HBR / Digital Article / Walgreens CEO Roz Brewer to Leaders: Put Your Phones Away …
and Listen to Employees
Walgreens CEO Roz Brewer
to Leaders: Put Your Phones
Away and Listen to
Employees
Published on HBR.org / December 09, 2021 / Reprint H06RN0
Video Available Online
To view, please visit this article at HBR.org.
Rosalind Brewer, CEO of Walgreens Boots Alliance and one of only two
Black female CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, says bringing her whole
self to work has been the key to her success.
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HBR / Digital Article / Walgreens CEO Roz Brewer to Leaders: Put Your Phones Away …
and Listen to Employees
HBR editor in chief Adi Ignatius sat down with Brewer in this episode of
our video series “The New World of Work” to talk about:
• How inclusion and equity—making employees feel seen and heard—
are just as important as diversity metrics
• How to ensure that employees feel empowered and love where they
work
• The importance of learning a business thoroughly, even if it means a
sideways career move.
When Brewer accepted a lower-level position at Walmart when she left
Kimberly-Clark as group president, some people questioned the move —
but she says she needed to start there to learn about retail. “I was in a
learning mode, but I took a step back to get ahead,” she says. “That’s
when my career began to really explode.”
“The New World of Work” explores how top-tier executives see the
future and how their companies are trying to set themselves up for
success. Each week, Ignatius interviews a top leader on LinkedIn Live —
previous interviews included Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and former
PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooryi. He also shares an inside look at these
conversations —and solicits questions for future discussions — in a
newsletter just for HBR subscribers. If you’re a subscriber, you can sign
up here.
ADI IGNATIUS: Roz, welcome to the show and thank you very much for
being with us.
ROZ BREWER: Thank you. I’m glad to be here.
ADI IGNATIUS: Let’s start with your career. You have had a series of top
jobs at Sam’s Club, at Starbucks, now at Walgreens Boots Alliance. Talk
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HBR / Digital Article / Walgreens CEO Roz Brewer to Leaders: Put Your Phones Away …
and Listen to Employees
about the challenges of walking into a new company, a new industry in
some cases, and projecting the kind of confidence that you need to be
able to do your job from day one.
ROZ BREWER: Great. That’s a very good question, especially now
having walked into a healthcare company in the middle of a pandemic,
and I think that was a pretty gutsy move and every day it’s proven to be
true. But I will tell you that I have been fortunate to really accumulate so
many different learnings over my career, and I’m pretty adamant about
making sure that I am clear about my role, what my intent is, and how
do I bring together my toolbox.
I think the one thread that I can pull through all of my roles and
opportunities is my personal leadership, and that’s the way I show up
first and foremost. Because most of these business problems that I face
in these leadership roles, it takes character, it takes guts, it takes
problem solving, and when I bring that basic toolkit to bear in these
different roles it has been proven effective for me every time.
The other thing I will tell you is that whenever I take on a new role, I
become a real student of the business. I remember when I joined
Walmart after being with Kimberly-Clark for such a long time, and being
in consumer products, and going into retail. My job was based in
Atlanta, Georgia, but I decided to move myself to Bentonville, Arkansas,
and go on a learning journey for 90 days. And I stayed in a little small
hotel and came into the home office there and really studied them
during what I call the honeymoon period, and it was the best thing I
could’ve ever done. I meet people. I learned more about retail. And I
really put myself in a learning position and not in a position initially of
leadership, and I chose to learn and be an advocate and open-minded
about what the opportunities were ahead of me.
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HBR / Digital Article / Walgreens CEO Roz Brewer to Leaders: Put Your Phones Away …
and Listen to Employees
ADI IGNATIUS: As a Fortune 500 CEO you are in a very elite group. As a
black female CEO in that group you are truly in rarefied territory, so
how do you balance the pressure, the scrutiny, the expectations being
practically the only person like yourself in these fields?
ROZ BREWER: I will tell you sometimes it’s a lonely position because
you don’t see yourself in different environments that you’re in, and
then I look at myself personally and say, what can I do to change this
because it could be difficult at certain times? I think that the
environment is opening up more to people recognizing the differences
and appreciating the differences.
Many times I am called upon and asked to give my opinion on diversity
issues, and I will be honest with you: I am as frank as I possibly can be,
because I do think I hold a unique position. When I get in these settings
I take advantage of an opportunity to learn and educate those around
me, because I can feel it when they’re unfamiliar with me or my culture.
I don’t hide my culture. I talk about it very openly. I feel like that is
almost my second reason for being. Everybody has their purpose in how
you get into a situation or an environment, but I take advantage of it
and do everything I can to teach and expose people to my culture and
who I am.
I learned early in my career, I’d say maybe five to seven years out of
college, that I really wanted to bring my whole self to work so I don’t
cover up my culture at all, and I think that that’s helpful for me because
they know how to count on me and what the expectations are in terms
of interacting with me.
ADI IGNATIUS: I’m guessing throughout your career you’ve often been
the only woman, maybe the only person of color, in a room full of
executives. You talked about bringing yourself, but can you talk a little
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HBR / Digital Article / Walgreens CEO Roz Brewer to Leaders: Put Your Phones Away …
and Listen to Employees
bit more about how you manage that situation and how you make it
work?
ROZ BREWER: Yes. I really do look forward to the day where I’m not
really ‘the only’ in these rooms and environments, and I’m doing a lot
personally to try and make that happen. The way I deal with this is
really I’m no different than other individuals in the room, and I try and
share that as well. My accomplishments come from hard work, come
from exposure. One of the things I find myself doing, fortunately or
unfortunately, is I have to run a few people through my resume because
I think they look at my titles and say, does she really do the work, how
did she get there? But I have some absolute real lived experiences.
When I was at Starbucks I worked the drive-thru window. When I was at
Walmart I had three trucks at night so I could learn distribution
logistics, warehousing, at those companies. So, I’ve done the worst and
the best of the jobs. Sometimes I have to remind people of that. And it
gives me credibility that I’ve not been a token. I’ve not been granted
these jobs. I’ve absolutely had to work very hard to get where I am.
And so I find myself doing that. It doesn’t bother me. I’m hoping, I’m an
optimist, and I hope that is not what the next person has to do, but for
now I find myself having to really go on a deep dive in terms of my
experience and do a lot of storytelling about why I believe in what I
believe.
I’m on the Business Roundtable, and we’re getting into some really
courageous conversations around the new infrastructure bill. I happen
to have a lot of experience in the space of what it takes to move goods
across the United States, and I’ve been fortunate enough to maybe share
a little bit of that, and maybe people didn’t realize that I had a
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HBR / Digital Article / Walgreens CEO Roz Brewer to Leaders: Put Your Phones Away …
and Listen to Employees
background in that as well, because you can’t be in retail and not
understand supply chain and logistics.
ADI IGNATIUS: Let’s talk more broadly about workplace diversity. As
you know, in the corporate world we’re all trying to move the needle on
diversity, equity, and inclusion, and that has been imperative since the
murder of George Floyd. I wish it didn’t have to be because of that, but
that’s where we are. What’s your view on how companies can pursue a
DEI strategy that truly has meaning?
ROZ BREWER: So, it’s interesting. When the George Floyd incident
happened I actually thought I knew it all and I had been doing a good
job in DE&I. And I quickly realized that even myself, who’s been a huge
proponent of it, myself who is a double minority, myself a mother of a
young black male, I thought I understood this. But I realize that I didn’t.
I realize that I had not been asking all the right questions. I had not been
focusing on the parts of our environment and our social environment
that are very much broken.
I think, myself included, we have been focusing on the D of DE&I and
not equity and not inclusion. And I say that because what really
happened with the George Floyd incident is that I don’t think people
understood the race issues that are happening in our country. Those
that are left out and those who don’t see a way out of their current
situation. But we do see putting numbers in place and hiring numbers.
But have we asked the questions, how can someone survive off of
minimum wage? And where is our country on great education and
access to healthcare?
And also, it made me think back. I took it personally, when all of that
was happening. As you can imagine, I didn’t know George Floyd and not
many of us did. But I tried to put myself in the shoes of him and of his
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HBR / Digital Article / Walgreens CEO Roz Brewer to Leaders: Put Your Phones Away …
and Listen to Employees
family. And I think about the work that I was doing at Walmart. I was
just so adamant about clearing the way and thinking about, “How can I
close in on food deserts.” Right? If people have proper food and access to
the best price, the best cost in food. So, I did everything I could do to put
Walmart stores in the right zip codes. That was my focus. But was I
listening to, “Take it one level lower, Roz.”, is what I said to myself. And
say, “So if you put the food right near them, and there’s still not proper
nutrition and proper healthcare in those places, what’s causing them to
not be able to thrive and rise above the minimum wage job, and go to
the next level, and the next level?”
Because, that’s the history that we know in the United States: give
someone their start and then they take it to the next level. And that’s
because we haven’t done enough work to study and think about, what
happens in someone’s life, when you’re single parenting more than one
child, and you’ve got to care for that child? And it’s more than cost, it’s
about their self-esteem. And so we began to look at things like, how do
you feel about yourself and are we developing that in people?
And so I came back. At that time when George Floyd’s situation was
happening, I was with Starbucks. And we began to do work on providing
mental health access for communities, for all of our employees, and
making that accessible. We began to think about what it means to really
teach and train someone. Are you giving them training materials? Are
you teaching them how to learn? And recognizing that people learn
differently?
For me, that whole situation said that we’ve been putting numbers on
the board from a diversity standpoint, but we’re not creating equity.
And then there’s a piece around inclusion. And I would tell you from an
inclusive standpoint, we have not created environments where people
feel like they can bring their whole self to their opportunities in front of
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HBR / Digital Article / Walgreens CEO Roz Brewer to Leaders: Put Your Phones Away …
and Listen to Employees
them. We don’t recognize from where they’ve come from, and give them
the same, fair chance. And give them an environment where they feel
listened, seen. Listened to and seen. And we don’t do that. We hadn’t
been doing that well.
And so at Starbucks, a group of us, the leadership team, we made it our
business to make sure that, when we are in stores, we are talking to
people and not talking at people. And we’re doing more listening than
talking. And I had already had the practice of never walk into a retail
unit as leader and have your mobile device out. I never do that. I either
leave it in my automobile or put it in my pocket, because I need to be
present, I need to listen.
But that wasn’t enough. I was listening and I wasn’t acting. And I wasn’t
drilling down enough. And I think that’s the next level of leadership, is
that we’re going to have to get pretty gritty about listening and acting
and making people feel included in the environments that we create, as
leaders.
ADI IGNATIUS: So the first takeaway is, leaders, leave your phones in
your pockets. Let me follow up on that. It seems that even when there is
diverse representation, corporate cultures can produce a kind of groupthink and group-speak. How do you create teams, including top-level
executive teams, that are not only diverse on paper, but truly reflect the
kind of diversity of viewpoints that trace varied experiences and
backgrounds?
ROZ BREWER: One of the things that I think about when I’m thinking
about diversity is diversity of thought. Because we can also realize that
there are individuals who may not be of diverse culture, race, or gender
themselves, but where is their mindset? How do they think about
different cultures and different environments?
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HBR / Digital Article / Walgreens CEO Roz Brewer to Leaders: Put Your Phones Away …
and Listen to Employees
One of the things that I began to do in my career is to put agile teams
together. And what I mean by that is, a lot of times, you have your
finance team working in their silo. You’ll have the tech team working in
their silo. But what I really think works is when we create these agile
teams and put them against the biggest problems to solve.
That’s one of the things I’m doing right now at Walgreens Boots
Alliance: make sure that this organization understands, what are the
biggest problems that we’re going to solve? It’s not, do we have enough
technology? But is the technology fulfilling the need for efficiencies in
the organization? Is it creating the right tools for our team members at
stores and for our customers?
So to give you an example, you can have the best strategy in the world.
But if your team operates in a silo-driven environment, you’re not going
to get the results that you expect. For instance, right now we’re trying to
create a tech-enabled healthcare company. I have the same message for
the entire group. And the biggest problem to solve is, how do we become
the best performing stock in the Dow?
And so, when you put that team together, you are forcing finance and
technology and operations and manufacturing all to be in the same
room, in the same discussion, against the biggest problem to solve. And
it’s not finance solving a finance problem. What that actually does: it
gets the diversity of thought to happen. And then you have different
people sitting around the table. And in some cases, one of the outcomes
that I’ve seen is that in certain functions, we have heavier opportunity
for diversity than we do in others.
I would love to see more diversity in technology. It’s coming. But right
now I have a lot of diversity in finance. So I get the opportunity to put a
diverse financial team to a growing diverse tech team in the room.
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HBR / Digital Article / Walgreens CEO Roz Brewer to Leaders: Put Your Phones Away …
and Listen to Employees
Diversity of thought is happening around the problem to solve, and then
the cultures are coming together. And hopefully, we’ll move all of those
opportunities up. But it’s about creating these agile teams and putting
them against the unique problems to solve. And forcing them to relate
to each other and think about how to solve it.
Now, you may say, “Well, where does race and gender come into that?”
It absolutely happens, because if you don’t have people who have the
innate ability to be forced to think different about a problem to solve,
they absolutely are not going to get there on a discussion with race and
gender. So, you have to start where people are. People operate in their
functions. Start where they are and move them to where you want the
organization to go to. It proved successful for me at Starbucks. I’m
replicating it again at WBA.
ADI IGNATIUS: That’s a really interesting approach. You mentioned
culture. I read the transcript of your recent earnings call, and you talked
about the importance of culture in driving corporate results. I’m
interested in your thoughts on how institutions can create and sustain
culture effectively, when we’re now so distributed and where employees
want to be even more distributed than we’ve tolerated in the past. It
seems to be one of the biggest challenges right now, for every
institution.
ROZ BREWER: It is super complicated. And I’ve done all the right
things. How many Zoom calls can I have? How many times can I have
dinner on a Zoom call, happy hour, playing games, all of those things
that I hope would keep us bonded together as a team and focused? I will
tell you, it’s complicated.
But I think what is happening now, when I think about this hybrid
position, is that we’re taking a position that, yes, we can be hybrid. We
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HBR / Digital Article / Walgreens CEO Roz Brewer to Leaders: Put Your Phones Away …
and Listen to Employees
don’t want anyone in our organization to be 100% remote. And there’s a
couple of reasons for that. One, they get too detached from the culture
of the company. And the second reason is, we’re seeing that there is
loneliness, anxiety, and depression in those who do not interact. There
is very little substitute for human connection, very little substitute.
And this is something I’ll stand behind. I’m no scientist. I’m not a
psychologist, but I will tell you, I’ve seen time and time again, isolation
absolutely never works. I stand behind that. We’re asking our teams to
create opportunities to interact with their organizations twice a week.
Come in for lunch or hit the team meeting in person, once a week. The
second thing we’re doing is thinking about: where are our hubs? Could
we have hubs across the United States so that you come in and you feel
the culture and you breathe the culture and you live the culture?
Because you can’t sit on a piece of paper like a strategy can. You can’t
pull it all off and then go create an action. It’s the way you make
someone feel, it’s the way the environment looks.
And then the last thing I would say about driving culture is to be very,
very consistent in aligning your decisions with your culture, mission,
and values. There’s some great examples of that. For instance, we right
now are really stressing the point around the importance of healthcare
in this country. We’ve taken a very, very hard stand on why vaccine
mandates work. We have delivered 50 million shots in arms across the
United States to date, 50 million, and we are adamant about
vaccinations. We are a healthcare company. So my organization at the
corporate level has to be 100% vaccinated. I can’t have people in the
stores, promoting vaccinations, and then we’re not vaccinated. That
doesn’t work. So you have to live your culture, your mission and values,
and be very, very clear about it.
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HBR / Digital Article / Walgreens CEO Roz Brewer to Leaders: Put Your Phones Away …
and Listen to Employees
Now, can I tell you how much pushback I’ve gotten about that? Because
people are being told, and people don’t like to be told. They think it’s a
partisan issue. It’s not a partisan issue. I take them right back to the
definition of a healthcare company and what we’re going to stand for in
this organization. And so if I didn’t do that, they would say, “Well, Roz,
you’re not kind of forcing us or allowing us to live our mission and
values.” And I’ve been adamant about it. And there’s several examples
of that, of making sure that your decisions are aligned with what your
culture states.
Sometimes it’s hard because you can say, “Wow, financially, this is
going to kill me.” Because we’ve got a due date coming of when these
vaccinations have to be done. I could have a fallout. There may be some
people say, “Okay, I’m done, I’m leaving the company.” And you know
what? I have to be prepared for that because I have to stand behind–we
have to stand behind it, as leaders of this organization–what we really
mean about providing localized healthcare when it matters and where it
matters. And vaccines absolutely are curtailing the spread of this
pandemic that we’re in.
ADI IGNATIUS: I love that clarity. I think if I have it right, you have
something like 400,000 employees worldwide?
ROZ BREWER: Yes.
ADI IGNATIUS: Before we get to the sort of the vaccination requirement
and what that’s going to do the workforce, how are you dealing now
with how managing talent got harder? We’re in in the Great Resignation.
There’s a question from Alexis in Dayton, Ohio, asking, “How are you
dealing with the shortage of employees within the Walgreens Boots
Alliance?” So talent is all stirred up. How are you thinking about talent
these days?
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HBR / Digital Article / Walgreens CEO Roz Brewer to Leaders: Put Your Phones Away …
and Listen to Employees
ROZ BREWER: That is a really big conundrum for us right now. We are
seeing it more at our store level, and you may be seeing that in our
stores. What we have been doing is to make sure that we do everything
we possibly can to retain the current talent that we have. A couple of
examples of that, our pharmacists have worked to deliver those 50
million vaccines, those shots in arms, they’ve been working like mad.
And so we wanted to recognize them. So we have adjusted the bonus
structure and become close to a best-in-class bonus structure in the
pharmacy area. We’ve looked at minimum wage. So to make sure that
we are absolutely offering best-in-class pay that we can.
But then the other part is making sure that people love where they work.
I think the next level that we need to do is to make sure that they have
the right jobs. Some of the jobs now have become very, very, very
complicated. Only imagine working in a Walgreens store where you
were the cashier and all you had to do was check people out every day.
And that’s the job you signed up for. But now you have long lines in the
store from vaccines, and you have people asking questions, they’ll ask
the cashier about, “You think I should get a third dose?” And the
cashier’s like, “How do I direct this question?” So we also recognize that
they have complicated jobs now. So we said to them, we see that your
job is complicated because we’re out here in the stores watching,
looking and trying to help. So we’re seeing them, we’re hearing them,
and then we’re trying to simplify their jobs.
We’re putting in new practices, new policies. So that these individuals
love coming to work every day. And sometimes, believe it or not, it is not
about pay. It’s about, do I love the environment? So we’re doing quite a
bit of work to say, you’re going to have the job that you love. We’re going
to give you the experience as an employee that makes you want to
engage with this as a company. And we realize some are going to step
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HBR / Digital Article / Walgreens CEO Roz Brewer to Leaders: Put Your Phones Away …
and Listen to Employees
away, right. But then we hope that we can recruit. And we’re doing a lot
of work right now in terms of recruiting.
And I do think that there’s going to be a day that people are going to
return to the workplace because this is causing most U.S. companies,
and even multinationals, to rethink who they are as a company. This is a
great time for a lot of these companies to look at themselves and say,
“Why don’t I have a company where people say, ‘Okay, it’s a tough time,
but I want to come to work every day’?” This is forcing a better
workplace in many of these companies. I just had a chance to talk to a
lot of fellow CEOs and we’re all focusing on how do we create the best
place to work? So people say, “Yes, pay me for the work that I do, but
make me love my job. Help me love my job.”
ADI IGNATIUS: As you said, we’re in a transitional moment. More
broadly, strategically, the social health disruptions have caused a sort of
strategic rethink. And you’ve talked about healthcare and the
importance for Walgreens Boots Alliance. But I think you’re really
undergoing a strategic rethink and healthcare is the forefront of that.
Could you talk about what you’re doing and what that says about
healthcare administration, particularly in the US?
ROZ BREWER: What’s really happening at WBA is we are looking at the
consumerization of healthcare. And it’s not unlike the work that I’ve
done when retail went digital and e-commerce came in. This is an
opportunity for us to really think about localized healthcare. Healthcare
is absolutely local. And if we want to bring access and cost-effective
healthcare to local zip codes, Walgreens is prone and primed to do that.
We have 9,000 stores across the US, and this company has not avoided
any zip code in this country. So we are dispersed in the most effective
way to localize healthcare.
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HBR / Digital Article / Walgreens CEO Roz Brewer to Leaders: Put Your Phones Away …
and Listen to Employees
We learned a lot during this vaccine administration when, first of all,
the education of why vaccines matter. We were in the forefront of that to
make sure we were educating. But while we were doing that, it helped us
realize that people don’t understand their own personal health. And
they had been using our pharmacist all along when they’re diagnosed
from the physician’s office, they grab that prescription, sometimes
they’re in a daze, but by the time they get to the pharmacy and the
pharmacy says, “You have three scripts, and this is how this needs to be
done.” The consultation happens with the pharmacist more so than
with the physician and we’ve been in that position. It was really just
forefront for us, as we were administering the vaccines.
So this work that we’re doing now is to help us really be a part of the
solution of reducing the cost of healthcare, which means how do we
look at absolute costs? And that’s about transparency, because a lot of
people don’t understand what it costs to get treated, so they avoid
healthcare, getting care for themselves.
And then the second piece is to really get improved outcomes in
healthcare. And what’s so important is to keep people out of the
healthcare system. Once you’ve been diagnosed and you’ve got a care
plan from your physician, all the monitoring, all the day-to-day upkeep,
all the consultations that you need with a pharmacist or another
practitioner, that keep people from returning to the emergency room,
because that’s when the chronically ill–the biggest burden on the cost of
healthcare is the chronically ill– and their return back and forth through
the system because lack of compliance to their meds or whatever the
situation may be. So we’re creating 1,000 physician-led clinics in our
stores through VillageMD, the acquisition that we made. And then we’re
adding 3,000 care centers called Health Corners, where there’s a
practitioner, either a pharmacist or a registered nurse. Registered nurses
in some states now can write scripts.
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HBR / Digital Article / Walgreens CEO Roz Brewer to Leaders: Put Your Phones Away …
and Listen to Employees
And so this is a way for you to say, “Okay, I can’t get back to my doctor
feeling poorly today, but here’s what I’m dealing with. I’m diabetic,
hypertensive. What’s happening here?” The beauty of WBA is that we
are within five miles of 75% of the homes across the US. And so if you
think that you can go within five miles of your home and get some
intermediary care, we believe that we can begin to bring the cost of
healthcare down.
ADI IGNATIUS: So here’s a question from Fatima from Iran. Her
question is, “What would be your advice for women who are struggling
to work their way up in a male dominated environment?”
ROZ BREWER: One thing about right now, trying to understand the
workplace, is that we are learning one very important thing is the cost of
daycare on young families. That may not be the case here, but in many
cases that is keeping women out of the workplace. And I think there are
some solutions coming forward around affordable daycare. That’s one
thing. Let’s say you’re in the corporate environment, which I assume
you are. I think that first of all, make sure you’re clear about who you are
and what you stand for and what excites you, what are your passions?
And really, really spend some time thinking about that, doing a personal
inventory, because for women, what I see is that, because sometimes
they’re held back, they take the next promotion, but it’s not what they
really want to do. And then they get to the point where they say, you
know what? I really don’t want to be in a staff position, I want to be in a
P&L position. But you’ve probably taken promotions in one area and
you can’t get out of it. You get pigeonholed.
I encourage women to really do a personal self-evaluation on what
you’re passionate about and stick to it. Be willing to say no to a
promotion. I took three sideway positions, where I came home and told
my husband that I got a new job, and either I took a pay cut or my salary
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HBR / Digital Article / Walgreens CEO Roz Brewer to Leaders: Put Your Phones Away …
and Listen to Employees
stayed flat and he wasn’t happy about that. But the learning experience
was tremendous and those were the three most impactful positions I
could have ever taken. I left Kimberly-Clark as group president, and I
took a job as vice president at Walmart, but I wanted to learn retail. And
I can’t come in as a senior VP of retail, I would’ve been fired the next
week because I didn’t know what I was doing. But I was willing to take a
step down to go much further, and then that’s when my career began to
really explode. I was in a learning mode, but I took a step back to get
ahead.
ADI IGNATIUS: Here’s a question from Octavia in Los Angeles. This is a
very personal question. As a first generation student in your family, how
did your time at Spelman impact your career trajectory?
ROZ BREWER: So everybody who knows me knows that’s my deepest
love outside of my family, is Spelman College because that experience,
that four years, had an impact on me. Being in an environment where
people were studying and learning, that looked like me and had similar
experiences, was very reassuring and re-enforcing to me that I could
make this happen, because I had 400 other women just like me, next to
me, doing the same thing. So it was very, very fulfilling.
But I would also tell you that there’s something about a liberal arts
college, too. I’m a big supporter of liberal arts institutions, I think that
they teach you critical thinking. I was able to do that at Spelman
College, so that’s what happens being at an HBCU. The professors and
staff and faculty at an institution like Spelman, it’s a deliberate choice to
teach there. They’re absolutely capable to be at the PWI or the Ivy
League schools, but they choose to educate a different kind of student,
so the investment was amazing.
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HBR / Digital Article / Walgreens CEO Roz Brewer to Leaders: Put Your Phones Away …
and Listen to Employees
My senior year, six weeks before graduation, going into finals and
studying for the GMAT, my dad passed away. And the chemistry
department rallied around me and said, “Go take care of family, go
home.” I left for 10 days, came back, they had laid out my plan for me. I
had to take my exams, they made me be accountable, which was really
interesting. Because believe you me, I was saying, “Well, can I not take
these and graduate anyway, I’ve given you four years.” They were like,
“No, you’ve got to take your exams, but we’re going to lay out a plan to
help you do that.” And that was a good example of accountability. They
were making me stand up for myself, but then they were giving me the
opportunity and they laid out a plan. I felt so cared for. I left Spelman on
the tip of my toes, thinking that I could solve all the world’s problems. It
wasn’t true, but at least they made me feel that way.
ADI IGNATIUS: That’s great. You’ve been great in really sharing very
personal stories and I want to ask one more personal question, and
that’s whether you could share a turning point moment in your
professional career that really made you the leader you are today.
ROZ BREWER: Yes. Probably when I had my first child and I was a
young mom trying to stay in the corporate setting, and it was a time
where I was being tested. I was working for a gentleman who had
already said to me he didn’t think that I was smart enough to do the job
that I was in, and now you’re becoming a mom. And so that was his
thing: let’s think about you doing something else. And that was a
turning point for me, because I set out to really prove him wrong that
yes, I am going to be a mom, I’d held off long enough being a mom
because of the corporate thing, and I was going to be a mom and I was
going to prove him wrong. And I absolutely did, eventually.
He retired early and I actually assumed his role. And it took me probably
18, 24 months to do that, but I think my leadership showed up, my
Copyright © 2021 Harvard Business School Publishing. All rights reserved.
18
HBR / Digital Article / Walgreens CEO Roz Brewer to Leaders: Put Your Phones Away …
and Listen to Employees
determination, my steadfastness, but also the appreciation that I was a
mom, I didn’t hide that I was a mom. I did all the things, I went to
daycare and all of those things, but I did what I had to do. And it was a
turning point for me, because I could have easily at that very point
stayed home, be a stay-at-home mom and believe what he said to me.
And that was a turning point to believe in yourself. Don’t believe the
hype of someone else that’s looking down on you. And it charged me,
and it still charges me today, and it makes me think about the young
women in my organization, and when they tell me they’re expecting
and I’m like, “Okay, let’s get after it.” That’s fun. That’s what you want.
You want people to come work for you that have a fulfilled life.
And we’re built around a family structure, so I want people to have a
great family life. I don’t want anyone ever to be told what they can’t do
because of what looks like might be an obstacle or a little break in time
to stop them from being effective. I’ve seen people become actually
more deliberate about the work they do because they have to parse out
time. So I got better on my schedule because I knew I had to get to
daycare to pick up a child, so I had to do 10 things before that, so it was
disciplined for me. But that changed my life when he said that to me.
And I wasn’t intentionally pursuing his job, I didn’t say to myself, “I’m
going to put him out of a job.” It just happened. And, I don’t know where
he is today, but I would enjoy shaking his hand. I don’t know where he is
though.
ADI IGNATIUS: So Roz, I want to thank you for being with us today.
That was a great conversation. I would love to find a way to do this again
or get you back in HBR. So, thank you.
ROZ BREWER: That’d be great. Thank you everyone. I enjoyed it.
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