Starbucks announced a CEO shake-up this week: current Chipotle leader Brian Niccol will be taking over at the massive coffee company.
Niccol is famous for turning Chipotle into a force to be reckoned with, but he’s also held prominent positions at Pizza Hut and Taco Bell. In an interview with Fortune earlier this year, he shared one key management hack he’s held close throughout his career: Stay curious.
“The best business advice I ever received was: ‘Don’t be afraid to ask questions,’” he says. “Regardless of what position you’re in, even as the CEO, there are moments where somebody’s talking about something, [and] I don’t totally get what they’re talking about.”
Top executives like Niccol are often expected to have all the answers, but moving between companies and departments requires a degree of humility and a willingness to learn. Niccol acknowledges that this doesn’t always come easy, and that CEOs need an open-minded disposition to drive real change.
“You have to be comfortable and confident enough to ask questions to be informed on the topic at hand. Whether you’re a new employee, or someone [who] has been in the company for 20 years, asking questions demonstrates you’re still actively learning, you’re curious, you care. If you aren’t asking questions, more than likely you just don’t care and you’re not that curious. And you know what, it’s probably time to move on.”
But just posing question after question isn’t the solution, either. Niccol clarifies that there has to be intention and meaning behind what you ask as a leader.
“If you know the answer to the question, that’s probably not the question to ask. If you’re asking for clarity, you’re asking to learn, you’re asking because you’re curious, that’s fine. But if the questions aren’t thoughtful, then you’ve gone too far,” he says.
But not all business advice is golden, and Niccol has also received recommendations he didn’t find so helpful. One of the worst leadership tips he has heard was passed down from a bad manager.
“One of their pieces of advice was ‘Hey, you’ve got to demonstrate that you have the ability to fire somebody.’ So find somebody in your course of business where you’re like, ‘Yeah, that should be somebody that I need to get rid of,’” he says. But Niccol didn’t agree with this tactic. “I think everybody comes to work wanting to succeed, and that’s just the wrong frame of reference.”
