At ConantLeadership’s most recent BLUEPRINT Leadership Summit, a virtual meeting of top leadership luminaries, two turnaround CEOs—Daryl Brewster (CEO of Chief Executives for Corporate Purpose and former CEO of Krispy Kreme), and Doug Conant (founder of ConantLeadership, former CEO of Campbell Soup Company, and bestselling author of The Blueprint and TouchPoints), convened in conversation about the leadership impact of corporate purpose.

Enjoy the following tips and takeaways from their conversation in the recap below. You can also watch the recording of their discussion (skip to roughly minute 6 to skip intros and housekeeping).

Shared Success Is a True Win

From coaching baseball teams to orchestrating company-wide efficiency initiatives, Daryl Brewster has demonstrated the power of purposeful leadership time and again. Now as CEO of CECP (Chief Executives for Corporate Purpose), he leads the charge to help more than 230 of the world’s top companies learn to drive sustainable business success and make a positive impact on the world.

Host and co-panelist, Doug Conant, who’s worked with leaders across the globe and served as a President and CEO in the Fortune 500, is a fellow believer in the “power of purpose.” He serves on the CECP board, is a former CECP board chair, and has dedicated his life to teaching others how to lift their leadership to new heights. He asks Brewster to share some of the career highlights that helped form his leadership philosophy.

Brewster thinks back to the first time he ever led a group of people, his brother’s Little League Baseball team. He recalls being a teenager, “coaching a bunch of seven and 8-year-olds,” and quickly realizing that the team’s success was about more than nurturing a few star players. It hinged on creating a culture where everyone pulled in the same direction and supported each other on and off the field. Even then, Brewster recognized that the players (employees), stakeholders (parents), and regulators (umpires) had different needs and requirements. In baseball—and in the corporate world—each person has a role, but the game can’t be won unless everyone is aligned.

Years later, Brewster put this same mindset into action at Nabisco and Kraft when he started running the Biscuits, Snacks, and Confections division. Known for iconic brands like Oreos, Triscuits, and Planters Nuts, he says the division had become “very siloed,” and needed some fresh thinking to stimulate growth.

At one industry event, Brewster ran into an indirect competitor, Bob Beebe, who was CEO of Frito-Lay at the time. Beebe asked him about the company’s “unsaleables,” products that had to be retrieved from stores after not selling. It was early enough in Brewster’s career that the question caught him off guard. But a seed was planted. He went back to his team and discovered that the company’s previous unsaleable rate of 1% had increased to about 4%, resulting in “a couple hundred million dollars” worth of unsold products. Because of how siloed the division was, blame passed from one department to another.

It was the baseball lesson all over again: There was no winning until the team was aligned and ready to “unleash the power of corporate purpose.” Right away, Brewster kicked off an initiative called “Project W.A.S.T.E.,” a good-natured acronym that united the entire division by declaring a “War Against Stupid Things Everywhere.” It worked because it wasn’t about pointing fingers, it was about everybody pitching in. The cross-functional initiative challenged each inefficiency head-on and saved the company more than $100 million without job cuts or reductions in quality.

Brewster says this is more proof that the success of your organization hinges on each person moving toward a common goal. If there’s no alignment, there’s no victory. If you’re committed to high-performance leadership, you’ll need to build the kind of culture where shared success is the true win.

“As the world has gotten more chaotic, purpose is more important because it’s always there for you.”

Start with Courage and Clarity

In all organizations, but particularly in turnarounds, forward momentum toward success hinges on having the courage to do things differently. Conant, who has spoken extensively about courage as the “mother skill” of leadership, celebrates the idea of an “upside down” org chart that puts leaders in a foundational position of support and service. It’s a concept that other Blueprint Leadership Summit guests have successfully implemented in their own organizations—most notably former Medtronic Chair and CEO Bill George, Albertsons Chair and former Starbucks President and CEO Jim Donald, as well as Brewster himself at CECP.

Pursuing this kind of human-centric leadership is one way Brewster continues to honor CECP Founder Paul Newman’s philosophy that “the world’s leading companies can and should be a force for good in society.” As he puts it, “we like to consider ourselves a purpose organization rather than a profit organization.” He says this approach makes good business sense too, citing research which shows that “purpose-driven companies outperform non-purpose-driven companies over time.”

In addition to leading with courage, the panelists say that leaders must also offer the gift of clarity. And purpose is a powerful clarifying tool. So make sure your team can answer these questions:

• What are the expectations?
• What are we motivated by?
• How will we navigate complex issues?
• What is our shared purpose?

Brewster says that companies with shared higher purpose are not only better aligned, but they also “take care of their communities, their employees, their customers, and the planet better than the others.” And Conant adds that it’s a leader’s job to reinforce the purpose in daily interactions: Stay connected, be supportive, and “work hard to establish yourself as a valued advisor.”

When All Else Fails, Go Back To Your Purpose

Conant points out that as the world has “gotten more chaotic, purpose is more important [because] it’s always there for you”—a steady, helpful beacon in the dark. Both panelists spent time reversing chaos as turnaround CEOs at global food brands—Conant at Campbell Soup Company and Brewster at Krispy Kreme.

As Conant unleashed the power of corporate purpose at Campbell, his team landed on one word that helped re-energize the company: Nourish. He shares, “Our company was known for nourishing people with a warm cup of soup on a cold day.” So his leadership team made the conscious choice to stir that purpose into other segments of the business too. The message was: “If you’re in investor relations, you nourish the investor. If you’re not sure what to do with your supplier with a specific issue, you nourish that supplier until you figure it out.” And Conant encouraged his direct reports to help their teams understand what this looks like tactically, day-to-day. The gift of a clear purpose, he says, is that “you always have a place to go,” when faced with a challenge.

Brewster had a similar experience at Krispy Kreme. When he was appointed as CEO in 2006, he walked into what he describes as a “mess,” billions of dollars in lawsuits, disgruntled franchisees, declining revenues, and five years of financials to restate. He and his team turned over every rock to cut costs and recover. Eventually, one leader at the company approached Brewster with a counterintuitive solution: global expansion.

Despite some pushback and a few logistical roadblocks, Brewster recognized the idea’s potential. Similar to Campbell Soup Company’s purpose to nourish, Krispy Kreme’s purpose was to “share sweet smiles.” Even though the company was in survival mode, Brewster looked to that original purpose as a lighthouse in the fog. For a while, he recalls, the purpose even morphed into “survive to share sweet smiles.” At the time, turning the company around required “taking a bet” to spread those smiles all over the world. While Brewster left two years later in 2008, Krispy Kreme continues to operate in 40 countries across the globe.

“There are no leaders without followers.”

Listen, Engage, Align, Deliver

Clear articulations of corporate purpose like Campbell’s nourish and Krispy Kreme’s share sweet smiles aren’t just feel-good slogans—they’re standing invitations to grow. Brewster points out that “the needs of stakeholders are asymmetric.” The reality is, “employees want to make more money, and customers want to pay less,” so you must “connect and stay consistent” by going “back to the purpose.” Brewster, who gives Conant credit for challenging him to define his own purpose, abides by a personal leadership philosophy he calls L.E.A.D. Brewster explains the acronym:

• Listen: “Listen so you can learn”
• Engage: “Engage people . . . so they can be energized, not exhausted” by their workload
• Align: “Align so we can act” on “really, really specific” goals
• Deliver: “While we deliver, also develop so we can do it again”

Conant echoes the need for leaders to start with “leading by listening” because it creates a “high engagement model with everyone,” that acknowledges the challenges and motivations of “your whole value chain, not just your executive team.” He adds that by asking questions and bringing curiosity to your team, “you will hear what’s unsaid” because “the more questions you ask, the more candor you get.”

Still, it can feel difficult to connect a higher purpose to the bottom line. Conant’s advice, taken from his conversation on centeredness with RHR International CEO Jessica Bigazzi Foster, is to “simplify the decision tree down to something that’s actionable.” It also helps to hear from likeminded leaders who are doing the work alongside you.

That’s where CECP’s CEO Investor Forum comes in. Brewster explains that it gives leaders a chance to “see the case studies” that detail what happens when purpose is embedded into an organization. He recalls that during the COVID pandemic, CECP was the only organization to get the CEOs of Moderna, J&J, and Pfizer on a virtual call to clarify their corporate purposes and “accelerate their activities in a world-saving initiative.” It was “really remarkable,” he says.

Because both panelists work closely with other CEOs daily, they’ve seen that all great corporate purposes have four elements in common. Brewster spotlights each one and suggests that leaders apply them as a framework for success:

1. “Unique to the enterprise.”
2. “Linked to the DNA” of your particular organization.
3. Compelling enough to “rally an organization together.”
4. Easily “translated to the critical stakeholders” even if the words vary a bit.

To close the session, Brewster offers an important reminder: “There are no leaders without followers, so seek first to understand those followers before you start telling them what they need to go do.” And he leaves us with one final, rallying challenge: “either you do it or you don’t.” The choice is yours.

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Enjoyed these insights?

Registration is now open for our Fall 2025 BLUEPRINT Leadership Summit. Register here.

You can also watch the full recording of this interview to get more details, including insights from an audience Q&A. And access the complete inventory of previous BLUEPRINT Leadership Summit sessions, including illuminating conversations with Brené Brown, Susan Cain, Indra Nooyi, Amy Edmondson, Bill George, Barbara Humpton,and many more.

About the Author: Vanessa Bradford, a featured contributor to ConantLeadership, is a freelance content writer and copywriter, and C3PR’s Content Marketing Director.

(Header photo by Michael C on Unsplash)