Thirty Minute Mentors Podcast Transcript: Former Tropicana CEO Willie Pietersen

I recently interviewed Former Tropicana CEO Willie Pietersen on my podcast, Thirty Minute Mentors. Here is a transcript of our interview:

Adam: Our guest today was the CEO of four different multi-billion-dollar businesses. Willie Peterson was the CEO of Seagram USA, Tropicana, Lever Brothers Food Division, and Sterling Winthrop's Consumer Health Group. Willie is also the author of the new book, Leadership, The Inside Story, Time-Tested Prescriptions for Those Who Seek to Lead. Willie, thank you for joining us.

Willie: My pleasure. Thank you, Adam.

Adam: Pleasure is mine. You grew up in South Africa during a time of historic upheaval. You were 11 when apartheid began in 1948. You studied law in South Africa and began your career as a lawyer before pursuing a career in business. Can you take listeners back to your early days? What early experiences and lessons shaped your worldview and shaped the trajectory of your success?

Willie: Yes, certainly. So, I grew up in an atmosphere where apartheid, that's the way it's pronounced, apartheid, was the prevailing method of governing society. Apartheid was a very strict policy of segregating the races. You couldn't go to the same schools, you couldn't marry across color lines, you couldn't live in the same areas, you couldn't marry people of a different race, etc. And I grew up with an understanding that that was the real world. I had no other point of reference. I had no other point of comparison. All the authority figures around me reinforced that imprinting. And I grew up in that atmosphere. And then I had a series of experiences that opened up my mind and for the first time gave me alternative points of reference. 

The first experience I had was going to college. in South Africa in a small liberal arts school. I studied law and then heard debates and challenges to existing thinking. I happened to become the chairman of the Students' Representative Council at this university and had a leadership role there and began protesting against this process of separation of the races through apartheid. That led me only so far, kind of removed me a few inches away from that imprint. But it wasn't a complete transformation as yet. Then I was lucky enough to win a scholarship to Oxford, a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford in England. For the first time, I looked at South Africa from the outside in and met other minds from other countries. And began to understand that with that level of objectivity, that distance, that that created, allowed me to examine the injustices of apartheid afresh. 

And that was the transformation. And it was kind of a huge lesson of how our minds work and the biases that set in. And if we're not conscious of them, it can interfere and derail thinking. Now, I went back to South Africa. I was very troubled by the system. I practiced law. And there was a process, there was a commission that was empowered. It's a good race classification board, it was called, where these cases were heard about people to be classified. And a number of my clients, I had to represent them in front of this board, and this dehumanizing experience. A pencil was put through their hair to test its kinkiness. 

A people's skin tone was looked at through a kind of microscope and they were classified. And we found members of the same family were separated and forced to go to separate schools. People already married were told that their marriage was illegal because it crossed a color bar. For the first time, I experienced the injustices of apartheid at the human level. We tend to think in terms of groups, those people, those unfortunate people, but it doesn't become real until you see that. That was a profound learning experience for me and the final illumination of my imprinting. And I went home that night and said to my wife, we cannot raise a family here. We need to find a way to leave South Africa. I left the law profession for that reason and joined Unilever, a global consumer products company with the hope of having an international career. And that worked and I had a wonderful career that took me to various countries. 

And then as I progressed in seniority, eventually became CEO of various businesses. Just as a little side story, when I was interviewing for a job with Unilever, the head of HR, a guy called Peter Murray, a lovely guy, I was a lawyer interviewing for a job in the marketing department because that was the great route up to the top. He said, well, how can a lawyer know about marketing? And I said, well, I'm a learner. I've read 19 books on marketing. Here they are. And so that's a bit of book learning, but I'll be a quick learner. And I said, my main motivation is to get out of South Africa and have an international career. And he looked at me and he said, Willie, Unilever is not a travel agency. And I said, OK, I fully understand that. Apologies. I just want to be fully transparent. Deal with my career basically on the merits. I'm not making any demands. I'm expressing my aspirations. And that worked very well. And I was posted to Holland, to Australia, to England twice, and then to the U.S.A. with human labor. Wonderful international career.

Adam: Well, you shared so much there that I would love to unpack. The importance of exposing yourself to the perspectives of others, something that has been a consistent theme throughout so many conversations with so many different leaders, the importance of leaders being around people who have diverse perspectives, diverse backgrounds, people who see the world differently from the way that you see the world. We all have blind spots. We all have biases. How can we account for those? By surrounding ourselves with people who can expand our worldview, can diversify our thinking.

Willie: Yeah, very important question. We all learn, every day we learn things, but we really don't know how we learn until we think about the methodology. How do we become effective learners? And part of it is monitoring our own thinking and eliminating our own biases that get in the way of effective learning. And if I think about learning, I go to a wonderful statement by Margaret Wheatley, the complexity theorist and leadership guru, She said, you cannot change a living thing from the outside. You can only disturb it so that it changes itself. And I realized that what we have to do as learners is invite new disturbances. They visit us from time to time, but we have to invite them in, in a variety of ways that help us think more broadly, inviting new perspectives. To be honest, I read very few business books. I do read some. 

But I read very few, maybe 20% of the books I read are business books. I love reading about astrophysics because it's the biggest subject in the world. I love reading about evolutionary science, which is one of the great leaps in scientific understanding of humanity and how we develop. And I love learning about biographies of successful leaders like Nelson Mandela and so on. And it's those disturbances that we invite in. And I think a great way to promote learning in that way is to learn how to ask the right questions. Everything we know in the world comes from a question somebody asked somewhere, sometimes, whether it's Albert Einstein or any other of the scientific thinkers. 

So, I think this great kind of engine of learning is creating our own disturbances that help us learn more effectively, exposing ourselves to a broad array of stimuli and diverse thinking. I find that from conversations I have. I find it from the books I read. I find it from the teaching I do in a broad range of organizations. Now, here's the other thing that I've discovered is important. It's keeping a learning journal. And the reason for that is really pretty important. We have very poor memories. And there was a guy called Hermann Ebbinghaus, a German psychologist who was very interested in memory. And he studied it. He made a stunning discovery that our capacity as human beings is the capacity to forget, not to remember. And one of the data points, for example, is after 30 days, you've forgotten 90% typically, 90% of what you've gathered as learning day to day. 

And the secret, he says there are a number of antidotes. Antidote number one, write down what you've learned. Antidote number two, regularly retrieve and look at what you wrote down. And the third is to practice it and practice it regularly. And the fourth one I add is to teach your team what you've learned and then you deepen your own learning. So it's a whole process of, I think learning our way to success in life generally, in life professionally, and certainly in leadership. There's no such thing as a born leader. We all have a baseline of capability in any sphere of activity. And I think the whole of life and success involves building from that baseline and not taking it for granted. And that's a learning process.

Adam: Willie, what do you believe are the key characteristics of a great leader and what can anyone do to become a better leader?

Willie: Well, let me just tell you a little anecdote to begin with. My very first assignment as a CEO was within Unilever and the food group in South Africa. I was young at the time. I was told I was the youngest person in Unilever to hold such a position at that time. I was a little bit overawed by it. I felt a little underqualified. I thought people were watching me and I was going to stumble. And I had a theory of leadership at that time, that it was a kind of an intellectual game of chess, working out a strategy, being able to analyze things and look at the balance sheet and understand where the weaknesses might lie and correct them. And looked at it that way and had this kind of belief that the logic was clear. In terms of what we needed to do, people would follow the logic, because who doesn't believe in a logical approach to things? 

After three months on the job, my chairman, C.J. Von Neuersfeld, called me into his office and said, Peterson, what surprised you in your first three months as a CEO? I said, well, I'll tell you what surprised me, is the amount of time I had to spend on human issues, people. their motivations, their needs for recognition, the fact that things had to be explained to them in a way that motivated them, that they needed to be inspired, they needed meaning in the work that they were doing, not just logic. And he looked at me for a little good while and he said, Peterson, welcome to leadership. And so, my very first statement to anybody aspiring to be a better leader, which we all do all the time, learning never stops. It's all about the people. Work happens through people. 

Great work happens through inspired people. And you can't just call it in and ask people to be inspired. You have to give them great ideas. You have to be totally authentic and clear. You have to be a good storyteller, being able to portray what needs to be done with metaphors and pictures, and stories that take the logic into the magic of inspiration. So, I've learned that leadership is about the people. Management is about things, disciplines, activities, and projects. And so, these two things need to work hand in hand. 

The other thing I've learned about it as we go along is that it's an alchemy between character and competence. We need to have the competence to do the job at hand. We need to know our business. We need to know our industry, and our customs. Those are essential competencies. But character matters most. I heard a statement from Francis Hesselbein's writing the other day that the essential aspect of leadership is being, not doing. It's the hallmarks of character that matter most. And building character is a lifelong journey. You're not born with character. It's an intentional process of establishing your core beliefs, the basic principles that guide your behavior and inspire others. 

And every single successful leader that I've observed has got what Marcus Aurelius, the Roman philosopher called your own personal command center. Your belief system about leadership is transparent to others and is based on a sound set of values, whether it's Nelson Mandela, whether it's Hans Westberg, who runs Verizon, who I know very well. If you ask them about leadership and how they lead, they will give you a very explicit philosophy. It's transparent. So, leadership is not about power. It's about service. And at the end of the day, it's a deliberate, intentional philosophy, not an ad hoc process of making decisions and exercising power. And that's the part of it, I think, that we all need to learn more and more about. That journey never ends.

Adam: Willie, I love the quote you shared. Leadership is being, not doing.

Willie: Yes.

Adam: What matters to you most and why? What is your belief system? Who are you? Something that I share with audiences that I speak to all the time. Before you can effectively lead others, you need to be able to lead your own life. And it all starts with self-awareness. Understanding who you are as a human being. Having that down. If you're not there on the individual level, if you're not there on the core human level, who's going to follow you?

Willie: That's absolutely right. And they don't follow you when you try and exert power over them. They follow you when you inspire them with ideas bigger than themselves, together with the opportunity of making a difference to that outcome. I found that that's really the ultimate motivation. And employees always have three questions in their minds. And at times of change and turmoil, these three questions are burning in their minds. The following question one, what are we aiming to achieve and why should I care? Leaders make people care. Second question, where does my department fit in and what's expected of me? Third question. How will we measure success and what's in it for me? And what's in it for people is very seldom money. It's meaning. It's fulfillment. It's coming to work with a kind of a sense on making a real difference. And those, for me, I'm always very conscious that leaders have to answer those three questions and address people, and connect with people at those levels. Those questions are always there and require a concentric mind.

Adam: And for leaders to make people care, they have to care.

Willie: Yeah. One of the things, sometimes I talk to people in the middle of an organization, although my philosophy is we all lead from the middle, not from the top. There's always somebody up there at a higher level, it's a board or your investors or something. So, we're all dedicated to a higher level of some kind or another. Your job is to create a career line of sight. to what the corporation's main priorities are, and then to translate them into the priorities in your particular functional business unit or region, whatever you're responsible for. 

But don't just report it to say, oh, our leaders want to do X or Y. That's not leadership. That's just conveying a message. You have to believe it yourself. You have to say, this is what we're doing, and this is why it's important, and this is the difference that we can make to something that really matters. If you're not a believer, they won't, just as you say. Don't just be a conveyor, a messenger of what needs to be done, because the top wants you to do it. That's not leadership at all, where you sit at home and send an email. It's really getting people inspired, but demonstrating that inspiration yourself is the starting point.

Adam: Willie, I asked you, what are the key characteristics of the best leaders? And you just shared one right there, authenticity.

Willie: Absolutely. That's it. That's number one. Authenticity is number one. And part of that is to demonstrate some degree of vulnerability because that's human. If you don't know, say so. and say, please help me understand this. Don't pretend that you know something. You're not all-knowing at all. If you make a mistake, admit it and then send that message. Everything we do is symbolic as leaders. We set an example and everybody's watching. I love Ralph Waldo Emerson's formulation when he said, what you do speak so loudly that I cannot hear what you say. 

So, we set an example. And that's part of authenticity. People know we all make mistakes. If we don't own up to them, we can't learn from them. So, my formulation about mistake-making is to look at it as kind of two sides. Risk-taking has got a reverse side of the coin, which is mistake-making. And if you're not making any mistakes, you're not taking any risks and you're seeking safety. And leadership is not a safe hub. We need to be bold enough to take prudent mistakes, and prudent risks. 

Now, if we make a mistake, The key thing is then the value of the learning has to be bigger than the cost of the mistake. Otherwise, the organization is not learning anything. And we make progress through learning. If we bury mistakes, we bury the learning. Getting an organization to behave as a learning system in that way requires us as leaders to demonstrate it every single day.

Adam: Own your mistakes, learn from your mistakes. Your walk has to match your talk. You've painted a picture of what leaders need to do to inspire the people who work for them. On the flip side, when we think about toxic leaders, It's the exact opposite. A toxic leader is someone who will never own up to a mistake they make, will make mistakes and make the same mistake over and over and over again, will say something, and do the exact opposite.

Willie: Yeah, I think about leadership as a triangle, just based on this line of thinking we're talking about now. And at the base of the triangle is your basic set of principles or values. And then you've got the two angles. And the first is your words, and the second is your deeds. And now when any one of those elements doesn't support the other elements like an ecosystem, a reinforcing system, your leadership falls apart. If you act in ways that are not true to your principles, your leadership is in trouble. If you say one thing and do another, your leadership is in trouble. So, there is an element there of consistency. 

Now here's an interesting thing though. We're all human. We all fall short from time to time. We're not perfect. The big thing there is to know what you have fallen short of. And people who know you and know your principles will see when you've fallen short of your own principles and you say, oh boy, that was a mistake. And you don't need to go much further because they know you, you're authentic. You may say, well, like Confucius said, if you want to be a leader, you must first be a human being. And so, I think those three parts of the triangle need to work together. It's not complicated, but it's not easy. because it takes a lot of thinking practicing and demonstrating.

Adam: And comfort in your own skin.

Willie: Yes, exactly. One of the first lessons of leadership, interestingly enough, occurred when I was six years old. This might sound like a strange example to you, but it was the beginning of the Second World War. I was living in South Africa, my father was a humble guy, he was a station master, and we were living in a small town at that time. And there was no conscription in South Africa because the war was 6,000 miles away in Europe. And by 1943, the Allies were losing badly, they were on the back foot, and it looked as if Hitler and his armies were going to prevail. 

And my father decided to enlist as a volunteer. and go 6,000 miles away to fight in this war that did not involve South Africa. And I vaguely remember conversations with my mother around the kitchen table, saying to my father, you've got two young kids. The war is far away. It doesn't threaten us. Why are you signing up to go and do this? And he said, in a very simple way, it was a man of very few words, but steadfast in his beliefs. And he said because it's the right thing to do. I remember waving him goodbye as the train pulled out of the station in the small town towards the seaport and then off on a ship to who knew where, how long was the war going to last? Would he come back alive? And I remember tugging at my mother's shirt and saying again, why is he leaving us? And she said because he believes it's the right thing to do. 

Now, as I grew older, he came back safely. So that's the good part of the story. But he's lived his life that way, according to his principles. And what I learned from that, and I try and emulate in the way I conduct myself, is the understanding of moral courage. That's the courage. It's unlike the physical courage of skydiving just for the thrill of it. This is doing the right thing in the interest of a cause that matters, regardless of what risks you might incur personally. 

And I think standing up for the right thing is what organizations need to do. There needs to be an ethical set of standards. Otherwise, you corrupt the entire organization. is that we don't just do good things, we do them in the right way, with honesty, with integrity, with respect to the outside world, to the laws that we all have to obey in our countries, et cetera. And we have to have a system of calling each other out. Do not bury ethical breaches. They need to be dealt with. So, it's imbuing that, and that's embedded in everything I do, that I strive to exercise moral courage. Do the right thing. It always involves a risk of some kind. Unpopularity is one of those things. Who doesn't want to be popular and accepted in your group? But sometimes you have to just stand up and say, this is not right. 

And that's really what leaders do. That's what Nelson Mandela did in South Africa. He just steadfastly said, this is not right. And he went to jail for life. but eventually negotiated a peaceful solution. And therein lies a whole story of moral courage of doing the right thing, regardless of the circumstances.

Adam: What is the greatest ethical challenge that you faced as a leader and how did you navigate it?

Willie: I was in the liquor industry for a good part of my career. And it's an interesting system. You can't sell directly to retail. You have to sell through distributors who handle your brands for you and sell to retail. Handing contracts to distributors is a very important part of your role. Finding the right distributor that's the right fit for your brand portfolio. And have they got the right skills to reach distribution and sales? Very important decision. And of course, the distributors were always coming into my office to say, choose me, switch from what you've got, I'll do a better job for you. And I remember vividly changing distributors because the distributor we had in a very large part of the country, I won't mention names and places here, was not doing a good job. 

And I had to say, well, look, we have to terminate, I'm going to appoint somebody else. I called the head of that distribution organization into my office and said, we’d like to appoint you and he has a draft contract. How does this look, et cetera, et cetera? And he said, oh, this is wonderful. Now it's worth millions of dollars to him annually. And I brought my legal counsel in and said, if you're happy with it, if you want to bring your own legal counsel to study it further, he said, no, the contract looks fine. And he signed it and my legal counsel left the room and we were drinking coffee. 

And this person said to me, so Willie, what else is there? And I said, there's nothing else. I'm looking forward to our relationship flourishing and doing great things together. He said, are you sure there's nothing else I can do for you? And I began to realize that he was asking me whether I wanted him to give me some money. And suddenly a number of pieces fell into place. I had noticed in the liquor industry, a number of people in various positions, living a lavish life that seemed to be way beyond their income. I subsequently discovered there was quite a bit of fraud and I had to deal with it in a couple of instances. 

And I realized I was working in an industry that invited, it wasn't rampant, but it was there. People did it from time to time. And realized how important it was to be absolutely false right and say no. Well, the whole organization becomes aware of this. in any event, ethics best defined, I think, was it by Socrates, Aristotle, one of the great three, anyway, it doesn't matter which one, I think it was Plato, who defined ethics as the ability or the determination to act in the public interest, regardless of who is watching, and without the expectation of punishment or reward, but doing it for its own sake. 

That was an example where it's attractive. I mean, who wouldn't want under the table, here's $5 million? You can hide it. You can put it in a Swiss bank account. It's okay. I've done it with a number of other people. These are things that happen in the business world. And the moment you step into that realm, you're corrupting your own moral standards. You will never be happy with ill-gotten gains. And I think you begin to corrupt the standards in your own organization.

Adam: Willi, what can anyone listening to this conversation do to become more successful personally and professionally?

Willie: I wish I had a magic bullet. I don't. I have a philosophy and it's mine. I'm happy to share it with you. I believe as Voltaire wrote in his book, you said we all have to cultivate our own gardens. And I think that's what leaders have to do. You have to cultivate your own garden. And I think that's an important thing for us to do. Now, if I think about what I've tried to cultivate that's worked for me, and we're all unique human beings, we need to have our own individual prescription that defines our character and our principles. 

But I have a few of them. One of them is the ethical standards. The other is practicing moral courage. And then in terms of competencies, I mean, those are the kind of elements of character that I think are important, which is this authenticity, being a learner, giving the right example to others, et cetera. With those elements of character, with that in place, you need to think about the competencies for effective leadership. 

And I come to those. One is simplicity. We have as leaders to create increasing simplicity from a world of increasing complexity. People are paralyzed by complexity. Always make sure that you've got a clear set of priorities that are simple and become the kind of clarion call for the whole organization to act in unison. A clear set of priorities, total simplicity. I think above all, is to create a learning organization. 

Now, this is what I've learned from evolutionary science, Charles Darwin. If you look at nature overall, the species that survive are those that are best adapted to the external environment. The external environment won't adapt to us. We have to adapt to the external environment. So an essential part of organizational success is outside-in thinking. not inside-out thinking. The wrong question is, what should we do? The world doesn't care what we do. They care only what they get. So always this discipline, look out of the window first, then look inside and look at the mirror. 

So, cultivating this thing of learning about the external environment is literally a survival imperative. I think the Darwinian science that we've learned about the survival of organisms applies equally well to the survival of organizations. You learn your way to success through a process of outside thinking and the ability to adapt to a constantly changing environment. So, I think the lifespan in an organization is not a factor of the number of years it's been in existence. It's a factor of its adaptive capacity. and that's capacity to learn about the external environment better and faster than your competitors do.

Adam: Willie, thank you for all of your great advice, and thank you for being a part of Thirty Minute Mentors.

Willie: My pleasure. Thank you very much for the conversation.


Adam Mendler is an entrepreneur, writer, speaker, educator, and nationally recognized authority on leadership. Adam is the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one on one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal-winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities, and non-profit organizations. Adam has written extensively on leadership and related topics, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. Adam teaches graduate-level courses on leadership at UCLA and is an advisor to numerous companies and leaders. A Los Angeles native, Adam is a lifelong Angels fan and an avid backgammon player.

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