Executive Forum: Doug Devos – Transcript

00:02Welcome to the executive forum speaker series from Purdue University's Daniel School of Business. I'm your host Dave Randich and I'm a lecturer here at the Daniel School teaching undergrads on the West Lafayette campus. Executive Forum brings students and industry leaders together. Our speakers inspire our students and the public with insights on trends in their industry and guidance for students as they develop their

00:28business leadership skills. Today we welcome Doug Devos, co-chair of Amway, the world's largest direct selling company. Come along with us as we build the future of business. Doug, on behalf of Purdue University, the Daniel School of Business, and the Executive Forum, welcome and thank you for taking the time today.

00:46>> Thanks for uh thanks for letting me be here. Love to be here. Good to see everybody. >> So, I'm going to jump right in on leadership. Uh, this week in my classes, we're all talking about leadership styles and and how we can learn to be leaders while we're here at at the Daniel School. We just heard about your long list of of leadership opportunities you've had. Can you describe for us your leadership style and perhaps how it's evolved as you've gotten more mature?

01:11>> Sure. Sure. So let to give you an idea. Amway is located in a small town outside of Grand Rapids, Michigan called Ada. Ada, Michigan is a tiny little town. Actually, if you look at the Google maps, you will see that the Amway complex is bigger than Ada Village. Uh and so the leadership style that I learned, it was a family business. My father and his business partner started the company. Uh I grew up in it, but it the leadership style was developed because it's

01:39because you're in such a small town. And I would say leadership is a contact sport. You know everybody. You know people working at the company, but you know their sisters and brother and you know their parents and you know their kids and you know your kids know their kids and you're all running into each other at the grocery store, the gas station or whatever the case may be.

01:56You're connected. So the leadership style I grew up with and what I watched with my dad and with Jay, it was very personal. You're dealing with people. You know, the Amway idea wasn't just about our products or our business model or or manufacturing and all the other things that we did. It was about people we were working with. And so, it was always important for us to to make sure you were connecting with people. You know, I

02:22I I watched and I myself would just spend time walking around the company. You know, that management by walking around sort of style. Uh I some of the you know, the best times are, you know, the the things I've learned in manufacturing. By the way, just so you know, Amway has a garage for a a tanker car, a rail car for our toothpaste manufacturing. I think that's the coolest thing that we have going. So, uh, but to to be there with everybody in the cosmetics plant, and to see what

02:50they're doing, see the pride in all the areas of the work that people are doing is something that's that shapes your style that, you know, you're connected with people. And so I think that's where I would say that's what I watched when I grew up when I you know uh you know being at the company picnics being at all the Christmas program all the sorts of things that we did. Uh that's what I watched and saw and that's what I tried to do. So my style was like that. Uh

03:17it's a global business so you get on airplane a lot. You just got to be there with people. I love technology. I love sometimes not traveling and doing a video conference. That's okay. But at the end of the day you're breaking bread. you're having a cup of coffee.

03:31You're having a conversation. It's the things you do at the meeting and it's the things you did before the meeting and it's the things you did after the meeting. So, it's that style. And I'd encourage all of us to say it's, you know, life is a contact sport. It's the people around you and engage in those relationships. And sometimes it's messy.

03:50And I say it's a contact sport because sometimes it's messy. But I think that's the that's the style that I saw and that's what uh that I try to demonstrate. >> That's terrific. That's terrific. And and you know in my experience as an executive I used to bring my boards to factories or when I was on boards take them go into factories >> and I'd see a lot of board members who wouldn't make eye contact with people on the shop floor.

04:12>> Yeah. Yeah. >> And so how do you break that culture down? Maybe it never occurred at Amway, but what if you were on another board and you saw that? How do you how do you break that barrier down? It it's it's just the initiative and it's just the recognition of the value that everyone has with whatever work they're doing throughout the company, you know, and and throughout the business and throughout our world, our communities, right? Every every job has value. All work is valuable and important. A and

04:40when you recognize that in people, then you have a fun time learning about what they're doing and and so what's going on? What are you doing here? So, I would do that a lot. I'd walk up behind people, what are we doing here? You know, what what product are we running right now? what's happening or even some of the office areas. Okay, what project are you working on? What's going on? And uh so I I I I think you create the culture that breaks that down. You create that culture where that's what's supposed to happen. And so one of the

05:06things that we try to do is it it's not one way. So all the people, you know, that that you're you know seeing in a work environment, they're seeing you too. They're talking to their colleagues. They're talking back and forth. It's not an unknown or a unique experience for somebody to be walking on the plan for. That's what we're supposed to be doing. And uh and we're supposed to be learning about what's going on and telling the story.

05:28>> Yeah. Yeah. So I I love your point about every job is important and every person in those jobs is important, right, to all of us. >> Yeah. It's it really goes back to this value of personal worth. Each one of you, you have a unique set of talents and skills and gifts, but you're more than that. You're more than just a bag of your, you know, a package of talents and skills and gifts. They help to describe you, but they don't define you.

05:52It's your character. It's who you are as a person. It's your belief system. It's the ideas that that you hold as valuable and the values that you want to live in your life and that you're going to express by your actions and by your interactions, by not just your words, but by your behaviors. When you turn those beliefs into behaviors, so you you start with beliefs. I kind of always say you start with beliefs in your heart and that guides how you think about things

06:18and then that guides how you act. And so when you believe that everyone is special and you're created with unique gifts and talents and characteristics and then you start to think about people in that light and then you say okay well what's your gift? What can you do? How do you add value? How can I help you work with you so that we can add more value together? you know, then you start to act differently and and that's the

06:45important piece when you roll that out, when you when you create that package. And that's why I would encourage all of you to to to think about where are you in your core? Who are you? What not just describes you that people would say from the outside in, but who are you from the inside out? And then at a at a time here and classes here and in this experience here at Purdue, you have a time to refine that. Okay, how do I identify

07:11that? How do I learn about the world around me? How do I express and how do I become a valued member in society, in my community, in my neighborhood, in my family, whatever the uh whatever the case may be. >> And Doug, you strike me as a leader who's learned to lead with some humility. And many of us, as we get a little older, we start to think about that more.

07:31>> Yeah. And and how do you balance humility with decisiveness and a sense of urgency when we're under massive pressure? >> Yeah. Yeah. So, so I'll start with humility. And I say it's it's pretty easy because I could see my report cards and and I knew I was not the smartest tool in sharpest tool in the shed, right? You know, it's like, okay, there's a lot of smart people around here. And so, what I try to do is just

07:58be curious, you know, okay, what do you do? where are you from? What do you think? How do you think about this? And and I try to get good at asking questions and and in a business environment, you know, that would be well, how are you seeing it? What what's the data say? Where does it come from?

08:12What's that mean to you? Rather than somebody presented, I said, well, this is what I think and here's what, you know, you know, we're going to try to, you know, proclaim a direction here. No, we're going to discover a direction together. We're we're we're going to figure that out. So you have to be, you know, curious to be asking questions which gets to the understanding expression that you don't know it all. And the other piece that

08:39comes with this, I had a great pastor friend who would say the other side of that is you kind of want to end everything, every statement that you make with, well, I could be wrong. You know, you know, this is what I believe, this is what I think, this is what I see, but I could be wrong. You tell me. What are you seeing? Are you seeing something different? Am I missing something? We all have blind spots, don't we? You know, we all have have things that we miss along the way. So, hey, you've been looking at a little bit

09:03differently. What do you see? What's going on? And and so you you stay in that curious mode, but you recognize there's a purpose to it. You have to make a decision. You have to move quickly in business and in life.

09:18You have to kind of, you know, assemble this view that you have on a certain subject. And I think as a leader and if you you know the term servant leader requires you to have that sense of urgency and decisiveness because your team is like what do you want me to do?

09:38Well what is the vision? What is the strategy? What's going on here? So you have to make decisions and and so I think that sometimes speeds up the process of being curious. You better ask better questions. You better ask more questions. you better do it faster so that you can get to a place of saying, "Okay, here's where we're going. Here's what it looks like. I can describe it in the best way that I can." And and and okay, people say now they have answers.

10:01And then the next question, okay, what's the first step? What's the next step? How do we go? How do we improve? How do we get better as we go uh down that track? But you you have to be decisive. You have to be clear, you know, in in a big organization. And you have to communicate that. You know, we we found sometimes in uh you know, we would develop a strategy in this, you know, in the senior executive team and we'd be talking about it for a while and then we'd roll it out and then it was like

10:29we'd wonder why nobody got it, you know, and they said, "Well, you guys been talking about it for months. Now you decide to tell us." Great. Well, you know, you might need more than one meeting to tell us. You might need to elaborate a little bit more. You might need to interact with us a little bit more. You might need to, you know, do a few different things. And we're like, "Oh gosh, yeah, that makes sense, doesn't it?" So, so, you know, being a servant leader doesn't take away from decisiveness or direction or urgency,

10:56uh, but it it adds in a sense of humility that you're working with the team and and that you recognize the value that each team member is bringing and and that you're connecting with them uh in a way so that you can all be better uh together.

11:10>> That's terrific. And you know, I know that you were on the football team when you were here, and you're going to go talk to the squad later today, I think, which is really exciting. >> Um, I actually didn't make the team when I was here at Purdue, but but um I always tell my students that if you want to if you want to be able to do things under pressure, you got to get reps in when you're not under pressure, right?