young biotech engineers that I'm seeing around Boston, because I think there's an unlimited amount of energy they bring. I would probably bring Elon Musk, because I think he would certainly mix it up. And I would probably bring along one of my favorite Japanese architects, because I find people so fascinating in that space. And then I might just throw Michelle Obama in, because what a great person to have dinner with.

Oh, I can do that.

There's a number. First of all, I think tips and tricks is really important. I think careers, you know, people talk about big grand strategies, but really you can control so little of your career that actually tips and tricks and making decisions in moments make a big difference. So for me, tips and tricks number one is always aim high, have incredible ambition, appreciating that it may not work out and you may end up in a different place, but that idea of movement and momentum is critical. Along those lines, always raise your hand. You know, the number of times that I've been offered an odd opportunity that made sense to nobody else. You know, when I've had a number of those times at McKinsey, when I left McKinsey to go to Carphone Warehouse, that would have been another example of those that just on the outside don't feel logical, but you know, you can make something of these great opportunities. I think that's a second one. Third is, you know, I think my father always used to say to me about failure, you know, what's the worst thing that can happen? Being clear about what your plan B is always, but not being afraid of having to use your plan B. That's an important one. And then lastly, treating people with respect and developing humility to understand you don't need to know everything. When you're thrown into new situations all the time, you're not going to know things, so being confident in that and comfortable with that, I think, would be another.

Yeah, no, I think, you know, leadership is a journey that one develops over life. And I think my leadership journey started, I don't know, 45 years ago or so. And your leadership is honed in difficult moments with people who can point out different paths than you might have thought about originally, and in moments of truth when you have to go back and find your values. So at my university, which, you know, 250 years in, I was the first president of the student body. And so they touted me around at Christmas one year to go talk to alumni, and two of the places they took me to were all-male clubs that I had to enter through the kitchen. And so, you know, you had a leadership moment to decide were you going to mention that when you got up to give your speech. And the first time I didn't, and I didn't feel very good about it. And the second time I did, and I did it a little bit awkwardly, but finding ways to speak your truth that makes a difference. I did not have a passport until I was 24 years old. I had an incredible mentor who explained to me, you know, this obligation of changing and making the world a better place. And so this idea of raising aspiration about global change and what an important role as an American at that point, you know, I needed to play. I think of leadership at McKinsey, where that was really grounded to me by colleagues who gave opportunities to make speeches, who gave opportunities to lead projects, and pushed you out of your comfort zone. All of those are moments. So what I now try to do as somebody who coaches leaders or helps leaders or mentors leaders is push people out of their comfort zone, help them see what they might be able to achieve that they can't see in themselves, and help them find their voice to be authentic to who they are.

You know, I've been really fortunate to work in a lot of companies where talent makes all the difference. Talent and magic, and we don't use that word in business very often, but if I see what people are doing at Sony, it's bringing magic to life. You know, I see what's happening at GSK, there's an incredible amount of magic that fuels the science. And I think if you're working in organizations that are full of magic, you need to appreciate that that is created by people, and humans need kindness and nurturing and development, but they also need straight feedback. And so creating a context in which you can build trust and you can set relationships to give honest feedback is truly important.

Yeah, I think we all have. And you know, one of the exciting things I think about becoming more senior in your journey is to be able to see a lot of things, but also to feel more comfortable with your failings, which helps you see different things. So I've seen, you know, people who bully, I've seen people who shout, I've seen people who just don't come to work with goodwill. You know, Charles always used to say you have to assume everybody comes to work every day wanting to do a good job or thinking they're doing a good job. And that mantra, I think, is critical. People who assume politics, people who assume bad will, that's not setting anybody up for success.

I love mentoring people, and I consider it an incredible privilege. I mentor formally, you know, first-generation college students, I mentor a charity chairman, but I love mentoring people within business. I love mentoring all of them, but people within business who want to make a difference, because people who enter into a mentoring relationship, you know, are seeking to get better. And so to be able to provide frameworks, to be able to provide coaching, and sometimes just to be able to change direction, is a fascinating way to spend this part of my career.

I think a bit of both. I think the world has become incredibly fast-paced. I think the world has become fast-paced in change, but also fast-paced in judgment, and fast-paced and comfort in changing direction. So leaders, to me, one, have to be very clear on their values. What do they stand for? What makes a difference? Where are your personal red lines? And you have to keep going back to that. And one's values are defined both across your professional life but also your personal life. So that, I think, is critical. I think secondly, certainly more than feels like 40 years ago, leaders have to be incredibly aware of external context. And external context is both your customers, it's your shareholders, but actually external context is what is happening in geopolitics, external context is what's happening in cultural trends. I think we're all learning so much about changes and expectations in society. And external context requires us also, I think, to be better communicators as senior leaders and much more external-facing in our leadership and not just internal-facing in our leadership. So what that implies to me, and what I see in really fabulous leaders, is people who are comfortable taking risks, who are comfortable making change, but who also are really clear about their North Star and what they want to achieve. And so it is a different leadership experience, but fundamentally in businesses you need to be clear on communication, you need to be clear on strategy, and you need to drive progress through others.

You know, okay, you've already admitted, Giles, so we're in the same vintage. So I will admit, I passed my 50th birthday. When I turned 50, I was trying to figure out how to celebrate, and I thought, actually, this should be a year of thanks. So I listed the top 25 people who most impacted my life, good and bad, who were not relatives. And sadly, two of them had passed away, but I went and found all of them around the world. And I didn't tell them what I was doing, but just to do that, to kind of step back and say, you know, we had a conversation when I was 17, you wrote a reference for me when I was 25, you treated me really horribly when I was 32, and had a reconciling and a Thanksgiving year that was really fabulous. And what I learned from that, with a little bit of distance, one is it's never too late to say thank you. That two, as you're going through all these things and you're having your moment, actually so is the other person on the other side of the table, and we forget about that sometimes when we tell our story. And three, it's really good to punctuate that people are not locked in their 23-year-old selves when you remet them. So it was, I would highly recommend that to anybody. It was the best thing I've ever done.

I really like food, actually. I know we're supposed to move away from the point of...

I have my 750 cookbooks. I set out a goal for myself in 2011 to be fully self-sustaining by 2014, which I've just about done. So I grow a lot of vegetables, I love restaurants. I think it's so fascinating because it's creative, it's mathematical, which, you know, so intellectually it's quite interesting. You get to share with people you love. And then you start getting into what interesting things in terms of global food supply chains and things like that. So I love food.

I really believe in the power of the dinner table. I believe in the power of sharing. I believe in the power of making people feel good. And there's a commonality to it which I think is super interesting. And it's also a fantastic way, as somebody who's a global traveler, I spend a lot of time in Japan, I spend time in Italy, I spend time in the US, and I spend a lot of time on an airline. You know, what is the commonality across all that? It is food. And so that's a great way to get to know cultures and different people, which certainly is.

Oh, I do. I don't know, actually. When I moved, my second passion of food is music. And when I moved to the UK and I was trying to understand how do you get your mind around a culture, our offices were over the Virgin Megastore in Piccadilly. And I would go down every Friday, I booked an hour, and I would go, they used to have these big headsets to listen to the Now, you know, Now 61, Now 47, whatever, so I could learn the music. So I thought if I learned the music, I would learn the culture. And that has carried with me. So I always now try to listen to the latest Sony artists to understand the moment.

I'm a horrible singer, but I love music. I love music.

Oh, my first album, I had Elton John, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. I got a music player from my father, and it was that and Jefferson, at that point they changed to Jefferson Starship. So I got two tapes that I played all summer. And that's what we did, isn't it? We didn't have that many, so you just kept playing them and playing them and you knew every word.

Oh, my first gig. I think my first gig, okay, now we're really dating ourselves, I went to go see the Grateful Dead.

You know, I was living in California at that point, and that was kind of the thing you did.

Oh, my first, well, I definitely remember my first car. It was a tiny little Honda Civic, about six years old. I had to pay for it myself, and I had to pay for the insurance, I had to pay for the petrol. So I remember it very, very well.

Oh, that's deep, actually. I really prefer Formula 1 cars to that car, I will have to admit.

No, exactly. We sponsored, at that point we were sponsoring McLaren, so I have fond memories of Lewis Hamilton flinging me into Silverstone one year. But actually being able to sit in those cars is fantastic. They're tiny.

I really love being in the mountains of New Hampshire. I think as leaders we need to find ways to break free and to reconnect with nature and to reconnect with what's important. So, you know, getting exercise, climbing a big mountain in a beautiful place is just fantastic for me.

Yeah, no, that, for my, you haven't asked me where to do my travel advert for, but it would certainly be New Hampshire from the last week of September through the middle of October as leaves are changing. And, you know, it's really magical.

Thank you, Giles. Really, always a pleasure.