Unbossing

In 1995, a project manager at a San Francisco software company drove twelve miles into a Nevada dry lakebed because a man in a bed sheet holding a plastic flamingo told her to. She never went back. That woman was Marian Goodell. Nearly thirty years later, she is the first and only CEO of Burning Man Project. In this episode of Unbossing, hosts Rishad Tobaccowala and Drew Ianni talk with Marian Goodell about what it means to lead an organization built on radical decentralization and no bosses — when you are, in fact, the boss. Marian arrived as a command-and-control project manager, learned to let it go, and built something genuinely collective. Then her co-founder passed away. Then the pandemic came. Then the rain nearly broke the event. Then the tickets stopped selling. Each challenge demanded something different — and each time, she had to decide whether to take the tiller herself or trust the community to sail the boat. Her lesson: collaborative decision-making and consensus are not the same thing. Knowing the difference might be the most important skill in leadership today.
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When Ann Mukherjee joined Doritos in 2006, the brand was in freefall. It had gotten so bad that Frito-Lay's own truck drivers refused to stock it. She turned it around by crashing the Super Bowl with a $5 million budget—against Anheuser-Busch's $100 million—by handing the ads to consumers and trusting them to do it better.
In this episode of Unbossing, hosts Rishad Tobaccowala and Drew Ianni talk with Ann Mukherjee—former Chairman and CEO of Pernod Ricard North America—about thirty years of walking away from what she'd just mastered to learn something entirely new. From Kraft to Frito-Lay to SC Johnson to Pernod Ricard, Ann's rule was simple: when you stop learning, you're done. Each move meant unlearning the previous company's system before her old instincts could become the wrong answer in a new place. She also challenges the conventional wisdom on weakness. Don't try to fix them. Understand them, compensate for them, and use them to find what you're actually built for. Perfection, she says, is a sickness. Her last lesson: the CEO of the past was expected to be all-knowing. The CEO of today has to be all learning.
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For 33 years, Janet Foutty helped the world's largest companies reinvent themselves. Then she had to do it herself. When she stepped down as Executive Chair of Deloitte US, she didn't walk into a plan. She walked into a blank page she didn't know how to fill.
In this episode of Unbossing, hosts Rishad Tobaccowala and Drew Ianni talk with Janet Foutty, former CEO of Deloitte Consulting and former Chair of Deloitte US, about what it means to unlearn the thing you were best at.
Janet spent three decades at one firm. She knew every hallway, every decision, every person to call. Then she left and quickly discovered that map didn't work anywhere else. Her lesson: the beginner's mindset doesn't kick in until you no longer have an organization to cover for you. We're all leaders in training, including the ones who've already led everything.
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At seven years old, Sarah Personette told a stranger she wanted to be a CEO. She spent the next three decades making it happen.
Days after Elon Musk closed his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, she resigned — walking away from a role she'd spent four years building, and stock she hadn't fully vested, to protect what she stood for.
In this episode of Unbossing, hosts Rishad Tobaccowala and Drew Ianni talk with Sarah Personette — CEO of Puck, the media startup the New York Times called "Vanity Fair for the Substack era."
Sarah's career ran through advertising agencies, Facebook, and Twitter. She took a demotion to join a startup called Facebook because she could see where the industry was heading. At 26, she managed a 90-person team through the 2008 financial crisis. At 33, she was U.S. President of Universal McCann.
The lesson she carries through all of it: the leaders who survive disruption aren't the ones who avoid fear. They're the ones who name it, move through it, and bring their teams with them.
She also makes the case that kindness isn't a soft idea, it's the thing that makes organizations actually perform when it matters most.
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Everything changes - except your brand and your story.
Fifty years after buying his first flower shop, Jim McCann did something almost no founder does voluntarily: he fired himself.
In this episode of Unbossing, hosts Rishad Tobaccowala and Drew Ianni talk with Jim McCann - founder and Executive Chairman of 1-800-Flowers - about what five decades of building, adapting, and letting go actually teach you.
In 1986, Jim heard a radio ad for a struggling flower shop in Texas. He bought their telephone number, rebranded his company around it, and turned a 14-store flower shop chain into one of the most recognised brands in American retail.
Since then, 1-800-Flowers has moved through six technology waves - from the 800 number to the internet to AI. But Jim’s lesson is clear: the real competitive advantage was never the technology. It was the relationship.
He also opens up about stepping down as CEO and the advice that shaped his leadership philosophy: fire yourself from every function, so you can focus on the things only you can do.
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