The Leadership Funeral: CVS Quits for Good
Even though we all know how bad smoking is for you, still roughly 1/5 of the population smokes. We all know the health problems it causes: cancer, stroke, heart disease, lung disease, and the list goes on and on. More than 5 million deaths per year are caused by tobacco use.
Against that backdrop, imagine for a minute that you are running a healthcare business. You are in the business of keeping people healthy and healing the sick. BUT at the same time, you directly contribute to those smoking-related deaths by selling cigarettes. In fact, you are selling $2 billion in tobacco products annually!
That is exactly the situation that the pharmacy retail giant CVS found itself in for decades.
What to do?
In February 2014, CVS made a bold move and decided to discontinue selling tobacco products.
The decision was by no means a no-brainer, as you can imagine. All major competitors are still selling cigarettes to this day. CVS walked away from $2 billion in annual revenue. As you would expect, short-term revenue took a tumble; however, the long-term benefits proved to be worth it. Hiring and retaining talent became much easier at CVS as millennials were rallying behind the cause. And in spite of the short-term losses, company-wide revenue more than doubled since 2014.
The letter from the CVS CEO included, “Ending the sale of cigarettes and tobacco products at CVS Pharmacy is simply the right thing to do for the good of our customers and our company. The sale of tobacco products is inconsistent with our purpose – helping people on their path to better health.”
By eliminating cigarettes from its stores, CVS embraced the concept of the leadership funeral. The company had the guts and wisdom to let go of THEN beliefs and to lean into new NOW values. As part of that process, they realized that what they had done up to this point would not serve them well going forward.
As the great management thinker Peter Drucker has said…
“If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old.”
How might we apply the leadership funeral to our own lives?
We all have habits and thought patterns in our personal lives and systems and procedures in our businesses that we have been using for years. Let’s ask ourselves: Does this still serve us NOW and beyond? Or is it time to celebrate it for what it was and bury it to make room for better, more relevant things?
In the spirit of proactively letting go of things like CVS did, here is a very simple tool that helps us free up time and energy and that we can all start implementing immediately: A Stop Doing List. Yes, a Stop Doing list.
What might go on a Stop Doing List?
Items can range from mundane personal errands such as cutting the grass and picking up the dry cleaning - the things we can automate or outsource. We can rid ourselves of the unproductive, and sometimes addictive behaviors such as checking email and social media constantly or binge-watching the latest shows like Billions or Ozark. I know you don’t ever do this either. ;)
It can be bigger items as well such as stopping attending that time-sucking meeting, stopping serving on that non-profit board you did not have the heart to say no to, or politely saying no to that grandiose idea at work. It’s the things that we do out of habit, or worse - guilt, that go on the Stop Doing List.
Even though the Stop Doing List is a very simple concept it can be hard to say ‘No’ to something or somebody: As humans, we want to please and be liked, and saying no and stopping doing things means pushing against social expectations.
But to start living a life true to ourselves, not the life others expect from us, to lean into our best future self personally and in business, starts with the ability to Stop Doing things. Stop doing the wrong things for the wrong reasons. Stop doing things so we have the time and energy to focus on what really matters.
Your Action Step:
Identify one item in your personal life and one item in your business and put them on your stop doing list. Then STOP doing them.
