CEO Voices: Leading with Communication with guest Muhtar Kent, Former Chairman and CEO of The Coc...

The higher you go, the less you can do in an organization, especially a global organization as large and as extensive as the Coca-Cola company and Coca-Cola system. So at the end of the day, I saw as my primary responsibility the need to communicate effectively, clearly a vision forward, and also to inspire and engage our organization and our total system to align behind the vision.

Thank you, June. And let me just say it's a pleasure being with you and with Steve, my good friend Steve. It's an absolute pleasure to once again be able to talk to Darden students. I believe it's been three years or so since I came there last and spoke. To your question, June, to be able to communicate properly, you must first learn how to listen properly. So empathy is really important. Building trust is really important, critically important. Communication always will trump data analytics and reports every single time. So you got to really be seen outside to be able to build trust and for people to have trust in you and respect for you.

I was appointed president and chief operating officer in 2007, and then later the following year I became the CEO. My charge was to create avenues, real avenues, for sustainable long-term growth. I pulled together a team of trusted colleagues, of experts, colleagues who had proven themselves, who shared a common vision, who shared a common story, people who complemented my strengths with their own unique attributes. We met constantly, one-on-one, team meetings, leadership meetings. We went on customer visits. We met many times in the marketplace and market visits, etc. And that's how we started to begin to chart the course for a journey of sustainable growth.

Let me just say at the outset that one of my key partners in formulating that 2020 Vision was my great colleague and friend John Farrell. We lost him unfortunately to an illness. John was a Darden alumni who headed up our strategy team at Coca-Cola. The 2020 Vision, as we phrased it, was grounded in the reality that the Coca-Cola company could only win if our bottlers also won, and vice versa. We went on an extensive world tour getting the input of all our bottlers, and we got their input, we got their alignment on strategy. It was a year long in the making, and then I brought together all the bottlers, ownership of all the bottlers. We knew that vision needed to be both aspirational, it needed to be inspirational, and it charted our way forward in sustainably growing our brands, improving our operational efficiency, and creating tighter connections, better connections, more stable connections with retailers. Also empowering our own people, the whole organization, which was 740,000 people working across the system, organization working across 207 nations. It also embedded really important sustainability initiatives way back in 2008 into the core of our business. So today ESG is such a buzzword. Everywhere I go, I hear ESG, you know, environmental sustainability initiatives. But we did that back in 2008 and 2009, and we built it into the core of our business, driving social value and taking care of our share owners. Then we put it all on one page, localized it, and that vision was the foundation virtually for my entire communication efforts over the next eight years. We had in the back of our mind when we put all this together in 2008 and 2009 that we understood really well what is referred to today as the stakeholder value creation model. And so we were one of the first in the large Fortune companies that actually architected the stakeholder value creation model. And what do I mean by that stakeholder value creation model? It is as follows: in order to sustainably grow value for your shareholders, you have to also generate value on a sustainable basis for all your key stakeholders. So in our case, it started with our employees, then our consumers, then our customers around the world that served our consumers, then our partners, all our bottling partners, our NGO partners, because we believe from the beginning what we call the power of partnerships, that when you partner you can actually generate synergies on a lasting basis. And then even in that stakeholder group was governments that hosted us in 207 nations and communities that hosted us. So we believed in creating value for that entire stakeholder team, and that's what brought us to our sustainability initiatives too, like our water neutrality program that we put a stake in the ground and said in 2010 that by 2020 we would become water neutral so that we could actually be a leader in creating awareness and respect for one of the most important resources in our world. And then our 5x20 program, we wanted to outside the four walls of the Coca-Cola company create 5 million woman entrepreneurs by the year 2020. Again, part of our stakeholder value creation model. We achieved water neutrality five years ahead of schedule in 2015 instead of 2020. And by the end of this year, my colleagues that are still working at the Coca-Cola company have told me that we will achieve the 5 million goal, the biggest woman entrepreneurial program in the world undertaken by a commercial organization.

The growth that was achieved, generating a total stakeholder value creation model, strengthening the financial health and customer response was a really important feat for our company. The bottlers really felt as part of a unique system, as part of a unique club, and the motivation, the energy of the system was really increased and heightened. Getting our system to think about the shifting consumer expectations was critical as we were moving our marketing and communication efforts deeper into the virtual and social worlds where our consumers reside. And the leadership that we showed in the environment in creating awareness for all of us to transfer a better planet to the next generations. Although we're century-old brands, we're as young as a few weeks in terms of their energy to the consumers and what they meant to the consumers. And then working with business, government, civil society, what I call the golden triangle, to address a lot of the societal problems, I think were important elements that I would want to mention.

The higher you go, the less you can do in an organization, especially a global organization as large and as extensive as the Coca-Cola company and Coca-Cola system. So at the end of the day, I saw as my prime responsibility the need to communicate effectively, clearly a vision forward, and also to inspire and engage our organization and our total system to align behind the vision. 80, 90% of my entire tenure over the 10 years involved communication, both formal and informal. As the CEO or the head of an organization as extensive as the Coca-Cola company and Coca-Cola system, you don't, you know, create advertising or you don't create products or you don't actually yourself sell products to a customer or to a consumer or manage day-to-day operations per se, the factories or the concentrate business or the supply chain. What you do instead is through your communication, both formal and informal, influence, you influence, you inspire, you also engage with all your stakeholders, starting with your employees and then your consumers, your customers, your shareholders, your government leaders, regulators, communities and partners and others.

I think by and large leaders have stepped up really, both in the United States and in Europe, stepped up to the challenge of open communication during this time in a nearly almost 100% virtual environment. It's tough. So, you know, at best what you can do is nurture your existing relationships, but it's very hard to create a new relationship on Zoom or on Microsoft meeting. It's also mandatory to establish transparency, you know, as much as one can during this time. Some have done better than others, and I'm sure we'll continue to see the cream rise to the top over the next several months. I don't think you can ever say you've over-communicated in this period. And the other piece of important advice is having focus. There is just so much distraction out there today that focus is really important. It's imperative for a CEO to be the chief focus officer, keep the ship on course and keep the crew engaged and inspired, and keep all the stakeholders, not just your own employee, but all the entire group of stakeholders inspired and engaged.

A few thoughts on successful 21st-century business leadership, and I think this applies both in times of the pandemic, and hopefully we won't have another for a while, as well as in normal times. Tomorrow's best leaders must have a global worldview, and also they must have the ability to navigate diverse people, diverse places, and diverse cultures. They need to be as comfortable working in Chennai, in China, or Charlottesville. Secondly, successful leaders for today and tomorrow, they have to be master relationship builders who treat other people with respect and with dignity. And the very, very best are those who are able to build vibrant relationships across what I said before, the golden triangle of business, government, and civil society, because only if you are able to build that vibrant relationships and partnership across the golden triangle of business, government, and civil society is when we're going to see some of the big societal problems of the world begin to be solved. Third, leaders for the 21st century tomorrow need to remain entrepreneurial with a strong respect for cash and the entrepreneurial spirit. Fourth, getting outside more. Get outside your school or city or industry, you know, get outside of your firm. Always learn something. Lastly, tomorrow I think is not going to belong to the cynics, but to the optimists. So I ask everyone to be a realistic optimist.

I'm actually staying pretty busy. I'm the head of the governance and nominating committee there at the 3M board, and I've been there for seven, eight years now. I am a trustee at Emory University. I am the head of the advisory board for London Cass Business School. I am very proudly continue to be a member of the board of Special Olympics. I have my own educational foundation where we send four kids to the United States on a full scholarship from the area in Turkey that I come from, which is near the ancient city of Troy on the coast. We send four kids. So at any point in time there's 16 kids that we fund in the United States at universities from that region. And then finally, I just set up a Kent Global Conflict Resolution Program at Columbia University, which is dedicated to teaching young diplomats from all around the world in conflict resolution. And I bring together leaders from the golden triangle of government, business, and civil society and ask those leaders to share their experience on practical experiences they've had in their careers on conflict resolution with these young diplomats. So that's what occupies my time.

Good being with you both, and continued good luck and most importantly, good health to both of you.