Uncommon Sense with Junia - featuring David Brandon

Thank you, Junior. It's great to be here.

Well, I've always felt that organizations kind of follow the lead of the leader. The leader sets the tone, kind of creates the culture and the expectations, and that's what I try to do at Domino's. I really try to first of all make sure that the team that I have embraces the values and the principles and the goals that I have for the organization. So you've got to have the right people on the team, and then once you have that, it gets pretty easy because if they embrace the opportunities that you see out in the future, those ambitious goals that all great organizations set, then all I try to do is kind of create the guardrails that keep them moving in that direction. And so I do think organizations are a reflection of their leader, and I certainly try to provide that leadership.

Yeah, my experience has been it's really leadership by example. I actually think it's both your words and your deeds and your actions. There are those moments of choice when most organizations look to their leader to kind of get that rudder that guides them in the direction that they really feel they need to go. And I don't think any leader can do that without being fully engaged in the activity. I'm—some people would describe me as a bit of a workaholic; I don't really like that word because it's negative. I just am all in. I'm passionate about what I do, and I like to be involved in the details and understand what's happening so that I can provide the direction, the energy, the resources, and sometimes just the cheerleading that's required to afford the team the resources and the motivation they need to be successful.

Well, I try to avoid stereotypes. I do think there probably are some reasonable conclusions you can draw as generations come and go. I do think we are in a little bit of a mode where we're inheriting a generation of workers that kind of have what I call the 'I want it all and I want it now' mentality. And some of that can be very, very good and healthy if channeled in the right direction. So what I try to do, and what we try to do at Domino's, is we really try to look at this broad spectrum of candidates out there that are looking for jobs, and we try to find those that have the work ethic, have the principles, have the aspirational goals that we have, and we try to select them from that group. And in our culture, some of the characteristics that you outlined are not going to fit real well. You know, we're a retail business. We have 8,700 stores that we have to get open every day in 60 countries around the world. And when the phone rings, when a customer calls on the phone and it rings, they expect it to be answered. So we're a retail business, and people have to be at the right place at the right time, and we have to get those stores lit up, and we have to have all the products and ingredients necessary to do what we do and provide the service to our customers. So it's not a job where you can gaze out the window and come and go as you please, or you necessarily are going to get your hand held all the time. It's a job that's constantly moving, constantly evolving. We do a million transactions a night, so we're interacting with customers in all languages and all time zones in all hemispheres of the world. So I need to recruit people that are consistent with that rate and pace of activity and challenge, and that's who we're looking for. And that's what's going to drive our success—if we're successful finding those people.

Well, it's a challenge. But one of the things that we do when we're selecting people is we put them through a number of different steps. Some of them would describe it as exhaustive, but we really have a number of different steps of the interview where we get a number of our people to get a lot of looks at that candidate, have them talk a lot about where they've been and what they've done and what they're proud of and what their goals are, their backgrounds and experiences. We look for patterns of behavior. If someone's coming to us suggesting that we might be their sixth employer in the last five years, you know, we're going to draw some conclusions about that person's stability and their potential for being passionately involved and connected with something that's more long-lasting. So we really look at a lot of different factors, and we try to carefully select the people who come to work for us. I learned a long time ago—I've done exhaustive research—and a jackass has never won the Kentucky Derby. So it doesn't matter what kind of training or what kind of equipment or how wonderful the jockey is; if the fundamental raw talent and capability isn't there, you can't win. And so we really try to recruit the fundamental raw talent that will allow us to be successful.

Well, first of all, if it feels like work, you're going to get fatigued and you're going to get burned out. You hear all this stress management and 'I'm burned out.' So I believe if you're engaged in something that feels like work, it feels like drudgery, it tends to sap the energy out of a person. I, on the other hand, to a large degree, business is my hobby at the same time it's my vocation. So I serve on these corporate boards, and I get involved in a lot of community and not-for-profit organizations, and I spend a lot of time at my core job at Domino's because I really enjoy it. And we should all aspire to get to the point where we work not because we have to but because we want to, and we enjoy it. And I'm very fortunate to be in that position.

No. People see through that really quickly if you kind of change hats and change personalities. I think it's phony. You know, I am who I am. I come from where I came from, and I view problems and issues the same way whether I'm a director of a company or a director of a not-for-profit board or whether I'm making the right decision at my company.

Well, believe me, there are a lot of times where I go home and scream into my pillow. I think that's all part of leadership. There are times that are frustrating and disappointing. You know, we all have lived through those times both in our lives and in our businesses. But again, if you are engaged in something, I just feel blessed to have the opportunities that I've had and that I continue to have. I feel lucky. I'm in a situation where I'm living out many of my dreams as it relates to what I could do with my career and the kind of organizations I could lead and be a part of. So for me, yeah, there are disappointments and frustrating times, but the energy that I have and what really keeps me going is the fact that I just love what I do.

That's a great question. It's a great question. I worked 20 years at a company before I came to Domino's. I've been at Domino's now for 10 years. And I don't think there's a formula. A lot of it depends on the business model and the impact that you're having. I've always said that if my health is good, if I continue to enjoy what I'm doing, and the people I work for continue to appreciate how I do what I do—to me, that's the magic formula. If all those three things are lined up, then I think you keep doing what you're doing. Say them again: if your health is good—my health has to be good, that's important—if I enjoy what I do, if I get up every morning and really look forward to the day because I'm busy doing the things that I love to do, and third, and as important, if the people I work for—in the case of Domino's, I work for shareholders and I work for the board of directors—if those people continue to appreciate and respect what I do and believe it's important and like the way I am doing my job, if those three things line up, I think you're in a really good spot and you should stay there. I've only had three employers in the 34 years that I've been out of school, so I'm not one who job hops around and has a short attention span. I like to get comfortable and connected and passionately committed to an organization and a team, and for me, that's one of the values that I think are important.

What do I listen for in a group situation, with a person in a conversation, a business conversation? Particularly, and this is topical because in the times we live right now, it's very, very tough. It's probably the toughest operating environment that I've been in in all my years. I've been the CEO for the last almost 21 consecutive years of my life, of two great organizations. That's a long time to be a CEO. I'm not sure how many guys and gals there are out there that have been CEOs for 21 consecutive years. And so when I say it's the toughest environment, it says a lot. But the commodity market pressures, and the whole fuel and the economy and all the uncertainty politically and all the things that are happening, make this a very, very tough time. So I go to a lot of meetings where what I'm really listening for is who's whining, and who's making excuses, and who wants to focus on all of the external factors that we cannot control. And those are the people that I put in one category—they're the whiner category. The people that I really want to respect, listen to, promote, and work with are the people who say, 'I can't do anything about those factors that I can't control. I want to focus on the things I can control, and here's some of the things we can do better that we can control—internal factors that we have managerial control over. I want to focus on those and get better.' Those are the people that I really listen to and believe that are going to be the best stewards of our company in the difficult times that we're navigating through.

Well, I think it's a challenging time for all leaders because—I'm a winner, you mentioned I was a part of three Big Ten championship football teams as a kid, and I went to work for a great company and got promoted a bunch of times, I went to work for another company and ran it for the last 10 years, and we achieved a tremendous number of our goals. And I come to Domino's and we've had year after year after year of success, and all of a sudden you get into one of these periods where just everything is hard and everything is tough. So I was meeting with a group of our team members yesterday, a large group of them, and I was reflecting on the challenges that were before us. And one of the things that I urged them to remember is we can't lose our confidence. You know, we didn't wake up one day and forget how to do our jobs, or we didn't wake up one day and decide to be lazy, or we didn't wake up one day and lose our goal orientation. We just woke up one day and there were a lot of factors that became very difficult that made our jobs harder. We can't doubt ourselves, we can't start finger-pointing and blaming. What we have to do is come closer together, focus on those things we can control, and do the best we can.

That is really good.

I think that's right. And I learned that from him. So when things get complicated for me, just view it that way and keep it going. Well, you know, in my youth I played football and I was the quarterback. And one of the advantages that the quarterback has is that when in the huddle, when you're calling the plays, everyone looks at you, so you get to look in everyone's eyes. And what was really interesting for me—it was kind of a study of human behavior—is when your team's four touchdowns ahead with three minutes left in the game, you look in everybody's eyes and everybody's happy and everybody's confident and everybody feels good about one another, everybody's hugging because times are good. And it's easy to feel good about yourself when times are good. The real study of character for me is when you're behind by two touchdowns with a couple of minutes to go, and then you look into their eyes and then you start to see who the real winners are. Because some eyes reflect back at you and say, 'I give up, this is too hard,' and some eyes look back at you and say, 'Hey, this is why we're here, we can do this.' And it sounds like that's exactly the way your husband was, and that's how all great business leaders are.

That's right.

What surprises me about business or about personal life?

What surprises me the most is the capacity that we have to do the things that we enjoy. And you know, my calendar is just ridiculous. I mean, I'm scheduled hour to hour, day to day. I'm involved in too many things by most people's standards. And so I have friends who look at me and they just say, 'Dave, you're nuts. Why are you doing this? How do you keep this up?' And the reality is that that old adage about if you want something done, give it to a busy person. Right? I don't feel stressed, I don't feel overbooked. I feel like I have a very interesting life with an opportunity to do a lot of different things. I can go to a cocktail party and talk about something other than what's going on at Domino's Pizza because I know what's going on in a lot of other industries and a lot of other organizations, including my community. And I believe that's important. So you know, probably the biggest surprise I've had is my ability to continue to expand my reach in terms of things I get involved in and still feel pretty good about the fact that I do them well.

Well, it's extremely important, and everybody has their own philosophy, and I will never write a book on this subject. But I'm always asked when I go to college campuses or when I'm interviewed by a lot of people who see the kind of life I lead, they look at my bio and all the things I'm doing, they always talk about this work-life balance thing. And it's always work-life balance, and that's kind of a big buzzword, particularly with the younger generation. And the best response I can give you is that I don't really look at this as a balancing act, because balancing acts kind of create a dynamic where if one's winning, if one's up, then one's got to be down. And so we're constantly trying to find out who's winning and who's losing. The way I've always approached this is I integrate my family life, my marriage, my business life, my extracurricular activities—I integrate all that in a way that I don't necessarily believe that one has to win and one has to lose. So my lovely wife Jan has gone through all the training programs at Domino's Pizza. She's a qualified pizza maker. She travels with me and we do store tours together. She's very engaged in what I do. When I come home at the end of the day, she's asking me very, very intelligent questions about what's going on at the company and what's happening. She's not disconnected, she's not feeling like that's one part of my life that she's shut off to, and she's in another compartment in my life. It's all integrated. It was the same way with my kids, who are all now kind of out making their own way. But at ages 11 and 12, I had my sons in business suits attending investor conferences in New York, sitting in the back of the room, understanding what their dad did for a living and why he worked so hard and what his responsibilities were. And they grew up knowing that yeah, dad sacrifices a lot and there are times he's traveling and he's away, but we know what he's doing, we know why it's important, and we've also seen all the benefits that come from that. So that integration, that ability to kind of bring it all together and have everybody participate in all the things that are going on, to me is the best approach. At least it's worked the best for me.

I have to. I have to because I'm so tightly scheduled and because I have so many things going on. And I'll leave here today and I'll go to the fourth city I've been in today. So I'm on the move and I'm doing a lot of things. And in order to make that all happen at the quality level that I think is important, I have to be very disciplined.

Thank you.