By Mike Santoro
I recently had the privilege of attending an Economic Club of Chicago dinner that featured a conversation between Eli Lilly CEO Dave Ricks and United Airlines President Brett Hart. It was a masterclass in leadership and how to accelerate one’s career.
Ricks was the featured speaker and shared candid insights from his career on what it takes to lead at one of the world’s most consequential companies. Here are some of my favorite takeaways:
On Driving Change
“When you’re in the CEO job, a lot of my peers, they kind of get tired of talking about the change agenda. But I think you have to be completely relentless and pretty focused, talking about two or three things all the time until it’s true. My lesson though is that the words matter, but not that much. What matters is what you do. What and who you pay attention to.”
I spent 16 years leading as President and then CEO of an agency and I thought about this a lot. Your credibility is central to your ability to lead. This quote reminded me of another I heard recently, “You can’t talk your way out of something you behaved your way into.”
In other words, people put far more weight on your actions than your words. If you want to be a leader who drives change, you have to be the first to change. Without action, you have no credibility. And a leader without credibility is dead in the water.
On Careers
“I didn’t have a master plan. It wasn’t until 14, 15 years ago, that I even thought of being Lilly CEO. I think that’s sort of a good way to go through your life. It’s good to have long-term goals, but they have a way of disappointing you if they’re too specific. We focus on the most probable person to be great versus the most qualified person today, and time and time again, the company put me in jobs I had no business being in. But I was able to learn and then go to the next one.”
Ricks talked about how his career focus rarely extended beyond the job he had. He worked hard, excelled in each role, and took on additional responsibilities to prove he was capable of more.
Like Eli Lilly, our agency placed nearly as much emphasis on potential as on current qualifications. I’d often promote someone and say, “You might feel like you’re drowning at first, but we won’t let you go under. There’s always going to be a helping hand to make sure you succeed.”
Taking on big challenges before you feel fully ready is how you grow. If you excel in your current role and stay eager to take on something new, you’ll often find yourself “stumbling” into bigger and bigger opportunities.
On Breaking Things
“There’s a plant manager I got to know in China, and he said, “To be a great plant manager you have to love the plant enough to break it and put it back together.” When I became CEO I really loved the company. I still very much do. But you have to be not afraid to push it to be a lot better.”
At our agency, we used to joke that the only constant was change. One year, we kicked things off with the story of Picasso and Cézanne, both genius artists, but with very different approaches.
Picasso worked from start to finish to create a masterpiece. Cézanne, on the other hand, would iterate 100 or more times, often painting over or destroying his own masterpieces to pursue a new and better direction. That was us. Always willing to pivot to create new growth.
The best organizations are constantly reinventing themselves. Those who can reinvent themselves alongside them will find immense success.
Ricks was humble, honest, and a wonderful storyteller. It’s no wonder he rose to lead one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. For anyone looking to grow their career, there was no shortage of lessons to learn.
Mike Santoro spent sixteen years as President and CEO of Walker Sands, a B2B marketing agency headquartered in Chicago. He is currently managing partner at