Adam Bryant conducts interviews of senior-level executives that appear in his “Corner Office” column each week in the SundayBusiness section of The New York Times. Here are a few insights provided during an interview of Carla Cooper, chief executive of Daymon Worldwide, a private-brand development company. She says that in bringing change to a business, “don’t start trying to make people decisions until your strategy and your structure are set.”
To read the complete interview as well as Bryant’s interviews of other executives, please click here.
Photo credit: Earl Wilson/The New York Times
* * *
Bryant: When you were a youngster, were you in leadership roles or doing entrepreneurial things?
Cooper: I’m a musician. That’s my background. My first job was playing classical organ for a funeral home when I was 12. I then played the organ for church, and as I went on and majored in music I graduated to larger churches. I learned to direct the choir with my right hand while I was playing the organ with my left hand and my feet.
When I went to college, they said, “What do you want to major in?” The only thing I really knew at that point was music, so I decided to be a music major — it was a performance degree, not a teaching degree. I probably shouldn’t have done that, since there aren’t that many professional organists in the world. So when I graduated, I started selling organs. That’s how I got into selling and marketing, and that’s really driven my career.
Bryant: What about your parents’ influence?
Cooper: Accountability, honesty and integrity were big in my family, as were being humble and thinking of other people. You had to be able to get along with other people. Public speaking was also a big thing for my dad. He thought that if you could command an audience and really connect with people, you’d have a leg up in life.
Bryant: And did he make you practice in the house?
Cooper: I had to write papers and deliver those. I would also give sermons in church. I got into debate as well, and that helps make you quick on your feet.
Bryant: Tell me about your first management role, and what you learned from it.
Cooper: I managed a chain of music stores in Kentucky. When you manage people for the first time, you don’t know what you don’t know. What you do know is your trade. I knew how to play, and I knew how to sell to individuals and to groups. So you try to do your job and you try to do everybody else’s job, too. If you’re ambitious and you’ve got a lot of energy and you’re pretty good at what you do, you can do your job and you can do their job, too. But it’s not helping them grow, of course. At some point, you have to learn to get things done through others.
My boss at Procter & Gamble eventually taught me that my job was to create the environment for my employees so that they can be as successful as they can be. The second thing he said is that it’s hard to turn the Queen Mary on a dime. The lesson was that the larger the organization is, the longer it will take to transform not only the business, but also the culture and the leadership. You have to recognize that. You have to really push hard, and the intensity of the turn has to be constant. But you can’t expect to turn around in six months because it’s not going to happen.
* * *
Adam Bryant, deputy national editor of The New York Times, oversees coverage of education issues, military affairs, law, and works with reporters in many of the Times’ domestic bureaus. He also conducts interviews with CEOs and other leaders for Corner Office, a weekly feature in the SundayBusiness section and on nytimes.comthat he started in March 2009. In his book, The Corner Office: Indispensable and Unexpected Lessons from CEOs on How to Lead and Succeed, (Times Books), he analyzes the broader lessons that emerge from his interviews with more than 70 leaders. To read an excerpt, please click here.
His next book, Quick and Nimble: Lessons from Leading CEOs on How to Create a Culture of Innovation, will also be published by Times Books (January 2014). To contact him, please click here.