THE HIGHER GROUND LEADERSHIP SUCCESS SYSTEM
50 YEARS OF LEADERSHIP → ONE SYSTEM FOR SUCCESS
Doug Conant has turned everything he learned running Fortune 500 companies, across five decades, into one leadership success system, organized around two pillars of DEPTH and REACH. Explore the system, read the story behind it, and sign up for the free 4-week mini-course.
THE MOMENT THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING
DOUG’S STORY
In 1976, on my first day of work at General Mills, I was completely out of my depth. Oblivious to the culture of the corporate world, I roamed the halls in my tan suit, brushing my overgrown curly hair out of my eyes. I didn’t look the part of a product marketing manager, and I didn’t feel the part either. I’d moved to Minneapolis to take the job, uprooting my whole life, and I didn’t know a soul. Untethered, I was a fish out of water.
As I tried to find my way through the labyrinth of office doors, a friendly older man stopped me and asked if I was lost. “Yes,” I answered, and I meant it in every sense of the word. Thankfully, he pointed me in the right direction, and that small act of kindness changed the trajectory of my entire career. . .
“Doug Conant has proven himself to be a very disciplined CEO . . . His example shows how effective business leaders can be quiet and bold, studious and decisive, disciplined and creative. Conant has so much to teach, and aspiring leaders at all levels would do well to learn from him.“
Jim Collins
Bestselling author of Good to Great and What to Make of a Life
INTRODUCING THE HIGHER GROUND LEADERSHIP SUCCESS SYSTEM
Over 50 years, as President of Nabisco Foods, President and CEO of Campbell Soup Company, Chairman of Avon Products, and Founder of ConantLeadership, Doug Conant has figured out what works in the real world.
Now, he’s bringing it together as one system.
The Higher Ground Leadership Success System is a flywheel of 10 interconnected elements, organized under two pillars:
DIG DEEP
Build a rock-solid leadership Foundation to create depth of character and competence
REACH HIGH
Use that foundation to lead people, teams, organizations, and communities to Higher Ground
The flywheel is designed to be self-reinforcing: the deeper you go on the first five elements, the higher you can reach on the next five. Whether you lead five people or five thousand, the work is the same. Build the depth, then reach high.
Click or tap any ring or arrow to explore that element · Use the toggle to focus on Depth or Reach
Element 01 · Depth
Build Foundation
The first and most important step. Looking inward at your life and leadership journey to articulate what you believe and how you want to show up for others.
Building a solid foundation starts with a good Blueprint. Explore the Blueprint →
LEADERSHIP ISN’T GETTING EASIER
Why This System?
Innovations in technology are swiftly remaking the world. Trust in institutions, and within workplaces, has eroded. Teams are stretched thin and managers are being pushed to the brink.
Every single day, we talk to leaders who tell us that changes in their companies are cascading faster than ever before, at a rate so speedy they’re causing corporate whiplash. Often, there is no effort to earn buy-in from direct reports, colleagues, or even customers before another top-down directive comes down the pike. The message is clear and thunderous: Comply or else. And there’s rarely an opportunity to ask ‘why’ or to collaboratively make a plan for ‘how’ it’s all going to get done.
If any of that sounds familiar, you’re not alone.
The good news is: It doesn’t have to be this way. The Higher Ground Leadership Success system was built inside the Fortune 500 by a CEO who used it to lead three companies through real turnarounds, and it teaches you how to go slow in order to go fast.
By learning to be more thoughtful, and to put “people first,” you can become a center of calm in a sea of chaos. And that’s a powerful skill. When you master the ability to stay grounded in your own leadership Foundation, no matter what dysfunction swirls around you, there is no limit to what you (and your team) can accomplish.
WHO IS THIS FOR?
This is for the senior leaders who have already done a lot of reading and work but still want to lift their game as the world changes. It’s for the middle managers whose companies have asked a lot of them this year, and who want a way to keep showing up for their team, especially under pressure. It’s for the new leaders who need to start building trust and deepening relationships right away. It’s for the HR and Learning & Development leaders who are trying to build a leadership culture that holds up under stress, and who want an experienced-backed framework they can use and champion. No matter where you are in your leadership journey, this system is for you.
“Doug Conant is a special breed: a hard-edged corporate CEO with an introspective nature who attributes his success to reflection, study, and thoughtful inner work rather than birthright or bombast.”
Susan Cain
Bestselling Author of Quiet and Bittersweet
VALUES-BASED LEADERSHIP
12 TENETS OF
‘LEADERSHIP THAT WORKS’
The Higher Ground Leadership Success System is guided by 12 core tenets: the values that anchor how a leader shows up every day. Doug has refined these over 50 years. This year, in the spirit of continuous improvement, he’s added two new values to meet the current moment.
01 High Performance
Leaders must perform. There are three Cs of high-performing teams: Competence, Character, and Chemistry. And three Qs of leadership intelligence: IQ, EQ, and FQ.
02 Abundance
Leaders must advance an abundance mindset that rejects the tyranny of “or” and embraces the genius of “and.”
03 Inspire Trust
To inspire trust, leaders must honor all parties, do what they say they’re going to do, uphold high ethical standards, and model the behavior they expect from others.
04 Purpose
Leaders must craft an aspirational “calling” that resonates with all parties, delivering both economic and social value.
05 Courage
Leaders must display the courage of their convictions. To do so, they must be deeply tethered to those convictions.
06 Integrity
Leaders must “Declare Themselves” so that constituents understand their beliefs and intentions — then match their behavior to those declarations.
07 "Grow or Die" Mindset
Leaders must champion a learning culture, push for continuous improvement, invest in growth, and hire people who will challenge the current paradigm.
08 Humility
The best leaders are expert connectors and listeners. Humility binds those two competencies. It’s also essential to understand that you’re not always the smartest person in the room.
09 "How Can I Help?"
When leaders learn to offer proactive support rather than operating in reactive mode, they can transform the organization. Four little words can change the energy of an entire workplace.
10 Have Fun
If work and leadership are serious all the time, it will be a slog for everyone. A leader must bring energy and vitality to the work every day and attend to their own needs so they have the capacity to meet the needs of their colleagues.
11 Creativity (NEW)
As the world changes rapidly, leaders must champion more creative solutions to new and complex problems and find ever-evolving means of innovation.
12 Kindness (NEW)
Leaders must be compassionate, unconditionally considerate, and generous in spirit. If the anxiety of the world increases, a leader’s kindness must expand in equal measure.
BATTLE-TESTED RESULTS
BUILT FOR THE REAL WORLD
CASE STUDY 1:
CAMPBELL SOUP COMPANY
Based on his performance at Nabisco, Doug was recruited to be the President and CEO of the Campbell Soup Company, where he faced a difficult but exciting challenge. Campbell was very troubled, having lost half of its market value in the previous two years. Product quality had deteriorated, sales were declining, market shares were eroding, the innovation pipelines were almost empty, acquisitions were struggling, and regulators were concerned about their corporate practices.
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Doug knew it would be difficult, but he was more anchored in his leadership Foundation than ever before, and felt ready to tackle the job. True to the Higher Ground Leadership Success System, he started the turnaround with a commitment to honoring people.
Immediately, the company began measuring employee satisfaction. A Gallup survey showed they had the lowest employee engagement in the Fortune 500. So Doug’s priority was to revitalize employee engagement and trust, knowing that all the other elements in the flywheel would follow. Once again, he needed to build depth before he could reach high. And the results were astonishing.
In Doug’s words: “I’m proud of what we accomplished over my decade as CEO. We transformed employee engagement from the worst in the Fortune 500 to the best. And, with a concerted effort, the other components in the flywheel system fell into place, supporting us as we grew sales, earnings, margins, and Return on Invested Capital/ROIC while significantly outperforming our peer group in total shareowner returns. And we were also celebrated for our corporate sustainability efforts, our diversity and inclusion work, and our ethical leadership, fulfilling the commitment to all stakeholders that is integral to Higher Ground leadership.”
CASE STUDY 2:
NABISCO
In the early 1990’s, Doug was Senior VP of Marketing for the Nabisco Biscuit Company, where the culture was so toxic that one employee satisfaction expert described it as “swamp water.” When he arrived, there had been several rounds of layoffs, spending had been reduced, sales were declining, and earnings pressure was at a boiling point.
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One instinct in this situation might be to match your leadership energy to the frenzied atmosphere, doubling down on a hierarchical style. But Doug was anchored enough in his Foundation to see the value of a different method.
Despite unimaginable stress, Doug committed to a “people first” approach. He vowed to honor all parties in the value chain, to ensure the team had the necessary resources to perform, to celebrate wins (rather than merely diagnosing problems), to expand the leadership training agenda, to set an aspirational goal for the team to lead a renaissance of the company, and then establish a plan to deliver that aspiration with excellence. It wasn’t easy. But it worked.
As they gained momentum, their performance skyrocketed to record-high levels: By year two, the same consultant who’d deemed the team culture “swamp water” now assessed it as “Perrier”; in year three, they graduated to “champagne.” And they did it by leveraging all the elements in the Higher Ground Leadership Success System™: They created the depth necessary in areas 1-5 in order to reach and surpass their goals in areas 6-10.
Buoyed by that positive result, Doug became President of Nabisco Foods Company, where he leveraged all the elements in the system to build the best-performing food company in the United States at the time. It all came down to first creating depth with a “people first” approach and then reaching for high performance. It was true then, and it is true today: Everything starts with the people.
“There is no other leader who has more effectively balanced enduring organizational performance with a passionate caring for people . . . take Doug as your teacher.”
Stephen MR Covey
Bestselling author of The Speed of Trust
EXPLORE TEN LIFE-CHANGING QUESTIONS OVER FOUR WEEKS
THE FREE 4-WEEK EMAIL MINI-COURSE
Dig deep to reach high. Every element of the flywheel is anchored by a single critical question. Five that help you build depth. And five that show you how to expand your reach. These are the questions Doug asked himself at Nabisco when a team described internally as “swamp water” became one of the highest-performing groups in the company within three years.
These are the questions he asked at Campbell Soup, when employee engagement went from the lowest in the Fortune 500 to the highest, while sales, earnings, and total shareholder returns outperformed the peer group.
These are the questions that separate the leaders who keep treading water from the leaders who actually inspire their team to achieve big wins.
Week 1
Build Your Foundation. Learn how to articulate your unique leadership philosophy and write your first draft of your Purpose.
Week 2
People First. Find interactive insights on how to honor people, inspire trust, lead with a growth mindset, and further clarify your higher purpose.
Week 3
Plan to Perform. As you shift into the ‘reach’ phase of the model, you’ll unearth actionable ways to create direction, align resources, and build momentum.
Week 4
Reaching the Summit. Here’s where you reach ‘Higher Ground,’ and learn what it looks like when all the pieces click into place and produce extraordinary results.
By the end of four weeks, you’ll be ready to hit the ground running with your team, armed with fresh insights and practices.
Enroll in the Free Mini-Course
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Practical. Free. Built for leaders across industries.
“Leaders at every level in today’s organizations must now be more courageous, well-equipped, and resilient than ever before. Conant’s process will help you to explore your own unique strengths — fearlessly.”
Amy C. Edmondson
Novartis Professor of Leadership & Management, Harvard Business School
TWO WAYS IN. ONE SYSTEM.
Doug Conant spent 50 years figuring this out. Now it’s yours.
Four emails. Ten questions. The first step toward Higher Ground.
The full 50-year retrospective, published in Leader to Leader.
Doug Conant
Doug Conant is the founder of ConantLeadership and one of the most experienced operating CEOs in modern American business. Over a 50-year career, he served as President of Nabisco Foods Company, President and CEO of Campbell Soup Company, and Chairman of Avon Products. He has served on dozens of for-profit and non-profit boards, including CECP, The Partnership for Public Service, The Higher Ambition Leadership Alliance, and The Conference Board.
He is the bestselling co-author of TouchPoints and The Blueprint. In 2011, he founded ConantLeadership to help other leaders find their way while staying true to themselves.