Building an Inclusive Company that Scales – Scaling Success Podcast

About Mindy Grossman:

One of Fast Company’s most creative people in business and Fortune’s Business Person of the Year, Mindy is a high energy, disruptive leader with over 30 years of experience in building and transforming consumer brands. In July of 2017, Mindy joined WW, formerly Weight Watchers, as president and CEO. In this role, Mindy leads thousands of employees in 10 markets to serve the millions of members around the world. Previously, she held senior executive roles, including CEO of HSN and CEO of IAC Retail. She also served as a global vice presidents president at Nike, where she oversaw its four billion dollar apparel business and served as co-chair of Nike’s Women’s Leadership Council. Earlier in her career, Mindy served as president and CEO of Polo Jeans Company and held senior positions at Tommy Hilfiger and Oxford Industries. Mindy has received many accolades throughout her career, including PR week’s top 50 Health Influencers, Time magazine’s 50 most influential people in health care, and Forbes magazines, the one hundred most powerful women. In addition, many serves as a member of the Capital Strategic Advisory Board. 

Key Highlights from Mindy:

• Companies that really believe in diversity and live that have greater business success, greater innovation, attract great talent, keep that talent, and ultimately they have a bigger impact. And this goes for boards. It goes for leadership teams.
  
  
• It’s really critical that diversity is embraced at all levels and becomes not just part of culture, but a fundamental fundamental business imperative within any business.
  
  
• Regardless of where anyone’s organization is in this journey, we can all do more. We can all be more deliberate. We can all be more accountable, be greater advocates and take greater action because of the impact that we can have certainly on our business. But just overall.
  
  
• When I started out in business I was in the menswear industry. It was very unusual for a woman outside of maybe the design area, whether that’s the sales area or the business development area, to really have opportunity. In my first year in business, I actually left the company because I realized that I wasn’t going to be getting the opportunities. I wasn’t part of the boys club, as you will. And I after that one year, I made a decision that whatever I did, I was only going to put myself in environments where I felt that I was going to be given equal opportunity if I performed at the level I needed to perform.
  
  
• I never felt that position gave me power. I always felt that impact gave me power. And impact was how I could contribute to other people’s success and make sure that I was in an environment that value that.
  
  
• Culture trumps strategy. That does not mean you don’t need a very cohesive and strong strategy to run the business. But if you’re not building it on the platform of a passionate, engaged, diverse culture where people feel they belong and that they will have success, ultimately it’s not going to have the sustainability. 
  
  
• Particularly in today’s world, if you want to attract the best talent, if you want to keep the best talent, if you want to collaborative an innovative workplace, you have to build that culture and it has to come first.
  
  
• The power of words, vulnerability, and empathy in business – that wasn’t really considered an asset 10 years ago. If you use the word vulnerability, particularly as a woman, it would have been looked at as a weakness. Well, fast forward, It’s being looked at as a strength, what your ability is to get in front of people and recognize what people are going through and give part of yourself to that as you build culture.