Leadership  

Rob: Welcome everyone, as you know our purpose is to discuss content that helps strategic leaders to compete at a high level and they increasingly intense business environment of plastics. Today we’re talking with former CEO and current executive chair at Dunkin brands is also the new co owner of latent Orient football club, husband and father, and the author of his newest book aimed at producing a competitive culture called the challenge culture. Why the most successful organizations run on pushback. Nigel, welcome to driving plastics today.

Nigel: Well, good morning. And uh, I guess I’m gonna Learn something about the plastics industry in our discussion.

Rob: Well, hopefully I think we’re really excited to have you on here today and I know that your book debuted last week on Tuesday and that hasn’t been a wild and crazy event for you.

Nigel: Uh, yeah, I’ve been on lots of TV programs, lots of radio programs, several podcasts, uh, and uh, and completely new to me. Three books signings, which was a fascinating experienced because in one we ended up solving a couples’ problems at work and we had a mega groups think about it. So that was fascinating. And you know, the events have been, I think quite helpful for a number of people because we didn’t just, they didn’t just listen to me, which I did for a short time, but it was the discussion that came up afterwards.

Rob: So is that sort of how work you were able to, uh, to talk about your book a little bit and then you had some, some round robin discussions after?

Nigel: Yeah. And, and I think that’s kind of very much my style. Um, I try and be very open all the time. I try and encourage people to get into the discussion and there’s a whole chapter in the book about, well I called coffee chats, but you could call it all kinds of other things. Previously when I was a public Jones tea time with Nigel, which is effectively a very much like a talk show where we sit down, talk about subjects. But the key thing is you have to open people up. So I would typically start a coffee chat row and say, right, you’ve got everyone in the room today, please note that you, you probably will never come together as a group. Again, they’re all from different functions. They’re all relatively junior in the organization. And I say, you know, today you might want to raise questions about sales marketing, a acquisition, rumors of questions about, you know, we’re going to buy someone a deliberately provocative subjects out there to open up people’s minds.

I’ve even gone into meetings and said, look, everyone’s talking about, uh, what’s going on in Washington and the behavior there. Oh, everyone’s talking about the me too movement. So the idea is to, if you like, not to take away the barriers in people’s minds and encourage them that in a very safe, which is key, safe environment, they can talk about what they want. But that safeness is reinforced by the fact that even though we take actions out of every meeting, there was never a list of people who was at the who were at the meeting.

Rob: So That’s interesting. So what are your strategies for having a meeting is actually bringing up topics maybe that are away from the workforce but of interest to people and that’s just a really start to get them going a little bit

Nigel: That’s it. And it seems to work. I mean the whole benefit of a thing like a coffee chat is not forq and a of Nigel, I mean acute and it will be. Okay. So we’ll start our approach about getting into a suppressor or something like that. Um, and I answered the question. Someone my sign. Amazing. Okay. So what’s our espresso stress? Just to explain to your listeners know we are primarily a drip coffee company and it’s something we do sell and as it’s growing quite well. So I would typically say if that came up. Okay. So Joe over there, you know, you work in coffee marketing now, what’s your thoughts on that subject? And then I might pick out someone else and say, I’m a lauren, you work in human resources. Um, you know, does that make sense to you? Because I’m trying to get people not to be too blanket in their functional areas at the same time.

Rob: Right. I think that makes a lot of sense. Now before we dive in to just learn a little about your, you know, you and number one, I was curious to know if you’re a coffee or a tea guy. And number two, I wanted to know what drives you at a personal level?

Nigel: Well, okay, so the simple question is I’m a very strong coffee guy. Drink and you’re listening to hold onto that. Jess put about seven cups of coffee a day. I also drink about three cups of tea. Um, and Duncan does a very good tea. I might just take an opportunity. Um, and I, I’m also a pretty motivated by enjoying everything I do. I’ve been very fortunate that we were talking about this last night. Every company I’ve ever worked for a liked. And I think it’s a mindset. I mean, a lot of people complain and Moan. I’ve always had a posted mindset. I get motivated by challenges and I think I was describing this to my wife over the weekend, you know, a lot of people talk about how people are motivated, the old stuff hertzberg, but there was also another um, professor called McClellan. I think this is mentioned in my book and who talks about they’re motivated by achievements and sometimes the achievements can be the biggest thing, like, you know, taking a couple of, taking a company public, but it may be just about breaking through in something and, and I think that’s what really motivates me.

It another way I’ve put it in, it might be I’m motivated by getting things done.

Rob: Sure. So I think that makes a lot of sense. Now, tell us a little bit about how your wife joined a, played an integral role in your decision to write this book.

Nigel: Well, it’s kind of a funny story. I went on my books to the little flake of, tells that story several times. My wife posted a little bit of background is a lawyer. She’s not practicing at the moment, uh, because even though I’m 68, she’s 18 years younger than me, but she was a prosecutor. I’m a, so she’s a pretty aggressive lawyer and uh, I, uh, you know, you always get a straight answer. So one day over dinner I said, you know, number of people said I should sit down and write a book about all my experiences and particularly about the challenge culture that I talk about. And she said, why, what have you got to say? And the first chapter, which is called the fundamental why Joanna’s question, um, is all about that, but that, that was a good start because that was a great question on a lot of the book is about questioning and I’m pushing back, pushing back.

I think people tend to interpret it as a very aggressive tub. It isn’t, I mean, I think everyone should push back and that’s kind of the main direction of the book that people should push back and everything. And, and going back to the book tour last week, um, what number of people in the audience said, yeah, my boss thinks they accept challenge. As soon as you challenge him, he gets very defensive or very difficult. So I think there was a belief that most people accept challenge is how they act upon it. And I must say when Joanna said, well, why write a book? My first instinct is the natural one to be defensive. Um, but I think you have to again say, yeah, good question. What is the answer? And it helped me think why I should be writing a book. So it truly added value to the process.

Rob: I think what’s important to note, as you mentioned that, you know, sometimes it does bring up some emotions and as a leader, you know, I read in your book and a couple different places where you had to sort of keep your emotions in check as well and just say, you know, this really isn’t about coming up with a decision. It’s about, it’s about understanding the problem and creating a solution for it. It’s not a personal attack. Um, can you talk about how, how you approach that?

Nigel: Yeah, no, I, I think that’s a great one. You know, we live in a, just explained Dunkin and this is explain about Duncan. Duncan is a 100 percent franchised company for your listeners. Franchisees are people who invest in the Dunkin brands. I won’t go into all the details so that often their whole life savings, they mortgaged their houses, et Cete
ra, et cetera into Dunkin and they have a vested stake and we basically control the brand. Um, we work on the marketing programs, we say operational standards, etc. This session ascendancy. Well, I, um, a franchise law does a franchisees are The biggest pushback as the wrist police buckles challenge everything because they’ve got money at stake. They often think that corporate is wrong, which I think is a natural feeling. Um, so you have to have a pretty strong backbone to put up with all the challenge.

And I always remember talking to someone at this, just say major dei, why building a retailer? There’s two out there. It was one of the two. And they said, wow, I’d hate to work in a franchise organization like that because your plans get attacked at every level and both in the planning and the execution. But in many Ways I think that’s what’s helped me because I’ve worked in many franchise organizations. It’s certainly not for everyone. And the number of times I get irritated or emotional about it is regular. But you say you have to try and put your emotions aside and try and move on. I mean, here’s another way of looking at that as the book describes, as I love sports, been involved in sports all my life. I’ve actually coached soccer for 50 years this year and I still coach my two kids teams one age, 13 and 11.

Uh, so take last saturday. My protein that you referenced, stuff we went top of the table would have magnificent three. Nothing when I’m undefeated, have a really good. My girls’ teams played spectacular. One, three, one. So I went home at lunchtime, felt excellent in the afternoon. My boys’ team were absolutely abysmal and we lost five one. so that’s life. And I think you have to find ways of balancing your emotions and extend in the positives. And I think one thing that I’ve learned while I’ve been describing the book is you need to, you need to separate the two key words in the title challenge. Everyone focuses on and you started talking about challenge right from the start, but the more important word is culture. I mean, and, and I think what may be helpful to all the people you speak to in the plastics industry is, is culture is something that’s totally misunderstood.

Culture is not something that you go to the local shop and you say, can I have two copies of culture place, um, and then you come back and you stick it in. Culture is something you have to, it’s a bit like life. You have to give birth to it, you then have to support it. You have to nurture it, nurture it, and you have to support it everyday. And I’m one of the things we say to our franchisees all the time because there’s obviously a labor shortage in this country. Uh, and if you can reduce labor turnover, that’s one of those things that will help each franchisee situation is if you do the right things, you can build a culture and that culture, if it’s the right culture, you will stop losing people. People will want to stay, they will like the environment because you’ve made it the right environment.

And just to demonstrate how it can be done. You know, we, we live in a global brand, but the average turnover in our industry is a hundred and 50 percent. One of our international franchisees on the baskin robbins side, it’s actually got the turnover down to five percent. Now I could argue that it’s actually too low, but five percent is phenomenal. And they did it by very much focusing on culture. Did they pay their people well? Yes. Did they insert them well? Yes. Did they pay them the right benefits? Yes, but what was really impressive listening to these people, it was the way that they communicated every week. They communicated every shift. They, they had the kind of questioning sessions that I talked about at the start, but also they trained people endlessly in my view, is not difficult to create the right culture. You just have to be incredibly persistent and pushing it and back up my football club laying around, you know, we went from having no bank account, no credit card processing or westville no players when we bought the club to be in well on the way to a sustainable club and doing very well on the field and a club where people come on loan because in football you learn players and what we find is people will come on loan debt.

I want to go back to their other club. That is the kind of measure of a great culture that you look.

Rob: Sure Nigel, you know, just from reading the book and, and, and, and everything. You know, this is really more about a book and I’m getting that sense from you. It’s really about a business philosophy. But what I’d like to do is take a, you know, just to go back just a little bit. Um, you know, you started to develop your skills as a leader at a young age. Can you give us sort of a three minute highlight of your career path and how that positioned you to become a CEO that’s able to, to gain these business philosophies and start to implement them and some of the most recognizable brands in the food and beverage industry.

Nigel: Okay. So it all started when I was about 15. I worked for my, a father who had numerous businesses, but one of them was a game, which I don’t know if it ever was produced in this country. Uh, and bakery was we have a bat and ball and my job was banging nails into blocks of wood affective or not. So I’d have always bits of wood I had to not nails into. And I went through hundreds and stop to. My father came in and he said, why aren’t you working? I said, I finished. And he’d say, and this was a regular occurrence, say, well, if you’ve got nothing to do, look as though you work in. And I said, why is his, his answer to that? And it’s documented in the book is because why is a crooked letter my father didn’t like challenge at all?

So that was learning number one, learning number two, I think it was when I became a soccer coach 50 years ago. You have to effectively take control of a group of people on a regular basis. I think about it, and it doesn’t have to be software, it could be hockey, it could be lacrosse, it could be any sport, you know, you’re saying one day, George, you’re in the team next week, you’re not entertain, but you have to explain why that’s the difficult thing and what a lot of people avoid. So that was my kind of introduction to management and also coaching. Um, so went straight into human resources. [inaudible] I did a, a strong vocational infantry. Just basically said I should go into a people oriented business. and then the next thing that really got me thinking about this thing, I was the group management development directorate grandma, which was a interesting conglomerate and the eight is to hide everything from our po to po vision children’s world, which was the Christ business.

But casinos betting shops, which are very legal in the UK, bars, restaurants, etc. And we had a, a really interesting German and sea shepherd and he was written up in having the light grip on the throat. Um, I mean he had this really robust challenge in business style, so one day I was given the tallest and sitting down with him to try and capture his organizational approach and we, we went through a lot of things like fast paced action oriented communications and what have you. But we had to try and describe this light grip on the road and I said, you can’t call it the light grip on the stroke. And he said, okay, well you got better idea. And I said, let me think about it. And I came back with the challenge. And the challenge culture is, is a challenge in style that’s done in a very civil way.

It’s not, it’s not frying a insults at people, it’s, it’s, it’s challenging them positively and having the kind of dialogue we talked about that stuff. So I think that was an important part of it. And then, um, as I went into general modern instrument, I started to apply these principles and it gradually evolved. So I started in general management running Europe, Middle East and Africa for burger king and then move through the ranks in a really enjoyable and interesting 10 years finishing up and the number two position president and CEO of. But when I became a CEO the first time at papa John’s, I tried to introduce it and I’m sure we all listened to say, wow, public Jones, yeah, controversy right now about 10 years ago. Um, and, and, and we evolved it. And here’s the interesting thing is I inherited the management team for the previous CEO who is the founder who’s been in the press, John Snyder.

I didn’t change one person. So a lot of people have asked me, well, do you have to change everyone? And the answer is no. I mean I use the same people who are working on the hair, took some time and I just encourage people to use all these questioning techniques and then it’s full of very successful years there. Then came to Dunkin and at Duncan they probably took a bit longer to introduce probably two years and, and just reopened. Eventually I changed all the management team. Uh, um, so, so sometimes you have to go both ways. I’ve used it. I think we’ve been very successful in the time I’ve been here and now I’m applying it at the football club. Uh, and, and just a matter of interest journals. Right. I never expected to write a book, but you know, I think it works and I think it makes sense and the reason why the culture is important in my mind, it’s a way to get the best business solutions in whatever business you’re in. Well, you just mentioned, you said I think it works and what I wanted to do is share with you some insights that I had in studying. And so in relation to background in engineering.

Rob: The former CEO of Ge, Jack Welch was asked during a podcast interview. This question said as you became a manager where you biased towards other engineers and promoting them, and it’s commented by saying, no, I don’t think so. I always look at the brightest, most aggressive self confident people I could find, and the third one is important because they speak back to you when you have a crappy idea. They tell you that. Is that similar to what you’re proposing?

Nigel: Uh, yeah. And I actually had the pleasure of bumping into jet world flow year and have a mode and through the years it is, I mean, too many meetings I think, oh, I’m set up where the boss comes in, everything’s rubber stamped. The both doesn’t encourage. they kind of pushed back that we have at dunkin and, and it’s. And it’s the genuine positive environment that you create that encourages that pushback. But here’s an interesting thing. Broke. I’m someone who recently left the company, went somewhere else and they’ve recently left that company and that person found me for some advice and, and in, in asking for the advice, what you should do next. He said, let me tell you something. It’s not until you leave, you realize how powerful the challenge culture is. he said, I went to a company where every decision was made by one person. This is a big company, this is a big name company, which I won’t actually say what it is, but it’s a very big retailer and every decision is made by one person.

Rob: Sure. Well, it makes it very difficult as soon to make any traction when it’s not a full visibility, especially in the beginning of the book as you were talking about, there’s so much intensity and competition out there now, not only with culture with people, but also technology. Um, how quickly do you think this kind of a culture lens to a decision making versus a culture that sort of is obsolete to it?

Nigel: I think it takes time, as I said before, to set it up and I think a lot of people have asked me what happens. The bus doesn’t do it and I basically said, I think a, it’s difficult, but I think you have to start in small groups and try and influence them. You may, you could start on your own challenge yourself. How many people actually challenge themselves when they get home at night? What did I do today? Did I waste my time? Did I actually achieve anything? Could I be more productive? Could I be more effective? That’s the challenge. Culture in an individual. You then perhaps my sites and someone, um, and I’ve got fred sitting across the table here who’s one of our hr people. I may find someone who’s friendly and helpful and say, hey, I read this book, this, can we try this together? And I’ll say to fred, perhaps at the end of the day, fred, you know, what do you think I did right? And rome today, simple as that. And then you build it from there. Um, but ideally in any organization, you don’t have to be a ceo or the top person. So if you’re like the head of, I don’t know enough about your industry, but let me make out plastic extrusion in a trade. You could apply to challenge culture in your department. You could because. And it should work even asleep. The whole business is hard.

People that work for you. And I’m rob. Here’s another interesting thing. I’ve worked a lot on the shop floor, you know, one of the most interesting experiences in my career a long time ago in 1980 in 1975, 76 where I was doing shop floor labor relations people on the shop floor I think is often so don’t have thoughts about things they do and when I was at burger king I always remember I was in hr there. I went out and had a discussion with a lot of truck drivers that worked in our distribution arm and we sat down and started talking. All they talked about was customer service and delivering to the franchisees and after about an hour I said, hey guys, this is brilliant love everything you’re saying and you’ve already suggested in some great improvements. Now I’m in hr. I mean, and anything you want to talk about in terms of wages or benefits or how you trace it. Someone said one thing and then they’re back to customer service. I mean, that told me the environment they worked in was very inclusive and very involving and, and whoever managed them was truly drawing on a trains every one of those truck drivers.

Rob: Sure. And it’s all about being open and getting those, getting the data really to be able to make decisions in essentially, it seems like that’s what the challenge culture is all about is, is looking at the data for what it is and finding ways to improve.

Nigel: Just out, which may be helpful. Again, I don’t know any about the plastics industry, but if I can go back to my days with blockbuster, which most people when I find really interesting and it was interesting, I did a speech to CEO’s, board members and see he has not speech. It is session four and a half hours, three hours from spent a blockbuster because buster, everyone remembers of a. Blockbuster was a disrupter. It disrupted all the video stores. Uh, it became a way of life on a Friday, Saturday night. You take the family to blockbuster and blockbuster is no more. So the question you get, well, what happened? Well, interestingly blockbusters as a leader in technology when I arrived at the company, which was in 94 in America because I was based in Europe, they were testing with IBM, a new new leaf. New leaf was a new technology that enabled a machine to be set up like a kiosk where you bang in a game music or movie and you copy it worked very well.

Then the music industry revolted against it and said, okay, you’re not doing that anymore. Um, and the net result was there was a vacuum created. And then the music industry obviously you had to put up with that stuff. So they effectively created their own downfall by sort of not having an open mind to the new technologies. Now going back to the blockbuster part, we shut down newleaf, uh, and we went through all kinds of technological challenges that we faced, evolution from vhs to dvd or successful. And then we had all kinds of challenges, like limited replay dvd came along. And then this company called netflix started in san francisco and they started sending dvd by mail. We kind of disregarded it as I’m sure some people in your industry will disregard startups and say, well, it wouldn’t last very long, like a lot of the web startups.

Um, then I got a little bit more traction. They went into austin and started to, well, uh, we could have bought the company for 50 million and Netflix today is worth 160 billion. So I share that accountability that we missed it. Netflix created a great model, which of course in his own rights has evolved into effectively a video on demand. Um, and interestingly, they still do dvds by mail, so we missed that. But what was also interesting is we actually jumped on the bandwagon, so to speak, light. We go into it in 2000 and for creating blockbuster on demand was taking share from Netflix. I left at the back end of oak for up to six and seven. Blockbuster was taking share from netflix, doing very well. Then it was a typical situation or activist investor. And bob, I’ve got nothing against activists. Investors came in, new management who said, all this internet stuff is nonsense retailers.

The way to go, uh, they tried to buy circuit city, which when I say it in my book, group fusion usually a little bit of a laugh. Um, and, and the net result was three years later, blockbuster was no law. Um, so I think the lesson for everyone is you’ve got to look at everyone that comes along and say, is this a viable competitor? BuT the true some from blockbuster is the power of anticipation. You have to anticipate the future. You have to challenge what you’re doing to think about the future. And plastic I’m sure has a lot of change in technologies. I would encourage your listeners to challenge the status quo, which if I had to define the challenge, culture is really, really about challenging the status quo every single day.

Rob: I remember you saying on a podcast are do Friedman. He said, it’s not only looking at, I’m looking at what makes you successful or what can make you more successful, but also what can create your demise.

Nigel: Yeah, I mean, it, it, it. If it is, I said, no, I’m. I mean, I’m not quite sure when you’re sending this out. While we’re recording this on Monday of the New England patriots who are mentioned in the bowl with a Detroit last night, I’m sure, greatest coach in the history of football, bill bell check spent all night, all day watching film, analyzing what went wrong. Um, as we do our football club, a Toronto learn from all the negatives as well as opposed to saying we’re going to do a better job next week. But one thing that’s really been helpful for me is I sometimes say to my groups, okay, what could kill us off? Blockbuster was killed off what could kill off Dunkin. Um, and that’s a really good exercise to go through. Another good exercise to go through, particularly if you’ve been in situ for some time.

I’ve been here for nine and a half years before I decided to do other things. It’s about every three years I would sit down with the management team and say, okay, we are the new owners that Duncan, what will we do? Because there is a reluctance to reduce things you’ve done. In other words, if you come in and you put processes and procedures in place as you do or set up methods, so marketing programs, you need to renew it regularly, so yeah, think about your demise. Think about what new owners would do. Think about. Here’s another good one. I’ve done a couple of times. Okay. Today, and by the way, Dunkin’s so incredibly cash positive company, very successful from the day we wake up and we are bankrupt. What do you do when you bankrupt and that often stimulates new thoughts that you don’t think about in the regular run of the mill operation?

Rob: Sure. Well, I imagine just to your point is when you’re talking about Netflix is they. They went but they are starting from scratch and they asked those kinds of questions and that’s how new ideas get developed.

Nigel: Well, you know, we had vending machines doing very well in Israel, UK and spoke. We then tested it in America and I think looking back, we tested it poorly because the test is only as good as you execute the test. We did it badly and said bending what work in America that result as we also got nailed by the Netflix phenomenon by red box, which was owned by McDonald’s. McDonald’s used it to generate traffic to their stores. So, so the question was, why did we not get into bending with the power of the blockbuster brand? Well, because we failed to test it properly. I gave up on it, read books came along, and again, the other day I looked up, bye. The code only read books website and this still operating today. Now they’ve evolved again because most of them, this sinks to be games rather than movies. But again, you know, you have to be constantly challenging what was going on out there.

Rob: Well, I can actually remember that. I remember going into blockbuster when I was younger and then I remember when, uh, when we could order through Netflix on the computer and that would take too long. But then Redbox came out, we started using that and now of course, now there’s Netflix and there’s. Amazon has now on demand. Everybody has on demand. So that’s, that’s an interesting point that you make. Um, now let’s, let’s turn it into some, uh, some of the fun stuff right now. Right now you’re the new co owner of latent orient football club and I just looked at some of your stats last last night and assuming that I’ve read them. All right, it looks like your team is undefeated seven or. No, but what’s really interesting to me is where your team was at last year. Where was your team at last year?

Nigel: Well, okay, so just to correct your stats, we, we’re actually on top of the table. I think we’ve got 26 points right now and we want them away at the top team on Saturday so we feel pretty good at them. So we bought the club 22nd of June last year. And just an aside, people find this amusing as well. there are actually a few like northern fans who have tattoos with my name and my partner’s name and football is very important in the uk and last year we kind of struggled because we got the team too late and what’s called the closed season, really the off season we went through a dreadful period and not winning for 15 games. Um, we finished. So it’s a place out of 24 teams. Um, so last year was a very mediocre. Yeah, but because we generated so much excitement, we have record season ticket sales, uh, and we questioned, you know, the players that we had, the setup we had, etc.

So, so far so good. But we feel good, but that’s on the playing side. Um, we worked very hard to put the commercial side into practice and most of your listeners probably won’t know this, but most football clubs run a pretty big loss. I’m most clubs think very short term. We’re trying to reinvent how small clubs do it by challenging everything. A. Sorry about the pings. It’s my emails. Uh, and uh, we feel we’re ahead of schedule, but I have a bold. there’s an interesting make up. I’m 68 years, I said before my vice chairman and principal investor, wonderful guy who I didn’t know so year and a half ago, uh, used to work at Microsoft. Uh, he is in his fifties then having a board member who’s in his sixties and then we have three bullets for board members all in their thirties and I think an evolving and has to be having younger board members.

Uh, and I, I’m talking about big public boards as well. I think the consumer is moving so fast, there is now a pretty significant generation gap in the way that people are educated. I mean, I started work when the way you type something was you wrote it out longhand. You then went down to someone who typed it for you in triplicate and handed it back to you. I mean, today all I need is the computer. I’m talking on my phone and my iPod and I’m done. I mean think of that revolution. So I think having younger board members is really good, but we all challenge each other incredibly positively. And in the time we’ve been the club, we haven’t had a huge rowel over anything. And I think one of the reasons is before we bought the club, we worked every morning 5:30 us time, we were on a call for an hour every day, seven days a week, planning olis debating things.

And I think even though it was done on the phone, we built a team that was really strong. And one thing that’s really impressive about that bull is, is probably more of a working board, the most bulbs. But if something happens, someone jumps in and fills it. We had a little bit of a personality issue the other week. Two more board members are based in the UK, dealt with it. Um, when we first started, we didn’t have a CEO, one of the members did it, uh, one of the board members happens to be my son who’s, he was a major technology company with. We’re doing all kinds of things like streaming will use hit. So it’s been a terrific team and I think we’re generally created a really positive vibe. And I talked earlier about how the players like the environment, but one of the best compliments I had was we had another team visited this last year and so the journalists with them came up to me before a game and said, you’re the chairman. I said, yeah. He said, they both said this is the friendliest club we’ve ever been to. I mean, that’s true. A compliment and I think it comes from the kind of positive culture we’ve generated.

Rob: Sure. That’s also something to drink too. Right? So, you know, you mentioned in your book, um,

What I’ve noticed about, you know, reading through your book and your business philosophy is, is you, you, you use a lot of context, whether it’s a real context or like the one you just said is, hey, if we went bankrupt, how do we start? So context seems to be a key element. And so what I wanted to look at is when you are with papa john’s, you mentioned you didn’t have to change any of the leadership team. However, when you went to Dunkin, that wasn’t the case. You did have to replace them. I just wanted to ask, what was your reasoning for that and how did you assess that?

Nigel: Hmm, that’s a great question. Um, and uh,

I think when I got to Dunkin looking Back, Dunkin was in worse shape than I realized at the time we had it. It was a very slow moving organization and we live in a very fast moving organization. So just to put it in, to use your word, the context we have, our biggest competitors are spectacularly successful and awesome gum In McDonald’s and Starbucks, despite the fact that I might say things about them because the competitors, this is about like late nor in the city of Liverpool. I mean we have two of the finest companies in America should be very proud of us. They challenge us everyday day. Um, we will woefully in challenging that. We had no data. Our operational standards were poor. Um, our ability to relate to the franchisees wasn’t good. Uh, and they’re after all effectively out customers. So I gave people, I think a fair amount of time.

I told them the philosophy I thought we should work on. We tried to work through it, but sometimes people just had too much baggage to change and I was working with a private equity people who had invested a lot of money three years before I got there, who were disappointed with the results. So there’s a fair amount of pressure, but I think the key thing is a Dunkin. I gave everyone a chance now one of the people who wanted to stay left because that individual ran into a personal situation with family, so I probably would still have that post and today, but they left voluntarily. I think it’s fair to say that the pace, they go up quite a lot. So that might be the true reason. Um, uh, one of the original people actually stayed for about three years, but probably six, seven people left. And if you had to take one reason it was there and the ability to challenge what they were doing and find a better way,

Rob: You think that’s because they sort of felt some sort of offense towards It or what would it be your assessment of it?

Nigel: Good question. I think for most of them they just found it difficult to change. I mean I think change is important and I think, you know, one of the things that I did through my hr career support people with change, people do not like change. I’m sure the plastics industry and as I said before we started my only true connection with the plastics industry is having watched the graduate several times where the future is plastics, but the fact that the future is plastic said that plastics for a lot of change, so I’m sure there’s a lot of change going on in that industry and people find change very difficult. I think some people just can’t get on the journey and unfortunately sometimes you have to change them, but I think you have to give everyone the chance to do it.

Rob: Now. you also mentioned that you felt some pressure in terms of making that change. Do you think that pressure is a good thing that somebody has, let’s say a CEO has somebody that can give them that kind of pressure to change or. Or do you think that causes them to sort of even stay in the status quo?

Nigel: No pressure. I think pressure is a good thing and you know, we’re in a competitive world and that should be a pressure enough. But if you’ve got a good board, I mean, I’ve been, I mean there’s a whole chapter on bolts in the book, but the private equity both that we had was fantastic. We had three private equity firms. They were really good. They were very helpful. I used to meet with them every two weeks. Somebody that’s a board meeting every three months. They were fantastic and they left me to get on with it, but they questioned everything. I mean, they, they, they truly push back on everything and that’s the way it should be. I mean, CEO’s should be accountable for what they do. So I think. So I actually believed the pressure. Is Rudy a positive thing? Um, we then moved to a public company when we went public in 2011 and the private equity people sold out completely by 2012.

What is interesting rub is, until recently we had three of the private equity people stood on the boat, which never happens. We’re down to two now. Um, and our board has been fabulous all the way through. And one of the things I’ve truly tried to do is I’ve never kept any secrets from the boat, and I don’t think this is in the book, but one of those things that I’ve learned being a ceo for 13 and a half years in total is too many CEO’s play the game where they go to the board and I say, right, I think we can do it this year. Nothing. They can do 85. They don’t tell the board about the other five. I’ve never taken that approach. I’ve always gone to the board and say, right, here’s the budget. We think we can do this. Our recommendation is to keep five as a continued.

What do you think every year without fail the borders said perhaps you need a bit more contingency, which is not the way it normally happens. So, you know, I think the lesson there is to be totally open, transparent. I think there’s a word, I mean mike, I was watching on the plane hits and Las Vegas, Michael Bloomberg given into it and they used the word transparency. That’s seven times I think very important between management, some bolts and I think what often happens in companies, and I saw this a little bit papa john’s the gulf between the boat and management, the job of the CEO is to make sure that doesn’t happen by bridging the gap. It’s a bit like, and I described this in detail in the book and know franchisees have a different set of assumptions, different set goals from the company and the job of the CEO and management is to bridge that gap and the essence of doing that is this very open communication style.

Rob: But it’s interesting to note. I had a thought the other day in terms of transparency because you know, working with publicly traded, it’s pretty easy to be transparent in terms of, you know, seeing the worth with private companies. They don’t have that, you know, you get to choose whether or not people see what the actual end number is. Do you think that it might be beneficial for some private companies to run more like a public company in terms of transparency?

Nigel: One hundred percent. And, and here’s an interesting thing in the UK is no such thing as a private company. I mean Elaine orange, even though under the us definition we’re a private company, our counselor available at companies house, any of your listeners can look up today, late football club and look at our financials, which based on the last year, year won’t be very healthy, but anyway. Um, but I think that openness is bright. No one’s ever asked me, you go question before. I actually think it’s a good thing. And, and despite the fact I’ve argued at times in my life that perhaps we should report as president suggested the other day, six monthly earning from freight month, like the pressure or earnings I think makes you full and having it both ways. I’m in a slightly unusual situation of life. I’m being a public company. And one thing I described in the book is a lot of CEO’s tend to view dealing with analysts just to define them. These are the people who follow the company’s financial recommendations and we’re. Duncan was staggering number 35 that follows. A lot of CEO’s I’ve been to don’t like it because they think their people, they’re outsiders will give views about things they don’t understand. I take the opposite view. These are people who study your company. They study in agree varying degrees of detail, but guess what? They also talked to the competition so they have a pretty informed view and I’ve never come away from the day of investor meetings without writing down to things to improve Dunkin brands.

Rob: Sure. Well, and I think it’s important to note as well, as you mentioned in your book for the challenge, culture’s not really designed to challenge every last thing and to be sober over used, if you will, but you kind of use the 80 slash 20 or 90 slash 10 model. Can you explain what that is for listeners that might feel kind of like, well, if I create this challenge culture, am I going to be turning every corner and this is going to happen? So can you talk a little bit about that?

Nigel: Yeah, I think it’s fairly simple. It’s, I describe it in the book as you occasionally have to put in a slow lap. I believe in slow laps of the meetings, getting difficult, can’t solve a problem. I decided to walk to the bathroom, which the office is exactly 72 yards um, and then I usually think of something else while I’m gone. So it’s the outsider in syndrome. I think the most important thing is a positive culture. You’re not challenging every minute if you say, uh, and I think a good measure of how many times or things you’ve chose to be 10 percent total. Um, but the most important thing isn’t the challenge in the important word is culture and creating the right environment because the demand to keep people is getting more and more difficult. The engagement of those people is vital to keeping people in this country. We’ve got three point nine percent unemployment. The predictions are in a year’s time, it be free. Well, I think most economists think the unemployable levels for cassette and the UK has got the same and Germany’s got the same challenge. So I think keeping people, keeping them engaged, age motivating them is what it’s all about. And the challenge is actually second but important. No.

Rob: If your human resources in your sort of, in the middle of your company and the CEO hasn’t bought into this and how can they challenge culture help somebody more than mid level management role?

Nigel: Well, I think, uh, let me take a slightly different direction from the way you asked the question. Sure. No, I learned long time ago that human resources is a very strategic, very strategic function in too many companies that just regarded as an administrative function. A hr is looking off the property. What is the most important resource in any company in any industry? I’m all companies rely on people. Even great new companies like Google, Facebook, and people are critical to them and haven’t had the opportunity to go to both Google and Facebook. You can tell I think a lot about people. They have very strong human resource functions. So I think human resources up in the top two or three functions in the whole, um, maybe like in the list of functions that report into senior management, I’d encourage anyone in human resources to see it as a strategic function and, and to have open discussions with your boss or the CEO or whoever it is, and I’ve found in my career, you don’t have to blatantly go in and say, hey boss, we’re going to have the Chinese culture from tomorrow and just say, look, I think we could do some things slightly differently.

Start slow, start soft and experiment. I’m a great believer in having discussions about management styles and you congratulate, evolve it, but it’s a famous old same rung or some built in a day. It does take time, but HR has to be a function that is leading the company forward in terms of people. In most companies it’s not. And if there’s one lesson I would love everyone to take away from this is treat your hr function with greater respect from tomorrow or even today than you have in the past.

Rob: Absolutely. Well, thank you Nigel for that. Now the Travis, the author of the challenge culture, why the most successful organizations run on pushback and I just tell people how they can order you book or learn more about the challenge culture.

Nigel: Well, um, yeah, I’m, I’m places most major bookshops have it. If you go to an airport, I’m Hudson’s who happened to be one of our franchisees, so that’s a quick plug for them. Um, and independent bookshops, I’ve been to several of them recently, but obviously a company that’s truly challenged everything before them. Amazon as a, uh, don’t come or an Amazon in the, amazon.co.uk. So it’s available in a lot of places. It’s actually published in the UK and the US and shortly coming out and then they’re in Korea.

Rob: Yeah. Now I actually ordered it audio and to Barnes and noble. And so there’s various different ways. Now just thank you so much for coming, uh, coming on for taking your time. We’d love to have you again to delve in deeper into your business philosophies. Uh, but good luck with your future benchers. And best of luck with the Leyton orient football club.

Nigel: Well, thank you very much. I enjoyed talking to you. Thank you. Take care

Rob: Okay, so there. Yup. Hey, thanks for doing that. I really appreciate it.

Nigel: And uh, Rob, I’ll speak to again.

Rob: Okay. Sounds great, Nigel. I appreciate it. Thank you. Take care. Bye.