Debra Crew, CEO of Diageo, credits her time as a military intelligence officer with influencing how she leads the 30,000-strong drinks company behind Guinness and Johnnie Walker.
Unlike many other executives, Crew didn’t start her career at a big corporation. Instead, she spent four years as a captain in the U.S. Army. She then began honing her corporate experience at some of the world’s biggest consumer brands, including Nestlé, Mars, and PepsiCo.
Still, Crew falls back on the lessons she learned in the military, she told Nicolai Tangen, CEO of Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, in an interview released Wednesday.
“When I took my first job in the Army—you walk in, you’re a brand-new lieutenant—everybody knows more about everything than you do. You figure out really quickly that it’s really not about you at all, it’s actually about making the team better,” Crew told Tangen on his podcast, In Good Company.
Although the setting was completely different, even in the military, as in business, it’s about finding a way to succeed collectively.
“I do always think about leadership first and making sure that—what am I doing to get the best out of the team? … It’s just always been a part of how I think it should be done,” Crew said.
When she first joined the Army, Crew admitted, she wasn’t very athletic or skilled at the tasks she was given. However, over time, she worked hard at improving in jobs that were outside her comfort zone.
“The amount of resilience and confidence that that has given me later in life … I always tell people, ‘Try new things that kind of scare you a little bit, because you’re going to surprise yourself,’” Crew said.
Since joining Diageo in 2023, Crew has had to navigate challenges, including softening alcohol spending and a Guinness shortage driven by unprecedented demand. Diageo has also expanded its nonalcoholic drink options, catering to a moderation trend among the younger generation.
The company’s net sales fell 0.6% during the six-month period to December, owing to global uncertainty, including in its biggest market, the U.S.
Dismantling the ‘culture of perfection’
The fast-evolving beverage market has meant that Diageo needs to keep up with the pace of change—even if that means faster failures. The military captain turned CEO said aiming for better is a big part of Diageo’s work.
One of the company’s previous values was to “be the best,” but this “created a culture of perfection,” Crew added, that hampered the company’s ability to cope when plans went awry. Instead, Diageo tweaked this approach to simply “be better.”
The CEO, who oversees more than 200 brands, gave the example of a ready-to-drink margarita that didn’t work out. So the team wrote a poem in its honor, noted the key lessons, and held a “Día de los Muertos”–style celebration.
“It was quite a great way, and this was at our senior leadership meeting, that we could sort of celebrate that we’re out there experimenting and learning and moving on,” Crew told Tangen.
