Ann Mukherjee on Crashing the Super Bowl, Embracing Your Weaknesses, and Why the CEO of Today Has to Be All Learning

When Ann Mukherjee joined Doritos in 2006, the brand was in freefall. It had gotten so bad that Frito-Lay's own truck drivers refused to stock it. She turned it around by crashing the Super Bowl with a $5 million budget—against Anheuser-Busch's $100 million—by handing the ads to consumers and trusting them to do it better. In this episode of Unbossing, hosts Rishad Tobaccowala and Drew Ianni talk with Ann Mukherjee—former Chairman and CEO of Pernod Ricard North America—about thirty years of walking away from what she'd just mastered to learn something entirely new. From Kraft to Frito-Lay to SC Johnson to Pernod Ricard, Ann's rule was simple: when you stop learning, you're done. Each move meant unlearning the previous company's system before her old instincts could become the wrong answer in a new place. She also challenges the conventional wisdom on weakness. Don't try to fix them. Understand them, compensate for them, and use them to find what you're actually built for. Perfection, she says, is a sickness. Her last lesson: the CEO of the past was expected to be all-knowing. The CEO of today has to be all learning. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.