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Herman Cain: Becoming the 'CEO of self'

Herman Cain believes he has one gift that has allowed him to attain every goal he's set for himself: the ability to inspire. "Great leaders inspire others," the conservative radio talk show host and former president of Godfather's Pizza told about 60 business students last week in a speech hosted by the W. P. Carey School of Business. "But more importantly, great leaders inspire themselves."

2008-09-24

Herman Cain believes he has one gift that has allowed him to attain every goal he's set for himself: the ability to inspire. "Great leaders inspire others," the conservative radio talk show host and former president of Godfather's Pizza told about 60 business students last week in a speech at the Memorial Union. It was hosted by the W. P. Carey School of Business. "But more importantly, great leaders inspire themselves."

Cain literally wrote the book on the subject, first authoring "Leadership is Common Sense" in 2000 and "CEO of Self: You are in Charge" the next year. He wove threads from the latter throughout his address to students he applauded for attending. "Your classmates that chose not to come, they're going to miss the secret to success," he joked.

"You're going to have to tell them about it and they're going to regret that they did not come." Maybe it wasn't a joke. Cain came from humble beginnings 62 years ago in Georgia where his mother worked as a domestic and his father juggled three jobs to educate his children. Every Friday, Cain said, "Dad would give my brother and I a quarter.

One day a week we could eat lunch in the cafeteria We were thrilled — a hot dog, an apple and a carton of milk." That quarter was the price of admission into hallowed ground — that school cafeteria, a luxury they could afford only one day a week. At 16, Cain set his first goal, to find a job that paid $20,000 a year. He vowed to do anything legal to reach that goal.

The young Cain had read that in order to qualify for an American Express card, the applicant had to earn a salary of $10,000. "I wanted two of them. I wanted to be real successful." He began to understand that success would come from being in charge of one's own life, to be the "CEO of self." "It's not a tragedy to die with dreams unfulfilled," he said. "But it is a tragedy to have no dreams. Great leaders have goals. Great leaders always have dreams. Always."

Setting a goal

After graduating from Morehouse College in 1967, Cain found a job that earned $7,729 and met his mother's definition of "a good job" — he worked in a shirt and tie in an air-conditioned office. As a mathematician for the Department of the Navy, Cain began climbing the first of many corporate ladders, always reaching for the next goal. "You don't whisper your goal to yourself," he said. "Say it out loud so that all your senses can participate in the process."

He noticed that he and another mathematician at the Department of the Navy had nearly parallel careers. Each received outstanding reviews for job performance. But his colleague always earned a promotion two months before Cain. He asked his boss why. The other man had a master's degree, he was told. So Cain set another goal, to earn a master's degree in computer science from Purdue University. His doubting employer warned that the course would be hard and he'd have to maintain a B average. "I know," Cain responded. "I read the bulletin."

When he returned to his job with a diploma in hand, Cain was promoted to supervisor, this time leap-frogging over his colleague. He asked his boss why and was told Cain had demonstrated leadership qualities. His new salary? $20,001. "If you don't have a goal," he told the students, "how do you know you got there?"

But, he cautioned, "It has to be your goal, step one to being the chief executive officer of yourself." Cain distinguished between a dream and a goal: "A goal is something you can quantify and the steps necessary to get there A dream is something out there that you're not exactly sure how you're going to get [to]."

The goal is the path to the dream. "The thing that connects your goals and your next goal and your next goal to your dream is called faith — in yourself and in your God." The path to success is not always a straight one. It usually zigzags. Successful people are those who are ready to seize opportunities along the way. "Ask Bill Gates, ask Warren Buffet," Cain said. "Success is not a straight line." But in following that zigzag, other goals and dreams might be discovered along the way.

Vice presidency in his sights

Cain's second goal was to be "vice president of something." He pored over business magazines and the Wall Street Journal that showed the social life of vice presidents, their ski trips. He told himself, "That looks cool." His family had never produced a vice president. There were no vice presidents at his church or his social circle. By now, Cain was working as a business analyst at Coca Cola, and he realized that was not the path to a vice presidency.

He would have to change jobs to get on the veep track. At age 31, Cain joined the Pillsbury Company and was made Vice President of Corporate Systems and Services. There, he watched a once-great American company disintegrate. He put the blame squarely on the CEO. "I watched how the CEO didn't do his job," he charged, "like Lehman Brothers, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Merrill Lynch, AIG. There's a lot of blame to go around, but it starts with the CEOs They didn't do their job. Period."

He curbed a momentary flash of pique. "But that's another whole speech. I'll come back later." At Pillsbury, Cain watched the company fall from a signature Fortune 500 company to ultimately being sold off and becoming nothing but a brand name. The faulty CEO, he said, made the mistake of mistrusting those around him. "You have to surround yourself with people that are smarter than you," he suggested. "I was never intimidated by someone smarter than me."

Now Cain had another goal: to be president of something. He was 34. Most corporate presidents, he noticed, were 45 to 55. So he gave himself until age 50 to climb the corporate ladder at Pillsbury, which had acquired Burger King and Godfather's Pizza. He agreed to transfer to the restaurant division of the company and begin climbing another ladder. He took a pay cut.

He lost his plushy vice president's office. He enrolled in fast-track manager training at Burger King and studied the business from the ground up. When restaurants in the Philadelphia area began performing below par, Cain was dispatched as vice president. The area soared from last place to first. Cain was promoted to district manager, then regional vice president. Again, he took his region to first place.

Hail to the chief

One day Pillsbury's executive vice president of restaurant operations called him into his office and announced Cain was being promoted to president of Godfather's Pizza, a company with a quality product but poor sales performance. "I had the dream of becoming president of something. I focused on working as hard as I could and someone noticed me," he said. "They reached into the organization and plucked me out." He began his new job April 1, 1986, at age 40.

What Cain didn't know then was that Pillsbury expected Godfather's Pizza to fail. Oblivious, Cain worked his usual magic and turned the company around. Cain had one more goal, but he never got the chance to articulate it before it became a reality. In 1988 he and a group of his executives bought Godfather's Pizza from Pillsbury.

He summed up the lessons of his business experience: "It has to be your dream, and it has to be your goal. Not everybody's dream is going to be achieved in a straight line. Not everybody's dream or goal is going to be achieved on a fast track Your job is to continuously prepare yourself for whatever opportunities come along."

Asked if he'd ever had a career failure, he said with a laugh, "Yes, but I'm not going to tell you about them." No, he continued, he'd never had any major career failures but had seen some financial failures he blamed on investing in someone else. "You're not going to make every decision perfect," he said. Indecision and regret paralyze some people, he said. His advice: "Make a decision, then don't look back." And be decisive. Faced with several job offers, he said, some people stall. "Pick one!" he roared.

Keys to company success

His three keys to returning Godfather's to profitability were to ensure a great product, great service and immaculately clean restaurants. In any company, he suggested that attitude is paramount, and the answer is threefold:

• Identify those employees who want the company to succeed the way you do.
• Identify the naysayers.
• Identify those who will deliberately work against you.

How to find those people in the first place? That's a tricky proposition, Cain agreed, saying that for all the background checks and aptitude tests, "it's a flip of the coin." Success in hiring comes about half the time, he said, then adjusted his estimate upward to 60 percent. One young woman despaired that she won't reach her goal for another 20 years. "Break it into chunks," Cain told her. One large goal can be divided into smaller ones, with satisfaction coming as each is realized.

In a run for the U.S. Senate in 2004, Cain he was defeated in the Republican primary, coming in a close second. He learned little about himself, he said, because he was determined not to let politics change him. But the experience taught him about the political system. "I learned more about the government and politics and the process than I did about myself. The greatest downfall within each political party is internal politics. It hurts the party. I saw it."

Bottom Line:

Cain cited the three steps to becoming CEO of Self. He's dubbed it R.O.I. R: Remove barriers that prevent self-motivation to achieve goals. His boss, he said, had doubted Cain could earn a master's degree. But lack of a master's was holding him back, so he removed that barrier. O: Obtain the right results by working on the right problems. I: Inspiration. Learn to inspire yourself.

Management