All right. Yeah. Greg, I grew up in India. My father was an architect. My mom was a schoolteacher. We moved every three years. Literally, life was all about picking up roots, adapting, exploring and being respectful of new cultures. I did that across the country and eventually went to school to study physics, hated it. And so and so as I got out of university, I ran in the opposite direction and took a job with the monster franchise or for Sheraton in India, working in hotels. So my first gig was working in restaurants out of five star hotels, and I knew I found my calling in life. The moment I did that, I really, really enjoyed the business. From there, I got introduced to folks at PepsiCo who were setting up an opening Pizza Hut in India. The startup and I had no idea what Pizza Hut was, in those days had not stepped foot outside of the country. But some, you know, fed like Pepsi is a good company and it came with a ticket to the United States. To train here and so I say, Yeah, let’s do this. So that led to a 20 romance and career with what eventually became Yum Brands. And I got into the chain restaurant business really obviously grew and learned from that organization love what I did. I worked across three continents with them. That role took me to an exposure to over 30 countries, literally around the world. worked across, grew up in the operations vertical, but then did stints with marketing people, concept development, business development, and eventually got into general management, which was my first love. My last role with Yum was as president of Pizza Hut, India. And then there was this itch of wanting to know what life was outside of being young. I’d spent 20 years wanting to know what it felt like to work for another organization and wanted to continue to grow my personal journey. And I found a role with Applebee’s that used to be owned or and still is by a company called Dine Brands. So as a family we shifted to Kansas City, literally in the heartland of America and we moved there as their CEO. That stint was short lived because Applebee’s wanted to move the campus to Glendale, California. So within about 10 months of having bought a house and got our girls into school, we got sticks. And there was a relocating said and we moved again. But we’ve really loved California and living here in the Los Angeles area. I did about Three years with Applebee’s as CEO and the old building had a very interesting turnaround time for that brand. And then got to a stage where I really wanted to work for a brand that had consumer tailwinds that was purpose driven, and gave me an opportunity to work alongside some great talent which brought me to Sweetgreen. Somebody introduced me to the founders, I found that to be an incredible brand and a very inspiring vision. And now have been with Sweetgreen for just over a couple of years and in my final weeks added and now in my yet another transition but more on that in time because at the moment, I’m serving my last few weeks of notice at Sweetgreen. So that’s the story of my life. I have two grown up daughters when 19 and 21, both in college, and I have been married for over 20 years to my darling wife, Michelle.
Greg Toroosian 7:00
So lovely. That is a great, great overview. Thank you, Anna, as listeners can probably attest to an amazing, interesting and amazing career full stop. I mean, it’s rare to see people that stay with a company for so long as you did for, you know, 20 years, but then also get the opportunity to see so many different continents and probably ways of working around the world, you know. So going back, actually, just quickly, while we’re on that, to your time at Yum, when you did those roles in all the different departments, was it like a rotational program that they had on or you just, like, yearn to find out more about marketing and when students didn’t over there and, you know, how did that work?
Sanjiv Razdan 7:40
Yeah, great. Great question, Greg. I think one of the things was fairly early in my career in life, I identified that my passion was to find a way of getting into general management and within Yum there was a very clear structure John Wood said, hey, look, if here’s what you want to do with your career, here are some very clear paths to get there. One of the ways of getting to a general management role within Yum was to accumulate a breadth of experiences. And whether that was working in a franchise and company in an environment, whether that was working across more than one market, whether that was working across more than one function. So there were a variety of ways of accumulating breadths of experiences. But that was something that young cherished and expected from executives that would eventually be grooming agenda management. Once I had identified that as my passion, essentially, I put up my hand and said, hey, look, I’d love to be a general manager. Do you guys think that I could get there one day and if I can, what do I need to do in order to get there and how do you help me with that? And so what that led to was at various points in time I’m in my career, young coming back with opportunities to say, hey, we’ve got this role for you. Are you interested? Each time those decisions were pivotal. They came with some sort of a personal sacrifice typically, because there might have involved lateral moves, you had to give up a lot for perhaps not even a promotion, picking up stakes moving countries and continents at times. But that’s what led to some of these doors opening.
Greg Toroosian 9:31
Yeah, I’m sure I love to hear that because it definitely makes you a very well rounded leader as well. And if you’re going to stay within an organization, you know, how things work together, like how each department works together. But then, also, you know, I’ve got a lot of experience in the startup world and you know, early founders and early stage founders, things like that. And something I like to talk about on the shows is knowing when your expertise kind of stopped being kind of self aware Where and right leaning on people who know things better. And don’t, don’t hesitate and relinquishing some control or decision making, because it’s rare, it’s rare to have the even first and foremost opportunity to work in so many different departments and get the insight from each one and know, you know where their skill set lies, where their strengths are and what you can lean on them for, or when you’re heading up a hole, you know, if you are a GM or a CEO, knowing how all the pieces fit together is key, right? It’s key to knowing you know, your business. So that’s great. That’s really cool to hear. And that was more just me being nosy and interested. So great stuff. So as I mentioned, I work directly with Sandy with Sweetgreen, and I was very impressed by how he thought about hiring in general and how he made a case to add headcount to his team and how he advised others and advised me as well frankly, on how to do the same and structure like presentations and things like that. And also really He valued the relationships they really had with internal and external recruiters. But, again, I guess knowing where your skill sets lie, knowing where other people’s strengths are, and then leaning on them really, and having those partners so it was really, really refreshing for me. Obviously Sanjiv, you mentioned how you got into the industry, you know, from physics studying to hotels and restaurants. So I’m only assuming that you didn’t come into your career with that sort of philosophy and with that mindset, so how did that kind of grow with you? How did you get to that point? And what do you wish you knew earlier? Right, you know?
Sanjiv Razdan 11:39
Yeah. Look, studying physics and all science, really at university state. One thing that it does help is just with trying to find order in chaos, and looking for patterns shopping around analytics and insights capability. So once this They actually didn’t really help me. But I think indirectly the way that it trains your brain to think was super helpful. Also, what it did was getting into the food service industry, I think it certainly made me acutely aware of how little I knew about it, and therefore made me incredibly thirsty, to learn more and very conscious at a very early stage in my career to go out of my way to seek out mentorship or learning from those who knew more than I did, irrespective of where that help came from, and really kept an open mind. And I think, I’d like to think that over the years for the most I’ve managed to keep that attitude going. But that started very early, getting into an industry that I knew very little about. So I think that certainly helped. And it’s a philosophy that over the years has been relevant which is starting any new role, any new project, any initiative is to identify for build know-how on that topic or the subject or the project, whatever it is that you’re taking on. And I find that being purposeful about learning about whatever the topic is really is incredibly helpful to shift strategy in terms of how you think about what, what needs to happen, or guiding the team to get there. It’s almost like worth spending some time to identify how much you know, or how little you know about the topic and build perspective from others or the sources and know how on that, on that topic, it was something that I learned from young I think they had a culture of encouraging that but it just has helped me stay current and relevant throughout my career because you just start with before you jump into something and start shaping strategy, you actually first get to know more about the topic before you even. That’s great. jump right in. So I’m not sure that answered your question directly. But certainly that’s been philosophically that has helped tremendously.
Greg Toroosian 14:11
That’s amazing. Yeah. And I think from learning that early on in your career, it kind of shaped who you are right now. And you can only build on that if that’s like the foundational stuff that you’re learning. You’re going to take that into every role or every avenue that you go down, right. And it’s only a positive I know firsthand, like I said, you know, selfishly I know firsthand that it was a great working relationship and it was valuable. They’re taking a step back, actually, can you tell us a bit more about the organization’s you’ve grown? Because, you know, they’ve been pretty complex, you know, the size, the locality of the teams, the type of employees, because, you know, you’ve had leaders reporting into you’ve also had all the way down the operations channel. There’s just so you know, listeners can get a better understanding about who you are and your experience.
Sanjiv Razdan 14:59
Yeah, why don’t we start with perhaps the most recent gig. Yeah, just just to take that as an example. So, just for context, Sweetgreen is a mission driven company that I was most recently AM, like I mentioned, it’s annual turnover is somewhere in the realm of north of $300 million, about 110 locations across the country. It is a food service establishment that operates on the cusp of health and wellness, technology, and food. When I joined Sweetgreen in just over a couple of years ago, the big challenge for us was to improve unit level economics and margins, but also really gear up Sweetgreen for rapid growth, and how the founders at Sweetgreen pivot the organization and the company from being motivate traditional brick and mortar multi site retailer into a omni channel food platform. So it was a big transformation effort. For me, where I start typically is using this framework of what I call strategy, structure culture. And what I mean by that is it’s most important as one starts to assemble a team to first think about and define the strategy in that function in that department or the company, whatever the frame of context, it’s right, to be able to define what the strategy is. And based on that broad strategy, what reveals itself is the kinds of skills that we’re going to have, the kind of experience we’re going to need and therefore the kind of theme that we need to put in place and the way that it needs to be organized and structured. So for me, it’s a very thoughtful, purposeful way of first shaping the strategy, then defining how one assembles that I’d been in the case of Sweetgreen, the example I’d give was given the priorities that I just defined. And in my role as CEO, what therefore I was looking for people who had the experience to scale that had been in other setups that had started relatively smaller but had grown to had demonstrated the capability of being able to scale the business, who understood what it took to run a small business and also had demonstrated capability and running a business at scale. The second thing I was looking for was learning agility, Sweetgreen’s a rapidly changing innovative, dynamic environment, unless people come from a mindset of learning agility who are constantly for lifelong learning. lifelong learners who are constantly seeking to find out and learn new things, it is very hard to make the cultural shift. And the right mindset is to survive and then thrive at sweeping. And thirdly, I think it’s very important to know one’s own self and one’s own sense, and opportunities. I wanted people surrounding me that were going to complement my own skills and therefore had very specific things in mind that I was looking for in terms of attributes that would, that would help and then finally, I was mindful and purposeful about diversity right from the word go, I wanted to build a very inclusive team, a very inclusive culture, and starting with gender diversity. And so there was a clear lens in terms of what was required. And then—
Greg Toroosian 18:49
Sorry to interrupt but I think for listeners or anyone that is maybe in a company or industry that is a disrupter or attempting to disrupt any industry that’s been around for a while, I think what you just shared is key, you know, big, you’ve come from large organizations, people probably wouldn’t look at it and say, you know, that’s a Applebee’s is a disruptive, you know, brand or anything like that. But like you said, you led transformation there, and came to Sweetgreen to help them do that, and very much so they’re disrupting that fast casual space health food, direct to consumer and creating that food platform. So with the mentality that you have, and that strategy that you put in place for growing your team, and, frankly, the type of people that you’re looking for, you’re going to need that because whatever they’ve been in the industry for ages or not, if they don’t have that mindset, or that capability is just going to be a wrong, a wrong fit, right.
Sanjiv Razdan 19:58
Yeah, absolutely. It couldn’t be put better myself, Greg. And I think what also I learned over the years, and we remember that Sweetgreen pretty heavily was that as you start to assemble the team, it’s also important that there is an organ rejection, when you try and bring in new talent into a managing organization and an organization that’s founder led that has used to have a very close knit team of a small group of people who are now for the core team, right? We’re now opening up and trying to embrace all this sudden growth and lots more people coming on, I think it’s super important to leverage the original, you know, three, three, and they were known as the old G’s, right? And making sure that they’re involved in the selection process that people get to meet them, the candidates as we’re trying to bring them on. And I think that made a big difference as well to make sure that that group was involved in the team selection.
Greg Toroosian 21:03
I think that yeah, that as well as great advice, and I want to add a little bit of my own with a caveat. I mean, great advice. Yes. But if you’re going to be doing that you should probably set expectations clearly and train those people for what they’re about to do, right? Because I’ve seen firsthand core teams like say, Oh, geez, other companies that can be resistant to change, or that don’t, they don’t want to get on board with it. Right and can be blockers or have every objection under the sun. Just because it’s not explained properly to them. You know, people don’t want to, you know, relinquish power they might have had up or looked over several teams, and now they’re trying to hire someone to take over part of their role, things like that just to be aware of and address ahead of time because you don’t want to lose good candidates. You don’t want to get down a process where it’s spoiled because someone wasn’t clear. on what you’re doing or why you’re doing it. Like that, bringing them into the fold making part decisions and making it a team effort for the betterment of the company is key. Right?
Sanjiv Razdan 22:10
And it’s, right, that that makes complete sense. In fact, you’ve got me thinking on a associated chain of thought, which is that when you walk into a new role or a setup or or you think it’s time for an inflection point in the journey of the company, to rapidly scale up, one of the things that clearly want us to do as as an executive is to make an assessment of the current talent and decide whether the folks who help you get from A to B are the right folks that are going to be that are going to be able to help you get from B to C and sometimes they are and sometimes they’re not. Right, and that just depends on who you got around the table at that time. So I think that’s been a very important part of not everybody who is appropriate to go from startup to a scale of 10 is the same person who’s going to help you get from 10 to 100. So that was very critical. I think it’s important. And I think making those calls at the right time is so critical to the success of shaping the new team. Because if they’re not the right, folks, then you start running into this issue of not being open, trying to be parochial or territorial. And that leads to all sorts of issues downstream. So yeah, I just want to add that.
Greg Toroosian 23:38
Definitely yes territories. Definitely something to watch out for. And I yeah, I’ve talked about it on the show. Previously, I like to call it shedding staff, right, especially as a startup, you get to that next point and you like, it’s painful, especially for the people who have been there and feel like oh, with the same core team, but sometimes those people need to go on to their next startup. Some people are just built for, you know, a startup. They Like the bars, they like the ever changing way of working. And when things get a bit more structured and formal and looking at, you know, revenue, maybe releasing whatever it is, it’s not for them, which is fine, you know, everyone’s got their own part to play. I know we’ve definitely gone off tangent here, we’ll probably get back to it afterwards. But while we’re on this point, I always like to understand how people go about when they come into a new organization inheriting a team. So I think you just touched on it there about, you know, doing an assessment and figuring out who the people are. But do you have any philosophy or, or what are your thoughts about repurposing people or addressing things head on if they’re not the right fit? And what does that look like for you? Because you obviously lead up large teams, right, large departments.
Sanjiv Razdan 24:52
Yeah, I think, first of all, for me, it’s always been helpful to have some sort of a framework to assess in the absence of age, I think it’s very risky because you’ll end up making subjective assessments which may or may not be appropriate. So I think first off, I’ve always benefited from being thoughtful about Okay, what do I need from the team, literally putting down pen to paper, creating some sort of a filter and doing that assessment. With that said, I think your question is great, which is, how does one, what’s my philosophy and then sort of moving people around or repurposing resources or leveraging them in a different way? And I’m a big, big fan of that. I think there’s some way of leveraging the core group that exists or whatever the inheritance has been in that department. That could only be a big way. I think, clearly, that is a function of trying to understand the individual. I think making them feel safe and giving them the opportunity to be vulnerable to share. What is it that their aspirations and what excites them? What makes them tick? I think once I’ve had a chance to develop some sort of a connection and help understand what their personal motivation is simultaneously, developing a landscape of what the future might look like, I think that has allowed me to understand what opportunities might exist and then in full transparency and candidness, share that with the individual to say, here’s what I’m thinking, What do you think, does this resonate with you? and carry them along in the journey, right? Because at the end of the day, you want them to feel excited and engaged and be pumped up about whatever change it is that they might embrace? Yeah, right, because that’s where the win win comes from. So I think for me, it’s always been the case of being transparent, but really, that comes and being deeply understanding. But all of that really stems from first building some degree of trust, that allows for vulnerability and being able to understand what the individual strengths and more observations are amazing.
Greg Toroosian 27:01
Yeah, that’s great. That’s great, great advice for people to know.
Sanjiv Razdan 27:07
Transparency is definitely key.
Greg Toroosian 27:08
And I feel like whenever a new leader comes in people, you know, you get the percentage that are optimistic, but then sometimes people have their backup, especially if you know that they’ve been there for ages or seeing multiple leaders and being transparent, being open sharing in those details. And like you said, This is what I’m thinking, what do you think like, Where do you want to be? Is it key that people stay, they value your input, and they know that it’s not malicious, right? You’re not just gonna turn around and say, like, well, we don’t need those people anymore. Goodbye.
Sanjiv Razdan 27:41
That’s great. That’s great.
Greg Toroosian 27:45
So taking that step back again, sorry, just so we can close the door on it was the question on the type of organizations and team that you’ve run it was very clear with that Sweetgreen, the type of employees that you were trying to hire and what the remit was so how you built that but you, you have had people in different localities, different time zones, different levels of employee, different types of experience, frankly as well like how and that this is for the listeners so they understand how complex your teams have been and and how complex the organization’s have been structured. How have you gone about understanding and learning or even shaping those? Because I’m just assuming at Sweetgreen, for example, you may have not always known or had the experience of what you’re building or the types of teams that you are working with. How did that work for you?
Sanjiv Razdan 28:40
Yeah, absolutely. I think as one becomes more and more senior in terms of the roles and has increasing responsibility, one of the things that starts to happen, which is quite natural is that you as a leader, you find yourself not being a subject matter expert on the topics that that you really are accountable for the end of the day as a team, right? So I’ll give you an example. Part of my team included Food Safety and Quality Assurance It included automation. For example, I am neither an expert on automation and neither am I an expert on food safety and quality assurance, but I know enough to make sure I understand how they integrate into the overall business strategy and have educated myself plenty to be armed and dangerous in those areas. But I think to your point, my teams have had diversity of levels of geographies, time zones, but also, just experience and capability, right, just very, very different scales. And so I think, again, a couple of things that have helped me nick those things together and make it work. One thing: As it goes back to know your people, right? Being very purposeful in having a very clear understanding and assessment of your talent, both the talent that you have and have inherited but also the talent that you’re bringing on. What is their capability level? How much do they know? And I think one of the biggest mistakes that I’ve made earlier in my career is to assume that people know or assume that people understand what they’re doing, right.
Greg Toroosian 30:28
Would you say that just to be clear, when you say that is that like, Oh, this person is in x role? They must know this?
Sanjiv Razdan 30:35
Correct? Okay. Yeah, this is exactly what I mean. Oh, so and so is the director of such and such, therefore, like how they will absolutely say no, right? And that is the biggest mistake. They may have the inherent capability of doing that roll down the road, right, or with the right important coaching and guidance, but they may not have been in that exact situation before or may just not have understood expectations of this organization of the new leadership or whatever that might be. So I think it’s very good to really get the tires pretty early and make sure one develops a pretty deep understanding of the capability of the individual, how they lead, what they’re capable of, what their strengths and opportunities are, and form an assessment off the ballot. Because then what that has allowed me to do is to also flex my style in terms of who do I need to be more direct with who do I need to be very consultative with who do I need to just stand back and inspire and cheer? So it’s almost sort of what everybody needs a little bit of everything. For me, it’s about identifying very clearly, who are the folks that just need inspiration in those roles, who are the ones that need coaching and who needs managing, right? And that frameworks employee I think associated with that is also how much time am I going to invest behind? Which individual, right if there’s somebody new to enroll learning the ropes, it has meant that I structure my one on ones very differently. It has structured the amount of time I invest both in person or virtually in a very different way. So again, putting in place a framework of routines that helps to drive engagement and success. Not only in my role, but in the roles that the individuals are performing has been super helpful just based on making that assessment. And of course, being conscious of what the business challenges right, what are the organizational priorities, where are the biggest fires burning, and therefore also making sure that one is putting aces in places and then investing one’s own personal time behind those things the most.
Greg Toroosian 32:56
You are taking a lot of input here. How to make a clear picture for yourself. That’s great. I mean, this is key for how you structure and plan and build a very complex organization, basically, and how you lead it effectively. That’s great. Thank you for that. This is great advice.
Greg Toroosian 33:21
Any things, any key things that you can advise people on avoiding when it comes to building teams, growing teams, leading these organizations?
Sanjiv Razdan 33:30
Yeah, there’s two or three things that I would like to offer that I’ve learned over the years. I think one is, the more complex the bigger you grow in size and complexity and variability within the team. I think the more it helps to literally be more planned for I was alluding to that earlier, I would at the beginning of the year, right around let’s say the October timeframe. lists down. What do I call it my running the railroad success routines? What? Who did I need to have one on ones with? How frequently what kind of subbing meetings do I need to have? What was the frequency? Who needs to attend that? What’s the purpose of these things? So literally create a framework for working. And then calendar eyes those things for the next year. Yeah, bizarre that makes, as it may sound on the 80/20 principle, right that even if I hit 70-80%, of that framework, for the time to come, that would set me up for success. I think that’s one. Secondly, I think as any team grows, and you’re bringing on new people, just trying to build a culture is so important. And a culture where what is important is more important and who is important, that is open that has trust and vulnerability and to do that, I think one has to really create communication, not just between the leader and the individual team members, but amongst the team members themselves. So I think being very purposeful or thinking about interventions which need collaboration amongst the team themselves, they can talk to each other. I really figured out ways of forcing that dialogue to happen, right for conflict to take place in a very productive way in those settings. So over time, what you don’t have is when the team starts to bump and grind against each other, that they’re not leaning on the leader to solve every problem, that they have the maturity to resolve it amongst themselves, and then just fostering trust. So I think that’s super important. Yeah, absolutely. And I think the third thing which I alluded to, I call it transparency and communication is hypercritical. All right. I’m constantly being transparent about decisions, why we’re doing things, what’s happening, because in geographically dispersed teams or teams that have a lot of players, it’s so easy to forget that not everybody has context on these things. And with the lack of context and perceived lack of transparency, it starts to breed gossip and people start having anxiety, and that’s the beginning of the end. So constantly making that a priority to just keep communicating, keep being transparent, allowing the people an opportunity to ask questions, like hyper important. That’s great.
Greg Toroosian 36:39
That’s great. Thank you. Yes, more key advice. So avoid not doing those things. do those things. Definitely. That’s key. That’s it. These are some great gems, some great advice. Thank you for sharing, like I said, the unique perspective that you’ve had in the type of organizations you’ve worked in different locations, the complexity of your teams. It’s been great. So Thank you. Thank you very much. And thanks again for being on the show. So where can the listeners find out more about you, find out more about you and or connect with you?
Sanjiv Razdan 37:12
Yeah, my, my sort of favorite social media platform so to speak is linked in. So if you search for me by name Sanjiv Razdan on LinkedIn, you should be able to find me. And I’m pretty active there. There’s another place that I’m now developing, Greg that I’m very passionate about one of my personal purposes in life is to help people along their leadership journey. So big I am taking this time of COVID where many of us have had time to reflect perhaps or to have a little bit more personal time on hand is to develop a network of voluntary based network of executives that are committed to growing leadership networks called GLEAM Network. GLEAM stands for Global Leadership, Enhancement and Mentorship. And it’s really a group of networks. It’s a network of a group of executives from the food service space that are volunteering their time to support other folks who may be in need of mentorship for leadership development, particularly from what I call the underserved parts of our community. So we’ve just registered a domain name: gleamnetwork.org. And so keep a note of that because over time, we will be developing that website and doing more work and activity there. So those are the two places to find me perfect.
Greg Toroosian 38:46
Little bit more on that so who can sign up to be part of GLEAM, both as a, an advisor and then also to get help?
Sanjiv Razdan 38:58
If you feel you have what it takes to provide either mentorship, leadership mentorship in particular is soft skills, leadership development, career navigation, those kinds of things. If you feel like you have the expertise to help and the motivation to help others, anyone from any walk of life or industry can step up and, and register yourself or just send me a message through LinkedIn at the moment is probably the easiest. Yep. Anyone can do that to the beneficiaries at the moment. For the purposes of focus, we’re starting with the food service industry, the hospitality industry, and that’s where we want to help the multitude of executives there that are thirsty to grow and learn and receive mentorship but don’t always have easy access to that. Those are the folks that we’re going to be focused on.
Greg Toroosian 39:58
Perfect for the senior leader. Isn’t execs great? Okay, well look. Thank you again for being on the show. I’ve really enjoyed the conversation and like I said, it’s always a pleasure to connect with you. And hopefully we will have you on back later down the line.
Sanjiv Razdan 40:13
Greg, I’d love to thank you for having me enjoyed it.
Greg Toroosian
Thank you Sanjiv. Take care. Bye.
Outro 40:22
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