Business Is Human: The Leadership Model That Turns Care into Enterprise Value with Niren Chaudhary

Ashish Kothari:

Hi Niren, it is so lovely to connect with you. Thank you for coming on to the Happiness Squad Podcast and just sharing your lifelong wisdom and learnings.

Niren Chaudhary:

Thank you, Ashish. Always a pleasure to see you, my friend.

Ashish Kothari:

Well, listen, Niren, you've had an amazing, amazing journey—starting in India, moving to the US, leading major companies, and living an incredibly rich life journey. I want to start by having you share a bit of your story and how it shaped your approach to leadership.

Niren Chaudhary:

Sure. It's been quite an adventure. I've worked for close to 35 years in food retail, lived in six countries, worked across 50, and had the privilege of working with extraordinary brands like KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Krispy Kreme, Panera Bread, Caribou, and Einstein. Absolutely wonderful brands and an incredible set of experiences.

But if I reflect on your question—what are the core, important takeaways—and rewind my life, the first lesson was about the importance of integrity and leading with integrity. Integrity is actually a personal choice you make irrespective of the environment around you.

This came to me when I joined the House of Tata, a very values-driven organization in India that I think your listeners may be familiar with. When I joined them, I saw this determination to lead with integrity, irrespective of the difficulty in the environment in which they operated.

That's when it came to me that integrity is a personal choice that a leader makes, and it's not a function of the environment you're in. So there are no excuses. That's the first one.

The second has been always saying yes to adventure. I was in India and came across this opportunity to join Yum Brands. With them came the opportunity to go to the UK—I said yes. Go to Holland—I said yes. Go to Germany—I said yes. Go to Dallas—I said yes. Every time, I accumulated new experiences and constantly learned.

So I would say, very often in our lives, we tend to find reasons to say no. I would encourage our listeners to think about the power of saying yes and how that actually multiplies opportunities. It's been absolutely extraordinary that whenever opportunity knocked, I would immediately jump at it and say, “Okay, let's go,” as long as I was going to learn something and have an impact.

I think a third important learning, as I lived and worked in different countries, dealt with different people, and led teams in places like the Netherlands and other countries all over the world, I found that the singular mindset to be able to connect, lead, and inspire teams is: be what you want. By that I mean, whatever you want, be that.

If you want trust, be trustworthy. If you want respect, be respectful. If you want friendship, be a friend. If you want a strong relationship, be a person who develops strong relationships. “Whatever you want, be that” has been a significantly important mindset shift for me.

The fourth one is from my role in Dallas with Yum Brands. I was leading a portfolio of restaurants across multiple geographies, and my single most important responsibility was to influence others—lead through other people by influencing them.

I realized that influence can only come if you're trustworthy. And being trustworthy is not only about being competent—which, of course, you have to be—but also about having a strong character. That was another very important realization: I can only influence and lead through other people if I am trustworthy, and I’ll be trustworthy only if I’m a man of character.

Finally, in my most recent experiences with Panera Brands, I learned how important it is to develop a new business model in this world—this virtuous cycle of profit and purpose. You must be profitable so that you can drive purpose, but purpose should also drive profit. That, I think, is difficult, but it must be done.

Those are some of my reflections as I think back on my journey over the last 30-odd years.

Ashish Kothari:

Yeah, no, I think they're so beautiful. What I love about these—one, they’re timeless. And second, they’re pretty universal. It doesn’t matter what space you're leading in; these can act as very powerful north stars on how to be.

A lot of people in leadership talk about what to do. But if I think about all of these, they’re actually not about what to do—they’re about how to be. And from that place, the actions emerge.

Niren Chaudhary:

Yeah. In fact, I often think of this as the metaphor of a tree. What you're doing is like the leaves of the tree that people can see. But what drives those actions is the trunk of the tree, which are your thoughts. And what drives your thoughts is actually what nobody can see—the roots, which are your values.

Your values drive your thoughts, which drive your behavior. Therefore, who you are—who you wish to be—is so important. It determines who you end up becoming and the behaviors you exhibit.

Ashish Kothari:

Yeah, I love that. It's the roots that hold us. They’re the ones that nourish us. They’re the ones that connect us. I love your last point on profit and purpose. We covered that so much.

As I was sharing with you earlier, I just released my first TEDx talk. The topic was flourishing—making flourishing your competitive edge. Purpose—our own purpose and the purpose of the organizations we lead—shows up in a really big way.

I love this quote by Alex Edmans—we had him on the podcast a couple of weeks back. He says, “If you want to reach the land of profit, follow the road of purpose.” And you talked about that—where profits are important, but they’re like red blood cells. That’s not the reason we exist. They are there to support a purpose, which is to support life.

Niren Chaudhary:

I would just say there's an important nuance there. I believe that the road to purpose lies through profit. If you're not profitable, you cannot be purposeful.

Being profitable is a prerequisite to having a sustainable purpose agenda. That’s why the connectivity is with profit. If purpose does not, in turn, reinforce profit, then it becomes a random act of charity. And then shareholders lose interest—and rightly so.

In the end, we have to provide superior returns to our shareholders to attract capital. Therefore, our job and challenge as a leader is: how do we create this virtuous cycle? How do we ensure that the purpose we pursue is actually accretive to our business model, and therefore ends up delivering higher returns for the shareholder? That’s the only way it will be sustainable.

Ashish Kothari:

Yeah, I’m very much aligned with that, Niren. It’s this notion of: how do we, through purpose, grow the pie versus the mindset of splitting the pie and doing things that might not make sense and are dilutive to shareholder returns?

But look, of all the people I know, you’re also one of the most human-centric leaders. Many of the businesses you have run—employees are on the front line. Your experiences are not just shaped by what you do at the center. It's the day-to-day interactions in stores, and that’s really at the heart of so much of the success of the organizations you've led.

So I’m curious—just reflecting on my own journey—that was top of mind when I was 23, when I graduated; at 30, when I joined McKinsey. Tell me a little bit about some pivotal moments that shifted you from what I would call a fairly traditional business leader to someone who really started focusing on humanity and flourishing.

I can imagine Tata obviously played a big role, but what might be some other things that shaped that for you?

Niren Chaudhary:

I think you're right. We are shaped by our experiences. For me, the Tatas and then Yum Brands deeply impacted how I think about organizations and my own sort of operating business model.

I really believe that organizations are essentially humans working with other humans in pursuit of a goal. Organizations, at the heart of it, are human-to-human experiences. Without human to human connection, there is no endeavor to be pursued.

Since we as humans are at the core of any entrepreneurial venture, the importance of people emerges from that.

My business model is very simple: the job of leaders is to love and take care of our employees as we would our own family members. If we do that, and they feel engaged, they in turn will delight customers. If that happens, the customers will come back, and you create this virtuous cycle of loyalty. Loyalty is the most important currency to create enterprise value.

So it starts with a ripple effect. We start by loving, embracing, and looking after our people, and then cascade that outward.

I also believe that success is a function of strategy and execution. Strategy is the plan. But it's not the plan that matters—it’s the execution. If strategy is to do with the head, execution is to do with the heart—inspiring people in the organization to go above and beyond every single day to do the very best they can, and then a little bit more, to execute the collective agenda of the enterprise.

That magical feeling of people being inspired to do more than what they think they're capable of comes only through a people-focused culture. A culture where people feel seen, heard, and inspired. Where they have the opportunity to learn and grow and drive both individual and collective excellence.

Every time I’ve entered an organization, my mindset has been: do I have the right people working on the right things the right way? That’s the roadmap for superior execution. It all starts with the people.

Ashish Kothari:

I love that—right people, working on the right things the right way. When you’ve stepped into roles, Niren, what are some ways in which you’ve actually assessed that and made changes to ensure people are at the heart of things and that we are actually bringing them along? To help develop them?

Oftentimes, people think of execution as processes and communication, but what you’re talking about is something deeper. It’s igniting the human spirit—the will to go above and beyond, continuously every day, to realize a vision, even if it's not "their" strategy. What are some ways you've actually been able to do that?

Niren Chaudhary:

It’s the right people, doing the right things, the right way. Let me double-click on each of those.

The right people—I believe that's entirely a function of recruitment. You hire for attitude and train for skill. You cannot train attitude. So if you have clarity on what the desired attitude is and the culture you want to create, you use that as a filter in all your people processes to hire right. And that’s what I mean by the right people.

When I talk about loving and taking care of people, I mean taking care of the right people—the ones who pass the attitude filter. That’s the first thing.

The second is the right things. This is about identifying the fewest things that matter most and have the highest leverage, and then being maniacally focused on executing those.

The third, the right way, is culture. To me, culture is the special feeling you create through a common language. As a leader, you have to define what those values are and express them in a way that can be understood—using shared language. Language is so important.

Those are the three ways I think about it: the right people, the right things, and the right way—to drive execution and unlock superior performance.

Ashish Kothari:

I'm reflecting on so many clients I’ve worked with—of course, during my time at McKinsey and also over the past two and a half years. These are foundational elements, especially that middle one.

So many people today struggle because they have overflowing plates and role conflicts, due to misaligned incentives. Then we roll out more processes and org charts, versus what you’re talking about: do we have the right people? What are the right things? What are the fewest things that matter? A priority list shouldn’t have 13 items—because that means nothing matters, and we’re just running around.

And then the “right way,” which is, what’s our special sauce? How do we communicate? Because communication generates worlds. We can say one thing, but if we don’t live those values, they remain just words.

Niren Chaudhary:

Yeah. I think just two thoughts as you reflected that back.

One is—I've also struggled with the right things. I think most leaders who are ambitious—and all of us—we are always wanting to do a lot more than what we can. There's a balance to it.

I'm by no means perfect on that dimension. But over a period of time, the metaphor I've come to sort of embrace is kind of the butterfly effect. Try and see where the ripples start and then put enormous energy on that, and have that butterfly effect on the enterprise and value creation.

And for me, therefore, people is the start point of that butterfly effect on enterprise value—is sort of how I think about it.

And therefore, if you have that clarity around—for any organization, any state that it might be in—what is that point of maximum leverage? And that can help you kind of narrow it down.

And the second thing about behaviors—why I was saying common language—if you look at traditionally, when companies talk about culture, they have these platitudinal words like “integrity,” “excellence,” “empowerment,” “engagement” that are on posters. And people don't really understand them because they have not been described in the form of observable behaviors.

I'd much rather have a line that explains what is expected rather than having a one-word ambiguous definition of what this culture is.

So I'll give you an example. Some companies might say courage is important. But some companies might say, “Focus on what you can control, not what's happening to you.” I would say the latter is much better.

Some companies might say “behave with integrity.” Other companies might say, “Be congruent in what you think, feel, say, and do.” That, to me, is behavior.

So therefore, I'm a big believer in: express your values in words, and express them in the form of observable behaviors that are more easily understood, that can be more easily observed. And against that, then you can have this flywheel of a very tight culture.

Ashish Kothari:

Yeah, and that's also how you can actually—I’ve always thought about this.

I've always believed companies talk about cultures, but cultures are so dependent on the leader who's leading a function, or a geography, or a plot, right?

And so there's always like, how do you create a harmonized way? There’ll always be some uniqueness, but how do we create a fabric?

And I think these behaviors—and cascading these behaviors—is a very powerful way. Because what you're basically saying is: this is what we mean.

Now, there is a certain element of the special sauce that a leader—and the way they show up—is going to add. But here’s the 60 to 70 percent of the foundation.

And I reflect on my own—we always used to joke about this at McKinsey, right?

I was reflecting on a proposal that I was on with five other partners. We had not actually talked. Now, this is not best practice. But we had worked remotely on the proposal. We had all come together 15 minutes before the client meeting.

And we had actually led the proposal, and the client's feedback back to us was, “We really like you because you all know each other, and you are just seamless.” That there was a consistency around it.

And I think a lot of it comes from the behaviors that we have lived and grown up in for so long. And that's why you can pull teams together.

And I think it's the work that most companies actually don't do. The mission, vision, values world starts with talking to everybody, defining something, and then they become words. But they don't get lived—because the next work of translating into behaviors doesn't get done.

So I want to pivot a little bit, Niren. And I want to talk a little bit about your daughter—and how her life really shaped you, and her strength shaped you.

Share a little bit about her story and how that has also shaped you—and, frankly, how your definition of success has changed.

Niren Chaudhary:

Yeah, thank you for that question. So for the listeners, I’ve lost two daughters over the years. One passed away when she was eight months old. Name was Tanya. And the second one passed away more recently. Her name was Aisha. She was 18 years old when she passed away. And I have a phenomenal son right now who’s a musician. His name is Ishan, and I’m incredibly proud of him.

So to your question about the loss of my daughters, I think my losses have been extreme, but I think there’s nobody who’s listening to this podcast, or even you, Ashish, who has not lost something or someone. I think that’s a very intrinsic part of the human journey.

And the question is not that it happens to you. The question is, what do you do with it? And how do you allow it to shape who you are? And could it actually be something that you embrace and that shapes you in such a way that you become stronger and you can walk taller and you can walk further? And that certainly has been my endeavor.

Aisha, in 18 years, achieved more than many of us achieve in a lifetime. So let me brag a little bit about Aisha. She was a motivational speaker on TED. You’ve just been on TED, Ashish. She spoke twice on TED. She has over a million hits on two of her leadership talks.

She’s the author of a bestselling book called My Little Epiphanies, available on Amazon. There’s a movie inspired by her on Netflix called The Sky is Pink, and a documentary inspired by her called Black Sunshine Baby, also on Netflix.

Incredible, you know, for a young lady who achieved so much despite how little she had. She has really inspired me because she was able to achieve so much because of her clarity on her values, to our earlier conversation. What she believed in was what allowed her to think and behave in different ways.

And I’ll talk to you about three of her core values, which since then I have embraced. Her number one value was courage—that of focusing on what I can do and not what’s happening to me. So even as her health declined, she kept focusing on, well, what can I still do, and not on what I can not do anymore. And she kept sort of moving and finding new challenges to conquer.

She writes in her book, “Pick the highest mountain to climb on and the dullest of the days to shine on.” Meaning when times are really tough, that’s when you need to pick a high mountain and do your very best to get to the top of the mountain, because fulfillment lies in the endeavor to get to the top of the mountain and not in reaching the top of the mountain.

So she talked about courage.

The second is that she talked about gratitude—that there is always something to be grateful for, and how gratitude is actually a daily practice. And if you look at the world through the lens of gratitude, we discover everyday miracles and it gives us the strength and the energy to keep moving forward.

And the third one that she talked about was the importance of generosity. And she wrote in her book that if you can’t change your own life, there is always someone else’s. And I do believe that as human beings, we feel most fulfilled at a very deep level when we are able to help others who are less fortunate than we are. And there is tremendous meaning and power and healing in the act of serving others.

So these three values of courage, gratitude, and generosity I have actually embraced, and I try to live by them every single day to shape myself into becoming the human and the leader that I want to be.

Ashish Kothari:

Just hearing those and the way you articulated—just, you know, one, brings tears to my eyes and fills my heart with hope. Because there’s so many values you can embody, but even if these three, you know, people tune in.

Courage. And I love what she wrote—pick the highest mountain to climb and the dullest day to shine on. Yeah.

Don’t let your circumstances and what’s happening to you control your actions. Don’t let it—you know, your experience is 100% your responsibility. And you can choose that. Nobody can take that from you.

I can hear Viktor Frankl in his Man’s Search for Meaning speaking through her young but time—you know, wise voice and experience.

Same with gratitude, right? We are always constantly looking at what we don’t have, going after—versus knowing how much we do have. It doesn’t change the external, doesn’t change what we are going for. I think it definitely gives a solid foundation to stand on though, versus keep us off.

And in particular, the last one on generosity. Yeah. We can all—no matter who we are—change and make a positive difference in somebody else’s life, especially in this time right now.

And I love this—you know, in one of the speeches of Thich Nhat Hanh, he said, “If you don’t have anything to give—even if you don’t have anything to give—just give a smile.” You always have that.

Niren Chaudhary:

Hmm, that's nice.

Ashish Kothari:

Right? And you might not know—that might be the sun on somebody's dullest day.

Niren Chaudhary:

Yeah.

Ashish Kothari:

So, thank you. Thank you for sharing those.

Through these experiences, Niren, did you always define success the same way? Or did your success change through your experiences as you went through life?

Niren Chaudhary:

It certainly has evolved and changed. You know, as one goes through one’s life, you realize what a gift life is, and how short life is, and how it is a unique opportunity for each one of us to leave a dent in the universe and to fully embrace this opportunity, this single opportunity that we have.

Of course, in India we think of multiple lives, but I don’t know. But let’s say we at least know that we have this one life. And why not make it absolutely extraordinary?

And then I think I felt that if that is what true fulfillment or success is, that I left nothing on the table. I gave it everything that I had and some more. What does that really mean? So it’s the following.

To me, life is not a singular-dimension experience. Life is like a kaleidoscope of experiences. So you’re not just defined by one thing, which is who I am at work.

I am defined by a kaleidoscope of roles and responsibilities in my life. I’m a father, I’m a son, I’m a peer, I’m a student, I’m a coach, I’m an athlete, I’m a musician, I’m a linguist, I’m a community server, I’m a spiritual student.

And there are these many dimensions to who I am that describe for me the human experience, which I know that you’ll agree with is true. I think none of us are like actually—but we very often live our lives in pursuit of just that one big thing.

But I believe that if you step back and recognize that life is a kaleidoscope of experiences, then true fulfillment lies in trying and pursuing excellence across all of these dimensions every single day. That is what a successful life is.

That—am I a better father today than I was yesterday? Am I a better husband today than I was yesterday? Am I a better student? Am I a better coach? Am I a better human today than I was yesterday?

Am I constantly pushing my boundaries to really fulfill my true potential in this holistic sense of who I am as a human, and not just one dimension of life? That’s what it means to me.

Ashish Kothari:

Yeah, yeah. Rather than define ourselves—so many people just define themselves as work. I read Clay Christensen’s book How Will You Measure Your Life way back in the day. I don’t know if you’ve read it, but I love how he compares it to strategy. He says external work gives us a constant sense of worthiness and instant feedback on what you're doing.

But many of these other dimensions, they give us feedback long-term but frankly matter so much more. So I love your invitation to our listeners to not just define your life singularly but really across the full dimensions of how you show up.

The other part you mentioned, Niren, that comes through very clearly is—you didn’t say be excellent in everything by some external measure. You said try to grow and become better every day from who I was yesterday. So it's very much an internal, present frame that you can control.

Niren Chaudhary:

Yes, that’s absolutely right. It's kind of—am I better tomorrow than I was today?

Ashish Kothari:

Yeah. And what can I do? I can always choose to do that. I control that. I might not control becoming the best CEO or the most—giver out there. And isn’t it crazy? So much of—especially in our 30s and 40s—our orientation is external, and work consumes so much of our attention. Everything else gets sidelined.

And then we’re constantly looking out: Is it good enough? What is somebody else getting? How am I compared to that? We don’t actually focus on the gain—from where we started, where we were yesterday, and where we are today. That pivot can be such a big, big difference.

Niren Chaudhary:

This comparison with others, I think, is a very human thing to do. It happens to me. It happens to everyone. A lot of life is getting to the right place from the wrong place. Where you take a deep breath, you acknowledge that, and then you just let it go.

You say, “Okay, I’m going to focus on my world, my kaleidoscope of experiences, and try to give love and generosity and gratitude for what I have.”

It’s a human thing—to think about other people and what’s happening—because we’re all trying to be our very best. But the magic is getting to the right place from the wrong place.

Ashish Kothari:

Yes. And I think that is key. And yeah, friends, just to give you a little bit of—We all do that. The comparison. When we were cavemen, we probably looked at the next caveman and said, “Is his cave bigger? Does he have more stuff?” Because if he had a higher chance, he’d get a mate more than I do.

So it's very much in our biology—how we evolved. But the key is, first, to accept that that’s how it is. I face that all the time. While we were rushing toward this TEDx last week, on that Saturday, I was at home telling my wife, “We’ve done a lot, but at the same time, we’re not as far.”

I was literally falling into the trap of: “Look at person X—look at where they are, the capital they’ve raised, what they’re doing. Look at person Y, the number of followers they’ve got. Look at that community. Look at where we are.” I was going through the cycle.

But the key, as you say, is to know that’s going to happen. Know when you’re in that spiral, and then pause and say, “Okay, I want to improve from where I am—but let’s ground in how far we’ve come.” What are the learnings? Focus on the learnings we can integrate from where we are to rise to the challenge, rather than beat ourselves down.

I think that space—if we are able to pause and create—is the space you’re inviting our listeners to take.

Niren Chaudhary:

Yeah. I have a short story to illustrate that. I have a wonderful, wonderful friend called Sandeep Das. He’s a Grammy Award-winning tabla player. He grew up in India and went to the traditional Indian gharanas—gharanas are the tradition of learning from masters by living in their home and doing all the work with them.

He grew up in that traditional way. He’s a phenomenal human and a great player. And he was telling me one day—he said, “My master told me, my teacher told me, ‘I want you to be perfect. Practice, practice, practice till you’re absolutely perfect. And then once you’ve reached that state, I want you to play imperfectly—and then get back on track.’”

Because he said the real genius is to get to the right place from the wrong place. You’ve got to learn how to do that. But you have to know what the right place is. And then he was teaching him to actually make mistakes so he could get back to the right place.

So I think the really wonderful thing for our listeners is that all of these impulses are very natural—to compare, to not feel that great sometimes, and then feel embarrassed with that thought—like, “Why am I thinking like this?”

But it’s very, very human to do that. I think it’s not bad that that happens. I think what’s important is to catch yourself in that moment, take a deep breath, and say, “Now let me get to the right place from the wrong place.” That’s where growth happens.

Ashish Kothari:

Beautiful. Get to the right place from the wrong place.

Niren Chaudhary:

Yes.

Ashish Kothari:

I want to go back to the topic we started with. At Panera, you championed employee well-being. With leadership, it’s a core ethos of the company.

Talk to me about how you built that culture. You've talked about the importance of culture—how did you build that in a place with so many distributed stores? There’s so much happening all the time. How did you do that?

What can leaders who have distributed systems—not just one office, one location, one geography—but many, do to make that happen?

Niren Chaudhary:

Yeah, you’re right. Panera has 2,000 stores, 100,000 employees. So the question is, how do you create a people-focused culture?

There are many dimensions to it, but I’d like to highlight the singular most important one: it is always leader-led. It is led by the leader and then also by the leadership team and other leaders. It’s not just the CEO. All leaders must lead by example.

We can all talk the talk, but it’s our actions that really define what the culture is. Words are cheap, as they say. But do you really behave based on the values and behaviors that you’ve articulated as the cornerstone of the culture you want to build?

It gets tested the most in tough times. In tough times, the organization is essentially observing: how are my leaders making decisions? What actions are they taking? Are they congruent with the behaviors they’ve articulated as being key for the enterprise?

We had a core value at Panera to always be people-centered and people-focused, to treat everybody with respect. That gets tested in tough times.

When the pandemic happened, it was a very tough time. Business was suffering. We had to protect the business and the brand. We had to furlough our employees, just like many other companies did—about 25,000 people on the front line.

That’s a tough action you have to take. As leaders, you must do the right thing for the company. But this is a pivotal point—when you go back to your values and behaviors and ask: “How can I role model care for people in this difficult situation?” Because that defines culture.

So we saw that CVS and Walmart were hiring 100,000 people. We reached out to those two companies and asked them to hire our furloughed employees. CVS, in fact, set up a website for our employees to apply and get a job with them.

That, to me, is demonstrating respect—going above and beyond, even in a tough decision you must make. You don’t shy away from it, but you take tough decisions with humanity and compassion.

And not only that. It’s not that once you cut the cord, your furloughed employees are forgotten. Every week, our furloughed employees could come with their families and have one free meal at a Panera close to their home, and get an update on what’s happening with the company so they didn’t feel forgotten.

That is how you shape culture. Through the actions you take when times are very tough. To demonstrate your firm resolve and commitment to the behaviors you’ve defined as the cornerstones of the culture you want to have.

Ashish Kothari:

Yeah, I'm just thinking about that, Niren. The story beautifully highlights the importance of respecting what we started our conversation with: profits and purpose. Oftentimes, people get too focused on one. If you were just focused on profits, you'd say, “We let them go,” and stop there. You wouldn’t provide meals or stay connected.

You could treat it as transactional—and that's what you get: a transactional workforce. Then, when you try to rehire and ask for loyalty, that's not going to happen. But if you were almost fully purpose-focused in a business with high labor costs, you wouldn’t be around. And then you’d do the worst thing, which is fold the business—and now you're not affecting 25,000 people, but many more.

What were the conversations like, Niren, as you and the leadership team thought about those two moves? I'm sure there were many others, but as you considered transparency, care, and going above and beyond, what were the boardroom conversations like?

Niren Chaudhary:

Yeah, so I think, like I was saying, when you're hiring the leadership team, you're hiring against these values and behaviors. So everybody on your team thinks the same way. They know that caring for people is important to them individually and collectively. That’s why hiring for attitude is so important.

If you hire people who are wired the same way, then these discussions happen organically. They’re happening not only at the executive level but also with restaurant general managers across the country—who treat their teams with the same compassion and respect you're trying to embed at the enterprise level. It starts with selecting people who believe what you believe.

Ashish Kothari:

Yeah. So it's a little bit like—

Niren Chaudhary:

Of course, as an executive, as a CEO, you need to align with the board and make sure they see that you're not compromising on what's right for the brand or the business. In fact, this has a potential business benefit too.

Being an employer of choice helps build your reputation. Panera has been selected as an employer of choice multiple times in recent years. That drives engagement, retention, efficiency, and lower costs. So it makes business sense as well.

Ashish Kothari:

It 100% does. Alex Edmans' work, and more recently the work replicated around flourishing and well-being by Jan-Emmanuel, shows that. For our listeners: companies ranked high in employee satisfaction—top places to work—generate 2 to 3.5% higher alpha. And it's causation, not just correlation.

There’s a real opportunity to create significant shareholder value if we double down on our people. But that requires building something true over time—not just in good times. As you're reminding us, it especially gets tested in times of hardship. It takes three to four years—it's a long-term strategy. That’s why we talk about flourishing as a competitive edge. It has to be a strategy.

You do it both for humanitarian reasons and for a strong financial case. It's an advantage most companies struggle to replicate. It's how Toyota got to where it is. It's beautiful.

Look, you've had incredibly challenging roles, with lots of demands. It's not easy being a CEO. We've talked a lot about helping organizations flourish. What are some of your personal daily or weekly practices that help you stay grounded and lead with clarity, compassion, and energy?

Niren Chaudhary:

Well, that’s such a good question. Refueling yourself—making sure your soul is hydrated—is so important. For me, there are a couple of practices.

One is my determination to be happy every day. And for me, being happy means doing something I love. I love music, so I play every single day—at least 30 minutes to an hour. It’s a way for me to just be and enjoy the process. Music is very important to me.

I also love to meditate. I can recommend something I discovered recently called CORE Meditation—C-O-R-E. I struggled with meditation until I found this tactile device. You hold it and can actually feel it as you meditate. It helps me concentrate, and I love it. I do that for 10 or 15 minutes every day. It really grounds me.

Third, I practice two master skills that I think the listeners will benefit from. If you practice these two things every day, I can promise you’ll be successful in various aspects of your life.

The first is curiosity. It shows up as learning something you like but find difficult—every single day. It could be learning about AI, a new language, a musical instrument—anything that builds the muscle of learning.

The second is resilience. That’s doing something you think is important, even when you don’t feel like doing it. This comes up multiple times a day.

You’ve resolved to eat better, but there's ice cream in the fridge—you resist. You said you’d go for a run, it’s raining—you go anyway. These tiny daily battles develop mental strength and tenacity. They help you choose your response rather than giving in to impulse.

So: being curious, being resilient, choosing happiness, and having a meditative moment of gratitude—these are the ways I try to stay grounded.

Ashish Kothari:

I love those. I was just reflecting on my little ice cream moment yesterday afternoon.

Niren, I’ll definitely give those a try. And to our listeners—these are practices. You might not get it perfect on day one. But even if you do it once a day, then twice, then three times, you’re making it a core part of your life. Curiosity, resilience, meditation.

I'm going to try CORE Meditation. I meditate daily but haven’t heard of that. I’m always curious about new modalities. I’ll give it a shot. And yeah, I love music.

Niren, we’d love to post some of your new pieces in the show notes. You shared one with me on YouTube—it’s beautiful, very introspective. Thank you for creating such moving music.

Niren Chaudhary:

Thank you. I can do with some extra hits.

Ashish Kothari:

Of course.

I’d love to close with this: you’ve shared practices we can all do. But what advice would you give to CEOs or founders who want to prioritize people but feel pressured—whether by growth, profitability, or performance? How do we not lose ourselves in the pursuit of purpose to the point where we forget the value of people?

Niren Chaudhary:

Sure. I think this new business model of a virtuous cycle—profit and purpose—resonates because it is the future. In today’s broken world, we each need to elevate the importance of purpose. But you can only do that if there’s a reinforcing loop back into profit.

Do good, but make more money.

There are three things I’d share on how to do that:

Align your purpose with your business model. If you’re a food company, don’t fix homeless shelters—fix hunger. Be close to your core.

Engage in purposeful efforts that elevate your brand. That gives you pricing power. If customers value your purpose, they’ll pay more. That drives margin.

Drive purpose that fuels employee engagement. When employees stay longer and are more engaged, efficiency increases and costs go down.

So always ask: is this purposeful activity accretive to my brand or to my employee value proposition? If not—don’t do it. But if it is—build that flywheel of profit and purpose.

Ashish Kothari:

Niren, this has been such a beautiful conversation—very soulful, very heart and mind-centric. I’ve taken so many notes. I’m sure our listeners will really benefit from this.

Thank you for taking the time. I look forward to our continued collaboration, my dear friend.

Niren Chaudhary:

Thank you, Ashish. Really inspired by what you do. Always a pleasure to speak with you.

Ashish Kothari:

Cheers.