ProductiviTree: Cultivating Efficiency, Harvesting Joy

How to Lead and Stay Calm Under Pressure with Ahmet Bozer

• Santiago Tacoronte • Season 2 • Episode 41

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Former Coca-Cola International President Ahmet Bozer managed an $80 billion business and hundreds of markets, yet today he’s on a mission to teach people how to thrive under pressure. In this episode, he reveals the Soulgery model, a transformative approach that turns stress into strength and reframes challenges into growth opportunities.

Takeaways

  • Everything evolves; nothing is ever permanent.
  • Adopt a smart bias for positivity in every situation.
  • Success and failure create psychological burdens; focus on outcomes instead.
  • Growth should happen naturally through lived experiences.
  • Understanding your sense of self is crucial for personal growth.
  • The journey of finding meaning is as important as the destination.
  • Excellence is a relative concept, not perfection.
  • Simplification is a key mental habit for productivity.
  • Stress is unavoidable; learn to respond to it effectively.
  • Growing yourself is the most important thing in life.

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Ahmed, welcome to ProductiviTree Welcome Santiago, thanks for having me. You managed Coca-Cola International's operations across 200 countries with 80 billions in revenue at stake. Looking back, what was the greatest pressure you faced and how did you keep your composure? Well, ah there were many moments where things just don't go as well as you'd like them to go. ah But really, I subscribe to a somewhat funny ah saying from a very ancient uh sage. This is his name, Shams Tabrizzi. He says, Don't fret that your life's gonna turn upside down. When it does, how do you know that it's not better? So basically I have this philosophy saying everything evolves, right? You you think of something's happening and you estimate that it's going to have a very negative consequence. But nothing is ever permanent. There's always good and bad and bad and good. So everything sort of goes together. uh I try to uh apply this concept that I call a smart bias for positivity. That doesn't mean that I'm sort of foolishly optimistic or uh I always assume that everything's going to be positive. No. Life's got pluses and minuses. Everything is there. But in every situation we face and every person that we deal with, there are positives. and negatives. So this smart bias for positivity is always looking for those positives and then working with them in a constructive way. Whether that's in people's intentions, whether that's in people's capabilities or whether in terms of the outcomes of events. So always trying to be constructive, probably that's the better word, rather than positive, to move forward. Those are some of the philosophical underpinnings that I've tried to embrace to deal with stress, adversity, and one has to be prepared that uh there are, there's winning and there's losing, but nothing is ever permanent. lot of people cracks under stress. Did you ever have a breaking point where you were almost close to that to crack? And what helped you recover and find, as you said, the evolution, the next step for you? Yeah, you know, I've developed this little mental technique So we're all human, right? We're we're all gonna get to those points and maybe sometimes we'll crack, you know That's that doesn't mean the end of the world. But I here's the technique that I developed whenever I feel I'm in a state of being that Isn't what I'd like it to be. I'm not talking about minor mood fluctuations. It's like I'm really feeling down and it's really bad. I call these fall times. I just say, I declare to myself that I have fallen. I'm in a fall time. So then I say, okay, what do I do when I'm in a fall time? And I basically prioritize two things. First, I say, how long did it take me to recover from this fall time last time I experienced one? And if that was a week, I said, can I do it in five days? I set myself a goal. said, look, I'm in a fall time, I understand, but I'm going to try to recover from that sooner than I have the last time I had one. And then the second goal I set is, I'm not going to try to accomplish amazing things while I'm in fall time. All I'm going to try to do is to minimize damage. That gives me focus. Okay. What is it that I just don't want to happen while I'm here? So if there's like a very important presentation, you know, I'm not trying to impress the hell out of everyone. I just want to get through. So because when you're in a full time, you're not at your energy level, you're not at your best and that happens. So, uh you know, what happened when I applied this full time logic earlier in my career, I could be, I could have fallen for a month, really feel miserable. As I practiced with this, by the time I got to the end of my executive career, I was setting goals for the next meeting. Sometimes you just have terrible bad meetings and you sort of fall, right? And if you go back to the next meeting with that same mindset, you're going to fall more. So I said, well, can I recover from a fall time in between two meetings? Now, sometimes I could, sometimes I couldn't, but I could definitely get to a point of recovering. the next day. If I had a bad day, I go home and I say my goal is to come back up the next day. So it's really this process of self persuasion. And then sometimes you have to do things for that. You may have to go out and have a wonderful meal. You may have to just blare your music and just get uplifted with what you hear or just spend time with friends or just have a phone call with someone that you really like talking to. So You know, we all have to understand ourselves better, you know, what resonates with us, what works with us, and experiment with those. And if we keep maintaining this kind of sort of reflecting on ourselves and taking action and learning from it, ah it's amazing that how this becomes sort of natural over time. Wow, that's very profound, Ahmed. And I just noticed that while you were speaking that there is something that really uplifts me and takes me out of my fall moments, which is singing out loud. Obviously, I don't do it publicly because I want to scare anyone. But I notice that if I sing a song that I love loud with all my power and passion, my mood changes. yeah, that's great. I mean, people might assume that success at Coca-Cola gave you peace of mind. But, knowing you a little bit already, was success what really made you happy, or what was it? You know, I try to eliminate certain words from my vocabulary. Two of those are success and failure. You know why I eliminate them? Because they create some psychological effects. So if I say I'm successful, I'm sort of boosting my sense of self. And in any given moment, what we call success, Probably part of it comes from your external circumstances and part of it comes from what you do Like there's always a factor of luck and all of that same with failure You know when you say failure it creates a psychological burden so Call it whatever you want, but you know you basically have outcomes and consequences of those outcomes and how you respond to those outcomes. And if you could, so I, so if your question is, you know, did I consider myself successful at Coke? Let me just say I felt very fulfilled at Coke. I felt I have grown a lot with Coke. I felt I have really loved Coke. I have really loved working for Coke. Those are the experiences that I can truly relate to and that uplifts me still. rather than focusing on success or failure. I'm not trying to avoid your question, but that's how I feel. Let's introduce the audience to the concept of soldiery. Can you tell us in a couple of sentences, before we go deeper, what is it about and why did you create it? So soldiery is a framework, it's a model, uh a way to think about yourself and life that when you embrace that, embrace means when you internalize it, you naturally accelerate your growth through your lived experiences. So in other words, growth isn't something to chase. It should happen naturally. because you're approaching things in a growth minded way. That's what soldiery um provides. It's a framework that when you apply, you naturally grow through your life experiences. uh Why did I create this? You know, when I was working at Coke in corporate world or got involved in other businesses, I truly believe that every business is a people business. When individuals Unleash their potential and when they really collaborate well with each other then the business does well, so Your your number one responsibility as a leader the way I saw it Is to create the environment so that people flourish and that starts with yourself you a leader is a role model You have to be a role model in demonstrating that you are growing yourself And then you are creating the environment for others to do the same and for others to collaborate, bring their strengths together so that the business thrives. So this is what I focused on all my life. And I tend to, uh I have this approach that I want to do this in a systemic way with the right philosophical foundation in a practical way. So while I focused on that in this manner, in my mind, I started painting a picture of a system for this, a system for unlocking individual potential. And I thought, will be a nice thing to put that together, to uh present this in an accessible, understandable, uh easily practicable way. And I followed that passion and I created it. what are the within the framework what are the parts of modules So, ah it has like three fundamental pillars. One is that, you know, we say growth, right? So basically it says unlocking your potential means you're growing. So, but what is growth? So it has a very clear definition of growing as a human being. And that definition is basically that we continuously become more capable, more impactful, and more resilient. So that's the definition of growth. That's the first pillar. The second pillar is what is a human being? So, you if we're growing the human being, what is a human being? So it has what I called the self map. It just shows what a human being is made up of. And then the third pillar is what makes the biggest difference to accelerate that human being's growth? There are four core beliefs that underpin the third pillar and that third pillar is called the four acts of growth. So if you do those things as part of your everyday life, you will accelerate your growth. So that's the three things, definition of growth, definition of the human being and what makes you grow. I've been doing some research about the soldiery framework and on the self map part that I am asking you also to explain a little bit. It seems that high achievers often has an incomplete or distorted map of themselves. Can you guide us through this and this sort of paradox? Absolutely, ah this is actually at the center of the self map in a way I call this our sense of self if you googled sense of self and People who are listening can do this My bet is and I've done this before and it probably still the same Nine out of ten things you're going to get is how to build a strong sense of self That's what we're focused on self-confidence and you know, you feel good about yourself. But in the book, I tried to ask another question, which I consider to be more important. How does your sense of self get in the way of your growth? To me, that's more important than or if you only ask strong sense of self, it's incomplete. You really have to focus on how does yours. So the point that you're referring to is If the thoughts you have about yourself, which is your sense of self, are misaligned with reality, you will be misguided because your sense of self affects the way you perceive things, it affects the way you interpret the outcomes you experience, it drives your choices, it drives you in how you set a vision for your life, it drives everything. It's at the center of everything. So, soldiery focuses a lot on what I call the inhibiting influences of the sense of self and how we can become more aware of it and manage it. There is a part in the four acts of growth that starts with find your direction. It sounds simple. sounds straightforward. Yet a lot of people even way, I'm saying way advanced in their age, 30, 40, 50s, even later, cannot find meaning or direction. What's your recommendation? for people to be able to at least find a direction. First, Santiago, if I had the mechanism of giving people soldiery certificates, you would have gotten one by now. You've really studied the website and thank you for that. You've used the word meaning, which is the same thing that I do. The word purpose is used sometimes, but I'd really like to, when I think about finding your direction, I'm talking about searching for meaning. I think... purpose in my mind gives you some sort of a deadline or something that may change over time or know meaning can change as well but meaning to me is a broader term and the way soldiery approaches this is approach the search for meaning in such a way that journey itself uplifts you and elevates you even if you decide or not decide on what the meaning of your life is. So that journey has three elements and Solger recommends that we take these three journeys. One is to open your heart to love. See the meaning comes up from the love you have, from the wisdom you have. And then you've got to have some philosophical curiosity about the existential questions of life. So if um you take the journeys to do these three things, to craft your personal philosophy, to open your heart to love, and it just book talks about, you know, an actionable way how we can do that, and harvesting wisdom from your life experiences, these three things will raise your level of consciousness, and you will start to experience yourself and life from a higher level of consciousness. Now, this could take years, decades, or even a lifetime. That journey in and of itself gives you meaning. That journey teaches you to source inspiration from life. It elevates you. Now, if along the way that meaning emerges from within and you really... it really resonates with you and you begin living... by that meaning and every role you play in life, you now become an inspiration for others. And this is all you have become a higher level human being because you found it. Now, I also say, you might say like, you do these journeys and you reach age 45 and you decide you found the meaning of your life. Next 10 years you have such experiences and then you start questioning that and you say, maybe, you know, maybe I didn't get it right. And that's absolutely okay because that means you're growing. So the whole point of this is the search for meaning grows you. So I focus on the search for meaning uh rather than sort of doing these eight or nine things to decide what the meaning of life is. You know, oftentimes, you know, in this, uh in our world, we're so goal driven, we have to get, achieve a goal by a certain time. And whenever something is not accomplished, we sort of feel incomplete. You know, we just need to bring closure to things. Search for meaning isn't something like that. We have to learn to be at peace with staying in the journey, not bringing closure, and just keep walking. And that, to me, is a better way to search for meaning. You often talk about performing for excellence versus just working harder. What is the distinction? You know, again, everything in soldier is, so I'm going to define excellence. know, excellence is a relative concept. It all depends on something. It could be, I perform better than the others, or I've performed better than my previous performances, or I've performed much better than the expectations. So it's always relative to something. So excellence is not perfection. It's an ongoing journey of trying to improve over something. all the time. So performing with excellence is exactly that, to surpass something all the time. that happens, you know, the foundation of this is discipline actually. But discipline not in the sense of having, you know, rigid routines, If you're very disciplined piano player, you will hit every note right. But if you don't flow with the music, you're not going to touch the souls of people. You may come across a little mechanic. So you first have to have the discipline, but then you have to use this discipline to create space to find your own rhythm of performance. What is your rhythm? Are you at your best in the morning? Are you at your best at 5 o'clock? Are you trying to accomplish the most meaningful tasks when you're at your best? So when you start getting into that rhythm, finding your personal rhythm, then excellence will follow naturally. A follow-up question here. If you look at soldiery from the probably more critical perspective, some might say it sounds philosophical compared to productivity hacks, which are very trendy today. And we have some episodes dedicated to productivity hacks in this podcast. So why do you think young professionals that are full of energy should trust this model over an app or a framework or a to-do list or something that can help them be more productive. All right. Let's do that with an example. So there's a chapter in the book called Time Management. And what you would normally expect to see on time management is, you know, these quick hacks and so that you use. I chose not to do that because there are wonderful people who are doing this and I just don't want to add. But I would argue that one of the key mental habits to productivity is the skill to simplify. So I want to bring to the table things that people haven't brought to the table. So. I don't know how many times you have noticed, I've noticed it many times. You know, I sometimes complicate things more than I should. That's because I haven't stepped back and asked myself, what is really essential here? What is unnecessary? Am I able to say this in a very brief and understandable way without losing any of the content or the material? So... simplification, Leonardo da Vinci says simplifying is the ultimate sophistication. gaining this skill, ability to simplify, so imagine like this, know, if you're doing uh a narrow scope work, it may be easier to simplify. But as you take on more and more in life, you have bigger things to think about, simplification becomes so much more important. So Developing the simplification skill isn't a quick hack, but it's a mental habit you can quickly act on each time. And each time you do it, you get better at it. But then you can get better at it for as long as you live. So there are elements like this to give us productivity over time immediately and more over time, like simplification. aren't always, uh they are more effective than quick hacks over time. And they are deeper. It has to do with deeper thinking habits. There are many examples like this that's uh not everything in life, not 100 % of life can be improved. Your productivity has deeper roots in your own thinking. and you have to address them as well. And that's what I tried to do. Some business leaders claim that stress is unavoidable at the top, so get used to it. Do you agree to this? Or do you think that a senior leader with a lot of responsibility uh can lead without that high level of stress? I agree that stress is uh unavoidable, you will have. The question is, it's not getting used to it. I'd say learn how to respond to it. So whenever you're stressed between, you know, two things pulling you in different directions, um do you respond by breaking down or trying to take one side or do you acknowledge that you're under stress? And then do you say, all right, let me try to understand this a little better. Let me try to see if there's a win-win or maybe not. But at least you're taking a step back and you're recognizing the stress, but you're leveraging it as a way to move forward. So um that's what I agree with. oh And then it doesn't feel comfortable. Feeling comfortable, get used to not feeling comfortable. I think if we need to get used to something, it's getting used to feeling not comfortable. Love, wisdom and purpose are key soldiery values. Now bring this to a boardroom and a lot of executives will tell you, Ahmed, this is fluffy. Give me KPI's, give me hard facts. How do you convince these people that love and wisdom and purpose are more important than this quarter sales number? I think to say more important is I wouldn't use those words, but I would say they are foundational. Now, love is, let's just take one example, as you said. Let's take love. Probably that's the one that's least fitting with the business world. So, my philosophy on love is that I think of that as an attraction. But it's an enduring attraction. So if it was between two people, you feel an attraction to this person. You may get mad at this person from time to time, you may get jealous and you may get upset. Those come and go. But the attraction endures. So it's an enduring attraction. But love isn't only between people. We can feel this attraction to a vision. to an idea, to a company, to a cause, to a country, to humanity, to anything. Now... If you, this has been my experience and maybe this happened naturally, maybe it happened through me trying to cultivate this within myself. But I had an attraction to the company that I worked for because I had an attraction to its global uh reach. I had an attraction to its brand. I had an attraction to its people. This attraction brought out the best in me. So if you approach love in this way, if love is an attraction that endures and that brings out the best in your people, who can argue against that in business? Bye. So that's the same with wisdom. mean, wisdom would be easy. That would be a killer. You know, if you're a uh high level executive in any company, if you're not developing your wisdom on the political, economic, social and technological environment in which you operate, you don't deserve to be in that position. You have to harvest wisdom. From your, that's learning. That's continuous learning. And every, every company promotes that. Let us do some rapid fire questions. Let's answer in 30 seconds. Number one, what is the book that impacting your thinking the most? It started when I was very young with the seven habits of highly effective people. That was my starting point. And then a couple others added to it. One was from Peter Drucker. It was called the effective executive. So let me count those two. But then I evolved from those. Number two, one habit you'd recommend to instantly reduce stress. habit of self-reflection. Explain that. Take the time to do quality thinking about what you've been going through in life ah without making negative judgments about yourself, just to try to understand what's happening, to accept yourself as you are. I call this like, I call planning like is a timeout in a basketball game. I played a lot of basketball when I was young. What does a coach do in a timeout? So gets everybody and basically say, Hey guys, this is what's happening in the field. Do you guys understand? Now what we're going to do is we're going to change this, that, and the other. And then what else? Then he or she basically boost their morale and sends them up. Do that to yourself. Take a time out. Think about what you've been through. Understand it. Think about what you're going to change and pump yourself up to go out, go back into the field and And with- Number three, what is the biggest misconception people have about success? I think it's the very use of the term success. Success is very relative. I can consider, you know, there is no uh benchmark to decide what is success, what is not success. There is no point in me telling myself I'm successful. I have my goals and I have my results. I can achieve them, I could surpass them, I could fall short of them. Then I have to move forward from them. So probably the biggest misconception of success is that we sort of use the word. uh Number four, what is the hardest lesson you ever learned as a leader? um I can't say that I've learned this lesson. I just know that this is still my... maybe I should say chosen weakness. This smart bias for positivity. I'd love to approach people in a constructive way. sometimes you could... the other thing, I try to live the value of humility. When you approach people in a positive way with humility, you can sometimes be misunderstood. And it could be some people try to take advantage of you. It could be that some people think you're weak or some people... So all of these things. uh And from time to time, I've had consequences for this that didn't uh sort of kill me, but probably... ah That's where I have an opportunity to adjust a little bit. And number five, what is the first thing you do beyond taking a timeout when you feel overwhelmed? Oh, go for a walk, go for a swim, do exercise, listen to music, have a nice meal, or talk to my wife, talk to my mother, talk to my brothers, talk to my good friends. It all, you know, but with all of this, you just have to keep telling yourself that nothing is permanent. In the book I have a section called surfing impermanence. So everything in life is impermanent. It just evolves one thing from another. You just need to surf those. I remind myself that if I'm really down, overwhelmed, yep, that's what it is right now and how am I going to surf this? If this podcast is the only time someone ever hear about soldiery, what is the one principle you'd want them to remember for life? I'd say that consider the idea of growing yourself being the most important thing in life. Ahmed, if people want to know more about you, want to know about soldiery, how can they do that? Is your book available? When is it coming out? So the book's available for pre-order and it comes out on October 28th. But my website, which is www.soldry.com, is live now, just a few days ago. And I would recommend people just uh exploring that website. There is just a lot of stuff in it. And I try to post once a week on LinkedIn through my name and Instagram. uh with the name Book of Soldry, all one word. So uh if they actually listen to my uh videos, which are like 90 seconds or less, one after the other, they'll probably get the gist of the book. And if they read the book after that, it'll really internalize. ah So those are the avenues that people can get more information on. Amazing. Ahmed, I want to thank you for a full of wisdom conversation. And my takeaway is that productivity goes way beyond an app, uh framework, and the real productivity is expanding human potential. And this is one of the things that your framework does. We tend to get hooked into quick hacks. People love quick things. People wants to get rich quickly. People wants to get the job done quickly um and move on to the next. But it's the journey. You just said it is the journey. What is what we need to enjoy. And I really want to make sure that what the one, those that you're describing are extremely valuable and they're needed. It's just that they're not the only things to do. Ahmed, thank you so much. Thank you, Santiago. It was wonderful talking to you.