The Monroe Street Journal

Issue date: 10/6/08 Section: Features

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Bob McDonald, current Chief Operating Officer of Procter & Gamble, was 11 years old when he first wrote to his Congressman to apply to West Point. Since then, McDonald has demonstrated a record of being driven, eventually graduating from West Point 13th in his class, and dedicated to cultivating leadership among those around him. The former West Point graduate and Army Ranger joined Procter & Gamble in 1980 and successfully rose into executive positions, including running P&G's multi-billion dollar northeast Asia region.

Last week, McDonald came to the University of Michigan to teach a strategy course on sustainability and to lead a discussion about Values-Based Leadership. In a week that saw a lack of decisiveness on the part of our nation's financial and political leaders, McDonald's visit was a unique opportunity to access a business leader and hear his thoughts on role models. During his time at the Ross School of Business, the COO of Procter and Gamble sat down with the Monroe Street Journal to discuss Values-Based Leadership and his thoughts on leading.

Who are your role models?

I've had a lot of role models. My parents have played a very important role in my life. They taught me values and the fact that integrity is important above all else. Now, obviously for someone like me who went to West Point, you get filled with values. At West Point, it's duty, honor, and country. But you also have an honor code that you won't lie, cheat, steal or tolerate those who do. Later, in the military service it's the same thing.

Procter & Gamble also has a very strong code of integrity, so those values have gone through me. A. G. Lafley, our current CEO, has been an important role model and friend for 28 years. He was my sponsor when I joined the company. John Pepper, who was one of our CEOs, was my first General Manager. The day I interviewed - April 4, 1980 - I went through three interviews. I got the offer right there on the spot. I was really surprised by that because no other company I talked with gave me an offer on the spot.

The recruiters were expecting to spend the rest of the day selling me on the Company, so they had to find some way to fill the day. They took me to meet John Pepper, my General Manager. I was supposed to spend just a couple of minutes with him, as he had a lot of responsibilities. However, I couldn't get out of his office. He just wanted to talk about everything. I kept telling him, 'Sir, I have to leave.' There was a line outside his office with people who wanted to meet with him.

I thought, 'How lucky I am to work for a Company that's about improving lives. And here is this man who was willing to spend so much time with a new hire."

That experience taught me so much about how P&G cares for people. It's similar to what I experienced in the military. In the military, when someone's life is in danger, you take care of him or her.

My wife has also been a role model for me. What I've learned from her is very different. In the military, you're often trained not to be emotional. If you're in a dangerous situation, soldiers do not want to follow leaders who are emotional. My wife taught me that it's okay to be emotional. Emotion is an important quality of leadership.

I can train you in all the behaviors of leadership. We have a 5 E model at P&G: envision, engage, energize, enable and execute. I can train you to execute all these behaviors, which will be known as leadership. What I am not as good at is training you to love the people who work for you.

Then how do you train people to love the people who work for them?

It's difficult. What we first have to do is get you in touch with your own socialization. How have you been socialized? How does that socialization lead to unfortunate stereotypes that might get in the way of your relationships with others? We get diverse groups of P&Gers together from all over the world. Then we have them discuss their socialization. We set up situations where their socializations might be hurtful to someone else in the group. We have all had hurtful situations. We teach people that the Golden Rule is no longer good enough in a global company.

In a global company like ours, we use the Platinum Rule. Remember that the Golden Rule is to treat others the way you would want to be treated. That's great when you're working with a homogenous group of people. But when you're working with a diverse group of people, the rule we use is to treat other people the way they would want to be treated. That means I have to know you to know how you would want to be treated. So as an American, I'd have to know how a Thai or Japanese person wants to be treated. I need to understand their culture to do that.

We call this approach "people supporting people." We teach that the best leaders are those who have ambition for the organization, but not for themselves. If an individual's ambition is for himself or herself, chances are people will not want to follow them.

How do you lead so that other people will follow?

The Platinum Rule is important but there's another aspect of leadership that we haven't talked about. To be an effective leader, you have to be an effective follower. A fellow named Larry Donnithorne wrote a book called The West Point Way of Leadership. West Point, if you think about it as a school of leadership, believes that you have to learn how to follow in order to learn how to lead.

Sometimes smart leadership is knowing when to keep your mouth shut and knowing when to follow.

How do you make sure that you are currently given that feedback?

I try to surround myself with people who are different than I am. We have a strategy of diversity at P&G. We want a very diverse organization. We want an organization that looks like the consumers we're trying to serve. Diverse organizations are inherently more innovative - because innovation is all about connecting seemingly disconnected ideas.

As a leader, I work hard to create and leverage diversity around me. I want to surround myself with people who don't talk like me, who didn't grow up like me, and who don't think like I do. And I have to listen, because I know they're going to look at things differently. Listening takes effort and concentration. Sometimes you're listening for what words aren't spoken. A lot of Japanese communication, for example, is not the spoken word. You have to watch for it.

It's good to be self-critical. It's good to be humble and to be introspective. It's good and it's smart to assume you don't always have the right answer.

Now that suggests a malleability of opinion, and I don't want that to come into conflict with being values-centered and principled. The two are not in conflict at all. The way you listen and then make judgment calls based on your values and principles is important. It's often what sets highly effective leaders apart from others.

How do you prepare yourself for a challenging job?

I learn. In 1989, when P&G asked me to move to Canada, I bought every book I could find about the country. I read books on Canadian culture, Canadian history, and a wonderful book called The 49th Parallel about the differences between America and Canada. I had to find a way into that culture.

The thing that differentiates good leaders from great leaders is passion for learning and the ability to learn. You can never know everything there is to know about a particular subject, but if you're insatiably curious, you'll learn more than most and you'll make smarter, more creative decisions as a result. If there is one thing to learn at the University of Michigan, learn how to learn.

What would your closest friends say about you?

One of my favorite books or musicals is Don Quijote or The Man of La Mancha. Cervantes wrote "Who is mad in this world, the people who see the world as it is or the people who see the world the way it should be?" I try to see the world the way it should be.

Here is this mad guy thinking that he's a knight, and in reality he's a mad man. He finds this barmaid he calls Dulcinea, but her real name is El Danza. He treats her like a princess. At the end of the show, after Don Quijote has died, Sancho, Don Quijote's companion, turns to the barmaid and calls her La Danza. She corrects Sancho and says, "My name is Dulcinea." And the show closes.

It's a beautiful metaphor. Don Quijote treated her like a princess, and he changed her life.

I think my closest friends would tell you this is what I'm passionate about. What I want to do is change people's lives, even if it's just in very small ways. It's like the story of the old man walking on the seashore who finds these starfish, and throws them back into the sea. This young man comes along, watches the old man, and then asks him why he's making the effort when obviously he can't save every starfish. "What does it matter?" the young man asks. The old man bends down, picks up a starfish, and says, "it matters to this one." As the story ends, the young man ends up throwing starfish back into the ocean, one-by-one.

P&G's purpose, as a company, is to improve the lives of the world's consumers - in small but meaningful ways, every day. I'm blessed to be working for P&G because it gives me the opportunity to help improve the lives of 6.5 billion people all over the world with our products and services, and at the same time, to help a P&G colleague - just one person every day.

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