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Douglas Conant |
Douglas Conant's Key Accomplishments Include . . .
Douglas R. Conant, a New York Times bestselling author and sought-after speaker, was appointed President and CEO of the Campbell Soup Company in 2001. He retired in 2011, receiving the American Society of Training and Development (ASTD) 2011 Champion of Workplace Learning and Performance Award.
An effective executive in today's over-scheduled, fast-paced 'interruption age' is not mutually exclusive with being an accessible and engaged leader. Indeed, everyday 'touchpoints' are a prerequisite for success.
CEO, NYSE Euronext Doug Conant was the 11th leader in this iconic company’s 141-year history – faced with reversing a precipitous decline in market value. Conant succeeded by dramatically transforming the global leadership team, reconfiguring the portfolio, cutting costs and making strategic investments in Campbell’s products, marketing programs, innovation pipeline and infrastructure. He improved the company’s financial profile delivering quality sales growth, ten straight years of adjusted earnings per share growth, strong cash flow, record high investment and record high Return on Invested Capital. As a result, the company was able to deliver cumulative shareholder returns in the top tier of the global food industry.
The key enabler of this performance was Campbell’s march towards achieving world-class employee engagement levels. During the decade of Douglas Conant’s leadership, employee engagement went from being among the worst in the Fortune 500 to being consistently among the best. Campbell has been widely recognized for its progress; its many honors range from being recognized by the Gallup organization with its “Great Workplace Award” for four years running to receiving the 2010 Catalyst Award for helping women advance their careers. During his tenure, the company was also recognized as a leader in social responsibility and ethical leadership.
Doug Conant joined Campbell with 25 years of experience from three of the world’s leading food companies: General Mills, Kraft and Nabisco. He began his career in 1976 in marketing at General Mills. After 10 years, he moved to Kraft where he held top management positions in marketing and strategy. Immediately prior to coming to Campbell, he was President of the $3.5 billion Nabisco Foods Company where he led his team to improved marketplace performance and five consecutive years of double-digit earnings growth.
During his tenure at Campbell, Douglas Conant established the Campbell CEO Institute to train the company’s future leaders. Along with his team and strategic leadership expert Mette Norgaard, his mission was to ensure that the company’s highest-potential employees were well-equipped to handle the challenges and surprises that inevitably create a leader’s impact and legacy. Conant and Norgaard have since co-authored the New York Times bestselling book, TouchPoints: Creating Powerful Leadership Connections in the Smallest of Moments.
More About Speaker, Doug Conant. . .
Douglas Conant was the recipient of the ASTD 2011 Champion of Workplace Learning and Performance award and is working on a new book about the secret to driving high performance in an enduring way in an on-demand world.
Along with writing, speaking and teaching on a variety of leadership topics, Mr. Conant now devotes his time to helping to guide non-profit organizations. He is Chairman of the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy (CECP) and an active member of the board of the following organizations: National Organization on Disabilities (NOD), the Partnership for Public Service (PPS), Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE), Catalyst, The Conference Board (TCB), the Families and Work Institute (FWI), the International Tennis Hall of Fame (ITHF), and most recently, the United Nations Fund for International Partnerships (UNFIP). He is also a former chairman of the Grocery Manufacturers Association(GMA)and The Conference Board(TCB).
A native of the Chicago area, Doug Conant earned his BA degree from Northwestern University and his MBA from the J.L. Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern. |
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| Suggested Keynote Programs |
- TouchPoints: Creating Powerful Leadership Connections in the Smallest of Moments
Leadership is tough – especially given meetings, endless emails, and chance encounters in the hallway. Most people feel that these inevitable demands are keeping them from doing their “real work.” But in a groundbreaking new keynote, CEO Douglas R. Conant argues that they are overlooked opportunities for every one of us to expand our influence and deliver measurably better results. Through previously-untold stories from his career, he shows how a leader’s impact is built through hundreds, even thousands, of interactive moments in time or “touchpoints.” Doug will show you how to create a culture of performance, engagement and contribution, where people feel valued and value the agenda, achieved one "touchpoint" at a time. The good news is that anyone, at any level and in any industry, can attain greater “touchpoint mastery.”
- Leading Change in the 21st Century: The Keys to Creating a High Performance Workplace in a Rapidly Changing World
Leading change is tough. The challenges in today's world are very Darwinian. . . you either grow or die – there is not much room in between. You must develop a strategy that helps you fully leverage your resources, seize opportunities, minimize risks, meet or exceed expectations and outperform the competition. Then, you must build a motivating plan that brings that strategy to life in a sustainable and compelling fashion every day. And, you must hit your marks despite shifting sands on virtually all fronts – changes in the organization, new customer demands, fragile financial markets, and demanding investors.
Doug Conant has seen it all in his 35 years in the corporate world. As president of the Nabisco Foods Company for five years and President and CEO of the Campbell Soup Company for over 10 years, he has dealt with all of these issues at the highest levels. At Nabisco, he delivered five straight years of double-digit earnings growth driven by marketing innovation, tight cost management, and superior employee engagement. At Campbell, the situation was more dire and the success was more pronounced. The company had lost half of its market value in one year and was being compared to a buggy whip by the leading food industry analysts. After joining the company in 2001, over the next decade, Doug lead the company to fully emerge from its tailspin – re-establishing its market place presence, growing earrings, and increasing dividends every year. As a result, by 2010 the company was substantially outperforming the S&P 500 in total shareowner returns, sales and earnings were growing, the core businesses were thriving, the employees were highly engaged in their work, the company was increasingly being recognized for its progress with workforce diversity and inclusion, and Campbell was ranked as one of the most socially responsible and ethical companies in the United States. A dramatic transformation had occurred.
Doug's core philosophy is built around the idea that to lead change effectively in the 21st century, today's leaders need to be tough on standards and tender with people. In Conant's experience, to get sustainably high performance from any organization, it is absolutely essential for the leader to clearly, authentically and tangibly demonstrate that they value the agenda of the people in the organization.
This blueprint for creating a high performance workplace is time-tested and drawn from intense experience. When brought to life in a fulsome manner, it can create extraordinary levels of energy and employee engagement that can and will lead to sustainably high performance.
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| What People Are Saying |
"Douglas Conant's keynote presentation and insights were of enormous value in preparing our members to assume the CEO role in their companies. They particularly appreciated the time he took to have individual conversations between each session. Doug practices what he preaches, and these personal interactions had a profound impact on our members."
- Kendall Crolius, Managing Director, G100 Next Generation Leadership
"Doug Conant was the perfect keynote for our daylong conference with regional leaders from the business, civic and government sectors. His down-to-earth style and lessons from his long and distinguished career as a business leader, set the tone for a great day for our group. His remarks played to all members of our audience, not just business leaders and gave people easy-to-apply lessons for their own work. The way you could tell he made a difference was how often his remarks were brought back into the conversations throughout the day. Doug also was excellent in the unscripted portion of his segment, providing great responses to a wide array of challenging and thought-provoking questions. Thanks again for recommending Doug as our keynote speaker!"
- Steven T. Wray, Executive Director, Economy League of Greater Philadelphia
"We all found Doug's words insightful and inspiring. He is an engaging and thoughtful speaker and his approach and advice regarding interpersonal skills and relationships in the workplace was immediately actionable and practical."
- Google
"Doug Conant has proven himself to be a very disciplined CEO – focused, able to let go of what doesn't fit, building greatness step-by-step, laying foundations for decades down the road while delivering results today. His example shows how effective business leadership can be quiet and bold, studious and decisive, disciplined and creative."
– Jim Collins, Author of Good to Great
"Thinking about leadership as managing an ongoing series of touchpoints is a fascinating concept. What you once considered to be interruptions will be appreciated as the serious stuff of business, to be managed and used every day."
– Shelly Lazarus, Chairman, Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide
"Walk every shift on the factory floor – you will learn more from that than what you read in the productivity reports. Make yourself available 24/7, care about people, they are the business. This is all about effective leadership, and effective leadership is what drives shareowner value and career progression."
– Bill Perez, former President and CEO, Nike
"Doug's thought provoking presentation at the CEO Alliance with over 40 Philadelphia CEOs in the audience provided a marvelous synthesis of his thirty five year business career, the steps he took to turnaround and sustain the performance at the iconic Campbell Soup Company, and his longstanding practice of taking a disciplined "tough-minded" approach to performance, coupled with a "tender-hearted" approach to people. In winning over this audience of experienced senior executives, he convincingly demonstrated his own adherence to competency, character, courage, and chemistry."
– Mitch Wienick, President/CEO, Kelleher Associates, LLC |
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