[Music] welcome to how leaders lead I'm Kula Callahan here to bring you another edition of three more questions with David Novak David it's so great to be on the show with you how are you today I'm doing well Kola and I always look forward to our conversation and today we are debriefing the podcast we had with Alan Shaw the CEO of norick Southern which is a railway company that's been around since 1827 now that is a long long time it is I love how on our how leaders lead show you get to learn from expert CEOs in all different sorts of Industries and I've never known much about the railway industry but this episode was super enlightening and now I know that when I buy something online it likely has traveled on a Norfolk Southern train to get to my house that's right you know you kind of think about that old song I've Been Working on the rail Road you know that's like you think of the rail businesses as really old line but man they make a lot of things happen today they really do in fact they touch 60% of consumption in our country today it's just wild the operation that Allan Shaw gets the privilege of leading at Norfolk Southern and David I'm excited to get your take on some of the concepts that you discussed with Allan so for today's three more questions we're going to be working on the railroad together question number one Allan's been at Northfolk Southern for 30 years and he's held a number of different roles from Finance to safety to marketing and many others in between I love Allen's explanation of how he quote grew up in the company now David your real Focus before you became CEO of young Brands was marketing how did you grow up in the company and grow yourself into becoming CEO well I was very fortunate to work for a fantastic company which was PepsiCo and PepsiCo was famous for developing people having high standards the great brands that they had and it was just a a great place to develop the biggest thing I did was distinguish myself on the marketing front and that was really important at PepsiCo because consumer marketers were viewed to be the people that could have the biggest impact on a business you know we had very consumer oriented business and and you really needed to have the leaders that uh ran those businesses you know love customers understand customers and know how to really Market whatever brand it happened to be had freed delay we had Doritos Tostitos lays Sun Chips all these great Brands you know we had at pepsicola we had Pepsi Mountain Dew slice you know tremendous Brands and then we had pizza Taco Bell and KFC and these are all great brands that that had been around for a long time so there was a big view that having a consumer orientation was a big plus I had that but you also had to demonstrate that you were more than just a marketing person so one of the things that I did was uh asked for the opportunity to be the Chief Operating Officer of pepsicola company when that job came up when I was running Marketing sales for Pepsi that showed people that I could work with the front line understand a p&l figure out how to make major process Improvement and that was very important to my development the other thing that I did was I was not a finance person I didn't have an MBA so I basically went to Wharton and went to school on finance for non-financial executives which really helped me a lot the other thing you have to do as a CEO is you have to be a good communicator and you know I had jobs that really forced me to get better and better at that but I wasn't as good as what I needed to be so I went to a outside consultant in the area of communications who helped me get much more comfortable in speaking to Big groups and also taught me how to to be a much better Communicator when I did have the opportunity to make a speech and all these were skills that I think ultimately helped me become a fairly decent CEO I love that David it's not too dissimilar from Allen's experience in fact when he was working in finance at Northfolk Southern the CEO at the time came to him and said hey why don't you be Chief marketing officer and he said Chief marketing officer I'm a numbers guy I'm a left brain guy I'm an engineer I'm a finance person but he said that taking that role as Chief marketing officer really forced him to develop those parts of himself that he wasn't super confident in and ultimately it's what has made him a great CEO yeah I think that you know in my case I was a right brain person you know more of a creative person but what you have to make sure is that your left brain doesn't derail you you got to be good enough at the things that are in the stereotypical left brain that doesn't create a problem that won't make you broad enough to take on the total Enterprise did you intentionally use the word derail there you did didn't you you always love to slide those in all right question number two safety is a huge part of what Allen is focused on at Norfolk Southern in fact he's committed to learning from experts on how to enhance his company's safety protocols and he recently brought on three former Navy Admirals to act consultants for Norfolk Southern and their Safety Division David how can a leader convince their team to open up to quote Outsiders who are basically trying to tell them how to do their job better well I think in this case with these Naval advisors they weren't just safety advisers they were people who had experience with nuclear nuclear safety which means you better be damn good at that so I think they had a lot of credibility when they came in my belief first of all is that I really had had a lot of disdain for bringing in outside Consultants it was always something that I did at a last resort because what I didn't want to do is have our people use Consultants to do the thinking that they ought to be doing for themselves and the same goes for me I mean I always felt that if I'm really running my business well I don't really need Consultants to come in and tell me how to run it so you know I tried to to make sure that you know I did everything I could to really run the business without having an additional expense but sometimes you do need to have an outside perspective in the case of uh Allen and and Nork Southern they had the crisis in uh East Palestine Ohio and you know they needed someone to come in and teach them more about safety but also let the outside world know that they were doing everything that they could to really attack this issue and attack this issue in in the best possible way so a consultant there really makes a lot of sense just like if you're having an acquisition in the corporate world today you can't make an acquisition by just saying this is something you want to do you usually get two Bankers involved that tell you that you're basically doing the right thing for your shareholders so that people know that you've you've done the right thing in my case when we used Outsiders to come in it was always to give us an objective perspective that we might not be able to come to ourselves and you know some fresh thinking on really tough topics and so we use Consultants to help us figure out how to to Really operate more efficiently cut cost because somebody from the outside can come in they have no ax to grind and they just lay it out because they see the world the way how it really is not necessarily the way you want it to be and they can be as I talk about in in my book they can be great truth tellers you know I think that's a very important time to do it you know David it doesn't matter how smart you are or how skilled you are at your job when you work in a company like Allen has for 30 years at a certain point it's like you're inside a bottle trying to read the label and no matter how hard you try to zoom out you just can't get rid of all of the knowledge you have about your business so to your point about getting that objective perspective and expertise like Allen has done by having these former Navy Admirals come in and consult them is really EV value out and it takes humility to say hey we don't have all the answers we need help but I don't know that I really answered the question that you asked as directly as I needed to because you said how can you convince your team to be open to Outsiders who are coming in and are going to tell you you know their thoughts on how you can do their job better and and I think the biggest thing here is that as the leader you need to let people know why they're coming in and we talked about the cases in which they can do that and two be totally honest with them and the need that you have that says you got to get that outside perspective you know the worst thing is is to bring Outsiders in and not have people understand why question number three in February of 2023 Northfolk Southern had a big-time derailment that resulted in a massive spill of hazardous materials in East Palestine Ohio Allen had only been CEO for seven months at that point and had to navigate this massive crisis headon in the episode you asked him what was most important for him to focus on during that time and David I know that you yourself are no stranger at a crisis in fact in your new book how leaders learn you call yourself a crisis survival expert what in your opinion are the most important things leaders need to do when they're in the middle of a crisis one that's very public well you're right Kola you know sometimes I thought of myself as a csse uh versus CEO crisis survival expert versus Chief Executive Officer and that's because I dealt with a number of uh food safety issues over the years that were very public and really demanded that I was present and focused on the problem to help our company work its way out of it and I believe there's basically three things that everyone needs to do in crisis number one you're completely honest and upfront and you tell everybody you got the problem number two you understand why it happened and then three you let everybody know what you're going to do to make sure it never happens again and you put all the process and discipline in place that you need to make sure that it never happens again one thing that I'm so impressed by with Allan is that it's you know almost 18 months after this crisis first happened and he still goes to East Palestine Ohio every other month or so yeah well it's a highly politicized situation you know there are lots of issues in the community still that exist and his presence needs to be felt you know the last thing you can do as a CEO is not be there not be present and that's the answer he said this this is a problem a huge problem that should have never happened he said this is why it happened and then he's put together a number of initiatives to make sure it never happens again including hiring outside independent safety experts from the Navy who specialized in in nuclear ships well that does it for our episode of three more questions for today thanks again for tuning in to how leaders lead we're on a mission to make the world a better place by developing better leaders and if you carve out a little time with us each and every week we'll help you build the confidence you need to lead well and coming up next on how leaders lead is Tom Baltimore the chairman and CEO of Park Hotels and Resorts [Music]