Not many executives can say they've studied the finer points of everything from deodorant and washing
Bracken Darrell, however, can. He is CEO of Logitech, a company that once specialized in
His curiosity has led him from a modest upbringing in Western Kentucky, to leading one of the smartphone era's most remarkable turnaround stories.
Here's the conversation:
Logitech's stock has quadrupled since he took over four years ago; the company's now worth $5.5 billion.
Start from the Bottom
Darrell's parents split up when he was a preteen. He grew up in Owensboro, Ky., one of four siblings raised by a single mother. As a result, he never had to look far for motivation.
"I had it easy. I didn't have a choice. I had to make it," Darrell told
"We literally would wear the same jeans all the time. Like a lot of people – I'm not a Horatio Alger story, I mean, we had plenty to eat. But we didn't have any money," he added.
That dearth of wealth "didn't make me particularly money-conscious, but I certainly did always envy the opportunities that I thought were available to people who had money that I didn't. It's really
It's a lesson that applies no matter what your circumstances are in the beginning. If you understand what it means to make do with less, it can help you stay focused and resist a sense of entitlement.
See the Whole Room
Darrell turns to literature and the arts to help him think about things in new ways. One book, Daniel Kahneman's "Thinking, Fast and Slow," shifted the way he looks at solving problems. A conversation with leading brain researcher Henry Markram helped illustrate just how much information we miss every day.
"He said when you walk into a room when you're a little, tiny child, you soak in the whole room. You see it all. When you walk into the room as an adult, you see this sliver in the corner, and you build the room in your brain. You actually don't even see it," Darrell said.
"That made a big mark on me. Think how many mistakes we make in our roles because our brain's building based on pattern recognition, and we're not seeing or thinking anymore, objectively," he added.
The rub, here: From a primitive perspective, it makes perfect sense. If you're walking through a savanna, you don't need to notice every blade of grass—but you need to see the lion that wasn't there before.
But business is different, Darrell said. We need to force ourselves to look at ordinary things in extraordinary ways if we want to win.
Sniff Out Genius
Problem-solvers also need to get smart about odd topics in short order. One of the best ways Darrell has found to do that? Find the smartest people in your organization and pick their brains.
It might sound obvious, but people are often intimidated by the engineers and scientists who might hold the key to figuring out a business problem. They're not always invited to the meetings where decisions get made.
Darrell saw the benefits to this up close while working for Procter & Gamble. He was working on the Old Spice deodorant product, trying to reinvent the brand and turn it around. He sat down with a chemist and told him he wanted a simple, visible way to show their product was better and lasted longer.
"He said, 'We have propylene glycol in this.' And propylene glycol evaporates less fast, and that's one of the reasons why this product is better – not the only reason, but it's one of the reasons why it lasts longer," Darrell said.
The result was a commercial for high endurance deodorant that showed a time lapse video of the competitor's product evaporating faster than a swipe of Old Spice.
"Those were the most boring commercials in the world," Darrell said now, "and I'm responsible for them." (I'm not so sure about the boring part. More than 20 years later, this Gen Xer still remembers them.)