While other boys played with toy soldiers, Bob McDonald dreamed of leading them. He applied to West Point in the sixth grade and, fortunately, his congressman didn’t discourage him. He told Bob to keep applying every year.
Bob not only was accepted to West Point, but he also graduated in the top 2 percent of his class. He later earned an MBA, joining the ranks of Procter & Gamble’s executive team upon graduation.
As P&G’s CEO, Bob oversaw 120,000 employees and a $10 billion restructuring plan. He expanded P&G’s reach by nearly one billion new customers while achieving consistent 3 percent annual organic sales growth.
After P&G, Bob led the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) with its 300,000 employees and $300 billion budget. His reforms halved veteran homelessness, reduced disability claims backlog, improved healthcare access, and modernized the VA’s medical supply chain.
Bob joined me for a discussion on Off the Rak about his customer-centric leadership framework that served him well at both organizations. Here are the highlights:
1. A Leadership Model that Scales from Boardrooms to Battlefields
Bob’s core philosophy rests on the “Five E’s”: Envision, Engage, Energize, Enable, and Execute. At the VA, he discovered the organization was using more than 70 different leadership models. He immediately created a single, cohesive model embedded across recruiting, development, and promotion systems.
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2. Intimacy with the Customer—Even in Crisis
During the VA’s public trust crisis, Bob turned the organizational pyramid upside down: Veterans at the top, leadership serving them. He gave out his personal cellphone number during a national press conference, trained teams in human-centered design, and mapped the veteran journey from enlistment to burial. Trust in the VA rose from 47 percent to over 90 percent.
A Story that Captures His Approach
Bob tells the story of visiting India before P&G acquired Gillette because sales weren’t strong there. The company had tested a new razor with Indian students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and assumed that it would succeed in rural India…but it didn’t.
When Bob pressed the matter, it turned out no one had actually gone to rural India to uncover why the razor wasn’t selling, so Bob took a team there. What Bob and his colleagues observed was a man sitting cross-legged on the floor, using a tin can of water to shave. P&G’s new razor—designed for running water—was ineffective. This customer insight sparked innovation: the team adjusted blade spacing and handle shape, and sales soared.
This same instinct—to step into the customer’s lived experience—drove Bob’s VA reforms. Whether for a consumer product or healthcare, Bob believed leaders must go see for themselves, gather insights, and innovate with empathy.
To hear more about Bob’s impact at both a Fortune 50 company and the second-largest federal agency, tune in to the full conversation on the Off the Rak podcast.
