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In Atlanta, loyalty often runs deep\u2014particularly to the city\u2019s two hometown giants: Coca-Cola and Delta Air Lines.<\/p>\n
So it might come as a surprise that Ed Bastian, who has spent nearly a decade leading Delta, credits an Atlanta rival\u2014PepsiCo\u2014for making him the executive he is today. On the latest episode of Fortune\u2019s Titans and Disruptors of Industry podcast, Bastian opened up about how the food and beverage conglomerate didn\u2019t just shape his own rise to the C-suite, but it has quietly done the same for a generation of business leaders.<\/p>\n
\u201c[At PepsiCo], you\u2019re surrounded by great talent. They understood that talent is going to win in the marketplace,\u201d Bastian told Fortune\u2019s Editor-in-Chief Alyson Shontell. \u201cThey were constantly recruiting, bringing talent. It\u2019s one of the only places I\u2019ve ever been to where they tell you when you start, you\u2019re probably not going to retire here because it\u2019s a talent factory.\u201d<\/p>\n
And he isn\u2019t exaggerating: PepsiCo has long been known as a breeding ground for top executives. A December 2022 analysis found at least a dozen Fortune 500 CEOs had passed through its ranks, including McDonald\u2019s Chris Kempczinski and Land O\u2019Lakes Beth Ford.\u00a0<\/p>\n
PepsiCo\u2019s approach to grooming leaders was shaped in large part by Bob Eichinger, an industrial organizational psychologist who spent nearly a decade at the company starting in the late 1970s. Eichinger adapted psychometric testing to assess executive behavior and effectiveness, helping cement PepsiCo\u2019s reputation as what Yale professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld famously called an \u201cacademy company.\u201d<\/p>\n
Central to PepsiCo\u2019s system is its identification of \u201chi-pos\u201d\u2014the top 20% of performers at any given time\u2014who are funneled into stretch assignments, international rotations, and cross-functional roles designed to prevent them from getting too comfortable in any one silo. The company\u2019s HR team actively moves rising talent across divisions, even over the objections of their current managers, on the theory that future leaders need broad operational fluency rather than narrow expertise.<\/p>\n
The expectation that you could move on, Bastian said, is baked into the culture from day one: \u201cYou learn what you can, you grow, and some people stay, but many people take what they have, and they go test their wares in another industry.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Bastian, that next move came naturally. As someone who had logged countless hours in the sky working with PepsiCo\u2019s international finance team, the path to aviation wasn\u2019t a leap so much as a landing.<\/p>\n
\u201cSomeone told me at one point I should consider working for an airline because I\u2019m on a plane all the time,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I said that kind of made sense.\u201d<\/p>\n
And it made sense for Delta, too. Bastian joined Delta in 1998 as a vice president of finance and was named CFO by 2005. A decade later, in 2015, Bastian landed the CEO role and has since helped the airline achieve industry dominance\u2014boasting top-tier on-time performance, a market value north of $40 billion, and a reputation as the most profitable U.S. carrier.<\/p>\n
Ed Bastian skipped an MBA to learn leadership at PepsiCo\u2014and it paid off<\/p>\n
Raised in upstate New York, Bastian graduated from St. Bonaventure University with a bachelor\u2019s degree in business administration in 1979 and soon began his career as an auditor at Price Waterhouse (now PwC). While a graduate degree had been a logical early career step, he said it simply wasn\u2019t feasible.<\/p>\n
\u201cI went right to work, I didn\u2019t have the money or the patience to get any post-graduate education,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
But as his ambition grew, so did his awareness of his talent gaps. So when PepsiCo came calling, he recognized what it was: a rare chance to get a world-class business education without the tuition bill.<\/p>\n
It proved to be the inflection point of his career. But beyond the skills he sharpened\u2014like prioritizing customers and smart decision-making\u2014Bastian said the deeper lesson was about the kind of leader he wanted to become\u2014one who never forgets how he got there.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy best advice is to make certain that you\u2019re taking care of the people that got you there,\u201d he told Fortune.<\/p>\n
That humility, the 68-year-old argued, is what separates good leaders from great ones. Many CEOs, including himself, never set out to reach the top job. Instead, they let drive and confidence be tempered by something quieter.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe talk about in leadership, the importance of confidence and drive and energy and vision,\u201d Bastian added. \u201c[But], there\u2019s also a really important attribute, and that\u2019s humility with the willingness to actually listen more than you talk, to be able to make certain that you have an appreciation for what people do, to relate to the people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bastian has embodied that behavior in part through Delta\u2019s annual profit-sharing. This past February, the company paid out $1.3 billion to its over 100,000 employees, averaging out to more than four weeks of extra pay.<\/p>\n
In an era increasingly defined by technology and speed, Bastian believes human instincts matter more than ever.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnderstand what leadership is about\u2014it\u2019s about people, it\u2019s about leading people,\u201d Bastian said. \u201cAnd that will get you further than anything you could ever do.\u201d<\/p>\n
#Fortune #CEOs #worked #Pepsi #Deltas #Bastian #explains #leadership #factory<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In Atlanta, loyalty often runs deep\u2014particularly to the city\u2019s two hometown giants: Coca-Cola and Delta…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[245],"tags":[3379,6353,2819,636,1281,960,637,2822,5119,6847,2099,5369,133,404,1680,2825,4024,6845,4629,967,6846],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2971"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2971\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stock999.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}