Ranjay Gulati: Running a healthcare company has to be one of the most demanding jobs you could choose. It’s a dynamic and challenging industry. There are scientific advances to keep up with insurance and government regulations to navigate and relentless competition to overcome. My guest is at the helm of one of the biggest ships in the healthcare sea. Rosalind Brewer runs the giant retail pharmacy company, Walgreens Boots Alliance, with stores across the United States and the United Kingdom. Roz took the job after being second in command at Starbucks. Before that, she worked for Sam’s Club, a division of the Walmart Corporation.

Ranjay Gulati: Welcome to Deep Purpose, a podcast about courage and commitment in turbulent times. I’m Ranjay Gulati, a professor of business administration at the Harvard Business School. If you take the view that healthcare is a basic human right, being the CEO of a place like Walgreens takes on dimensions you just don’t see in other business sectors. One dimension is simply helping people understand their health and their healthcare.

Rosalind Brewer: We have people walk into the pharmacy and they’ll say, “This drug is way too expensive. It’s $40.” We explain to them that probably that drug is probably $400, and there are so many other steps along the way that’s reducing that cost to get them to $40. But the reality is 40 is too much in some communities, right? And so how do we get that $40 drug to either be a generic so that we can then pass the best cost on to the patient and the consumer? And so we work very hard in terms of the conversations we have in Washington. We are actually doing everything we possibly can to pull down our costs so that we can deliver the best cost position. But then also too, there’s an education piece in terms of how we can get involved in preventative care as well, because the cost of healthcare, it is very fragmented.

Rosalind Brewer: When I think about the times I’ve had to work on cost initiatives, there are probably two or three levers to pull. In healthcare, there’s probably 10 or 12. And so we have to think about this is the plight of WBA is to create these really unique partnerships, partnering with our distributors, partnering with these physician practices coming together like we’re doing with VillageMD. And this is at least providing access and we’ll have to continue to work on it in terms of how we get the best access to the consumers. And that’s our position. That’s what we’re working on. We believe that if you begin to use things like our health advisor, you begin to take care of your health a lot better. And maybe the question won’t be the cost of the drug, because you’ll be healthier in the end. And so I think there’s a lot of work to be done here. It’s a battle every day in healthcare to really get in that sweet spot of doing right and hitting the right profit position as well as the best position you want for the community. It’s a struggle, but this is our plight. We’re working on it as strong as we can.

Ranjay Gulati: Under Roz Brewer’s leadership, Walgreens Boots Alliance has invested more than $6 billion in VillageMD. It’s a national chain of 250 primary care clinics. The new venture is called Walgreens Health.

Rosalind Brewer: Yeah, so it’s been exciting for the company to think about what’s next. I think we realize that we’ve done a fantastic job in the area of retail pharmacy. This entire organization is charged to get behind what’s next. And at some point, we have to face the music that retail pharmacy is just not enough for us in the long haul. I will tell you that the organization is excited about something new. And here’s what we need to understand about WBA. We’ve had these relationships for quite some time. This is an advanced relationship we have now with VillageMD. We invested in them initially several years ago. When I am amongst my healthcare peers, they’re super excited about localizing healthcare. If you think about all the others that are in healthcare, can you really localize healthcare? And this is our distinct advantage is taking that pharmacy relationship because understand that many Americans, their relationship with their pharmacist is much stronger than their relationship with a primary care physician.

Rosalind Brewer: They see them more frequently. They consult on the use of meds frequently, and they can access them right away without a phone call or an appointment. And so there’s something to be said about that as the engine to start this work to get healthcare directly to the consumer. So I don’t think it’s that much of a leap of faith. We have 9,100 stores. A good portion of them, probably 50% of them are in medically underserved communities. We can bring healthcare local to the patient and our customer. And when you think about we have all of your information from a pharmacy perspective and the relationship that our customers have built with our pharmacist, adding VillageMD and a primary care physician, adding a health corner, which is a health advisor, and then having that local and also having neutrality, we do not have the relationships that some other pharmacy retailers have.

Rosalind Brewer: So in terms of all different insurance plans, our VillageMD units accept all of them. So the point of neutrality, we’re going to leverage that. We’re going to leverage our stores. We’re leveraging the digital nature of our business that we’ve already built in. And then we’re bringing it right to the patient so that they can care for themselves. The whole goal is to improve health outcomes. And we think by providing access and understanding, I think we are doing the same thing that happened in retail probably 10 or 12 years ago. So there’s a lot of similarities here and things that we can leverage from my learnings as a retailer. We are creating relationships with companies across the United States. You think about our relationship with Blue Shield of California. And so we are creating, we built our healthcare units with them, and we just put in 10 new units of health corners in their areas. We’re building more. We’ll have 3,000 of those health corners and we’ll have health advisors in our buildings and Blue Shield of California will be behind it. So it’s really interesting what you can do if you take advantage of your assets. And that’s what we’re doing.

Speaker 3: Walgreens Boots Alliance’s purpose, to inspire more joyful lives through better health.

Ranjay Gulati: In the midst of this kind of pretty significant strategic initiative on your part, you also decided to do a take on the purpose itself. And I love the way you came out with the words you did, more joyful lives through better health. And I’ll tell you why I loved it personally, because most of healthcare is about illness, not wellness. We get paid for illness. We don’t get paid for wellness. So tell us a little bit more about why coming up with this kind of a purpose mission statement was so critical for you so early in your tenure as CEO.

Rosalind Brewer: Some of it is personal. If you’ve ever been a caretaker for a family member, and you can see how arduous a task it is to care for someone, either in their final days or at the worst moments of their health experience, you can see how tough it is. And they’re not joyful days, but they could be. And if you had the right access around you, you could turn this situation into something that is workable. So I took a look at this and we did as a team because we know that usually when a patient is diagnosed, the first thing they do is take their prescription to the pharmacist. And that’s where they’re really at the point of realization that I have something happening to me, and they have a consultation. And we know how important it is for our customer service model to respond to that.

Rosalind Brewer: So first and foremost, we’re usually that first person. But then you talked, you made the reference to wellness. What we would really like is that let’s have these conversations before you are diagnosed. And so this wellness piece allows us to talk about the mental wellbeing of all of us. It allows us to get ahead of issues. For some of the communities we serve, we’re really clear on the social determinants that affect them.

Rosalind Brewer: One of the areas that we are constantly thinking about is obesity. And so are there things that we can do to have a healthier offering in our stores so that we make our contribution to a healthier lifestyle through what you put in your body. And so those are the kinds of things we’re beginning to think about. And remember this vision for us, it’s a long term vision. And this is what gets us charged because this isn’t meeting next quarter. This is our long view. And so imagine the work that we plan to do with reformatting our stores and making sure that we have the right offering in our stores. So getting to that wellness piece hopefully will curtail some of these less than happy moments in people’s lives.

Ranjay Gulati: I totally agree with you that purpose can give an organization a sense of a compass, an orienting framework on their long term vision of where they’re trying to go. It’s also a way to communicate with other stakeholders about that’s our purpose. This is who we are, but purpose, when you activate it inside your organization, all the way down to the frontline, that can be another energizing element of purpose where people feel connected to it. But getting it there is hard work. Getting it to frontline people who say that’s a corporate speak. How are you thinking of that next piece of the puzzle, which is activating it at the frontline?

Rosalind Brewer: It’s probably best that I give you some examples here, Ranjay because the way we are getting our organization ingrained and aligned behind this purpose is to make decisions through the intent of the purpose. I’ll give you an example. We’re looking at our benefits package right now. And if I look at our benefits package, it’s not living up to our mission. And so I would tell you that I would love to see the day where we have more support for mental health in our benefits package. I would like to see the day that we provide flexibility and care and being able to take care of extended family members, because we know that that’s part of what happens in all of our lives is we act as caretakers. We need leave of absence to do those kinds of things. So we’re making those decisions.

Rosalind Brewer: And when my team brings me something that doesn’t live through that, I decline it and say that doesn’t fit with our mission and values. And it’s interesting because they’re like, “But no, this is best cost. Everybody’s doing this now.” I don’t want what everyone’s doing now. We’re going to fight for the future. I didn’t ask for a cost initiative. I asked for this to meet our mission and values. And so in some instances, people are startled by it. They’re like, “You’re going to forego a cost benefit for this.” And absolutely in many cases, we’ll have to do that. And so it takes a balance, but it takes us living through it and making our decisions based on who we want to be.

Ranjay Gulati: I bring it up because I have a niece who works as a cashier in the Walgreens. She’s been doing it for at least 15 years. She loves her job. She loves going to work. She doesn’t have to work, but she chooses to go to work. And every time I speak to her, she just feels that the work itself gives her so much fulfillment. So that’s what I was wondering that you take a statement like this and that when internalized can make work even more meaningful.

Rosalind Brewer: Absolutely. I love to hear stories like that. And when I’m in stores, I try and walk and live the values of the company and engage our frontline cashiers. And I think a lot of our leaders do that. And sounds like your family member has realized what we’re trying to do here.

Ranjay Gulati: Like all of us, business leaders are shaped by their life stories. Roz Brewer points to her upbringing as her source of inspiration, her drive to succeed. Roz is one of only two black women to lead a Fortune 100 company. She grew up in Detroit in the 1960s and ‘70s. Her folks were assembly line workers at General Motors.

Rosalind Brewer: My parents had migrated from the Southeast, from the state of Alabama to Michigan. And it was part of that huge industrial migration in pursuit of employment and to gain a different lifestyle. Neither of my parents went to college. So this was really important for them. So it really brought something into our household and it was a strong sense of family because as they both migrated, they brought loads of family with them.

Rosalind Brewer: I think about how I relocate now, I just grab my family and move, but these are siblings and families that migrated together. So first of all, a strong sense of family. The second thing I would tell you is hard work ethic. Because they did not have a college degree, they had to find those jobs that allowed them to develop on the job. And so my parents both learned skills in the automotive industry. My dad eventually became a manager and had a management position. And it was interesting to watch all of that happen. So I think it instilled family values with me and hard work ethic.

Ranjay Gulati: Your next part of your journey was really around going to Spelman College. And I know it has a special place in your heart for you. How has Spelman helped you develop as a leader? What were the things you learned there that really have allowed you to really evolve as a leader and be where you are?

Rosalind Brewer: So during my time at Spelman, understanding that Spelman is an all-women’s college, historically black college, it was interesting to be amongst my peers that looked just like me. So I learned a few things in that, mostly all about myself, because I saw myself in so many other people. The other thing I would tell you is that when you’re amongst someone, this very tight knit group, we’re very frank with each other. And so it wasn’t uncommon for one of my Spelman sisters to tell me exactly when I made a mistake or exactly when I did something wrong. And then the other thing I would tell you is that when you’re around what I call your people, you have this sense of pride in not wanting to disappoint them. The other thing I will tell you is that the professors, the faculty, the staff there, they acted almost as a parent, a counselor, and a professor.

Rosalind Brewer: And I felt like they would not let me fail. The classroom size was small enough where they would look me in the face. They knew when I was probably not doing my best or maybe distracted because maybe I went to an event to party the night before, but they would tell you those kinds of things, but they would reengage you. And so I felt a real strong caring and nurturing in that environment. And it was such a time of great change. I lost my dad while I was in college. My parents, there were four of us in college at one time. I understood my parents’ financial struggles at that time. Being 19, 20 years old, you get it at that point. And so at that point of a lot of change in your life, I felt like I had a really nice warm blanket around me, either from the sisterhood of Spelman or the faculty and staff that was there. So I learned a lot.

Ranjay Gulati: So here’s an unfair question. We’re going to talk about purpose later on, but as a young college graduate, did you have some sense of purpose as to what am I going to do in this world? Why am I here? Did you start to discover even at an early level, at a basic level, what am I going to do with myself?

Rosalind Brewer: Yeah. Spelman is in Southeast Atlanta and it is in an environment where there’s a lot of Section 8 housing. And so when you come into the gates of the college, it’s actually very pristine and beautiful, but outside the gates, they’re very, very much an underrepresented community. And many of us would work in the community in the evening hours because there were children that needed to be tutored, single parenting, those kinds of things. And we all chipped in and we took care of the neighborhood. And so I had not seen that growing up in Detroit, quite honestly. I mean, I lived in a neighborhood. It wasn’t pristine or perfect, but I definitely had not seen that level, but I was in it. And I did a ton of work in the community there. And it stuck with me very hard because it was sort of in my head, I’m inside the gates being educated, but those outside the gates look like me, but they’re uneducated and they need help. And that stuck with me for a very long time.

Ranjay Gulati: Another life experience that shaped Roz Brewer as an industry leader goes back to her family and the healthcare challenges they faced.

Rosalind Brewer: I am the youngest of five, and we’re very close knit as a family. I think about when -- we’ve lost both of our parents now, but the care for them towards the end brought us together as a family. And it’s interesting how difficult those situations were to manage with even all the means that we had between my siblings and I, and being in this healthcare environment right now, I mean I’ve actually had to live it. And it makes me think about, I don’t want anyone else to have to go through what I did. And then I think about, I actually had the financial means. What about those individuals who don’t have the financial means and don’t understand the system and can’t make a phone call or lean on a friend in a very high power position to help get care for your family?

Rosalind Brewer: When I thought, Ranjay, about leaving Starbucks and coming into the healthcare industry, I thought to myself, “Why am I doing this?” But I think it is something that had festered me very early on as I saw my parents go through things and caring for them that this is the legacy that I want to leave is to see how well I can create impact, create noise in this industry to make new partnerships happen. I’m spending quite a bit of my time talking to legislation on how this might be able to change. And it does stem from my lived experience. I could have come in here and become the retailer that I know how to do so well, likely with my eyes closed, but this is a challenge for me to learn something new. But I think I’ve learned enough in the industry that I hope I grab some good ear from people on this and I’m having some good conversations in trying to mobilize a different healthcare industry for the United States.

Ranjay Gulati: Are there any people in your career or moments in your career that really touched you and have shaped you as a person, either at Sam’s or at Starbucks that you say, either a moment or a person who really gave you a moment to think about and really was formative for you?

Rosalind Brewer: There’s probably been a couple of those. My sponsor at Walmart was Mike Duke. And here’s an interesting thing. Mike Duke and Indra Nooyi had a very close relationship, and Mike was sponsoring me through the company and he knew what my gaps were. He introduced me to Indra. Indra invited me to her office. And within 10 minutes, she shut the door. She knew everything about me. She had studied my background and she helped me understand what I was up against.

Rosalind Brewer: And that was so impactful for me to see, first of all, how networks happened, started with a white male who grew up in Fayetteville, Georgia, extended to one of the leading CEOs in the country at the time, Indra Nooyi. Indra Nooyi, a very busy CEO, took the time to learn about me and share something with me. And then she never left me alone. Indra will drop me a note, she’ll see something, she’ll do something. And it really said to me how important networks are, how important mentoring and sponsoring are, but also too, how much she cared and continues to care even in her lifestyle. And quite honestly, we had some things in common because of our career in CPG, but then our lifestyles were different. So for me, that was very impactful to know how much intentionality was there. And we’re still very good friends today.

Ranjay Gulati: Roz Brewer leads a company under tremendous social pressure to do what’s right. For instance, how do you get paid for keeping people healthy? The entire American healthcare system is designed to compensate for illness, not wellness. Adding to the complexity, extensive government regulations and partisan political battles over how much government should be involved in healthcare. For Roz Brewer, having a deep purpose is an essential compass in navigating such a difficult market.

Rosalind Brewer: It is a difficult balance, particularly in this environment right now where we have labor issues and shortages where they are, and you want to motivate people to come back into the workplace. I will tell you that I have seen time and time again, my experience at Walmart, my experience at Starbucks, that when people are purpose driven, they tend to run through a wall for you. People want to know that their work is going to count for something greater than just delivering the profits. I think profits are an outcome of doing the right thing. One of the things I talk to my team about each and every day is doing the right thing in terms of how we make decisions. And when we do the right thing on behalf of the customer and our patients, that will create profits. Now it is a careful, a very careful structure.

Rosalind Brewer: So understanding business very well, I look at our business in terms of a portfolio. There’s some areas that we will make money. And so we’ll concentrate on those. And so I’ve always done this is to look at the portfolio and say, “Where is my money being made?” And that’s the area that I’m going to push. And then there’s other areas where I’ve got to meet the purpose of the company. And so one of the things we’re working on right now is leveraging our core business, which is our retail pharmacy business. And so we’re doing a lot of automation of everything that happens behind the counter in the pharmacy. And that does two things. One, we’re not going to eliminate jobs from it. What we’re going to do is make the pharmacist’s job easier for them, because they are professionals, they are trained, they’re educated.

Rosalind Brewer: I want them to operate at the top of their degree. And that is interacting with the customer. When they interact with that customer, because I’ve taken all the paperwork from them, that will turn profits because that customer will come back. And so there are those kinds of things where you have to understand your business really well before you make these drastic means to be purpose driven. You have to understand your business model. And it’s interesting that I’ve found that some people don’t really get their business model real well and they go right to purpose. And that’s where the breakdown happens.

Ranjay Gulati: How do you think about unhealthy products, cigarettes or junk food? And those are tough decisions because you can’t overnight walk away sometimes from things like that. But how does one even put them into your purpose calculation?

Rosalind Brewer: I learned this at Walmart is that you can try to remove sugar and salt from the front of the store and you’ll lose a lot of your customers because people are flexitarians. They eat Cheetos at night and cucumbers during the daytime. We used to joke about that all the time. So it’s both. And so you have to know your customer well. In certain geographies, there is both. If I were in a certain area of town, I would be able to express a little bit more healthy for you, but you’ve got to understand your consumer in that respect, but understand too that people are flexitarians. Now, there are some areas where you have to really pull some hard triggers. We’ve been really clear about what we want to do from a healthier standpoint. Tobacco is a problem. Tobacco is not where we want to be. It sends a bad signal. So these are the things we’re working on to make sure that we’re living through what we really want to do here, but it’s a balance.

Ranjay Gulati: I want to talk about leadership with you, Roz, because I’ve heard you talk about leadership. You talk about next level leadership and listening, acting and making people feel heard in the workplace. Tell me a little bit about what you see is going to be necessary for leaders in the coming decades now, because we are facing tremendous uncertainty and change around us. What are you hoping for and what have you learned?

Rosalind Brewer: Through the pandemic and the social unrest in this country, I remember making those statements about next level leadership, and now I’ve begun to think what’s at next, next level, because that’s not really good enough anymore, just to listen and react. I think people want to be heard and felt and seen. And there’s not only, in our environment right now, the wealth gap. I think there’s also just a gap in just really understanding what motivates people. I look at my new hires and my young hires, my early college graduates. And it’s hard for them to see a road from who they are right now to where someone in my position is. They want to be able to bring more than just their whole self to work. They want people around them that actually are like them. And it’s not that a Black person wants a Black person next to them.

Rosalind Brewer: A Black person wants a white person next to them who understands them. And so even when I look through the vernacular of looking at diversity numbers, that’s not good enough. We need our leaders and our companies to reflect what’s happening in the world. They’ve got to be in touch. And when we see this disparity between a young new hire wanting people to understand what happens in their daily life and to ask them what did you do on the weekend is just not enough. But to understand when they said that they’ve done something that you’ve never seen before, that you’re actually interested in it. And so as we hire, we can’t just look at numbers anymore and say, “What’s my numbers between race diversity and gender diversity.” It’s diversity of thought. And the way we treat people, the way we see and hear and listening, and it’s how we want to pattern ourselves. And so we have to think more about this because our future generation of leaders, they’re impatient with intolerance. They’re not having it for one second. And I think that’s part of the fallout we’re seeing right now in terms of employment in the United States.

Ranjay Gulati: Strong leadership is not just a top down proposition. Yes, a commanding officer needs to lead the troops, but effective leaders also guide one another and look to one another for guidance. As the rare Black woman in a top role in corporate America, Roz Brewer has been called on by her colleagues to advise on diversity, equity and inclusion work.

Rosalind Brewer: One of the things that I try to do as much as I possibly can is to teach and train and develop even my peers. Other CEOs have called me and asked me about my experiences and particularly around when the George Floyd incident happened, what would I do and how would I think about it? And I will exhaust my every schedule just to respond to them, to help them understand how to deal with this. I’m so glad that they’re making the phone call because I can remember times in my career where a phone call wouldn’t have happened. They would have made a knee jerk decision, but people are seeking to understand. I think, Ranjay, I look forward to the day where there’s much more conversations happening between these differences, so that people are not so impatient with each other and that they give each other grace. People are trying to learn. And so I’m an optimist, I know that, but I think that there’s a time for us to listen and learn and not be so quick to judge.

Ranjay Gulati: One of the things you’ve talked about also is making Walgreens the best place to work. In this talent war we’re facing right now, where it’s so hard to find talent, what are some things that you are imagining doing to really make it a thriving place to work, where people want to come to work?

Rosalind Brewer: You’re right. When I think about regrettable losses and I sit with those individuals, never is a question around pay or benefits. It’s usually about what kind of work they were engaged in. What I really enjoy doing is to make sure that the company and the teams understand the biggest problems we’re trying to solve, and to have those conversations at the lowest levels of the organization. It is always interesting to me when I walk into a store and I get to meet some of our frontline employees, they’ll say, “We get this inventory in every day and it comes every Tuesday or Wednesday, but that’s not the day that our schedules are aligned.” So we have these conversations around what decisions are we making at the top that’s impacting these people that have to manage the day to day? But then I turn it around and engage them and say, “Well, we’re working on an inventory management system.”

Rosalind Brewer: And then they’ll say to me, “Well, have you thought about this?” And so it’s that engagement at the lowest levels. Never underestimate taking a big problem to your frontline teams because they actually know much more about the execution of it and the reality of it. And then the engagement grows, but just take that in a different vein, bringing in new, I would say, mid-level managers into the company and giving them the biggest problems to solve. They love that. That’s the energy that they want. They know that their brain is being counted on for, we go to them for the answers instead of having it come top down.

Ranjay Gulati: So, Roz, I know that you evolved as a leader in your professional career and your personal life as well. How would you describe your own purpose today? And I realize this, and it’s a lifelong journey. My purpose is a dynamic thing. I don’t know about yours.

Rosalind Brewer: Mine has migrated over the years. It’s been dynamic. I think for me, I think about my ability to touch the lives of so many people. I’ve worked in large organizations. And I think that’s been an intent of mine because I think if I want to make change happen, I need scale. So for me, I want to, you hit on a point for me, Ranjay, about what’s happening in terms of the misunderstandings of people. I think the more I can talk and get the message out there to help people bridge these gaps, I think we need to focus on things as really important as this wealth gap is really keeping us apart. I believe secondly, I think the gap in understanding between our differences is there. So I do take every advantage I can to talk about this little murky middle and diversity initiatives, that’s keeping people apart. And then third, I think being able to talk about growing large companies and what that takes and making sure that I don’t land on profit in all of my conversations. It’s tough to do when you’re a CEO. But I think right now, my purpose is around helping people dispel these misunderstandings so that we can come together and build large success factors that stem from who we are as people, what we want to do for our communities, but actually building strong companies.

Ranjay Gulati: One of the things you’ve talked about is bringing your whole self to work. And I actually, in my research for this article on what do your Black executives really want, heard a number of them tell me that they never want to bring their whole self to work because they have to wear a mask and they feel that they have to be somebody else at work, that they really can’t bring their whole selves to work because people around them don’t really want to know their whole self. They’re not interested in their whole self. So they actually resisted this phrase with me on a number of occasions, but you transcended it. Somehow, you felt that you could bring your whole self to work. Tell me more.

Rosalind Brewer: I regret to hear that because it makes me think about, have we really become that much of a stall work that we can’t embrace people’s differences? What I would say is that it does take a sense of confidence to do that, but I just hope they would hang in there because my stress level went down tenfold when I began to be the same person at work and the same person at home. They must be living an extremely stressful life. I don’t know how they do that. I have to be able to come to work and talk about my family and the things that we do that don’t look anything like what I know my peers are doing. I tell people how I prepare my Thanksgiving dinner. That sounds like something small, but the times that I’ve done it, people have looked at me like, “Are you crazy? Do you all really do that?” And so, it’s those kinds of things that I hope, I hope that changes. That’s very disappointing for me that they feel that way. There’s this gap in between who they are and where they work every day. But then I hope that they do find their place because there are companies that will accept them as they are, and I hope they don’t fall out of the workplace.

Ranjay Gulati: On that note, let me turn to a question that you’ve been asked a lot is that as one of two African American women to lead a Fortune 500 company, which to me is in and of itself highly problematic, do you feel you’re under more scrutiny and attention and that you have more to prove that people are looking to see where you’re going to take this company?

Rosalind Brewer: Yes. I do think that I’m under more scrutiny than the average. Some people look at it as a novelty, to say, “Oh, let’s see what she’s going to do. Does this model really work, having an African American female leader at a Fortune 100 company?” I do think that. The one thing I don’t do is to make decisions to prove them right or wrong. I push that way back in my decision making, because that will absolutely create disaster for me. I have to do what’s right for the company. I understand my shareholders well, but I understand what I have to do for the people who work here. And that’s what I’m committed to do. So I’m not trying to live through it. I don’t let it impact my decision making, but it’s absolutely there. I feel people watching me through a different vernacular than they’ve watched other leaders. It happens frequently.

Ranjay Gulati: You have talked in the past about naysayers who question your capability and wonder why you’re here. You’ve never let that faze you. You’ve kind of walked right through it. How do you do that?

Rosalind Brewer: I feel like I have been prepared for this. If you look at my background, I mean I started off as a scientist. I worked in manufacturing and operations. I’ve done M&A. I’ve transitioned from one company from another, which is not easy. I’ve run transformations, and then I’ve scaled large projects. When I look at that, if you peel my name off of my resume and put on a more, what I will call, mainstream name, I probably would have been a CEO probably 15 years ago. So that’s very clear to me. And then I’ve sat in meetings and watched decisions being made, I’ve seen the worst of leaders and I’ve seen the best of leaders. I know what bad looks like. I’m committed not to be one of those. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen the impact it’s had on companies and organizations.

Rosalind Brewer: So I try to embody what I think is going to be the success factors for my company. The other thing too, Ranjay, I have to say is that I’ve lived a pretty selfless life. And what I mean by that is that I’ve not done these jobs in order to gain the next title or to gain the next income level. If you look at the companies, I’ve been very deliberate about where I wanted to be and when I didn’t want to be there, I made the decision not to be there. And the other thing too, is I’m very comfortable living a simple life if it ever got to that. My purpose in these corporate initiatives have not been for self-prospering. It has actually been to make an impact. And I’ve been very deliberate about that and unapologetic about it. And at some points it’s cost me. I’ve spoken up in meetings where no one else would and it’s cost me in certain areas, but you bounce back or sometimes you don’t.

Ranjay Gulati: You’ve been very vocal speaking about diversity, equity and inclusion. And I think you are one of the first to call out the idea that diversity gets a lot of attention, equity and inclusion don’t.

Rosalind Brewer: That’s right.

Ranjay Gulati: Tell me more about the E and the I, because that was my observation too in my own research that all these young individuals I interviewed said, “Our company is great at the D so we have plenty of intake, but then the E and the I don’t materialize. And so we have a big hole in the bucket, people leaving.” How have you made sense of the E and the I? Because those are tough ones to really understand for a CEO.

Rosalind Brewer: Yeah, this is where the hard work begins, because this is where the E and the I really gets back to the culture piece and what kind of environment you’re trying to create for the people that work for you. And I feel like I have a little bit of an advantage. One, I’ve got a 20 something who’s been in corporate environment, went to best of schools, all of those things. I listen to his struggles. So I’ve got that advantage. It’s data point of one, but I have spent a lot of time myself going through the same struggles, and I know it, I feel it. And it’s so interesting, Ranjay, I can walk into a room and I’ll see a new hire sitting in the room and I can see this fear and trepidation on their face. And it makes me want to do some very simple things, take my level of conversation to meet them.

Rosalind Brewer: I try to meet that person in the room that’s most vulnerable, and everybody else take care of yourself. But that’s my goal when I walk into a big setting, because I know if I get it right for that person, the rest of the room will gain from it as well. I look at these, our young hires and say they’re scared to ask the question. So I will extend myself to them and ask them the question. I’ll get to know them. Now I’m one data point, but I have a lot of people watching me. I have a whole team watching how I interact and I’m seeing them walk it off and sort of pattern my behavior. And I think leaders at my level need to understand just how meaningful that is, how genuine that needs to be, and when you get in these conversations, I’ve tried to build a culture of equity and inclusion, make sure that you understand who’s in your room.

Rosalind Brewer: And I don’t think we do enough. We’re so trained to look at data and numbers. We look at where’d you graduate from, then we put you in a box. We put you in a box when we look at your color, your gender. We put you in a box and those boxes have diversity within the box. And I don’t think we’ve recognized that. I know that for sure, there’s diversity within the Black community. And I think we need to understand that you are now, we are now as leaders going to have to go two or three levels down to understand what equity and inclusion really means, what matters to these individuals that work the hardest for us. And I think it’s going to take some time, but we’ve got to stop looking at numbers and get into the environment. It’s important that we focus on the culture and that’s in walking and living the culture that we want, that we think can thrive.

Ranjay Gulati: One marker of a great leader in any domain, be it business or government or the greater society is courage. And as Nelson Mandela said, “Courage is not the absence of fear. It’s taking action in the face of fear.” I asked Roz Brewer how she thinks about courage.

Rosalind Brewer: The reason why I am asking our organization to focus on courage is because this is probably one of the hardest business times we’ve been in in a long time. There’s so many trade-offs that could be made at this time. And it’s going to take courage because, and also too, Ranjay, our results are going to be factored through a multiple lens. Not only do we do what’s right financially, but we’ve talked about it already is doing the right thing when no one’s watching. It’s also really important that courage is emphasized here because some of our outcomes won’t look like financial metrics. They won’t. They’ll look like we’re facing a time right now, where people are walking out of the corporate environment for nothing, for no jobs. I’ve not seen that in my career. We have to understand that, and it’s going to take courage to really think about the decisions that we make.

Rosalind Brewer: They’re hard. I’ll give you some examples. Right now, just thinking about what we just did with vaccine administration and how we saved lives. Now we did that and we spent a lot of money to get ready for that. And it’s interesting because it can affect your profitability, but we made that decision because it was the right thing to do. And we were uniquely capable of delivering that work. That took courage for this organization to make the decision that we were going to slow down some innovation that we absolutely needed in this company to deliver vaccines. That took courage. And I don’t think it’s going to stop here now that we’re in an endemic. We have to think about the courageous moves to make differences in this healthcare environment. It’s going to take everything we’ve got. And so I think courage is going to be important because the decisions have really big differentiated outcomes to them. And so we’ll be making trade-offs. So courage is going to be very important as we go forward through this next time that we’re in right now as companies.

Ranjay Gulati: Rosalind Brewer is the CEO of the retail pharmacy and healthcare company Walgreens Boots Alliance, headquartered in the suburbs of Chicago. Roz leads an organization that is in the eye of the COVID pandemic storm, delivering vaccines, test kits and other essentials. But her industry is also at the center of where hard economics meet social responsibilities. Roz Brewer is a pathbreaking African-American leader who brings her life sensibility and her core purpose to show how her company and others can finally and truly embrace diversity, equity and inclusion.

Ranjay Gulati: You’ve been listening to Deep Purpose, a podcast about courage and commitment in turbulent times. You can go to my website for more of my conversations with leaders in the business world, navigating the 21st century business environment. You can also find out about my book titled Deep Purpose. That’s deeppurpose.net. This podcast is produced by Steven Smith with help from Lauren Modelski, Melissa Duncan, Craig McDonald, and John Barth. The theme music is by Gary Meister. I’m Ranjay Gulati.